Born: Archbishop Usher, 1580; Jacob Ludwig
Carl Grimm, 1785.
Died: The Mareschal Duc de Luxembourg, 1695;
Charlotte Lennox, novelist, 1804; Rachel, Tragedienne,
1858.
Feast Day: St. Titus, disciple of St. Paul.
St. Gregory, bishop, 541. St. Rigobert, or Robert,
about 750. St. Ramon, bishop.
JACOB L. C. GRIMM
Jacob Grimm and his younger brother Wilhelm,
natives of Hanau in the electorate of Hesse Cassel,
now (1861) occupying professorships at Berlin, are
distinguished as investigators of the early history
and literature of Germany. They have produced numerous
works, and finally have engaged upon a large
Dictionary of the German Language. 'All my labours,'
says Jacob Grimm, 'have been either directly or
indirectly devoted to researches into our ancient
language, poetry, and laws. These studies may seem
useless to many; but to me they have always appeared a
serious and dignified task, firmly and distinctly
connected with our common fatherland, and calculated
to foster the love of it. I have esteemed nothing
trifling in these inquiries, but have used the small
for the elucidation of the great, popular traditions
for the elucidation of written documents. Several of
my books have been published in common with my brother
William. We lived from our youth up in brotherly
community of goods; money, books, and collections,
belonged to us in common, and it was natural to
combine our labours.' The publications of Jacob extend
over fully half a century, the first having appeared
in 1811.
MARESCHAL DUC DE LUXEMBOURG, 1695
Whatever glory or territory France gained by arms
under Louis XIV. might be said to be owing to this
singularly able general. It was remarked that each of
his campaigns was marked by some brilliant victory,
and as these were always blazoned on the walls of the
principal church of Paris, he came to be called, by
one of those epigrammatic flatteries for which the
French are distinguished, Le Tapissier de Notre
Dame. With his death the prosperities of Louis XIV
terminated.
MADEMOISELLE
RACHEL
The modern tragedy queen of France died at
thirty-eight, that age which appears so fatal to
genius; that is to say, the age at which an
over-worked nervous system comes naturally to a close.
An exhausting professional tour in America, entered
upon for needless money-making, is believed to have
had much to do in bringing the great trag�dienne
to a premature grave.
Rachel was the child of poor Hebrew parents, and
her talents were first exercised in singing to a
guitar on the streets of Paris. When at an early age
she broke upon theatrical audiences in the characters
of Roxane, Camille, and others of that class, she
created a furor almost unexampled. Yet her style of
acting was more calculated to excite terror than to
melt with pity. She was in reality a woman without
estimable qualities. The mean passion of avarice was
her predominating one, and strange stories are told of
the oblique courses she would resort to to gratify it.
There was but one relieving consideration regarding
it, that she employed its results liberally in behalf
of the poor family from which she sprang. The feelings
with which we heard in England in 1848 that Rachel had
excited the greatest enthusiasm in the Th��tre
Francais by singing the Marseillaise hymn, and
soon after that her lover M. Ledru Rollin, of the
provisional government, had paid her song with a grant
of public money, will not soon be forgotten.
INTRODUCTION OF THE SILK
MANUFACTURES INTO EUROPE
It was on the 4th of January 536, that two monks
came from the Indies to Constantinople, bringing with
them the means of teaching the manufacture of silk.
Workmen instructed in the art carried it thence to
Italy and other parts of Europe. In England, the
manufacture was practiced as early as the reign of
Henry VI, in the middle of the fifteenth century.
ARREST OF
THE FIVE MEMBERS
The 4th of January 1641-2 is the date of one of the
most memorable events in English history �the
attempted arrest of the five members of the House of
Commons�Pym, Hampden, Hollis, Haselrig, and Strode�by
Charles I. The divisions between the unhappy king and
his parliament were lowering towards the actual war
which broke out eight months later. Charles, stung by
the Grand Remonstrance, a paper in which all the
errors of his past government were exposed, thought by
one decisive act to strike terror into his outraged
subjects, and restore his full authority. While London
was on the borders of insurrection against his rule,
there yet were not wanting considerable numbers of
country gentle-men, soldiers of fortune, and others,
who were eager to rally round him in any such attempt.
His design of coming with an armed band to the House
and arresting the five obnoxious members, was
communicated by a lady of his court; so that, just as
he approached the door of the House with his cavalier
bands, the gentlemen he wished to seize were retiring
to a boat on the river, by which they made their
escape.
