Born: Daniel Bernouilli, a celebrated Swiss
mathematician, 1700, Gr�ningen; C. F. Volney, French philosopher, 1757.
Died: Agnes Sorel, 1450, Memel; Bishop Hooper, burnt
at Gloucester, 1555; Dr. Rowland Taylor, burnt at Hadleigh, 1555; Henry Lord
Darnley, consort of
Mary Queen of Scots, murdered, 1567; Dr. John Gregory, author of A Father's
Legacy to his Daughters, 1773, Edinburgh; Dr. William Boyce, 1779;
Benjamin Martin, philosophical
writer, 1782; Nevil Maskelyne, astronomer-royal, 1811, Flamstead House.
Feast Day: St. Apollonia, virgin martyr at Alexandria,
249. St. Nicephorns, martyr at Antioch, 260. St. Attracta, virgin in Ireland,
5th
century. St. Theliau, bishop of Llandaff, circ. 580. St. Ansbert, archbishop of
Rouen, 695. St. Erhard, of Scotland, 8th century.
DANIEL BERNOUILLI, THE
EMINENT MATHEMATICIAN
This eminent man, one of a family which is known in the
history of mathematics by the services of eight of its members, was the second
son of John
Bernouilli, and was born at Gr�ningen, February 9, 1700. His father, though
highly famous as a mathematician, was jealous of his own son: it is related
that, one day, he proposed
to Daniel, then a youth, a little problem to try his strength; the boy took it
with him, solved it, and came back, expecting some praise from his father. 'You
ought to have done it
on the spot, was all the observation made, and with a tone and gesture which his
son remembered to the latest day of his life. That Daniel in mature life was not
deficient in ready
power is proved by the following anecdote. Koenig, another great mathematician,
dining with him one day, mentioned a difficult problem which had long baffled
him; but he added with
some pride, 'I accomplished it at last.' Bernouilli said little at the moment,
but went on attending to his guests, and before they rose from table he had
solved the problem in his
mind.
The elder Bernouilli, John, was succeeded in the Academy of
Sciences by Daniel, at whose death, in 1782, his brother John succeeded him.
Thus for ninety
years the Academy never wanted a Bernouilli in its list of members. Daniel spent
a great part of his life in Basle, where he was held in such esteem that it was
part of the
education of every child to learn to take off the hat to him. The fact of so
peculiar a talent passing from father to son, and spreading into so many
branches, is very noteworthy;
and it will be found that the subject is followed out in a paper a page onward.
THE EXPERIMENT AT
SCHIEHALLION
Dr. Maskelyne, the astronomer-royal, amongst many
investigations in astronomy and general physics, distinguished himself in a
special manner by one which
had for its object directly to ascertain the attraction of mountains, and
remotely the mean density of the earth. The scene of this great labour was the
mountain Schiehallion, in
Perthshire. Arriving there in the latter part of June 1774, the philosopher and
his assistant, Mr. Burrow, had a station prepared for themselves half way up the
south side of the
hill; afterwards another on the north side. It is a long bare mountain of 3,500
feet in elevation, in the midst of a country purely Alpine, and subject to the
dreariest climatal
influences. Three weeks elapsed before the learned investigator got a clear day
for the ascertainment of a meridian line wherein to place his astronomical
quadrant. Amidst the
greatest difficulties�for the season was the worst seen for several years �he
was just enabled, before November, to fix approximately the declination which
the plumb-line made from
the perpendicular on the respective sides of the mountain, being 5" 8'
whence it was afterwards deduced by Dr. Charles
Hutton, that, if the rock of
the hill be taken as that of free-stone, or 2.5 of water, the earth's density
will be 4.5 of the same measure (subsequently corrected by Professor Playfair
into 4.867).
