text:
Why Ask To Know The Date—The Clime?

Why ask to know the date—the clime? More than mere words they cannot be: Men knelt to God and worshipped crime, And crushed the helpless even as we.

But, they had learnt from length of strife— Of civil war and anarchy To laugh at death and look on life With somewhat lighter sympathy.

It was the autumn of the year; The time to labouring peasants, dear: Week after week, from noon to noon, September shone as bright as June. Still, never hand a sickle held; The crops were garnered in the field— Trod out, and ground by horses feet While every ear was milky sweet; And kneaded on the threshing floor With mire of tears and human gore. Some said, they thought that heaven's pure rain Would hardly bless those fields again. Not so—the all-benignant skies Rebuked that fear of famished eyes— July passed on with showers and dew And August glowed in showerless blue; No harvest time could be more fair Had harvest fruits but ripened there.

And I confess that hate of rest, And thirst for things abandoned now, Had weaned me from my country's breast And brought me to that land of woe.

Enthusiast—in a name delighting, My alien sword I drew to free One race, beneath two standards fighting, For loyalty, and liberty.

When kindred strive—God help the weak! A brother's ruth 'tis vain to seek: At first, it hurt my chivalry To join them in their cruelty; But I grew hard—I learnt to wear An iron front to terror's prayer; I learnt to turn my ears away From torture's groans as well as they.

By force I learnt what power had I To say the conquered should not die? What heart, one trembling foe to save When hundreds daily filled the grave?

Yet there were faces that could move A moment's flash of human love; And there were fates that made me feel I was not to the centre, steel.

I've often witnessed wise men fear To meet distress which they forsaw; And sinning cowards nobly bear A doom that thrilled the brave with awe:

Strange proofs I've seen how hearts could hide Their secret with a lifelong pride, And then, reveal it as they died— Strange courage, and strange weakness too, In that last hour when most are true, And timid natures strangely nerved To deeds from which the desperate swerved! These I may tell, but, leave them now. Go with me where my thoughts would go; Now all today, and all last night I've had one scene before my sight—

Wood-shadowed dales, a harvest moon, Unclouded in its glorious noon; A solemn landscape, wide and still; A red fire on a distant hill— A line of fires, and deep below, Another dusker, drearier glow— Charred beams, and lime and blackened stones Self-piled in cairns o'er burning bones; And lurid flames that licked the wood, Then quenched their glare in pools of blood.

But yestereve—No! never care; Let street and suburb smoulder there- Smoke hidden, in the winding glen, They lay too far to vex my ken.

Four score shot down—all veterans strong— One prisoner spared, their leader young— And he within his house was laid, Wounded, and weak and nearly dead. We gave him life against his will; For he entreated us to kill— And statue-like we saw his tears— And coldly fell our captain's sneers! 'Now heaven forbid!' with scorn he said 'that noble gore our hands should shed Like common blood—retain thy breath Or scheme, if thou canst purchase death. When men are poor we sometimes hear And pitying grant that dastard prayer; When men are rich, we make them buy The pleasant privilege, to die. O, we have castles reared for kings, Embattled towers and buttressed wings, Thrice three feet thick, and guarded well With chain and bolt and sentinel! We build our despots' dwellings sure; Knowing they love to live secure. And our respect for royalty Extends to thy estate and thee!'

The supplicant groaned, his moistened eye Swam wild and dim with agony. The gentle blood could ill sustain Degrading taunts, unhonoured pain. Bold had he shown himself to lead; Eager to smite and proud to bleed— A man, amid the battle's storm; An infant in the after calm.

Beyond the town his mansion stood Girt round with pasture-land and wood; And there our wounded soldiers lying Enjoyed the ease of wealth in dying.

For him, no mortal more then he Had softened life with luxury; And truly did our priest declare 'Of good things he had had his share.'

We lodged him in an empty place, The full moon beaming on his face, Through shivered glass, and ruins, made Where shell and ball the fiercest played. I watched his ghastly couch beside Regardless if he lived or died— Nay, muttering curses on the breast Whose ceaseless moans denied me rest:

'Twas hard, I know, 'twas harsh to say, 'Hell snatch thy worthless soul away!' But then 'twas hard my lids to keep, Through this long night, estranged from sleep. Captive and keeper, both outworn, Each in his misery yearned for morn; Even though returning morn should bring Intenser toil and suffering.

Slow, slow it came! Our dreary room Grew drearier with departing gloom; Yet, as the west[almost ineligible—possible 'night'.] wind warmly blew I felt my pulses bound anew, And turned to him—nor breeze, nor ray Revived that mould of shattered clay, Scarce conscious of his pain he lay— Scarce conscious that my hands removed The glittering toys his lightness loved; The jewelled rings, and locket fair, Where rival curls of silken hair, Sable and brown, revealed to me A tale of doubtful constancy.

['Forsake the world without regret'; I murmured in contemptuous tone; 'The world, poor wretch, will soon forget Thy noble name, when thou art gone! Happy, if years of slothful shame Could perish like a noble name! If God did no account require And being with breathing might expire!']--bracketed text lightly crossed out in the MS. And words of such contempt I said, Harsh insults o'er a dying bed, Which as they darken memory now Disturb my pulse and flush my brow; I know that Justice holds in store, Reprisals for those days of gore; Not for the blood, but for the sin Of stifling mercy's voice within.

The blood spilt gives no pang at all; It is my conscience haunting me Telling how oft my lips shed gall On many a thing too weak to be, [Even in thought,]--bracketed text not crossed out [Even in thought, my enemy]--bracketed text in random version on the net And whispering ever, when I pray, 'God will repay—God will repay!'

[He does repay, and soon and well, The deeds that turn his earth to hell, The wrongs that aim a venomed dart Through nature at the Eternal Heart.

Surely my cruel tongue was cursed; I know my prisoner heard me speak; A transient gleam of feeling burst And wandered o'er his haggard cheek.

And from his quivering lips there stole A look to melt a demon's soul, A silent prayer more powerful far Then any breathed petitions are, Pleading in mortal agony To mercy's Source but not to me.

Now I recall that glance and groan, And wring my hands in vain distress; Then I was adamantine stone, Nor felt one touch of tenderness.]--bracketed text lightly crossed out in the MS.

My plunder ta'en[?] I left him there, Without one breath of morning air, To struggle with his last despair, Regardless of the wildered cry Which wailed for death yet wailed to die.

I left him there unwatched, alone, And eager sought the court below, Where o'er a trough of chizelled stone An ice cold well did gurgling flow.

The water in its basin shed A stranger tinge of fiery red. I drank and scarcely marked the hue— My hand was dyed with crimson too.

As I went out a wretched child, With wasted cheek and ringlets wild, A shape of fear and misery, Raised up her twisted hands to me, And begged her father dear to see. I spurned the piteous wretch away; 'Thy father dear is lifeless clay, As thou mayst be ere fall of day, Unless the truth be quickly told— Where they have hid thy father's gold.' Yet in the intervals of pain He heard my taunts and moaned again; And mocking moans did I reply, And asked him why he would not die. [In noble agony uncomplaining] Was it not foul disgrace and shame To thus disgrace his ancient name?

Just then a comrade came hurrying in. 'Alas!', he cried, 'Sin genders sin For every soldier slain they've sworn To hang up five tomorrow morn! They've ta'en of stragglers ['stranglers' in the MS} sixty-three, Full thirty from one company, And all my father's family; And comrade thou hadst only one; They've ta'en thy all—thy little son!'

Down, at my captive's feet I fell: I had no option in despair: 'As thou wouldst save thy soul from hell, My heart's own darling bid them spare, Or human hate and hate divine Blight every orphan flower of thine!'

He wakened up— he almost smiled: [He raised his head from death beguiled--alternative line not crossed out] 'I lost last night my only child. Twice in my arms, twice on my knee, You stabbed my child and laughed at me; And so'—with choking voice he said— 'I trust in God—I hope she's dead. Yet not to thee, not even to thee, Would I return such misery. [Such is that fearful grief I know I will not cause thee equal woe]-- in random version on the net Write that they harm no infant there. Write that it is my latest prayer.' I wrote—he signed—and thus did save My treasure from the gory grave; And oh! my soul longed wildly then To give his saviour life again. [Alternative lines not crossed out: And I would freely, gladly then, Have given his saviour life again.]

But heedless of my gratitude The silent corpse before me lay; And still methinks, in gloomy mood, I see it fresh as yesterday; The sad face raised imploringly To mercy's God and not to me. [Two partly illegible lines: And mercy's God The last look of that glazing eye.]

I could not rescue him; his child I found alive and tended well; But she was full of anguish wild, And hated me, like burning[?] hell; And weary with her savage woe One moonless night I let her go.

title: Why Ask To Know The Date—The Clime?


text:
Author:Martin Martin

Works

 * Voyage to St. Kilda (1698)
 * A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (1703)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Author:Martin Martin


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/69

 Rh centre. To this Plot adds that Camden "and since him [a certain] Dr. Childrey plainly avouch that the Ophiomorphit's of Cainsham have some of them heads, and that in this they differ from those of York-shire" of the story concerning whose heads Plot was at this time apparently ignorant.

That there are special geological reasons why this particular belief may not only be ancient but of remotest antiquity, the following account of the life-history of the ammonite (from the time of its appearance in the Devonian formation) will show:—

It is certain that any chance local discovery of any such uncoiled forms as those just described would materially help to reinforce the popular belief that ammonites were petrified serpents; and it also seems impossible that in the course of centuries such discoveries should not have happened. I should, however, add, in case of


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/70

 56 that the description of these ammonites as coiling or uncoiling themselves has reference only to growth of the shell, and not to any conscious effort in the lifetime of any individual specimen, although this distinction would hardly suggest itself to our remote ancestors. But I understand that one of the most recent theories has reference to what I may call the possession of a terminable life-history by a genus, which is regarded as normally following a course roughly analogous to the birth, life, and death of an individual. The question here naturally suggests itself: Is it conceivable that early man, considering the extent to which his faculties must have been absorbed in the struggle for existence, should have paid any attention whatever to such things as fossils? Whatever may or may not be conceivable, there is, I think, unmistakable evidence that he did. In the first place, General Pitt-Rivers, during his excavations at Rotherly (Wilts) and Woodcuts (Dorset) reported that he came upon an altogether unnatural number of the flint echinoderms or sea-urchins in the surface soil, as well as in the pit-dwellings themselves. His conclusion was that these fossils, being conspicuous, must have been noticed by the early inhabitants of the villages, who had evidently collected them with great industry, and his purely provisional suggestion was that these fossils were used as a species of currency. There are, however, better reasons for thinking that they were employed as almost any very odd-looking stones to this day would be used by less civilized races in all parts of the world, i.e. on account of some fancied magical virtue. One fact distinctly pointing in this direction is given by Sir B. C. A. Windle, in his Remains of the Prehistoric Age in England, where there is an illustration showing the plan of a double interment in a round barrow on Dunstable Downs, where a triple row of chalk echinoderms runs completely round the interment.


