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thing having almost persuaded them the Doctor had deceived them, my friends seemed inclined to leave the affair on that footing, but, having a more ardent curiosity, I told them, that as we were within a mile of the place, it would be a pity not to have it in our power either to confirm or to confute the account; so, with much persuasion, away we went.

us.

"When we arrived at the spot, it proved to be a well in a yard belonging to a nest of miserable houses, and being Sunday, every one was idle, so that we had at least a hundred men, women, and children surrounding You may imagine how surprising it was to them to see ten well-dressed foreigners entering their yard, and hovering about their well. I enquired about the truth of the story, and was answered that, about fifteen years ago, the Duke de Boufflers had employed men to dig, and that they had found not only many fine statues, part of which I saw, but also immense riches. Upon this, I ordered a rope to be procured to let me down, but, as we were all taken for a parcel of madmen, I was little regarded. The people, however, perceiving we were in earnest, procured us a rope, with which we measured the depth of the well, and found it just ninety-one feet.

"Who should go down first was the question, when I told them I would; but the general opinion being that a stranger could not find the place, we, with much difficulty, hired a man who had been down some time since to cleanse the well, to go first, in order to receive us. The fellow descending about eighty feet, landed, and then we sent him down a number of torches, after which Mr. Blackhall, a young gentleman, went down; after him your humble servant, and next Mr. Atwell, a member of the Royal Society, and my Lord Cooper's* governor, but no others of our party would venture down. I must own they had, on their side, good reason, for the very look of it is terrible indeed.

"After we were all three down, we went in pursuit of discovery, and found a number of ruinated houses, with their several passages, doors, etc., which appeared to us like a town fallen in by the undermining it. In some places the pilasters, which were of marble, and others of brick, remained upright, and others were reversed. I measured one pilaster of brick that was two feet nine inches wide, and another piece of brickwork above thirteen feet long. Some of the bricks

Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, died at Naples, Feb. 15, 1712-13, and was succeeded by his only son, of the same name, the fourth Earl, the person

here alluded to. He died May 21, 1771.

Mr. C. Sturges, in a letter to Granger, dated Ealing, July 12, 1773, writes

"Have you a print of Dr. Atwell, engraved by Faber, before he was in orders? I suppose you know he travelled with the late Lord Cowper?"

The print referred to must have been an anonymous private plate, unknown to Bromley or Noble, nor has it fallen under the writer's cognizance.

were flat like tiles, and between them was very little mortar. There were others almost as thick as English bricks, and in another place was the ancient opus reticulatum.

"In some places the pavement was of marble, in large slabs, and in others, it was every way exactly as it is made now. There was in some places a sort of plaster, half an inch thick, remaining on the brick. Many pieces of wood burned to a coal, and which cut like a piece of clay, was observable in places; and there were the remains of an earthen trough, that, I presume, served to carry water. I found two capitals of the Corinthian order, and, of the same order, one very fine capital of a pilaster, with an entire case about it, fifteen inches in diameter. Also a large slab of marble, imposts, and window-stools of marble, which remained in the same situation as they stood originally; a large piece of a second and third faccia, of the Corinthian order, of white marble; a pillar of red marble; a staircase of ten steps of stone, one foot deep, and two feet wide, besides vast quantities of bricks and marble confusedly jumbled together.

"I observed that the tops and sides of this ruin are either of bricks and pieces of marble in ruins, or else of a sort of loam or clay, that, to me, is sufficient evidence this city was swallowed up by an earthquake, and not by an eruption from Mount Vesuvius, for if it had I should doubtless have seen some of the calcined matter; besides, how preposterous it is for any one to imagine that there should have been matter enough in the mountain to cover a city eighty feet in thickness!

"The ruins are very intricate, insomuch that we lost our way, and found ourselves in a real labyrinth; the further we went, the more we were embarrassed, so that our guide began to stamp and roar with fear; and indeed it was not very agreeable, for the place being damp, our torches would not burn without a number of them being put together, and as the place was close, and the weather hot, we were nearly suffocated. I don't know what apprehensions my comrades had, but I thought our friends above, when they saw we did not quickly return, would have sent down after us, and as I did not know at what distance we were from the entrance, I was not certain of escaping suffocation; for had our lights been extinguished, we were in such a prodigious sweat, the damp would have been certain death to us. However, after having rambled nearly half an hour, we felt the air, arrived at the entrance, and from thence were, by the people of the upper region, hauled up, all covered with dust and sweat, and were received, one after another, with a loud huzza, as if we

were risen from the dead.