The writer of this notice has often amused himself by
reflecting on what would be the feelings of the English philosopher, fresh from
the Greenwich
Observatory, and Crane-court, Fleet-street, on finding himself in a wilderness,
whence, but thirty years before, there had poured down a host of half-naked
barbarians upon the
plains of his native country, and where there had recently died an old Highland
chief and bard (Robertson, of Struan) who had been out with both Dundee and
Marr. What, also, would
be the conception of his enterprise, his instruments, his measurements and
surveyings, adopted by the Clan Donnochie, of the Moor of Rannoch? What would
they think when they were
told that a man had come to Schiehallion to weigh it,�nay, to weigh the
earth? Maskelyne tells us, however, in his paper in the Philosophical
Transactions, that:
'Sir Robert Menzies, the chief
gentleman near Schiehallion, paid him many hospitable attentions, and that he
received visits
from Wilson, Reid, and Anderson, professors in Glasgow, and from various other
men of science, throughout the autumn�'so great a noise had the attempt of
this uncommon experiment
made in the country, and so many friends did it meet with interested in the
success of it.'
The mountain Schiehallion was adopted for the experiment,
because it was a lofty and narrow one, whereof the longer axis lay nearly east
and west, thus
giving a small difference of latitude between the two stations in proportion to
the bulk of the mass lying between. Maskelyne himself, and even his geological
friend and visitor
Playfair, might have felt some additional interest in the affair, if they had
known that the mountain had been shaped for their purpose by the great ice-flow
of the glacial period,
the marks of whose passage can be clearly traced along its sides and ridge, up
to nearly the summit.
MURDER OF DAVID
RIZZIO�PERMANENCY OF BLOOD-STAINS
On the evening of the 9th March 1565-6, David Rizzio,
the Italian secretary of
Mary of Scotland, was murdered in Holyrood Palace, by certain Protestant
leaders of her court, with the assistance of her husband, Lord Darnley. The poor
foreigner was torn
from her side as she sat at supper, and dragged through her apartments to the
outer door, where he was left on the floor for the night, dead with fifty-six
wounds, each conspirator
having been forced to give a stab, in order that all might be equally involved
in guilt and consequent danger. The queen, who was then pregnant of her son
(James I of England),
deeply resented the outrage: indeed, there is reason to believe that it affected
her so as to become the turning-point of her life, giving her in the first place
a strong sense of
the unworthiness of her husband, who perished less than a year after.
The floor at the outer door of the queen's apartments
presents a large irregular dark mark, which the exhibitor of the palace states
to be the blood of the
unfortunate Rizzio. Most strangers hear with a smile of a blood-stain lasting
three centuries, and Sir Walter Scott himself has made it the subject of a
jocular passage in one of
his tales, representing a Cockney traveller as trying to efface it with the
patent scouring drops which it was his mission to introduce into use in
Scotland. The scene between him
and the old lady guardian of the palace is very amusing: but it may be remarked
of Scott, that he entertained some beliefs in his secret bosom which his worldly
wisdom and sense of
the ludicrous led him occasionally to treat comically or with an appearance of
scepticism. In another of his novels�the Abbot�he alludes with a feeling of awe
and horror to the
Rizzio blood-stain: and in his Tales of a Grandfather, he deliberately
states that the floor at the head of the stair still bears visible marks of the
blood of the unhappy
victim. Joking apart, there is no necessity for disbelieving in the Holyrood
blood-mark.
There is even some probability in its favour. In the first
place, the floor is very ancient, manifestly much more so than the late floor of
the neighbouring
gallery, which dated from the reign of Charles II. It is in all likelihood the
very floor which. Mary and her courtiers trod. In the second place, we know that
the stain has been
shewn there since a time long antecedent to that extreme modern curiosity
regarding historical matters which might have induced an imposture: for it is
alluded to by the son of
Evelyn as being shewn in 1722. Finally, it is matter of experiment, and fully
established, that wood not of the hardest kind (and it may be added, stone of a
porous nature) takes
on a permanent stain from blood, the oxide of iron contained in it sinking deep
into the fibre, and proving indelible to all ordinary means of washing. Of
course, if the wearing of
a blood-stained, floor by the tread of feet were to be carried beyond the depth
to which the blood had sunk, the stain would be obliterated. But it happens in
the case of the
Holyrood mark, that the two blotches of which it consisted are out of the line
over which feet would chiefly pass in coming into or leaving the room. Indeed,
that line appears to
pass through and divide the stain,�a circumstance in no small degree favourable
to its genuineness.
