February 19th
Born: Nicolaus Copernicus, astronomer, 1473,
Thom, in Prussia: Henry Frederick Prince of Wales, 1594, Stirling Castle; Admiral
Lord Rodney,
1718, Walton-on-Thames; Richard Cumberland, dramatist, 1732, Cambridge; Sir
Roderick I. Murchison, geologist, 1792, Tarradale, Rossshire.
Died: Dec. Albinos (Emperor), killed, 198,
Rhone River; Erasmus Reinhold, astronomer, 1553, Thuringen; Lucilio Vanini, 1619,
burnt as an
atheist, at Toulouse; Sir Henry Savile, mathematician, 1622, Eton College; Francis
de Sauvages, nosologist, 1767, Montpelier; Elizabeth Carter, classical scholar,
1806, London;
Bernard Barton, poet, 1849: Sir William Napier, military historian, 1860.
Feast Day: St. Barbatus, bishop of Benevento,
684.
HENRY PRINCE OF
WALES
It is blessed to
the in promise, rather than after all
the blots and mischances of performance. We naturally credit the young dead with
much which might never have been realized. Nevertheless, in the early death of
Henry Prince of
Wales there is no room to doubt that the national bewailment was just. All
accounts concur in representing him as a youth of bright talents, most generous
dispositions, and the
noblest aspirations. At sixteen, he had the figure, the proportions, and the
sentiments of a full-grown man. With the love of study which belonged to his
father, he possessed what
his father entirely wanted, a love of manly military exercises. In riding, in
archery, in the use of arms, he was without a superior. He studied shipbuilding
and the whole art of
war with as much zeal as if he had had no taste for elegant learning. When, at
Christmas 1609, the romantic spectacle called his Barriers was presented in the
Banqueting House at
Whitehall,�when he and six other youths met each in succession eight others, at
pike and sword play,�all clad in the beautiful armour of the period,�Henry was
remarked, to the
surprise of all, to have given and received thirty-two pushes of pike and about
three hundred and sixty strokes of sword, in one evening.
It was in the midst of active study and exercise, and
while the nation was becoming fully aware of the promise he gave as their future
ruler, that
this accomplished prince was seized with a fever, the consequence, apparently, of
the too violent fatigues to which he occasionally subjected himself. What
immediately affected him
to a fatal illness, seems to have been his playing at tennis one evening without
his coat. In the simple act of stripping off and laying aside that coat, was
involved an
incalculable change of the current of English history; for, had Henry survived and
reigned, the country would probably have escaped a civil war�and who can say, in
that event, how
much our national destinies might have been changed, for good or evil? During the
twelve days of the prince's illness, the public mind was wrought up to a pitch of
intense anxiety
regarding him: and when, on one occasion, he was thought to have yielded up the
ghost, the cry of grief went out from St. James's Palace into the street, and was
there repeated and
spread by the sympathising multitude. All that the medical skill of that age could
do was done to save so valuable a life, including some applications that sound
strangely in our
ears: for example, pigeons applied to the head, and a split cock to the feet. Sir Walter
Raleigh sent from his
prison in the Tower a 'quinteseence' which he believed to be of wonderful power:
and it did give the prince the only approach to a restoring perspiration which he
had had. But all
was in vain. Henry died on the 6th of November 1612, when three months
less than nineteen years of age. As a historical event, his death ranks with a
very small class in
which deceased royalty has been mourned by the nation's heart; the deaths of the
Princess
Charlotte and of the
Prince Consort Albert
being almost the only other instances.
The national admiration of this young prince is shown
in some quaint lines, hitherto inedited, in the Burleigh MSS.:
Loa where he shineth yonder,
A fixed star in heaven:
Whose motion heere came under
None of your planets heaven.
if that the moone should tender
The sunne her love, and marry,
They both would not engender
Soe great a star as Harry.'�1617
SIR WILLIAM NAPIER
The public was for some years startled from time to
time by the publication of letters signed William Napier, speaking passionately
and
unmeasuredly on some subject, generally military: it came to be recognized as a
Napierian style of writing. The writer of these fiery missives was one of the
worthiest and ablest
of men, the younger brother of the eminent commander Sir Charles James
Napier, and par excellence the historian of the
Peninsular War. William Napier, born in 1785, commanded a regiment (the 43
rd) all through that war, and was well
fitted to be its
annalist. His work, begun in 1828, and finished in six volumes, is a masterpiece
of detailed history. Passages of it are said to have been re-counted round the
watch-fires and told
in the trenches before Sebastopol, and never without warming the soldier's heart,
firing his mind, and nerving his arm. Sir William also wrote The Conquest of
Scinde, and a
Life of his brother Charles, both of them valuable books. He will not be
the least memorable of the extraordinary brood of sons - which
Sarah Lennox, after some other singular passages of life, was fated
to bring into the world.