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/71

Rh To return to modern times, James Sowerby (1818) gives us an amusing anecdote of the Rev. W. Buckland, who,

"having found a large specimen, was induced by his ardour to carry it himself, although of considerable weight, and being on horseback it was not the less inconvenient; but the inner whorls being gone so as to allow his head and shoulder to pass through, he placed it as a French horn is sometimes carried, above one shoulder and under the other, and thus rode with his friendly companions, who amused him by dubbing him an Ammon Knight."

It is interesting to be able to add that the specimen thus honoured was the original specimen of ammonites Bucklandi, and that it came from one of the many quarries in the Lower Lias limestone of Pennycuick, near Tiverton, Weston, Keynsham, and other places near Bath.

All these snakestones are much of the same kind, but another Elizabethan, Richard Carew, in The Survey of Cornwall (first. ed. 1602), gives us a snakestone of a different kind. His account runs (p. 21): —

"The countrey people retaine a conceite, that the Snakes by their breathing about a hazell wand, doe make a stone ring of blew colour, in which there appeareth the yellow figure of a Snake; and that beasts which are stung, being given to drink of the water wherein this stone has bene socked, will therethrough recover. There was such a one bestowed on me, and the giver avowed to have seene a part of the stick sticking in it: but Penes authorem [sic? auctorem] sit fides!"

But the bridge over which most unmistakably we travel


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/72

58 back to immemorial antiquity is a passage of Pliny, which in Holland's translation (p. 627) is given as under:—

Upon this passage Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie comments to me, in a letter of June 24th, 1911, that the reference in Pliny "evidently refers to pyrites casts of ammonites which are found from Lias up to Chalk." Professor Petrie adds that he does not know of such late strata in Ethiopia, and that he has never found an ammonite in any Egyptian tomb or ruin. But he informs me that there is a coiled serpent amulet with head and tail, which is sometimes found in the prehistoric age in Egypt. This, he says "might be deduced from an ammonite, just as people in Wiltshire [and, as we have already seen, in other parts of England for centuries past] used to carve heads on the great ammonites and call them serpent stones."

It remains to add some particulars of a most remarkable parallel to Pliny in the snakestone belief of India. For it has been conclusively shown that the Salagrama, a celebrated mystic emblem of Brahman ritual in north-west India, which is considered to be the embodiment of Vishnu, is in reality a specimen of black ammonite. After describing how the tulasi or "Holy Basil," which is considered (inter alia) to be an embodiment of Krishna's wife Rukmini, is annually married in November to the god Krishna in every Hindu family, Mr. Frazer proceeds: —


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/73

Rh

A fuller account is given in the same author's Golden Bough. He adds that a draught of the water in which the shell has been washed is supposed to purge away all sin and secure temporal welfare. These fossils are found in Nepaul on the upper Gandaka, a tributary of the Ganges. Hence the district is called Salagrami, and is considered holy, and an object of pilgrimage. In a letter of May 26th, 191 1, Mr. W. Crooke wrote me:—

"The Salagrama, to which numerous references are given by Frazer in his new Golden Bough (Pt. i., ii., 26 f.) is undoubtedly a very ancient "fetish." It was specially adopted as a symbol of


text:
Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/30

18 dash, and all the little streets whose name is Legion, were scorching, blistering, and sweltering. The houses, high and vast, dirty to excess, rotten as old cheeses, and as thickly peopled. All up the hills that hem the city in, these houses swarm; and the mites inside were lolling out of the widows, and drying their ragged clothes on poles, and crawling in and out at the doors, and coming out to pant and gasp upon the pavement, and creeping in and out among huge piles and bales of fusty, musty, stifling goods; and living, or rather not dying till their time should come, in an exhausted receiver. Every manufacturing town, melted into one, would hardly convey an impression of Lyons as it presented itself to me: for all the undrained, unscavengered, qualities of a foreign town, seemed grafted, there, upon the native miseries of a manufacturing one; and it bears such fruit as I would go some miles out of my way to avoid encountering again. In the cool of the evening: or rather in the faded heat of the day: we went to see the Cathedral, where divers old women, and a few dogs, were engaged in contemplation. There was no difference, in point of cleanliness, between its stone pavement and that of the streets; and there was a wax saint, in a little box like a berth aboard ship, with a glass front to it, whom Madame Tussaud would have nothing to say to, on any terms, and which even Westminster Abbey might be ashamed of. If you would know all about the architecture of this church, or any other, its dates, dimensions, endowments, and history, is it not written in Mr. Murray's

title: Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/30


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/74

 60 the god by the Vaishnava school, worshippers of Vishnu, a cult which seems to have been organized after the downfall of Buddhism. The earliest reference I can quote to it is from the Mahābhārata, which seems to have assumed something like its present form in or after the 5th century B.C. The words used (Mahabharata, trans. Kisari Mohan Ganjali, vol. iv., p. 128), are "the stony image of Vishnu, with gold within.""

It will be seen at once that the description here given of the ammonite of Vishnu is in one respect strikingly reminiscent of the description of Pliny, i.e. in regard to the observation made by him as to its "golden colour."

It only remains to consider whether there is any recognition from Indian sources of the coiled snake idea which has been familiar for so long a period in England and other parts of Western Europe. I think on the whole that we can say there is, for Mr. Crooke kindly writes to me: —

Another of the widely-spread beliefs of our peasantry is the belief that the prehistoric stone implements found in all parts of the country, generally speaking, are "thunderbolts": indeed the best-known stone superstition is that the celt was a thunderbolt. Johnson rather uncritically remarks,—"That the various kinds of fossil belemnites, as well as the rounded concretions of iron pyrites from the Lower Chalk are also called thunderbolts, matters little. Gods, fairies, witches, and other like beings, have divers weapons for afflicting the ignorant peasant, bowed low in his fear." It really matters a good deal! But I shall first take the various kinds in succession.


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/75

 Rh First, as to the belemnite, the Scottish geologist Hugh Miller, in The Old Red Sandstone, remarks that he

Again, the earliest Scottish mention I have been able to find is in 1703, when Martin, in A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland speaking of Strath and Trotterness in Skye, remarks:—

There is of course no mention here of thunderbolts.

At Whitby, according to Robinson, the term thunderbolt applied to "the petrified remains of a kind of cuttle-fish, in the Whitby Lias, resembling tubes of various lengths and thicknesses tapering to a point." The comparison here made between the "thunderbolt" of this kind and a tube is not quite accurate, since a tube is generally considered to be hollow, whereas these fossils are, with the exception of a small and shallow cavity at the upper end, perfectly solid, and may be more suitably compared to a cigar than to a tube. I may add that the Greek Belemnon, whence they get their name, means dart or javelin, and is connected with the verb "ballein," to cast.


text:
Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/31

Rh Guide-Book, and may you not read it there, with thanks to him, as I did!

For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning the curious clock in Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a small mistake I made, in connection with that piece of mechanism. The keeper of the church was very anxious it should be shown; partly for the honour of the establishment and the town; and partly, perhaps, because of his deriving a per-centage from the additional consideration. However that may be, it was set in motion, and thereupon a host of little doors flew open, and innumerable little figures staggered out of them, and jerked themselves back again, with that special unsteadiness of purpose, and hitching in the gait, which usually attaches to figures that are moved by clock-work. Meanwhile, the Sacristan stood explaining these wonders, and pointing them out, severally, with a wand. There was as a centre puppet of the Virgin Mary; and close to her, a small pigeon-hole, out of which another and a very ill-looking puppet made one of the most sudden plunges I ever saw accomplished: instantly flopping back again at sight of her, and banging his little door, violently, after him. Taking this to be emblematic of the victory over Sin and Death, and not at all unwilling to show that I perfectly understand the subject, in anticipation of the showman, I rashly said, "Aha! The Evil Spirit. To be sure. He is very soon disposed of." "Pardon Monsieur," said the Sacristan, with a polite motion of his hand towards the little door, as if introducing somebody—"The Angel Gabriel!'"

title: Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/31


text:
Page:Smith - The game of go.djvu/103

Rh

254. Q 12. The three white stones must be taken before Black is safe.

255. R 19. White must take this before filling T 19.

256. T 15. A necessary connection.

257. N 6. Necessary to form connection.

Second: The following moves which are strictly "Dame." It makes no difference which side fills these intersections, but it would generally be done as follows:

258. T 19.

259. O 19.

260. P 17.

261. N 15.

262. N 14.

263. F 12.

264. J 10.

265. H 7.

266. M 7.

267. M 4.

268. M 3.

The frontiers are now absolutely in contact, and the count can be made, and it will be seen that after filling up the vacant territory with the captured stones as far as they will go, Black has won by three points. The Japanese would rearrange the board in order to make the counting of the spaces more easy ("Me wo tsukuru"), but for the first game or two the beginner might find it less confusing to omit the process.

Honinbo Shuye comments on this game as follows:

"In spite of so many errors, Black wins showing how great is the advantage resulting from a handicap."

title: Page:Smith - The game of go.djvu/103


text:
Page:Smith - The game of go.djvu/104

 II

Plate 15

This game is taken from Korschelt, and the notes are his. In some of these notes will be found mere repetitions of matter that I have inserted in the preceding chapters, or which will be hereafter found in the chapter on “Joseki.” These notes are, however, very full and valuable, and a little repetition may have the effect of aiding the memory of the student, and will do no harm. Contrary to the custom, this game was played without handicaps.

