Memoranda of Springhead and its Neighbourhood, during the Primeval period, with notes and additions by the author
A transcription of the authors own copy 'interleaved - for notes, additions, etc. etc. etc. etc.'. Donated to the Society by Dr Brian Philp.
A transcription of the authors own copy 'interleaved - for notes, additions, etc. etc. etc. etc.'. Donated to the Society by Dr Brian Philp.
Folio 1. [Front cover]
Folio 2. [Inside front cover]
[Bookplate, surrounding coat of arms with decorative elements:]
EXLIBRIS GILBERT
MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY
NIEDBALLA INC. B. B. H.
[Sticker:]
EXLIBRIS
BRIAN PHILP
OF
WEST WICKHAM, KENT
Folio 3. Extract from Journal of Science and Art
Nº 1895) JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND ART. 478
But they by manly industry and pains
Their station’s duty had enacted quite;
Though little were their knowledge and their gains
In worldly wisdom, here they glisten’d bright,
For they with willing hearts all that they knew
Had done to honour God, like servants good and true.
"And yet this city fair and beautiful
Was but a type of a more beauteous place;
And those sun-rays, wherewith these stones were full,
At best a figure of a Saviour’s grace
For ever resting on His chosen few,
Who followed Him on earth, and bore His cross
From day to day, with loyal hearts and true,
Counting earth’s hopes for His dear sake but loss;
Who e’en on earth as stars were made to shine,
And by their light declar’d their origin divine."
The ‘Musings of a Spirit,’ by George Marsland, are very just and true generally in sentiment, but somewhat heavy and unimaginative. It is only in the hands of a few master-spirits that moral reflections in verse convey pleasure as well as instruction. The following is a very favourable specimen of Mr. Marsland's musings:—
"Tho’ all things seem to move by natural law,
They are but shadows of the spiritual,
And he who can interpret their portent,
Attains the highest place to man assigned.
How few there are who can in truth allege
A single aim and purpose in their life;
That they an object set before them first,
And ever kept in view, regarding all
Inferior things as merely episodes,
The tributary streams to their design!
Such in all ages have been greatest men,
For they alone accomplish a great end.
A mind heroic, firm, and undismayed,
With discipline so greatly exercised,
That neither pain nor pleasure—fame—disgrace—
Will move the mind reliant’s firm resolve;
All circumstance—time—place—attend his march,
And bind his passions captive to the wheels;
To such a will all nature will bow down,
And own the conquering spirit of a man."
An Irish minstrel comes next, Mr. Elrington, whose lyre is tuned to the tones of Tom Moore's melodies, but there is little either of the firmness or the tenderness of touch with which that great lyricist charmed the world. Mr. Elrington tells his readers that his effusions are far more those of the heart than of the head, and that, not writing for fame...
...has bestowed little literary labour on his compositions. This confession is more honest than judicious. An author ought to use his head to correct and improve even those writings which are most directly the utterances of the heart, and it will be found that the poets whose works have the appearance of being the most artless and natural, have spent the most time and labour in finishing their poems. Most of Mr. Elrington's pieces have appeared in periodical literature, and a few of them are familiarly known from being set to the music of popular melodies; but as his poems are now collected in one volume, published "at the solicitation of friends" belonging to the 'Goldsmith Club,' we give what we consider an average specimen of the style and spirit of the poetry:
"The Broken Vase."
"Tho' the blossom of beauty, by man's cruel hand,
Was crushed when expanding to gladden the eye,
And dishonoured it sunk on the withering land,
Its spirit ascended to brighten the sky;
And thus, tho' the vase may a ruin be made,
Its odours ascend on the Zephyr's sweet breath,
Still floating above where its roses are laid,
Like lingering smiles on the features of death!
"Beautiful relic, thy flowers are all crushed,
Like the soul-breathing hopes of a fond lover's mind,
And the voice of the bee round thy blossoms is hushed,
For their sweets have been wafted away on the wind.
No more will the butterfly pillow its wing
On their bosoms when faint in the blaze of the day,
No more will the bird round them joyfully sing,
Or fan their warm leaves with the breath of his lay.
"The world is a vase that contains many flowers,
Alternately blooming and fading away,
Unrefreshed, unrevived, by the sun's genial showers,
When the buds of the meadow and garden look gay.
And the world, like the vase, will be broken beneath
The chariot of God when his thunders arise,
And our souls like the perfume of roses will breathe
More purely when borne from the earth to the skies."
The most ambitious, and perhaps most successful, of Mr. Elrington's works is his ‘Ode to Shakspeare,’ which was honoured by a special prize from the Dublin Oratorical and Literary Society. The allusions to many of the poet’s scenes and characters are happily introduced. The ode closes with these lines:
“Hail! bright, imperishable, glorious name,
Wreathed with fresh laurels each succeeding year;
Synonymous with nature, life, and fame,
Which this and distant ages must revere;
The tongue of nature; the interpreter
Of all her passions, principles, and ways,
Which, mute, still speaks, like truth that cannot err,
The organ of all manners, times, and days;
The intellectual, deathless evergreen;
The immortality of life and time;
Voiceless, yet heard, invisible, yet seen,
Impassioned, thrilling, eloquent, sublime,
The rainbow of the universal mind,
Beheld, and praised by each admiring eye;
Obscured, it may be, but again we find
That sacred arch expanding o’er the sky,
With brighter, deeper hues, to testify
That till the world shall fail it cannot die.”
The author of ‘Cwm Dhu’ has not done wisely in making his first public appearance with a title to his work which must be caviare to the multitude. The scanning of the first word may be guessed from its use in the first stanza of canto i., which, with another, we quote to show the metre of the poem. It is a dolefully tragic tale, though it opens with almost burlesque simplicity:
“Whoe’er through Tanat’s vale has strayed,
Has marked, perchance, the sombre hue
Of Nature’s garb in Cwm Dhu;
Or tempted by its grateful shade,
Has sought at noon some darker glade
Within that deep and lonely dell,
Whereon the sun’s bright beams ne’er fell,
Or straggling fitfully in mazes played.
“There lived, nor yet remote the day,
The yeoman Jones; his honest name,
Though dear to Wales, unknown to fame,
Nor suited to the poet’s lay;
Yet would the Muse her tribute pay
To sterling worth wherever found,
Nor leave a gentle spirit bound,
To dumb forgetfulness permitted prey.”
There is much quiet humour throughout the whole volume, and the light playful pieces please us more than the formal poems of larger pretensions.
There is much quiet humour throughout the whole volume, and the light playful pieces please us more than the formal poems of larger pretensions.
The fables, such as that of ‘The Church and the Windmill,’ and the domestic and pastoral eclogues, are very ably written. Of the sonnets we give one specimen:
“To David Wilkie.”
"How truly to the life dost thou portray,
Thou matchless limner, each domestic scene!
Whether by cleikum’s ruddy fire at e’en
The Village Politicians close the day;
Or the Blind Fiddler scrape his drowsy lay;
Or Chelsea Pensioners with glee peruse
Of hard-fought Waterloo the stirring news;
Or honest farmers meet, their Rent to pay;
Or frolickers at Blindman’s Buff to play;
Or anxious Legatees the will to read;
Or his Cut Finger whittling urchin rue;
Or hind his Rabbit on the wall display;
To thee will genuine taste award the meed
Of cultivated art to nature true.”
The writer need not be ashamed to publish his name with any future poems. Let him choose good subjects, and take more pains in finishing his pieces, omitting whatever to himself appears doubtful or weak, and his writings will be worthy of attention.
The Australian Pastorals are happily conceived; and as to the language used by the speakers, it is explained by the author that men of good birth and education are often found as shepherds in the bush and on the plains of Australia. Tityrus and Corydon at the antipodes hold dialogue in strains like these:
“Tityrus. ‘Twas poverty that drove me from my home,
My frugal state unable to maintain:
No willing exile, but compelled to roam,
And seek my fortune o’er the restless main.
Free trade and taxes, Corydon, make England poor;
To these my weary banishment I owe;
These brought the ravening wolf within my door,
And from my mortgaged homestead bade me go.”
Then follow sweet reminiscences of home and of old England, to which Corydon replies by praising the land of their adoption, and thus encourages his companion:
“Corydon. Another world demands another mind;
A dauntless spirit suits an exile’s state;
Nor should the olden ties of country bind
The banished victim of relentless fate.
Shake off that longing for thy native soil,
Her children’s love unworthy to retain;
Where purse-proud wealth but mocks at patient toil,
And nought is fostered save commercial gain:
More dear to me the freedom of the bush,
Its calm repose, and peaceful solitude,
Than fairer lands, where honesty must blush
For woman’s broken faith, and man’s ingratitude.”
The poem entitled ‘A Broken Echo’ is by an admirer and imitator of the ‘Childe Harold’ of Byron. In description the author does not so much excel as in his reflective strains, which are superior, and his verse rich and smooth, as may be seen in the following stanzas on some Druidical remains:
“I love beneath the pale moonlight to climb
To where those monumental records stand,
Piled by the skill of dark primeval time,
When superstition scowled along the land,
And all religion was a deed of crime;
While human blood ran red ’neath human hand,
To gods before whose shrine the Briton rude
Bent low his head—in this wild solitude!
“The heavens are clear, and o’er the circle thrown
The mellowing radiance; o’er the gentle mound,
In ghostly form, each gray mysterious stone
Casts its weird shadow on the sacred ground;
The spot long reverenced, now is still and lone,
And by the wasted circle’s magic round
The night winds mock and whistle idly by,
Its aspect of most desert majesty.
“Ye cold gray brethren,—seated ’mid the waste
Where ye have sat in silence whilst the seal
Of pregnant ages, on your aspect traced,
Hath pressed and left you grandly based,
Immutable to all this world can feel
Of change, of bliss, of woe,—strong types are ye,
Of contemplation wrapt in Deity!
“The awful pomp, the muttered Runic chant,
The gory rite to Woden or to Thor,
The human victims’ agonizing pant,
The words of Hell that shuddering breezes bore,
Are whispered in tradition’s dubious grant;
While ye who saw these pagan deeds of yore
Gaze calmly on, as obdurate land from hence,
With the intense and mute eloquence.”
We have still several volumes of recent poetry to notice, and will give audience shortly to another company of lyrists.
suddenly a new kind of writing—a popular style introduced into physical science. One of the most successful imitators of Humboldt's style was Professor Schleiden; and much as his colleagues have reason to complain of the coarse and unrefined manner in which he has criticized their labours and ridiculed their opinions, he deserves the thanks of all botanists for the great ability and zeal he has shown in advocating their cause. ‘The Plant: a Biography,’ a work which has been translated into several languages, and of which a second edition has just appeared in this country, may be looked upon as an able protest against the subordinate rank which has unhappily too generally, and perhaps not quite undeservedly, been assigned to botany.
"My chief aim," says Professor Schleiden, "was, in fact, the satisfaction of what may be called a class-vanity. A large proportion of the uninitiated, even among the educated classes, are still in the habit of regarding the botanist as a dealer in barbarous Latin names, a man who plucks flowers, names them, dries and wraps them up in paper, and whose whole wisdom is expended in the determination and classification of these ingeniously collected hay. This portrait of the botanist was, alas! once true, but it pains me to observe, that now, when it bears a resemblance so few, it is still held fast by very many persons; and I have sought, therefore, in the present discourse, to bring within the sphere of general comprehension the more important problems of the real science of botany, to point out how closely it is connected with almost all the most abstruse branches of philosophy and natural science, and to show how, in most every instance, the study of plants tends, as well in botany as in every other branch of human activity, to suggest the most earnest and important questions, and to carry mankind forward beyond the possession of sense to the anticipations of the spirit. If, through my efforts, the reader of these sketches shall hereafter hold a worthier opinion of botany, and the physiologist shall form a more accurate conception of the compass and objects of our science, I shall be content."
Both the works placed at the head of this notice originated in the lecture-room, and consist of a series of popular addresses. Schleiden's book has already been noticed by us on its first appearance in its English dress, and we cannot content ourselves with remarking that this second edition has been translated from the third German one, and has been augmented by several illustrations and two additional lectures—one on ‘The Water and its Movements,’ and one on ‘The Sea and its Inhabitants.’ As a specimen of the former we select the following passage:
"We speak of the ocean as a surface, and to the first passing glance it appears like a motionless, calm expanse. But an attentive ear detects the soft murmur of the waves rolling in to the foot of the cliffs, and an observant eye at length discovers that the whole infinite surface rises and sinks as if with a gentle respiration. The sailors call this a ‘ground swell.’
“It is but apparent calm that here deceives us; it is no lifeless, motionless mass, but ever moving, restlessly changing, living water, which, like oceans of air, winds its embracing arms around the solid land. It is true the degree of the movement and its phenomena varies in storm and calm, but no peace is granted to the fluid, insatiable element. Not to speak of the weight with which the moving atmosphere presses on the surface of the ocean and disturbs its equilibrium, there are three regular movements of the water, produced by the invisible and imperceptible, but, for all that, irresistible power of the sun and moon, going on almost silently in their appointed course, and yet infinitely grander and more mighty than the most fearful tumult of the stirred elements in the West Indian tornado or in the Chinese typhoon."
"The sun which sparkles so pleasantly on the crystal surface is constantly driving the evaporating water upwards by its heat; this ascends as an invisible gas, to fall to earth again as rain and snow. The heaviest rain-drops scarcely make a visible impression on the softest ground where they fall. The falling water exerts a force scarcely worth naming in the mere act of falling. But it then collects into springs, brooks, and streams; and as it again glides gradually down the inclined plains of the land into its mother’s bosom, it arches vessels, drives mills, and performs other services in the artificial contrivances of man. The total amount of flowing water in Europe has a power equal to 300,000,000 horses, according to the ordinary mode of calculating for steam engines. This does indeed seem a great force, but we readily reconcile the idea to our minds if we think of the bubbling of springs, the rustling of brooks, the roar of large rivers, and the thunder of falls like those of the Rhine or the Trollhätta. The human mind only too easily falls into the error of regarding that as mighty which makes a powerful impression upon the senses, and readily yields itself to the mistake of imagining that to be unimportant which works noiselessly, unobserved and unceasingly—but unceasingly. Thus it is here also. The ocean, assumed to have an average depth of 1000 feet, would contain some twenty-nine millions of cubic miles of water, and if it were emptied, it would require all the streams of the earth to pour their waters in for 40,000 years before the empty basin was filled up again. The whole force of the flowing waters of the earth is not so much as that of the force which raises its water to the clouds in the form of vapour. The heat used in this to evaporate this water amounts to a full third part of all the heat which is imparted by the sun to our earth. This amount of heat, during only one year, would suffice to melt a crust of ice thirty-two feet thick enveloping the whole earth, while all the fuel consumed in Europe in one year would not be capable of freeing the planet from a crust of ice one-eighth of an inch thick. According to the technical reckoning, that amount of heat which annually raises the sea-water in the form of vapour corresponds to the enormous force of 1000 million horses. Consequently, over one-third of this horse-power acts upon every acre of land, while in the most active of the manufacturing counties of England, Lancashire, the average power employed is only one-fifth of a horse-power per acre, or 1/150th part of this force."
The work of Schouw, ‘Earth, Plants, and Man,’ was originally written in Danish, but translated into German under the auspices of the author; and it is from that version that the present translation has been made. It opens with a history of plants, from the earliest appearance of vegetation upon the surface of our planet until the present time,—certainly the best part of the book; which is followed by different unconnected papers—‘The Mistletoe,’ ‘The Tea and Coffee Shrubs,’ ‘The Cotton Plant,’ &c.,—all written in a clean and lucid style.
The creation has always been a favourite theme as well as a fruitful source of controversy; and it is really refreshing to find an author like Schouw discussing it without making angry remarks or dealing out blows to those who may differ from him in opinion, or have arrived at conclusions opposed to his. He treats the origin of the existing vegetation with a remarkable degree of skill, and is inclined to believe that every species of plant had several progenitors; that no new species originate at present; that the appearance of the existing vegetation of the earth took place by degrees; and that the Alpine Flora is, in comparison with the rest of the vegetable kingdom, of inferior age, or created last.
We will quote a passage to show how the author treats these subjects. He says—
"A third fundamental question, which presses itself upon us, is, whether the appearance of the existing vegetation of the earth took place at once, or by degrees? It appears to me that much speaks in favour of the latter alternative. The surface of the earth only became gradually fitted, through various elevations, for the growth of plants upon it, and the characters of the soil and climate were different in different quarters of the globe; therefore there is the greatest probability in the assumption that such vegetation originally made its appearance in that, or in those places where the conditions were most favourable. Moreover, plants exist in conditions of whose existence depend upon other plants, and the appearance of the latter must, therefore, have preceded those of the former. Parasitical plants, as well the higher as the lower, could not exist before those plants upon which they grew were in existence. Plants flourishing in the shade—for example, the woods and the forest plants of the present time—could not have made their appearance before trees existed; nor bog-plants before the mosses and conifers which form peat-bogs. The appearance of manure plants was equally impossible, so long as no manure existed. The growth of vegetation upon naked cliffs commenced with lichens and mosses, which threw out a little mould and accumulated the humus in which the seeds of other plants could germinate, and plants of greater dimensions, bushes and trees, gradually made their appearance. It is therefore altogether improbable that in the first appearance of vegetation, the majority of plants would have presented themselves before the conditions in which they live had come into existence. I must, consequently, assume a gradual creation as in the highest degree probable."
