“Each ought honestly to place himself, for a moment, in the other’s

situation—when each might see causes in operation which he might not

otherwise have seen—trials and difficulties of which he had not

dreamed. Let the master look steadily at the position of the working

man, especially in hard times, pressed down to the earth with

exhausting labour, anxiety, and galling privations endured by himself

and his family, often almost maddening him, as he feels that it _is in

vain for him to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of

sorrow_: in moments of despondency and despair, he feels as though the

appalling language of the prophet were sounding in his ears—_Son of

man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling

and with carefulness!_ He cannot keep himself and those towards whom

his harassed heart yearns so tenderly from the jaws of starvation,

with all his patience, economy, and sobriety; and yet he sees out of

the fruit of his labours, his employers _apparently_ rolling in

riches, and revelling in luxury and splendour! But let that workman,

on the other hand, do as he would be done by: let his master deal with

his capital, which happens to be money, as the workman with his, which

happens to be labour—‘freely.’ Let him reflect on the anxieties and

dangers to which his employer is often exposed, but dare not explain,

or make them public, lest it should injure or ruin his credit: his

capital may be locked up in machinery, or he may be otherwise unable

to realise it, however desperate his emergency, without a destructive

sacrifice: great but perfectly legitimate speculation may have failed

from causes he could not foresee or control—from accident, from fraud,

or misfortune of others—from a capricious change in public taste: he

may have been running desperately, but with an honest spirit, along

the black line of bankruptcy for many months, without his workmen

dreaming of it, and yet has punctually paid their weekly wages to

perhaps several or many hundreds of them, often borrowing at heavy

interest to do so, while these workmen supposed him always the master

of untold thousands! Now I say, let each party try to think of all

these things, and pause before he commits himself to a rash and

ruinous line of hostility. A strike too often partakes of the nature

of a social suicide. Capital—that is, labour and money—at war with

itself, may be compared to the madman who, in a sudden phrenzy, dashes

each of his fists against the other, till both are bleeding and

disabled—perhaps for ever.... Let each party sincerely try to respect

the other; to find out and dwell on those qualities really, and to so

large an extent, entitling each to the other’s respect and sympathy.

Let the master reflect on the patience, ay the truly heroic patience,

self-denial, fortitude, and energy with which the workman endures

severe trials and privations; and let the workman reflect on the

fairness and moderation, often under circumstances of serious

difficulty,—on the generosity and munificence of his master, as could

be testified by tens of thousands of grateful workmen, in seasons of

sickness, suffering, and bereavement.”

Towards the close of his elaborate lecture, Mr Warren discourses nobly

and cheerfully on the Dignity and Consolations of labour, and glances at

the monster evils of Improvidence and Intemperance by which the daily

life of the working-classes is robbed alike of its honour and its

comfort. In this part occurs a passage so striking and so eloquent that

we cannot but transfer it to our pages, and we trust the warning and

appeal which it conveys will animate all who have the privilege of

influencing the working-classes, with an enduring desire to banish the

debasing and all-abstracting passion of intemperance from their ranks.

“I hope and believe that I _must_ go out of this hall, to find a

victim of _Intemperance_! Such a man, or rather wreck of a man, is not

to be found _here_! I know, however, where to find him; there is

another hall in which I took my seat this morning, have sate all day,

and shall be at my gloomy post again in the morning, to

see,—possibly,—standing trembling, or sullen and desperate at the bar

of justice, one whom the untiring and remorseless fiend Intemperance

has dragged thither, and stands grim but unseen beside his victim. He

had been a man, might we say, well to do in the world, and getting

respected by all his neighbours, till _he took to drink_, and then it

was all up with him—and there he stands! disgraced, and in despair. I

need not draw on my imagination for illustrations, especially before

an audience which numbers so many men whose painful duty as jurymen it

is to sit every sessions, with myself, engaged in the administration

of justice. You have seen how often, in a moment of voluntary madness

occasioned by drink, a life’s character has been sacrificed, the brand

of felon impressed on the brow, and free labour exchanged for that

which is profitless, compulsory, and ignominious to the workman,

within the walls of your prison! It would be unjust, however, not to

say that exhausting labour, and the companionship of those who are

together so exhausted, supply but too many temptations to seek the

refreshment and exhilaration afforded by liquor, and which soon

degenerates, from an occasional enjoyment, into an accursed habit.

Home soon ceases to be home, to him who returns to it under the guilty

delirium of intoxication: there, weeping and starving wife and

children appear like dismal spectres flitting before his bloodshot eye

and reeling brain. As the husband frequents the dramshop, so he drives

his wretched wife the oftener to the pawn-shop, and her and his

children at length to the workhouse; or perhaps in her desperation—but

I dare not proceed! The coroner can tell the rest.

“Look at yonder desolate little room, at the end of a dreary court; a

funeral goes out from it in the morning! Enter this evening. All is

silent, and a single candle on the mantel-piece sheds a dull

flickering light on a coffin, not yet screwed down. Beside it sits

morally a murderer; his bloated face is hid in his shaking hands; he

has not yet ventured to move aside the coffin lid, but at length he

dares to look at his poor victim—his broken-hearted wife! Poor, poor

soul! thou art gone at last! Gone, _where the wicked cease from

troubling, and the weary are at rest_! ’Tis a happy release, say the

friendly neighbours, who have contributed their little means to lay

her decently in her coffin. Ay, besotted husband! let your bloodshot

eyes look on that white face, that wreck of a face so sweet and pretty

when you married her! Never fear! the eyes are closed, and will weep

and look mournfully at you no more! Touch, if you dare, those limbs,

which the woman who laid them out said, with a sigh, were _mere skin

and bone_! Dare you take hold of her cold hand and look at her

wedding-ring? Do you see how her finger is worn with the needle?

During the day, during the night, this poor creature was your willing

slave, mending your linen, and that of your wronged children, and what

was left of her own, and which are nearly rags. Do you hear those

children sobbing in the next room? Do you see the scar on that cheek?

Look and tremble. Have you forgotten the blow that caused it, given by

your hand of drunken and ruffian violence? Yet she never reproached

you! And when at length, worn away with misery, starvation, and

ill-usage, she was forced to give up the struggle for life, her

last—her very last act was gently and in silence to squeeze your

unworthy hand! Perhaps remorse is now shaking your heart, and you

inwardly groan—

‘Oh, if she would but come again,

I think I’d grieve her so no more!’

She will come no more on earth, but you will have to meet her again!

So, man, close the coffin lid! Go to bed, and sleep if you can! The

funeral is in the morning, and you must follow the poor emaciated body

close past your favourite dramshop!”

As befitted the audience, it is manual or mechanical labour that Mr

Warren in his essay chiefly concerns himself with. But so eminent an

author cannot be insensible to the still nobler labour of the Mind, or

to the grand and touching lives of so many of its votaries. Manual

labour may appear harder than some kinds of intellectual pursuits, but

it cannot be carried to the same excess. It is less fatal, because less

alluring. The labour of the hands does not kill like the labour of the

head. It is not the lower classes alone that work. Mr Warren well says:—

“The _working-classes_! Are those not worthy of the name, and in its

very highest sense, few in number, comparatively, though they be, who

by their prodigious powers of thought make those discoveries in

science which have given tenfold efficacy and value to labour, turned

it suddenly into a thousand new channels, and conferred on all classes

of society new conveniences and enjoyments? Are we to overlook those

great intellects which have devoted themselves to statesmanship, to

jurisprudence, to morals, to the science of medicine—securing and

advancing the best interests of mankind, and relieving them from

physical anguish and misery; the noble genius devoted to literature,

refining, expanding, and elevating the minds of all capable of it, and

whose immortal works are glittering like stars of the first magnitude

in the hemisphere of thought and imagination? No, my friends; let us

not be so unjust, ungrateful, or unthinking; let us rather be thankful

to God for giving us men of such powers, and opportunity and

inclination to use them, not for their own reputation’s sake alone,

but for our advantage; and let us not enhance the claims of manual, by

forgetting or depreciating intellectual labour. I could at this moment

give you a dozen instances within my personal knowledge, of men whom

God has given very little physical strength, but great mental

endowments, and who cheerfully undergo an amount of exhausting labour

of which you have no idea, in conducting public affairs, political and

legal, and prosecuting scientific researches, immortalising the age in

which they live.”

Genius in all ages commands the spontaneous homage of mankind. And it is

only just that it should be so. “Tell me,” said an acute observer of

human affairs, “what a few leading minds are thinking in their closets,

and I will tell you what their countrymen will be thinking in the next

generation.” It is the great minds of a country that most deeply

influence its fortunes,—it is the great minds of the world that mould

the progress of our race. These men may live a life of toil and

sacrifices in the cause to which their high powers are devoted, and may

die ere the precious seed sown by them has begun to germinate. But they

do not lose their reward. The fruit comes at last. Their words enlighten

the world, hastening its progress to a happy goal; while their example

of high powers and glorious self-devotion reaps a rich recompense by

inspiriting others through future ages to follow in their steps. As

saith Longfellow,—

“Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us,

Footprints on the sands of time:

Footprints that perchance another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwreck’d brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again!”

TOUCHING OXFORD.

A LETTER TO PROFESSOR NEBEL.

My dear Professor!—You see that I have not forgotten the note of

admiration which your countrymen use at the beginning of letters when

they address each other. It is an easy way of giving emphasis to the

greeting, or of expressing the admiration of the writer for the

character of the person written to. When I last saw you at

Dummerjungenberg, I recollect I promised to write you down the

impressions which an intended visit to my old University might make upon

me, and I hasten to fulfil that promise now. It is superfluous for me to

tell you that the two English universities are essentially different in

their constitution from a German university, as you are well acquainted

theoretically with the constitutions of both. I maintain that each kind

is good, and answers its own end. The German university fully answers

its purpose of making men learned, but the stamp of character which it

affixes to the man is evanescent, and does not follow him through life.