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The sixth and concluding chapter is wholly occupied in defining the attributes of the Wendic Berstuck, or Waldschrat, here shown, a bronze figure, with runic inscriptions, one of the Rhetra idols, discovered at Prilwitz, at no great distance from the Baltic Sea, between the years 1687 and 1697, and now extant in the collection of the Grand Duke of MeckMr. lenberg Strelitz. Douce has already noticed this and the other idols as having been originally placed in the temple of Radegast, at Rhetra, that was wholly destroyed in the time of Charlemagne.*

FAUSSETT COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES. THE recent case of the rejection of these Anglo-Saxon Antiquities by the Trustees of the British Museum, is one of the latest and strongest evidences of the great mischief arising from the absurd constitution of the present board of management. Of its incompetency there are numerous instances, and Parliament must soon be awakened to the necessity of reconstructing it upon a more rational and systematic basis. This opinion will be conclusively adopted by any person who may peruse Mr. C. Roach Smith's most eloquent and forcible exposé of all the circumstances attending the proffer of this unrivalled collection by the executors of the late Dr. Faussett, for the enriching of our National Museum, at so low an amount of cost, that dealers in such articles would gladly have become the purchasers at the price named. Mr. Smith's statement is embodied in the recently issued fourth portion of his Collectanea Antiqua, but as there has been considerable interest excited by the result of this untoward affair, many applications for the paper exclusively relating to the Faussett Antiquities have been made to him; and that distinguished antiquary, determined to comply with the eager call thus spontaneously expressed, has printed it separately. A copy has been forwarded to the writer; and applications should be addressed to Mr. Smith, 5, Liverpool-street, Bishopsgate-street, whose courtesy will doubtless be as cheerfully shown on this, as on many other occasions.

The Faussett Manuscripts descriptive of this highly interesting and valuable collection, deposited at Liverpool, now never to enrich this metropolis, are under the arrangement and editorial supervision of Mr. C. Roach Smith, for immediate publication.

66

ANTI-HIGH ART.

*

SHAKESPEARE'S PUCK ELUCIDATED. DR. BELL, in his Shakespeare's Puck and his Folkslore, illustrated, more especially from the Earliest Rites of Northern Europe, and the Wends," a volume unpublished, or rather "sold only by the Author," has most deeply and learnedly defined the etymology and traces of the northern German Peze, spirits which were in every respect like our own Robin Goodfellow,* "famoused in every old woman's chronicle," and has also shewn that the Devonshire and Scottish Pixies are a regular plural from the German Puchs. Füchs, and similar words made by the regular forms of Teutonic grammar, their plural as Füchse, and their feminines. Füchsin, this latter we have transferred to our dictionaries exactly as pronounced at Dresden or Leipzig, Vixen, a she fox so by analogy, Püchs makes its plural as Püchse, phonically Pixie."

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Dr. Bell, at p. 188, refers to Ben Jonson's Pranks of Puck, the old ballad with the laughing burden, "Ho, ho, ho!" As this merry ditty was certainly well known in 1587, or before, Ben Jonson, who was born in 1574, has but little chance of being considered the author.

The author hints the

conjecture, that from the many concurring points in the classic and northern mythologies, a very pro

bable derivation of the Roman name of Satyr, that neither themselves

FIRM

nor their latest elucidators have satisfactorily solved, might be readily deduced from the Asa-Tyr of the Edda, as a satyr. From the Runic characters Su, or Zu, on this bronze, and considered as the first syllable of the well-known high title of Zu-pan, Dr. Bell, by a very copious discussion, based on notices in the early rhyming chronicles, and the language of the olden day, aims at the establishing this figure as representing the classical satyr, the PAN of the ancients, and hence the origin and nature of our Puck divinities and Robin Goodfellows. So the Fairy, in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, asks the Elfin—

"Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow: are you not he?"
Act ii. sc. 1.

The volume is replete with much to interest the archæological reader; much that unveils many passages of surpassing interest in our ballad lore, and characters familiar in our nursery tales, the objects of wonderment in our childhood; and as the author prothe classic myths with the Tales of the Edda, as well as mises many more conformities in other particulars of with our own vernacular superstitions, we sincerely wish he may obtain sufficient encouragement to a speedy production of the second volume.

Archeologia, 1827, vol. xxi. p. 86.

