traces and teaches "economic fish cul- subsequently captured betrayed their identity with a certain hatch and draft turned in, and so clenched his doctrine of the marvellously sudden development of the smolt into the grilse. On the other hand, he had at South Kensington specimens of salmon that had been hatched for years, but which had never breathed salt water, and they remained little bigger than herrings. Those were problems which he never satisfactorily solved for himself, laboriously though he worked at them. He satisfied himself that the whitebait is sui generis, but what it is he was not decided. He labored to discover a cure for the strange fungoid excrescence of "salmon disease" of late years, but life was too short for him: he toiled to the last, and died in harness. RUSSIA IN 1670. - When Ivan went through | poor fellow, whose wife was momentarily exthe country he was in the habit of accepting presents from the poor and the rich. There happened one day to be in his route a good honest bask-shoemaker, who made shoes of bask for a copeck a pair, but when the emperor came he was quite at a loss what to give. His wife, a woman of ready wit and reserve, suggests a pair of sopkyes, or bask shoes. "That is no rarity," quoth the man; "but we have a huge great turnip in the garden - we'll give him that, and a pair of sopkyes too." Great was his success; the emperor was delighted, and made all his followers buy sopkyes at five shillings a pair, and wore a pair himself. So began the wheel of good fortune to turn for the Sopotskies, for he soon drove a thriving trade and left a great estate behind him. And in memory of this gallant, it is the custom for the Russians to throw all their old sopkyes into a tree which stood by his house. There was a gentleman, however, hard by, who, seeing the turnip so graciously accepted and generously rewarded, bethought him of a like success, and offered the emperor a brave horse. But the emperor, seeing through his motives, gave him nothing in return but the aforesaid great and mighty turnip, for which as seems not improbable- he was both abashed and laughed at. Ivan, following the habits of so many Eastern despots, delighted to go about in disguise, and test and witness the feelings of the people towards strangers generally and the imperial person in particular. One night, in disguise, he sought a lodging in a village near the city of Moscow, but in vain, for no one would let him in; but at last one pecting to become a joyful mother, opened his door and admitted the apparently exhausted beggar. In the course of the night the child was born, and the vagrant, getting himself gone, told the man he would bring him some godfathers next day. Accordingly, the next day the emperor and many of his nobles came and presented the poor fellow with a handsome largess, and set fire and burned up all the other houses in the village, playfully exhorting the inhabitants to charity and the entertainment of strangers, and that it were good for them to try how excellent it was to be out of doors on a cold winter night. It was his custom to associate with thieves and robbers in disguise. Once he went so far as to recommend them to rob the Imperial Exchequer, "for," said he, "I know the way to it." But upon this, in a moment one of the fellows up with his fist and struck him a hearty good blow on the face, saying, "Thou rogue! Wilt thou offer to rob his Majesty, who is so good to us? Let us go and rob some rich Boyar who has cozened his Majesty of vast sums.' Ivan was mightily pleased with this fellow, and at parting changed caps with him, bidding him meet him next morning in the Dravetz, a place in the court where the emperor was accustomed to pass by, "And there," said he, "will I bring thee a good cap of aqua vitæ and bread." The next morning the thief was there, and being discovered by his Majesty, was called up, admonished to steal no more, preferred to high dignity about the court, and appointed chief commissioner of the detective force. Antiquary. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. 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. THE oldest, and perhaps the strongest, link which binds England to the continent of Europe is the relation of this country to Flanders. There, on the eastern shore of the German Ocean, where Charlemagne planted a Saxon colony a thousand years ago on the littus Saxonicum, still lives a people singularly congenial to ourselves. The same eager pursuit of trade, the same skill in manufactures, the same attachment to municipal government and political freedom, and during many centuries a common fear of France, united the people of England to the people of Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp. In times of trouble and persecution many an English fugitive found a refuge in the Scheldt; and from the counts of Flanders to the dukes of Burgundy, and even to their Spanish descendants and heirs, the rulers of the Low Countries almost invariably looked to the alliance and support of the English crown. To this day the independence of Belgium is an object of paramount interest to England. The history of the Commons of Flanders is therefore one of peculiar interest to ourselves, and we shall make no apology for presenting to our readers an episode taken from these Flemish annals. A great English poet has already given to the name of Philip van Arteveld a lasting place in English literature. Our present subject concerns the father of that eminent person, whose character and fate were not less heroic and tragical than those of his son. 3. Annales de Flandres de P. d'Oudegherst. Par M. LESBROUSSART. Gand: 1789. 4. Korte Levensschets van Jacob van Arteveld. Door LIEVEN EVERWYN. Gent: 1845. 5. Mémoires sur la ville de Gand. Par le Chevalier CHARLES-LOUIS DIERICX. Gand: 1814. 6. Cronijcke van den Lande ende Graefscepe van Vlaenderen. Gemaect door JOR. NICOLAES DESPARS. Te Brugge: 1839. 