According to the language of the Bursch or German student, as soon as a

man has ceased to be a student, he falls back again, as a matter of

course, into the Philisterium, or limbo of the Philistines, which is the

student’s term to designate the uncovenanted class, which comprises all

mankind excepting the student. On the other hand, we speak of men for

the whole of life as Oxford or Cambridge men much more than we do of

them as Göttingen or Leipzig men, inferring by this mode of expression

that they have been, as it were, fed on the milk of Alma Mater, which

continues through the whole of life to affect their constitutions in a

peculiar manner. So highly do some of our men think of this influence,

that they dread too much infusion of the Germanic element, as dangerous

to this peculiar quality of our universities of forming and stamping the

whole man, instead of merely the logical part of him. I recollect well

that at a meeting of Convocation at Oxford, when some material changes

were brought under consideration, no sentiment was more highly applauded

than one which concluded the Latin speech of a talented polemical

churchman, when he said, “Hanc Universitatem Germanizari non volo”—“I

protest against this university being Germanised;”—by which he plainly

meant, not that he objected to the widening of its scope of teaching,

but that he feared that mere instruction would usurp too much prominence

in the scheme of education, and throw into the shade that general moral

training which is now a most essential part of the system. One of the

feelings, to speak individually, that I should be sorry to lose is that

which this very name of Alma Mater implies. The word “Almus” is one of

the most beautiful in the Latin language; it means that whose nature is

to cherish, nourish, inspire with life. Thus, Venus is called “Alma” by

the ancients, as representing the principle of life in nature; Ceres is

also called “Alma,” as being the goddess that supplies the staff of

life. If it be true, as Mr Carlyle says, that our word “lady” is derived

from two old words, meaning a giver of loaves, it would be a good

translation of the word “Alma.” And desirable it certainly is, that the

word “lady” should bear this fulness of meaning; the function of woman,

in her beautiful ideal, being to give life, to support life, and to make

life worth living. And the poet saw the matter truly, as poets generally

do the most truly, when he said—

“Woman, dear woman, in whose name,

Wife, sister, mother meet,

Thine is the heart by earliest claim,

And thine its latest beat.”

Now, to every Oxford man, his Lady Mother, or Alma Mater, in the

transcendental sense, is his university, occupying nearly as high a

place in his heart as Our Lady occupies in that of the devout Catholic.

And this much I can say from experience. As Hercules could do nothing in

wrestling against the giant Antæus, the son of the Earth, as long as he

persisted in throwing him, seeing that whenever he fell in his mother’s

lap he gained new strength, so is it with myself; the world never throws

me,—I never am cast down by circumstances, but a thrill from the warm

bosom of Alma Mater, as powerful but more enduring than galvanism,

inspires me with a new life, and I rise with fresh courage and fresh

heart to the wrestling-match of life.

I have lately visited my old University after a long absence, and found

its outward aspect fair as ever—nay, rather fairer and fresher than

ever. Changed it is undoubtedly, but changed for the better. Much that

is new and tasteful, at the same time—a rare accident in our times—has

been added, and the hand of Time has been arrested, and that which was

decayed or destroyed has been restored with affectionate fidelity. One

of the greatest improvements, to my mind, has been effected by the

railroad, which was at first greatly feared as a revolutionary agent. It

has diverted from the main thoroughfares that brawling stream of traffic

which formerly flowed through them in the shape of stage-coaches,

stage-waggons, and other properties and accessories of the stage, and

left the town to its genuine academical character of a dignified repose.

Although this change gives to the town, in the eyes of commercial

travellers, a somewhat dead-alive appearance, and although a similar

change in other places seems to take away truly the only life they

possessed, it seems, on the contrary, to have withdrawn an unpleasant

intrusion from Oxford, and left her to the dignified retirement from the

world of bustle and action, in which she most delights.

Oxford is a town which, for its medieval beauty, deserves to be kept

under a glass-case; and nothing can be more advantageous to its

academical character, than diverting from its walls the turbid current

of commerce which belongs to this much-bepraised nineteenth century.

This the railroad has achieved most effectually. There is still

abundance of life in the streets, but life in unison with the history of

the place; and suddenly whirled as one is by the express train from the

turmoil of London to the repose of Oxford, with its lines of venerable

colleges, and troops of sombre but graceful gowned figures, one

experiences a feeling as of having been transported in a trance on the

carpet of the Arabian Nights from one place to another. Never did the

High Street appear so broad or so beautiful as now that its area is

uninvaded by the rattle of vulgar vehicles. The time to see it to

perfection is when the sun happens to set behind the opening at Carfax

Church, dazzling the eye at its focus, and forcing shafts of amber light

out along the fronts of St Mary’s and All Saint’s churches, and the

fantastic façade of Queen’s College. This is a condition which presents

one of the finest town-views in the world that can be seen where there

are no mountains in the case. There is much similarity between Oxford

and the grand old Flemish towns; and the railway has been a boon to

them, as it has been to her, in preserving their quiet character. Unlike

other English towns, the inhabitants of which point with an ignorant

pride to the substitution of stucco-fronted houses, and cockney

plate-glass, for the cross-beamed gables and lattices, all the

architectural changes which have taken place of late years in Oxford

appear to have been for the better. One is certainly sorry to see the

time-corroded and weather-beaten stone disappearing from the faces of

the colleges, and new freestone appearing in its place; but this change,

though one that we may sigh over as even over the seasonal changes of

nature, is, in reality, of a conservative character, and its absolute

necessity is an unanswerable plea. The nature of the stone of which most

of the colleges are built being such as to peculiarly expose it to wear

and tear of weather, we are not sorry to see it replaced by a material

which looks durable in its novelty, and to many generations yet to come

will become more beautiful with age. No expense has been spared in these

reparations; and the stranger will be peculiarly struck with the manner

in which they have been carried out in many of the principal buildings.

In Oxford alone, of all the towns in England, domestic architecture

appears properly subordinate to that devoted to public purposes; and as

she grows in beauty with each addition, her inhabitants may be one day

allowed to boast as the Romans of the olden time,

“Privatus illis census erat brevis,

Commune magnum,”

for the splendour of her public buildings will quickly dwarf the most

ambitious attempts of private proprietors; and one good result of the

communal, or, as a Cantab would rather say, combinational life of

Oxford, is the prospect that things will be achieved there by bodies of

men imbued with the “genius loci,” which would surpass the aspiration,

taste, or indeed ability of most individuals to accomplish elsewhere. So

should it ever be. What can the use be of any individual, whose

establishment does not assume palatial proportions, pluming himself on

the possession of architectural decorations, or masterpieces of painting

or sculpture, which, added to a public gallery, would give delight and

instruction to thousands, instead of administering to the pleasures of a

few? I do not know whether you have ever visited Oxford. If you have, I

may remind you, though unnecessarily, that, besides the world-renowned

High Street, there are two other streets in it not less

characteristic—one the Broad Street, parallel with it for a part of its

length; and the other St Giles’s, a continuation of the Corn Market,

running at right angles to the High Street from Oxford Cross. The Broad

Street is one of those areas reminding us of Continental cities, where

the population might be mustered in arms if necessary. It was in the

middle of this that Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were martyred; and at

its junction with St Giles’s is now set up an elegant Gothic monument,

something in the manner of Sir Walter Scott’s at Edinburgh, to

perpetuate the memory of that event. St Giles’s is a most remarkable

street. It has a church at its commencement and near its end, where it

branches into two roads. It is so spacious that the houses on each side,

irregularly built as they are, and ought to be, appear diminutive; and

between the houses and the central road, on each side, is a row of

trees, which gives it the appearance of a boulevard. On entering it, you

have on the right the new buildings of Baliol, and farther on, the more

ancient face of St John’s College; facing which are the new Taylor

Buildings—a structure with which much fault has been found, as a weak

centre on the side towards Beaumont Street appears to carry two heavy

wings, but which must be allowed on all hands to conduce greatly to the

adorning of its site, and indeed of the town generally. It is in this

street that fountains, judiciously placed, would add much to the general

effect; but many may doubt whether fountains would ever have other than

an unnatural and artificial aspect in England, where the wetness of the

atmosphere renders drier objects pleasanter to look upon. There are two

seasons of the year when fountains are especially agreeable—in the

summer heats, when it is delightful to be within reach of their spray;

and in frost, when they are draped with pendulous icicles of the most

fantastic beauty—a phenomenon I have indeed seen on the little fountain

in the Botanic Garden at Oxford. Both these seasons are generally with

us of short duration, and during all the rest, fountains to many would

be somewhat of an eyesore, and create a shivering sensation. Those in

Trafalgar Square count as nothing. As for the Crystal Palace and

Versailles fountains, and all of the same description, people delight in

them more for their mechanical cleverness than their artistic effect,

and they are things got up for holiday occasions, not meant to form

parts of the scenes of everyday life, like the fountains of Italy, or

the gossip-haunted Brunnen of Germany. I fear then that, for the

present, Oxford must be contented with her rivers, and not babble of

fountains. She is one of the few large towns singularly blest with the

presence of ever-flowing and ever-living water. The Isis runs beside

her, covered with a fleet of pleasure-boats, probably as large as that

of Athens during the Peloponnesian war, to which it has been wittily

compared, and in the summer days, swarming in and out amongst each other

like the gondolas of Venice. The Cherwell, which is a river as large as

the famed Cam, or nearly so, encircles the meadows of Christchurch and

Magdalen, and, with its sinuous course, and banks overshadowed with

trees, presents numberless nooks of beauty, and spots of refuge from the

heats of summer. The avenue in Christchurch meadow is second to none in

the world, perhaps superior to all, though there are many like it; for

instance, the avenue at Cambridge, which was compared by Porson to a

college fellowship, as a long dreary vista with a church at the end of

it; the avenue by the Severn, in the Quarries at Shrewsbury: that of the

University of Bonn, and others at royal residences, and near places of

academic retirement. In connection with this avenue, it is well to

mention that there is a time-honoured custom prevalent in the

University, of making it a general promenade on the Sunday in

Commemoration-week, which generally occurs towards the end of the leafy

month of June. On that day, most of the members of the University are to

be seen in their distinctive dresses; and those are considered happy who

are accompanied with friends, called, from their object in visiting the

University, “lions and lionesses;” nor is the wealth and beauty of the

city unrepresented. From this custom arises the name of “Show Sunday.”