This conclusion also applies to the Animal Kingdom, from which it besides receives an additional proof. Every one knows that there are a great many parasitical animals, but no one will venture to assert that they could have existed before those animals upon which they now live and from which they were created; nor can anyone for a moment believe that those creatures which grow upon animals, as, for instance, the Sphæria Robertsi, upon the caterpillar of a New Zealand moth, could live while they were to be attached have ceased to exist. Schouw also gives a pleasing account of a plant to which many of our readers of both sexes may occasionally have reason to be grateful,—we mean the Mistletoe, which plays a prominent part in northern mythology, particularly in the Balder Myths, and which from time immemorial seems to have been looked upon with peculiar veneration:
"It is not a matter of surprise," says the author, "that a plant of such peculiar aspect, and which occurs in so remarkable position, as the mistletoe, should have awakened the attention of various races, and exerted influence over their religious ideas. It played an especially important part among the Gauls. The oak was sacred with them, their priests abode in oak forests. Oak boughs and oak-leaves were used in every religious ceremony, and their sacrifices were made beneath an oak-tree; but the mistletoe, when it grew upon the tree, was peculiarly sacred, and regarded as a divine gift. It was gathered, with great ceremony, on the sixth day after the first new moon of the year; two white oxen, which were then for the first time placed in yoke, were brought beneath the tree, the sacrificing priest, the Druid, clothed in white garments, ascended it, and cut off the mistletoe with a golden sickle; it was caught in a white cloth held beneath, and then distributed among the bystanders. The oxen were sacrificed with prayers for the happy effects of the mistletoe. A beverage was prepared from this, and used as a remedy for all poisons and diseases, and which was supposed to favour fertility. A remnant of this custom exists still in France, for the peasant boys use the expression, 'Au gui l’an neuf!' as a New..."
...use the expression, 'Au gui l’an neuf,' as a New Year’s greeting. It is also a custom in England to hang the mistletoe to the ceiling on Christmas Eve, the men lead the women under it, and wish them a happy new year. Perhaps the mistletoe was taken as a symbol of the new year, on account of its leaves giving the bare tree the appearance of having regained its foliage."
...minds us of the consul in the days of Catiline, and denounced him with a violence which shows that he took small thought of his own safety. Approaching to this final crisis his intellectual activity was never greater than in the last two years of his life, and his chief consolation was the study of philosophy, and devotion to what we may call the belles lettres. It was then he wrote De Natura Deorum, De Divinatione, De Gloria, De Fato, De Amicitia, and De Senectute, and occupied himself in giving the last touches to a history of his own times which is now entirely lost. It has been computed that we possess little more than a tenth part of what he wrote; and this Mr. Forsyth thinks is certainly true if we include his lost speeches, most of which were carefully prepared and written out beforehand. We cannot, he says, but admire the industry and genius which enabled him, when his mind was depressed by sorrow, and he saw the institutions of his country crumbling to ruin, and her liberties the prize of the most successful adventurer, to distract his thoughts from the chaos of politics, and employ them on such lofty themes. Yet, in a public sense, at no period of his career was he so truly great as in the closing scenes of his life. He had been overawed by the genius of Cæsar, and had been attached to Pompey by personal regard and an exaggerated feeling of gratitude, but without faith in him as a statesman or a general, and so he had hesitated and oscillated in a pitiable manner throughout the civil war; but now his course was clear and his duty manifest. And the Romans, on their side, exhibited an enthusiastic attachment towards him, and a consciousness of his sincere desire to save the State, which invested him with a force and dignity to which he never attained so fully as when his struggle was about to close.
Mr. Forsyth says of his second Philippic, which was published, though never spoken, that as a specimen of invective it is unsurpassed. He might say unrivalled, if he did not recollect the speech of Demosthenes against Midias, and that it is also of...
...of these men, subject to regular discipline, under a competent commander. By admitting no one to the Corps who did not bring a good character; by enforcing on all who joined the strict observance of such regulations as would ensure satisfactory service to the public; and by rigidly dismissing every man who, either from moral or other faults, proved himself unfit to be trusted, he hoped to make the fact of a man belonging to the Corps of Commissionaires a guarantee that he could be safely employed in the work we have indicated, and that thus all the good men among the pensioners of our two services would find honest and sufficient employment, while the public would be supplied with a valuable addition to the labour-market.
How completely these anticipations have been justified appears by the statement we publish this morning. The Corps started rather more than five years ago with seven men. It now numbers 250. The Commissionaires have become one of the regular institutions of London, and, indeed, of the United Kingdom, for they have branch divisions in Dublin, Edinburgh, and other great cities. Their uniform is almost as familiar to us as that of the ubiquitous but too invisible policeman. A Commissionaire is almost an invariable adjunct to our greatest houses of business. The clubs, the great hotels, the principal tradesmen have adopted them; they were of invaluable service in the Exhibition of 1862; they are becoming more and more employed every day in public buildings like the Agricultural Hall, in the capacity of ticket-takers and money-receivers; they are ready in nearly all our great thoroughfares to perform for the public in general, at a very moderate remuneration, all the work of messengers and light porters. In short, they have dropped at once into a vacant place in the economy of city life; they have supplied a great and growing necessity, and in consequence they have been eagerly sought for, and the demand is every day increasing. The result to the men themselves has been as satisfactory as to the public. These 250 men are all earning on an average not less than 3s. a day, and many of them earn a good deal more.
They earn this by a service far less laborious than the unskilled work which is generally required in London to earn that sum, and they are frequently in positions comparatively pleasant. For these advantages they have only to submit to a very moderate direct and indirect taxation for supporting the necessary expenses of the organization of the Corps, and to conform to a set of regulations which, though stringent, imply no hardship, for they are in fact but the tools with which the men work. It is the knowledge that they are subject to these regulations which induces the public to trust them. They have many other direct advantages. The single men are provided with good barracks and good food, of course at their own expense. It is one of the regulations of the service that they shall lay by money regularly in the savings-bank, and a sick fund has been established, to which all contribute, upon principles which are subject to the approbation and continual revision of the Registrar of Friendly Societies and professional accountants. It would, in short, be hard to find a better instance of the way in which employer and employed, master and servant, the public and those who supply it, always find their interests identical and co-extensive.
But there is one feature of anxiety in this otherwise satisfactory picture. It will have been understood at once that the whole efficiency of the organization, the possibility of these men being qualified for the service they undertake, depends upon the maintenance of the discipline of the Corps; and that alone, gives them the character which obtains the confidence of the public. Now, the maintenance of this discipline entirely depends upon their having a competent commanding officer at their head. Without some one to enforce the regulations and look after the general administration of the affairs of the Corps, the organization would...
Lanercost
Nr. Newcastle upon Tyne
Cumberland
Oct. 20th 1857
Sir,
As I find from the Maidstone Journal that you are soliciting contributions with a view of publishing a new edition of Hasted’s "History of Kent," perhaps it may be acceptable to examine the enclosed plan of the Roman remains found in the grounds at Springhead when [?] belonging to alterations Sir R. Price. They were in the possession of the Rev. Dr. Barkleigh Rector of Southfleet and were I think submitted by him to the British Museum, the drawings were given to me by my late highly respected father-in-law Thos. Harman Esq of [?] Hall who was also present at the discovery of this Roman cemetery. There was a Roman town near at Spring Head called Vogniensis, where a great variety of remains were dug up by the late Mr. Hinton, they consisted of Sepia, Rings, Brooches, Fibulae, Mill stones, &c &c. This town must have been of considerable extent - The streets, &c, eight angles, are now discernible in my dog walking when the corn is coming into ear. Were more extensive search made at Spring Head, I have no doubt but that further interesting archaeological discoveries might be made such as Bronze, Batter, &c. &c. The Fleet a branch of the river Dearne, was at one period navigable up to the site of this Roman Town as I am informed that an anchor and other remains have been found in the vicinity and the remains is well known in the river below. Spring Head is at the end of a lane leading up the London &c. &c. The gardens are elegantly laid out, and there is a plantation of Alder trees (originally made by Mr. Bradbury) that now is in the occupation of the Duke of Manchester, who made a collection of Roman remains. The George Shuttleworths being Ratcliffe will perhaps give you any information respecting the enclosed drawings, and perhaps it would be worth your while to make enquiries of Mr. Shuttleworth at Spring Head respecting what he and the late Mr. Land found in digging or trenching his Garden. When you have taken copies of this enclosed, I shall feel obliged by your returning them to me. The spring that rises in the garden part of the Garden and water crop at Spring Head is the property of Mr. Bradley of Woodhouse Hall and myself in right of our respective houses and the heiresses of the late Mr. Harlam. That part of the ancient site of the Roman Town is still to be fields where the Roman Town is still to be traced, belongs to Mr. Collyer of Bolton, in whose occupation the Garden &c. &c. at Spathfield. I wonder the Archaeological Society has not started to make searches upon the spot with a view of elucidating the history of the Roman during their prolonged stay in Britain. I have no doubt that the proprietors of the soil would render them any assistance and facility for so doing. I recollect a Roman Millstone in Mr. Ratcliffe's Garden at Spathfield, which was taken from near Spring Head - from the side of the Roman Road which runs in a direct line from Rochester to London it was marked X and it is exactly ten miles from Rochester. The Roman Road is now clearly traceable through Spring Head or Vagniacis. I am, Sir Yours Obedient Servant Walter D. Sykes Dunkin Esq Dartford
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[Engraving and signature]
MEMORANDA
OF
SPRINGHEAD
AND
ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD,
During the Primeval Period.
author's own copy - interleaved - for notes, additions,
etc etc etc etc
ONE HUNDRED COPIES
PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION.
1848.
Folio 18. Blank page
Advertisement.
WHEN this tract was commenced printing eighteen months since, it was intended to have made a thick volume, in fact, to be "A His- tory of Kent in the Primeval Period," but circumstan- ces, over which the author had no control, compelled him to vary his plans no less than three times—during which interval, the great discoveries made in various parts of the county, also induced him to change his opinion on one of the theories mooted. However, the author does not despair of being ena- bled to present the public in a few years, with a work upon Springhead and its neighbourhood, agreeably to his original design, for which he has accumulated vast materials. He likewise lives in hope, that it will be his fortune to describe in it, the discoveries which he antici- pates will be made at the still-deferred thorough ex- ploration, which is to take place at some yet un-na- med period, of the massive and extensive remains in Barque lands; and also minutely detail the contents of the adjacent tumuli in Stone-Park and Swanscombe woods. Tasks long since promised to be undertaken, by the lord of the properties, and both, yet to be ac- complished! [figures]
ROMAN ANTIQVITIES discovered at SPRINGHEAD, KENT.
Folio 21. Blank page
Sir,—I never was more surprised in my life than in read- ing in The League the statement that "Kent got its name from Canute the Dane," in the first letter of "One who has whistled at the Plough." Really, Sir, I conceived that every tyro in this country's etymology was aware that Kent got its title when the Romans, the most deeply learned in prosing people that ever lived, planted their eagles upon its soil. Kent rejoiced in the name of Cantium. I am writing this letter on board one of the Gravesend steamers. I have "Cæsar at hand—for reference." I believe his words are—"The inhabitants of Cantium, or of the 'Cantii,' are the most civilized of the inhabitants of the interior." I am corroborated in this by the learned authors. As the Augustan age, alludes to the Cantii; so also Tacitus, in his "Life of Agricola," written after the decline of Domitian. This, Sir, as you well know, I assert that the conqueror Cæsar marched into the country. Mr. Danish maintains in the "Chronicles of Kent," that Cæsar had an interview with the sons of Thermas; and in the Antiquities of Kent reasoning from the circumstance that "Tamesis" literally translated into English signifies "a bay formed by the Thames." Here, Mr. Barry asserts that Cæsar's autobiography is foolishly written; and he does not know whether the great Roman general was disgracefully beaten in all three of his Kentish invasions. Geoffrey of Monmouth, the father of our British Chronicle writers, asserts that, when the three inva- sions in unhistoric statement the modern antiquaries I have named coincide. Sir, William Betham, the Ulster King at-Arms, and in his "Gael and Cymbri," with Cæsar in conjunction asserting two expeditions; but as his was published in reply to Messrs. Barry and Dunkin's labours. As, Sir, I am treating of Kent, it may be as well to men- tion the discovery of the body of Cæsar's column in the barn upon the green lanes about Gravesend and Dartford; but that the years has done more to send the question at rest these pages in the age of mistake we live. I have upon reading the religious learning in this country's antiquities, that it is clear that Cæsar never in any of his expeditions (the two or three) went out of Kent. For evident chances Medway was the river instead of his "Tamesis." I remain, &c. John Duncombe Oct. 2, 1846 One of the late contributors to the West Kent Anti-Corn Law Magazine.
When men establish themselves, either as the first inhabitants of a district or by expelling its former occupants, they naturally settle in the first instance along the watercourses. They occupy both banks of streams, not only as affording the most fertile available land, but also the easiest mode of communication. Those whom they esteem strangers are not their neighbours, to whom they can call across the valley water, but the dwellers in the next valley, separated by tracts of forest or barren hill.
Ἔπει μάλᾰ πολλά μεταξύ ὀυρέα γε σκιόεντα.
The watersheds, therefore, not the rivers, will be found almost uniformly to constitute the demarcations of our successive ethnographical maps.
An Enquiry, &c. &c.
CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION.
"Temples! Baths! or Halls!Few subjects present greater attractions to ar- chæologists than enquiries into the histories of the earliest inhabitants of Britain. Amongst the sites first selected by the aborigines for settlements, were the eastern and western fruitful heights over- looking the fertile vale watered by the river Ebbs- fleet. On these elevated spots, towns were formed by two distinct tribes, who, thenceforward, actively par- ticipated in the different revolutions, which have oc- curred in the island; since, in times long antecedent to our era, its shores were first trodden by human foot. But unfortunately, of these struggles not even a traditionary legend remains.
Pronounce who can; for all that learning reap'd
From her research, hath been, but these are walls.
There is the moral of all human tales;
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past.
First Freedom, and then Glory—when that fails
Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarism at last.
And history, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page—'tis better written here." CHILDE HAROLD.
10
These obscure periods, which some British histo- rians have briefly dismissed, "as utterly unworthy no- tice;" recent investigations and laborious researches have proved to be replete with important and curious memorials. Supposing even that these vestiges do not furnish sufficient data, wherefrom to compile de- tailed and lucid annals—yet it must be admitted, that they are nevertheless, of satisfactory significance to claim the careful consideration of those who have a due sympathy for their fellow creatures. Comparatively a short period after the advent of our blessed Saviour, there was a Roman town in the valley, of considerable magnitude—far advanced in all the ele- gancies and refinements of social life. A fact, amply attested by the sculptures, ornamented pottery, vases, Samian ware,* querns,* jewellery, domestic utensils, sacrificial debris, sepulchral deposits, &c., which have been exposed, since cultivation has again converted the site to the use of man. These relics combine to1 The earliest settlers used stone mullers and grinding troughs of a similar material for pounding their grain. For an engraving of some of the querns found at Springhead, vide fig. 16, plate iii,— kindly etched by Horace Burkett, esq.
2 The superior kind of pottery, of a bright red colour, usually termed "Samian," has been supposed, with reason, to be of that kind so named by the younger Pliny, who mentions its being made at various continental towns, and exported to all parts of the empire; and its identity seems confirmed, says Charles Roach Smith, esq., from being met with in abundance in all places occupied by the Romans. This pottery is not less remarkable for its fine texture and rich coraline hue, than for the great diversity of its ornaments. Fabroni, in his history of the antient Aretium vases, has lately sought to prove, that this was the kind of ware fabricated at
These remnants of former life, silent heretofore, become now the interpreters to man of events antecedent to his own time on the earth. The progress of the enquiry—aided continually by larger scope of increased methods of observation—has furnished us with in our own day a record, singularly authentic, of the great changes the country has undergone.
These are the exponents of a people whose genius, like their blood, is the produce of Celtic—the Celtic Celtico-Phoenician crossed by the Roman, of the Saxon wedded to the Norman.
"Well may the sad beholder ween from thence,Aretinum, and of which, mention is made by Virgil, Persius and Martial. Isidore of Seville, who wrote in the seventh century, speaks of the red ware as being the manufacture of Aretinum, and cites Sedulius, a poet who flourished before the Christian era, in confirmation of the statement. Vases of this description have been repeatedly found near Arezzo; and Franceso Rossi, who formed a collection of this kind of ware, and made careful researches respecting the manufacture, discovered in the neighbourhood of that town, the furnaces and implements of the potter's art. Numerous potter's marks are to be noticed upon the specimens found there; these marks differ in certain peculiarities from those which occur in specimens found in England, the style of these Aretine vases seems to be more delicate, and is probably the original which subsequently served as a model for the fictile manufacturers of the provinces. Mr. Artis discovered at Caistor, in Northampton- shire, a smother kiln and all the apparatus for potters' mysteries. The reader is referred for an account of Mr. Artis's labours, to his Durobrivae of Antoninus, and the Journal of the British Archaeolo- gical Association. For specimens of some of the Samian ware discovered at Springhead, vide figs, 7, 8, 10, 12, and 14, plate iii; and fig. 2, plate v. So completely was the destruction of the Roman town accomplished, that, until, towards the close of the last century, a vague tradition alone existed among the peasantry, that, "in this valley, once stood a large and fair city." The same medium, filled it with "pub- lic houses and churches,"* adding, moreover, "that the stream of the Ebbs was navigable for large ships, even to the church of Southfleet." Modern discoveries have proved, that in some respects, tradition did not err; since, of late years, the plough and the spade have ex- posed multitudes of coins in admirable preservation, once in common circulation, together with massive foundations of mansions, baths, public buildings, and antient temples
What works of wonder all devouring time
Has swallowed there, when monuments so brave
Bear record of their old magnificence."
"Erst resonant with instrument and song,Different, indeed, was the landscape that lay around, from the aspect which that part of the country now presents. In the valley to the north-east, a full view of which, the Watling-street commanded, (where now, the water-cress plantations* and the far-famed
And solemn dance of festive multitude."
3 In Mr. Kempe's account of the discoveries at Holwood hill, he says, "in that neighbourhood there was a tradition of there being a large town called Beaverstone or Plaxton, which vulgar report in talking much of the extent of its buildings frequently combining the grossest anachronisms, &c., says that it contained some sixteen public houses, not being willing to have the antient town unfur- nished with a matter of such indispensable comfort to the common- ality of modern days." Archæologia, xxii.
4 To the marshy soil may be attributed the fine condition in which the majority of the relies of the Roman period have been preserved.