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THE DIVINING ROD. DIVINATION by the rod or wand is mentioned in the prophecy of Ezekiel, and in Hosea, iv. 12; the Jews are reproached with being infected with the like superstition. Not only the Chaldeans used rods for divination, but almost every nation that has pretended to that science has practised the same method. Herodotus notices it as a custom of the Alani, and Tacitus, as among those of the old Germans.

Dr. Henry tells us, that after the Anglo-Saxons and Danes embraced the Christian religion, the clergy were by the canons* commanded to preach very frequently against diviners, auguries, omens, charms, incantations, and all the filth of the wicked, and dotages of the Gentiles. Yet the vulgar notions still prevalent of the hazel's tendency to indicate the presence of water, coal, and minerals in the earth, is evidently a vestige of this rod divination.

The virgula divina, or baculus divinatorius, is a forked branch of the white thorn or hazel, cut off in the form of the letter Y; and the method of using it by those who pretend to discover mines and springs underground, is, the person who bears it, shaftwise to the breast, walking very slowly over the places where he suspects mines or springs may be, the effluvia exhaling from the metals, or vapour from the water, makes it dip or incline, and is indicative of a discovery. This is the most lucid explanation that has been advanced; a writer in the reign of King James the First, observes

No man can tell why forked sticks of hazel, (rather than sticks of other trees, growing upon the very same places) are fit to show the places where the veines of gold and silver are; the sticke bending itselfe in the places, at the bottom,

where the same veines are.‡

Johnson's Ecclesiastical Canons, under the year 747, ch. iii.

+ History of Great Britain, vol. ii. p. 550. p. 283.

Living Library, or Historical Meditations, 1621, fol.

Lilly appears to have been early imbued with the belief of the virtues of the hazel rod; but in one instance seems to have been baffled in the solution. He relates the following adventure, as an accident, and as something remarkable' that happened to him late in 1634.

Davy Ramsey, his Majesty's clock-maker, had been informed there was a great quantity of treasure buried in the cloyster of Westminster Abbey. He acquaints Williams, Bishop of London, then Dean, therewith; the Dean gave him liberty to search, with this proviso, that if any was discovered, his church should have a share. Davy Ramsey finds out one John Scott, who lived in Pudding-lane, and had been sometime a page or such like to the Lord Norris; and pretended the use of the Mosaical rods, to asist him herein I was desired to join with him, and consented. One winter's night, David Ramsey, who brought an half quartern sack to put the treasure in, with several gentlemen, myself and Scott, entered the cloysters. We played the hazel-rod round about the cloyster; and upon the west side the rods turned one over another, an argument that the treasure was there. The labourers digged at least six feet

deep, and then we met with a coffin, but, in regard it was not heavy, we did not open, which we afterwards much repented.

From the cloysters we went into the abbey-church, where upon a sudden, so fierce, so high, so blustering and loud a wind did rise, there being no wind when we began, that we verily believed the west-end of the church would have fallen upon us: our rods would not move at all; the candles and torches, all but one, were extinguished, or burned very dimly. John Scott, my partner, was amazed, looked pale, and knew not what to think, or do, until I gave directions and command to dismiss the Dæmons, which when done, all was again quiet, and each man late at night, about twelve o'clock, returned unto his lodging. I could never since be induced to join with any in such like actions. many people being present at the operation; for there was The true miscarriage of the business was by reason of so above thirty, some laughing, others deriding us; so that if we had not dismissed the Dæmons, I believe most part of the abbey-church had been blown down. Secrecy and intelligent operators, with a strong confidence and knowledge of what they are doing, are best for this work.*

Butler, in his Hudibras, made Lilly the prototype of his Sydrophel, and appears to allude to this incident in the couplet

And with his magic rod could sound,
Where hidden treasure could be found.

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VABALATHUS UCRIMDR. MR. BROWN's explanation of the word Ucrimdr I believe to be correct; but it is not now brought forward for the first time, as he would seem to think. When the same question was asked, Notes and Queries, vol. iv. p. 255, I answered it by reviving, in the same volume, at p. 427, the explanation given for the first time, so far as I know, by the Rev. George North,* who stated, that from the Arabic word karama, honoravit, was derived a word ukrim, or ukrima, honoratus. I afterwards found that the word UKR was the correct one, as Mr. Brown has said; I, however, did not attempt to explain MDR, and in this Mr. Brown is probably correct. I am rather doubtful as to whether, in the time of Aurelian, names were given from personal qualities or dispositions, whatever may have beenethe case in early

"Kedhah, the liar," on account of the wonderful tales he told of himself.