The rivers afford an inexhaustible source of amusement, at a cheap and

easy rate, to the gownsmen, who luxuriate in all sorts of boats,

according to their activity or laziness—the energetic eight-oar, the

social four-oar, the friendly pair-oar, the fantastic canoe, the

adventurous outrigger-skiff, the dreamy sailing-boat, and the sleepy

punt, the latter having come into fashion chiefly of late years, and in

the hot season, and being a method of amusement which, at the price of

the violent exertion of one of the party, purchases the perfect repose

of the rest, who lie on their backs in boating-dresses, cigar in mouth,

and the last work of Dickens or Thackeray, chosen for its lightness, in

hand, and watch over the sides the swimmings of their Skye terriers.

This peculiar dog, distinguished from all others by its sagacity,

fidelity, and an ugliness which has worn into beauty, is now quite a

part of the University system; yet I remember when the first was

introduced into Oxford, and considered so remarkable that he gave his

master the name among the townsmen of the “gentleman what belongs to the

dog.” The poor little fellow had to suffer much for his resemblance to a

door-mat, before his position was fully recognised.

Next in importance to the colleges and rivers of Oxford are the gardens.

With the latter we must include the college-meadows, which are composed

of a real meadow in the centre, surrounded by a planted gravel-walk,

bounded generally, on the outer side, by one of the rivers. These

gardens, though private, are liberally opened by the college authorities

to the public, and, occupying a large part of the area of the town, they

invite the residents to a number of short walks and lounges, the

temptation to which in other towns is generally wanting, but which must

be most conducive to health. In some of them—as in St John’s—the members

of the college amuse themselves with archery, in others with bowls—a

truly after-dinner recreation; while in the park that is attached to the

grounds of Magdalen College the eye is gladdened by the sight of a

number of browsing deer, who become singularly tame in consequence of

the attentions of the Fellows. Well might Macaulay call it “their

pleasant abode” of Magdalen! Magdalen is now rendered even more pleasant

to some minds by the choral service of the Church of England having been

brought to perfection in its chapel, so that its members can never

attend Divine service without their ears being charmed by the most

exquisite music. Others may be of opinion that the service solemnly read

produces an effect which is appreciable by all rather than by a few of

peculiar temperament. I do not take upon myself to strike the balance.

In two other colleges is the service sung instead of being said—namely,

in St John’s and New Colleges, and these three colleges are naturally a

source of great attraction to strangers—so much so, that the chapels

being of limited dimensions, admission to them has of necessity been

made a favour. In the chapels at Oxford, customs have been perpetuated

from time immemorial, which would shock rigid Protestantism, unless

inured to them by habitual contact—such as the lighting of candles on

the altar, and painted altar-pieces, instead of the Commandments-table

which is usual in Anglican churches. Be this as it may, the attendance

at morning chapel, which is enforced on the junior members, and

sometimes considered by them a grievance, becomes in time so much a

habit that they feel the want of it when they become parochial

clergymen, and in many cases endeavour to perpetuate it by daily

services (having certainly the letter of the law of their Church on

their side), with considerable success indeed in some town parishes, and

among the richer classes; but with doubtful result in the rural

districts, where the peculiar habits of the labouring poor scarcely seem

to allow them to fall in with it to any great extent.

While on the subject of Oxford, you naturally wish me to say what I

think generally of the system of education of the place. I will tell

you, then, in short, that I consider it the best possible system of

education to form the character of a man and a gentleman. Do you ask me

why? I answer that it is so for this simple reason—that it tends to

develop in the fairest manner all the various energies of that

many-sided creature, Man. There are two sorts of education at Oxford, as

at our public schools—one enforced by law, the other dependent on social

customs: both have their full sway at Oxford. Thus we have a practical

illustration of the strongest kind of the Platonic theory of education.

Plato very properly thought that the development of the bodily powers

was almost of as much consequence as that of the mental, and accordingly

enjoined that education in his Utopia should consist of music and

gymnastics. By music he understood all that falls into the province of

either of the nine Muses. By gymnastics he understood not a dreary

tugging at ropes, and hugging of bars, and climbing ladders with hands,

but a simultaneous exercise of mind and body in pastimes where the body

is deceived by the mind into activity, and cheated into wholesome

weariness—such as contests of strength and passages of arms, hunting,

fowling, and the like. Even so at Oxford physical education is complete;

and although it does not form a subject of examination in the schools

under the new system, it is carried perhaps to greater perfection than

any other kind, and therefore we may conclude that the Royal Commission

does well to leave it where it stands. These Oxford gymnastics (using

the word always in its special and Platonic sense) are for the greater

part perfectly consistent with the “musical” part of the system which

emanates from authority. Occasionally, however, those sports, which, as

a Catholic founder of one of the colleges said, “miram atque

incredibilem delectationem afferunt” (showing that the old boy himself,

though he wished to see his seminary like a bee-hive, thoroughly

appreciated them), interfere with the hours devoted to study; and

therefore fox-hunting, which I especially allude to, is generally

discouraged by the Dons even in the case of those students who are able

to afford it. The delicious languor, so unlike the rude and partial

fatigue resulting from any other exercise, which pervades the whole

system after a good day’s riding, and gives a Parisian savour to the

plainest dinner, is of course fatal for the rest of the day to any other

intellectual work; for who shall deny that hunting is intellectual

work?—intellectual for the hounds, who have the sagest of beasts to

outwit—intellectual for the horses, who have the safest footing to

choose in a moment of time, and the exactest distances to measure;

intellectual for the rider, who requires the eye of an eagle and the

judgment of a Solon to know where he ought to be, not to mention the

huntsman and M. H., whose whole lives, if they take deep interest in the

matter, as they generally do, must be spent in intense thought? An

excellent exercise it is of mind, undoubtedly, but fatal to other

exercises of a less absorbing character, and therefore consistently

discouraged by the Dons. The same may be said of driving. Driving is at

best but a lazy exercise; and though it requires skill, it is not

sufficiently gymnastic; besides, it is expensive, and presents no

advantage corresponding to the expense. But we cannot help thinking that

if the thunders of each university Zeus had been less lavishly launched

against tandem-driving in particular, this antiquated practice, very

good in peculiar countries, but generally merely a puppyish display,

would have died out of itself. There is always a peculiar sweetness to

young minds in forbidden pleasures.