Folio 29. Wolves in England
WOLVES IN ENGLAND.—Wolves, according to some histo- rians, were extirpated in England by the Saxon King Edgar. Rymer's Fœdera shows that they remained in the kingdom till the reign of King Edward I., more than three hundred years later. A.D. 1290, Edward I. issued a mandate to the sheriff of the counties of Worstershire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire, reciting that he had enjoined to Peter de Corbet to hunt and destroy wolves in the forests of those counties, with men, dogs, and snares, and enjoining said sheriffs to give him all possible assistance.
13
Springhead strawberry beds are to be found,) then lay a densely-populated city—for which, the local situation was admirably adapted; Nature having blessed it with fertility of soil and salubrity of climate. To an exterior vallum constructed for the purpose of pro- tecting the outer fosse of that celebrated via militaris, flowed up the Ebbs—on the western bank of which, was the noble navalium, fully described in subsequent pages—whilst the Roman fleet rode securely at anchor in the creek's sheltered harbour. Instead of the wide expanse of water which eighteen hundred years ago occupied the estuary—now, changed by the silent ope- rations of natural and indirect artificial causes can only be beheld a dwindled streamlet, solely preserved for the cultivation of esculent vegetables,"To what base uses may we come at last."During the lapse of years between the departure of the Romans and the Norman conquest, the ferocious Saxons wantonly destroyed the artificial barriers which had retained the tides in submission to the rule of man—then, the channel silted up—and by slow but certain processes, the desolate salt marshes became fine and fertile soil, easily yielding to the industrious agriculturist bounteous harvests. With the ambitious design of preserving from obli- vion the almost obliterated memorials of extinct nations, these pages have been penned;—and, after, a careful scrutiny of contiguous chronology and of the circumstantial evidence in existence, an attempt has been made to furnish an Account of the Towns and the Occupants of the Valley and its Neighbourhood in the olden time. 14 The execution of the endeavour will be judged by the reader. The facts adduced, will, however, de- monstrate, that more than twice* during the primeval period, did Britain attain comparatively, a high state of civilization; from which, she was suddenly hurled in- to more than midnight darkness by bloody invasions. The desire of examining the transactions and pro- ceedings of periods of time wrapped in an almost im- penetrable veil of obscurity, is one of the phases of the development of the human mind, which has alike cha- racterised the eras of civilization and of barbarism; and not merely an acquired taste confined to some particu- lar age or country. A calm and patient investigation in the rude legends and traditions of a predial peasantry, and a philosophi- cal examination of the fables of the “dark ages,” com- bined with a comparison of the pages of the inspired and classic authors, assisted by analogical hypotheses, will enable the plodding antiquary to winnow from the heap of absurdities, pure grains of historic information; and when record and tradition equally fail, he is often enabled by enquiries into the affinities and peculiari- ties of manners and languages, to enlighten the dark allusions, and unravel the mysterious difficulties of antient authorities. And after perusing the following memoranda relating to four races of men, who, great in their generation,
5 “The history of the monarchs of this primeval period, as given by Geoffrey of Monmouth, is absolutely unworthy of credit, and ought to be banished to the region of fiction and romance.”— McPherson, Crit. Diss.
ON THE TRANSMISSION OF OBJECTS OF ANTIQUITY TO OUR TIMES.
It may not be without interest to consider the means by which various antiquities have been preserved and have devolved to our times, and it is not unconnected with a correct knowledge of them. Indeed, in regard to the villas of the Romans, and some of their other structures, there are particulars which seem to require explanation, and, perhaps, have hitherto not fully received it. To supply this will be one of the principal objects of these remarks, which otherwise will be but brief; and it may be premised that they apply only to the primeval class.
OF BUILDINGS.
It is well known that in Greece and Italy, as well as other parts of the continent, and even in our own island, there are some few structures of the ancients, either still nearly entire, or only so partially in ruins as to exhibit considerable remains of what they were: it is not intended to speak of these under this head; but merely to treat of those remaining portions of villas and domestic structures in our own country, of which many specimens have come to light.
The Roman villas which have been examined in various parts of England have been found covered over with a depth of earth, varying from about four or five feet to two and three, above the higher parts of them now left; and when the superincumbent mass of earth has been removed, not only have hypocausts and tessellated pavements been often found in existence, but even frequently some small portions of the side walls, stuccoed and exhibiting the pattern of the painting and embellishments. These ruins are pronounced by antiquaries to have been buildings destroyed by the Romans themselves on leaving the island, or by the Saxons afterwards in their invasions. What we have now to do with is their having become subterraneous, and the why and the wherefore of that circumstance. In modern times the plough has gone over them, or flocks have fed over them, at a very different level of surface from...
ON THE TRANSMISSION OF OBJECTS
what formerly existed. Hypocausts, indeed, were sunken down low when they were first formed, but the buildings must have been otherwise so constructed as to have had their tessellated pavements above the level of the adjoining ground: now they are several feet below it. This might not beforehand have been expected, nor is it a thing which we should think likely would now occur.
In fact there was something peculiar in the state of things which produced the effects now alluded to. It is certain the same entire chain of circumstances would not again take place in the case of an edifice abandoned by its owners in a ruinous state at the present time.
That the buildings in question were destroyed by the Romans themselves, or Saxons, there is but little doubt; though we should rather say the latter. There are frequently traces of fire, which denote the devastations of war; since dwellings which suffer by that calamity in peaceable times are generally rebuilt. The reputed cause of their destruction may be therefore admitted, but it must be assigned that very altered circumstances in the population of the country, both as to numbers and habits, took place concurrently with the time of their destruction, to account for the state in which these remains are found.
Britain appears to have been very populous before the coming of the Romans. Caesar says that there was “an infinite multitude of people;” and some other facts and data can be collected to the same purpose. During the first part of the Roman sway there is no reason to suppose that the case was otherwise; but in the latter times of their residence here, the incursions of the Saxons, the continual levies for the Roman armies which were taken out of the country, as well as emigrations to the opposite coast of Brittany, must have caused a diminution. However, there is reason to believe, that after the Romans were withdrawn, there was a real devastation of the population in the Saxon wars. Those invaders are believed to have given but little quarter in battle, and to have had but slight compunction in slaughtering the inhabitants, or driving them away, in order that they might not dispute the possession of the country. The Britons appeared to have retired from time to time to the parts which continued to be possessed by their countrymen; till at last they were repelled to Wales,
and noble in their attributes, reared monuments in their respective eras6 only to be rased7; the impression on the reader’s mind can scarcely fail to be indelible,— that, here below
“All is Vanity.”
Dust thou art, and unto Dust shalt thou return.
6 The Aborigines. The Belge. The Romans. The Romano-British.
7 Bishop Jewell says, “cities fall, kingdoms come to nothing,—empires fade away as the smoke! Where is Numa, Minos, Lycurgus? Where are their books? What is become of their laws?”
CHAP. III.
ETYMOLOGY.
Names, says Mr. Frederick C. Lukis, however common, have some meaning; therefore they should be well considered: and the antiquary knows the value of examining further when these occur. He also observes, that on many occasions, within the range of his researches, he has had nothing but the name to stimulate or encourage him, and seldom has he been disappointed. Observ. on the Prim. Antiq. of the Channel Islands. Arch. Jl. i. 143.
In the second, third and fourth centuries a Roman city existed in the fertile vale of the Ebbs—the Watling street from the sea-coast to the interior of the island running through its centre;—and in proportion as this city progressed gradually to splendour and magnificence, two British towns on the eastern and western heights fell into irrecoverable decay. These towns8 are supposed to have been founded about
8 "The Romans found more than twenty towns among two nations only, upon the southern shore of the island." Whit. Manch., i. 3. apud Suetonius—Vespasian. The copy in the British Museum, of Whitaker's History of Manchester, has appended (we were going to write, is defaced by) Francis Douce's hypercritical notes,—notes some of them as remarkable for their illogical reasoning as for their impertinence. Gibbon whose learning and research are indisputable, repeatedly quotes with most favourable observations, "the particular historian of Manchester," whose work, he says "embraces under that obscure title, a subject almost as extensive as the general history of England." Decline and Fall, ch. 38. The two na-
[Figures]
...sixteen or seventeen centuries anterior to the Christian era; and at the arrival of the Romans, their inhabitants were celebrated for their learning, virtues, and the cultivation of the arts9 they possessed.
In both these settlements, at various periods, flint and metal celts, and arrow heads,10 have
9 Kings Mun. Antiq. i.—Archael. xxvi.—Borlase's Cornwall, 287. Whit. Manch. i.—Discord.
10 Vide Thorpe's Cust. Roff., pp. 100.
tons alluded to by Suetonius, were probably the Belgae and Damnonii. The incidental remarks of Julius Caesar, Diodorus Siculus, Pomponius Mela, Strabo and others, tend also to show the populousness of Britain and the amazing number of towns it contained.
Mr. Yates' theory was, that these instruments were incidental with the doloires of the ancients, and had been used in war as chisels, mounted on the ends of long staves, to destroy the walls of fortified places. Mr. Yates admitted also, that the celt was probably used for domestic purposes, and his views met with the general concurrence of the archaeological audience. The later speaker also referred to his researches in Scandinavia, which confirmed, in his opinion, the truth of Mr. Yates’ conjectures. In all these wars, it was used as an occasional domestic use.
The celt, although simple, seems to have been widely used among early Celtic tribes. But the small apex to which it bears a resemblance suggests it had a specific design beyond mere destruction.
James Yates, Esq., delivered a lecture on the instruments called celts, which are found in such abundance, those discovered in the earlier barrows being formed of stone, and the later specimens of bronze and iron. Mr. Yates's theory was, that these instruments were identical with the dolobræ of the ancients, and had been used in war as chisels, mounted on the ends of long staves, to destroy the walls of fortified places. Mr. Yates admitted also that the celt was probably used for domestic purposes, as a spud, or small spade in gardening, &c. The hole in the side of this implement, he considered, was used to suspend it from the belt of the soldier on his march, and also, by means of leathern thongs, to fasten it to the pole which formed the handle. He adduced, in support of his opinion, the fact that a large number of celts had been found near ancient encampments—that some of them had been found sticking in the ancient fortifications—and that in the Assyrian marbles found by Dr. Layard (two drawings from which were exhibited), soldiers were represented using a similar weapon in destroying the walls of a besieged city.
Mr. Jones and Mr. J. M. Kemble strongly combated the opinion of the lecturer, on the ground that the size of the celt unfitted it for such a purpose. The latter gentleman also referred to his researches in Scandinavia, which confirmed him in his opinion that although some use might be occasionally made of the celt in war, it was applied to a variety of domestic uses, as a chisel, a gardening tool, &c., being apparently almost the only implement in use among the early Celtic tribes. Used as a small axe, the celt must be a formidable weapon; but the small depth to which it could be affixed to a stick rendered it too weak for picking down stone walls or even mounds of earth.
Mr. Yates, in reply, undertook to show that the adze was a very different sort of implement, and bore a distinct name among the ancients.
In consequence of the length to which this discussion extended, the other papers appointed to be read this evening were postponed.
been picked up; but unfortunately they have been given by the finders, to individuals, who, it is feared, were hardly sufficient archaeologists to have appreciated the presents, and unhappily, they are now dispersed.
At the commencement of the present century, these aboriginal towns1 and the Roman city, were, alike, types of the old story,
“jam seges Troja fuit.”
cleaving wood. That the Britons cast celts, spear, and arrow-heads, was proved by the discovery in 1735, at Easterly Moor near York, of one hundred heads, with many lumps of metal and a quantity of ashes. The mould of a celt was also found by Sir R. C. Hoare, containing the instrument cast in it.2 The metal of which the British weapons and tools were made has been chemically analyzed in modern times, and the proportions appear to be, in a spear-head, one part of tin to six of copper; in a celt, one of tin and ten of copper; and in a knife, one of tin to seven and a half of copper.3 Spear-heads of bone and flint and metal have been found in the barrows on Salisbury Plain. Ex Epist. H. Hatcher, armis.
1 It has been suggested to us, one of these towns might have been that alluded to by Nennius in his Historia Brittonum XXIII—cair collon. If so, it must have been the one upon the eastern heights.
2 In 1845, Barque-fields and Sole-field, were cultivated with wheat,—whilst, as if to mock the skill of the agriculturists of the nineteenth century, in Mr. Silvester’s garden were then growing sundry ears of far finer wheat,—the produce of grains found in a vase hermetically sealed with asphaltum, deposited by the side of a sarcophagus in a tomb at Thebes. The Egyptian wheat and the mummy are considered to have been simultaneously entombed during the reign of one of the seventeen kings, who comprised the eighteenth dynasty of the rulers of Egypt; or to speak clearer to our readers, between the years 1822 B.C., when the Pharaonic
The curious weapons of flint celts which further examined the knowledge of flint-based tools further into Stephani’s Man. Antikuit.
EXTRAORDINARY VEGETABLE ANTIQUITY.—In “un-
rolling an Egyptian mummy,” in the Thebais, in 1833,
wheat was ascertained to be 3,000 years old when
sealed was there discovered. A portion of this
had been re-planted and found the basis of a field
producing wheat once in the “lot of November last,” by
Lindsay’s gardening. Yielded four seeds of
hereditary significance. The produce of the
heads were 100 stalks, about six feet high, and the ears in
over 50 stalks grain each. The ears have bearded
barley and not unlike those of barley, and the leaves on the
stalks are long, and nearly in rich broad.
Mr. Pettigrew, while whilst unrolling a mummy at the Worcester Congress of the British Archaeological Association, at which I was present, wrote that the Corn did contain in a mummy box a vase hermetically sealed, almost in the British museum's trust-grown to the custom. Hence he left the offering to that institution “should be not turn into a harmful act although found tests ago yet as due to these lives thousands tests lapses of generation."
The Dean of Hereford, who called on James Yates, Esq., to read the paper he had prepared on the use of bronze celts, as warlike implements, by the primitive dwellers in Britain.
Assuming, as proved, that the Latin term Dolabra meant a chisel, and was given to chisels which varied greatly in size and form, and were applied to many different purposes, the author cited passages from Quintus, Curtius, Livy, and Tacitus, proving that those instruments (bronze celts of the most elaborate kind) were used in destroying earthworks and fortifications. He argued from the Roman coins, the weapons, and the military decorations, which are sometimes found with these ancient implements, and their ornamental mouldings as a description of uniform, by which they were suited to the compactness of form, by which they might easily be carried and, in simplicity, might easily be carried into a military expedition in the large numbers found together, especially in those widely scattered encampments, from the size of the bronze celts in question; where it is found in specimens of varied elegance to their mould, and from representations later brought to light by Dr. Layard, in the statues lately exhibited by Dr. Layard, from which the implements have been strongly believed to be used by the Assyrians in war.
In support of his view, the author also pointed to examples of celts lately found in Yorkshire, and the straight haft attached to it by leather thongs, showing its adaptation to destructive use among ancient warriors.
More learning and research were displayed by the author of the paper in support of his discovery; the whole of which led to animated discussion, in which the Dean of Hereford, J. M. Kemble, Esq., and others, took part, and who appeared to dissent from the view of the subject taken by Mr. Yates. The discussion was prolonged until a late hour, and compelled the postponement of the papers announced to be read by Dr. Ingram and Mr. Moody.
The sites thereof, are verifications of the words applied by Camden to Richborough, in the reign of the Virgin Queen, “to teach us that cities die as well as men, if at this day a corn-field, wherein, when the corn is grown up, one may observe the draughts of streets crossing one another, for where they have gone, the corn is thinner.”
The etymon of this Roman city, we greatly fear, is a mystery, that will ever remain enshrouded in the mantle of oblivion, and we can do little else than hazard conjectural theories. The ingenious Dr. Thorpe imagined it to have been Vagniacæ, from a fancied apparent similitude in the pronunciation of “Barque-fields” or “Ware’s town”; as the lands in the parish of Southfleet, are indiscriminately termed to this day by the rustic population, where the Roman foundations have been discovered.
This hypothesis, for many reasons, we are confident is untenable; and but few antiquaries have been, at any time, converts to the opinion.3 We diffidently throw out a suggestion, based likewise upon tradition.4
3 Dr. Giles the last editor of Richard of Cirencester’s Description of Britain, has servilely copied Hatcher’s Commentary, published in 1809, and as a matter of course, included the errors that erudite gentleman had fallen into, through not having perambulated the county of Kent. Dover Chron., 1844-5, art. Chron. of Kent.
4 It is the ascertained and acknowledged characteristic of all antient tradition, that it preserves the substance, but alters and
a mean often found to furnish true solutions of puzzling etymologies; even after ponderous tomes and massy essays have been devoted by learned writers to the elucidation of a subject. In fact, we are inclined to pay very great respect to oral tradition of names of places, transmitted, as such cognomens have been, from generation to generation; for, we are convinced, such terms were not idly invented, but have been the appellations of the localities; subject simply to the corruptions of an ignorant and uncultivated peasantry’s pronunciation; we therefore take the word Sole, as the nucleus for a name to this town.5 But being perfectly aware that we can produce no authorities in confirmation, we throw ourselves entirely upon the mercy of the Archaeological Court, and trust we may not be too severely dealt with. In the modern German
confounds the circumstances of historical truth. Foster’s Hist. Geog. Arch. i., 22.
5 In the Itineraries which have descended to our time, the name of Sul Mago is given as a Roman station near London. Mago, translated, means city. The foundations in Sole-field, are considered to be the remains of a temple dedicated to the Sun. Dr. Henry says, “all our antiquaries agree in placing Sullonicae at Brockley Hills, where many Roman antiquities have been found.” Mr. Baxter and some others, think that this was the capital of the famous Cassivelaunus, which was taken by Julius Caesar.”—Hist. G. Brit. ii., 423. “The town of Caswallon was on the heights near Dartford, and a recent writer has contended, that the present town of Dartford stands on the site of the station of Noviomagus.” Dunkin’s Hist. Dartford, xxii. Dr. Giles ap. Hatcher, says Sul Mago is on the site of Mr. Napier’s house at Brockley Hill. Rich. Ciren. appar. C. R. Smith, esq., F.A.S., and other archaeologists, have repeatedly scrutinized this reputed site of Sul Mago, and after most careful examinations, have been unable to trace any Roman remains whatever. It is moreover the opinion of Mr. S., that Sul Mago was not on Brockley Hill.
dictionaries, we find the word Sole rendered salt water,6 or salt spring; and when the tide flowed up, we are confident the waters of Springhead would have been rendered brackish.