8. Le Siècle des Artevelde. Par LEON VANDER The numerous works placed at the head of this article sufficiently indicate the interest which attaches to the family of Arteveld, and we are indebted to them and to some researches of our own for the story we are about to lay before our readers. Casting about for allies to aid him in enforcing his claim to the crown of France, Edward III. was counselled by his father-in-law, the count of Hainault, to secure the support of the Flemish Communes. The chief manufacturing towns of Flanders had been alienated from their own count, Louis de Nevers- -sometimes called Louis de Crécy — by reason of his grievous exactions and entire submission to his overlord, the king of France. It was at the instigation of Philip of Valois that, in the autumn of 1336, the count, without either provocation or warning, threw into prison every Englishman found within his territories. Philip's object was plainly manifest. There was nothing he more desired than to bring about a rupture between England and Flanders, for he had observed with much anxiety the excellent relations, based on mutual interests, that had sprung up between the wool-producers of the one other. As it chanced, he overshot the country and the manufacturers of the mark. Edward indeed shortly afterwards retaliated by arresting the Flemings within his own dominions, and prohibiting the exportation of wool. Deprived of the raw material of their industry, the Flemish looms were thrown out of work, and the weavers were reduced to destitution. They were sufficiently logical, however, to trace their sufferings to their true source, and to regard as their real enemy not the English monarch, but their own sovereign. Edward, moreover, took some trouble to exculpate himself, and assured both the count of Flanders and the magistrates of the chief towns that he much desired to revive the old friendship which had proved so pleasant and advantageous alike to them and to his own subjects. To these overtures Louis de Nevers 7. Memorie Boek der Stadt Ghent, 1301-1737. turned a deaf ear, for the privations of his Bruxelles: 1879. In the following year the States of Flan- | Tronchiennes, the grandfather of the ders, Brabant, and Hainault, entered into brewer, if we follow M. Auguste Voisin an offensive and defensive alliance, by - or his father-in-law, if we adopt the which they agreed to refer all future dis- guidance of Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove. putes between themselves to arbiters In either case, he is described by Meyer chosen from among their most eminent as "eques Flandrus nobilissimus," as a townsmen, and to reopen commercial rela- citizen of Ghent, and "baro præcipuus tions with England. These resolutions Flandriæ." Jehan le Bel, too, has a good having been communicated to Edward, he word to say for him, as "ung vaillant chelost no time in deputing the Bishop of valier ancyen qui démeuroit à Gand, et y Lincoln and the Earls of Huntingdon and estoit moult fort aimé. L'appeloit-on," Salisbury to negotiate personally with the he continues, "Messire Courtesin, et great men and great cities of Flanders. estoit chevalier banneret; et le tenoit-on His envoys were instructed to express the pour le plus preu chevalier de Flandre, king's readiness to re-establish the wool- et pour le plus vaillant homme, et qui le staple in that province whence it had been plus vassaument avoit toudis servi les removed to Dordrecht, and to betroth his seigneurs." These services were now daughter Joan to the count's son, Louis forgotten, as well as the prowess which de Mâle so called from a château near had won the honor of knighthood on the Bruges in which he was born, and which field of battle. Like the Van Artevelds, is still inhabited. The Flemings naturally Sohier de Courtrai* belonged to the comattached immense importance to having a mercial nobility, and was, consequently, depot or emporium of wool in one of their rather popular with the citizens than acown cities, because, as we read in the ceptable to the count. It is certain that "Cronique de Flandres :"*"Toute Flan- his hospitable reception of Edward's endres estoit fondée sur draperie, et sans voys gave sore umbrage to Louis de Nelaine on ne pouvoit draper." The English vers, who invited him to Bruges to attend envoys appear to have visited "the three a general assembly of deputies from the good towns" of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, Flemish Communes. The invitation was but it was in Ghent they made their long- accepted, but on his arrival the aged est stay, and, according to Froissart, knight was treacherously arrested and "spent such sums that gold and silver conveyed to the Château de Rupelmonde seemed to fly out of their hands." With on the Scheldt. In vain did the towns of all their patriotism the worthy Flemings Flanders implore the count to release his had a keen eye to their personal interests; venerable prisoner, nor was the Duke of and Walsingham sarcastically remarks, Brabant's intercession a whit more effica "Plus saccos quam Anglos venerabantur." cious. The count also attempted to inThere is reason to believe that Jacob van tercept the English envoys, but they, Arteveld played a conspicuous part in the being timely warned, returned home by negotiations which ensued, and Sismondi way of Holland. is scandalized that a prelate so eminent as the Bishop of Lincoln should have condescended to hold any sort of intercourse with a dealer in hydromel. A genial hospitality was at the same time exercised towards the English nobles by Zegher or Sohier de Courtrai, lord of Dronghen or * Cronique de Flandres, anciennement composée par auteur incertain, et nouvellement mise en luinière par Denis Sauvage de Fontenailles en Brie, Historiographe du Très Chrétien Roy Henry, second de ce nom. Lyon, 1572. "L'évêque de Lincoln ne dédaigna point de traiter avec ce bourgeois, qui levoit contre son souverain l'étendard de la révolte." - Hist. des Français, tome Paris, 1828. X. Irritated by the failure of his conciliatory measures, Edward despatched an expedition against Cadzand, a small island lying at the entrance of Sluys harbor, and a favorite station of the French cruisers employed in intercepting English vessels laden with wool. After a stout resistance by the men of Bruges, the count's brother was taken prisoner, five hundred Flemings were put to the sword, and the place given up to plunder. The loyalty of the Bruges citizens was rewarded by permission to Translated by Carte "Lord of Courtesy," vol. iii., bk. x. |