Mr. John Forster has
assembled, with great skill, all the facts of the
scene which ensued. 'Within the House,' he says, 'but
a few minutes had elapsed since the Five Members had
de-parted, and Mr. Speaker had received instruction to
sit still with the mace lying before him, when a loud
knock threw open the door, a rush of armed men was
heard, and above it (as we learn from Sir Ralph Verney)
the voice of the King commanding "upon their lives not
to come in." The moment after, followed only by his
nephew, Charles, the Prince Elector Palatine, Rupert's
eldest brother, he entered; but the door was not
permitted to be closed behind him. Visible now at the
threshold to all were the officers and desperadoes, of
whom, D'Ewes proceeds: "some had left their cloaks in
the hall, and most of them were armed with pistols and
swords, and they forcibly kept the door of the House
of Commons open, one Captain Hide standing next the
door holding his sword upright in the scabbard." A
picture which Sir Ralph Verney, also present that day,
in his place, completes by adding that, "so the door
was kept open, and the Earl of Roxburgh stood within
the door, leaning upon it." '
The King walked uncovered along the hall, while the
members stood uncovered and silent on each side.
Taking a position on the step in front of the
Speaker's chair, he looked round for the faces of Pym
and his four associates, and not finding them, he thus
spoke: 'Gentlemen, I am sorry for this occasion of
coming among you. Yesterday I sent a sergeant-at-arms
upon a very important occasion to apprehend some that
by my command were accused of high treason; whereunto
I did expect obedience, and not a message. And I must
declare unto you here, that albeit no king that ever
was in England, shall be more careful of your
privileges, to maintain them to the utter-most of his
power, than I shall be, yet you must know that in
cases of treason no person hath a privilege. And
therefore I am come to know if any of these persons
that were accused are here.'
Still casting his eyes vainly around, he after a
pause added, 'So long as those persons that I have
accused (for no slight crime, but for treason) are
here, I cannot expect that this House will be in the
right way I do heartily wish it. Therefore I am come
to tell you that I must have them, wherever I find
them.'
After another pause, he called out, 'Is Mr. Pym
here?' No answer being returned, he asked if Mr.
Hollis was here. There being still no answer, he
turned to the Speaker, and put these questions to him.
The scene became painfully embarrassing to all, and it
grew more so when Lenthal, kneeling before the King,
entreated him to understand that he could neither see
nor speak but at the pleasure of the House.
Mr. Forster has been enabled by D'Ewes to describe
the remainder of the scene in vivid terms. After
another long pause�a 'dreadful silence'�'Charles spoke
again to the crowd of mute and sullen faces. The
complete failure of his scheme was now accomplished,
and all its possible consequences, all the suspicions
and retaliations to which it had laid him open, appear
to have rushed upon his mind. " Well, since I see all
my birds are flown, I do expect from you that you will
send them unto me as soon as they return hither. But,
I assure you, on the word of a king, I never did
intend any force, but shall proceed against them in a
legal and fair way, for I never meant any other. And
now, since I see that I cannot do what I came for, I
think this no unfit occasion to repeat what I have
said formerly, that whatsoever I have done in favour,
and to the good, of my subjects, I do mean to maintain
it. I will trouble you no more, but tell you I do
expect, as soon as they come to the House, you will
send them to me; otherwise I must take my own course
to find them."
To that closing sentence, the note left by
Sir Ralph Verney makes
a not unimportant addition, which, however, appears
nowhere in Rushworth's Report. "For their
treason was foul, and such an one as they would all
thank him to discover." If uttered, it was an angry
assertion from amid forced and laboured apologies, and
so far, would agree with what D'Ewes observed of his
change of manner at the time. " After he had ended his
speech, he went out of the House in a more
discontented and angry passion than he came in, going
out again between myself and the south end of the
clerk's table, and the Prince Elector after him."
'But he did not leave as he had entered, in
silence. Low mutterings of fierce discontent broke out
as he passed along, and many members cried out aloud,
so as he might hear them, Privilege! Privilege! With
these words, ominous of ill, ringing in his ear, he
repassed to his palace through the lane again formed
of his armed adherents, and amid audible shouts of an
evil augury from desperadoes disappointed of their
prey.'
There was but an interval of six days between the
King's entering the House of Commons, and his flight
from Whitehall. Charles raised the issue, the Commons
accepted it, and so began our Great Civil War.
LIFE-BOATS AND THEIR BOATMEN
The northern coast of Wales, between the towns of
Rhyl and Abergele, was thrown into excitement on the
4th of January 1847, by the loss of one gallant
life-boat, and the success of another. A schooner, the
Temperance of Belfast, got into distress in a raging
sea. The Rhyl life-boat pushed off in a wild surf to
aid the sufferers; whether the boat was injured or
mismanaged, none survived to tell; for all the crew,
thirteen in number, were overwhelmed by the sea, and
found a watery grave. The Temperance, however, was not
neglected; another life-boat set out from
Point-of-Air, and braving all dangers, brought the
crew of the schooner safe to land.
