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November 20th
Born:
Mean Francois de la Harpe, miscellaneous
writer (Lyc�e ou Cours de is Litt�rature);
Thomas Chatterton, poet, 1752,
Bristol; Louis Alexandre
Berthier, Prince of Wagram, general of Napoleon, 1753,
Versailles.
Died:
Sir Christopher Hatton, statesman and
courtier of Queen Elizabeth, 1591; Caroline, queen of
George II of England, 1737; Cardinal de Polignac,
statesman and man of letters, 1741, France; Abraham
Tucker, author of The Light of Nature Pursued, 1774, Betchworth. Castle,
near Dorking; Roger Payne,
celebrated bookbinder, 1797; Mountstuart Elphinstone,
Indian diplomatist, &c., 1859, Hookward Park Surrey.
Feast Day:
St Maxentia, virgin and martyr. St.
Edmund, king and martyr, 870. St. Humbert, bishop of
the East Angles, martyr, 9th century. St. Bernard,
bishop of Hildesheim, confessor, 1021. St. Felix of
Valois, confessor, 1212.
THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE DOUBLED BY VASCO DA GAMA
The doubling of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da
Game, on the 20th of November 1497, was a notable
event in the world�s history not on account of the
actual discovery of that cape, which had been made
some years earlier, but from the solution of an
important question, whether or not India could be
reached from Europe by sea. Columbus, we know, sought
to reach that far famed land of gold and diamonds,
perfumes and spices, by a western route across the
Atlantic. He discovered America instead, and those
islands, which we now call the West Indies, owe their
name to the geographical error which formerly
prevailed regard their position. The Spanish
monarchs, who first fostered and then neglected
Columbus, countenanced those projects which led to the
discovery, conquest, and settlement of various parts
of America; but the kings of Portugal were the great
promoters of the enterprises by which South Africa and
India were laid open to Europeans.
With the assistance of a map of Africa, the reader
can easily trace the steps by which these discoveries
were effected. In the year 1412, Prince Henry of
Portugal, a man gifted far beyond the average
intelligence of his age, determined to send out a ship
to explore the west coast of Africa, by sailing
southward from the Straits of Gibraltar. The first
voyage was not attended with much success; but the
prince pursued the scheme at intervals for many years.
In 1415, one of the exploring vessels thus sent out
reached as far as Cape Non. In 1418, John Gonzales Zano and Tristam Vaz Texeira,
two gentlemen of Prince
Henry�s court, made a voyage which enabled them to
discover the island of Madeira. After a period of
several years, marked by discoveries of a minor
character, Gillianez doubled Cape Bojador in 1433 an
event which led Pope Martin V, in the plenitude of
liberality and inadvertence, to bestow on the king of
Portugal all that might be afterwards discovered in
Africa and India; a papal concession that gave rise to
serious international disputes in after days.
In 1441, Antonio Gonzales and Nuno Tristan advanced
as far south as Cape Blanco; a progress which was
followed up by Vicente de Lagos and Aloisio de Cada
Mosto, who, in 1444, advanced to the river Gambia, and
by Cada Mosto, who, in 1446, reached Senegal and Cape
de Verde. A long interval now ensued, unmarked by any
discoveries of importance on the west African coast.
In 1470, the Portuguese discoveries recommenced with a
voyage by Fernando Gonaz nearly as far south as the
equator. Some years after this, the northern limit of
the kingdom of Congo was reached; and in 1484 the
river of the same name was attained by Diego Cano.
Then came discoveries of a far more important
description. King John of Portugal, in 1486, sent out
two expeditions to discover an eastern route to India,
and likewise the whereabouts of the mysterious
potentate known as Prester John. The latter eluded all
search, but India did not. One of the expeditions
proceeded through Egypt and down the Red Sea, and,
amid many difficulties, crossed the Arabian Sea or
Indian Ocean to Calicut, in India.
The other, under Bartholomew Diaz, comprising two
caravals and a small store ship, proceeded southward
beyond the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope; and Diaz
doubled it, or went round it from west to east
with-out knowing it. He coasted a thousand miles of
the African shores never before seen by Europeans; and
though difficulties prevented him from crossing over
to India, he had the joy of finding, on his return,
that he had really reached and passed the cape which
forms the southern extremity of Africa. He called it
Cabo Tormentoso, the Cape of Torments, or Tempests, on
account of the rough weather which he experienced
there; but the king said: No, it shall be the Cape of
Good Hope, for the discovery is one of great promise!