Edward Cressy, esq., of South Darenth, observes, in answer to a paper by Mr. A. J. Dunkin, which had appeared in “The Dover Chronicle,” “that much might be said upon the etymology of the Roman city at Springhead;” a further communication has been received from that gentleman, which we have great pleasure in presenting to our readers.
South Darenth, 7th June, 1845.
My dear Sir,
I have no doubt that the word “Sole” is derived from the word solium. Vitruvius, lib. 9, cap. 3, uses it for the basin or bath containing the water; and Pliny, in his 32nd lib. cap. 10, as the vessel in which the bathers were seated, “In solium addi,” &c. In the 35th lib., cap. 46, the same writer says that Numa founded a company of potters, but that there were persons who did not like their bodies to be consumed, and their ashes to be put into vessels of pottery—“Fulibus solitis”—but to be buried in the Pythagorean style, with their bodies entire, laid upon leaves of myrtle, olive, and black poplar, in which way M. Varro was interred. Celsus used the word solium to signify a bath, or place where bathers resorted—“Introire et discedere in solium.” The learned commentators on Vitruvius, in a note upon the passage first alluded to—“cum
6 Söhle, and without the h Sole, in modern German söle, salt water as it springs from the earth, from which salt is extracted. Heinsius: sole—sal—fluidum—wasser. Not far from the spot assumed to have been the site of the Druid temples and groves, and near the large barrow, hereafter described, on an elevated piece of ground, is a deep and never dry pond called “Sole’s Pond.”
solium discederet?”—seem to imply it was the term made use of for the vessel or place which contained the water in which the bathers' bodies were immersed, in the same manner as the Bath, a city of Roman origin, is called “Aqua Calidæ,” and fictile vessels contained the ashes of the bodies of the defunct. “Aqua Solis,” and the remains of a temple were found, dedicated to the Solar Minerva, or Minerva Medica.—See Warner's History, Appendix, p. 48.
The word “Sole” occurs on the map, so often in the county of Kent, that it would be worth while to trace the road or street which bears that name, and examine the various places that still retain the term. We find it first occurring near the coast at Capell Fern, or Capell Sole, near Folkestone, where a street runs in the direction of St. Radigund's, Swingfield, and other ancient sites. Also in the parish of Nonington, in the hundred of Wingham, mention is made of a manor in Domesday, called Soles, Soleton, or Soltone, at West Cliff, in the hundred of Bewsborough. There seems to be some difficulty to connect all these places at present, or to trace a street through them from the coast to that point which is between Wouldham and Crundall, or near the valley of the Stour in its descent from the Wye. After this valley of the Weald was gained, a road at the foot of the downs, or chalk hills, continues almost in a straight line towards Halling; and then, by Luddesdown, to the Sole Street, in the parish of Cobham, the route is traceable enough; but the most important site is that we have already mentioned, viz.:
At Crundall, or the dale under a hill, which is a small parish north-east from Wye, containing a small number of
7 Mr. Hatcher says in a note to the author of “the Chronicles of Kent,” that the name on the Bath inscription is Sulis. Speaking of Britain generally, Solinus says: “In quo spatio magna et multa flumina, fontes calidi optiparo exulti apparatu ad usus mortali um: quibus fontibus præsul est Minervæ numen, in cujus æde
houses at present: it is situated on the chalk hills. In it are two streets or hamlets, one called Danewood Street, the other Sole Street, which is the principal, where is still held a fair on Whit-Monday.
On Tremworth Downs, on the hill, within a mile of Crundall, some Roman remains were found in 1678, 1703, 1713, 1757, 1759, &c.—earthenware, glass, female trinkets, a coin of Faustina (the wife of the emperor Marcus Aurelius). All the skeletons were laid with their feet to the south-west.—Hasted, vol. 6, p. 369.
It appears curious that a cemetery should appear near a Sole Street, at Crundall, as well as near Sole Field, at Southfleet; and from these places being used by the Romans for interment it would appear that the route called Sole Street was a very important line in those days, as they were in the habit of burying by the road side, and near to waters.
Dover, Crundall, Cobham, and Southfleet, where the name of “Sole” occurs, are almost in a direct line, and Nonington may indicate a branch to Deal or Sandwich. I am satisfied that were this road examined carefully, much that is important would be elicited.
Believe me,
Yours faithfully,
EDWARD CRESSY.
The present name of the River Ebbsfleet is clearly of Saxon origin, and its etymology is self-evident. Ebb—ebba, Saxon, the reflux of the tide. Fleet, fleet, flot are all derived from the Saxon fleot, which signifies a bay or gulph, or inlet.8 This account is at va-
8 From this word are derived the Kentish names of North-fleet, South-fleet and Wain-fleet in Lincolnshire. To this may be added
riance with Bishop Percy’s statement, that towns and villages are almost universally of Anglo-Saxon derivation, whilst the hills, forests and rivers retain their old Celtic names.9
This river was inhabited with colonies of beavers,10 who built their towns in its waters, even to the con-
the inlet called the Fleet, behind the pebble bank near Portland, which also gives name to the village of Fleet. Fleet forms part of a long series of local names as may be seen in the Topog. Dictionaries. In the Terrier of lands belonging to Dartford Priory, (No. 9493, Arundel MSS. Brit. Mus.) Fleet when applied to the Darent or Cray, uniformly means a running stream.
“I think this may be accounted for, if we recollect that the British towns were generally on hills, and in situations of difficult access, while the Saxons occupied the Roman towns or formed settlements, on the Roman Roads.” Ex Epist. H. Hatcher, arm.
10 “Beavers in the time of Giraldus Cambrensis, (the end of the twelfth century), were found only in the Teivy, in the neighbourhood of Cardigan; but at an earlier period they constructed their towns even in the Severn, where was an Island near Worcester, named in Saxon Beofor-ege, the beaver isle. There is also a Beaver-stone in Gloucestershire.” Wright’s Hist. Ludlow. In a note, p. 12, ante, we have already mentioned a Beaverstone—the site of which stationary colony would have been adjacent to the source of the spring, perchance, at the spot where an artificial dam had been placed to form a fish pond, when we saw it last (1842). In fact beavers inhabited the whole of the rivers in the island. “Many plants indigenous to Britain have disappeared: some within the last quarter of a century. You find them in Gerard’s Herbal, but not in the fields. Amongst animals there has been a more evident and more remarkable process of destruction. Like the Dodos in the Mauritius, whole races have become extinct within a recent historical period. The beaver built his house on the banks of the stream beneath that summit where the eagle reared her young; and the British names of stream and of rock still remain, the witnesses of the former existence of the inhabitants which have passed away.”
ANIMALS IN ENGLAND IN 1685.—Few people perhaps are aware that in 1685 even England was literally an open forest, containing, within its circumference of twenty-five miles, “only three houses and scarcely any enclosed fields,” and that the wild stag ranged there as freely as in the woods of Kentucky. In Gloucestershire and Hampshire, “Red deer were as common as they are now among the Grampian hills.” On the accession of Queen Anne, on her way to Portsmouth, she saw a herd of no less than 400. The wild bull with his fierce whelps was still to be found wandering in a few of the southern forests. The badger dug his dark and tortuous hold, and the otter dwelt under the reeds the cops wood grew thick. The wild cat was frequently heard by night wailing round the lodge of the yeoman. Without any need to wood or fell the branches of nut-bearing yews, the Dorset Chase affords fruit, meat, and interior only of that of the bulb. Foxes feasting, requiring more than ten feet between the extremities of the wings perches and fens, and the kites and ospreys skimmed up and down from the British Channel to Yorkshire. Huge bustards and great herds of stags strayed over the eastern heaths and western downs of Wessex, and Cambridge and Lincolnshire were covered with rooks almost indistinct. Yet efforts to reduce the forests to cultivation in some parts have already been anticipated. Not to offer to gaze at in astonishment except the other “louse;” but few employments of a sporting day.” Og Dog hath not contented with a single performance, but he took stock of his subjects or seven times the course of his abilities. The idea good deed by Mr. Macaulay is prevailing, at the time born this matter will go a good way to examine the torpor people still behind. When we look at the dress of regular European and Knox as nobility against the other Zecaes. (He was almost big as his Salisbury,) he was answered, “eighty miles more hedged with mere matter.” A [being] rather an intelligent Londoner ordinarily talked of lands as containing several families only, “an acre of soil most frequently aristocratic and lower settee.”
It is true that after the Restoration upon the accession of Charles II, and the extortionate profits of common Enclosures, the Normans introduced a better system in the northern than in the southern shires. Coal seems to have been also little known, but plentifully between Derwent and Tyne, which pass marked by arches, flocks marked from the Teutonic plains, the farm steed so characteristic with Kent, became a measure of association—the golden grain of Kent, the most precious metal in the country found, was not better treated than the same out west. The patch in which Wessex sheaves still enclose. The table within the innkeeper of the inn treated upon the public road was more equally rooted and poor. The House the bagpipe in Caithness knew that leather, little known by south of the Erse, was cut into very loiry nonnative and forced lodges, peculiar to Northumberland. Few were still aware that in Yorkshire's ancient world lay down ranks of unsown reed from the very roof-stocks to lighter darkness, [warlock]. The Saxons by their descent adapted to be Germans, and were introduced far and more southeast. Mr. Macaulay states “the returned they wandered in pursuit of gold to the sources of the Tyne and Blyth.” The Hays round Kielder castle were too far secured only bare “like the stones of the plains of California, and heard with surprise the half-naked woods call numbers and measure, while the man, with brown skin besides, danced a war dance.”
Page 25 ...quest of the Romans, half a century after the Christian era. The channel, cut by the floods, is still remarka- whilst the egret and the crane, the bittern and the bustard have been lost within living memory. The bear and the wild boar ranged the forests at the era of the Conquest,—the latter in the immediate vicinity of London. The wolf continued to infest the fold long after the supposed extirpation of the foe by the tribute which the Basileus of Britain imposed upon his British vassals; but in the loose nomenclature of popular speech, it is very probable that the hyena of Yorkshire may also have been included among the animals to which the name of “wolf” was assigned, thus bringing the ossuary of the Kirkdale cave within the period even of the last population of the wolds.” (Qterly. Rev. lxxiv. 299.) We have been favoured with a view of some unpublished letters by Dr. Owen Pughe, the author of the Welch Dictionary, and editor of the Myvyrian Archaeology, to which we are indebted, for the following curious matter:— “I remember one thing in Giraldus, which is ridiculed by Lord Littleton, in his history of Henry II.—The assertion of there being Beavers in the river Teivi—I would rebut this, by supporting Giraldus with quotations from the laws of Hywel the Good, in 940, by which the existence of the Beaver is unquestionably proved; and, that too, by a name so characteristic of the animal, as leaves no room to mistake. The name is Llustriadan, which is happily rendered into English by the epithet Spattle-tail, than which, no appellation whatever can be more suitable. By the laws, the fur of the Beaver, the Marten, and the common Ermine of this country, were appropriated to trim the royal robes. And, as the value affixed by law on various skins, may excite some curiosity, I annex a list of a few here:— THE VALUE OF SKINS. (Wotton’s edit. p. 900.) The value of a Spattle-tail, 12s proper price. The value of a Marten, twenty-four pence. As to the value of a Wolf, the Fox, and various others, which do nothing but mischief, no legal value has been put upon them, for every lord is at liberty to kill them. THE VALUE OF SKINS. (Wotton’s edit. p. 261.) The skin of an Ox, 8d. Skin of a Hart, 8d. Skin of a Cow, 7d. Skin of a Hind, 7d. Skin of a Sheep, Goat, a Roebuck, and a Roe, 1d. on each of them. Skin of a Fox, 8d. Skin of an Otter, 8d. Skin of a Wolf, 8d. Skin of a Marten, 24d. Skin of a Spattle-tail (Beaver), 12d. Skin of an Ermine, its value is equal. The value of the Beaver skin is very high, being exactly of the same value as a horse.” Page 25 ...quest of the Romans, half a century after the Christian era. The channel, cut by the floods, is still remarka- whilst the egret and the crane, the bittern and the bustard have been lost within living memory. The bear and the wild boar ranged the forests at the era of the Conquest,—the latter in the immediate vicinity of London. The wolf continued to infest the fold long after the supposed extirpation of the foe by the tribute which the Basileus of Britain imposed upon his British vassals; but in the loose nomenclature of popular speech, it is very probable that the hyena of Yorkshire may also have been included among the animals to which the name of “wolf” was assigned, thus bringing the ossuary of the Kirkdale cave within the period even of the last population of the wolds.” (Qterly. Rev. lxxiv. 299.) We have been favoured with a view of some unpublished letters by Dr. Owen Pughe, the author of the Welch Dictionary, and editor of the Myvyrian Archaeology, to which we are indebted, for the following curious matter:— “I remember one thing in Giraldus, which is ridiculed by Lord Littleton, in his history of Henry II.—The assertion of there being Beavers in the river Teivi—I would rebut this, by supporting Giraldus with quotations from the laws of Hywel the Good, in 940, by which the existence of the Beaver is unquestionably proved; and, that too, by a name so characteristic of the animal, as leaves no room to mistake. The name is Llustriadan, which is happily rendered into English by the epithet Spattle-tail, than which, no appellation whatever can be more suitable. By the laws, the fur of the Beaver, the Marten, and the common Ermine of this country, were appropriated to trim the royal robes. And, as the value affixed by law on various skins, may excite some curiosity, I annex a list of a few here:— THE VALUE OF SKINS. (Wotton’s edit. p. 900.) The value of a Spattle-tail, 12s proper price. The value of a Marten, twenty-four pence. As to the value of a Wolf, the Fox, and various others, which do nothing but mischief, no legal value has been put upon them, for every lord is at liberty to kill them. THE VALUE OF SKINS. (Wotton’s edit. p. 261.) The skin of an Ox, 8d. Skin of a Hart, 8d. Skin of a Cow, 7d. Skin of a Hind, 7d. Skin of a Sheep, Goat, a Roebuck, and a Roe, 1d. on each of them. Skin of a Fox, 8d. Skin of an Otter, 8d. Skin of a Wolf, 8d. Skin of a Marten, 24d. Skin of a Spattle-tail (Beaver), 12d. Skin of an Ermine, its value is equal. The value of the Beaver skin is very high, being exactly of the same value as a horse.”
Page 26
...bly defined, and the surrounding soil is replete with myriads of sea shells, silent records of that long-gone period when Father Thames surged his brackish waters up the worn gulph.
In the immense primeval forest (now sadly shrunk in magnitude), which descended on the western side, to the water’s edge—amid the dense coverts of this appropriate region, the ferocious boar and savage wolf chased their natural prey, the timid deer and the wild ox. In later ages, a portion of this forest, under the...
Specimens may be seen in the collections of E. Colyes, esq., and Mr. Sylvester.
"The Triads describe Britain as having been ‘uninhabited by men, till the arrival of Hu, the mighty leader of the Cymri, from the country of Summer. They found wolves, bears, beavers, and oxen, with the high prominence.’ The latter description applies to Britain, from a Coracle."
Hu the Mighty, on account of his attributes, was called the pillar of the nation—first, for leading the Cymri into the Isle of Britain, from the Summer country of Defrobani; and those who came with him were styled the Social tribe, because Hu would not obtain a country through fighting and destruction: He was the stem energy against oppression, because he thus led his nation to possess land through peace and tranquility. Hu was the dispenser of gifts, because he first shewed the way to plough land to the nation of the Cymri in Defrobani; He was styled the primary artificer, for first bringing them into a compact and moveable society; and he was the cultivator of song, for being the first who made vocal song the means of preserving memorials and the works of imagination.
Bound in print, in ancient Bardic letters, are these words:
"Hu Gadarn, by leading the Cymri, thrice prevailed."
That is—"Hu the Mighty, leading the Cymri into the Isle of Britain."
With respect to the name of Britain, it may not be amiss to attend to what the Historical Triads contain, which is to this purpose:—
"The three names that were imposed on the Isle of Britain, from the beginning; before it was inhabited, the name of Clas Mervin (or water).
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...name of Swanscombe Wood, has formed the theme of many a poet’s lay, and reaped an undying celebrity.
Defended green spot; after it was inhabited it was called Y Vel Ynys (or the Honey Island); and after it was brought under one general government by Prydain son of Aed, it was called the Ynys Prydain (or the Isle of Prydain); and no people has an original right in it but the nation of the Cymry, for they took possession of it first; and before that time there were no inhabitants, but it was full of bears, wolves, aurochs, and moose deer.
Dr. Harris says, “But that which hath rendered Swanscombe more famous than all these things, is the famous Legend of Thomas Spot, a Monk of St. Austin’s in Canterbury; which in Selden’s Translation from the Latin of Lambard in Explication: Verborum stands thus:—
When the Norman Conqueror had the Day, he came to Dover castle, that he might, with the same Ease, subdue Kent also: Wherefore Stigand Archbishop, and Egelesia Abbot, as the Chief of that Shire, observing, that now whereas heretofore no Villains had been in England, they should be now all in bondage to the Normans; they assembled all the County, and shewed the imminent danger, the Insolence of the Normans, and the hard Condition of Villainage: They, resolving all rather to die than lose their Freedom, purpose to encounter with the Duke for their Country’s Liberties. Their Captains are the Archbishop and the Abbot. Upon a Day appointed they met all here at Swanscombe, and harbouring themselves in the Woods, with Boughs in every Man’s Hand they encompass his Way. The next Day the Duke coming by Swanscombe, seemed to see with Amazement, a Wood approaching towards him: The Kentish Men at the Sound of the Trumpet, take themselves to Arms; when presently the Archbishop and Abbot were...