1. R 16. In the beginning of the game the corners and margins are first occupied, because it is there that positions can most easily be taken which cannot be killed, and which also contain territory. From the edges and corners the player makes toward the center. This process is repeated in every game. 2. D 17. 3. Q 3. In taking a corner that is still vacant there is a choice among seven points; e.g., in the corner designated as D 4, these points are D 3, D 4, D 5, C 4, C 5, E 3, and E 4. On the other hand, C 3 and E 5 are bad, because the territory which is obtained by C 3 is too small, and the adversary would reply to E 5 with D 4, by means of which E 5 would be cut off from the margin. Of moves that are good D 3–C 4 are the surest, and most frequently used. E 4–D 5 formerly were the favorite moves, but the preceding moves are now preferred to them. E 3–C 5 are seldom used. All of this, of course, applies to the corresponding points in the other three corners. 4. P 17. The attack could also be commenced at P 16.

title: Page:Smith - The game of go.djvu/104


text:
Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/32

20 Soon after day-break next morning, we were steaming down the Arrowy Rhone, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, in a very dirty vessel full of merchandise, and with only three or four other passengers for our companions: among whom, the most remarkable was a silly, old, meek-faced, garlic-eating, immeasurably-polite Chevalier, with a dirty scrap of red ribbon hanging at his button-hole, as if he had tied it there, to remind himself of something: as Tom Noddy, in the farce, ties knots in his pocket-handkerchief.

For the last two days, we had seen great sullen hills, the first indications of the Alps, lowering in the distance. Now, we were rushing on beside them: sometimes close beside them: sometimes with an intervening slope, covered with vineyards. Villages and small towns hanging in mid-air, with great woods of olives seen through the light open towers of their churches, and clouds moving slowly on, upon the steep acclivity behind them; ruined castles perched on every eminence; and scattered houses in the clefts and gullies of the hills; made it very beautiful. The great height of these, too, making the buildings look so tiny, that they had all the charm of elegant models; their excessive whiteness, as contrasted with the brown rocks, or the sombre, deep, dull, heavy green of the olive-tree; and the puny size, and little slow walk of the Lilliputian men and women on the bank; made a charming picture. There were ferries out of number, too; bridges; the famous Pont d'Esprit, with I don't know how many arches; towns where memorable wines are made; Vallence, where

title: Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/32


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/76

62 So, too, in J. Walcott (1779) we read that "the Belemnite receives its English name thunder-bolt from the vulgar, who suppose it to be indeed the darts of heaven." The earliest mention, however, that I have been able to find is in R. Plot, (1677), who says that from their form by all naturalists they are called belemnites, "from the Greek word βέλεμνον telum, which indeed some of them represent pretty well."

Again, J. H. Macalister writes : —

Again, in Gloucestershire belemnites from the Lias were used to cure watery affections of the eyes of the horse; the fossil was pulverized and the dust blown into the animal's eyes.

Turning to the extreme south of England, Mr. Lovett states that at Lyme Regis the belemnites of the Lias are hardly ever called by any other name but thunderbolts, and adds that it is a curious fact that in localities where the belemnites are not found the people, if shown any such things, not only do not regard them as thunderbolts, but ignore them as being "nothing."

Beyond remarking that, according to Parkinson, they were also called "Devil's fingers," I shall not here follow up this question of the belemnite beliefs, but I may remark


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/77

 Rh that they may be expected to correspond roughly, in regard to their distribution, with the geological distribution of the belemnite-bearing strata. These occur in the south of England, as far west as Dorset, in all the south-eastern counties, and in eastern counties as far north as the Tees; also in the north of Scotland (Cromarty Firth), and the north-east of Ireland, They do not occur in Wales.

Allusion has already been made to the fact that the echinis was noticed and employed for some apparently magical or quasi-religious purpose by prehistoric inhabitants of these islands. The only question that remains is what that purpose could be, and unfortunately this is not very clear. On the one hand we have the fact that the so-called "snake's egg" of the Druids has been considered to be an echinus. On the other, various species of the genus micraster, which are popularly called fairy loaves, are still treasured by the labourer of modern Essex, who believes his household will never want bread so long as he retains one. Again, Mr. G. W. Lamplugh informs me that he once had a fossil. echinoderm, said to be a lucky stone and to have been used for making butter come, brought him for identification in south-west Ireland, the nearest chalk being in Antrim.

Last, but not least, the echinis is recorded by Plot to have been called a thunderbolt by the country people, no doubt from the rough resemblance of some specimens in shape to the nodules of iron pyrites, which are also so called.

The belief in what I may call the keraunic origin of the stone axehead and arrowhead has often been described as if it were universal in these islands, but, although it would be a matter of considerable labour and time, it would, no doubt, be possible to show that the alleged universality of the belief has been over-stated.

In Scotland there was a long list of ailments which


text:
Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/33

Rh Napoleon studied; and the noble river, bringing, at every winding turn, new beauties into view.

There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge of Avignon, and all the city baking in the sun; yet with an under-done-pie-crust, battlemented, wall, that never will be brown, though it bake for centuries.

The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the brilliant Oleander was in full bloom everywhere. The streets are old and very narrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded by awnings stretched from house to house. Bright stuffs and handkerchiefs, curiosities, ancient frames of carved wood, old chairs, ghostly tables, saints, virgins, angels, and staring daubs of portraits, being exposed for sale beneath, it was very quaint and lively. All this was much set off, too, by the glimpses one caught, through rusty gates standing ajar, of quiet sleepy courtyards, having stately old houses within, as silent as tombs. It was all very like one of the descriptions in the Arabian Nights. The three one-eyed Calenders might have knocked at any one of those doors till the street rang again, and the porter who persisted in asking questions—the man who had the delicious purchases put into his basket in the morning—might have opened it quite naturally.

After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the lions. Such a delicious breeze was blowing in, from the north, as made the walk delightful: though the pavement-stones, and stones of the walls and houses, were far too hot to have a hand laid on them comfortably.

We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the

title: Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/33


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/271

 Rh of which the members are of four or five different totems. As this is the case, how can local totemism prevail? In ten families in a given region there might be people of at least twenty different totems. Are we to suppose that sires of one totem choose to flock together, for purposes of working magic, and that their totem is the local totem, while those of their wives and children are negligible? We are not told by Mr. Spencer that all this occurs, but, if it does not, how have the Arunta managed to possess local totem groups?

I am not sure that the difficulty of accounting for the existence of local totem groups among a people whose totems come by accident has been remarked upon. The fact has always puzzled me, for how can there be a local wild cat or emu group in a district of which the inhabitants are necessarily of many different totems? If we can suppose that several adult men of the wild cat or emu totem have congregated in the locality as a magicworking society, the problem is solved,—but where is the evidence for this intentional combination? Perhaps I have overlooked some other solution, and I merely draw attention to the difficulty which the situation presents.

Scottish Amulets.

(Vol. xix., p. 288.)

As regards present-day survival of amulets for protection against diseases, I may note that I still find them in use, but not commonly. Red silk round the wrist for rheumatism I have seen in Fife,—(although the wearer was a "gangrel" and perhaps had Irish blood in his veins),—and in Aberdeenshire of old days red worsted would be tied round a child's wrist to keep away the "witches." The chief thing, however, for the latter purpose was the little heart-shaped silver "witch-brooch." It was pinned to the child's underclothing at its first dressing. The shape was probably derived from its being originally the mounting of an "elf shot" or "fairy dart," i.e. flint arrow head. An old man in Kincardineshire some thirty


text:
Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/34

22 cathedral: where Mass was performing to an auditory very like that of Lyons, namely, several old women, a baby, and a very self-possessed dog, who had marked out for himself a little course or platform for exercise, beginning at the altar-rails and ending at the door, up and down which constitutional walk, he trotted, during the service, as methodically and calmly, as any old gentleman out of doors. It is a bare old church, and the paintings in the roof are sadly defaced by time and damp weather; but the sun was shining in, splendidly, through the red curtains of the windows, and glittering on the altar furniture; and it looked as bright and cheerful as need be.

Going apart, in this Church, to see some painting which was being executed in fresco by a French artist and his pupil, I was led to observe more closely than I might otherwise have done, a great number of votive offerings with which the walls of the different chapels were profusely hung. I will not say decorated, for they were very roughly and comically got up: most likely by poor sign-painters, who eke out their living in that way. They were all little pictures: each representing some sickness or calamity from which the person placing it there, had escaped, through the interposition of his or her patron saint, or of the Madonna; and I may refer to them as good specimens of the class generally. They are abundant in Italy.

In a grotesque squareness of outline, and impossibility of perspective, they were not unlike the woodcuts in old books; but they were oil-paintings, and the artist, like

title: Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/34


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/272

 232 years ago had such a "fairy dart," which he kept as a safeguard against warlocks and witches. It would lose all efficacy if allowed to touch the ground, and in showing it he always held his hands below those of the person looking at it, in great anxiety lest it should fall.

The use of sulphur as an amulet for cramp is common in Fife and Aberdeenshire. In the former county I have seen it often as a "sulphur band," i.e. a piece of rock sulphur sewn into the garter and worn round the leg. I have seen a piece tied in the armpit, while a piece of it under the pillow would be expected to keep a whole family from the affliction. A homœopathic chemist in Edinburgh had, some years ago, sulphur balls which he sold for cramp.

, M.D.

(Ante, p. 95.)

I do not know whether the two following bits of children's magic are sufficiently to the point to interest Colonel Hanna.

1. My brothers and sister and myself, as children, were fond of going to see the process of brick-making at a neighbouring brickyard, and used to bring back bits of clay with which we made little sun-dried bricks, pots, and so forth. A lady who lived near was very obnoxious to us because she had the bad luck to time her visits just when we wanted my mother's company, or when we were playing in full view of the windows and were not fit to be seen. She was, moreover, we thought, very ugly. To mark our dislike, we made a little clay figure supposed to represent her, and set it up among the branches of a tree where we kept our sundried pottery. We certainly meant to hold her up to ridicule and contempt, but I do not think we expected or wished any harm to happen to her in consequence.