At last came the expedition of Vasco da Gama, to which
all the above were preliminary. King Emanuel of
Portugal (King John�s son) sent him out in 1497, in
command of three vessels, with 160 men. He doubled the
cape on 20th November, sailed northward, and
discovered Sofala, Mozambique, and Melinda; and then,
guided by an Indian pilot, he crossed the ocean from
Melinda to Calicut in twenty three days. All that
followed was a mere finishing of the great problem:
Vasco da Gama was the first who made the entire voyage
from Western Europe to India, so far as records enable
us to judge.
ROGER PAYNE
In the last century, when the pursuit of book
collecting was almost approaching to the nature of a
mania, a great want was felt of an artist capable of
providing suitable habiliments for the treasures of
literature of constructing caskets worthy of the
jewels which they enshrined. When the demand comes to
be made, the means of supply are seldom far distant;
so, at this eventful crisis, as Dr. Dibdin informs us,
Roger Payne rose like a star, diffusing lustre on all
sides, and rejoicing the hearts of all true sons of
bibliomania. The individual who could excite such
lively enthusiasm was simply a bookbinder, but of such
eminence in his art, as to render all his works
exceedingly valuable. For taste, judicious choice of
ornament, and soundness of workmanship, Payne was
unrivalled in his day, and some maintain that he has
never been equalled in subsequent times. But whatever
lustre Roger may have diffused, it was by his
handiwork alone; in person he was a filthy, ragged,
ale sodden creature, with a foolish, and even fierce
indifference to the common decencies of life. His
workshop was a deplorable filthy den, unapproachable
by his patrons; yet, when he waited on his
distinguished employers, he made no alteration in his
dress. The Countess of Spencer�s French maid fainted
when she saw such a specimen of humanity in
conversation with her mistress. Payne, like others of
this kind of temper, thought he thus shewed his
manliness, for a Quixotic spirit of independence was
one of his failings, though in speech and writing he
ever displayed the greatest possible humility.
In spite of his eccentric habits, Payne might have
made a fortune by his business, and ridden in a
carriage, as finely decorated as the books he bound.
The rock on which he split was the excessively ardent
devotion which he cherished for strong ale. In one of
his account books, still preserved, we find one day�s
expenditure thus recorded: 'For bacon, one halfpenny;
for liquor, one shilling; reminding us of a snatch of
a song, in the old comedy of Gammer Curton�s Needle:
'When I saw it booted not,
Out of doors, I hied me,
And caught a slip of bacon,
When I thought that no one spied me.
Which I intended not far hence,
Unless my purpose fail,
Shall serve for a shoeing horn,
To draw on two pots of ale.�
Ale may be said to have been meat, drink, washing,
and lodging for the wretched Roger. When remonstrated
with by his friends and patrons, and told that
sobriety, like honesty, was the best policy, and the
only road that led to health and wealth, he would
reply by chanting a verse of an old song in praise of
his favourite beverage, thus:
�All history gathers
From ancient forefathers,
That ale�s the true liquor of life;
Men lived long in health,
And preserved their wealth,
Whilst barleyn-broth only was rife.�
Payne could rhyme on his darling theme; his trade
bills are preserved as great curiosities, for they
mostly contain unbusiness like remarks by this
eccentric original. On one, delivered for binding a
copy of Barry�s work on the Wines of the Ancients, he
wrote:
�Homer the bard, who sung in highest strains,
Had, festive gift, a goblet for his pains;
Falernian gave Horace, Virgil fire,
And barley wine my British muse inspire,
Barley wine first from Egypt�s learned shore,
Be this the gift to me from Calvert�s store.�
Payne�s chef d�oeuvre is a large paper copy of the
famous folio �schylus, known to collectors as the
Glasgow �schylus, being printed, with the same types
as the equally famous Glasgow Homer, by Foulis, in
that city in 1795. This book, bound for Lord Spencer,
contains the original drawings executed by Flaxman,
and subsequently engraved and dedicated to the mother
of the earl. Dibdin, in the
E
des
Althorpianae, describes it as the most splendid and
interesting work in Europe. Payne�s bill for binding
it is verbatim, literatim, and punctuatim, as follows:
'E
schylus
Glasguae. MDCCXCV. Flaxman Illustravit. Bound in very
best manner, sewd with strong Silk, every Sheet round
every Band, not false Bands; The Back lined with
Russia Leather, Cutt Exceeding Large; Finished in the
most Magnificent Manner, Emborderd with ERNAINE
expressive of The High Rank of The Noble Patroness of
the Designs, The other Parts Finished in the most
elegant Taste with small Tool Gold Borders Studded
with Gold; and small Tool Plates of the most exact
Work, Measured with the Compasses. It takes a great
deal of Time, marking out the different Measurements;
preparing the Tools, and making out New Patterns. The
Book finished in compartments with parts of Gold
Studded Work. All the Tools except Studded points are
obliged to he worked off plain first and afterwards
the Gold laid on and Worked off again. And this Gold
Work requires Double Gold, being on Rough Grained
Morocco, The Impressions of the Tools must be fitted
and covered at the bottom with Gold to prevent flaws
and cracks ...