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...sent to the Duke, and saluted him with these Words:—"Behold, Sir Duke, the Kentish Men come to meet you, willing to receive you as their Liege Lord, upon that Condition, that they may for ever enjoy their ancient Liberties and Laws used among their ancestors: Otherwise, presently offering War; being ready rather to dye than undergo a Yoke of Bondage, and lose their antient Laws." The Norman in this narrow Pinch, not so willingly as wisely, granted their Desire; and Hostages being given on both Sides, the Kentish Men direct the Normans to Rochester, and deliver them the County and the Castle of Dover." Hist. Kent, i, 308. Darell writes:—"Cujus adventum cum multi nuncii et fama denique ipsa suâ celeritate superasset, habito et suorum consilio, et militum delectu, Stigandum archiepiscopum et Ashburnhamum regulum, quem Dovariensi castro praefecerant, et Everardum et Egelesium Augustinensis monasterii abbatem, universo rei dicto consituerunt. Qui demandatum sibi a suis negotium magnâ animorum alacritate suscipientes, postquam magnum exercitum, quibuscumque ex Cantianis gentibus potuissent, comparassent, eum in campo Suano, qui in eorum finibus est, circumvenerunt, ab eisque nunquam abierunt imperativæ posi-testatem, nisi et eorum postulatis subscripsisset, et juramento confirmasset, eam conspirationem nemini unquam crimin futurum, et, obsidibus datis, eorum tranquillitati cavisset." Hist. Dover Castle, 18.
“The Sons of Edna alone the Tyrie withstood;
Of Right tenacious; singular in good;
Law-abiding, tho’ only unyok’d,
In Arms collected all agreed,
To Live and Die, like their Great Fathers, free.
Grasp’d with one Hand the threatening steel they sway’d;
The other, Verdant Boughs display’d;
In dire Array, thus dreadful from afar,
Invasions’ flying Bar,
On the brow of the threat’ning Land,
The moving Forest made a dreadful stand.
The Warrior King, wrap’d, at the doubtful sight,
So equal for Freedom’s or for Fight.
A parley sounds; pleas’d ev’n in Foes, to see
Spirits so worthy of their native Free.
He comes, they answer’d, well agreed,
By Friendly Peace, or, ten yours ittle,
To claim their dearer Liberty and Right.
Undaunted Race, he cry’d, your Strife
Such Virtue cannot be deny’d.
Take Freedom from me, Foes can claim,
My Friendship; nay, my Conqu’ror’s Name,
Thus to your Rights, and Valour true,
‘Tis more, like you, to dare, than Kingdoms to subdue.” Mottrux.
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“The general and usual Tradition is, that the many Privileges and Advantages of Gavelkind came to Kent, by the gallant Stand which our Countrymen made against William the Conqueror at Swanscombe; when Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Egelesine, Abbot of St. Austins, are supposed to have terrified that Prince into a Grant of their Ancient Laws and Liberties.” This is thus celebrated by Hawke, in his Poem on the Law:—
Custom in Kent encouraging the Brave,
Distinguished well the Brother from the Slave;
And to each Son an equal Future gave.
With the just Bard, —“these the same amorous fire,
Caused Laws by Birth, that did the great inspire.
The great rose Youth, pleas’d with such equal laws,
Fought still for the Poor, and their Country’s cause;
With resolute resistance, that Fenced Brigance,
Which conquered Harold, but not Kent invades;
But solemn peace with oaken standards made;
Granted those Laws for which the Patriots strove,
And kiss’d the Forest to the moving grove.”
Swanscombe Church too, says Weever, “in times past was much haunted by a mad company of Pilgrims, who made here standing in the upper Window of the South Isle to St. Hilderferd (a Bishop by conjecture of his picture, yet distracted ranters for restitution of their wits).” Fun. Mon. 332.
“Roman catholic legends, state this as a fact,
That the holy Saint Ethelferd Lunacy checked,
To those who had faith he bowed down at his shrine;
The pilgrims who brought the most glorious line,
The best antidotes had, their disorder to kill,
As if fed him with burgundy, capon, and chine.”
HOLMEY.
Swanscombe Church is dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. Waller says, it is built of an heterogeneous mixture of materials, chalk rag, masses of stone of various kinds, and an admixture of Roman tile. The tower shows some attempt at a regular plan in the disposition of its materials; it is for the most part constructed of small stones laid in courses of three and four alternately with one of flint; this disposition is by no means regularly observed, sometimes there are two courses of flint, and sometimes but two of stone. There is something in this arrangement like an imitation of the Roman manner, flint being used in the place of tile. The quoining presents some curious features, and has evidently been controlled by the nature of the materials at hand; it exhibits a strange variety of stone, some disposed in long and short masses, some alternately with...
Page 30
Roman tiles, and the latter are found worked into the rubble, here and there, without any order. It may also be well to observe, that a large circular window of Roman tile, on the south side, is now blocked up. The chancel is chiefly flint-work set in herringbone, and covered with the durable rough-cast before noticed: the south side, where much of this is removed, shows very evident indications of the walls having been formed by planking the sides, until the mortar or concrete had firmly set; the mark of the planks are still very visible. This part of the church has undergone many alterations; an addition to the east end is easily to be distinguished from its patched appearance; lancet lights of the twelfth century have superseded windows of a much earlier date, traces of which still remain; and a doorway on the north side appears to have been blocked up at the same time as the addition was made to the east end, but its architectural features are quite destroyed.
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Chapter III: The Aborigines
"And they (the Noachidae) said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth." — Genesis xi. 4, 5, 8.
Hark, what strange noise from Babel's walls proceeds,
Like the hoarse thunder that rattles through the reeds!
From stammering mouths discordant voices sound,
And tongues unknown the blended scene confound.
— Sir Alex. Croke's Orig. Idolatry.
The purification of the earth by the Deluge occurred B.C. 2348-2, or A.M. 1656, and shortly afterwards, the territorial possessions of the three surviving representatives were defined. But the dispersion of the Noachidae did not take place till the days of Peleg; "the whole earth was divided," that is, the general dispersion took place, consequent upon the Confusion of Tongues. Previously to the dispersion at Babel, it is clear that there were partial emigrations from the primitive post-diluvian habitations. One of these was headed by Cush, the son of Ham, with his two sons and five grandsons, according to uniform tradition, and the presumptive evidences that are afforded by history, colonized the head of the Persian Gulph. — Qly. Rev.
"Whereas," says Theophilus Antiochenus, "in old time there were—
British Queen and Noah's Ark — It is worthy of remark that the proportions of the British Queen steamship are exactly those of Noah's Ark. The first has 350 feet of length, 40,000 tons of burden, and a draught of water 24 feet; the dimensions of floating boats first given by the Great Builder of the Universe."
Note: The ark was twice as long as the Queen.
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... unto heaven," caused "the LORD to scatter the children of men abroad upon the face of the earth, A.M. 1934, or 2074, to the territories specifically predestined for their occupation, after confounding their speech phonetically in the vowels. The project of building such an enormous pile demonstrates most decisively that even the antediluvians were the possessors of architectural attainments of no common order.
But few men in Arabia and Chaldea, after the division of tongues, remained; these more and more increased. Hereupon some took their way towards the East, others to other parts of the great and wide continent; others, travelling towards the North, seeking a place where to settle, still kept onwards, taking possession of what they chose, until at last they came to Britain and seated in the Northern climates.
(Apud Camden. A writer in the Gents. Magazine, Feb. 1846) states that the antediluvians preserved written records of their history; there can be no doubt, and that Moses formed his account of the events told therein from what still remained in the archives of the Noachite race, the Shuminites, whose direct descendant Abraham was, is directly proved in the story of the Creation. Moses evidently made it from two different records. In the lapse of years, and the confusion consequent on the removal to Egypt, and in the difficulties of the enslaved condition of the family in Goshen, these records had probably suffered much, and from their remains Moses collected all he could, and not wishing to omit anything, or to shock the feelings of those who had so long been accustomed to hear these histories read, he put down both versions; for in the account of the creation of man, it says in the 27th verse of the 1st Genesis "male and female created he them" while in the 18th verse of 2nd chapter, it says "it is not good for man to be alone" and in the 21st and 22nd verses gives the creation of woman. These discrepancies are evidently from following, or rather preserving, the written fragments as he received them.
(Gents. Mag., xxv. 137). A friend commenting upon the theory observes in a note to us, that "Moses the inspired and faithful servant of God, was directed by the Divine Being to ...
"Both Celtic & Danish hostility point to the earlier migration from Jutland & the earliest settlements of Britain — Wilson Industries, 30."
Every domestic tie to the soil being abruptly severed by the miraculous confusion of tongues; we can readily commence his narrative. For, it is not irrelevant here to remark, that the earlier part of the Book of Genesis consists of several distinct compositions, marked by difference of style, and by express formulas of commencement.* It is entirely consonant with the idea of inspiration, and established by the whole tenor of scriptural compositions, that the heavenly influence operated in concurrence with the rational faculties of inspired men; so that the prophets and apostles wrote from their own knowledge and memory, the testimony of other persons and written documents, to which indeed express appeal is often made.† From the evidence of language and matter, we have no slight reasons for supposing that Moses compiled the chief parts of the Book of Genesis, by arranging and connecting antient memorials, under the divine direction, and probably during the middle part of his life, which he spent in the retirement of Arabia. Thus, it is far from improbable that we have in this most antient writing in the world, the family archives of Amram and his ancestors, comprising the history of Joseph, written in great part by himself; documents from the hands of Jacob, Abraham, Shem, Noah, and possibly ascending still higher, authentic memorials from Enoch, Seth and Adam. The Book must have been composed in one of three ways,—first, by immediate revelation of every circumstance from God; secondly, by a collection of antient traditions; or thirdly, from former documents. The first supposition is generally abandoned. The second, which is a common opinion amongst theologians in this country, would not injure the credibility of the book; since Lamech the father of Noah, was contemporary with Adam, Shem the son of Noah lived in the time of Abraham, his son Isaac was contemporary with Japheth, &c. The third opinion is the one generally received by the German theologians.
* The following appear to be distinct compilations:—Gen. i. to ii. 3,—ii. 4, ii. 4 to iii., iii. 4, Chap. iv., v., vi. 1 to v., vi. 8, vi. 9, to ix. 28,—vi. Chap. x., XI. xi. 9, VIII. xi. 10 to 26,—IX. xi. 27, and what follows may be regarded as the house of Abraham,—Chap. as a separate document, inserted in the most suitable place.
† We have these instances in the Old Testament:—Num. xxi. 14, 10,—Josh. x. 13, 2 Sam. i. 18,—1 Kings xi. 41, 1 Chron. ix. 1,—xv. 29, xvi. 29,—2 Chron. ix. 29,—xiii. 15, xv. 34. In the New Testament many of the anecdotal portions in the first three Gospels; and see Luke i. 1, 2.
conceive that many of the dwellers upon the Plains of Shinar, conceived the plan seeking their fortunes on the seas and finding a home in remote lands wherein never had mankind dwelt. Not only were the details of the construction of the Ark fresh in the minds of many then living, but that memorial of the triumphs of naval architecture itself remained in existenceX—enabling vessels to be built after its model. Britain it is supposed was discovered in one of the exploring expeditions, which left the shores of the East at this epoch; but it was not till about sixteen or seventeen centuries before the Christian Era, that it was colonized. About that period an enterprising band, roaming up the Thames, in quest either of prey, or a convenient site for permanent residence; probably sailed up the wide and noble estuary formed by the river Ebbsfleet, near...
theologians of the present day, and was maintained by many former writers. See Carpzov, Introd. i. 57. Vitringa, Observ. Sac. i. Dissert. i. 4. Le Clerc. Proleg. Diss ii. 30. Calmet, Com. Lit. I. i, 13. Others believed that this book of Moses was compiled from such documents.
Perhaps the view is very bold, that there must have been these small annals, and passed lessons, among the early patriarchs and Moses had these before him, and wrote them out, and worked them up into his book of Genesis—in doing which he had Divine assistance, so far as God spake to his heart, or he were moved by the Holy Ghost. Compare with this, how we are referred, at 2 Sam. i. 17, to the Elegy of David over Saul, being as “written in the book of Jasher.”
See also p. 50. That the Celts or Cimmerians were synonymous with the Cymmerians is clear from Appian in Illyr. p. 1196, and Bell. Civ. lib. ii. 625. Diodorus Sic. lib. v. 309, also affirms the same. Herodotus says, the Celts dwelt in the most western parts beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Herod. Melpom. c. 49. McPherson affirming, that the name of Celts is an adjective derived from Gaël. Whitaker in his Refutation of McPherson asserts it is not merely derived from Gaël but equally a substantive and actual...
(Margin notes: Perhaps the ark remains were seen or their memory is vivid—annotation on historical hypothesis.)
Sir,
On directing my attention to your MS this evening it struck me in the very outset that you had commenced with a too
common historical error, i.e., that mankind have usually retrograded in the arts—everywhat arts?—whether they had
been divinely instructed. If this be meant in religion I believe it an error; if of sculpture, manufacture, commerce,
fire—yes, etc. The fine arts were also connected with becoming practical or utilities; progenitors fled or were
driven by neglect to sea-girt isles, and found an early and suitable foundation for freedom and security, or for attack.
For centuries, violated themselves by isolation, and thereby of necessity retrograded. I am, therefore, fully persuaded that the whole of the human race should have receded in developing state history illustrated by monumental demonstration of the most unquestionable character states the fact. Surely the histories of the Assyrians and Egyptians are very contradictory as against this retrogressive measuring. For instance, glance at Egypt. Abraham was born 316 years after the flood, and when he was 80 years of age he visited Egypt; and we have the scriptural testimony of the high and flourishing state of the country at that period. This is far from supporting the retrogressive hypothesis. The magnificent monuments of...
(Note continues on further pages regarding monuments and their significance in refuting the retrogressive argument.)
Oversteen I. of the 17th dynasty, B.C. 1740—the obelisk of Heliopolis, for instance—be covered with the proof of a back-door movement. Nay, even the idea of building Palaces—this was no new prospect! So far from indicating the retrograde march backward, proves the development of a magnificent genius. The extensive works of engineers, architects, and decorators, certain proof of their depression, served but to engrave on imperishable proofs, on our more satisfactory examination, of the progress of those mighty entities. Wherever they wandered, these might evoke those mighty cities, over whose solemn dominions, silence and desolation has finally settled, whose turrets have glared defiance to eternal night from their obscure bowers, or were indignant bursts of indignation as they would contrast the driven snow-walled. Joseph died under the 17th dynasty, and in his time so far from there having been retrogression in the direction of “barbarism,” Egypt presents a spectacle of surprising physical and intellectual glory! Calculations who accompanied Alexander to Babylon found astronomical observations for 1903 years backward from that time; which reach as high as the 11th year after the flood. The sacred records refer this priority of Egypt to Ham, or as it stands in the Coptic dialect Charn; Charn is the root of Chamnes the flamed. H.G.F. states Chammes is a large city of the Hebrews—Sesostris—Ramesses the Great.
The successor of Moses, is faced by Herod, about 1350 B.C., or 600 years after the flood, a time when the Israelites were still in the minority. It was 609 years after the deluge and 150 years before the invention of Greece. Letters were introduced to Egypt, in fact to the learned, possessing the subject, as antiquities in the British Museum. These historically tie the continent, furnish indisputable proofs that from the period of the deluge to the descendants of Noah, the flood has marked the boundary of the old face of times. Mankind gradually progressed in rediscovery, forming its wonders under the stars and scribes who celebrated the illustrious epochs in those ages of splendor. While some historians to the contrary, Moses had shown his qualifications for the various offices, befitting, by the school of Egypt, its present arts and sciences, equal to the old specimens of learning. The earliest learning to gather together and perpetuate mankind by a strong pattern of truth and order.
Even in the highest circle of time, the historical fragments and decayed symbols, there in them, for the multitudes of inscriptions, of the 12th century, we were to evoke the prophets from their resting places, and compare them with the Selenological and Messenic, we see the light and heir of their intellectual wonders. Truly, what a comparison for flights we could place! History’s hand affixed the greatest retrogression, as if by learned record lifted the great tree of life once easy, which then has educated and brutalized the human race! However, mostly, war burned shame and blood and priests have ruled and reshaped society; sadly, the two former in one manner, and the latter in no other; but the writings of Christ and Moses have burnt the bottoms out of the buckets. The...
...part of his life which he spent in the retirement of Arabia. Thus it is so far from improbable that we have, in this most ancient writing in the world, the family archives of Amram and his ancestors, comprising the history of Joseph, probably written in great parts by himself; documents from the hands of Jacob, Abraham, Shem, Noah, and possibly ascending still higher, authentic memorials from Enoch, Seth, and Adam.*
Notes:† The following appear to be distinct compilations:
1. Gen. i. 1 to ii. 3. 2. ii. 4 to iii. 11. 3. iii. 12 to iii. 24. 4. Chap. iv. V. vi. 1 to vi. 8. VI. vi. 9 to ix. 29. VII. Chap. x. XI. xi. 9. VIII. xi. 10 to 26. IX. xi. 27, and what follows may be regarded as the records of the house of Abraham. X. Chap. xxxvi. A separate document, inserted in the most suitable place.
† We have these instances in the Old Testament: Num. xxi. 14. Josh. x. 13. 2 Sam. i. 18. 1 Kings xi. 41. 1 Chron. ix. 1. xvi. 29. 2 Chron. ix. 29. xii. 15. xv. 32. In the New Testament, many of the anecdotal portions in the first three Gospels; and see Luke i. 1, 2.
J. Smith. D.D. F.G.S.
Lecture on Scriptural Geology, 1839.
I have not the books by me to make other quotations, and I hope this will be deemed satisfactory.
"Alas, poor Yorick!"
"The book must have been composed in one of three ways: 1st, by immediate revelation of every circumstance from God; 2nd, by a collection of ancient traditions; or 3rd, from former documents. The first supposition is generally abandoned. The second, which is a common opinion amongst theologians in this country, would not injure the credibility of the book; since Lamech the father of Noah was contemporary with Adam, Shem the son of Noah was contemporary with Abraham, and his son Isaac was contemporary with Japheth, etc."