But boating and cricket and football, tennis, rackets, fives, and

billiards, still please, although there is nothing illegitimate about

them, and are perfectly consistent with the earnest pursuits of the

place. With regard to billiards, I must just observe that this

fascinating game has in a great measure lost its reputation, from the

fact that the billiard-room is in most English towns the rendezvous of

all the blackguardism of the place; but in Oxford the billiard-rooms are

private, and engaged by each party of players; they are an especial

refuge on wet days, nor can I see any exception that can be taken to the

pastime, save when it degenerates into the public pool, becomes a

species of gambling, and loses its real character, which is that of a

game of skill, quite as much as that of chess, combined with gentle

exercise. As there is not the slightest danger of the studies I have

mentioned falling into desuetude, so have they been with good judgment

overlooked by the University authorities, and as they present in every

phase an examination of themselves, it has not been found necessary to

create any special honours as a reward for proficiency in them. The

universal existence of this gymnastic education in Oxford, superadded to

a peculiar keenness and dampness in the air, induces an appetite which

can only be satisfied by what appears to strangers an unusual amount of

eating and drinking. In the latter particular there is indeed a great

improvement. Excess in quantity is extremely rare even among extravagant

students; but the fiery wines of Portugal and Spain still hold their

ground against all comers, and public opinion is decidedly in their

favour—so much so, that others are treated with a sort of contempt. It

is said that on the occasion of the visit of a great personage to the

sister University, whose habits bear a strong resemblance to those of

Oxford, when the servants of that personage sent a complaint to the

entertainer,—a Head of a House,—that they were only supplied with port

when they were used to claret, he sent back a message to them that the

college port, with a due admixture of pump-water, would make the best

claret in the world. The substantial nature of an Oxford breakfast,

enough of itself to convert Bishop Berkeley to a belief in the existence

of Matter, is in itself an evidence that the potations of the preceding

night have seldom been immoderate. With regard to that part of the

education of the place, to the furtherance of which its gymnastics and

good fare are supposed only to administer, it is truly “musical” in the

Greek sense of the word. Of music, as we understand it, there is

certainly little as yet enjoined; but every encouragement is given to

its culture by chanted services in certain chapels, by a liberal

allowance of concerts sanctioned by authority, by doctor’s degrees

conferred in it, with a most splendid gown worthy of Apollo himself if

he ever wore one; by especially the Grand Commemoration festival, at

which the first public singers are often engaged. On the whole, there is

a great taste in Oxford for this beautiful art, which requires little

forcing, for it grows of itself in the climate of the place. This taste

is especially shown by the liberality with which brass-bands playing

your national airs are remunerated; but important as it is, it is

sometimes found to interfere with the soundless but sounder elements of

education, and therefore it becomes necessary in certain cases to check

it. The rooms of the men have in general such thin partitions, that the

noise of one seriously interferes with the silence of another. I once

knew a reading man in —— College, who was placed between two

pianofortes, one overhead, and the other underfoot: he especially

complained of the interruption on Sundays, as on that day his more

celestial neighbour played sacred tunes, while his neighbour of the

nether world played profane, producing a discord in mid-air as ludicrous

as painful to an ear of taste. But I take it that the sense in which

music is used in old scholastic Latin, is in general the Platonic sense,

and thus the Music school at Oxford means one not especially devoted to

exercises in what we call music, but to exercises on examination in

belles lettres. That this term has acquired a broader significance by

the recent changes in the Oxford University system, I cannot but think a

subject for congratulation. When the University departed as a general

principle from the practice of making verse-writing in the dead

languages the mainspring of erudition in them—a practice still far from

obsolete in the public schools of England—it became necessary, if only

to take up the time of the students, and prevent them from lapsing into

intellectual inanition, to supply them with other food congenial to the

spirit of the place. The germ of these new studies had existed before,

and only required development. There could be no better foundation for

culture in modern history and jurisprudence than the exact study of the

ancient historians of Greece and Rome pursued under the old system. Even

so with mathematics. The modern examinations are, for the most part,

mere distributions of the former work, and by getting part of it over

sooner, the student is less puzzled as to the disposal of his time. But

the paucity of candidates for mathematical honours, in comparison with

those who cling to belles lettres, is a sign that the exact sciences are

still exotics in the atmosphere of Oxford; and as long as the spirit of

the place remains what it is, they are scarcely likely to become

otherwise. Nor are the physical sciences apparently likely to acquire

soon a hold on the popular feeling of the University. Still, as before,

the pivot around which Oxford studies revolve is formed by the solid

metal of the ancient classical authors, whose words are picturesque and

statuesque, and fraught with the same eternal beauty, the same

adaptability as models for all time, as the things that the hands of

their contemporaries produced. Although as yet no school of modern

languages has been formed in which examination in them forms a part of

the University system, yet every encouragement has been given to the

study of them by the foundation of a professorship supported by public

teacherships; and even if nothing more is done, there is every reason to

think that, supported as it is by the cosmopolitan position which our

country has taken of late years, this important branch of literature

will sufficiently nourish in Oxford.

So far it appears that the changes which have been made in the

constitution of Oxford have been of a conservative character—the reforms

have destroyed nothing, but developed a great deal that formerly lay

dormant in the University system. They will continue to be of this

character if the University is allowed abundance of light and air and

space to put forth its own energies, and not damaged by injudicious

meddling from without. There have been rumours of further changes, some

of which are apparently called for by the necessities of the time, while

others have merely been engendered by the inventiveness of the spirit of

innovation. One peculiarly delicate subject has been brought on the

tapis, which, although I hold an opinion of my own respecting it, I

should prefer stating in the position of one balancing two conflicting

views, as far as my prejudice admits. I mean the celibacy of the

Fellows. In the first place, if it is true that women are like a church,

because there is no _living_ without them, a proposition I heard the

other day in the form of a riddle, the business is settled at once,

because it is cruelty to condemn any body of men to a living grave; but,

on the other hand, if the men themselves acquiesce in this social

burial, and refuse to be delivered from it, they have undeniably a voice

in the matter, even though it be from the catacombs, and ought to be

heard in a manner so nearly and dearly affecting their own interests.

The defenders of the present system have a great advantage in being able

to raise a laugh against those who from within advocate a change,

alleging that they have some gentle reasons for doing so. We are a

nation peculiarly sensitive to being placed in a ridiculous position,

and it requires no small amount of moral courage for any man who is a

member of a body to start opinions which the rest, though they may in

their hearts sympathise with, are not immediately prepared to fall in

with. It must be allowed that the outcry against collegiate celibacy has

been louder outside than inside the walls of common rooms. It may be

said, on the other side, that the voices of those without are not

stifled by the fear of snubbing and ridicule as those within are, and

that those who see the effect of a system on others are better qualified

to judge than those whose own minds are biassed by its pressure. Those

who work in mines and live in unwholesome air only feel by diminished

energy the evil effects of the miasma they have to breathe, while those

who live apart from them see it in their pale and haggard looks. It is

not the bondsman in general who calls for emancipation so loudly as the

spectator who has tasted the sweets of freedom. To come to a practical

aspect of the question; it is urged by the advocates of emancipation

that celibacy was part of the religious system under which the colleges

were founded, and that as that religious system has ceased to exist in

reference to them, there is no object in keeping up a restriction which

can have no such motive; and to those who would urge that the intentions

of the founders ought to be consulted as that of any testator ought to

be, it is answered that it is hypocrisy to pretend to consult the wills

of founders in a matter which is merely a corollary to a rule which has

been essentially broken through, and that the wills of founders are even

in this instance nullified by the marriage of heads of colleges, who

being of necessity priests by the statutes under the papal regime, would

render such a prohibition in their cases superfluous. Again, those who

are for continuing the celibacy system urge that a fellowship is

intended only as a stepping-stone to a permanent provision in the view

of the world, and that to allow the marriage of Fellows would render the

succession so slow as to destroy the practical value of the foundations.

To this is opposed the statement that in fact men are well content to

settle down on a fellowship, which is indeed a premium on indolence, and

that they acquire, even if industrious, habits of expense, which make

them loth to part with a large proportion of their incomes without grave

cause, so that in fact many men do continue Fellows until late in life,

when they care naturally less about marriage; and moreover, that the

slowness of succession might equally be urged in the case of livings

which only become vacant by death, and that for the same reason it would

be equally reasonable to enforce the celibacy of bishops were they not

expressly commanded to be husbands, as some interpret Scripture; yet

more, the fellowship might be made tenable for a certain number of years

only, and superannuation might not entail, as it does now, the loss of

the chance of college patronage to livings. Some satirical writers have

drawn a humorous picture of the condition of colleges with sets of rooms

inhabited by family Fellows, the quadrangles turned into play-grounds,

and the sacred grass-plots invaded by nursemaids with their charges,

still further presuming to imagine intestine feuds between jealous

_fellowinnen_ (as you Germans would call them), which they think would

be incompatible with the feeling of collegiate brotherhood or

sisterhood. To this it may be answered, that, as it is, the majority of

Fellows reside in the country, and are otherwise occupied than with

collegiate duties, and there would be less inducement than formerly for

the plural Fellow to content himself with the limited accommodation of a

college; and it would be easy to make a rule that a certain number of

the Fellows,—that is to say, of the younger, should reside to undertake

the offices; and even if they were married, those offices should only

continue so long as to incur no danger of their inundating the

quadrangles with urchins. The worst of it is, that the Oxford education

has a peculiar tendency to develop the poetical and artistic

temperament; and to men of this temperament, who are, in all countries,

in a much larger proportion to others than is generally thought, the

long vista of celibacy is little else than a long perspective of

purgatory. To all who love the beautiful, whether saints or sinners,

there is one central point round which all their thoughts revolve—one

standard by which all their comparisons are made,—and that is none other

than woman. The musical mind is drawn to her through the symphonies of

Mozart or Handel—through the complicated opera strain, and the simple

national air—

“The soul of love and bravery;”

for even the hero-songs of war, by arousing the manliness of man,

suggest the loveliness of woman. The artistic mind is drawn to her

through all the schools of painting—through even the sumptuous Madonnas

which the sacred painters have imagined, as through the sun-warm but

less heavenly creations of Titian or Correggio. It is impossible for the

artistic eye to look at the symmetry of a tree or the graceful lines of

a mountain, or even the crystal curves in a fountain, without dwelling

on that form which, of all created, is undeniably the most beautiful

without any of its associations, and dwelling on it, too, with somewhat

other feelings than those expressed by the Italian priest when he

remarked, in a tone of reproof, to a friend who wished to call his

attention to a fair lady at an assembly—

“Una bella creatura di Dio!”

Thus I do think that if this celibacy is to be continued, it would be a

great improvement to enjoin the study of pure mathematics on college

Fellows, with examinations at intervals to prove that their time is only

taken up in contemplating the affinities of triangles, and the love of

the angles (not of the angels). The whole series of classical literature

ought to be forbidden them for the time; ditto all galleries, pictures,

and statues, all music and poetry; and they ought, as a final measure,

to be relegated to that monastery mentioned by Mr Curzon, somewhere in

the Acroceraunian mountains, where there were some Greek monks who had

never seen a female face, and had even forgotten their mothers. One of

them asked him whether women were like the Madonna. The poor fellow had

better not have seen that Madonna. Even now, some men in their

undergraduate life grow tired of the exclusively masculine aspect of the

University, and some very good lines on that subject, of which I only

recollect the end, were written by a now eminent poet, when he was an

undergraduate—

“As I am one who feels the full divinity

Of a fair face in woman, I protest

I’m sick of this unvaried regularity

Of whiskered cheeks and chins of black barbarity.”

And one painful consequence of the present system is, the violation of

the good old adage, “Happy’s the wooing that’s not long a-doing:” the

notorious evil of long engagements becomes, in this case, exaggerated to

a painful degree. There being no absolute, but only a conditional

prohibition, and the prospect of a living, certain though distant,

appearing to justify the formation of such ties, engagements are formed

in early life, the ratification of which seems ever near, but never

actually comes, till both parties have passed their meridian, and the

fulfilment takes place, if it is thought worth while that it should take

place at all, rather as a matter of course, than because the parties

really now desire it. The hope deferred which “maketh the heart sick,”

embitters the masculine temper, and withers the feminine frame, even

before their natural bloom would have disappeared. The courage which, in

earlier life, would have taken a bold step, and dared the world to do

its worst, becomes irresolution and timidity; and as it often happens

that those who have been kept without food too long, only know the

sensation of hunger through a general faintness of the system, so the

vacuum of the affections too long kept up by circumstances, becomes at

last a chronic disease, which, to the end of life, remains irremediable.