�12 12 0
Fine drawing paper for Inlaying the
designs 5s. 6d. Finest Pickt Lawn paper
for Interleaving the Designs ls. 8d. One
yard and a half of Silk 10s. 6d. Inlaying
the Designs at 8d. each 32 Designs
�1, ls.
4d.,
1 19 0
Mr. Morton adding borders to the
Drawings
1 16 0
----------
�16 7 0
Another bill, delivered to Dr. Mosely, Payne�s
medical attendant, runs thus:
'Harmony of the World, by Haydon: London 1642. Bound
in the very best manner; the hook sewed in the very
best manner with white silk, very strong, and will
open easy; very neat and strong boards; fine drawing
paper inside stained to suit the colour of the book.
The outsides finished in the Rosie Crucian taste very
correct measured work. The inside finished in the
Druid taste, with Acorns and SS. studded with Stars,
&c., in the most magnificent manner. So neat, strong,
and elegant as this book is bound, the binding is well
worth 13s., and the inlaying the frontispiece,
cleaning and mending, is worth 2s. To Dr. Mosely�s
great goodness, I am so much indebted, that my
gratitude sets the price for binding, inlaying,
cleaning, and mending at only . . �0 10 6
Payne, for a long time, lived and worked alone in
his filthy den; but towards the close of his career,
he took in, as a fellow labourer, an excellent workman
named Weir. This man was a regularly dubbed ale
knight, loved barley wine to the full as much as his
partner, and used to sing:
'Ale is not so costly,
Although that the most lie,
Too long by the oil of the barley,
Yet may they part late,
At a reasonable rate,
Though they come in the morning early.
Sack is but single broth,
Ale is meat, drink, and cloth.'
Sobriety may not be always a bond of union, but
inebriation is a certain source of discord, and not
only words, but frequently blows were exchanged
between the two artists. Weir�s wife was a famous
cleaner of old books, and she went with her husband to
Toulouse, where they exercised their skill and art,
for several years, in binding and repairing the
valuable library of Count Macarthy. Payne ended his
wretched existence on the 20th of November 1797, and
was soon followed by Weir to the bourne whence no man
returneth. After their deaths, Mrs. Weir was employed
to clean and repair the books, parchments, vellums,
&c., in the Register Office at Edinburgh. Lord
Frederick Campbell was so much pleased with her good
conduct, and marvellously successful labours in this
capacity, that he had her portrait drawn and engraved.
Her chef d�enevre was a copy of the Faits of Arms and
Chivalrye, printed by Caxton, and bound by Payne. At
the Roxburgh sale, this book was brought to the
hammer. As a work printed by Caxton, bound by Payne,
and cleaned by Weir does not occur every day, the
excitement and sensation when Mr. Evans put it up was
immense; nor was it finally knocked down till the
biddings reached the high figure of three hundred and
thirty six pounds.
THE BRITISH NIMROD
In a letter, dated 20th November 1611, from John
Chamberlain, a gentleman and scholar, in the reign of
James I, to his friend Sir Dudley Carleton, we find,
amid other items of news, the following passage
regarding the king and queen:
'The king is hunting at Newmarket, and the queen at Greenwich, practising for
a new masque. This brief sentence exhibits very
comprehensively the ruling passions of those two royal
personages. Queen Anne was no less fond of court
masques and halls, than her consort was of the chase.