2. We were very fond of "make-believe plays," in which we each represented certain characters whose sayings and doings,—invented as we went on,—were as real to us as if they had been living people. If we got tired of any of these plays, or wished to do away with some character or incident in them, we went through


text:
Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/35

 the painter of the Primrose family, had not been sparing of his colours. In one, a lady was having a toe amputated—an operation which a saintly personage had sailed into the room, upon a cloud, to superintend. In another, a lady was lying in bed, tucked up very tight and prim, and staring with much composure at a tripod, with a slop-basin on it: the usual form of washing-stand, and the only piece of furniture, besides the bedstead, in her chamber. One would never have supposed her to be labouring under any complaint, beyond the inconvenience of being miraculously wide awake, if the painter had not hit upon the idea of putting all her family on their knees in one corner, with their legs sticking out behind them on the floor, like boot-trees. Above whom, the Virgin, on a kind of blue divan, promised to restore the patient. In another case, a lady was in the very act of being run over, immediately outside the city walls, by a sort of piano-forte van. But the Madonna was there again. Whether the supernatural appearance had startled the horse (a bay griffin), or whether it was invisible to him, I don't know; but he was gallopping away, ding-dong, without the smallest reverence or compunction. On every picture "Ex voto" was painted in yellow capitals in the sky.

Though votive offerings were not unknown in Pagan Temples, and are evidently among the many compromises made between the false religion and the true, when the true was in its infancy, I could wish that all the other compromises were as harmless. Gratitude and Devotion are Christian qualities; and a grateful, humble. Christian spirit may dictate the observance.

title: Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/35


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/78

64 could be cured by the "arrowhead." The water in which it had been boiled was good for eye diseases and for the pangs of childbirth; it was also valued by the cattle-doctor, down to the present generations. Both are called thunderbolts, but the Rev. J. G. Campbell, who is quoted by Johnson in connection with stone arrowheads, described one of these objects as a smooth, slippery black stone, shaped like the sole of a shoe, and called it a "fairy spade." There seems, however, to have been some confusion here, for obviously this stone from the description' of its shape is our familiar stone axehead. A Scotch gentleman, writing in 1664, relates how a lady who was riding one day discovered one of these arrowheads or elf-bolts in the breast of her habit, and how a horseman found one which had been placed by a fairy in the top of his riding-boot. Robert Kirk (1691) in his Secret Commonwealth describes these "Armes (solid earthly Bodies)" as "cut by Airt and Tools it seems beyond humane," and as having "something of the Nature of Thunderbolt subtilty." "They are flung like a Dairt, with great Force, and mortally wound the vital Parts without breaking the Skin." Again, mounted in frames, small arrowheads were worn as amulets around the necks of Scottish ladies. A specially good example of this was the old-time witch-brooch, a little silver heart formerly pinned to the child's underclothing at its first dressing by the peasantry of Aberdeenshire. The shape is believed to have been derived from its being originally the mounting of an elf-shot or fairy dart, i.e. flint arrowhead. An old man in Kincardineshire thirty years ago had a "fairy dart" as a safeguard against witchcraft. Lastly, we may add one special use of the stone arrowhead in the witchcraft of Scotland. They were used in


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/97

 FOWNS, RICHARD (1560?–1625), divine, ‘a minister's son and Worcestershire man born,’ was elected student of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1577, at the age of seventeen, and graduated B.A. 30 Jan. 1581, M.A. 3 April 1585 (, Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 217, 230). He took the degrees of B.D. and D.D. by accumulation, 16 May 1605 (ib. i. 306, 307). He became chaplain to Prince Henry, and in 1602 was rector of Stoke Severn, Worcestershire, in the church of which he was buried 25 Nov. 1625. His monument was ‘miserably defaced’ during the civil war. He was the author of: 1. ‘Concio [on 2 Thess. ii. 3, 4] ad Clerum celeberrimæ florentissimæq; Academiæ Oxoñ. habita Iulij decimo, Anno Domini 1606,’ 4to, London, 1606, dedicated to Henry, prince of Wales. 2. ‘Trisagion, or the three Holy Offices of Iesvs Christ, the Sonne of God, priestly, propheticall, and regall; how they ought of all his Church to be receiued. With a Declaration of the violence and iniuries offered vnto the same by the Spirituall and Romish Babylon,’ London, 1619, a stout quarto of 782 pages, inscribed to Prince Charles.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 388–9; Nash's Worcestershire, ii. 347.]  FOX, CAROLINE (1819–1871), diarist, born at Falmouth on 24 May 1819, was second daughter of Robert Were Fox of Penjerrick. From her earliest years she displayed great intelligence and refinement of mind. In 1835 she began to keep the journal which has rendered her celebrated, not so much from its considerable literary merits, as from its association with distinguished persons. Most of these were men of science, attracted by Robert Were Fox's scientific reputation, and his especial knowledge of Cornish mineralogy; but the most remarkable were thinkers and men of letters brought to her remote nook of Cornwall by their own delicacy of constitution or that of their friends. At the beginning of 1840 John Sterling was staying at Falmouth, partly on account of his own health, partly in attendance on his sick friend, Dr. Calvert; Stuart Mill's mother, with her daughters Clara and Harriet, was nursing her youngest son Henry in a hopeless illness, and was soon joined by Mill himself. Sterling and Mill soon became exceedingly intimate with the Fox family, especially with Caroline and her brother Barclay, to whom Mill wrote several letters published in the second edition of Caroline's journal. Caroline's account of their conversations is exceedingly interesting, and adds considerably to our knowledge of both, especially of Mill, who has not elsewhere found a Boswell. The intimacy was the means of introducing her to Carlyle and other remarkable persons, few of whom are mentioned without some bright touch of appreciative portraiture. Her tendency was always to admiration and sympathy, recognising what seemed to her excellent, ignoring or minimising points of difference; it would not be possible to point out a cavil or an ill-natured expression from one end of the record to the other. The intimacy with Mill gradually diminished, while that with Sterling increased in warmth, and his death in 1844 may not have been unconnected with the depression into which Caroline fell in that year, and which left its traces on all her subsequent life. From this time her diary becomes less copious and interesting, partly from the comparative infrequency of remarkable acquaintances, partly from the interruptions occasioned by ill-health, but partly also from a loss of buoyancy and a comparative limitation and timidity of thought. Every line nevertheless indicates the gentle, spiritual, and at the same time intellectual and accomplished woman, and it will always be valued as a highly important illustration of the most characteristic thought of the Victorian era. Caroline died on 12 Jan. 1871, having never married, or quitted her home except for occasional visits to the continent. With her sister, Anna Maria Fox (d. Dec. 1897), she translated into Italian several English religious works, of which the latest, ‘Il Mozzo Bertino,’ was published in Florence in 1867.

[Memories of Old Friends, being extracts from the Journals and Letters of Caroline Fox, edited by Horace N. Pym (London, 1882); Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, pp. 160, 1189.]  FOX, CHARLES (1749–1809), Persian scholar, was, according to one account, son of Joseph Fox, quaker and grocer at Falmouth, and was born there in 1749; but he may possibly be identified with Charles Fox, who was the eldest son of John Fox by his wife, Rebecca Steevens of High Wycombe (, Fox Family, p. 15). He kept a bookseller's shop in his native town, and is the person mentioned in Southey's ‘Espriella’ (i. 6), who, when his house was on fire and he realised that nothing could be saved, ‘went upon the nearest hill and made a drawing of the conflagration—an admirable instance of English phlegm.’ Polwhele, who refers to this incident, adds that ‘his friend Wolcot saved the horses in the stable by muffling up their heads in blankets.’ After this loss, which does not seem to have involved him in pecuniary difficulties, Fox followed the bent of his inclination in landscape


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/79

Rh preference to metal to pierce or cut the wax or clay images which were once commonly used to represent the intended victims of the rites in question.

Turning to Ireland, we find that there, too, the medicinal use of the flint arrowhead has long been known, for two centuries ago (in 1709) we find mention of a "thunderbolt or head of a spear" from Kerry, and down to 1865 the Irish continued to put celts in the troughs at which they watered their cattle, and in county Antrim neolithic flint arrowheads are used as amulets. In the north of Ireland generally, where polished diorite celts are often turned out of the ground, Mr. Lovett states that there was a time when every cottage kept one on the rafter as a safeguard against lightning.

Of Whitby, Robinson has stated that the ancient British flint "arrow-points" were called "elf-shots," that cattle suddenly excited were formerly supposed to be shot at with these implements by the fairies, and that to cure an "elf-shotten" animal it must be touched with one of these arrows, and the water administered in which an arrow has been dipped. And Johnson quotes Dr. Hickes, in a letter to Pepys (1700), as describing these elf-bolts, clearly believing that they were driven straight to the hearts of cattle. Sir J. Evans states that in the north of England the celt is called a thunderbolt, and in the west country a thunderaxe. Again, in Cornwall, as elsewhere generally, the celt Avas boiled in water, which was used as a remedy against rheumatism. Of course, if there were any object in doing so, such facts could be indefinitely multiplied, but the important thing to note is that Mr. Lovett has stated that he knows places in England where such "thunderbolts" as tangible objects are quite unknown. The earliest


text:
Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/36

24 Hard by the cathedral, stands the ancient Palace of the Popes, of which one portion is now a common jail, and another a noisy barrack: while gloomy suites of state apartments, shut up and deserted, mock their own old state and glory like the embalmed bodies of kings. But we neither went there, to see state-rooms, nor soldiers' quarters, nor a common jail, though we dropped some money into a prisoner's box outside, whilst the prisoners, themselves, looked through the iron bars, high up, and watched us eagerly. We went to see the ruins of the dreadful rooms in which the Inquisition used to sit.