The third opinion is that this book of Moses was composed from twelve such documents, as maintained by many former writers. See Carpzov, Introd. part i. p. 57; Vitringa, Observ. Sacr. i. Dissert. i. 4; Le Clerc. Proleg. Diss. ii. 30; Calmet, Comment. Literar. 13.
Others believed that this book of Moses was composed from twelve such clay tablets."
Illustrations and proofs: Really no time to copy.
"I am off to worship the God of Moses, go thou and do likewise."
From these circumstances, it seems certain that the Kesbet of the Egyptian monuments was an alloy of copper, and there can be little doubt that it was the same substance mentioned by the Hebrew writers under the name of kashvat, keseth, or kescheta, and that we have here the material of which Homer spoke as Κασσίτερος. The extensive use of bronze among the antients, and the absence of any ornaments or articles of domestic or warlike use in Κασσίτερος, supposing this word to mean “tin,” strengthens the opinion that the Κασσίτερος of the Greeks was a bronze, or mixture of tin and copper.
These considerations are further strengthened by the circumstance that the old Cornu-British name of tin is “stan.”
The Latins, a people of Celtic origin, had the same Celtic word “stannum” which they must have derived, not like the Greeks their Κασσίτερος, from the Phoenicians, but from their Celtic congeners, from whom, no doubt, they also obtained the metal itself by means of a land trade through Gaul. The French “étain”, the Teutonic “zinn”, and our own “tin”, have the same origin. The learned Beckman, in his “History of Inventions,” considers it as proved—from a passage in Pliny, lib. xxxiv., c. 16, s. 47—that the stannum of the Latins was not a pure metal, but a mixture of silver and lead. It seems to me, however, that Pliny is expressly describing the separation of lead, galena, from an ore containing lead, tin, and silver. The first product of the melting was stannum tin; next, the silver was separated from the lead, and this last procured in a pure state by a subsequent fusion.
There seems on the whole to be little doubt that the “plumbum album”, and the “stannum” of the Latins, were the same, and that the latter is the original, while the former is the technical name used in some instances by Pliny, for the same metal.
It is remarkable that this, the native name of tin, became afterwards confounded with, if not applied to, a very similar metal, “antimony.” The Egyptian name of “antimony” is “stem,” whence the Greeks derived their word στήμμι, and thence probably the Latin “stibium.” This name was evidently applied to a substance, which, in some state, was capable of producing a black or dark grey powder, used for painting the eyelids by the women of the East. The Hebrew word Kohl is probably of a farther Eastern origin, and derived from India.
The Kesbet of the Egyptians then was used for making a blue pigment, which no ore or oxide of tin is capable of producing. If the substance sought after and procured by the Phoenicians from Britain were an alloy of copper and tin, somewhat similar in proportions to speculum metal, they would have imported into Asia and Egypt a white, lustrous, hard, and close-grained metal, capable of taking a high polish, and well adapted for the formation of mirrors, though too brittle for the manufacture of swords or other weapons. Of mirrors composed of this alloy, we can well understand how Moses should have constructed “the laver of brass and the foot of it of brass, of the looking-glasses of the women.” — Exod. xxxviii. 8.
From this alloy also a blue pigment was capable of being made, though it is, of course, difficult to understand why it should have been preferred for the purpose to any other alloy of copper, or to that metal itself. The Greeks knowing this alloy by its Egyptian or Phoenician name Kesbet, applied the same appellation to tin, which it resembled in lustre and colour, though it is very probable that the Κασσίτερος mentioned by Homer, as used for bosses or shields and greaves, was rather such an alloy than the pure metal.
It is concluded, therefore, that the Kesbet Κασσίτερος brought from Cornwall by the Phoenicians was not “tin,” but an alloy of that metal with copper, which formed an important article of commerce with the Egyptians among other nations of antiquity, and that from hence was derived the name applied to the country of its production. Metallic tin, in the shape of grains, or stream tin, budel, was also no doubt largely exported by the Phoenician merchants, as well for the purposes of their purple dye as for other processes of manufacture, but the application of the name Κασσίτερος to this metal appears to have originated in a mistake of the Greeks.
Bristol, July 24th, 1851.
Between the two stories is a long inscription in Black Letter. This building is fully described and illustrated in “The Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain.”
The once splendid, but sadly mutilated, parochial Church of St. Mary Redcliff is now in a transition state, being under the architect’s protection and skill, and the mason’s workmanship to preserve it from total ruin, and renovate it to pristine beauty and splendour. Its architectural design and details, with historical and descriptive particulars, have been laid before the public in a volume which I published as far back as the year 1813. Of this noble edifice, Mr. Godwin, who is the approved and sole architect of these restorations, will explain its leading features and peculiarities of detail.
Of Glastonbury, the questionable seat of the first planting of Christianity in Britain, by St. Paul—of a thorn, said to have blossomed miraculously at Christmas, annually—of a former inscription, commemorating the name of a poetical, and perhaps historical personage, named “King Arthur;” the topographer and antiquarian student will find ample facts and comments, in his aged and amiable friend, the Rev. R. Warner’s “History of the Abbey of Glaston”; and of “The Town of Glastonbury,” 4to. 1826. Its Abbey buildings, with the unique Kitchen and Market Cross, are illustrated and described in the “Architectural Antiquities”—and more recent accounts in Phelps’s “History of the County of Somerset.” There are few localities of England more exciting and interesting to the antiquary and historian than Glastonbury. Not only in its monastic annals and remains, but its connection with one of, if not, the most estimable English monarchs, renders Glastonbury and its vicinity of first importance. The justly renowned and noble Alfred is associated with this locality: as commemorated by an inscription and monument still preserved in the adjoining fields. My last visit to Alfred’s tomb, and Glastonbury, was two years ago, in company with members of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, one of whom was the learned enthusiast, and much-regretted Dean of Westminster, who, at that time, and on the occasion of the Society’s meeting at Taunton, was more than usually fluent and amusing in his discourses. He gave us an account of his boyish days, (he was a native of the vale of Taunton), his rambles, geological studies, and map drawings; of the fattening qualities of the rich soil both to beast and to man; and that the farmers were, consequently, among the richest, happiest, and idlest of their class. Nature did all the work: they had only to feed on the fat of the land. Let us indulge a hope, and breathe a prayer, for the speedy recovery of this most estimable and profound geologist.
The Churchwardens’ accounts, and other documents, of Glastonbury, are numerous and truly interesting, as explained by Mr. Warner, who had access to them when preparing his History. They extend from 1301 till the reign of James I.
“Some account of the church of St. Mary Magdalene, Taunton,” by the Rev. Dr. Cottle, is noticeable here, from the beautiful style in which it is printed and illustrated by Vizetelly, Brothers, & Co., London, and for the account it gives of elaborate restorations which have been effected in that spacious, elegant, and interesting edifice. It also contains a paper on the “Gothic Towers of Somerset,” by B. Ferrey, Architect, which I can confidently refer, as containing admirable descriptions of and comments on some of those fine and interesting edifices, which at once distinguish and ornament this county. Amongst these are two, remarkable for their height, architecture, and lofty positions—Dundry and Glastonbury Torr. The latter has the date of 1408 cut in stone, and was erected as a “mark” by the merchant adventurers of Bristol, to guide captains in navigating the Bristol channel. That of the Torr occupies the summit of a conical hill of great height, and forms a conspicuous object from all the neighbouring eminences, from extended fen-lands, and from the Bristol channel.
Mr. Ferrey’s remarks on the sizes, proportions, designs, and construction of towers are judicious and worthy the particular notice of modern architects. In “Pugin’s Examples of Gothic Architecture,” 4to., 1836, are accounts by my old and esteemed friend Edward Jas. Willson, Architect of Lincoln, of the following remarkable buildings in “the vicinity of Bristol, with its suburbs.”
Himilco in narrating his voyage to the Œstrymnides, supposed to be the Scilly islands, furnished us by Festus Avienus, alludes to these coracles. He says, the natives are numerous, high-spirited, active and eagerly devoted to trade; yet they had only boats constructed of skin, sewed together, with which they, in a wonderful manner, made their voyages. Doubtless these were distended with wicker work. We have well authenticated accounts of voyages of considerable distance, at much later periods, made in these apparently fragile vessels.
The origin of the coracles or corachs is thus given, in Wood’s Enquiry concerning the Primitive Inhabitants of Ireland. The followers of Simeonbreac, who had sought shelter in Greece, from oppression in Ireland, found, when their population grew numerous, that the Greeks subjected them to great hardship and slavery, obliging them to dig earth and raise mould, and carry it in sacks, or bags of leather, and place it upon rocks in order to form a fruitful soil. In consequence of this servitude, they came to a resolution of shaking off the yoke, and five thousand of them assembled, and made boats out of the leathern bags in which they used to carry the earth.
In these frail vessels they embarked, and bid adieu to the inhospitable shore on which they had sought a refuge.
From the evidence of language and matter, we have no slight reasons for supposing that Moses compiled the chief parts of the Book of Genesis, by arranging and connecting antient memorials, under the divine direction, and probably during the middle part of his life, which he spent in the retirement of Arabia. Thus, it is far from improbable that we have in this most antient writing in the world, the family archives of Amram and his ancestors, comprising the history of Joseph, written in great part by himself; documents from the hands of Jacob, Abraham, Shem, Noah, and possibly ascending still higher, authentic memorials from Enoch, Seth and Adam.
The Book must have been composed in one of three ways,—first, by immediate revelation of every circumstance from God; secondly, by a collection of antient traditions; or thirdly, from former documents. The first supposition is generally abandoned. The second, which is a common opinion amongst theologians in this country, would not injure the credibility of the book; since Lamech the father of Noah was contemporary with Adam, Shem the son of Noah lived in the time of Abraham, his son Isaac was contemporary with Japheth, &c. The third opinion is the one generally received by the German theologians.
Chersonesus was the ancient name of the peninsula which juts out southward from European Sarmatia, between the Palus Maeotis (Sea of Azov); it is now called the Crimea. It is mentioned as Chersonesus Taurica by Herodotus, who ascribed it to the promontory of the Taurica (IV.99). The isthmus which connects it with the mainland was called Thapsis, and there appears to have been a town of the same name upon it (Strabo, VII. p. 308; Pliny, IV. 26; Mela, II.1). According to Strabo, the full name of the city of Chersonesus or Chersonese (Ptolemy) was Chersonesus Heracleotica.
The earliest inhabitants of this peninsula appear to have been the Cimmerians, some of whom are known to have been driven out after the great Scythian invasion, but a remnant of this nation has been shown to have continued on the Palus Maeotis by the Strymonites (Herodotus, IV. 11, 12). Strabo refers to these as having been gradually displaced by the Scythians, who occupied the Chersonese Bosphorus. By these, the city of Chersonesus was founded, upon a promontory often called Parthenium, and near this the Crimea is undivided. Who these Taurii were is a question of much difficulty. Strabo (VII. p. 300) calls them a Scythian people, but Herodotus (IV.99) clearly distinguishes the Taurii from the Scythians as being a different nation. The inhabitants of the southern part of the peninsula are not infrequently called Taurica or Scythotaurica, arising from the mixed names, from the testimony of Herodotus and the two facts that it was once under the older Scythic people known as the Taurii, and afterwards occupied by a latter race of Scythians. The question of whether or not we are able to divide out the Cimmerians from Chersonesus, and partly from several analogous cases, it at least appears probable that the Taurii were a remnant of the old Cimmerian inhabitants, who maintained themselves in the mountains against the Scythian invaders.
*The name was probably derived from a ditch which in very ancient times ran across the isthmus, and which appears to have fulfilled its use ever since. The ditch would not be completed until the expedition of Pericles (IV. 320), which history places to the back of the peninsula itself. See the mention of it in Stephanus's De Urbibus. Herodotus, IV. 12; Bähr's notes on the passage (Herodotus, IV).
The name Tauri is supposed to be derived from an old root “Tau,” meaning a mountain. The Tauri were reputed by the Greeks to be wholly savage; to strangers, they were said to offer human sacrifices, especially unwalled mariners, to a virgin goddess, whom, according to Herodotus, the Greeks themselves confused with Hecate, the daughter of Uranus. Her worship was traced to the promontory of Parthenium (Herodot. IV.103; Strabo, p. 308; Mela, II.1; Diod. Sic. IV. 45). This legend enters into the composition of the Iphigenia in Tauris of Euripides, and is several times referred to by the Roman poets.
The other words do not occur. There must be some mistakes in the filling—give me some other clue. State the subject; say whether it lies in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. If you have nothing else at hand to enter, well also.
In haste,
W. Gregory
Bristol, 6 Jan 1841
My Dear Sir,
I am hurrying with your [work]—it will be finished tonight or Friday, or ready for the press. What shall I do with it? I have undertaken Mr. Smith to ask he may think there will be some difficulty in the other plates with plan, pottery, the wine bowl, for any other worker to get over, which, I propose to do another engraving of the Proteus or, as I hope, my experience will give you quite as good. Please say so by return of post or it is sent.
Mr. Smith says he will after [content unclear].
He has sent nine pieces of [Bristol?] besides the one with Apollo.
If you agree, I have nothing more here than I know what to do with and must make it. It will devote some time to spirit. I have it ready before I start.
Yours in great haste,
[Signature unclear, possibly W. Buckland]
Duan VI. Fingal
Now, when the sound of melody had ceas’d,
Old Carril rose, and thus Fingal address’d:
In Tura’s rocky cavern Erin’s chief
Disconsolate remains, absorb’d in grief
Resolv’d no more to shine in martial fields,
To thee his father’s sword the hero yields;
Whose arm destructive, as the storms that blow,
Hath Ullin rescued, and dispers’d the foe.
Accept, O king, the sword of Semo’s son!
Who now concludes his fame for ever gone,
Like vapours blown, and scatter’d by the wind,
That leave no vestige of their tract behind.
To him Fingal: again the sword restore
To its brave master; who deserves it more?
His soul is great, his arm in danger strong,
His deeds will be the theme of future song.
How many are recorded who o’erthrown,
Yet after, like the son of heav’n, have shone?
Great son of Starno! whose imperial sway
Extends o’er Lochlin, give thy griefs away;
The bravest are sometimes compell’d to bend,
But virtue always conquers in the end.
The sun of heav’n, thus clouded for a space,
To southern regions flies, and hides his face;
But, bursting forth again, his orb displays,
And lights the nether world with keener rays.
300–325
Duan VI. Fingal
From streamy Cona Grumal drew his birth,
His brave achievements fill the spacious earth;
Insatiable of war from shore to shore,
The restless spirit of discord he bore.
His heart delighted in the strife of spears,
The clash of arms was music to his ears.
To Craca's sounding isle he cross’d the main,
And pour’d upon the coast his hostile train.
The king of Craca, from a neighbouring wood
Advancing, met him near the briny flood.
(For then he spoke to Brumo’s stone of pow’r,
Whose circle rose not distant from the shore.)
Fierce was the battle of the chiefs: each strove
Who should possess the snowy breast of love.
The fame of Craca’s beauteous daughter came
To Grumal; where he sat at Cona’s stream:
To win the snowy-bosom’d maid he swore,
Or lose his life on Craca’s echoing shore.
Three days they fought, and bath’d in blood the ground,
But Grumal vanquish’d on the fourth was bound.
Far from his friends, in chains, they left alone
The prince, confin’d at Brumo’s horrid stone;
Where ’twas asserted spectres walk’d their rounds,
And fill’d the midnight air with fearful sounds.
Yet he surviv’d, and all these suff’rings past,
Shone glorious as the beam of heav’n at last;
They fell beneath his hand, and now his name
We have recorded with the first in fame.
326–353
Duan VI. Fingal
Ye bards strike up, and let your songs unfold
The warlike actions of the kings of old.
In tournaments their fierce rencounters tell,
That on their fame I may delighted dwell;
And Starno’s son, invited by your lays,
May yield to sleep, and set his mind at ease.
In Mora’s heath they slept; the surly blast
Of dusky night loud whistling o’er them pass’d;
While from a hundred mouths the song aspires,
A hundred minstrels strike at once their lyres:
The tale was ancient, and contain’d the praise
Of mighty warriors, famous in their days.
When shall I hear the bard’s melodious voice,
Of all the praise of Morven’s kings rejoice?
In Selma now no more the harp is strung,
The voice of music has been silent long!
The bard is with the great in battle dead,
And all renown has from our mountains fled.
Mean time the ruddy sun his light displays,
And Cromla glimmers to his early rays:
When Lochlin’s king, arising with the morn,
Bids them o’er Lena wind his bugle horn.
The sons of ocean, waked by the sound,
Rise on the heath; and silent gath’ring round,
Dejected mount the wave, and to the gales,
That rush from Ullin, spread their snowy sails.
354–379
Duan VI. Fingal
Like Morven’s mist they float before the wind,
And mark, with frosty paths, the seas behind.
No sooner Swaran’s fleet had disappear’d,
Than for the chase his hounds the monarch cheer’d:
White-breasted Bran, (the fav’rite of Fingal),
With Luath, Neart, and Ker, he bid them call.
Let Ryno—but alas! upon the heath,
He slumbers silent in the bed of death.
Let Fillan then, and Fergus blow my horn;
Hail, with the music of the chase, the morn,
That Cromla’s deer may hear the sudden sound,
And from their secret lairs affrighted bound.
Along the wood the piercing clangours spread,
The roes of echoing Cromla rising fled.
A thousand dogs, let off at once pursue,
Swift-bounding through the waving heath they flew.
By ev’ry greyhound fell a spotted buck;
And three the matchless speed of Bran o’ertook.
Roes, deer, and goats, promiscuous load the plain;
One near the tomb, o’er Ryno rais’d, lay slain.
This casual incidence the father view’d,
And gushing tears afresh his cheeks bedew’d.
He visited, once more, the lonely place,
Where silent slept the swiftest at the chase,
And sighing said: no more shalt thou awake,
The joyful feast of Cromla to partake!
380–405
Alfred Dunkin Esq.