His flatterers bestowed on him the title of the
British Solomon, and extolled him as the most
profoundly wise sovereign that had ever sat on a
throne, but with much greater appropriateness, as far
at least as regarded enthusiasm for, and devotedness
to sport, they might have dubbed him the British
Nimrod. From his early youth in Scotland, the love of
the chase was with him an overpowering and absorbing
passion, and he gave so much time to it, that the
extent of his studies and his knowledge becomes the
more a wonder. It took him much away from state
business, and proved a serious annoyance to his
counsellors who would be required to accompany him
after the stag for six hours in order to get five
minutes conversation with him; but he was never at a
loss for something to say in excuse of this
misspending of time. My health, he would say, is
necessary for the state; the chase is necessary for my
health: ergo, it is doing the public a service if I
hunt. This logic, from royal lips, was irresistible.
The king�s sports were chiefly pursued in his own
parks; but he was not less willing to let his bugle
waken the echoes in those of his chief nobles, who
were but too happy to contribute to his gratification
that they might establish themselves in his favour.
Now and then, some one of the favoured few
permitted to ride with him, has, luckily for us,
sought to enliven his letters to absent friends with
little sketches of the adventures that fell out on
these merry hunting mornings; and in the State Papers
we meet with a series of detached photographs, which,
brought together, form a not uninteresting picture.
Bravely responding to the sharp sting of Ripon rowels,
we seem to witness the pure blooded iron gray that
carried England�s fortunes, dash onwards, to be again
at the head of the field, which he had momentarily
lost. Down the steep, along the valley, through the
centre of its shallow river�s bed, sweep onwards the
gallant cavalcade, scattering the shingle with their
horses hoofs, and throwing up the water in broad
glistening sheets. A bugle note from some distant
forester falls on the ear. The game�s at soil. Another
five minutes sweep round that elbow of the stream, and
there stands our hart of grease, knee deep in the
amber pool, his broad dun haunches firm against the
lichen covered rock; his beamy antlers lowering from
side to side, as the clustering hounds struggle and
swim around him, straining their bloodshot eyes. The
king, pleased, yet flushed and pale with excitement,
his hunting garb soiled with mire and bog water from
spur to bonnet plume, reins up just in time to witness
the finish, for Bran and Buscar, Ringwood and Jewell
(prime leader of the royal pack), have fastened upon
the quarry�s throat.
And when the deer has been broken up, and whilst
the foresters, all unbonneted, wind the customary mart
upon their bugles, our royal woodsman is plunging his
unbooted limbs in the beast�s warm, reeking entrails:
an extraordinary panacea, recommended by the court
physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne, as the sovereign�st
thing on earth, for those gouty and rheumatic twinges,
which too emphatically reminded the Stuart in the
autumn of his days, how every inordinate cup is
unblest and the ingredient thereof a devil, though the
warning produced no practical result.'
It is amusing
enough to note how cheaply and contemptuously James
held the judgment of such as presumed to differ from
him in their estimation of his favourite sports and
his style of indulging in them. Great was his disgust
when he heard that his brother in law, Christian, king
of Denmark, who visited England in 1606, had spoken
slightingly of English hunting in general, saying it
was an amusement in which more horses were killed in
jest, than in the Low Country wars were consumed in
earnest. James, after indulging in a few expletives,
which it is as well to omit, sarcastically growled
forth the reply:
'That he knew not what sport the old
Danish gods, Thor and Woden, might partake of in their
Scandinavian heaven, but flesh and blood could spew no
better than he had done.'
A prince thus enamoured of the pleasures of a
sportsman�s life, could hardly be expected to endure
otherwise than impatiently the sedentary duties of his
council chamber. They were, indeed, utterly
distasteful to him; and so, likewise, by association,
were those assembled there Egerton, Buckhurst, Dorset,
Naunton, Winwood, Nottingham, &c.; lord keepers, lord
treasurers, lord admirals, and lord chamberlains.