This event is a type of two important things in
relation to the shipping of England�the enormous
amount of wreck on our coasts, and the heroic and
unselfish exertions made to save human life imperiled
by those catastrophes. The wreck is indeed terrible.
There is a 'Wreck Chart' of the British Islands now
published annually, spotted with death all over;
little black marks are engraved for every wreck,
opposite the part of the coast where they occurred.
More than one of these charts has had a thousand such
spots, each denoting either a total wreck or a serious
disaster, and involving the loss of a still larger
number of lives. The collier ships which bring coal
from the north to London are sadly exposed to these
calamities during their ten or twelve thousand annual
voyages. The eastern coast from the Tyne to the
Humber, the coast opposite Yarmouth, the shoals off
the mouth of the Thames, the Scilly Isles, the west
coast of Wales, and Barnstaple Bay, are all dismal
places for wrecks.
Little need is there to tell the story of
shipwreck: it is known full well. How the returning
emigrant, with his belt full of gold, sinks to a briny
grave when within sight of his native shore; how the
outgoing emigrant meets with a similar death before
his voyage has well commenced; how the soldier is
overwhelmed when departing to fight on foreign shores;
how friends are severed, valuable goods lost,
merchants ruined�all this is known to every one who
takes up a newspaper. Some may say, looking at the
prodigious activity of our shipping, that wreck is an
inevitable accompaniment of such a system. When we
consider that seven hundred over-sea voyages per day
either begin or end at a port in the United Kingdom,
we ought to expect disasters as one of the attendant
consequences. True, some disasters: the question is,
whether prudential arrangements might not lessen the
number.
About seventy years ago, after a terrible storm on
the Northumbrian coast, Mr. Greathead, of South
Shields, constructed what he called a safety-boat or
life-boat, containing much cork in its composition, as
a means of producing buoyancy. Other inventors
followed and tried to improve the construction by the
use of air-tight cases, india-rubber linings, and
other light but impervious substances. Sometimes these
boats were instrumental in saving life; sometimes a Grace Darling, daring all perils,
would push forth
to a distressed ship in a common open boat; but still
the loss of life by shipwreck was every year
distressingly great.
It was under this state of things that the
'institution for the Preservation of Life from
Shipwreck' was founded in 1824, to establish
life-boats and mortar-rockets at all the dangerous
Farts of our coasts; to induce the formation of local
committees at the chief ports for a similar purpose;
to maintain a correspondence with those committees;
and to encourage the invention of new or improved
boats, buoys, belts, rocket apparatus, and other
appliances for saving life. Right nobly has this work
been done. Without fee or reward, without guarantee or
'subsidy,' the Institution, now called the 'Life-Boat
Institution,' has been employed for nearly forty years
in saving human life. Many an exciting narrative may
be picked out of the pages of the Life-Boat, a journal
in which the Institution occasionally records the
story of shipwreck and of life-preserving.
The life-boat system is remarkable in all its
points. In 1850 the Duke of Northumberland offered a
prize for the best form of life-boat. The
boat-builders set to work, and sent in nearly 300
plans; the winner was Mr. Beeching, boat-builder at
Yarmouth. Oddly enough, however, the examiners did not
practically adopt any one of them, not even Mr.
Beeching's; they got a member of their own body ( Mr.
Peake, master shipwright at Woolwich dockyard) to
construct a life-boat that should comprise all the
best points of all the best plans. This boat, slightly
improved by later alterations, is the one now adopted
by the Life-Boat Institution, and coming into use in
other countries besides our own. It is about thirty
feet long, seven wide, and four deep; nearly alike at
both ends, and ingeniously contrived with air
chambers, passages, and valves. It possesses in a high
degree these qualities�great lateral stability; speed
against a heavy sea; facility for landing and for
taking the shore; immediate self-discharge of
sea-water; facility of self-righting if upset; great
strength of construction; and stowage room for a
number of passengers. Gallantly the boatmen manage
these life-boats.
The Institution maintains life-boat
stations all round the coast, each of which is a
little imperium in itself�a life-boat, generally a
boat-house to keep it in, a carriage on which to drag
it out to the sea, and a complete service of all the
articles necessary for the use of the men. There is a
captain or coxswain to each boat, and he can command
the services of a hardy crew, obtained partly by
salaries and partly by reward when actually engaged in
saving life. The Institution can point to nearly
12,000 lives saved between 1824 and 1861, either
directly by the boats and boatmen, or by exertions
encouraged and rewarded by the Institution.