Alleged examples of blood-stains of old standing both upon
wood and stone are reported from many places. We give a few extracted from the
Notes and Queries.
Amidst the horrors of the French Revolution, eighty priests were massacred in
the chapel of the convent of the Camelites at Paris. The stains of blood are
still to be seen on the
walls and floor. 'At Cothele, a mansion on the banks of the Tamar, the marks are
still visible of the blood spilt by the lord of the manor, when, for supposed
treachery, he slew
the warder of the drawbridge.' 'About fifty years ago, there was a dance at
Kirton-in-Lindsey: (luring the evening a young girl broke a blood-vessel and
expired in the room. I have
been told that the marks of her blood are still to be seen. At the same town,
about twenty years ago, an old man and his sister were murdered in an extremely
brutal manner, and
their cottage floor was deluged with blood, the stains of which are believed yet
to remain.'
TALENTS�FROM WHICH PARENT
USUALLY DERIVED?
There is a prevalent, but nowhere well-argued idea, that
talents are usually, if not always, derived from the mother. One could wish that
a notion so
complimentary to the amiable sex were true: but it scarcely is so.
There are, certainly, some striking instances of
mother-derived abilities; none more so than that presented by the man perhaps
the most distinguished for
general abilities in our age�Henry Lord Brougham, whose mother, a niece of
Principal Robertson, was a woman of the finest intellectual properties, while
the father was of but
ordinary gifts. Of like notableness is the case of Sir Walter Scott: the mother
sagacious in an extraordinary measure, the father a plain good man, and no more.
But look, on the
other hand, at two other able men of the last and present epochs, Lord Macaulay
and Robert Burns. In their
cases, the phenomenon was
precisely the converse: that is, clever father, ordinary mother.
It is only too easy to point to instances of father and son
standing as noted for talent, while we hear nothing of the mother. Binitics like
Bernardo and
Torquato Tasso, John and Daniel Bernouilli, William and John Herschel, James and
John Stuart Mill, Chatham and William Pitt,
George and Robert
Stephenson, Carlo and Horace Vernet, abound in our biographical
dictionaries. Another fact, connected less
pointedly with the subject, but in itself of some value, is also pretty clearly
hewn in these compilations: namely, how often a man of eminence in the world of
thought and taste is
the son of a man who was engaged in some humble capacity connected with the
departments in which his son excelled:�Mozart, for instance, the son of a
capell-meister;
James Watt, the son of a teacher
of mathematics.
There are, however, instances of the descent of superior
mental qualities through a greater number of generations than two, with a
presumable transmission
from the father to the son, while mothers are unheard of. The amiable Patrick Fraser Tytler, who wrote the best
history of Scotland extant, was
son to the accomplished Alexander Fraser Tytler (commonly styled Lord
Woodhouselee), who wrote several books of good repute, and was, in turn, the son
of William Tytler, author of
the Enquiry into the Evidence against Mary Queen of Scots.
The late Professor William Gregory, a man of the highest
scientific accomplishments, was the son of Dr. James
Gregory, a
professor of distinguished ability, author of the well-known Conspectus
Medicince, who was the son of Dr. John Gregory, author of the Father's Legacy to
his Daughters, and other
works; whose father, an eminent Aberdeen professor, was the son of James
Gregory, right eminent as a mathematician, and the inventor of the reflecting
telescope. It is, however, to
be remarked that the talents of this last gentleman, and of his scarcely less
distinguished brother David, are supposed to have been inherited from their
mother, who was the
daughter of an ingenious, busy-brained man of some local celebrity.
Not less remarkable is the
series of the Sheridans. It seems to have started as a line of able men with Dr.
Thomas Sheridan, of
Dublin, the friend of Swift: who
was the son of another
Dr. Thomas Sheridan and the nephew of a Bishop of Kilmore. Next came Mr. Thomas
Sheridan, of elocution-teaching memory, a man of lively talents: next the famed
Richard Brinsley;
next Thomas Sheridan, in whom there were brilliant abilities, though through
unfortunate circumstances they never came to any effective demonstration. Among
the children of this
last, we find Lady Dufferin and the Hon Mrs. Norton, both brilliant women: and
from Lady Duflerin, again, comes a son, Lord Duflerin, whose Arctic yacht voyage
has given his name
the stamp of talent at a very early age. Of the five Sheridans, who stand here
in succession, we hear of but one (Richard) whose mother has left any fame for
abilities.
