ISAAC DISRAELI.

ISABEL, QUEEN OF DENMARK.

This is a fine rebuke.

Congreve's remains lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument was erected to his memory by Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, to whom he bequeathed £10,000, the accumulation of attentive parsimony. The Duchess purchased with £7,000 of the legacy a diamond necklace. How much better,' says Dr Young, 'it would have been to have given the money to Mrs Bracegirdle, with whom Congreve was very intimate for years; yet still better would it have been to have left the money to his poor relations in want of it.'

ISAAC DISRAELI.

Few miscellanies have approached the popularity enjoyed by the Curiosities of Literature, the work by which Mr Disraeli is best known. This success may be traced to the circumstances of his life, as well as his natural abilities, favouring the production of exactly such a work. When a boy, he was sent to Amsterdam, and placed under a preceptor, who did not take the trouble to teach him anything, but turned him loose into a good library. Nothing could have been better suited to his taste, and before he was fifteen he had read the works of Voltaire and dipped into Bayle. When he was eighteen he returned to England, half mad with the sentimental philosophy of Rousseau. He declined to enter mercantile life, for which his father had intended him; he then went to Paris, and stayed there, chiefly living in the public libraries until a short time before the outbreak of the French Revolution. Shortly after his return to England he wrote a poem on the Abuse of Satire, levelled at Peter Pindar: it was successful, and made Disraeli's name known. In about two years, after the reading of Andrews's Anecdotes, Disraeli remarked that a very interesting miscellany might be drawn up by a well-read man from the library in which he lived. It was objected that such a work would be a mere compilation of dead matter, and uninteresting to the public. Disraeli thought otherwise, and set about preparing a volume from collections of the French Ana, the author adding as much as he was able from English literature. This volume he called Curiosities of Literature. Its great success induced him to publish a second volume; and after these volumes had reached a fifth edition, he added three more. He then suffered a long illness, but his literary habits were never laid aside, and as often as he was able he worked in the morning in the British Museum, and in his own library at night. He published works of great historical research, including the Life and Reign of Charles I. in five volumes, and the Amenities of Literature in three volumes; but the great aim of his life was to write a History of English Literature, of which the Amenities were to be the materials. His literary career was cut short in 1839 by a paralysis of the optic nerve. He died at the age of eighty-two, retaining to the last, his sweetness and serenity of temper and cheerfulness of mind. Shortly before, his son wrote, for a new edition of

author, in which he thus happily sketched the features of his father's character:

'He was himself a complete literary character, a man who really passed his life in his library. Even marriage produced no change in these habits; he rose to enter the chamber where he lived alone with his books, and at night his lamp was ever lit within the same walls. Nothing, indeed, was more remarkable than the isolation of this prolonged existence; and it could only be accounted for by the united influences of three causes: his birth, which brought him no relations or family acquaintance; the bent of his disposition; and the circumstance of his inheriting an independent fortune, which rendered unnecessary those exertions that would have broken up his self-reliance. He disliked business, and he never

required relaxation; he was absorbed in his pursuits. In London his only amusement was to ramble among booksellers; if he entered a club, it was only to go into the library. In the country, he scarcely ever left his room but to saunter in abstraction upon a terrace; muse over a chapter, or coin a sentence. He had not a single passion or prejudice; all his convictions were the result of his own studies, and were often opposed to the impressions which he had early imbibed. He not only never entered into the politics of the day, but he could never understand them. He never was connected with any particular body or set of men; comrades of school or college, or confederates in that public life which, in England, is, perhaps, the only foundation of real friendship. In the consideration of a question, his mind was quite undisturbed by traditionary preconceptions; and it was this exemption from passion and prejudice which, although his intelligence was naturally somewhat too ingenious and fanciful for the conduct of close argument, enabled him, in investigation, often to shew many of the highest attributes of the judicial mind, and particularly to sum up evidence with singular happiness and ability.'

FAC-SIMILES OF INEDITED AUTOGRAPHS.

ISABEL, QUEEN OF DENMARK.