Nor should the gallant life-boatmen be grudged
their bit of honest pride at what they have done. They
can tell of the affair of October 7th, 1854, when, in
an easterly gale at Holm Sand on the Suffolk coast,
the life-boat boldly struck out, and finding a
Norwegian brig in distress, was baffled by the drunken
state of the eight sea-men on board, but succeeded, on
a second at-tempt next morning, in bringing all safely
off; the men being by that time sobered and
manage-able. They can tell of the affair of the 2nd of
May, 1855, when the Ramsgate beachmen saw signal
rockets at the light-vessels moored off the Good-win
Sands, denoting that a ship was in danger. The
life-boat gallantly started on her mission of mercy.
Then was there seen a hapless ship, the Queen of the
Teign, high and dry on. the Goodwins, with a foaming
sea on the edge of the sand. How to get near it? The
boatmen waited till the morning tide supplied a
sufficiency of water; they went in, ran on the sand
among the breakers, and aided the poor exhausted crew
of the ship to clamber on board the life-boat. All
were saved; and by dexterous management the ship was
saved also.
There was the Whitby case of January the 4th, 1857,
when one of the boatmen was clearly washed out of the
life-boat, over the heads of all his companions, by a
raging sea; and yet all were saved, ship's crew and
boatmen alike. But most of all do the life-boatmen
pleasurably reflect on the story of the Northern
Belle, and what they achieved for the crew of that
ship. It was a fine vessel, an American trader of 1100
tons. On the 5th of January 1857, she was off the
North Foreland struck by a terrible sea, and placed in
imminent peril. The Broadstairs boatmen harnessed
themselves to their life-boat carriage, and dragged it
with the boat a distance of no less than two miles,
from Broadstairs to Kingsgate, over a heavy and hilly
country. In the dead of a winter's night, amid hail,
sleet, and rain, the men could not see where to launch
their boat. They waited through the darkness.
At day-break on the next morning, a distressing
sight presented itself: twenty-three poor fellows were
clinging to the rigging of the only remaining mast of
the Northern Belle, to which they had held on during
this appalling night. Off went the life-boat, the Mary
White, manned by seven daring boatmen, who braved the
raging sea which washed over them repeatedly. They
went to the wreck, brought off seven men, and were
obliged to leave the rest for fear of involving all in
destruction. Meanwhile another life-boat, the Calmer
White, was wheeled overland from Broadstairs, then
launched, and succeeded in bringing away four-teen of
the sufferers. There remained only two others, the
captain and the pilot, who refused to leave the wreck
so long as a spar was standing. The Calmer White
dashed out a second time, rescued these two mariners,
and left the hapless ship to its watery grave. How the
poor American sailors were warmed and cared for at the
little hostelry, the 'Captain Digby,' at Kingsgate;
how the life-boats returned in triumphant pro-cession
to Broadstairs; and how the quiet heroism of the
life-boatmen was the admiration of all�the newspapers
of the period fully told.
EVIDENCE
ABOUT A CHIMNEY
A claim having been made this day (1826), at the
Marlborough-street Police Office, for a reward on
account of the detection of a brewery chimney on fire,
it was resisted on the ground that the flue, which was
above eighty feet high, was so constructed and managed
that it could not take fire. A witness on this side,
who gave the (unnecessary) information that he was a
chimney-sweep, set forth his evidence in the following
terms: 'This here man (pointing to the patrol) has
told a false affidavit, your worship. I knows that ere
chimley from a infant, and she knows my foot as well
as my own mother. The ways I goes up her is this�I
goes in all round the boiler, then I twists in the
chimley like the smoke, and then up I goes with the
wind, for, your worship, there's a wind in her that
would blow you out like a feather, if you didn't know
her as well as I do, and that makes me always go to
the top myself, because there isn't a brick in her
that doesn't know my foot. So that you see, your
worship, no soot or blacks is ever in her; the wind
won't let 'em stop: and besides they knows that I go
up her regular. So that she always keeps herself as
clean as a new pin. I'll be bound the sides of her is
as clean this minute as I am (not saying much for the
chimney); therefore, your worship, that ere man as saw
two yards of fire coining out of her, did not see no
such thing, I say; and he has told your worship, and
these here gentlemen present, a false affidavit, I
say. I was brought up in that chimley, your worship,
and I can't abear to hear such things said�lies of
her; and. that's all as I knows at present, please
your worship.'