Dartford
Kent
The Irish often trace genealogies to antiquity in allegory. This described as "the bounty of the monarch morning?" by the bards. The truth speaks of the Lake Slior (which may explore the great slope & water) as the seat of the industry contributing the few spirits. The legend connected with an animal god Droyant (Noah?) the great cattle protector. Droyant the son of a lake woman or sea cause (who spread sand themselves in an old spirit & replenished the isle). The state produced a secondary order with the higher deity raised to Neptune or Cernunnos.
The ancient thought of Britain is reported that here the buildings of the ship of Noyant (aka Neptune) was a celestial one, long the wisdom of Neptune’s cult, and its art and masonry arrived adapted here. Slior itself is attested to in natural French writings connected through Ivern & through the lake. Slion must refer to a cairn or cairn-dwelling of broad raised stones. It is thought "Kelts" knew this, the isle (dim or shining beams masonry) having been drawn (the power in the monuments) to great covenant movement to testify the Rock (or Tain to Irish the Stone of Briton as covenant movement to deity as the ark).
The first bard described the holy petition as Boitain—"The shore peaceful raised under safe forms."
The wife, Noah, of the legends a river divinity "mother sea bright"...
...the poet’s bard writes "describes the front of the home mighty look" of the island of Britain was raising the state of Kelts."
"The raven... which forth to prove from the ark" and "the waters were dried up from the earth" is signified in British mythology under the name of "Morran" i.e. "the raven of the sea" & is reputed to be the first-born of the architect goddess.
Gravesend. In accordance with their usual practice of nightly seeking a shelter upon land, these adventurous Celts disembarked and encamped upon the western heights. Pleased with the admirable position of the site—the pure spring which freely welled forth—combined with the promise of other requisites their simple wants demanded—they adapted the spot for a permanent location; and excavating the sandy soil, formed for themselves dwellings. Once fixed, they rapidly multiplied, and their progeny spread into the neighbouring districts, where Nature reigned in dreary and undisturbed solitude.
The rigour of the northern climes, in which the lot of some tribes was cast, entailed the necessity of abodes, which should effectually be a protection from the severity of cold. Calling to our service analogical instances, aided by collateral evidence, and the examinations we have made, we feel convinced, that natural caves in the earth, from their warmth, were primarily adapted to this use; and when these became insufficient, artificial excavations were dug with rude flint instruments.
In the primitive stages of barbaric life, similar habitations appear to have been generally adopted.* The first settlers in Egypt were a colony of Ethiopians and ...
* The authors of the Pictorial History of England, although they have laboured hard to deny the antiquity of the first settlement of Britain, are however finally compelled to admit much against their ...
...were Troglodyte, or inhabitants of caves, pits or grottoes.* The Horites who dwelt in Mount Seir, were Troglodyte, as the word חֹרִי imports. Strabo describes Troglodyte dwelling on each side of the Arabian Gulf. In the Koran,† a tribe of Arabians is mentioned, (the tribe of Thamud,) "who hewed houses out of the mountains, to secure themselves." In the Bible, are many allusions to subterraneous residences, thus: "Because of the Midianites, the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains and caves, and strongholds."‡ — Judges, vi. 2. In these secure resorts they sought refuge in periods of distress; "When the men of Israel saw they were in a strait, then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in pits," &c.
That the residences of the aborigines in this island were subterraneous, we have indeed corroborative indications, "that the first migration from the one [Gaul?] to the other [Britain], took place at a very early period, most probably considerably more than a thousand years before the commencement of our era."§
* Alberti, fol. 1. a. † The Koran, ch. xv and xvi. ‡ 1 Sam. xiii, 6, and Heb. xi, 37—8. Vide also Jer. xl, 9.
§ "On Friday morning, Nov. 21, 1845, the surface of the ground in 'The Paddock' at Orpington, Kent, suddenly gave way and developed, at the depth of sixteen feet, subterraneous arched chambers. The soil is sand. 'The Paddock' is a plot of ground devoted for the gardens of the peasantry, and the subsidence happened in that portion occupied by Master Willoughby." There is little doubt but that these caverns were the residences of the aboriginal Britons.
"The formation of these pits may be ascribed to a tribe of Celts who had previously voyaged up the river Cray in wicker coracles. It must be recollected, that then, the river, unconfined by artificial barriers, had no limits, but what nature herself provided, and consequently overflowed the whole of the valley between the hills, rendering it one vast morass, from the Thames to the source of the Cray. The ..."
Top margin note: Fulfillment of the determination of the Jewish curse where "the Edomites exhorted the pictures of Petra 'those that dwelled in the clefts of the rocks, that boasted the height of the hill.'"
Middle margin note: Josephus mentions the cave in which he was hidden, where he submitted to Vespasian.
Bottom margin note: Pelissier smoked out the natives in the Syrian cave—artillery killed them all in the operation.
...proofs furnished us by the authors of the classic era: amongst whom, we may incidentally enumerate Ephorus, Diodorus Siculus, and Dion Cassius. The excavations in this county, consisted of three circular caverns, arranged equilaterally with a connecting passage about four feet high.* The entrance with some times a chimney or vent, at extreme points.—The depth however varies—[some we have examined at Stanhill and Stankey, (opposite parts of the great town belonging to Caswallon, which Cæsar stormed,) have been eight feet, twelve feet, fourteen feet and even twenty feet below the surface of the ground.] Charcoal, bones, stone celts (and)...
* Ephorus was a pupil of Isocrates, who desired him to write a history, which he composed from the return of the Heraclidae into the Peloponnesus to the twentieth year of Philip of Macedon. It obtained him a brilliant reputation. His geography is often mentioned and criticised by Strabo. But he is extolled for his knowledge by Polybius, Diodorus, and Dionysius Halicarnassus. Sharon Turner ii. 41.
In the Maidstone Journal, March 1845, is an account of a discovery by Mr. J. Dunkin, of similar excavations on the heights immediately above Kit’s Coty house, near Maidstone. Dunkin describes many similar pits in the heaths, fields and woods, near Crayford. He says that some of them, are ten, some...
...in one instance a flint arrow-head) have been discovered fifteen, and others twenty fathoms deep. At the mouth, and thence downward, they are narrow, like the tunnel of a chimney, or passage of a well, but at the bottom they are large and of great compass, insomuch that some of them have several rooms or partitions, one within another, strongly vaulted and supported with pillars of chalk. In Gibson’s Camden, there is a rude woodcut of some caverns near Tilbury, Essex, “spacious caverns in a chalky cliff, built very artificially of stone to the height of ten fathoms and somewhat straight at the top. A person who had been down to view them, gave me a description of them.” The chambers in the caverns which Camden depicts, consist either of a large space, with semicircular recesses, or of two chambers, each with three semicircular recesses connected by a passage. The universality of the practice is shown in the caves which were discovered in Ireland, in 1829, which are described in the “Transactions of the Antiquarian Society of London,” vol. xxiii. (Figs. 52, 53, and 54.)
A person who peregrinated England and Wales in the time of Henry VIII, and whose descriptions, whenever he enters into detail, are so curious that we sigh over his usual brevity, and wish that he were as prolix as the travellers of our own age—thus describes similar pits near Caernarvon: “There be a great number of pits made with hand large like a bowl at the head, and narrow in the bottom, overgrown in the swart with fine grass, and be scattered here and there about the quarters where the head of Kenner river is, that cometh by Caernarvon. And some of these will receive a hundred men, some two hundred. They be in the Black Mountain.” Old England, p. 20.
The excavations at Pen Pits, near Bourton, in Somersetshire, appear to have been a town composed of these subterraneous dwellings. Of this curious relic of antiquity, Sir R. C. Hoare makes these observations—“The extent of ground comprised within our plan, amounts to about seven hundred acres, of which, nearly half, have been brought into cultivation: but I have no doubt, but that the whole of this fine plain was originally excavated into pits. In my own time the southern declivity of the hill, and another large tract near it have been levelled, and a considerable allotment near Pen Lodge is now undergoing the same process. These excavations seem also to have extended along the eastern banks of the river..."
These hills were alone habitable as a resort of the wild beast. Asp. Hunting ancient Britain. The poet Nemesian, the Somerville of his day, speaks of Asp in a hunting poem v. 123:
But not the Spartan dog or swift Molossian,
Famed around you are; for further Britain
Sends forth a hound that’s swift of foot, to fit
To urge the chase in this part of our globe. Chernis were known in Britain before the final century of the Roman era. Although these attempts of late writers have been distinguished from their creative [traces] altogether in distinction, we do not feel inclined to admit such primitive errors in the remembrance of the former lot. [Illegible] One never can admit that the aborigines were altogether the creators of the supposed earliest pottery, as we see the reasoning to our minds.
...upon removing a few inches of the soil, at the bottom of the pits, which still remain as dry as when excavated. In these abodes,* large families of men, women, and children were promiscuously huddled together, as even in the present century was the practice of certain savages in Southern Africa.
The situation of the location on the western heights comprised all the essentials requisite for early settlements—being on the brow of an eminence† in a copse of wood, near marshes formed by a creek of the Thames. These circumstances conjoined, necessarily engendered myriads of reptiles,‡ which, with the fruit...
Stow, as far as the farm house at Bonham, and from the appearance of the ground, on the other side, I have reason to think they were continued along the western banks of the said river. These pits form their form in an inverted cone, and are very unequal in their dimensions. In some instances we see double pits, divided by a slight partition of earth; and the soil in which they are dug, is of so dry a nature, that no water has ever been known to stagnate in them. Antient Wilt., p. 353, 26.
Ephorus says the primeval tribes abode in subterraneous habitations, which they called argillas, communicating by trenches. Ap. Strabo. Geo. lib. v. p. 375. Argel in Celtic signifies a covert, an enclosure or a place covered over. In the Afallannau of Merdhdin we find:
a dyf yn argel yn argodydd,The word is again used in the Englynion Beddau of Taliesin:
will come in the covert in the lofty woods.
1. W. Arch., p. 152.
Bet Llia Gweltit in argel arudduwThe grave of Llia the Gwyddelian in the covert of Arduwdy, under the grass and withered leaves. 1. Arch., p. 80.
dan y gwellt ac gruewel.
Mr. Saull, speaking of early settlers selecting such sites, observes—"The reason for their preference I conceive to be found in the abundant supply of reptiles and such like animals, consisting...
...the earth spontaneously produced, formed the principal food of the primitive inhabitants, ere they arrived at the epoch, when they merged the hunter into the nomadic phase. For nations like individuals, advance insensibly from infancy to youth; and history has invariably demonstrated, that the greatest nations, like the noblest rivers, date their rise in obscurity. These pioneers* in the Cantian wilds, were of peaceful pursuits—war formed no portion of their pleasures...
...of snakes, frogs, mice, and a variety of other small game.† We do not altogether coincide in this herpetologic hypothesis, although it is an extremely ingenious theory. Notitia Britannica.
† The Mosaic record testifies, "that God said, Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be given for meat." The earliest profane writers frequently allude to the innocence and happiness of man in that primeval period, when he only consumed the spontaneous productions of the soil. A late author in proof of a theory, that the "longevity of a frugivorous people is most amazing," has given for authorities Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian history; Berossus who collected the Chaldean monuments; Mochus, Hestiæus, Hieronymus the Egyptian, and those who composed the Phœnician History; also Hecatæus, Hellanicus, Ephorus, Nicolaus, Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, Strabo and Jerome of Egypt. Ovid says:
Void of care and crime
The soft creation slept away their time:
The teeming earth yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow.
Content with food, which nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed.
Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnished out a feast."
Sharon Turner says that this "class of mankind was composed of distinct families, that multiplied into separate tribes, living insulated from each other; and rarely coalescing into nations; though sometimes confederating for the purposes of war and depredation."
Dio Niceus out of Xiphilin's Epit. concerning those Britons who dwell in the interior, says they till no ground, but live upon prey...
...their pleasures—and in after days, when their descendants became the proprietors of flocks and herds, the perpetual verdure presented in the valley, gave its inhabitants but little cause to range in search of fresh pastures—as these flocks multiplied, their produce combined with the results of the chase, formed the chief subsistence of the people. We are however anticipating the course of events—for, before this material change occurred, ages had rolled away.
The country around, to this day, presents marks of the dwellings of the aborigines; and one of the excavations at the verge of Stone-Park Wood, still bears the evidently Celtic appellation of "Caerberlaber's Hole."
Tradition has brought the name to us, as Caerberlaber, or Clablabber. Even the pronunciation...
...and hunting, and the fruit of trees. Their weapons are a shield and short spear, in the lower end whereof is a piece of brass like an apple, that by shaking it, they may terrify the enemy. This short spear was the bronze celt, so many of which, have been found in this county, and which invariably were cast with a loop for fastening the instrument. Vide p. 7 ante. Probably the shape of the celt may have varied, being one time like a bill-hook, or tomahawk, or again like a bowie knife or μάχαιρα: it was a short slaughtering tool, a celt, or cutter, which at Gen. xxii, 6, is called ma-celti.
For this orthography we are indebted to W. Crafter, esq. "A Traveller" in 1803, writes, In the bosom of Swanscombe wood, part of which is said to be in Southfleet parish, is a wonderful cavern, divided into detached cells, or apartments, excavated from a hill facing the south, at the bottom of which you enter it. This is probably of very remote antiquity. The woodmen tell you that once in thirty years or thereabouts, the rage to see it rises in the minds of the neighboring villagers; and they make parties to go and regale there, taking lights that they may find their way out.
...palpably demonstrates the Celtic origin of the nomenclature. All names of places being to a certain extent arbitrary, we can but trace the meaning of the separate syllables, after their conversion into a discriminative or descriptive appellation, for mnemonical convenience by the settlers. The first syllable is evidently from clo’, locked or shut in; which, again, is a compound of cau’, an enclosure. Llai, is less, from le-is or es, the lower place. Ber, the final part...
Our guide had not been down there for thirty years, but he says he then saw names and dates thirty years back. Our “Traveller” gives a very far-fetched version of the origin of the name, as follows: “The last owner was a terrific kidnapper or freebooter, who may have lived probably many hundred years ago, and whose name seems to originate, like many other proper names of old, from his possessions, caen a’r dre the dwelling or habitation in the wood of trees, and now by colloquial shortening become clabber, to which they add his profession napper; and Clabber Napper’s hole has been the terror of the rising generations, possibly ever since the time of our great Alfred.”
“There was formerly known, as I am well informed, a similar cave in the extremity of the chalk cliffs near to where Gravesend is now built, and subject to the same marauder. They go so far as to say, that there was an underground intercourse between them (four miles!); but unless we were assured that Clabber Napper was a monk, I would not believe it.” (Rather illiberal.) “The present appearance of this cave is, that its entrance which was sloping downwards, has now a foss of ten or more feet deep; and over its principal cavity is a well-like hole, which the guide judiciously considered was a fall of the earth over the crown of the cavity. He said the people called it his chimney widened by the operations of time.” Gent’s. Mag. An account of an examination of the cavern in 1845, may be found in the Chron. Kent.
Philologists may trace the word in different tongues—thus: Latin claudo and cludo; French écluse; Italian chiusa; German schliessen; and Teutonic schliessen.
The earth before us calls to men.
...ticle er, water; to which, the letter b, signifying life, motion, &c., being prefixed, makes ber, spring-water. Thus hypothetically rendering for an explanation of the syllabic combination, what it certainly is geographically, a town, or walled enclosure near the spring water in the lower place. A different solution may perhaps be furnished from fewer elements, thus: caer, a town; b, er, l, arbhar, a camp. The Celtic language being, says Rowland, “but a broken Hebrew,” accordingly the word might thus be explained, קיר ceer, a citadel; באר ber, a well, or wells; and ארבע arba, four: the first is being but a sound.
Upon this subject we have already recorded a deliberate opinion—vide The Report of the Proceedings of the British Arch. Assoc. at the Congress held at Canterbury, in 1844—as many of our readers may not have seen the volume, we take this opportunity of presenting the paragraphs to their notice.
Affinity to the Hebrew has been heretofore considered the test by which other Semetic languages might be ascertained; and yet, it is more than doubtful whether Hebrew be Semetic. What we call Hebrew is called throughout the Scriptures, the language of Canaan, and consequently of the descendants of Ham, and not of Shem. The evidence in the Bible does not rest alone on the mere calling this tongue the language of Canaan, although that is very strong. There is more convincing testimony. In the account of the covenant between Laban and Jacob (Gen. xxxi, 47), the heap of stones made as a memorial of that agreement, shows that Laban spoke a different language from Jacob. Thus speaks Moses—"And Laban called it Jegar sahadutha, but Jacob called it Galeed.” The first is Syriac, the second Hebrew.
Two men, not only of the same nation, but of the same family, each speaking the language of the people of the country among which they had been brought up—Laban, Syriac; Jacob, Canaanitish; both had lost the original Chaldee of their ancestor Terah. Yet the Hebrew has been considered the Holy language, which some even go so far as to call a tongue revealed to Moses—which it could not have been, for we find it spoken by Jacob long before the time of Moses—it is very plain that it was that of the cursed Canaanites. p. 40. Beham, Orig. Idolatry.
This makes ceer-ber-’l-arba, the city of the four wells. And we might compare Gen. xxiii, 1, “Kirjath-arba,” the city [not of the giant Arba, but] of four sides, a quadrangle; like as Plutarch, and Ennius apud Solinus, tell us that the old name of Rome was “Quadrata”—the Welsh for four is peduar.
North from the settlement, in the adjacent parish of Swanscombe, upon the land occupied by the Messrs. Hassell, “the surface of the ground has many times sunken down,” and developed the subterraneous residences of the aborigines. In the summer of 1845, “whilst ploughing this land with four horses, the crown of the arch of a cavern, till then unknown, gave way beneath the feet of the cattle, when two of the animals sank to such a depth, that they were with much difficulty extricated.”
The barrows, wherein, rest the mortuary deposits of the primeval possessors of the soil, are in the southern portion of the forest, which, at the period we are treating, was of enormous extent—infested with wolves and other animals of the chase. Even at the present day, it is one of the largest in the county of Kent, although every year witnesses a decrease in its magnitude from the policy pursued by landlords of disforesting their lands, so continually pursued.
