dà江 Owere oted y 20 2 West, for there is a letter extant from "painted" afresh on one occasion; an Charles V. of France to the mayor and art that seems to have been lost. Idiots burgesses asking them to supply him or naturals wore long petticoats of yelwith another fool. The merry brother- low; that being the fool's especial color. hood waxed puissant; they gained the Their restless habits caused them to wear patronage of two saints, St. Julian and out their boots very quickly, as the houseSt. Mathurin, and though John of Salis-hold expenses of the French court testify. bury, in 1160, had denied them the sacra- The fool's head was shaven, nor were the ment, religion looked benignly on them ladies spared this disfigurement, for there from her loftiest throne on earth, for Leo is a charge of "iiijd. for shaving of Jane, X. kept a pack of jesters, and laughed the fole's hedde "in the books of one of immoderately at them over his favorite our queens. Fools being so constantly dainty of peacock sausage. Nor were near the persons of great men, had often they confined to the Old World, for Cor- to stand amid the wreck of their fortunes, tez saw at the court of Montezuma, in dumb jesters, silent witnesses that favor, the wondrous city of Mexico, a company honor, and rank may be empty as the of humorous misshapen beings, two of emptiest of jests. So stood poor Patch, whom he procured and piously sent to in Putney town, beside the dishonored Rome for the amusement of Clement Wolsey. They were travelling towards VII. The pleasant folly spread, women my Lord of Winchester's house at Esher took to fooling, and nobles and men of in very miry weather. Presently a genlearning jangled the bells and trifled with tleman riding hastily overtook them, bearthe dagger of lath. Fools amassed for- ing a gracious letter and a golden ring tunes, estates were given to them wit from the king. Wolsey, overjoyed, beness one who held his lands upon the thought him of what peace-offering he condition of executing a saltus, a suffa- could send to his imperious sovereign. tus, and a bambulus," yearly before the His eye rested upon the crestfallen Patch. king. They were benefactors and found-"The fool is worth a thousand pounds," ers of religious houses like Rahere, to said the cardinal; "I'll give him to the whom we owe the Church and Priory of king." But Patch was of finer metal than St. Bartholomew in East Smithfield; and he had been accounted, and would not Hitard, fool to Edmund Ironside, who left leave him who could be "sweet as suman estate at Walworth for the benefit of mer" to those he loved. And so resolute Canterbury Cathedral. They became the was he that in the end six men had to confidants of kings, and the mouthpieces gird the noble fool to a horse and trot of political parties; they were even sent him off to his new master. Heywood, on secret missions. In later times, Peter poet, dramatist, royal jester, and staunch the Great recruited the ranks of his fools, Catholic, was often called upon to "unwho were divided into classes according dumpish " his mistress, the unhappy Queen Mary, and in her dying hours, when she felt the sting of the beloved Philip's desertion and of her subjects' hatred, he was with her to the last, solacing her with music. to their qualifications, by enrolling amongst them those ambassadors or men of science whose negotiations or researches were not to his liking. Several fools are recorded to have fought gallantly, and to have saved their masters from the hands of assassins. The Franciscans borrowed their name, calling themselves "Fools of the World." The Jack-Puddings who frequented fairs and markets stole their jokes. Whole ages were leavened with the light yeast of their folly, and laughed as the nineteenth century cannot laugh. There is evidence that the dress of the fool was greatly varied at different times and in different places. Will Somers, one of the fools of Henry VIII., had an of outfit at the king's charge of thickly-lined His portrait by Holbein cloth. green may be seen at Hampton Court. The ro garments of Edward VI.'s jester were il 2 The fashion of humor has changed; the old jests have lost their savor. No king of Spain would die nowadays from laughter at a fool's jest. The quips and quibbles that have been handed down to us are dead as flowers that have been clasped for centuries in a missal. And yet the brood of folly struggled hard for life and lingered long in odd places. Muckle John, fool to Charles I., was the last official royal fool in England, and in 1680 fools in private houses were reported "out of fashion." In 1722 a certain Kathrin Lise was jester to the Duchess von Sachsen Weissenfels Dahme, and Dicky Pearce, the Earl of Suffolk's fool, had the honor of having his epitaph writ I. A rocky or stony bottom. 2. Shallow water as compared with that higher up the stream. ten by Swift. It was reserved for George | conditions are requisite for its formation, II., when Prince of Wales, to abolish the namely: last humorous appendage to the royal The household, the king's cock-crower. fool died with the French Revolution, and it was but the ghost of medieval folly that appeared at the Eglinton Tournament, brandished its bauble for a little space, and vanished. Whether the ancient spirit be laid, or whether it does yet haunt the councils of the nation, let those keen-eyed gentlemen, the reporters, inform us. 3. A swifter current and rougher water in comparison with a smooth and slower motion immediately above. All these conditions existed in the present case. The ford was a rapid, and as I have already mentioned, shallow, whilst immediately above there was a pool of nearly still water, three or four times as deep, which was ice-covered to within a few yards of the ford. On the surface of this almost still water, close to the rapid, where it was yet unfrozen, numerous ON looking over some old papers I find small crystals of ice were forming and a few notes on a rather curious instance floating, indicating that the water was at of the mode of formation of anchor-ice- perhaps colder than the freezingwhich was accidentally brought to my notice. ANCHOR-ICE. From Nature. When at Repulse Bay on the Arctic Circle many years ago, I went out one morning in the latter part of September to shoot deer, and on my way forded a stream of no great size, dry-shod, having on Eskimo waterproof boots, the water being little