Died at Ghent, of a broken heart, January 19, 1525, Isabel of Austria, Queen of Denmark, a 'nursing mother' of the Reformation. Isabel was the second daughter of Philip the Fair of Austria, and Juana la Loca, the first Queen of Spain. She was born at Brussels in 1501, and married at Malines, August 12, 1515, to Christiern of Denmark, who proved little less than her murderer. When he, the Nero of the North,' was deposed by his infuriated subjects, she followed him into exile, soothed him and nursed him, for which her only reward was cruel neglect, and, some add, more cruel treatment, descending even to blows. The frail body which shrined the bright, loving spirit, was soon worn out; and Isabel died, as above stated, aged only twentyfour years.

It will be seen that the Queen spells her name Elizabeth, probably as more consonant with Danish ideas, for she was baptized after her It is well grandmother, Isabel the Catholic.

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entirely dependent upon her, and whose abilities she made use of without being in danger from his ambition. But the minister became unpopular: a successful insurrection ensued, and Anne and the court were detained for a time prisoners in the Palais Royal, by the mob. The Spanish pride of the queen was compelled to submit, and the people had their will. But a civil war soon commenced between Anne, her ministers and their adherents, on one side; and the noblesse, the citizens and people of Paris, on the other. The former triumphed, and hostilities were suspended; but the war again broke out: the court had secured a defender in Turenne, who triumphed over the young noblesse headed by the great Condé! The nobles and middle classes were never afterwards able to raise their heads, or offer resistance to the royal power up to the period of the great Revolution; so that Anne of Austria may be said to have founded absolute monarchy in France, and not the subsequent imperiousness of Louis XIV. Anne's portrait in the Vienna gallery shews her to have been of pleasing exterior. Her Spanish haughtiness and love of ceremonial were impressed by education upon the mind of her son, Louis XIV., who bears the blame and the credit of much that was his mother's. She died at the age of sixty-four.

DEATH OF GARRICK.

Garrick, who 'never had his equal as an actor, and will never have a rival,' at Christmas 1778, while on a visit to Lord Spencer, at Althorpe, had a severe fit, from which he only recovered sufficiently to enable him to return to town, where he expired on the 20th of January 1779, in his own house, in the centre of the Adelphi Terrace, in his sixty-third year. Dr Johnson said, 'his death eclipsed the gaiety of nations.' Walpole, in the opposite extreme: Garrick is dead; not a public loss; for he had quitted the stage.' Garrick's remains lay in state at his house vious to their interment in Westminster Abbey, with great pomp: there were not at Lord Chatham's funeral half the noble coaches that attended Garrick's, which is attributable to a political Burke was one of the mourners, and came expressly from Portsmouth to follow the great actor's remains.

cause.

SIR JOHN SOANE.

pre

This successful architect died at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, surrounded by the collection of antiquities and artistic treasures which he bequeathed to the British nation, as "the Soanean Museum." He was a man of exquisite taste, but of most irritable temperament, and the tardy settlement of the above bequest to the country was to him a matter of much annoyance. His remains rest in the burial-ground of St Giles's-inthe-Fields, St Pancras, where two tall cypresses overshadow his tomb. At his death, the trustees appointed by parliament took charge of the Museum, library, books, prints, manuscripts,

The ceiling of the front drawing-room was painted by Antonio Zucchi, A.R. A.: the chimney-piece is said to have cost £300. Garrick died in the back drawing-room, and his widow in the same house and room in 1822.

COLDEST DAY IN THE CENTURY.

drawings, maps, models, plans and works of art, and the house and offices; providing for the admission of amateurs and students in painting, sculpture, and architecture; and general visitors. The entire collection cost Soane upwards of £50,000.

THE FIRST PARLIAMENT.

First Parliament. It was a great date for England, that of the There had been a Council of the great landholders, secular and ecclesiastic, from Anglo-Saxon times; and it is believed by and to some extent represented in it. But it was some that the Commons were at least occasionally during a civil war, which took place in the middle of the thirteenth century, marvellously like that which marked the middle of the seventeenth, being for law against arbitrary royal power, that the first parliaments, properly so called, were assembled. Matthew of Paris, in his Chronicle, first uses the word in reference to a council of the barons in 1246. At length, in December 1264, when that extraordinary man, Simon de Montfort Earl of Leicester-a medieval Cromwell-held the weak King Henry III. in his power, and was really the head of the state, a parliament was summoned, in which there should be two knights for each county, and two citizens for every borough; the first clear acknowledgment of the Commons' element in the state. This parliament met on the 20th of January 1265, in that magnificent hall at Westminster* which still survives, so interesting a monument of many of the most memorable events of English history. The representatives of the Commons sat in the same place with their noble associates, probably at the bottom of the hall, little disposed to assert a controlling voice, not joining indeed in any vote, for we hear of no such thing at first, of the important results that were to flow from and far of course from having any adequate sense