THE
DREAM OF THE GOOD KING GONTRAN
The late Hugh Miller, in his
interesting work, My Schools and Schoolmasters, when speaking of a cousin
named
George, says some of his Highland stories were very curious. He communicated to
me, for example, beside the broken tower, a tradition illustrative of the Celtic
theory of dreaming,
of which I have since often thought. Two young men had been spending the early
portion of a warm summer day in exactly such a scene as that in which he
communicated the anecdote.
There was an ancient ruin beside them, separated, however, from the mossy bank on
which they sat by a slender runnel, across which there lay, immediately over a
miniature cascade,
a few withered grassstalks. Overcome by the heat of the day, one of the young men
feel asleep: his companion watched drowsily beside him, when all at once the
watcher was aroused
to attention by seeing a little, indistinct form, scarce larger than a humble-bee,
issue from the mouth of the sleeping man, and, leaping upon the moss, move
downwards to the
runnel, which it crossed along the withered grass-stalks, and then disappeared
amid the interstices of the ruin.
Alarmed by what he saw, the watcher hastily shook his
companion by the shoulder, and awoke him: though, with all his haste, the little,
cloud-like
creature, still more rapid in its movements, issued from the interstice into which
it had gone, and, flying across the runnel, instead of creeping along the
grass-stalks and over
the sward, as before, it re-entered the mouth of the sleeper, just as he was in
the act of awakening. "What is the matter with you? said the watcher, greatly
alarmed: "what ails
you?" "Nothing ails me," replied the other, "but you have
robbed me of a most delightful dream. I dreamed I was walking through a fine rich
country, and came at length to the
shores of a noble river: and, just where the clear water went thundering down a
precipice, there was a bridge all of silver, which I crossed: and then, entering a
noble palace on
the opposite side, I saw great heaps of gold and jewels: and I was just going to
load myself with treasure, when you rudely awoke me, and I lost all."'
The above story is by no means uncommon in the
Highlands, and the writer has frequently heard it related by an old native of
Rossshire who firmly
believed it�as an indisputable evidence of the immortality of the soul, the
'little indistinct form' being assumedly the soul of the man, in full life, sense,
and motion, while his
body was wrapped in the death-like torpor of sleep. And he further stated that in
the Highlands, under peculiar circumstances, the little form has been seen leaving
the mouths of
certain persons at the last gasp of life.
It is a curious fact that a similar legend, having,
however, a much more practical conclusion, is related of Gontran the Good, king of
Burgundy,
who lived, reigned, and died so far back as the sixth century. One day, Gontran,
wearied with the chase, and attended but by one faithful squire, laid himself down
to rest near a
small rivulet, and soon fell asleep. The squire, while carefully guarding his
royal master, with great astonishment perceived a small beast (bestion) emerge
from the king's mouth,
and proceed to the bank of the rivulet, where it ran up and down for some time,
seemingly wishing to cross the water, but unable to do so. There-upon the squire,
determined to see
the end of the adventure, drew his sword, and laid it over the stream from bank to
bank. The little animal seeing this improvised bridge, ran over it, and speedily
disappeared in a
small hole, at the foot of a hill on the opposite side.
After remaining there for a very short period, it
returned along the sword, and into the king's mouth. Soon after, Gontran,
awakening, said that he
had just had a most extraordinary dream, in which he thought that he had crossed a
foaming torrent on a bridge of polished steel, and entered a subterranean palace
full of gold and
jewels. The squire then relating what he had seen, the king, on his return to his
palace, summoned all the learned men in Burgundy, and having stated the whole
occurrence, demanded
of them the immediate interpretation thereof. For once in the world's history, the
opinion of the savans was unanimous: they declared there could be no reasonable
doubt on the
matter. A large treasure was concealed under the hill, and, its existence being by
a special miracle disclosed to the king, he alone was destined to be its
possessor. Gontran
immediately set a great number of men to work, the hill was undermined, and the
treasure discovered. Receiving this treasure as an especial gift of Providence,
Gontran devoted the
principal part of it to purposes of charity and religion. He founded hospitals for
the poor, and ecclesiastical edifices for the clergy: he made extensive roads
through his
kingdom, that the poor might be the better enabled to perform pilgrimages: and
covered the shrine of St. Marcel, at Ch�lons-sur-Saone, with a thick layer of
beaten gold. Still
further to commemorate the wonderful event, the King ordered that the hill should
ever after be termed Mont-Tr�sor, the name which it bears at the present day.
Claud Paradin, in his Syinbola Heroica, has recorded
the wonderful dream of Gontran, by the accompanying engraving and the motto: 'SIC
SOPOR
IRRUPIT.'
February 20th
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