more than a foot deep. The parts of this small river which had a slow current were already covered with ice, but not strong enough to bear my weight. For so early a date the day became extremely cold, and on my way home, after an absence of about eight hours, I was surprised to find, when recrossing the stream, that the water came high over my knees, filling my boots. On examination I discovered that this rise of water was produced by an accumulation of frozen water fully eight or nine inches deep, adhering to the stones at the bottom of the rapid, all of which must have been formed, since the morning, at the rate of not less than one inch in the hour. The foot sank readily into this "slushy" formation, a lump of which rose buoyantly to the surface at each step. Unfortunately I could not wait to study the process of construction, as it was getwhich ting "dusk," and my wet clothes had to be cut off when I got to my fireless tent-began speedily to freeze. I have seen "anchor-ice" in rivers many times, and believe that two or three point. When these ice-crystals and surface cold water get into the turmoil of the rapid, they are brought into contact with the rocks and stones at the bottom, which are thus cooled down to the freezing-point, and become convenient nuclei for ice-formation.* Supposed anchor-ice is often found at the bottoms of shallow lakes and ponds, and also in the quieter pools of rivers; but this, as far as my experience goes, is not true anchor-ice, but is formed in the usual manner, beginning at the surface and increasing in thickness downwards until it reaches the bottom, to which it freezes firmly and remains attached during the spring and early part of summer perhaps longer-with two, three, or more feet depth of water over it, as it slowly thaws. Fifth Series, No. 1879.-June 19, 1880. Volume XXX. From Beginning, CONTENTS. I. THE LETTers of Charles Dickens,. III. WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL,. Fraser's Magazine, Westminster Review, Advance Sheets, By Advance Sheets, VI. A PERSIAN GARDEN-PARTY. By a Guest, For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. From The Westminster Review. THE LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS.* THE dean of Westminster, in his recently published memoir of his mother, gives us her estimate of Sir Walter Scott: "As to Sir Walter, when one thinks over other works and other writers, there is not one to be compared to him since Shakespeare; not one to whom so many can feel grateful for the number of hours of innocent and delightful amusement he has given to the world." + This opinion was expressed before the publication of any of the works of the great writer, whose selected letters are now given to the world. At its date we should have concurred in it, but now we :hink that in the amount of innocent and lelightful amusement Dickens has given to the world he certainly equals, perhaps even surpasses, Scott. In common with the rest of the world we, therefore, gladly welcome these volumes, which completely fulfil their editors' intention and "great desire to give to the public another book from Charles Dickens's own hands, as it were, a portrait of himself by himself." The editors, to whom the preparation of the work has undoubtedly been "a abor of love," tell us that they ntend this collection of letters to be a supplement to the "Life of Charles Dickens," by ohn Forster. That work [they go on to say], erfect and exhaustive as a biography, is only complete as regards correspondence, the theme of the book having made it impossible include in its space any letters, or hardly by, besides those addressed to Mr. Forster. s no man ever expressed himself more in his tters than Charles Dickens, we believe that publishing this careful selection from his eneral correspondence we shall be supplying want which has been universally felt § Not only do we agree in this belief, but e go further: we believe that had we ily had the "letters," and not Mr. Forsr's biography, we should have known ore what manner of man Dickens was In 2 The Letters of Charles Dickens. Edited by his STER-IN-LAW and his ELDEST DAUGHter. ls. Vol. I. London: Chapman and Hall. 707 than if we had known him only from Mr. Forster's "Life." The letters extend over the period from 1833 to 1870, that is, from the commencement of Dickens's literary life, just before the starting of the "Pickwick Papers," to the time of his death, and we purpose calling our readers' attention to those of them which are most characteristic of the writer's mind and style. We first take an illustration of Dickens's habit of making real persons and events the foundation of characters and incidents in his tales. In a letter written to his wife during a tour in Yorkshire, undertaken in order that he might investigate for himself "the real facts as to the condition of the Yorkshire schools," and dated from "Greta Bridge," in the neighborhood of which our readers will remember "Dotheboys Hall" is placed, he writes: We reached Grantham between nine and ten on Thursday night and found everything prepared for our reception in the very best inn I have ever put up at. It is odd enough that an old lady who had been outside all day and came in towards dinner-time turned out to be the mistress of a Yorkshire school, returning from the holiday stay in London. She was a very queer old lady, and showed us a long letter she was carrying to one of the boys from his father, containing a severe lecture (enforced and aided by many texts of Scripture) on his refusing to eat boiled meat. very communicative, drank a great deal of brandy and water, and towards evening became insensible, in which state we left her. She was Again, writing on another day, during the same journey: : We had a very droll male companion until seven o'clock in the evening, and a most delicious lady's maid for twenty miles, who imwindows, as she expected the carriage was plored us to keep a sharp look-out at the coach coming to meet her, and she was afraid of missing it. We had many delightful vauntings of the same kind; but in the end it is scarcely necessary to say that the carriage did not come, but a very dirty girl did.* Here we plainly have the origin of Mr. Squeers's drunken habits. The boy who Memoirs of Edward and Catherine Stanley, by refused to eat boiled meat appears in thur Penrhyn Stanley, p. 301. t Vol. i., preface. Ibid. * Vol. i., p. 8. |