At the same time, the life of the common-room, and the extreme ease with

which material wants are provided for, acts on the mind as opium acts on

the system, till at last it ceases to care for anything but the drug

which has become a habit. It may be with some of those who have felt the

enduring influence of this soporific regime, as with the lotos-eaters of

Tennyson; they even come to dread a change, and cling to the indolence

from which at first they would have fled:

“Our island home

Is far beyond the sea, we will no longer roam.”

But, on the other hand, it may be urged that the immediate happiness of

those concerned is not so much contemplated in the foundations as their

usefulness, and that they must be content to cull the flowers which grow

beside the path of duty. This may be answered by urging that, in certain

cases, a man’s usefulness is diminished instead of being increased by

his being denied certain sources of happiness. The best workman is ever

the man who is best fed and clothed, and made most generally

comfortable; even so in the great work of human life is that individual

most efficient whose legitimate wants, both of body and soul, are

satisfied. The motives which actuated the founders of the Roman Catholic

colleges were no doubt, as most human motives are, of a mixed nature. On

the one hand, they wished their money to fructify and do as much good as

possible; on the other hand, they wished it to fructify in such a way as

to redeem their own souls from purgatory, by providing a succession of

those who should sing masses for them for all time; at the same time, it

was the prevailing notion in these times, and is now, among Romanists,

that celibacy, if not the happiest, is the holiest state of man.[4] If

there be any truth in this, even to the most limited extent, there is

something to be said for the system; but if the poor founders have been

cheated out of their masses, and may remain, for all the present

generation care, boiling and broiling in purgatory to the end of time,

it seems purely hypocritical to lean on a notion which has no better

foundation than the ruling opinions of founders. All the great and

imposing faith is gone which would support a heavy burden with the

supernatural sinews of religion, and the burden remains still to be

borne as it best may by human muscle alone. But it may be also said, the

fellowships of colleges are in themselves eleemosynary institutions, and

poverty was in most cases made a condition of the enjoyment of them; and

just as, under the new poor-law system, we imagine that a man, though he

has a right to existence, has no right to encumbrances which others must

support, so some would argue that the charity of the founders ought to

be thankfully accepted under all its conditions. But in the first place,

the question may be asked, whether apparent necessity, rather than

humanity, did not suggest the new poor-law system? In the next place,

whether that can strictly be called eleemosynary of which merit is made

a condition? We give to a beggar sometimes, although we know him to be

utterly worthless, merely because he is destitute; and even the utterly

worthless have a certain claim, in right of their Maker’s image; but we

give to a good man as a tribute to his virtue, and the application of

these foundations to proficiency in knowledge is to those who accept

them usually accounted peculiarly honourable, just as a national pension

is to the wounded soldier. Besides, it might be said that all bequests

are in a manner eleemosynary, because the legacy is not a payment for

labour in most cases, but a free gift from the testator to the legatee;

nor is its character materially altered by the fact of its having been

given under conditions. It appears to some that the college property is

as much real property to those who have the use of it, as any property

bequeathed subject to conditions; such as, for instance, the law of

entail in England. Indeed, a case has been mentioned, in which, for some

peculiar reason, a very rich man inherited his estates subject to this

very condition of celibacy. And eleemosynary institutions, strictly so

called, are commonly administered by trustees, not by those who reap the

benefits of them, as is the case with college fellowships. I think I

have now, as well as I can, stated the arguments, both _pro_ and _con_,

though perhaps it is easy for you to see to which side I lean. I confess

that I should regard the repeal of celibacy as a conservative change,

because it would give individuals a more enduring interest in their

University. I dread innovation, and especially from profane hands; at

the same time, I feel the necessity of such wholesome repairs in the

constitution of Alma Mater as shall secure for her, as far as possible,

a perpetuity of youth, or at least a green old age. How other changes,

such as the admission of Dissenters, can be brought about without

ignoring the entire history, associations, and character of the

University, I do not well see. If Dissenters are admitted at all, Roman

Catholics must be admitted with the rest; and they may perhaps lay claim

to a participation in the good things of the University, seeing that the

ancient foundations were undoubtedly made in their favour; and if this

participation be allowed, the rights of the foundation will be again

disturbed; and they may push their claim to the entire exclusion of all

other communities, for, unless there be a reason for disfranchising

them, they will ask why others should share advantages originally

intended for them alone. They are not like the Jews, a sect who keep to

themselves, and seek not to domineer over others; but universal dominion

is as much the policy of pontifical as of imperial Rome. Thus they will

be sure to take every advantage. Thus there is a _primâ facie_ danger in

mooting any integral question concerning the constitution of the

University, lest an opening should be unwarily made which would destroy

everything on which its existence depends; and this is, in my opinion,

the most plausible argument in favour of continuing the celibacy of

Fellows. But averse as all well-wishers to Oxford would be to any change

in the way of subtraction or diminution of her privileges, no such one

could look with coldness on any proposed additions to her area of

efficiency, and especially on extensions which seem suggested by her

natural aptitudes. As Cambridge seems to possess the soil in which

everything connected, however remotely, with science, is destined

especially to thrive, such as natural history in its various branches,

so does Oxford appear to be that University which should assume a

prominently artistic character. The foundations of a new museum have

been laid, which is to be built on a grand and imposing scale. Is its

chief attraction, when completed, to consist in a collection of dried

beetles and stuffed humming-birds, or even a complete skeleton of the

megatherium, if such a thing is to be had; or is an attempt to be made

to bring together, by every possible means, a collection of works of art

which would really do credit to the University? It must be remembered

that we have in England no national gallery worthy of the name; not that

the pictures composing the collection in Trafalgar Square are to be

despised—far from it; but the building which contains them shows them to

so little advantage, and is altogether so inadequate, that it presents

few temptations to large additions, either by purchase, gift, or

bequest. The very atmosphere of London is an argument against building a

new national gallery in the neighbourhood of any of the centres of

metropolitan life. Trees may be blackened, but flourish under the soot;

but the purity of the marble, and the freshness of the canvass, are

liable to be permanently discoloured by the constant action of an air

impregnated with smoke, in a manner far other than that in which they

receive the mere mellowness of age. This would be conclusive against a

central situation, and if such a building is to be placed in the suburb,

to arrive at it would cost a sacrifice of time and effort little short

of that necessary to arrive at a site at a moderate railroad distance

from the metropolis. As it is, Oxford is a great point of attraction to

all strangers, and no Englishman who had not seen it, could pretend to

an average knowledge of his own country. It is even placed within reach

of the working-classes of London by excursion-trains, who are thus led

in the pursuit of pure air to a place full of associations, which are in

every way likely to do them good. It seems to me that it is worth

considering whether the national gallery of England might not with

advantage be placed at Oxford, and combined in some way with the scheme

of the new museum. A school of art would probably spring up around it,

to which the University would naturally present many advantages, and to

which it might well extend peculiar privileges. The present is not the

worst time to consider this matter, when the existence of a great war

postpones the execution of all plans of subordinate importance. It is

quite certain that everything cannot be concentrated in London; and this

being the case, it is well to consider what other places are calculated,

in their own way, to become capital cities. Oxford has already received

some of the Muses as its inmates, and it is abundantly spacious to

receive them all. With respect to the natural scenery of its environs,

very much might be said in favour of its being suited as a residence for

an artist. The banks of its rivers are especially fertile in subjects

for the brush, and though its upland scenery is generally stamped with

that mediocrity which seems peculiar to the central counties of England,

there are spots here and there which, from their wildness or woodiness,

are well adapted for the sketcher. I am sorry to see many of the wild

places round Oxford either already enclosed, or in course of enclosure;

but what I saw with most regret was, that Bagley Wood had been

surrounded with a fence, and placed under a most rigorous _taboo_ to the

public in general. Now, there is some excuse for bringing land into

cultivation which may be made available for the wants of the community,

and can only become so if enclosed; but when the better preservation of

game is the only object, to exclude the public from a place where they

have been accustomed for years to expatiate and “recreate themselves,”

