Documents of one age sometimes lie bur- the whole body of the MS. treasures of ied in a heap of later ones. Constantly this country.

JAMES GAIRDNER.

A LINK BETWEEN THE PRESENT AND
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

TIMES.

do we find them misdated in catalogues, so that even royal letters of one king are ascribed to another, not to speak of the strange mistakes, of which I have given specimens above, about letters written by others. The contents of unpublished papers, too, are so very insufficiently described, that a student with a special object in view must be often doubtful, EUROPE at large will rejoice with Gerfrom what he sees in the catalogues now many and Cologne that, by the complein use, whether it be worth his while to tion of Cologne cathedral, its architecconsult the MSS. or not. This is a very tural treasures are enriched with another serious drawback, which must cause, in flower of Gothic art. European history many cases, to the investigator a great itself seems to have been given a new waste of labor; while in many more it connecting link by the literal fulfilment may induce a feeling, not justified by the of an engagement made six hundred and facts, that the examination of original thirty-two years ago. The plan of the documents would afford him little new in-year 1248 is consummated in the year formation.

teenth. But tokens of a less material sort are visible everywhere that no element is irredeemably faded and perished which has once been incorporated in European life. The plan of the gorgeous façade and the two majestic towers work. ing itself out in these days according to the exact intention of the architect, as he has pictured it for every tourist to view, appears, and with justice, a marvellous phenomenon. In itself it is far less strange and wonderful than that the municipal existence of Cologne, which alone has made this great event possible, should, like a thousand other greater and lesser cities throughout the Old World, have prolonged itself in innumerable qualities and features from the splendor of Roman times, through the darkness of the ruin which succeeded, into this prosaic age.

1880; the subjects of the emperor WilBut if this new principle in cataloguing liam receive the finished work with as be adopted, it ought to be applied uni- little sense that it is an obsolete antiquity versally. It may or may not be desirable as if they had been subjects of a Hohento have new special catalogues of each staufen or of Rudolph of Hapsburg. It separate library in the British Museum, is seldom that the ages are bridged over but the work should be done simultane- thus by a solid structure of palpable ously there and elsewhere by the co-oper- stone, that the nineteenth century exeation of a large staff of skilled palæog- cutes a manifest commission of the thir raphers. There is no reason, indeed, why we should not have one great chronological catalogue of the MSS. in all our public libraries. Much has been done of late years to facilitate the execution of such a work. As far as concerns the MS. materials for British history, the late Sir Thomas Hardy's catalogue, though unhappily left unfinished, is complete down to the end of the reign of Edward II. As far as the State papers of Henry VIII. are concerned, the work was done for half the reign by the late Professor Brewer. These two noble pioneers of documentary and historical study have unhappily both been taken from us, and it may well be said that there is none to fill their places. But their method, at least, need not and ought not to perish with them. We have only to proceed on the lines they marked out for us, and extend further the work which they so well began. It is more a question, after all, of having trained workers at our command than of any peculiar genius. Palæographic skill can certainly be acquired by any well-educated person with a few years' study and experience. We require but that two or three practised hands should co operate on a right system, and it may be hoped that within a comparatively small number of years we may have efficient and comprehensive guide-books to

STANDARD.

THE persistency of human resolution in a work like the Cologne cathedral is curiously satisfactory to the mind, amid the perpetual changes and chances of mortal things. Since Babel men have been continually seeking to "build towers," literally and metaphorically, to make great States and kingdoms which should abide forever, to erect cities never to become desolate, to form systems of philosophy and religion which should

endure for all time. But against these | had recently been swollen, but had now poor human efforts after earthly immor- shrunk low in their beds. Something tality the stars in their courses have glistening in the path of the moonbeam seemed to fight. The soaring towers caught his eye, or that of a woman who have sunk "to ruinous heaps," and the rode one of his mules. They stopped; bittern cries in the lonely marsh where it was something of bright metal. They stood the million-peopled city, and all our scraped the loose, washed up soil away philosophies give place to other men's and disinterred a golden jewelled crown. dreams -"Our little systems have their This is no fairy legend, but a fact of our day, they have their day, and cease to own day. They found a royal crown of be." And now, here amongst us, is one gold and precious stones. The effect on strange and striking exception to all this these rude peasants' minds of such a mutability. We have not merely left the sight, at such a moment, must be left to work of our forefathers as they bequeathed the reader's imagination to realize. Their it to us (which of itself, in these days of disinterred treasure, moreover, was not ruthless restorations, would be much), alone; a buried hoard of untold value, but we have done a more noteworthy hastily hid away in some moment of peril thing. We have patiently and obediently and never recovered, had come to light gone on with their work, and, without after more than a thousand years of oblivvarying or modifying it to our taste and ion. Ten crowns, circlets of gold with fashion, have honestly and steadily ful- pendants of precious stones, were ultifilled their ideal. A purpose has run mately exhumed, together with other obunchanged through twenty generations. jects. Another and most important one It may be safely said that no project unhallowed by religious feeling or unglorified by pious zeal would have had a chance of thus being adopted by the men of one age after another. It is, after all, essentially the feeling of awe and reverence and sense of dependence on the great Power above which has moved the generations of the builders of Cologne one after another, through all the variations of creeds and changes of opinion. If in earlier times some base alloy of "other worldliness" of a desire to buy the pardon of Heaven with the offerings of earth-mixed itself too often with the sacred ambition to build a house of prayer which should be worthy of Him to whom it should be dedicated, yet this lower motive for the erection of the great religious edifices of the Middle Ages has for a long time ceased to play any important part in such undertakings. Men build splendid churches mainly and chiefly because they honestly desire to surround the worship of God with all the beauty of art and all the dignity which a noble edifice can be framed to convey.

