sion; and that a triple dimension is perfect, because three are all; and that three are all, because when 'tis but one or two, we can't say all, but when it is three; and the sum of this sorites is, that we can say all of the number three, therefore the world is perfect; which is as good as—

"Tobit went forth, and his dog followed him ;

Therefore there is a world in the moon."].

The French, however, make very light of Aristotle's dictum, that we cannot say all for two. Tous deux, all two, is the French for our word both.

[Elsewhere Aristotle shows that the heavens move this way rather than another, "because they move to the more honourable; and before is more honourable than after." This is like the gallant, who sent his man to buy a hat that would turn up behind and not before.

That its circular definitions, such as that heavy bodies descend by gravity, or that light is evépyɛia тov diapavov, the act of a perspicuous body, cannot lead to discoveries: and that some of Aristotle's definitions are only as good as that was lately given of a thought in a University sermon, viz. "a repentine prosiliency jumping into being."]

Mr. Glanvill says that dogmatism is ill-mannered, litigious, and a breaker of the world's peace; and [if our returning Lord shall scarce find faith on earth, where will he look for charity? The union of a sect within itself is a pitiful charity; it is no concord of Christians, but a conspiracy against Christ: and dogmatists love one another, not because they bear his image, but because they bear one another's.]

Of dogmatic disputation, Mr. Glanvill says: ["that which is pursued by the eager opposites is, whose passion is the strongest; or whose pen can best express the animosities that inspire the disputants."]

We fancy that we know in our time a kind of dogmatism as bad as that of the Aristotelian, though it may have been bred by the use, or rather the misuse, of induction. Our books of history,

travels, politics, and criticism are often marked, and we think greatly marred, by the forthsetting of hasty conclusions for sound truths. The old writers of history, such as those of the Bible, and Herodotus, give only what a Saxon has defined to be history, things and deeds that were done in former days," in the best order and with the best evidence of their truth; but our writers seem too

"the

much given to an arranging of every fact under some general truth or law, to which they may believe it belongs.

As an instance of what we mean, we have a passage from the Abridgment of Goldsmith's History of England:'-(a) "The first acts of an usurper are always popular: (b) Stephen, in order to secure his tottering throne, passed a charter, granting several privileges to the different orders of the state." Here Stephen's act (b) is referred to a law of behaviour (a), the constancy of which we gainsay; and the very book which declares that "the first acts of an usurper are always popular," tells us elsewhere that "Henry IV found that the throne of an usurper is but a bed of thorns;" and that after he had quelled a rising that was bred from grievances which he had not righted, he endeavoured to acquire popularity which he had lost by the severities exercised during the preceding part of his reign: so that his first acts were not popular, and the general law is unsound.

This may be called the tadpole form of writing, as it gives a particular fact, the tadpole's body,-hung to a great law or general truth, which makes its head. Our writers may deem that from our wide field of particular truths, and our tracking of general ones by inductive reasoning, they have a greater right than their forefathers to generalise particular truths, and that their hanging of them on a general one may help their readers to knowledge.

But whenever a proposition, which is given for a constant truth, is too hastily taken, and untrue, it may mislead a reader into untruth; and may so far vitiate a history that a great frequency of such ones would make men little willing to seek the particular truths with which they are mingled; while a history of pure and well-arranged single truths would be good for ever.

The ammonite was once taken for the body of a serpent, and some men were eager to find a specimen with its head on; and it is said that a cunning stone-cutter supplied one with a head of stone but when it was known that the ammonite was a shell, and never had any head, his headed specimen would have been unworthy of any museum, till its false member was knocked off: and if any thing less than the soundest truth be given as the law of a fact, not only is the reading of it not worthy of a reader's time, but is rather to be shunned as a teaching of untruth.

Again, our history says-" The dress of savage nations is everywhere nearly alike." that's the tadpole's head, but we do not think it true. The gnatoo dress of Tonga men is not much like the skins

of the Esquimaux. "The clothes they (the Britons) wore were usually the skins of beasts;" but the Tonga mens' robes are of paper-cloth, or mats.

Again (The head): “As weak princes are never without governing favourites," (the body), he (Henry III) first placed his affections on Hubert de Burgh, &c.

Another "A state of permanent felicity is not to be expected here; and Mary Stuart, commonly called Mary Queen of Scots, was the first person who excited the fears or the resentment of Elizabeth," &c.

One more- "A nation entirely addicted to war has seldom wanted the imputation of cruelty; the Saxons are represented as a very cruel nation," &c.

We do not think there are many nations entirely addicted to war the Saxons were land-tillers.

The tadpole's head is not, however, always so large as a general truth; it is sometimes the motive of the following action: as,

Cæsar, having overrun Gaul, and anxious to extend his fame, determined upon the conquest of a country that seemed to promise an easy triumph.

Cæsar says himself, that he made up his mind to come into Britain because he understood that in nearly all the Gallic wars help had been afforded from thence to his Gallic foes; and some have thought that Cæsar had hopes of opening a new slave mart: so that a wish "to extend his fame" may not have been his only motive to the invasion of Britain.