With these facts before us, and it would be easy to multiply
them, it must plainly appear that the inheritance of talent from a mother is not
a rule. At the
utmost, it is a fact only possible, or which has an equal chance of occurring
with its opposite. Most probably, people are led to make a rule of it by the
propensity to paradox, or
by reason of their remarking mother-descended talent as something unexpected,
while they overlook the instances of the contrary phenomenon.
Let us speculate as we may, there are mysteries about the
rise of uncommon abilities that we shall probably never penetrate. Whence should
have come the
singular genius of a Lawrence�son to a simple inn-keeping pair on the Bath-road?
Whence the not less wonderful gifts of a Wilkie�child of a plain Scotch minister
and his wife�the
mother so commonplace that, hearing how David was so much admired, she expressed
surprise at their never saying anything of George�a respectable young grocer,
who, being of goodly
looks, had more pleased a mother's eye? Whence should the marvellous
thought-power of Shakspeare have been derived �his parents being, to all
appearance, undistinguished from
thousands of other Stratfordians who never had sons or daughters different from
the multitude?
SHROVE TUESDAY
Shrove Tuesday derives its name from the ancient practice, in
the Church of Rome, of confessing sins, and being shrived or shrove, i.e.
obtaining
absolution, on this day. Being the day prior to the beginning of Lent, it may
occur on any one between the 2nd of February and the 8th
of March. In Scotland,
it is called Fasten's E'en, but is little regarded in that Presbyterian country.
The character of the day as a popular festival is mirthful: it is a season of
carnival-like jollity
and drollery�'Welcome, merry Shrovetide!' truly sings Master Silence.
The merriment began, strictly speaking, the day before, being
what was called Collop Monday, from the practice of eating collops of salted
meat and eggs on
that day. Then did the boys begin their Shrovetide perambulations in quest of
little treats which their senior neighbours used to have in store for
them�singing:
'Shrovetide is nigh at hand,
And I be conic a shroving:
Pray, dame, something,
An apple or a dumpling.'
When Shrove Tuesday dawned, the bells were set a ringing, and
everybody abandoned himself to amusement and good humour. All through the day,
there was a
preparing and devouring of pancakes, as if some profoundly important religious
principle were involved in it. The pancake and Shrove Tuesday are inextricably
associated in the
popular mind and in old literature. Before being eaten, there was always a great
deal of contention among the eaters, to see which could most adroitly toss them
in the pan.
Shakspeare makes his
clown in All's Well that Ends Well speak of
something being 'as fit as a pancake for Shrove Tuesday.' It will be recollected
that the parishioners of the Vicar of Wakefield 'religiously ate pancakes at
Shrovetide.'
Hear also our quaint old friend, the Water Poet�'Shrove
Tuesday, at whose entrance in the morning all the whole kingdom is in quiet, but
by that time the
clock strikes eleven, which (by the help of a knavish sexton) is commonly before
nine, there is a bell rung called Pancake Bell, the sound whereof makes
thousands of people
distracted, and forgetful either of manners or humanity. Then there is a thing
called wheaten flour, which the cooks do mingle with water, eggs, spice, and
other tragical, magical
enchantments, and then they put it by little and little into a frying-pan of
boiling suet, where it makes a confused dismal hissing (like the herniae snakes
in the reeds of
Acheron), until at last, by the skill of the cook, it is transformed into the
form of a flipjack, called a pancake, which. ominous incantation the ignorant
people do devour very
greedily.'
It was customary to present the first pancake to the greatest
slut or lie-a-bed of the party, 'which commonly falls to the clog's share at
last, for no one
will own it their due.' Some allusion is probably made to the latter custom in a
couplet placed opposite Shrove Tuesday in Poor Robin's Almanack for 1677:
Pancakes are eat by greedy gut,
And Hob and Madge run for the slut.'