afterwards rewarded the sagacity of some patient searcher, who suspected that the torrent might have swept part of the golden spoil further down its bed. At first these precious relics were shared among the peasants of the district; a few objects were sold and melted at Toledo; but, happily, there was near the spot some one keen enough to suspect their importance. A Frenchman in the neighborhood heard of the "find" and saw some of its produce; this, as may be supposed, whetted his curiosity; by degrees he obtained nearly all that had come to light eight votive crowns-and these he carried to Paris, and offered them for sale at the Museum of Antiquities in the Hôtel Cluny, Paris. The director purchased them at once, and there they are now exhibited, chief among the treasures of that rich collection. They are rightly called "votive crowns, that is, objects not for personal wear, but intended to be offered at a shrine and to be suspended near the altar. Their peculiar form would prove this, the circlets being of dimensions unsuited for wear-some too large, others too small in diameter, and having long pendants descending from them; some enriched with perforated precious stones, sapphires, amethysts, etc. In all probability they had been so suspended as an offering at some shrine-a Christian sanctuary IT is not many years since a Spanish existed in the Visigothic period near the muleteer was traversing one night with spot- and at some dangerous crisis had his string of mules a rather wild track in been carried away either by a spoiler, or the neighborhood of Guarrazar not far more likely, from their perfect state of presfrom Toledo. The moon was bright, and ervation, by one seeking to save them. the torrents of La Fuente de Guarrazar | Thus they may have been hidden rudely

From The Magazine of Art. VICISSITUDES OF ART TREASURES.

320 SPORT IN THE OLDEN TIME: THE GAME OF PALL MALL.

in haste and fear in the first remote spot | through an elevated ring at the end. The that offered a chance of secure conceal player who succeeded in effecting this ment, for in their placement there was no with the smallest number of strokes won sign of the deliberate care and precaution against injury occasionally evinced in the discovery of treasure-trove, as, for example, in the wonderful find of antique Roman silver vessels exhumed a few years ago at Hildesheim, in Hanover. Those who in the wild and rugged district of Guarrazar buried this treasure no doubt themselves perished, and their secret died with them. Thus the silent and forgotten grave of these kingly offerings seemed to have closed over them forever, till some such cause as probably aided their entombment, the action of a mountain torrent, at length sufficed to disclose them, and they have come forth from their hiding-place, to be set up for the gaze, more curious than reverend, of tens of thousands.

From Land and Water.

the victory. The alley or walk was hardened and strewn with pounded shells, which were well beaten down until the surface became perfectly smooth, and the sides were boarded, in order to prevent the ball from going off the path. The effort to ring the ball must have required considerable practice and very great skill; and as the only known relics left us of this good old sport are a mallet and ball, engravings of which are to be met with in one or two works treating of ancient games, we can but dimly guess as to the exact rules laid down for the players, or know whether, as in golf, mallets of different shape and weight were used for the different strokes. It seems strange that in the present time, when there is a rage for the introduction of new games -witness polo and an effort to revive old pastimes, such as ombre, some of the rising generation should not have re-introduced pall mall. That it must have been a sport conducive to health and un

SPORT IN THE OLDEN TIME: THE GAME attended with danger there can be little

OF PALL MALL.

MANY have been the conjectures as to the derivation of this name, some asserting that it comes from the Italian, palamaglio, signifying a ball and a mallet; others, that we derive the word directly from the French, palemaille. Anyhow, it is very certain that Pepys, in his "Diary,' when alluding to this game, writes it pelemele," " and records having seen Charles the Second's brother, the Duke of York, playing at it in St. James's Park on April 2, 1661. Charles formed the mall in St. James's Park for the purpose of playing this game; but previous to that there was a walk ornamented with trees on each

side, where "pelemele" was played, and where now the street known as Pall Mall stands. The Merry Monarch was a very admirable player. Waller, in a poem written on St. James's Park, alludes to

this:

Here a well-polished mall gives us the joy
To see our prince his matchless force employ.
And doubtless it was a game that re-
quired great vigor, affording at the same
time a fine field for displaying graceful-
ness of action. It has been said in some
degree to resemble golf, but the object of
the game appears to have been this -
to
drive a ball along a straight walk, and

doubt; for it was played in the open air, and if the poet's description be correct, youth, activity, manly grace, and vigor were all requisite to constitute a good pall mall, etc. We now make use, it is true, of our ponies' legs instead of our own, and I have heard it said that some of our fine young English sportsmen rest their manly bodies on chairs to shoot at driven birds, but I hope Mrs. Grundy was misinformed on this point. The original avenue for the game was made into a street at the time of the Commonwealth. A propos of the game of golf, did you ever hear that the phrase " getting into a scrape" originated in the north at golf? At that time the land, and generally played on the downs, game was, one may say, peculiar to Scotor, as they are called there, "links," near the sea; there are usually a great number of rabbits in such places, and the hole made by them in the ground when attempting to burrow is called "a scrape." Golf is played with a small, hard, elastic ball, which is driven from point to point by wooden or iron mallets (some term them clubs), so when the player's ball got into one of these said " scrapes" it was exceedingly difficult to get it out, and in some golfing clubs there was a rule made defining what was allowable for a player to do when he "got into a scrape."

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322 AN ANECDOTE OF THE SIEGE OF ST. JEAN D'ACRE, ETC.

AN ANECDOTE OF THE SIEGE OF ST. JEAN