A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black eyes,—proof that the world hadn't conjured down the devil within her, though it had had between sixty and seventy years to do it in,—came out of the Barrack Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with some large keys in her hands, and marshalled us the way that we should go. How she told us, on the way, that she was a Government Officer (concierge du palais apostolique), and had been, for I don't know how many years; and how she had shown these dungeons to princes; and how she was the best of dungeon demonstrators; and how she had resided in the palace from an infant,—had been born there, if I recollect right,—I needn't relate. But such a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic, she-devil I never beheld. She was alight and flaming, all the time. Her action was violent in the extreme. She never spoke, without stopping expressly for the purpose. She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung herself into attitudes, hammered against walls with her

title: Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/36


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/98

 and portrait painting. He accompanied his brother, the master of a merchant vessel, on a voyage to the Baltic, and then made a tour, on foot and alone, through Sweden, Norway, and part of Russia, drawing hundreds of views on the way. On his return he stopped for a short time in London, but soon fixed his abode permanently in Bristol. He was facile in acquiring languages, and made a special study of oriental literature, collecting numerous Persian manuscripts. In 1797 Joseph Cottle published for him a volume of ‘Poems, containing the Plaints, Consolations, and Delights of Achmed Ardebeili, a Persian Exile, with notes historical and explanatory.’ The verses are said to have evinced much vigour of thought and beauty of expression, and the notes have been lauded for their illustration of Eastern subjects; but their value in a monetary sense may be judged from the fact that Cottle, after selling his copyrights to Longmans, found that Fox's ‘Achmed’ and Wordsworth's ‘Lyrical Ballads’ had been ‘reckoned as nothing.’ As both authors were his personal friends, Cottle begged them back again, and, the request being readily granted, returned to the former his receipt for twenty guineas, and to Coleridge, for Wordsworth, his receipt for thirty guineas. Fox's nominal profession made slight demand upon his time, and for many years before his death it was abandoned altogether for poetry. About 1803 he had prepared for the press two volumes of poems from the Persian, but growing weakness of health hindered their publication, though he still continued versifying. He died at Villa Place, Bathwick, Bath, on 1 March 1809. From the description in Hone's ‘Table Book’ (i. 762), he was ‘a great natural genius, which employed itself upon trivial and not generally interesting matters. He was self-taught, and had patience and perseverance for anything.’ His eccentricity is acknowledged, but he is credited with ‘the quickest reasoning power, and consequently the greatest coolness, of any man of his day who was able to reason.’ He married, in 1792, Miss Feniers, the daughter of a Dutch merchant, who survived him. They were hospitable people, and to young persons with literary tastes their house and conversation were ever open. Southey says: ‘I knew him well, and met Adam Clarke at his house. I have profiles of him, his wife, and the parrot, &c.’ Claudius James Rich, author of a memoir on the ruins of Babylon and other works, was attracted to the study of the oriental languages when a boy by accidentally seeing some Arabic manuscripts in Fox's library, and by constant access to these books, and the loan of an Arabic grammar and lexicon, he soon made himself master of the language. From him William Isaac Roberts, a young Bristol poet whose poems and letters were issued in 1811, ‘experienced continual kindness and encouragement in his literary pursuits.’ It was during Dr. Adam Clarke's second residence in Bristol, beginning in 1798, that he obtained much aid from Fox in his study of Persian; and he is said to have repaid these services by turning his friend into a ‘devout believer.’ Many of Fox's manuscripts, including the illustrated narrative of his travels, passed into the doctor's hands. They are described in J. B. B. Clarke's catalogue of the ‘European and Asiatic Manuscripts of the late Dr. Adam Clarke’ (1835), and the particulars are copied into the ‘Bibliotheca Cornubiensis,’ iii. 1186. Proofs of Fox's ‘humour and accurate observation of character’ are found in his Cornish dialogues printed by Polwhele and other authors.

[Gent. Mag. 1809, pt. i. 385; Corresp. of Southey and Caroline Bowles, p. 281; Polwhele's Reminiscences, ii. 182; Polwhele's Biog. Sketches in Cornwall, ii. 62–9; Annual Register, 1809, pp. 658–9; Monthly Mag. April 1809, pp. 311–312; Cottle's Early Recollections, ii. 26–7; Etheridge's Adam Clarke, pp. 265, 384; Memoir of Rich in Residence in Koordistan; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub.]

FOX, CHARLES (1794–1849), line-engraver, born on 17 March 1794, was the son of the steward to Lord Stafford at Cossey Hall, Norfolk, where he was brought up in the gardens, spending his early years in agricultural and horticultural occupations. An accidental visit from William Camden Edwards [q. v.], the engraver, led to young Fox being placed by his father as a pupil with Edwards at Bungay in Suffolk. He had already received some instruction in drawing from Charles Hodgson at Norwich. On the completion of his engagement with Edwards, Fox came to London, and became an inmate of the studio of John Burnet [q. v.], the engraver, who was then engaged on his large plates after Sir David Wilkie's pictures, in which Fox assisted him. Fox's most important plates, of his own execution, were from pictures by Wilkie, viz. ‘Village Politicians’ and ‘Queen Victoria's First Council.’ He also engraved some illustrations by Wilkie for Cadell's edition of Sir Walter Scott's novels. He was employed on the annuals, then so much in vogue, Stark's ‘Rivers of Norfolk,’ and other works. Among other engravings by him were the full-length portrait of Sir George Murray, after Pickersgill, in which his best work was shown, ‘A Cauchaise Girl,’ after G. S. Newton, &c. He also


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/99

 painted in water-colours, mostly portraits of his friends. During his whole life Fox never ceased to take interest in floriculture, and was considered one of the best judges of flowers. When Dr. John Lindley [q. v.] was appointed superintendent of the Horticultural Society, Fox was chosen as judge and arbitrator, in which capacity he gained universal esteem. He superintended the illustrations of the ‘Florist.’ While on a visit to a friend at Leyton in Essex, Fox died from an affection of the heart on 28 Feb. 1849. He was engaged on an engraving of Mulready's ‘The Fight Interrupted,’ which remained unfinished at his death. A portrait of Fox was etched from a drawing by W. Carpenter, jun. for publication in the ‘Florist.’

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Ottley's Dict. of Recent and Living Painters; Cunningham's Life of Sir David Wilkie; Gent. Mag. (1849), new ser. xxxi. 434; Florist, 1849; other obituary notices.]

FOX, CHARLES (1810–1874), engineer, youngest of four sons of Francis Fox, M.D., was born at Derby 11 March 1810. He was originally destined for his father's profession, but abandoned this intention as his taste for mechanics developed. He was deeply interested in the projected scheme for the Liverpool and Manchester railway, and at the age of nineteen he was articled to Captain Ericsson. With Ericsson he was engaged in designing and constructing the ‘Novelty’ engine, one of the three which competed at Rainhill in October 1829. He was also employed with Ericsson in experimenting with rotary engines. His mechanical talents having attracted the attention of Robert Stephenson, he was appointed by him one of the constructing engineers of the London and Birmingham railway. He designed the tunnel at Watford, and afterwards carried out the extension of the line from Camden Town to Euston Square. These works were wholly constructed within a covered way and retaining walls, thus realising for the first time the idea of a metropolitan railway. While engaged on this line Fox read a paper before the Royal Institution upon the correct principles of skew arches, which he had carried out in the works. The new mechanical departure was the development of these arches, not from the intrados or the extrados, but from a line midway between the two. Fox now entered into partnership with the contractor Bramah, and upon the retirement of the senior partner the firm assumed the title of Fox, Henderson, & Co. of London, Smethwick, and Renfrew. This firm was the first to carry out the manufacture of railway plant and stock upon a complete and systematic plan. Great improvements were effected in bridges, roofs, cranes, tanks, and railway wheels. Fox was the inventor of the system of four feet plates for tanks, combined with a very simple formula for calculating weight and contents. He also introduced the switch into railway practice, thus superseding the old sliding rail. Many improvements in iron structures were due to him, and in connection with his experiments upon links he read a paper before the Royal Society (March 1865) ‘On the Size of Pins for connecting Flat Links in the Chains of Suspension Bridges.’ From 1857 Fox practised in London as a civil and consulting engineer, with his two eldest sons, the firm still being known under the style of Sir Charles Fox & Sons.

During the forty-five years of his professional life Fox was engaged in works of magnitude in all parts of the world. His chief undertaking was the building in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851, designed by Paxton. This work was begun towards the end of September 1850, and finished before the close of April 1851, Fox having been engaged exclusively upon it for eighteen hours a day during a period of seven weeks. Together with Cubitt and Paxton he received the honour of knighthood (22 Oct. 1851) in connection with the exhibition. Fox's firm afterwards removed the building from Hyde Park and re-erected it, with many alterations and improvements, at Sydenham for the Crystal Palace Company. Fox was a consistent advocate for economy in railway construction, and it was through his exertions that the ‘light railway’ clauses were inserted in the Railway Facilities Act. In conjunction with G. Berkley he constructed the first narrow-gauge line in India. He made a special study of the narrow-gauge system, and eventually constructed lines upon this principle in various parts of the world. While strenuously advocating the narrow-gauge system, however, Fox was strongly opposed to break of gauge, except under special circumstances. His main principle was ‘to retain the gauge of the country, and to reduce the weight on the engine wheels to the same as that on the wheels of the stock, to limit the speed, and then to reduce the weight of the permanent way and other works.’ He was also in favour of vertical rails and cylindrical tyres.

The works executed by Fox as a manufacturer and contractor include the bridge over the Medway at Rochester; three bridges over the Thames, at Barnes, Richmond, and Staines; the swing bridge over the Shannon; a bridge over the Saône at Lyons; and the


text:
Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/37

Rh keys, for mere emphasis: now whispered as if the Inquisition were there still: now shrieked as if she were on the rack herself; and had a mysterious, hag-like way with her forefinger, when approaching the remains of some new horror—looking back and walking stealthily, and making horrible grimaces—that might alone have qualified her to walk up and down a sick man's counterpane, to the exclusion of all other figures, through a whole fever.

Passing through the court-yard, among groups of idle soldiers, we turned off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our admission, and locked again behind us: and entered a narrow court, rendered narrower by fallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it choking up the mouth of a ruined subterranean passage, that once communicated (or is said to have done so) with another castle on the opposite bank of the river. Close to this court-yard, is a dungeon—we stood within it, in another minute—in the dismal tower des oubliettes, where Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by an iron chain to the very wall that stands there now, but shut out from the sky which now looks down into it. A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in which the prisoners of the Inquisition were confined for forty-eight hours after their capture, without food or drink, that their constancy might be shaken, even before they were confronted with their gloomy judges. The day has not got in there yet. They are still small cells, shut in by four unyielding, close, hard walls; still profoundly dark; still massively doored and fastened, as of old.

Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly

title: Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/37


text: Author:Eustace Neville-Rolfe

title: Author:Eustace Neville-Rolfe


text:
Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/38

26 on, into a vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room: once the chapel of the holy office. The place where the tribunal sat, was plain. The platform might have been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good Samaritan having been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition chambers! But it was, and may be traced there yet.

High up in the jealous wall, are niches where the faltering replies of the accused were heard and noted down. Many of them had been brought out of the very cell we had just looked into, so awfully; along the same stone passage. We had trodden in their very footsteps.

I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining—a rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright day. I ask her what it is. She folds her arms, leers hideously, and stares. I ask again. She glances round, to see that all the little company are there; sits down upon a mound of stones; throws up her arms, and yells out, like a fiend, "La Salle de la Question!"