their appearing there that day. There, however, they were an admitted Power, entitled to be consulted in all great national movements, and, above all, to have a say in the matter of taxation. The summer months saw Leicester overpowered, and himself and nearly all his associates slaughtered; many changes afterwards took place in the constitutional system of the country; but the Commons, once allowed to play a part in these great councils, were never again left out. Strange that other European states of high civilization and intelligence should be scarcely yet arrived England, in comparative barbarism, realised for at a principle of popular representation, which herself six centuries ago!

THE COLDEST DAY IN THE CENTURY,
JAN. 20, 1838.

Notwithstanding the dictum of M. Arago, that 'whatever may be the progress of the sciences, never will observers who are trustworthy and careful of their reputation, venture to foretell the state of the weather,'-this pretension received a singular support in the winter of 1838. This was the first year in which the noted Mr Murphy *Fabyan's Chronicle, i. 356.

published his Weather Almanac; wherein his indication for the 20th day of January is Fair. Prob. lowest deg. of Winter temp.' By a happy chance for him, this proved to be a remarkably cold day. At sunrise, the thermometer stood at 4° below zero; at 9 a.m., +6°; at 12 (noon), +14°; at 2 p.m., 16; and then increased to 17°, the highest in the day; the wind veering from the east to the south.

The popular sensation of course reported that the lowest degree of temperature for the season appeared to have been reached. The supposition was proved by other signal circumstances, and particularly the effects seen in the vegetable kingdom. In all the nursery-grounds about London, the half-hardy, shrubby plants were more or less injured. Herbaceous plants alone seemed little affected, in consequence, perhaps, of the protection they received from the snowy covering of the ground.

Two things may be here remarked, as being almost unprecedented in the annals of meteorology in this country: first, the thermometer below zero for some hours; and secondly, a rapid change of nearly fifty-six degrees.- Correspondent of the Philosophical Magazine, 1838.

Still, there was nothing very remarkable in Murphy's indication, as the coldest day in the year is generally about this time (January 20). Nevertheless, it was a fortunate hit for the weather prophet, who is said to have cleared £3000 by that year's almanac !

It may amuse the reader to see what were the results of Murphy's predictions throughout the year 1838:

This seems a fair opportunity of adverting to the winter amusement of skating, which is not only an animated and cheerful exercise, but susceptible of many demonstrations which may be called elegant. Holland, which with its extensive water surfaces affords such peculiar facilities for it, is usually looked to as the home and birthplace of skating; and we do not hear of it in England till the thirteenth century. In the former country, as has been remarked in an early page of this volume, the use of skates is in great favour; and it is even taken advantage of as a 138

SKATING.

means of travelling, market-women having been known, for a prize, to go in this manner thirty miles in two hours. Opportunities for the exercise are, in Britain, more limited. Nevertheless, wherever a piece of smooth water exists, the due freezing of its surface never fails to bring forth hordes of enterprising youth to enjoy this truly inviting sport.

Skating has had its bone age before its iron one. Fitzstephen, in his History of London, tells us that it was customary in the thirteenth century for the young men to fasten the leg-bones of animals under their feet by means of thongs, and slide along the ice, pushing themselves by means of an iron-shod pole. Imitating the chivalric fashion of the tournament, they would start in a career against each other, meet, use their poles for a push or a blow, when one or other was pretty sure to be hurled down, and to slide a long way in a prostrate condition, probably with some considerable hurt to his person, which we may hope was generally borne with good humour. In Moorfields and about Finsbury, specimens of these primitive skates have from time to time been exhumed, recalling the time when these were marshy fields, which in winter were resorted to by the youth of London for the amusements which Fitzstephen describes. A pair preserved in the British Museum is here delineated.

11

PRIMITIVE BONE SKATES.

The iron age of skating-whenever it might come-was an immense stride in advance. A pair