The termination us is not originally Roman, but Sanscrit. In putting tus as the orthography for

I have been negligent, it ought to be written thus, according to the orthography of Castell, who very justly makes equivalent to the Hebrew th. But, suppose us to be a Latin termination, and that Vabalat is a noun from the verb Vabal; ought not UCRIMDR to have been written UCRIMDRUS, seeing that Vabalathus? I have translated a number of the Muit is a compound noun, and put in opposition with katteb inscriptions, and find but two or three names of persons, none of them ending in tus or thus. The names I have found are Raft, Jallad, Nath (Nathan), and Hafi. I do not find that I am wrong in Vabalathus. Odenathus was never supposed to be the father of Vabalathus.

As regards cpia¤, I think we shall find the Greek Evpia and Latin Syrius to be derived from the Arabic suryan, Syrian; sari, a prince;

سريان | و

times; and I also think it is quit unnecessary, in
analysing the name of Vaballathus, to take into account
what is evidently the Roman termination. Besides this,
to correspond to the THUS ending the names of Vaballa-
thus and his supposed father Odenathus, we should have,
not, but b. The native names, it is most pro-
bable, were Ouaballath, Oudenath-or rather, perhaps,
Ouaballatho, Oudenatho, as the old Arabic names, such
as are found in the Sinaitic inscriptions, all end in
u, 9,
with which the nunciation of the nominative
appears to be connected.

For some other particulars as to the etymology of these names, I may be permitted to refer to the extracts from M. de Longperier, inserted in Notes and Queries, vol. v. p. 149.

sar, the head or chief. Assyria, the chief kingdom in the world, i. e. in the time of Ashur (see Genesis x. 11.), or, as it is inscribed on the Nimroud bricks, Aythr. T. R. BROWN.

Southwick Vicarage, June 10.

MUSCOVITE PASSPORT TO EVERLASTING Life. BEFORE burial the Muscovites kiss the corpse, or coffin, and the priest places between the fingers of the deceased There is another point about the coins of Vaballathus a piece of paper, as a testimonial or pass for his introto be cleared up, the word, or words, cpwIAC some-duction into the other world. This passport, signed by times cpiac. I have sometimes conjectured cp to be the Patriarch, is sold by the priest. The form thusan abbreviation of CWTHP, preserver; but I doubt this, and cannot explain the rest.

I have written Vaballathus, rather than Vabalathus, in accordance with the Alexandrian coins, but it is of no importance which form is employed. Clifton.

W. H. SCOTT.

THE word UCRIMDR I do not remember to have seen in print until last April, in Current Notes; I am, however, happy to find my interpretation is satisfactory to an Oriental scholar.

Mr. Scott's criticisms on VABALATHUS induce the following remarks:- In the eastern tales, or romances, the greater number of which are doubtless of a date considerably posterior to the time of Zenobia, we find frequent mention made of names given to persons of mature age, and corresponding with their qualities and dispositions; as in the history of Abderaim (Mogul Tales), recited by Mouiad, whose father was called

Compiler of the Sale Catalogue of the Museum Meadianum, 1755. See the description of the denarius of Vabalathus, p. 97.

the

We whose names are hereunto subscribed patriarch or metropolitan, and —, the priest of the sents, that the bearer of these our letters hath always lived city of do make known and certify by these preamong us like a good Christian, professing the Greek religion; and though he hath committed some sins, yet he hath confessed the same, and received absolution, and taken the communion for the remission of his sins, hath honoured God and his saints, hath said his prayers, and fasted on the hours and days appointed by the church, and hath carried himself so well towards me, his confessor, that I have no reason to complain of him, nor to deny him the absolution of his sins. In witness whereof we have given him the present testimonial, to the end that, upon sight thereof, St. Peter may open to him the gate of everlasting bliss.

The coffin is then closed and deposited in the grave, the face eastward. They mourn forty days, and feast on the third, because then the face is disfigured; again on the seventh, because the body then begins to putrify; and thirdly, on the twentieth, because then the heart corrupts. Some relations erect huts, and cover the graves with mats, because in the morning and in the evening, for six weeks, the priest prays over the buried dead.

EOTENS OR GIANTS.-In that admirably humourous drama, Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, 1613, is a curious mention of the old gigantic race, alluded to in Current Notes, p. 41. It shows that their Teutonic name was at that period a familiar household word. The adventurous Rafe, in the first act of the play, is seen "like a grocer in 's shop, reading Palmerin of England," and lauding the true knights, who protect damsels and destroy giants; the citizen's wife chimes in with "they say the king of Portugall cannot sit at his meat, but the Gyants and the Ettins will come and snatch it from him."