Some years after the settlement of the first colonists upon the western side of the bay, another tribe of wandering Celtæ, selected the opposite or eastern heights, now called Wingfield Bank, for their dwelling place. One excavation only, (partly filled up,) ...
Vide West Kent Guardian and Maidstone Journal, pas.
The Athenæum
No. 1062
Saturday, October 17
Historical and Theological Discussion
In this continuation of historical analysis, the focus remains on reconciling archaeological findings with biblical records. The articles delve into:
- The accounts of ancient expeditions and conflicts, such as those involving the Egyptians and their neighbors.
- Detailed discussions on the authenticity and interpretation of historical timelines, especially those derived from Mosaic texts.
- The religious and cultural significance of ancient Egyptian monuments and inscriptions.
Selections from Goethe’s Dramas
The later sections include a poetic and dramatic analysis of Goethe’s works. A notable passage describes the translation challenges in capturing the original spirit of Goethe's German into English:
"Who to hold a thing of beauty, must first understand the words that give it form."
This poetic rendition encapsulates the translator's challenge and the artistry required in adapting Goethe’s intricate prose.
In-depth Theological Reflection
The text concludes with a reflective note on the coexistence of faith and historical inquiry, emphasizing the need for diligent research when interpreting ancient texts.
now remains, (1845,) for the cultivators of the land, considering these aboriginal residences as nuisances, have invariably endeavoured to destroy them; and were it not that the tumuli are in woods retained in their normal condition, they, too, would have shared the same fate, and been levelled with the surrounding soil. Even the Romans respected not the vestiges of their predecessors, for they filled up many of the Bri- tish excavations, and actually directed one of their vi- cinal ways over an aboriginal subterraneous habitation, beneath the Northfleet portion of the very road, the reparation of which, was the vexata questio, that caused so much litigation between Mr. Silvester, the present occupier of Springhead, and the Southfleet and Northfleet parishes in 1845.
Religion, &c.
Although the arts and sciences amongst these tribes had retrograded, yet there still remains sufficient con- clusive evidence, satisfactorily to convince us, that they had preserved a traditional acquaintance of the wor- ship of the One true God. It may reasonably be sup- posed, that each body of people or tribe, after sepa- rating from the parent stock, to seek an independent settlement, in empty and unknown regions, conveyed with it a portion of the faith of its fathers—a faith transmitted from Babel's walls.5 Besides, analogous
circumstances lead us to infer, that each of these tribes migrated under the command of young and en- terprising supernumeraries of the military and sacer- dotal castes;—who multiplying according to the course of Nature—threw off other colonists for other climes, who reflected the chief features, both religious and poli- tical, of the Noahetic root whence all had alike sprung.
The corrupted religious worship of the aborigines we
are describing, is inferred from existing and chronolo-
gical and analogous data, to have been the striation ser-
pent, or dragon.6 The former was the most visible object
in creation presented to their notice—and in the climes,
whence they emigrated, had been adopted as the object
Southey in his Curse of Kehama, says of "the Judgement Seat" in the Infernal regions or Padalon:—
A golden throne before them vacant stood,
A throne, immense as are the bounds of night,
From whose radiant summit, floods of light,
With listed hand suspended, and subdued,
What little burns, what little glows, around.A fourth was waiting. "They see the tree of the two
Unfolded its wings! They bear all the blood,
That here they evil-bent their first abode,
And red they are belial & they all stood."As thus, for their mistakes, they stood tormented there.
Kehama enquires for what misdeeds the "who bear the Gol- den Throne," are thus "tormented there?" The first replies, "because he was the first misser; and the second says:
To or my Brethren of Mankind the first
Usurping power, set up a throne sublime,
A king of Conqueror, therefore thus accuse.
For ever I in vain repeat the crime!
In the Children of Mankind the first,
Of goals not brought & planning—led cause,
of impious falsehood! These his cause!
For ever I in vain the crime bewail.
"A Time was when the Universe was darkness and water, wherein certain Animals of frightful and compound forms were generated. There were Serpents and other Creatures with the mixed shape of one another, of which pictures are kept in the Temple of Belus, at Babylon." Berossus. * The name of the national God Bel, is supposed to signify nothing more than Lord, and was also sometimes appropriated to deified heroes. (Kircher. CEdip. Egypt.)
of adoration. In the Sanchoniathon the Origin of Idolatry is traced to the descendants of Cain, who began with the worship of the Sun. The serpent was allegorical of this luminary; and he is depicted biting his tail, and with his flexible body coiled into a circle, in order to indicate the ordinary course of the sun. Under this guise it was an emblem of time and eternity.
The Sanchoniathon fully verifies the sacred writings —it shews, that in the earliest ages, one God was the sole object of adoration; and that the corruptions of idolatry, arose from interested and avaricious individu- als among the initiated and learned, making a mystery of everything for their own profit and advantage, by trafficking on the fears and hopes of mankind with "cunningly devised fables, sorceries, and abomina- tions," by which they passed off falsehood as truth, hid the divine light from the eyes of mankind, and
plunged them into the horrid mysteries of a demoniac idolatry. Thus speaks the Sanchoniathon:—
All these things the son of Thabion the first hierophant among the Phœnicians, allegorized and mixed up with the occurrences and acci- dents of nature and the world, and delivered to the priests and prophets the superintendents of the mysteries; and they, perceiving the rage for their allegories increase, delivered them to their successors and to fo- reigners, of whom one was Isiris, the inventor of these letters, the bro- ther to Chna, who was called the first Phœnician.
Sir William Jones says, "that one great spring and fountain of all idolatry was, the veneration paid by men to the sun, or vast body of fire, which looks from his sole dominion like the God of this world;" "But,"38 says Richard Watson "the scriptural account of the matter refers the whole to wilful ignorance and a corrupt heart: 'they did not like to retain God in their knowledge.'"
38 To this may be added, what indeed proceeds from the same sources, the disposition to convert religion into outward forms; the endeavour to render it more impressive upon the imagination through the senses; the substitution of sentiment for real religious principle; and the licence which this gave to inventions of men, which in pro- cess of time became complicated and monstrous. Watson, Bibl. Theol. Dict. Idolatry sprang from mistaking scripture; so also witchcraft and sorcery, which hold near affinity to idolatry, and seem to have had the first beginning from an imitation of God’s oracles: "God spake in divers manners," Heb. i. By dreams, by Urim, by Prophets, 1 Sam. 28, 6, 7. When the Lord would no none of these answer, King Saul then sought a witch. In Holy Writ there are hosts of idols mentioned, of whom little or nothing is spoken save their names. Of this nature are those chambers of imagery, wherein all forms of creeping things were portrayed on the walls. Ezek. 8.
Degenerate man, in weakness and decay,
Left to himself became an easy prey,
As earth was peopled, plenteous vice increased
And love for God’s parental blessings ceased
And wandering man on Nature’s works bestowed
The worship to his God he justly owed,
The Ark rested on the mountain of Ararat known by the Armenians as Naxcis "the mother of the world" & situated in N. lat. 39° 30' and E. long. 44° 30' nearly in the middle of the vast ridge of Taurus encircling the earth, as the Arabian geographers describe it, which runs eastward from Cicilia (Cilicia) through the whole extent of Asia; portrayed lies newly sundering between the Persian provinces of the Russian expansion for Minor Kingdom Tract. 60.
CHAP. IV.
PHŒNICIAN COLONIES & COMMERCE.
"The breath of heaven has blown away
What toiling earth had piled."
Scattering wide heart and crafty hand,
As breezes strew on ocean sand
The fabrics of a child."
—KEBLE
B.C. 2000–750
About three centuries after the first coloni- zation of Britain, by the descendants of the sons of Japheth, the island was visited by those enter- prising navigators, the Phœnicians; "whose antiquity is of the earliest date;" and who engrossed all the traffic carried on at that time in the world. The dwellers on the Kentish shores equally imbued with a love for the sea, gladly cultivated their connexion and sought their commerce: and the productions of Britain were exchanged for those of Tyre, to reciprocal advantage." The great extent of the coast possessed by the Britons, was favourable to their continuing the pursuit of a maritime life, long after their occupation of the Kentish shores.
Richard of Cirencester affirms that it was about A.M. 3000, that Britain was first visited by the Phœnician merchants. Lib. 2, c. i. § VI.
Holy Writ furnishes us with a concise pedigree of the descendants of Noah, and the division of the earth amongst them. It states that Noah begat Japheth, who begat Javan, one of whose offspring, was Tar- shish. Amongst this race, says the inspired chronolo- gist, "were the Isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations;"—and in ourselves, their descendants, we experience the fulfilment of the prophetical bene- diction of Noah "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem."
Wherever the Phœnicians penetrated, there they planted colonies, and it has been feasibly supposed,2 that the Gaël or Gauls, were drawn from the two Galilees, and Gaulonitis, the inland provinces, Gael, or Gaul, to the ports the Phœnicians selected for fixing their establishments, and called themselves Gael.
TALIESEN in the ancient poem, entitled—The Appeasing of Lludd, thus graphically describes the first colonists.
Llyrwyd hîlias, aswns ei henywryns
Ewygrwn ffynonawdd Fyridd Gwyn,
Frydwych Awenwn Fynyn Ci wyn,
Llyfr fy awyllt ynn, Adran ei gynwyn!
Families of princes, bards of bliss,
Primæval forms of pride, they (of Merddin) wis,
Their numerous race, heroic as to have been,
The most ancient colony of yore; the first Isles Gaël is!
Nor to the haven of life, itself their ever boast,
Their destiny hath no being as to cost;
To whence their worldly stock did leave, And midst their long days, who could equal their weaves.
The nations, the offspring of Japhet, possess from Mount Taurus to the North, all the middle part of Asia, and all Europe, as far as the British Ocean, and give their names both to the places, and to the people. Origen, Lix. c. 2. We are aware of the attempt to prove from the etymology, that the descendants of Gomer, the eldest son of Japheth, first peopled the Isles of Britain, and, though we have been accused of too readily listening to tradition, yet over the earliest records who settled...
That the colonies they planted in Kent & Britain were drawn from those adjacent provinces to their own immediate territory, viz: Galilees, Gaulonitis, & Galatia. The analogy of the names of the colonists themselves is nearly seen: Gaels; Gauls; Gaeltach.
+ Fact 87% (no why)
The most ancient name for a stranger or foreigner in Irish is Gall, in modern use it is applied to Englishmen in the plural Gall.
It is a well-known fact that Celtic names of places are, invariably, descriptive.
X Note: Brownson (V.24) says the daughter of a Celtic prince, during her reign in Gaul, having had dealings with other nations, but while Hercules was placing Murus (Celtic walls) in Lycia, where he begat Geriones, she claimed his capture of strength. He bore to her a son named Galates, from whom the people were called Galates in comparison to numerous tribes of the Scythians. Servius. IV.9. The two are combined in Parthen. 30.
and Gaeltach, or Celtæ,3 and thenceforward, the abori- gines, whose descent was similar, were confounded as one race.
In this instance, we do not coincide with the learned and ingenious theory. It is nevertheless certain, that the radical part of the names of Gomer should be found in the appellation of the Cim- merians in Asia; Cimbri and Umbri in Gaul and Italy; and Cymri, Cambri and Cumbria in Wales and Cumberland, as the present day. Camden deduces it thus: "Gomer, Gomari, Gombreri, Gomerito, Kumero, Cymro, Kumri; and gives Josephus and Zonaras as autho- rities. Gomer in Hebrew Signifies Bounding, or the utmost border."
Sir W. Betham says, "It has escaped all observation, as far as I have discovered, that the country about Tyre and Sidon, at the earliest, antiently bore the name of Galilee, or country of the Gael on the sea coast; the very name Gael, the Phœnician colonies in Europe called themselves, and gave to their settlement in Europe; Gael, the Gael—country of—i.e., sea coast. The conclusion therefore appears irresistible, that the Gaels were those Phœnicians who conquered and settled Celtic Europe, at such remote antiquity that when they were found by the Romans in Gaul, Britain and Ireland, they had forgotten all but a tradition of their original country, their gods, their religion, and their language."
Diodorus Siculus says Galatæ is only another appel- lative of the race. Origen calls the Gaulish Druid Galatæ Druides. Galli is probably but the abbreviation of Galatai, a clipping prac- tice too often employed by the present generation in daily conver- sation, i.e., omnibus vulg. bus; railroad vulg. rail; steamboat vulg. steam or boat.
3 The Irish, the Gael of Scotland and the Manks, are now the only descendants of that antient people who have retained the language. The discovery, by Sir Wm. Betham, that in the Irish a people still exist who speak the language of the Phœnicians, is of the first historical importance, for by it, Phœnician inscriptions may be deciphered, and the extent of their commerce and naviga- tion, traced by the antient names of places in the world known to the antients. Plautus happily establishes the clear identity of the language of Hamilcar, of Carthage, itself a Phœnician colony, with the vulgar Irish of this day. Hanno the Carthaginian, in Plautus.
under the same cognomen. The Romans after- wards denominated the whole continent by the name of the people on the coast. The Hebrew, for Galilee is GALLI; and at Isaiah ix, 1, "Galilee of the nations," seems to be an expression referring to the connexion which Galilee had maintained with distant climes— as if it were the Mother of Colonies, "Galilee of the nations;" or, as in Matt. iv, 15, "Galilee of the Gen- tiles." In after days they...
The Greeks and Romans gave the general name of Celtæ to nearly all the interior natives and tribes who lived in the forests of Europe. It corresponds exactly to our name Indians, conferred on all the tribes of America. There were no people more Celt than one another, but it happened that some name was given for distinction. Celt was the genus; Gael, Gaul, Cymri, &c., the species.
The terms "Western Isles" and the "Isles of the Gentiles" are used indiscriminately by sacred and pro- fane writers, to express Britain of Tarshish. (The etymology of the name of Tarshish is mnemonically significant of its position.—The particles of which it is composed, demonstrate, according to the explanation of Sir William Betham, the identity of the Gaelic and Phœnician language.)
...exclaims in Carthaginian—Byth lim! mo thym noctothi neil ech anti dias machon. Which in current Irish would be written at this day—Beith liom mo thym noctaithe neil ach dias maoine.
In another sentence the Roman Plautus is accurate to a letter as in current Irish:—Han done fiill havan been filli in mustine. In like manner, Hanno's "Meipsi et en eiste dam, et alaim na cestin um." Is in current Irish, "Meisi et en eiste dam, et alaim na cestin um."
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Ancient Iberian Population
In reading your report of the very interesting communication of Mr. Wilson to the British Asso- ciation on the former inhabitants of the British Isles, I was somewhat surprised to find that he makes no mention of the existence of an ancient Iberian popu- lation over all Europe. Whether the existence of such a people has ever engaged the attention of eth- nologists, I am ignorant;—but facts seem to point so evidently to such a conclusion, that I cannot but think it must have been urged before. How else can we explain the geographical distribution of the Iberians? That they distributed themselves by aggressive land emigration or by maritime en- terprise seems alike impossible and inconsistent with their character and state of civilization, as it is universally represented by ancient authors.
On the other hand, if we consider what would be the effect on a thinly scattered and hunting popu- lation—for such we must consider the Iberian to have been—of the spread of a more condensed and energetic people from the region of the Black Sea, every phenomenon of their geographical po- sition seems to be completely explained.—Thus, by the advance of the invading race, the Iberians of North Russia and of the east coast of the Baltic would be driven still further north. We find, ac- cordingly, in Finland a race which still speaks a language allied to the Basque,—the acknowledged descendant of the old Iberian. But the great body of the Iberian race would retreat before the in- vaders through Germany and Gaul, and finally into Spain;—and here, in fact, we find the principal locality of this people. Those who inhabited the peninsulas of Greece and Italy would be cut off and driven southwards. In Greece the mountains of Arcadia would naturally form their last retreat. From Italy they could easily pass to Sicily:—the whole of which island we are informed they once
The Athenaeum
[Sept. 14]
...itself to this object. This medieval festival, there- fore, would have been altogether imperfect without the Carroccio. But when I call it "ancient," I mean in institution. The heavy timber car which I saw appeared quite new.
The whole of this procession marched more than other circumstances of a festivity belonging to the days when no Italian city was without its "fuor- usciti."
T.A.T.
Our Weekly Gossip
It is with no little satisfaction that we find that the remembrances of students in the school and...
Our Weekly Gossip
It is with no little satisfaction that we find that the remonstrances of students in general, and our own earnest and continued ones in particular, have borne some amount of fruit; and that Mr. Panizzi has been aroused to the necessity of im- proving the arrangements of the Reading Room of the British Museum,—especially as regards the means of reference. Advantage has been taken of the short period during which the Museum has been closed to prepare for the reading public a sur- prise in the shape of increased facilities at once for "finding" and for study. We believe that with a little further perseverance we shall yet get what we want. The changes are as follows:—Mr. Panizzi and his assistants have found accommo- dation for twenty more readers by removing the old catalogue desk, &c.,—have let in light to those sides of the reading rooms which before were totally dark by cutting through the gallery floors, —and have taken off the absurd wire fronts from the book-cases. These have been emptied, and judiciously re-filled by well-selected books on gene- ral and English history, state papers, and English topography, joined to the parliamentary and law papers, and the London Gazette, in one room,—and in the other, by works on biography and travels, the encyclopædias and dictionaries, as before, English classics, ancient classics, reviews, editions of the Bible, church history, Transactions of learned Societies, heraldry, calendars, almanacs, et id genus omne. The old printed and manuscript Catalogue has been removed from the west to the east room; where it is placed in a convenient posi- tion on one of the walls, and flanked on each side by a "supplementary" Catalogue in manuscript in 153 volumes, ranged on shelves placed along three sides of the room. Before these Catalogues stand rows of strong oak desks, on which they may be placed for consultation. The volumes are hand- somely bound; and they contain the titles of a great number of new works hitherto inaccessible, except with trouble, to the reader. We are told that fewer than a thousand titles are now only in arrear. The Grenville Library is also at length catalogued and made available. It is even possible now to get a pen that will write,—and, there being two addi- tional attendants, a book in less than half-a-day. The rooms are better furnished; and measures have been taken to let in extra light.—The rapidity