In the time of Elizabeth, it was a practice at Eton for the
cook to fasten a pancake to a crow (the ancient equivalent of the knocker) upon
the school door.
At Westminster School, the following custom is observed to
this day:�At 11 o'clock a.m. a verger of the Abbey, in his gown, bearing a
silver baton, emerges
from the college kitchen, followed by the cook of-the school, in his white
apron, jacket, and cap, and carrying a pancake. On arriving at the school-room
door, he announces
himself, 'The cook;' and having entered the school-room, he advances to the bar
which separates the upper school from the lower one, twirls the pancake in the
pan, and then tosses
it over the bar into the upper school, among a crowd of boys, who scramble for
the pancake: and he who gets it unbroken, and carries it to the deanery, demands
the honorarium of a
guinea (sometimes two guineas), from the Abbey funds, though the custom is not
mentioned in the Abbey statutes: the cook also receives two guineas for his
performance.
Among the revels which marked the day, football seems in most
places to have been conspicuous. The London apprentices enjoyed it in Finsbury
Fields. At
Teddington, it was conducted with such animation that careful house-holders had
to protect their windows with hurdles and bushes. There is perhaps no part of
the United Kingdom
where this Shrovetide sport is kept up with so much energy as at the village of
Scone, near Perth, in Scotland. The men of the parish assemble at the cross, the
married on one side
and the bachelors on the other: a ball is thrown up, and they play from two
o'clock till sunset. A person who witnessed the sport in the latter part of the
last century, thus
describes it: 'The game was this: he who at any time got the ball into his
hands, ran with it till overtaken by one of the opposite party: and then, if he
could shake himself loose
from those on the opposite side who seized him, he ran on: if not, he threw the
ball from him, unless it was wrested from him by the other party, but no party
was allowed to kick
it. The object of the married men was to hang it, that is, to put it three times
into a small hole on the moor, which was the dool, or limit, on the one hand:
that of the bachelors
was to drown it, or clip it three times in a deep place in the river, the limit
on the other: the party who could effect either of these objects won the game:
if neither one, the
ball was cut into equal parts at sunset. In the course of the play, there was
usually some violence between the parties: but it is a proverb in this part of
the country, that "A'
is fair at the ba' o' Scone."'
Taylor, the Water Poet, alludes to the custom of a fellow
carrying about 'an ensign made of a piece of a baker's mawkin fixed upon a
broom-staff,' and
making orations of nonsense to the people. Perhaps this custom may have been of
a similar nature and design to one practised in France on Ash Wednesday. The
people there 'carry an
effigy, similar to our Guy Fawkes, round the adjacent villages, and collect
money for his funeral, as this day, according to their creed, is the burial of
good living. After sundry
absurd mummeries, the corpse is deposited in the earth.' In the latter part of
the last century, a curious custom of a similar nature still survived in Kent. A
group of girls
engaged themselves at one part of a village in burning an uncouth image, which
they called a holly boy, and which they had stolen from the boys: while the boys
were to be found in
another part of the village burning a like effigy, which they called the ivy
girl, and which they had stolen from the girls: the ceremony being in both cases
accompanied by loud
huzzas.
These are fashions, we accompanied opine, smacking of a very
early and probably pagan origin. At Bromfield, in Cumberland, there used to be a
still more
remarkable custom. The scholars of the free school of that parish assumed a
right, from old use and wont, to bar out the master, and keep him out for three
days. During the period
of this expulsion, the doors were strongly barricaded within: and the boys, who
defended it like a besieged city, were armed in general with guns made of the
hollow twigs of the
elder, or bore-tree. The master, meanwhile, made various efforts, by force and
stratagem, to regain his lost authority. If he succeeded, heavy tasks were
imposed, and the business
of the school was resumed and submitted to: but it more commonly happened that
all his efforts were unavailing. In this case, after three days' siege, terms of
capitulation were
proposed by the master and accepted by the boys. The terms always included
permission to enjoy a full allowance of Shrovetide sports.