F. W. FAIRHOLT.

MASQUERADE OF DIVINITY.

POPE Julius the Third, who held the Papal See from 1550 to 1555, one day being oppressed by the sultriness of the weather retired into a summer-house in his garden, and for coolness stripped himself of his clothing; at that juncture two Cardinals came to his villa, and ordering them to be admitted, he obliged them without further ceremony to divest themselves of their habiliments and appear in the same state of nudity with himself. Having done so, the Pontiff asked them what they imagined the people would say of them supposing they should walk through the public streets in their then condition, and take a few turns in the Camp of Florus? Why, no doubt," replied the Cardinals, "they would take us for knaves or fools, and stone us into the bargain." "Then," said Pope Julius, "it is our habits alone that preserve us from the character of knaves and fools; of what vast obligations are we under, my reverend brethren, to the masquerade of divinity!"

66

GREAT EFFECTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES. POPE INNOCENT X. had an implacable hatred of the

French, that he evinced on all occasions, and persecuted the family of his predecessor, Pope Urban VIII., with the most deadly ire. The immediate cause Amelot de la Houssaie thus explains :

While Cardinal Barberini, Pope Urban's nephew, was legate in France, he went to see the curious library and collections of the Sieur de Moustier, when Monsignor Pamphilio, who attended, slipped a small but rare volume into his pocket. As they were leaving, the legate, who had observed the transaction, closed the door, and desired De Moustier to examine whether he had lost any book; he immediately missed the stolen one. The Cardinal bid him search all his train; but Pamphilio resisting to be examined, they came to blows, but De Moustier becoming the victor, by the prelate's being encumbered in his long habit, beat him severely, and found the book in his possession.-Mémoires Historiques, vol. i. P. 362.

The Barberini, or, as now named, the Portland Vase, in the British Museum, was the property of Pope Urban. M. F.

MERRY JESTS.

From a Manuscript temp. King Charles the First. ON a time, a merry fellowe being brought before Sir Stephen Soame, in London, for a common drunkard, and standing between him and the constable, Sir Stephen sharply reproned him, tould him it was his dayly custome to bee drunk, and that hee was soe att the present. Noe! quoth the fellow, I am not nowe drunk, but I confess myselfe to bee betwixt hawke and busard.

A country man walkinge in Westminster yard, and seeing the lawyers come flockinge out of the hall, asked, what they were? Lawyers! answered one. Oh Lord! quoth the countryman, how can this citty endure soe many lawyers, for we have but one about us, and he troubles all our country.

Dr. Harvey of Cambridge beinge piouslie given, made an excellent way or causey, three or four miles long, joining to Cambridge, and often viewinge the workmen, a merry gentleman calls to him, Mr. Doctor! Mr. Doctor! this is not the way to heaven. Surely, Sir, I think soe, replied Dr. Harvey, for if it had, I feare, I should not have met you here.

A fellow condemned to have his ears cut off, and being brought to the pillory, the executioner looking for them, found none, and turning to the spectators, tould them hee was disappointed, for his ears were gone. Hee who was condemned, replyed, Sirra! I am not bound to find you ears.

A drunkard being threatened to be sent to prison, often repeated, his worship was a wise justice. On the next morning, being again called, and rebuked for his beinge drunk, insomuch that the night before, he had often tould him, hee was a wise justice. "Nay! then," answered he, "if I said so, I was drunke indeed."

One being afeared of going to sea, it was demanded,

why he was soe; aunswered, "because soe many men were drown'd." "Then," quoth the other, "are you not afeared of goeing to bed, considering the farre greater number die in their beds ?"

ORIGIN OF THE TURKISH SYMBOL, THE CRESCENT. THE Crescent was the symbol of the City of Byzantium, now Constantinople, and was adopted by the Turks. The device is of very early origin, as appears from coins, and is traditionally said to have taken its rise from an event thus related by a native of Byzantium:

Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, meeting with bold resistance while besieging Byzantium, directed his engineers during the darkness of the night to undermine the walls; fortunately for the besieged, a young moon suddenly appearing discovered the purpose of the besiegers, and the design failed. The Byzantines, in acknowledgment, erected a statue to Diana, and the Crescent became the symbol of their state.

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