HANDSEL MONDAY
The first Monday of the year is a great holiday
among the peasantry of Scotland, and children
generally, as being the day peculiarly devoted in that
country to the giving and receiving of presents. It is
on this account called Handsel Monday, Handsel
being in Scotland the equivalent of a Christmas box,
but more specially inferring a gift at the
commencement of a season or the induing of some new
garment. The young people visit their seniors in
expectation of tips (the word, but not the action,
unknown in the north). Postmen, scavengers, and
deliverers of newspapers look for their little annual
guerdons.
Among the rural population, Auld Hansel Monday,
i.e. Handsel Monday old style, or the first Monday
after the 12th of the month, is
the day usually held.
The farmers used. to treat the whole of their servants
on that morning to a liberal breakfast of roast and
boiled, with ale, whiskey, and cake, to their utmost
contentment; after which the guests went about seeing
their friends for the remainder of the day. It was
also the day on which any disposed for change gave up
their places, and when new servants were en-gaged.
Even now, when most old fashions are much decayed,
Auld Handsel Monday continues to be the holiday of the
year to the class of farm-labourers in Scotland.
'It is worth mentioning that one William Hunter, a
collier (residing in the parish of Tillicoultry, in
Clackmannanshire), was cured in the year 1738 of an
inveterate rheumatism or gout, by drinking freely of
new ale, full of harm or yeast. The poor man had been
confined to his bed. for a year and a half, having
almost entirely lost the use of his limbs. On the
evening of Handsel Monday, as it is called, some of
his neighbours came to make merry with him. Though he
could not rise, yet he always took his share of the
ale, as it passed round the company, and in the end he
became much intoxicated. The consequence was that he
had the use of his limbs next morning, and was able to
walk about. He lived more than twenty years after
this, and never had the smallest return of his old
complaint.'�(Sinclair's) Statistical Account of
Scotland, xv. 201, note.
THE MAN IN THE
MOON
This is a familiar expression, to which few persons
attach any definite idea. Many would be found under a
belief that it refers merely to that faint appearance
of a face which the moon presents when full. Those who
are better acquainted with natural objects, and with
folklore, are aware that the Man in the Moon�the
object referred to under that name�is a dusky
resemblance to a human figure which appears on the
western side of the luminary when eight days old,
being somewhat like a man carrying a thornbush on his
back, and at the same time engaged in climbing, while
a detached object in front looks like his dog going on
before him.
It is a very old popular notion amongst various
nations, that this figure is the man referred to in
the Book of Numbers (chap. xv. v. 32 et seq.),
as having been detected by the children of Israel in
the wilderness, in the act of gathering sticks on the
Sabbath-day, and whom the Lord directed (in absence of
a law on the subject) to be stoned to death without
the camp. One would have thought this poor
stick-gatherer sufficiently punished in the actual
history: nevertheless, the popular mind has assigned
him the additional pain of a perpetual pillorying in
the moon. There he is with his burden of sticks upon
his back, continually climbing up that shining height
with his little dog before him, but never getting a
step higher! And so it ever must be while the world
endures!
Our poets make clear to us how old is this notion.
When Moonshine is to be represented in the famous play
of Pyramus and Thisbe (Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's
Dream), Mr. Quince, the carpenter, gives due
directions, as follows: 'One must come in with a bush
of thorns and a lantern, and say he comes in to
disfigure, or to present, the person of moonshine.'
And this order is realised. 'All I have to say,'
concludes the performer of this strange part, 'is, to
tell you, that the lantern is the moon; I the man in
the moon; this thorn-bush my thorn-bush; and this dog
my dog.' Chaucer adverts to the Man in the Moon, with
a needless aggravation of his criminality:
'On her brest a chorle painted ful even,
Bearing a bush of thorns on his backe,
Which for his theft might clime so ne'r the
heaven.'
Dante, too, the contemporary of Chaucer, makes
reference, in his Inferno, to the Man in the Moon, but
with a variation upon the popular English idea, in as
far as he calls him Cain.
In Ritson's Ancient Songs,
there is one
extracted from a manuscript of the time of Edward II,
on the Man in the Moon, but in language which can
scarcely now be understood. The first verse, in modern
orthography, will probably satisfy the reader:
'Man in the Moon stand and stit (?)
On his hot fork his burden he beareth,
It is much wonder that he na down slit,
For doubt lest he fall he shudd'reth and
shi'ereth.
When the frost freezes must chill he byde,
The thorns be keen his hattren so teareth,
Nis no wight in the world there wot when he syt
(?)
Ne bete it by the hedge what weeds lie weareth.'
January 5th