Debates about the most signal means of curbing
Gondomar�s haughty insolence, which but reflected the
arrogance of his master, or upon the policy of the
Spanish match, were often abruptly terminated by the
monarch rising from his chair with a yawning remark,
that he had worked long enough; so he was off towards
Royston, to have a flight with the new Spanish
falcon.
His majesty, writes Sir Dudley Carleton, already
referred to, having broken up the council, rides
straight to Royston, with all his hunting crew, a
small train of forty persons; and again: the king is
at the inn at Ware, with his hawkes. Unfortunately, he
neglects to satisfy inquisitive posterity who read his
pleasant letters more than two centuries afterwards,
whether James, and his small hunting crew of forty
persons, passed their nights, one and all, in the
great bed which is so inseparably associated in our
ideas with that town.
Cecil, styled by his master who had a
characteristic nickname for every one about him 'my
little beagle' because, like that diminutive hound, he
was small of stature, and indefatigable in hunting
down not hares and conies, but conspiracies (men say
he invented far more than he discovered) was almost
the only one of his ministers for whom James felt any
personal regard, although he often growled at the
king�s expensive hobbies, which, he said, cost more
than would build a fleet. Once when he lay ill of a
fever, and the king was about to quit London on a
sporting tour, he received a visit of condolence from
his sovereign, who comforted him with these words:
that he was very sensible of his sickness, and must
have a care of his well doing; "For," quoth James, as
he pressed his hand at parting, "should aught unto
ward occur to thee, my little beagle, there were no
more safe hunting for the king of England."
The
probability of being assassinated in his solitary
gallops through the lonely forest, was ever present to
the royal mind; and his preservation he attributed
wholly to the untiring vigilance of his astute state
secretary. Nor were his fears at all unfounded. Among
the State Papers is a declaration of one Captain
Newell, that a soldier named FitzJames had said:
'There
would soone be a puffe, that may send some high enough
and low enough to hell ere longe; and that he would
shoote the king in the woods of Royston, with many
similar affidavits.'
Our modern English sovereigns are satisfied with
the modest parade of a single master huntsman and one
pack of buck hounds. But the first English king of the
Stuart race maintained at least seven establishments
at the same number of hunting lodges at Royston,
Hinchinbrooke, Theobalds, Windsor, Newmarket, Nonsuch,
Hampton Court with hounds for the chase in St. John�s
Wood, and the great woods stretching around Newington.
Possibly the reader may be rather astonished to hear
of great stags and fallow deer roaming wild in the two
last named suburbs of London, and that James
maintained a large staff of foresters and keepers to
preserve the pheasants, hares, conies, &c., swarming
in their leafy coverts. The one, he now sees covered
with pleasant villas, rising from the midst of grounds
adorned with all the cunning of horticulture elegant
retirements for the refined and wealthy; the other,
chiefly a squalid, densely populated quarter possessed
by the sons of poverty and toil, and little suggestive
of the accessaries to sylvan sport.
Our old friend,
Sir Dudley Carleton, viewed them under a different
aspect. The king, he says:
'went this evening to lie at
Lord Arundel�s, in Highgate, that he may be nearer and
readier to hunt the stag on the morrow, in St. John�s
Wood. His son, Charles I, one Monday morning
unharboured a buck from a great secluded dingle at
Newington, where, twenty four hours previously, a knot
of poor trembling Puritans had sheltered themselves
and their worship from the persecution of
Archbishop
Laud. We took, says that zealous churchman in a letter
to Windebank, dated Fulham, June 1632 another
conventicle of separatists in Newington Woods, in the
very brake where the king�s stag was to be lodged, for
his hunting next morning.'
But, revenons
B
nos chiens. James had distinct packs of hounds for the
several kinds of chase in which he indulged stag, red
deer, roebuck, fox, wolf, hare, and otter beside ban,
bear, and bull dogs, with a nobleman for their keeper;
and teams of spaniels, indispensable to his superb
hawking establishments. These necessarily demanded a
large suite of attendants, whose names sound strange
in the ears of modern sportsmen. There were masters of
the game, sergeants of the stag hounds, lumbermen of
the buck hounds, yeomen and children of the leash,
tents and toils (the latter being small pages who held
relays of fresh dogs at openings of the forest),
keepers of the royal fishing cormorants, of the
elephants, camels, and other tame beasts, located in
St. James�s Park. His majesty, we are told, once
experienced some inconvenience at his hunting seats,
from the crowding about him of certain over zealous
country gentlemen, eager to gaze upon their sovereign
taking saye, or to assist at the ceremony of cutting
up a fat stag.