The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was made of that shape to stifle the victim's cries! Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile, in silence. Peace, Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame out again.

Minutes! Seconds are not marked upon the Palace

title: Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/38


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/118

  first-hand authority for many details of private life from 1802 to 1806, according to S. Rogers ‘inaccurate though pleasing,’ both epithets seem disputable; a spiteful criticism of Fox's character by Francis in Parkes and Merivale's Life of Sir P. Francis, 1867; Brougham's estimate in his Historical Sketches of Statesmen, I., Knight's Weekly, 1845, is worthy of attention; Lecky's Hist. of England in Eighteenth Cent. vols. iii–vi., 1882–7; Lewis's Administrations, 1864; May's Constitutional History, 1875; Speeches of C. J. Fox, 1815; Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of Geo. III, 1859, Last Journals, 1859, and Letters, ed. Cunningham, 1880; Wraxall's Historical and Posthumous Memoirs, 1884; Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand, 1810; Letters of Junius, ed. Woodfall, 1878; Donne's Correspondence of Geo. III with Lord North, 1867; Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1807; Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, ed. Lord Sheffield, 1814; Lord Albemarle's Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham, 1852; Duke of Buckingham's Courts and Cabinets of Geo. III, 1853; Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, 1875; Franklin's Works, ed. Sparks, vol. ix. 1840; Nicholls's Recollections of the Reign of Geo. III, 1820. For the Westminster election of 1784: History of the Westminster Election, 1784; Book of the Wars of Westminster, 1784; Oriental Chronicles, 1785; Collection of Squibs in the British Museum, 1784. For caricatures of Fox: Wright's History of Caricature, 1865; and Caricature History of the Georges, 1868. Lord Holland's Memoirs of the Whig Party, 1852; Moore's Life of Sheridan, 1825; Lord Malmesbury's Diaries, 1844; Prior's Life of Burke, 1853; Grattan's Life of Grattan, 1836; Stanhope's Life of Pitt, 1862; Lord Auckland's Journal and Correspondence, 1862; Horner's Memoirs of F. Horner, 1853; Rose's Diaries, 1865; Pellew's Life of Lord Sidmouth, 1847; Lord Colchester's Diary and Correspondence, 1861; Lady Minto's Life of Sir G. Elliot, 1874; Maltby's Samuel Rogers's Table-talk, ed. Dyce, 1887; Clayden's Early Life of S. Rogers, 1887; Princess Liechtenstein's Holland House, 1874, contains, among other matters, notices of the portraits and statues of Fox.]  FOX, CHARLES RICHARD (1796–1873), numismatist, was the son of Henry Richard Vassall Fox [q. v.], third lord Holland, by Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Vassall, formerly wife of Sir Godfrey Webster, born (in 1796) before their marriage. He served in the navy from 1809 to 1813, and was present at the sieges of Cadiz (1810) and Tarragona (1813). He left the navy and entered the grenadier guards in June 1815. He became colonel in 1837 and general in 1863. He represented Calne and Tavistock in parliament, and was elected for Stroud in 1831. In November 1832 he was appointed surveyor-general of the ordnance, and was afterwards secretary to the master-general of the ordnance. He became equerry to Queen Adelaide in July 1830, and aide-de-camp to William IV in May 1832. He was elected a member of the Dilettanti Society in 1837. At the time of his death he was receiver-general of the duchy of Lancaster, having held the appointment some time.

Fox began coin-collecting early in life, and a journey to Greece and Asia Minor in 1820 stimulated his taste. He obtained many coins from the peasants, and at Priene found several specimens in dry watercourses. In 1851 he acquired one of the collections of Whittall of Smyrna. He also bought at the Pembroke, Thomas, Devonshire, and other sales. In 1840 Burnes gave him the whole of his Bactrian coins. In 1862 his collection consisted of more than ten thousand Greek coins. He published a description of part of it entitled ‘Engravings of Unedited or Rare Greek Coins,’ with descriptions and plates. Part I. (‘Europe’) London, 1856, 4to. Part II. (‘Asia and Africa’), London, 1862, 4to. The collection was purchased (after his death) in 1873 by the Royal Museum at Berlin. Dr. J. Friedlaender, who published a notice of it in the ‘Archäologische Zeitung’ for 1873 (pp. 99–103; ‘Die Fox'sche Münzsammlung’), declares that this acquisition for the first time enabled the Berlin coin-cabinet to aspire to the rank of the national collections of England and France. The Fox collection consisted of 11,500 Greek coins, among which were 330 in gold, and more than 4,000 in silver. It was remarkable for the rarity of the specimens (not a few being unique), and for the admirable state of preservation throughout (cp. and, Das königliche Münzkabinet, 1877, pp. 43–5). Fox died at his house in Addison Road on 13 April 1873, after a long illness. He married, first, on 19 June 1824, Lady Mary Fitzclarence, second daughter of the Duke of Clarence and Mrs. Jordan, a woman of great social ability, who was raised to the rank of a marquis's daughter in May 1831, was for many years state housekeeper of Windsor Castle, and died in 1864; and secondly, in August 1865, Katherine, second daughter of John Maberly, M.P., who survives him. There was no issue of the marriages. Fox's portrait when a midshipman was painted by Sir Martin Archer Shee, and a portrait of him in his sixty-sixth year is prefixed to part i. of his ‘Engravings of Unedited Coins.’ Fox had a remarkable memory and, though not a savant, much facility in acquiring knowledge. He was a man of great amiability, and a wit without cynicism. He endeavoured to make, his house a literary centre, especially of some of the younger archæologists. In politics he called himself ‘a movement whig.’


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/80

66 English reference that I have been able to find is from the Oxfordshire naturalist, Plot, who in 1677 wrote that

This statement, (which seems to be the source of Walcott's remark), is the more remarkable since along with these arrowheads he identifies as Brontiæ the fossil echinoderms, to which reference has already been made. After speaking of selenites and other stones which he considered to be "some way related to the Celestial Bodies," Plot proceeds :—

I may also mention that Sir J. Evans gives the best account of their distribution I have been able to find. After describing their distribution in Great Britain and Ireland, he proceeds to give an account of their distribution on the Continent, giving examples from Brittany and other parts of France, Savoy, various parts of Scandinavia, (where celts inscribed with runes occur), Germany, Holland, Portugal, Italy, and Greece. In the last country they are called astropelekia, and Sir John states that, about 1081, the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus sent to the Emperor Henry III. of Germany, ἀστροπέλεκυν δεδεμένον μετὰ χρυσαφίου i.e. probably a celt of meteoric origin


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/119

  [Times, 16 April 1873, p. 7, col. 6; Michaelis's Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, pp. 64, 165; Fox's Engravings, &c.; information from Reginald Stuart Poole, LL.D.]

FOX, EBENEZER (d. 1886), journalist, was born in England, and practised his profession in the north until he had nearly attained middle age. For several years he was chief reporter on the ‘Manchester Guardian.’ His account of the great floods at Holmfirth in 1852 was widely quoted. Delicate health induced Fox to emigrate to Australia. In 1862 he went to Dunedin and joined the staff of the ‘Otago Daily Times,’ being associated with Sir Julius Vogel and B. L. Farjeon, the novelist. When Vogel established the ‘Sun,’ Fox assisted him. The two friends moved to Auckland, and soon after Vogel joined William Fox's ministry in 1869 as colonial treasurer, Fox became his private secretary. In 1870 he was appointed confidential clerk and secretary to the treasury, which position he held up to his death. For sixteen years he was implicitly trusted by successive ministries. In the columns of the ‘New Zealand Times’ Fox wrote a series of articles on the denudation of the forests, which attracted much attention. Fox, who was kindly but eccentric in character, died of muscular atrophy at Wellington in January 1886.

[New Zealand Times, 9 Jan. 1886; Phonetic Journal, 20 March 1886.]

FOX, EDWARD (1496?–1538), bishop of Hereford, was born at Dursley in Gloucestershire. He was educated at Eton, whence he proceeded to King's College, Cambridge, the date of his admission being 27 March 1512. According to Lloyd, he was ‘wild’ in his youth, but his brilliant talents afterwards made him the ‘wonder of the university.’ The same writer implies that Fox was partly indebted for his advancement as a scholar to his relationship to Richard Foxe [q. v.], bishop of Winchester; but these are statements with respect to which we have no confirmatory evidence. His whole career gives us the impression that he possessed not only great abilities, but also a readiness, tact, and indomitable energy which rendered him especially adapted for difficult negotiations. His early success must, however, be to a great extent attributed to the fact that he obtained the appointment of secretary to Wolsey. At what time this occurred does not appear, but his admission as prebendary of Osbaldwicke in the county of York, which took place 8 Nov. 1527, was probably one of the earliest proofs of the archbishop's favour.

In the early part of 1528 he was sent with Gardiner by Wolsey to Rome, for the purpose of overcoming Clement VII's scruples as to granting a commission and a dispensation with respect to King Henry's marriage with Catherine. They were enjoined especially to represent the dangers that would ensue from a disputed succession, and the likelihood in that event of England declining from obedience to the holy see (Letters and Papers, Hen. VIII, ed. Brewer, IV. ii. passim). In a letter (12 May) written to Gardiner on his return, Fox gives a detailed account of his reception at court, together with the report of their mission, which he gave to the king and council, and of the manner in which it was received (, Records of the Reformation, pp. 141–55). On 22 Sept. 1528, being D.D., he was elected provost of King's College, on the recommendation of the king and Wolsey. On the arrival of Campeggio in England in the same year, and his first audience with the king (22 Oct.), Fox made an ‘elegant reply’ to the address of Florian, the legate's spokesman. It was in the following August (1529) that, being at Waltham in attendance on the king, he held with Cranmer [see ] their historic conversation respecting the legality of the royal marriage. It was Fox who reported Cranmer's observation to Henry, and thus became the means of introducing him to the king, and of bringing about his rapid rise in the royal favour. In October Fox was sent on an embassy to Paris, and in December he was presented to the hospital of Sherburn in the county of Durham. In the following January (1529–30) he appears as intervening at Cambridge for the purpose of putting an end to a controversy which had there arisen between Latimer and the Romanist party, his influence evidently inclining in favour of the former, mainly, it would seem, because Latimer was known to have pronounced in favour of the royal divorce. Fox, however, admits in his letter that Latimer is perhaps ‘more vehement than becomes the very evangelist of Christ, and purposely speaks paradoxes to offend and slander people.’ In the ensuing month he visited the university along with Stephen Gardiner, in order to wring from the academic body a formal expression of opinion in favour of the divorce. Their object was not accomplished without difficulty, and the means by which it was ultimately brought about cast a slur on the chief agents in the matter. In the following April Fox was sent on a similar errand to Oxford, along with John Longland, bishop of Lincoln, and John Bell, afterwards bishop of Worcester [q. v.] His account of their proceedings, transmitted to the king, is still extant in his own


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/120

 handwriting (, Records, pp. 291–3). He next went with the same object to Paris; and Reginald Pole, writing to Henry (7 July) and giving some account of the circumstances under which the conclusion of the university there was arrived at, states that the adverse party had used every effort to prevent its being carried, but that Fox (who appears to have been the bearer of his letter) had ‘used great prudence and diligence in withstanding them.’ In May 1531 he again proceeded to France on the same business. Chapuys, in a letter to the emperor, describes him as an ‘habile galant, and one of the boutefeus in this matter of the divorce.’ On 26 Sept. the same writer states that Fox has again been sent to Paris, and adds that, in order ‘to enable him to do it better, the lady’ (Anne Boleyn) ‘has given him benefices and the office of almoner.’ In December Fox returned to England; and on New Year's day we find the queen presenting him with a piece of arras.