and an intelligent public, such as that of the University;—to exclude

them from one of the spots which Arnold mentioned as giving him especial

delight on his return to Oxford, and as being one of its chief

glories,—this, though perfectly justifiable according to law, is

scarcely consistent with that Aristotelian equity which ought to be

above law, especially in the neighbourhood of those brought up in his

precepts, and whose philanthropy might naturally be expected to be more

expansive than that of other men. It appears, however, that this

mischief has been done for some time; and the only compensation the

public gain is that a fine wide road has been made, which certainly

makes the walk round the wood complete—a poor consolation, indeed, to

those who, like myself, look upon walking along a road as one of the

dreariest duties imaginable, and have an irreclaimable vein of the

savage in their composition. Why, to me the sight of the stiff hedges

and mathematical drains of Bagley Wood would spoil half the pleasure of

shooting there; but, of course, those who have that privilege may say

that the grapes are sour. I may mention that on the walk which crosses

the railway, and cuts across into the Abingdon road, which leads through

Bagley Wood, a large reservoir has lately been made, which in one place

is crossed by a bridge, that seems as if it had been put there on

purpose to give the best near view of the city. The best distant views I

consider to be those about the Hinksey fields, near the spot where

Turner, with singular ignorance of the customs of the University,

painted gownsmen in their academicals among the haycocks; and at a place

near Elstree, called Stow Wood, well known as a fox-cover. But perhaps

the most characteristic view of all is that of the towers of Oxford,

seen reflected in the flooded surface of Christchurch meadow under a red

sky. This view is suggestive of Venice, especially if the boats are

magnified by a slight effort of the imagination into sea-going ships, or

softened into gondolas. I have mentioned the advantages which an artist

might derive from residence in Oxford, alike from the models that might

be placed there, the architectural beauties of the place, and the

natural scenery. To the second of these advantages would belong the

excellent studies of interiors that some of the rooms present. The rooms

of one of my friends, which were those at first intended for the Head of

the College, are quite a gem in the profuseness of decoration,

especially as applied to the ceiling. The halls of many of the colleges

are also remarkably fine, as presenting studies of interiors of peculiar

magnificence. Occasionally the internal decoration of the rooms

themselves, in which individual taste has perhaps taken a wider range

than in any other place I know, would assist a painter in his

composition. Pictures and engravings, profuse in quantity, if not always

good in quality, decorate the rooms of most of the junior members, and a

marked improvement has of late years taken place in this matter,

engravings from good masters, and really good original pictures by

modern artists, having taken the place of trumpery hunting-prints and

portraits of the nymphs of the ballet. Other rooms are hung round “with

pikes, and guns, and bows,” now obsolete, and seemingly made, at the

time of their construction, for this ulterior object of ornamenting a

room, which they fulfil so much better than any modern invention. But

perhaps the most extraordinary rooms of all are those of a friend of

mine, in one of the most picturesque colleges. The whole centre of his

room is taken up by a kind of immense Christmas tree, formed by his own

labour and ingenuity, on which is hung every imaginable article that

would be chosen in an old curiosity-shop from mere oddness in form or

nature. It is a rare collection of what the French call specimens of

“bêtises,” ironically, as I suppose, considering the extreme cleverness

which imagined them all. There are, if I rightly remember, gods from the

Sandwich Islands and fetishes from Africa, clubs from New Zealand and

bows from Tartary, stuffed birds, pipes of all kinds and sizes, skins of

snakes and crocodiles, skulls of men and animals, and everything, in

fact, that ever entered into a skull to devise. The walls are papered

with engravings, and engravings are hung from the ceiling because there

is no room for them on the walls. There is a collection of divers

plants, native or exotic, flourishing in stands or trailing over the

windows, in each of which is a kind of caravanserai for wild birds (not

aviary), for the amiable proprietor does not detain them there longer

than they wish to stay, but invites them in by abundant proffers of

their peculiar kinds of food; and as he sits or reclines by his fire

(for he has abundant facilities for assuming either position) by the

motionless silence which he purposely observes—has constant

opportunities of watching their flittings and hearing their twitterings,

and studying their little habits with the gusto of a naturalist. That

such an inventory, which entirely passes my memory to describe, should

have been amassed in a single room by any amount of time and trouble, is

a marvel to me, only to be explained by the perfect and lotos-eating

repose of a college life. Long may our friend enjoy his quaint and

instructive rooms! Travellers see strange things, but few can say that

they have seen stranger than those that are enshrined in the colleges of

Oxford.

You see that I have carefully abstained in what I have said from making

invidious comparisons between Oxford and the sister university; nor have

I spoken of the universities of the north, with which I am but little

acquainted, but which I should imagine to hold an intermediate place

between the English and the German system. On the whole, it appears to

me that the function of education, comprising theology, philosophy,

science, and belles lettres, is to impress upon the mind images of

Beauty and Truth, and to enable the mind which has received these

impressions to act in like manner through life. If education cannot make

a man’s actions truthful and beautiful, he remains to the end a savage,

or rather, I should say, the scion of a vulgar civilisation, even if he

knows all the poets by heart, or can discourse with the acumen of an

Erasmus or a Crichton. That Beauty and Truth are one and the same in

that perfect sunlight which our eyes cannot see, and from which all

lesser lights proceed, few will deny. But here on earth they may be

considered as in a measure apart, and as exciting, each for good in its

way, separate influences on the moral life of man. Men incline to one or

the other light according to their natural bent or the bias of their

education. It seems to me that if a distinction is to be made between

our universities, the tendency of Oxford studies is to look at Truth

through Beauty, while that of Cambridge studies is to look at Beauty

through Truth. It is therefore that I have laid so much stress on the

capabilities of Oxford as a school of Art. I confess that I am anxious

to gain a closer insight into the nature and life of your German

universities. Probably they are with us but imperfectly and unfairly

understood. If it be true that the Bursch preserves, under his outwardly

rough exterior, any remains of that antique chivalry of thought which is

so fast dying out in this country, he preserves a treasure which is of

inestimable value, and which ought to be secured to him at any price. At

the same time, I think you will allow that our system has certain

superiorities of its own, which deserve at least careful study, if not

active imitation. We, at least, are successful in affixing an

ineffaceable stamp to the character of the great majority, while you

seem only to succeed in permanently impressing the nature of a few, and

impressing only a limited part of that nature. May you live and lecture

many years, Herr Professor; and may your brimming Rhine flow on for

ever, free and German as of yore; and may the vine-blight spare the

clusters that yield that molten gold which, unlike the morbid production

of Australia and California, brings nothing but innocent joy to the soul

of your Fatherland. _Vale!_ and believe me,

Your loving friend,

TLEPOLEMUS.

THE ANCIENT COINS OF GREECE.[5]

Father Hardouin, a learned French Jesuit of the seventeenth century,

lived to the venerable age of eighty-three years, and died, as he had

lived, in the full persuasion that the only authentic monuments which we

possess of classical antiquity are comprised in coins, a few Greek and

Latin inscriptions, with the Georgics of Virgil, the Satires and

Epistles of Horace, and the writings of Pliny and Cicero. Out of these

materials he held that certain ingenious “falsarii,” in the thirteenth

century, whom he styles the “architects of annals,” compiled those

multifarious productions of poetry and prose which we have been

accustomed to regard as a most precious legacy bequeathed to us by

ancient Greece and Rome. This fact we mention to our readers, not with

any view to shake them in their old and orthodox convictions upon the

subject, but simply to show them what a vast amount of _matériel_ this

learned Father had discovered in the study of ancient numismatics. A

coin indubitably presents, within the smallest compass, the fullest view

of ancient times that we possess. Though silent, it is always waiting to

communicate knowledge; though small, it is always ready to teach great

things. “Inest sua gratia parvis,” is the motto of the Cabinet. It would

be difficult, indeed, to say what department of ancient lore—whether in

mythology, or economics, or politics, or chronology, or geography—may

not be elucidated and explained by the study of coins. A series of coins

are, in fact, a series of illustrative engravings, of contemporaneous

date with the literary works of Greece and Rome, and of the noblest

school of art. We may realise much of what we read by turning to designs

executed by artists who lived in those very countries, and at that very

period. The lordly oak is uprooted by the tempest, the lowly willow is

spared. While the temples of the gods and their concomitant myriads of

statues have been reduced to unintelligible fragments, those coins which

formed the medium of ordinary traffic—the tetrobolus, the soldier’s

daily pay—the drachma, that of the mariner—and the tetradrachmon, which,

by virtue of the archaic visage of Pallas, with her rigid smile, passed

current among merchants of every state and province,—these have remained

safe in their hiding-places under the soil, and may be found in nearly

the same condition in which the Greeks handled them more than two

thousand years ago.

Cities have been built with the express intent of perpetuating the glory

of a founder, and after all the founder’s intent is achieved, not by the

enduring testimony of edifices and streets of marble, but by that of its

coins. Thus the Emperor Augustus thought to immortalise the fame of his

victory over Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, by erecting a city on the

shores of the Ambracian Gulf, which city he called by the appropriate

name of Nicopolis. It was supplied with the usual complement of public

edifices; a gymnasium and a stadium were built in a sacred grove in the

suburb; another sanctuary stood on the sacred hill of Apollo, which

surmounted the city. It was admitted by the Emperor’s desire into the

Amphictyonic council, and was made a Roman colony. Sacred games were

instituted, accompanied by a sacrifice and a festival, equal in dignity

to the four great games of Greece. Coins of the city were struck: and in

commemoration of a favourable omen which had presented itself on the

morning of the day of battle, a group of bronze statues, representing an

ass and his driver,[6] were placed, among other dedications, in the

temple of Apollo Actius.

Such were the forward-looking expedients of the conqueror to perpetuate

his fame;—and what has been the result?

“Look, where the second Cæsar’s trophies rose,

Now,—like the hands that made them, withering.”[7]

A long succession of ruined edifices, in one part converted into a

sheep-pen. In fact, before four centuries had elapsed, a contemporaneous

author tells us that the town of Nicopolis had fallen into lamentable

decay. The palaces of the nobles were rent; the aqueducts crushed;

everything was smothered with dust and rubbish.—The bronze statues of

Eutyches and Nicon, after being removed first to Rome, and then to adorn

the Hippodrome at Constantinople, were at last melted down by the

barbarous Latins on their capture of the city in A.D. 1204. All is gone

of Nicopolis except the coins. The coins may be seen in the cabinet of

the numismatist, by time as yet uninjured; and we find upon one of them

the head of Augustus himself with the description of Κτίστης or founder,

and the appropriate figure of Victory holding a garland in her extended

right hand.

In connection with this city of Nicopolis, we may mention the fact that

one of the most important transactions in Colonel Leake s diplomatic

career—namely, a conference with the celebrated Albanian Vezír, Ali

Pasha, which led to the ratification of a peace with the Porte in

1808—took place on the sea-beach, near the ruins of the ancient aqueduct

of the city, on a stormy night in the winter of 1807. The crafty Vezír,

in order to throw dust into the eyes of the French consul, who was

watching the proceedings with much jealousy, had previously got up a

sort of scene in his presence,—receiving an English messenger, whom he

had himself instructed to ask for permission to purchase provisions,

with affected sternness,—haughtily refusing to grant his request,—and

declaring that the two nations were still at war;—although he had

already made with Colonel Leake a private arrangement to give him the

meeting that same evening on the beach. As the day declined, the weather

became so threatening that the captain of Colonel Leake’s ship was

afraid to anchor off the coast; and so dark was the night, that had not

Ali himself caused muskets to be discharged, the appointed place of

rendezvous on the beach could not have been discovered. At length the

boat neared the land, and the Vezír was found seated under a little

cliff attended by one or two of his suite, and a few guards. Dr Johnson

might seem to have anticipated this scene, in his tragedy of _Irene_,

where he describes an interview between the Greek Demetrius and the

Vezír Cali in these words:—

“He led me to the shore where Cali sate,

Pensive, and listening to the beating surge.