In days not very long gone by, the inhumane sport of throwing
at cocks was practised at Shrovetide, and nowhere was it more certain to be seen
than at the
grammar-schools. The poor animal was tied to a stake by a short cord, and the
unthinking men and boys who were to throw at it, took their station at the
distance of about twenty
yards. Where the cock belonged to some one disposed to make it a matter of
business, twopence was paid for three shies at it, the missile used being a
broomstick. The sport was
continued till the poor creature was killed out-right by the blows. Such tumult
and outrage attended this inhuman sport a century ago, that, according to a
writer in the
Gentleman's Magazine, it was sometimes dangerous to be near the place
where it was practised. Hens were also the subjects of popular amusement at this
festival. It was
customary in Cornwall to take any one which had not laid eggs before
Shrove-Tuesday, and lay it on a barn-floor to be thrashed to death. A man hit at
her with a flail; and if he
succeeded in killing her therewith, he got her for his pains. It was customary
for a fellow to get a hen tied to his back, with some horse-bells hung beside
it.
A number of other fellows, blind-folded, with boughs in their
hands, followed him by the sound of the bells, endeavouring to get a stroke at
the bird. This
gave occasion to much merriment, for sometimes the man was hit instead of the
hen, and sometimes the assailants hit each other instead of either. At the
conclusion, the hen was
boiled with bacon, and added to the usual pancake feast. Cock-fights were also
common on this day. Strange to say, they were in many instances the sanctioned
sport of public
schools, the master receiving on the occasion a small tax from the boys under
the name of a cock-penny. Perhaps this last practice took its rise in the
circumstance of the master
supplying the cocks, which seems to have been the custom in some places in a
remote age. Such cock-fights regularly took place on Fasten's E'en in many parts
of Scotland till the
middle of the eighteenth century, the master presiding at the battle, and
enjoying the perquisite of all the runaway cocks, which were technically called
fugies. Nay, so late as
1790, the minister of Applecross, in Rossshire, in the account of his parish,
states the schoolmaster's income as composed of two hundred merks, with 1s. 6d.
and 2s. 6d, per
quarter from each scholar.
The other Shrovetide observations were chiefely of a local
nature. The old plays make us aware of a licence which the London prentices took
on this occasion
to assail houses of dubious repute, and cart the unfortunate inmates through the
city. This seems to have been done partly under favour of a privilege which the
common people
assumed at this time of breaking down doors for sport, and of which we have
perhaps some remains, in a practice which still exists in some remote districts,
of throwing broken
crockery and other rubbish at doors. In Dorsetshire and Wiltshire, if not in
other counties, the latter practice is called Lent Crocking. The boys go round
in small parties, headed
by a leader, 'who goes up and knocks at the door, leaving his followers behind
him, armed with a good stock of potsherds�the collected relics of the
washing-pans, jugs, dishes, and
plates, that have become the victims of concussion in the hands of unlucky or
careless housewives for the past year. When the door is opened, the hero,�who is
perhaps a farmer's
boy, with a pair of black eyes sparkling under the tattered brim of his brown
milking-hat,�hangs down his head, and, with one corner of his mouth turned up
into an irrepressible
smile, pronounces the following lines:
A-shrovin, a-shrovin,
I be come a-shrovin;
A piece of bread, a piece of cheese,
A bit of your fat bacon,
Or a dish of dough-nuts,
All of your own makin!
A-shrovin, a-shrovin,
I be come a-shrovin,
Nice meat in a pie,
My mouth is very dry!
I wish a was zoo well-a-wet
l'de zing the louder for a nut!
Chorus�A-shrovin, a-shrovin,
We be come a-shrovin!
Sometimes he gets a bit of bread and cheese, and at sonic
houses he is told to be gone; in which latter case, he calls up his followers to
send their
missiles in a rattling broadside against the door. It is rather remarkable that,
in Prussia, and perhaps other parts of central Europe, the throwing of broken
crockery at doors is
a regular practice at marriages. Lord Malmesbury, who in 1791 married a princess
of that country as proxy for the Duke of York, tells us, that the morning after
the ceremonial, a
great heap of such rubbish was found at her royal highness's door.