One day when the court was at Rufford, says one of
Lord Stafford�s letters, the loss of a stag, and the
hounds hunting foxes instead of deer put the king into
a marvellous chafe, accompanied by those ordinary
symptoms (oaths), better known to you courtiers than
to us rural swains. In the height whereof comes a
clown galloping in, and staring full in his face.
"Mass!" quoth the intruder, "am I come forty miles to
see a fellow!" and presently turns about his horse,
and away he goes faster than he came; the oddness
whereof caused his majesty and all the company to
burst out into a vehement laugh, and so the fume was
for that time happily dispersed. Yet was his majesty
merry against the hair, however genuine might be the
glee of his courtiers. He that very day, says
John
Chamberlain, erected a new office, and made Sir
Richard Wigmore "marshal of the field." He is to take
order that the king be not attended by any but his own
followers; nor interrupted nor hindered in his sports
by idle spectators.
During one season, the king hunted
in the Fen country, where the deer not unfrequently
sought safety in the meres, surrounded by dreary
marshes, impassable to sportsmen and dogs. The fenmen,
like the Bretons dwelling in the Landes of France,
traversed their boggy soil on stilts; and a party of
them being hired on one occasion to drive out the
game, and doing their work off hand and cleverly,
James was so gratified thereat, and. so amused by
their singular appearance when stalking through the
water, like a flight of fishing cranes, that he
signified his gracious pleasure to erect a new office.
Accordingly, one day after a jovial hunting dinner, he
chose Sir George Carew as leader of the stiltsmen who
was to be ready with his squad in uniform, whenever
the royal hounds hunted that district.
Although passing a considerable portion of his life
in the saddle, James was not a very skilful horseman,
as is testified by the many and dangerous falls
recorded of him, through which he was sometimes at the
point of death. Every precaution was therefore
resorted to, to lessen or avert the perils incident to
the headlong pace which the king fearlessly maintained
in order to be well up at the finish. The high sheriff
of Herts, Thomas Wilson, writing to the constables
of Sandon, Ketshall, and other towns of the county,
informs them of the King�s express command that they
give notice to occupants of arable land, not to plough
their fields in narrow ridges, nor to suffer swine to
go abroad unringed, and root holes, &c., to the
endangering of his majesty and the prince in hawking
and hunting; they are also to take down the high
bounds between lands which hinder his majesty�s ready
passage.
Although his various kennels contained, at a
moderate calculation, little short of two hundred
couple of hounds, and the cost of their maintenance
and equipages was a serious draught upon his privy
purse, James never deemed himself properly furnished,
while a single hound of reputation remained in
possession of his subjects. The writer has seen a
score or two of docquets, empowering his officers
everywhere to seize hounds, beagles, spaniels, and
mongrels for his majesty�s disport; and his chief
huntsman had a similar warrant to take by force every
canine celebrity known to exist in three counties. On
the occurrence of any of those hunting casualties,
where his dogs got maimed by horse kicks, or being
ridden over, &c., he vented his indignation in the
most outrageous language; yet there, as indeed in
almost every transaction of his life, he shewed
himself as placable as he was momentarily irate. There
is a pleasant instance of this feeling mentioned in
one of the letters already quoted. The king, says the
writer, is at Tibbalds, and the queen gone or going
after him.
At their last meeting being at Tibbalds, which was
about a fortnight since, the queen, shooting at a deer
with her crossbow, mistook her mark, and killed
Jewell, the king�s most special and principal hound,
at which he stormed exceedingly awhile, swearing many
and great oaths. None would undertake to break unto
him the news, so they were fain to send
Archie the
fool on that errand. But after he knew who did it, he
was soon pacified, and with much kindness wished her
not to be troubled with it, for he should love her
never the worse, and the next day sent her a jewell
worth �2000, "as a legacy from his dead dog." Love and
kindness increase daily between them, and it is
thought they were never on better terms. Doubtless
this opportunity of perpetrating a practical joke upon
the name of his most principal hound, went a great way
in reconciling the royal punster to his loss and to
the queen.
November 21st
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