There, in soft hints and in ambiguous phrase,

With all the diffidence of long experience,

That oft had practised fraud, and oft detected,

The veteran courtier half revealed his project.”[8]

During the two hours the conference between Colonel Leake and the Vezír

lasted, the surf rose considerably; and it was not without a good

drenching from the rain and the sea, and some difficulty also in finding

the ship, which they could hardly have done without the aid of the

lightning, that the boat returned on board. The ship then stood away

from the coast.[9]

But to return to our subject. Every one who feels a thirst for

knowledge, must value coins as the medium of acquiring knowledge: every

one who has an eye for grace and beauty, must value them as presenting

unrivalled specimens of grace and beauty: every one who is susceptible

of the charms of fancy, must love to study the hidden meaning of those

imaginative devices, which sometimes, as Addison says, contain as much

poetry as a canto of Spenser. Let not the study be condemned as dry and

crabbed, for Petrarch was a numismatist. Let it not be condemned as

connected with only a bygone and obsolete school of art, for Raffaelle

and Rubens, Canova, Flaxman, Thorwaldsen, and Chantrey, delighted to

refresh their powers by it. Condemn it not as beneath the notice of the

philosopher, for Newton and Clarendon were among its votaries. Say not

that men of active pursuits can find no time for it, when you hear of

the collections of Wren, Mead, and Hunter.

There were numismatists among the ancient Romans. Admirers and

collectors, as they were, of the other productions of Greek art, we

should conclude that they were admirers and collectors of Greek coins

also, even if we had no direct evidence upon the subject. Suetonius,

however, expressly informs us that the Emperor Augustus was

accustomed—probably at the Saturnalia—to distribute among his guests a

variety of valuable and interesting gifts, and, among the rest, pieces

of money—not modern money, but of ancient date—not Roman, but foreign;

and some of it the coin of ancient kings. May we not recognise in this

description the beautiful coins of Greece and her colonies—the coins of

Syracuse and of Tarentum—of the Seleucidæ and other Asiatic kings—of the

kings of Macedonia, Epirus, and Thrace? A facetious friend of ours

professes to enrol Horace also in the list of numismatists; and we have

often smiled at the mock solemnity with which he argues his point. He

holds, for instance, that the passage,

“Nullus argento color est avaris

Abdito terris”—

refers, not as we have been taught to interpret it, to the unwrought

silver lying hidden as yet in the mine, but to those choice productions

of ancient art—Syracusan medallions, for instance, or the rarer

tetradrachms of the Seleucidæ—which blush unseen in their subterranean

lurking-places, and are kept out of our cabinets by that churlish miser

the earth. And he holds that the poet very consistently, in the same

ode, assigns the regal diadem, and the laurel crown of virtue, not to

the man who is simply master enough of himself not to covet his

neighbour’s money-bags,

“Quisquis ingentes oculo irretorto

Spectat acervos,”

but rather to the noble self-denial of that numismatist, who can pass

from the contemplation of the well-stored cabinet of his rival without

one sidelong glance of envy.

And in that well-known passage where Horace says, in a rather boastful

strain, that the fame of his lyric poetry will be more durable than

bronze, our friend observes that if the poet alluded to the statues of

bronze which met his eye at every turn in the city of Rome, it did not

follow that his lyric fame would be of any long duration; for of all

articles of bronze the statue was doomed to the earliest destruction,

and but few, in comparison with the number of marble statues, have come

down to our time. Many a graceful figure which Horace had seen and

admired in the palace of Mecænas, for instance, ere many centuries had

elapsed was melted down by greedy plunderers, and played its part a

second time in the brazen caldron of the housewife. But the medal of

bronze survives the wear and tear of centuries full a score. The medal

it is,

“Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens

Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis

Annorum series, et fuga temporum.”

Our observation has been drawn by some modern writers to the supposed

existence of a sacred character or quality in the coin of the ancients.

It is the opinion of the most experienced numismatists that the Greek

coin was invested with a character of sanctity, arising from the head,

or figure, or symbol of some deity which it usually bore; that the ἐικών

or image upon it was really and truly an idol. We believe that such a

notion prevailed, to a certain extent, both among the Greeks and the

Romans. Not that we regard the worship of Juno Moneta as a case in

point. We think that the worship of Juno Moneta was the worship of a

deity who was supposed to have admonished the Romans that there are

other things in the world much better worth attending to than money, and

that money would not be wanting to them, so long as the weapons they

fought with were the arms of justice. At the same time, there was

indubitably a reverence paid to the coin, even down to the Roman times,

for the sake of its religious symbol or device. The people of Aspendus,

in Pamphylia, professed to hold in such reverence the effigy of the

Emperor Tiberius upon his coin, that they found a certain fellow-citizen

guilty of impiety, simply on the ground of his having administered a

little wholesome chastisement to a refractory slave who happened to have

at the time one such coin in his pocket.

It has been thought that the practice which prevailed among the Greeks,

of placing a piece of coin in the mouth of the corpse, originated in

this notion of its sanctity, inasmuch as it was supposed to insure the

protection of the deity, whoever it might be, to whom the coin was

attached by the symbol it bore. But we must confess that, for our own

part, we still cling to the old story of the fee required by the Stygian

ferryman. Hercules informs Bacchus, in the _Ranæ_ of Aristophanes, when

he is meditating a visit to the shades below, that he will arrive at a

wide unfathomable lake, and that an old man who attends for the purpose

will ferry him and his companion across it, on receiving the fee of two

oboli. Lucian, too, has a joke about Charon’s complaining that, in

consequence of the slackness of his trade, he cannot raise money enough

to supply the necessary repairs for his boat. The _mouth_ was so

commonly used as a purse by the Greek in his lifetime, that we can

scarcely wonder at this method being adopted for his carrying money into

the other world with him when dead. Colonel Leake mentions the discovery

of a coin of Motya in the mouth of a skeleton in the island of Ithaca,

in a tomb of the first century before Christ.

At the same time, although we believe that the myth of Charon was more

closely connected with this practice in the minds of the common people

than any other consideration, we doubt not that the sanctity of the coin

was also taken into account. We find that notion of sanctity prevailing,

not only among the Greeks and Romans, but among other nations, to a

considerable extent. The Mohammedan coin bears invariably a passage from

the Koran, or some other religious text, quite sufficient to insure its

reverential treatment by the faithful Mussulman; and we read in

Marsden’s _Numismata Orientalia_ of a certain class of very rare gold

coins of ancient date, to which the Hindoos avowedly paid religious

worship. Of this coin the Rajah of Tanjore was so fortunate as to

possess two specimens.

Whether the sect of gold-worshippers is yet extinct is a question which

we must leave moralists to settle among themselves. It has been remarked

by an accomplished scholar and excellent numismatist,[10] that “gold has

been worshipped in all ages without hypocrisy.” That there were many in

ancient times who held the coin in reverence for the sake of an

indwelling sanctity connected with the symbolic representations which it

bore, we fully believe; and that there may be some in modern times who

hold it in reverence,—ἀισχρου κέρδους χάριν,—we are by no means disposed

to deny.

There is no doubt that pieces of antique coin have been frequently

carried in the purse or in the pocket as a sort of charm or amulet; but

we question whether this notion of their supernatural power has any

connection with the supposed sanctity of the legends or symbols with

which they are impressed. We should ascribe it rather to the same

feeling which induces some old women, and young ones too, to carry a

crooked sixpence in their purse—the charm being supposed to reside, not

in any device or legend of the coin, but simply in its curvilinear

shape. So in the cases we have just alluded to, the charm lies in the

mystery of the coin’s unknown and ancient origin—“omne ignotum pro

magnifico est.” Stukeley tells us that, in the neighbourhood of one of

the ancient Roman sites which he visited in his “_Iter Curiosum_,” Roman

coins were known among the peasantry by the appellation of “swine

pennies,” from the fact of their being often turned up by that

indefatigable excavator in his search after something more succulent. To

the mighty Cæsars this was truly a degradation. But at Dorchester he

found the same coins known by the name, assigned with more semblance of

respect, of “Dorn pennies,” after some mythical king Dor, whom tradition

states to have once resided there. The rustic antiquary is wont to

labour under a sad confusion of ideas. The Roman he confounds

perpetually with the Roman Catholic. We remember ourselves—after

visiting a sort of bi-linguar monument near Hadleigh in Suffolk, which

marks the spot of the martyrdom of Dr Rowland Taylor, under Queen

Mary—to have asked a passer-by whether a certain antiquated mansion by

the road-side had ever been inhabited within his recollection; to which

we received the oracular reply that, to the best of our rustic friend’s

belief, it had never been inhabited since the Romans occupied it, in the

days of Dr Taylor!

This, however, is rather a digression. We learn from Trebellius Pollio

that, in the fourth century, the coins of Alexander the Great were

supposed to insure prosperity to any person who was prudent enough to

carry one of them constantly about his person; and we find this, and all

other such notions, strongly condemned by Chrysostom. An Italian

traveller tells us that, in 1599, the silver coins found in the fields

in a certain district in the island of Crete were called by the people

after the name of St Helen; and that the story went that this saint,

being in want of money, had made a number of coins of brass, endowing

them, at the same time, with such miraculous properties, that the brass,

in passing into the hands of another person, was at once changed into

silver; and, moreover, that any such silver coin being held fast in the

hand, will cure the falling-sickness. Mr Pashley, who visited Crete in

1830, found that the possession of an ancient coin is looked upon as a

sovereign charm against maladies of the eyes. In the year 1366, the

discovery made by some children at play of a number of ancient coins, at

Tourves, near Marseilles, threw the whole community of the district into

a state of alarm and consternation. The coins were some that had been

struck at Marseilles at that early period when, under the name of

Massalia, it ranked among the most thriving colonies of ancient Greece.