OLD GRAMMAR-SCHOOL CUSTOMS
Mr. R. W. Blencowe, in editing certain extracts from the
journal of Walter Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield, in the Sussex Archaeological
Collections, tells
us that the salary of the Mayfield school-master was only �16 a-year, which was
subsequently increased by the bequest of a house and garden, which let for �18
a-year. There were
none of those perquisites so common in old grammar-schools, by which the scanty
fortunes of the masters were increased, and the boys instructed in the
humanities, as in the Middle
School at Manchester, where the master provided the cocks, for which he was
liberally paid, and which were to be buried up to their necksto be shied at by
the boys on Shrove
Tuesday, and at the feast of
St. Nicholas, as at Wyke, near Ashford, Mr. Graham had
bequeathed a silver bell to
May-field, as he had done to the school at Wreay in 1661, to be fought for
annually, when two of the boys, who had been chosen as captains, and who were
followed by their
partisans, distinguished by blue and red ribbons, marched in procession to the
village-green, where each produced his cocks; and when the fight was won, the
bell was suspended to
the hat of the victor, to be transmitted from one successful captain to another.
There were no potation pence, when there were deep drinkings,
sometimes for the benefit of the clerk of the parish, when it was called clerk's
ale, and more
often for the schoolmaster, and in the words of some old statutes, 'for the
solace of the neighbourhood:' potations which Agnes Metiers, avowess, the widow
of a wealthy bellfounder
of Nottingham, endeavoured, in some degree, to restrain when she founded the
grammar-school in that town in 1513, by declaring that the schoolmaster and
usher of her school should
not make use of any potations, cock-fightings, or drinkings, with his or their
wives, hostess, or hostesses, more than twice a year. There were no
'delectations' for the scholars,
such as the barring out of the schoolmaster, which Sir John Deane, who founded
the grammar-school at Wilton, near Northbeach, to prevent all quarrels between
the teacher and the
taught, determined should take place only twice a year, a week before Christmas
and Easter, 'as the custom was in other great schools.' No unhappy ram was
provided by the butcher,
as used to be the case at Eton in days long gone by, to be pursued and knocked
on the head by the boys, till on one occasion, the poor animal, being sorely
pressed, swam across the
Thames, and, reeling into the market-place at Windsor, followed by its
persecutors, did such mischief, that this sport was stopped, and instead thereof
it was hamstrung, after the
speech on Election Saturday, and clubbed to death. None of these humanising
influences were at work at Mayfield: there was not even the customary charge of
5s. to each boy for
rods.
No such rules as those in force at the free grammar-school at
Cuckfield prevailed at Mayfield. They were not taught 'on every working day one
of the eight
pearls of reason, with the word according to the same, that is to say, Nomen
with Amo, Pronomen with Amor, to be said by heart; nor as being a modern
and a thoroughly
Protestant school, were they called upon before breakfast each Friday to listen
to a little piece of the Pater Nester, or Ave Maria, the Credo, or the verses of
the Mariners, or
the Ten Commandments, or the Five Evils, or some other proper saying in Latin
meet for babies.' Still less, as in the case of the grammar-school at Stockport,
did any founder will
'that some cunning priest, with all his scholars, should, on Wednesday and
Friday of every week, come to the church to the grave where the bodies of his
father and mother lay
buried, and there say the psalm of De Profundis, after the Salisbury use, and
pray especially for his soul, and for the souls of his father and mother, and
for all Christian
souls.' Neither did the trustees, that they might sow the seeds of ambition in
the minds of the scholars, ordain, as was done at Tunbridge and at Lewisham,
'that the best scholars
and the best writers should wear some pretty garland on their heads, with silver
pens well fastened thereunto, and thus walk to church and back again for at
least a month.' A
ceremony which in these days would infallibly secure for them all sorts of
scoffings, and probably a broken head.'
It is deemed appropriate to append hereunto a memorial of one
of the ancient grammar-school customs, more honoured in the breach than the
observance, but
which nevertheless still retains a certain hold. It is the stool or altar of
punishment which was formerly in use at the Free School of Lichfield�the school
at which Addison,
Ashmole, Garrick, Johnson,
and Wollaston received thew education. When our artist visited this venerable
temple of learning a
few years ago, there was a head-master receiving a good salary, but no scholars.
The flogging-horse, here delineated, stood in the lower room, covered with dust.
February 10th