The tact and ability which he showed in these difficult and delicate negotiations led to his frequent employment in other political business. In 1532 he appears as one of the signatories to the treaty with France; and when, at the celebration of high mass, the treaty received the signature of Henry and the French ambassador, Fox, according to Chapuys, made a speech in praise of the alliance, describing it as ‘inviolable and eternal’ and ‘the best means of resisting the Turk.’ In April 1533 he was appointed on the commission to conclude a yet stricter ‘league and amity’ with Francis I, and in 1534 discharged a like function in arranging terms of peace with Scotland. The whole conduct of the divorce transactions appears to have now been mainly in his hands, and Sir George Casale refers to him as the best informed among English statesmen with respect to the negotiations on the subject which had been going on in Italy. In April 1533, when the lawfulness of Henry's first marriage was under discussion by convocation, he presided in the place of the prolocutor. In the following May, on the occasion of an official conference with Chapuys at Westminster, he was appointed to reply to Chapuys, to whom he represented that ‘the king, by his great learning, moved by the Divine Spirit, had found that he could not keep the queen as his wife, and, like a catholic prince, he had separated from her, and that there was no occasion to discuss the matter further’ (Rolls Series, 25 Hen. VIII, No. 465). He took a leading part in the attempts made to induce Catherine to give her assent to the statute respecting the succession, and in 1534 he published his treatise ‘De vera Differentia Regiæ Potestatis et Ecclesiæ.’ It was printed by Berthelet, and a second edition was published in 1538. Fox, by this time, had definitely taken his stand as a reformer, and Chapuys describes him as, along with Cranmer and Cromwell, ‘among the most perfect Lutherans in the world.’

In the meantime honours and preferments had been showered liberally upon him. On 3 Jan. 1528 he was presented to the rectory of Combemartin in the diocese of Exeter. In 1531 he was appointed archdeacon of Leicester, and continued to hold that office until his election as bishop of Hereford. In January 1532 he received a grant, in augmentation of the royal alms, of all goods and chattels of deodands and suicides in England. In 1533 he was promoted to the deanery of Salisbury and the archdeaconry of Dorset. In May 1535 he was presented to a canonry and prebend in the collegiate church of SS. Mary and George in Windsor Castle. In the following August he was elected to the bishopric of Hereford, the royal assent being given on 2 Sept. During the former month he appears to have been much with Cranmer at Lambeth, occupied probably in discussing with the primate the various points on which he would have to confer with the Lutheran divines in Germany, to whom it was proposed he should go as a delegate for the purpose of winning them over to Henry's side. On the 31st he received his credentials from the king at Bromham in Wiltshire, and in October he set out with Dr. Nicolas Heath, archdeacon of Stafford, for Germany. They were instructed to proceed first to the elector of Saxony, and afterwards to the other German princes. On their arrival at Wittenberg they had an interview with Luther, who, although he could not conceal his amazement at their apparent confidence in the justice of their cause, expressed himself willing to listen to their arguments. He, however, became wearied by their pertinacity and prolonged stay, which was protracted to April, Fox, in that month, even going so far as to follow the doctors of the university to the diet at Frankfort. At length he and his colleagues were dismissed, taking back to England as the reply of the protestant divines of Germany, that, although the king had doubtless been moved by very weighty reasons, and it was impossible to deny that his marriage was against natural and moral law, they could not persuade themselves that he had acted rightly in the matter of the divorce.

In 1536 Fox was sent on a similar errand to France. In the same year his growing sympathy with Lutheran doctrine was shown


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/81

Rh mounted in gold. Sir J. Evans, I may add, traces back this keraunic belief about celts in Greece to about 2000 years before our time.

So far do our modern facts take us, but this in itself is only the beginning. A little research will show us that there is unquestionable evidence as to the immense antiquity of this "elf-shot" idea in English. In Cockayne's Leechdoms etc. we find a very remarkable Anglo-Saxon incantation "Against the Stitch," of which I shall here give a literal rendering. The spell begins, as is so very frequently the case, with a sort of rubric, which recited the objects to be used in the charm for which the incantation is to be sung, and describes the method of their application. This rubric, which I propose to take first, runs as follows:—

"Fever-few" is an Anglo-Saxon name for the well-known plant pyrethrum partenium, and is borrowed from the Latin febrifugia, a febri-füge or "fever-chaser." The "red nettle" is familiar enough, and "way-bread" is the plantain, a strange Anglo-Saxon name that has survived right on down to modern English, but the real meaning of which is not, as might be supposed, "bread that grows by the way," but "way-broad," or more strictly speaking, "way-breadth," a fact that will be evident as soon as we recall its modern German equivalent Wege-breit, even were it not that the application of "broad" or "breadth" to the leaves of the plantain in itself has an application that is perfectly fitting. These three ingredients, then, feverfew, the red nettle, and the plantain, were to be boiled in butter, no doubt for external application to the real or supposed wound in the form of a poultice. It is at this point that the magician begins his incantation:—


text:
Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/82

68

Here this particular charm ends, and another begins, which is evidently given either as a reinforcement of the preceding one or, as would seem more probable from the wording, as a reply to be made either by the patient himself, or, as is usual, on behalf of the patient by the medicine-man himself:—

Here again follows a new charm, which runs:—

Now comes what seems to me by far the most important and striking lines of the entire scene:—

"Six smiths sat, and they wrought spears of slaughter.

'Out, spear!' not 'In, spear!'

If there be herein a piece of iron which is the work of the hag, it shall melt.

[Turning to the patient] If thou wert shot in the skin.

Or if thou wert shot in the flesh.

Or wert shot in the blood,Or wert shot in a limb,

Never let thy life be injured. If it were a shot of the gods [Aesir],

Or if it were a shot of the elves,

Or if it were a shot of the hag.Now will I help thee.

This is thy remedy against the shot of the gods,


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/121

 by the support which he gave to Alexander Alane [see ], on the occasion when the young reformer pleaded his own cause before convocation. The whole of Fox's remarkable speech is printed in the 8th book of Foxe's ‘Acts and Monuments;’ it contains, among other noteworthy utterances, an explicit declaration, that ‘the lay people do now know the Holy Scriptures better than most of us.’ In the same year Martin Bucer dedicated to him the edition of his ‘Commentaries on the Gospels’ printed at Basle.

Fox died in London 8 May 1538, and was buried in the church of St. Mary Mounthaw there. His will, dated on the day of his death, was proved 20 March 1538–9. Some of his sayings have become proverbial. ‘The surest way to peace is a constant preparedness for war.’ ‘Oft was this saying in our bishop's mouth,’ says Lloyd, ‘before ever it was in Philip the Second's—“Time and I will challenge any two in the world”’ (State Worthies, ed. 1670, pp. 88–9).

Fox's chief work was the ‘De vera Differentia’ above mentioned, which his warm friend and admirer, Henry Stafford, only son of Edward, duke of Buckingham, translated into English (8vo, 1548). He appears to have been the joint author, along with Stokesley, bishop of London, and Dr. Nicolas, of a volume ‘afterwards translated into English, with additions and changes, by my lord of Canterbury,’ entitled ‘The Determinations of the most famous and mooste excellent universities of Italy and Fraunce, that it is so unleful for a man to marie his brothers wyfe, that the pope hath no power to dispence therewith,’ London, 8vo, 1531.

[Letters and Papers of the Reign of Hen. VIII, ed. Brewer and Gairdner; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabrigienses, vol. i.; manuscript notes to Baker's copy of the De vera Differentia in St. John's College Library, A. 3, 36; Pocock's Records of the Reformation; Lloyd's State Worthies; Lelandi Encomia.]