They bore on the one side a head of Apollo, and on the other a circle

divided into quadrants. In the chronicles of Provence, where this

discovery is recorded, they are described as bearing on the one side a

_Saracen’s head_, and on the other side a _cross_. This was interpreted

as bearing some portentous allusion to the Crusades. And the devout

writer intimates that, while one part of the community look upon it as

an omen of good, and the other part as an omen of evil, Heaven only

knows how it will turn out.

We believe that some persons, sedulously devoted to other branches of

the study of classical antiquity, are deterred from availing themselves

of the aid of coins, by a fear of being imposed upon by forgeries. This

is an easy, but an idle mode of putting aside that which we have not

courage to investigate. We shall add a few remarks upon the subject.

In the first place, we shall venture to ask these anti-numismatic

sceptics, whether they think we ought to cease to read and to admire the

dramas of Shakespeare, because it is questionable whether one or two of

those which pass under his name were really of his composition?—or,

whether we shall shut our eyes before all pictures which pass under the

names of the Old Masters, because spurious ones have been palmed off

upon the self-dubbed connoisseur?—or whether all autographs of

illustrious men are to be condemned as trash, because Ireland attempted

to impose upon the public with some that were not genuine?—or whether

all currency is to come to an end, because clever knaves have succeeded

in counterfeiting it? Everything, in short, which is valuable, offers,

in proportion to its value, a temptation to ingenious and unscrupulous

men to show their cleverness by imposing upon the world with an

imitation of it. The Holy Scripture itself has not escaped.

And after all, in regard to coins as well as in regard to the other

subjects which we have mentioned, although forgers may be clever,

detectors are clever also. The numismatic phalanx of investigators are

more than a match for the “falsarii.” The skill of Cavino, Gambello, and

Cellini, has been met with equal skill on the part of the numismatist.

The eye that has been accustomed to wander over a well-selected cabinet

acquires a power of ready discrimination,—a power difficult to teach by

theory, but not so difficult to gain by practice. Solitary instances may

occur of a solitary numismatist fondly persuading himself that some

clever forgery which he possesses is a genuine coin, but we would not

give much for his chance of beguiling others into the same belief.

Unwilling he may be to have the “_gratissimus error_” extracted from his

own mind, but he never will succeed in engrafting it upon others. Never

does the eye of man exert so much jealous vigilance as when it is

employed upon the coin of a rival numismatist claiming to be genuine

upon insufficient grounds, The House of Lords sitting upon a claim of

some peerage in _abeyance_ is nothing to it. We apprehend that scarcely

an instance is on record of a forged coin having enjoyed for any length

of time, unquestioned, the honours of a genuine one. Nor do we think

that there are many instances of a forger’s attempting to falsify

history. He generally aims at making his invention tally with historical

fact as closely as he can. And if his inventive powers are not at all

brought into exercise, but he simply produces a coin which is a

_fac-simile_ or reproduction of a genuine one, for purposes of study

that _fac-simile_ will be equally available with the genuine coin, and

no further harm is done than the abstraction of a few shillings more

than its value from the pocket of the unwitting purchaser.

At the same time we would not let the forger go unpunished. Though the

evil actually done be small, the intention is bad. We would have him

tried by a jury of numismatists. Or if the offence should have been

committed in a country where the power of punishing the offence resides

in one magistrate, we should say that that one magistrate ought to be a

numismatist. It is said that a distinguished archæologist who possessed

this power in virtue of his office as Her Majesty’s consul at Bagdad,

very recently exercised it by directing that a Jew “falsarius” should be

bastinadoed. We applaud his Excellency’s most righteous judgment. The

man who had counterfeited the famous sequins of Venice, and had

aggravated his crime by doing it badly,—

“Che male aggiusto ’l conio di Vinegia,”

is represented by Dante as worthy of an especial notice among those

sinners against laws divine and moral with whom he has peopled the

shades of his _Inferno_.

Seriously, however, we think that any clever work of art is worthy of

being preserved, and none the less for its having taken in some who set

themselves up as judges. Even in Pliny’s time a counterfeit denarius of

superior workmanship was sometimes thought cheap at the price of sundry

genuine denarii. The tasteful device of Cellini, or of some cunning

artist of Padua, must not be thrown to the dogs, merely because it was

produced with the intention of rivalling the work of ancient artists,

and of testing the acumen of the cognoscenti. Those figures of Cellini,

for instance, which some one brought and exhibited to the artist himself

as antiques, and respecting which the nobleman who was their proprietor

declared, when he saw a smile playing upon the conscious visage of

Cellini, that there had not lived a man for these thousand years who

could have wrought such;—would not those figures have been worth

preserving? And in like manner a coin which, by the excellence of its

workmanship, has raised a doubt whether it may not have been really of

ancient origin, ought by no means to be treated with contempt, even

though it proves to be modern.

The learned work of Colonel Leake, now before us, has supplied a

desideratum in the archæological literature of our country. It is the

first work of the kind upon Greek coins which has been published by an

Englishman, and those of our readers who are acquainted with his

character will agree that no Englishman could have been found to do it

so well as Colonel Leake. The vast amount of knowledge which he has been

laying up for more than half a century, in regard to the literature, the

mythology, the political and social history, and the geography of

ancient Greece, supplies an infinity of streams which flow over the

pages of his work in the form of notes. No longer shall we blush under

the well-grounded reproach that all the standard works upon Greek

coinage are written by foreigners. Already, indeed, we observe that

Professor L. Müller, in his _Numismatique d’Alexandre_, just published

at Copenhagen, has made ample use of Colonel Leake’s volume, which must

necessarily become a text-book in this branch of Greek archæology. For

the convenience of those who may consult it, not only is every ordinary

variety of index supplied to the coins themselves, but we observe that,

in an appendix, an index is added to the valuable information contained

in the notes. We observe, also, in the appendix, a very interesting and

learned dissertation upon the weights of Greek coins, in which Colonel

Leake traces the Attic didrachmon—which seems to have been a sort of

standard or unit in the monetary scales of Persia and Lydia, as well as

of the cities and colonies of Greece—to Phœnicia, and from Phœnicia to

Egypt. It would scarcely be in accordance with our usual practice to

enter into the more erudite part of this important subject, and we shall

therefore conclude our remarks by making one reference to the work, in

order to show how successful its author has been in availing himself of

the light which a coin may throw upon the more obscure portions of

ancient geography.

In Colonel Leake’s collection there is a coin, recently brought to

light, of a people called the Orthians, bearing the Thessalian type of a

horse issuing from a rocky cavern, in allusion to the story that Neptune

produced the horse originally by a stroke of his trident upon a

Thessalian rock. Now a city, called “Orthe,” is mentioned by Homer in

the second book of the Iliad.[11] With regard to the site of this city,

there was a difference of opinion among geographers even in Strabo’s

time; the majority seem to have identified it with the acropolis of a

more modern city, which at that time was known by the name of Phalanna.

But inasmuch as there are coins now extant of Phalanna, and of a date

contemporaneous with that of Colonel Leake’s coin of Orthe, it is

evident that Phalanna and Orthe were two separate and distinct places.

The appearance, therefore, of this previously unknown coin of Orthe

corrects an error which prevailed among geographers as far back as the

time of Strabo. It shows that Phalanna and Orthe were not the same

place. Out of the five cities mentioned by Homer in this passage, Strabo

had well ascertained the position of three; and Colonel Leake is now

enabled to fix the probable position of the fourth. In reference to such

facts as this, Colonel Leake observes in his preface that they have an

important bearing upon the great question as to the origin of the

Homeric poems.

“It seems impossible,” he says, “for any impartial reader of the

_Iliad_, who is not seeking for arguments in favour of a preconceived

theory; who visits the scene of the poem; and who, when making himself

acquainted with the _Dramatis Personæ_ in the second book, identifies

the sites of their cities, and thus finds the accuracy of Homer

confirmed by existing evidence,—to believe that no such city as Troy

ever existed, and that the Trojan war is a mere poetic invention;

this, too, in defiance of the traditions of all antiquity, and the

belief of intelligent historians, who lived more than two thousand

years nearer the event than ourselves. The _Iliad_ differs not from

any other poetical history or historical romance, unless it be in the

great length of time which appears to have elapsed between the events

and the poem; but which time was employed by an intelligent people in

improving and perfecting their language and poetry—in committing, by

the latter, past occurrences to memory; and the principal subjects of

which, therefore, could not have been any other than religious and

historical.”

The study of coins has been very much facilitated by recent improvements

in the art of electrotype, which now enables the collector to obtain

perfect copies of the rarer and more costly specimens, and to render

them as useful to art and literature as the originals themselves. For

purposes of reference we have a noble collection in the National Museum,

as well as another which, although of much more limited extent, is

nearer to ourselves, and therefore more accessible to students on this

side of the Tweed, at Glasgow. In the concluding paragraph of his

preface, Colonel Leake mentions these two collections in connection with

each other; and with that paragraph we shall also conclude our remarks

upon his valuable work.

“Augmented as our National Collection has been by the bequest of Mr

Payne Knight, by the purchase of the Bargon Collection, and by similar

acquisitions on the dispersion of the Devonshire, Thomas, and Pembroke

cabinets, it now rivals most of those on the Continent. With the

addition of the Hunterian at Glasgow, which the Trustees of the

British Museum have now, at the end of eighty or ninety years, once

more the opportunity of acquiring, with the assistance of Government,

it would be the richest in Europe.”

TICKLER AMONG THE THIEVES!

EXTRACT FROM AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, WITH A PREFATORY NOTICE.