A provincial newspaper had lately undertaken to give a statement of a case of borough persecution, and headed it by a preface to show that every age has its persecutions, as is shown by the records of time from Nero to Queen Mary.

The alchymists have been the butt of much raillery, as men who were so foolish as to work for an unattainable end; and yet what or wherein was their folly? They thought to make a natural body, gold, with the chymistry of their own hands. Now if it be folly to think of producing, by hand-chymistry, a body which has been made by the chymistry of nature, then our chymists are still fools. Ultramarine is a body which was formerly very costly; but a chymist, Gmelin, made ultramarine, not worse and much cheaper than that of nature, by heating a mixture of hydrated alumina and silicic acid, to whiteness, with sulphuret of sodium. It may be answered, that ultramarine is a compound body, and gold is a pure

element: it is true that ultramarine is now, and that gold is not yet, found to be a compound; but we should think no man would take upon himself to declare that none of the bodies, which we know only as elements, can ever in the world be analysed, and found otherwise than single. It would be a dogmatism of the worst kind to believe that we of our age have all truth in quantity or quality.

ART. II.-Old Notions on Heraldry.

The Blazon of Gentrie: devided into two parts. The first named The Glorie of Generositie. The second, Lacyes Nobilitie. Comprehending discourses of Armes and of Gentry. Wherein is treated of the beginning, parts, and degrees of Gentlenesse, with her Lawes: Of the Bearing, and Blazon of Cote-armors: Of the Lawes of Armes, and of Combats. Compiled by JOHN FERNE, Gentleman, for the instruction of all Gentlemen bearers of Armes, whome and none other this worke concerneth. At London: Printed by John Windet, for Andrew Maunsell. 1586.

THERE are few subjects about which writers have differed more widely than respecting the origin of heraldry. All our old armorists-Upton, Dame Julyan Berners, Gerard Legh, Bossewel, Sir John Ferne, Guillim, Waterhouse, Randle Holme-entertained notions more or less extravagant concerning its antiquity. Not only do they assign regular and technically-described coats of arms to all the Saxon kings, up to the apocryphal Hengist himself, but even to the older-the fabulous, royalties created by the monk of Monmouth. Sir Winston Churchill, father of the great Duke of Marlborough, in his 'Divi Britannici; a Remark upon the Kings of this Isle,' (a remark in 362 pages folio!), illustrates his narrative with the armorial bearings of the kings of Britain up to "King Brute," in the year of the world 2855. The "four doctors of the Church, all gentlemen, both of blood and coat-armour;" the Roman emperors, the sages of Greece, and the Jewish heroes and patriarchs, were similarly honoured, and there were arms found" even for Adam and Eve, both before the Fall, when coats were not, and, "with a difference," after that event. The coats of skins mentioned in sacred story, though possessing little claim to be considered ensigns of honour," are most ingeniously twisted by the author of the treatise before us into something very like a medieval surcoat.

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Our great bard, who had certainly read this and other heraldric books, among the contemporary literature of his day, broadly hints at this folly (Hamlet, act v, scene 1):

"1st Clown. Come! my spade.

There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession.

2d Clown. Was he a gentleman?

1st Clown. He was the first that ever bore arms. 2d Clown. Why, he had none.

1st Clown. What! art thou a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scriptures? The Scripture says Adam digged; could he dig without arms?"

Even some modern writers, men of intelligence, living in this unromantic, unchivalric, nineteenth century, have been misled by our old heraldric literature, and have greatly antedated the origin of the science-if we may so call it-of heraldry. The arms of Ethelred, Canute, Edward the Confessor, and William the Conqueror are as gravely written about as any well-established incident of their reigns. A certain popular and generally well-executed work favours us with a representation of the ship of the Norman conqueror, which has its mainsail emblazoned with the three lions of England, after the fashion that prevailed almost three hundred years later; and we believe that the authorised regulators of these matters, the members of the College of Arms, themselves occasionally sanction such fictions in their formal official documents.* No one tolerably conversant, however, with medieval antiquities, requires to be warned of the futility of attempting to find armorial bearings before the latter part of the twelfth century. One may hunt-but his labour will be lost-over illuminated manuscripts, architectural ornaments, seals, painted glass, sepulchral memorials, encaustic tiles, and the whole field of decorative art, to find one representation of the heraldric shield. True it is, that the monkish artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries represent the scenes of much earlier days in the costume of their own times. And if a cloistered

*We are surprised-almost grieved-to find respectable writers of history so ignorant as many of them are upon the archæology of this subject. Even the elegant and graphic Thierry tells us, that the sails of the Conqueror's ship "were of different colours, and on them in various places were painted the three lions-the arms of Normandy!" (Hazlitt's Translation, vol. i, p. 166). What is worse still is, that the Roman de Rou and the Bayeux Tapestry are given as references for the statement!-Mr. Worsaae also tells us that the Norman Dukes bore three lions passant, and accounts for the alleged fact by the Norwegian descent of those potentates, affirming that the lion is "peculiarly Scandinavian." (Danes in England, p. 65.) What will astonish even our nonantiquarian readers is the assertion of this writer, that " generally, the lion was not, nor is indeed at present, found in coats of arms in England." (Ibid., p. 64. Vide text infra.)