FOX, ELIZABETH VASSALL, (1770–1845), daughter of Richard Vassall of Jamaica, was born in 1770, and was married on 27 June 1786 to Sir Godfrey Webster, bart., of Battle Abbey, Sussex. The marriage was dissolved on 3 July 1797 on the ground of adultery committed by her with Henry Richard [q. v.], third baron Holland, to whom she was married at Rickmansworth three days afterwards. Lord Holland had just restored Holland House, and there he gathered round him that brilliant circle of statesmen, wits, men of letters, and other people of distinction, which gave the house a European celebrity. Lady Holland possessed a remarkable power of making her guests display themselves to the best advantage. Traits in her character that were by no means attractive rendered her power of fascination the more extraordinary. Cyrus Redding says of her: ‘Polite, cold, haughty to those she met first in social intercourse, she was offensive to those to whom she took a dislike,’ adding, as an instance, that Campbell having jestingly taken her to task for using the expression ‘take a drive,’ she treated him ‘with an hauteur to which he would not again expose himself’ (Fifty Years' Recollections. iii. 176–8). ‘Elle est toute assertion,’ said Talleyrand, ‘mais quand on demande la preuve, c'est là son secret’ (, Journal, i. 300). Moore tells how on one occasion she asked him how he could write those ‘vulgar verses’ about Hunt, and on another occasion attacked his ‘Life of Sheridan’ as ‘quite a romance’ showing a ‘want of taste and judgment.’ To ‘Lalla Rookh’ she objected, ‘in the first place because it was eastern, and in the second place because it was in quarto.’ ‘Poets,’ says Moore, ‘inclined to a plethora of vanity would find a dose of Lady Holland now and then very good for their complaint.’ To Lord Porchester she once said: ‘I am sorry to hear you are going to publish a poem. Can't you suppress it?’ ‘Your poetry,’ she said to Rogers, ‘is bad enough, so pray be sparing of your prose.’ To Matthew Gregory (better known as Monk) Lewis, complaining that in ‘Rejected Addresses’ he was made to write burlesque, which he never did, she replied, ‘You don't know your own talent’ (, Diary, Russell, ii. 328, v. 262, vi. 41; Quarterly Review, cxxv. 427). Byron, supposing that she had prompted the article on ‘Hours of Idleness’ in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ satirised her in ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,’ but afterwards made reparation by dedicating the ‘Bride of Abydos’ to her husband. In Ticknor, the historian of Spanish literature, she met her match. Referring to New England she told him that she understood the colony had originally been a convict settlement, to which Ticknor answered that he was not aware of the fact, but that in the King's Chapel, Boston, was a monument to one of the Vassalls, some of whom had been among the early settlers of Massachusetts (Life of Ticknor, i. 264 n.) She kept a tight rein on her guests when they seemed inclined to monopolise the conversation. Macaulay once descanting at large on Sir Thomas Munro, she told him brusquely she had had enough of the subject and would have no more. The conversation then turned on the Christian Fathers, and Macaulay was copious on Chrysostom and Athanasius till Lady Holland abruptly turned to him with, ‘Pray, Macaulay, what


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/122

 was the origin of a doll? when were dolls first mentioned in history?’ This elicited a disquisition on the Roman doll, which in its turn was cut short by Lady Holland (, Memoirs, 1837–52, i. 367–8). On another occasion she sent a page to ask him to cease talking, as she wished to listen to Lord Aberdeen. She would also issue her orders to her more intimate friends with very little ceremony. ‘Ring the bell, Sydney,’ she said once to Sydney Smith, to which he replied, ‘Oh yes! and shall I sweep the room?’ She dined at the unfashionably early hour of six or half-past six, merely, according to Talleyrand, ‘pour gêner tout le monde,’ and often overcrowded her table. ‘Make room,’ she said to Henry Luttrell [q. v.] on one of these occasions. ‘It must certainly be made,’ he observed, ‘for it does not exist.’ Lord Dudley declined her invitations, because ‘he did not choose to be tyrannised over while he was eating his dinner.’ Lord Melbourne, being required to change his place, got up with ‘I'll be d——d if I dine with you at all,’ and walked out of the house. Nevertheless her beauty, vivacity, and the unrivalled skill with which she managed the conversation so that there should never be either too much or too little of any one topic, atoned for everything. Her house was neutral ground on which men of the most opposite schools of thought met and conversed freely and with mutual forbearance and respect. Though herself a sceptic she never encouraged an irreverent treatment of religion; and though, like her husband, a staunch whig, she impressed a temperate tone on the discussion of all political questions.

In 1800 she became entitled, under the will of her grandfather, Florentius Vassall, to some estates in Jamaica, on condition that she assumed the name of Vassall only after her christian name. She did this by royal license 18 June 1800 (in Heralds' College, I. 36, 20). She aspired to exert an influence on politics. ‘Lady Holland,’ writes Lord Hobart, under date 16 Sept. 1802, ‘is deep in political intrigue, and means for the preservation of peace to make it necessary that Fox should be in power’ (Journal of William, first lord Auckland, iv. 163). By degrees Holland House came to be the headquarters of the opposition, where the leaders of the party were accustomed to hold council every Sunday (, Memoirs of the Court of the Regency, i. 169–70). On the collapse of Lord Goderich's coalition ministry (1828) Lady Holland was ambitious of high office for her husband. ‘Why should not Lord Holland be secretary for foreign affairs,’ she asked, ‘why not, as well as Lord Lansdowne for the home department?’ Lord John Russell is said to have quietly replied, ‘Why, they say, ma'am, that you open all Lord Holland's letters, and the foreign ministers might not like that’ (, Corresp. i. 400). During the progress of the Reform Bill, some of the cabinet ministers often dined with her, and freely discussed the political situation. Brougham accuses her of pursuing him with bitter spite on account of an affront put on her by his mother (Memoirs, ii. 102), but much importance cannot be attached to such a charge emanating from Brougham. He and Lady Holland were, however, at feud for a great many years; she made an advance in the direction of a reconciliation by sending him an invitation to dinner in 1839, which he declined (, Memoirs, 1837–52, i. 245–6). She was an ardent admirer of Napoleon, to whom she was introduced at Malmaison in 1802, and sent him a message of respect and sympathy at Elba in 1814, and parcels of books and Neapolitan sweetmeats at St. Helena. He bequeathed to her a gold snuff-box ornamented with a fine cameo, the gift of Pius VI after the signature of the treaty of Tolentino, 1797, and she procured and preserved as relics a ring and cross of the Legion of Honour which had belonged to him, a sock which he had worn at his death, and a copy of the ‘Edinburgh Review’ (October-December, 1816) containing pencil marks in his handwriting. Dr. John Allen lived in her house, and Macaulay says she treated him like a negro slave [see, 1771–1843]. By the death of Lord Holland in 1840 the gaiety of her house suffered a brief eclipse. But three months afterwards Greville was present at one of her most brilliant dinner parties (ib. 1837–52, i. 367). These, however, were now for the most part given at her house in South Street, Grosvenor Square, and to a somewhat smaller company. Thiers and Palmerston were both present at the last she ever gave (October 1845). Her own death, the approach of which seemed to cause her neither fear nor concern, took place at her house in South Street, Grosvenor Square, at two o'clock on the morning of 16 Nov. 1845. She was buried at Ampthill Park, Bedfordshire. Her will was unnatural, her children being almost entirely excluded. She was a kind mistress to her servants, and a warm, sympathetic, and faithful friend. Greville says that ‘she dreaded solitude above everything.’ A portrait of her, painted by Gauffier at Florence in 1795, and another by Fagan are at Holland House. Lady Holland had issue by her first husband two sons (Godfrey Vassall, who succeeded his father in title and estates, represented Sussex in parliament, and died in 1836; and Henry,


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/123

 who entered the army, and rose to the rank of colonel) and one daughter, Harriet, who married in 1816 the Hon. Sir Fleetwood Pellew, captain R.N. and C.B. She also had a son by Lord Holland before her marriage with that nobleman, viz. [q. v.], who entered the army, and married in 1824 Lady Mary Fitzclarence, second daughter of William IV by Mrs. Jordan.

FOX, FRANCIS (1675–1738), divine, son of Francis Fox, was born at Brentford in 1675. He entered St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, as a commoner in April 1698, after having, according to Hearne, served six and a half years of his time as apprentice to a glover in London. He took the degree of B.A. in 1701, and that of M.A. in 1704. In 1705 he was chaplain to the lord mayor, Sir Owen Buckingham, and apparently about this time was ‘commonly known as Father Fox.’ Bishop Burnet appointed him rector of Boscombe, Wiltshire, in 1708, and promoted him thence to the vicarage of Potterne, a better living, in 1711. He was chaplain to Lord Cadogan, and, from 1713 till his death, prebendary of Salisbury. In 1726 the lord chancellor presented him to the vicarage of St. Mary's in Reading, a living worth 300l. a year. There he died in July 1738.

He was, at any rate for most of his life, a strong whig, and in 1727 he preached at what was called the Reading lecture a sermon which gave great offence to a number of the clergy who formed the audience. After being repeated as an assize sermon at Abingdon, it was published under the title of ‘Judgment, Mercy, and Fidelity, the Weightier Matters or Duties of the Law’ (Matt. xxiii. 23). It was considered to undervalue the efficacy of the sacraments, and to depreciate unduly the usefulness of preaching against dissenters. Angry letters about it were exchanged between Fox and the Rev. Joseph Slade of St. Laurence's, Reading, who eventually published a sermon in reply to it, with the letters prefixed. This in its turn was attacked by the Rev. Lancelot Carleton in ‘A Letter to the Rev. Jos. Slade.’

Besides the sermon, ‘Judgment, Mercy, and Fidelity,’ Fox published:
 * 1) ‘The Superintendency of Divine Providence over Human Affairs,’ a sermon preached in St. Paul's before the lord mayor on Restoration-day, 1705.
 * 2) An anonymously printed folio sheet entitled ‘The Obligations Christians are under to shun Vice and Immorality and to practise Piety and Virtue shown from the express words of Holy Scripture,’ about 1707.
 * 3) ‘The Lawfulness of Oaths and the Sin of Perjury and Profane Swearing,’ an assize sermon at Salisbury, 1710.
 * 4) ‘The Duty of Public Worship proved, with directions for a devout behaviour therein,’ 1713 (19th ed. S.P.C.K., 1818).
 * 5) ‘A Sermon on the Sunday next after 5 Nov.’ (Num. xxiii. 23), 1715.
 * 6) ‘The New Testament, with references and notes,’ 1722.
 * 7) ‘An Introduction to Spelling and Reading, containing lessons for children,’ 7th ed. 1754 (17th ed. S.P.C.K., 1805).

FOX, GEORGE (1624–1691), founder of the Society of Friends, son of Christopher Fox (‘righteous Christer’), a puritan weaver in good circumstances, was born at Fenny Drayton (otherwise Drayton-in-the-Clay), Leicestershire, in July 1624. Fox mentions that his mother, Mary Lago, was ‘of the stock of the martyrs,’ in allusion probably to the family of Glover of Mancetter (see, The Mancetter Martyrs, 1860). Penn describes her as ‘a woman accomplished above most of her degree.’ Whether Fox had any schooling is doubtful; his spelling was always uncouth, but his illiteracy has been somewhat exaggerated. The accounts of his early seriousness are chiefly remarkable for bringing to the front the ethical element in the puritan character and training. His parents intended George for the ministry of the church of England; he speaks of no objection on his own part, ‘but others persuaded to the contrary.’ Accordingly he was apprenticed to a shoemaker (at Nottingham, according to Croese). His master did business as a grazier and wool dealer, and employed George as a trusted agent, whose ‘verily’ was accepted as a final word in a bargain.

Early in the summer of 1643 (before July) an incident at a fair determined Fox's future.