of me POWEL'S PUPPET-SHOW. parable dramas of his own composing; such as, Whittington and his Cat, The Children in the Wood, Dr Faustus, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Robin POWEL'S PUPPET-SHOW. the utmost limits Cæsar's conquests-been filled with the fame of Mr Powel's chanical achievements? The Dutch, the most expert nation in the world for puppet-shows, must now confess themselves to be shamefully outdone. It would be trifling after this to recount to you how Mr Powel has melted a whole audience into pity and tears, when he has made the poor starved children in the wood miserably depart in peace, and a robin bury them. It would be tedious to enumerate how often he has made Punch the diversion of all the spectators, by putting into his mouth many bulls and flat contradictions, to the dear joy of all true Teagues. Or to what end should I attempt to describe how heroically he makes King Bladud perform the part of a British prince?' So great a favourite was he in Bath, that 'he was mightily frequented by all sorts of quality, and Punch, with his gang, soon broke the strollers, and enjoyed the city of Bath to themselves. Money coming in apace, Mr Powel bought him several new scenes, for the diversion of his audience, and the better acting of several incom Hood and Little John Mother Shipton, Mother Goose, together with the pleasant and comical humours of Valentini, Nicolini, and two elders.' In the Spectator (No. 14), a letter was introduced, purporting to come from the sexton of the parish of St Paul's, Covent Garden, complaining that when he tolls to prayers, I find my congregation take the warning of my bell, morning and evening, to go to a puppetshow, set forth by one Powel under the Piazzas. By this means I have not only lost my two best customers, whom I used to place, for sixpence apiece, over-against Mrs Rachel Eyebright, but Mrs Rachel herself has gone thither also. There now appear among us none but a few ordinary people, who come to church only to say their prayers, so that I have no work worth speaking of but on Sundays. I have placed my son at the Piazzas, to acquaint the ladies that the bell rings for church, and that it stands on the other side of the garden; but they only laugh at the child!' The literary celebrity that has thus invested Powel's show, has not been shared by his rivals. The Tatler, however, announces, in the account of the downfall of May-fair, that Mrs Saraband, so famous for her ingenious puppet-show, has set up a shop in the Exchange, where she sells her little troop under the name of jointed babies.' Penkethinan, When the Scottish lords and others were executed for their share in the Rebellion of 1745, 'the beheading of puppets' made one of the exhibitions at May-fair, and was continued for some years. The last 'great' proprietor of puppets was Flockton, whose puppet-show was in high repute about 1790, and enabled him in time to retire on a handsome competence. AUGUST 4. St Luanus or Lugid, sometimes called Molua, abbot in Ireland, 622. St Dominic, confessor, and founder of the Friar Preachers, 1221. ST DOMINIC. The Romish church has been for nothing more remarkable than the many revivals of energy within her pale under the impulse of particular enthusiasts. One of these took place at the beginning of the thirteenth century, through the zeal of a Spanish gentleman, named Dominic de Guzman, born at Calaruega, in Old Castile, in the year 1170. Had Dominic chosen an ordinary course of life, he would have been a man of station and dignity in the eye of the world. But, being from his infant years of a religious frame of mind, he was content to resign all worldly honour, that he might devote himself wholly to the service of God. Protestants hardly do justice to such men. Think of their objects as we will, we must own that, in confining themselves to a diet of pulse and a bed of boards, in giving away everything they had to the poor, in chastising themselves out of every earthly indulgence, and giving nearly their whole time to religious exercises, they established such a claim to popular admiration, that the influence they acquired was not to be wondered at. As an example of the self-devotion of Dominic, he offered to go as a slave into Marocco, that so he might purchase the liberation of another person. The purpose of all his devotions was to secure the eternal welfare of others. It was the Waldensian 'heresy' that first put him into great activity. His success in restoring many of the Vaudois to the church seems to have suggested to him that he, and others associated with him, might greatly advance the interests of religion by a practice of going about preaching and praying continually, while at the same time visibly abstaining in their own persons from every sort of indulgence. In the course of a few years, he had thus established a new order of religious called the Black or Preaching Friars, or shortly, from his own name, the Dominicans (the term black referred to the hue of the cloak and SIMON DE MONTFORT. hood which they wore). This order was sanctioned by Pope Innocent III. in 1215, and very soon it had its establishments in most European countries. There were in England, at the Reformation, fortythree monasteries of Blackfriars, and in Scotland fifteen. Dominic was unremitting in his exertions to extend, sustain, and animate his institution. He performed many journeys, always on foot, and on bare feet. He braved every sort of danger. He never shewed the slightest symptom of pride in his success: all with him was for the glory of God and the saving of men. The contemporary memoirs which describe his life are full of miracles attributed to him. He on several occasions restored to life persons believed to be dead. raptures at the altar, he appeared to the bystanders Often, in holy elevated into the air. It was his ardent desire to shed his blood for the cause he had espoused; but in this he was not gratified. The founder of the Dominicans calmly expired of a fever at Bologna, at the age of fifty-one. He was canonized by Gregory IX. in 1234. Born. Joseph Justus Scaliger, eminent critic, 1540, Agen, France; John Augustus Ernesti, classical editor, 1707, Tennstadt, in Thuringia; Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet, 1792, Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex. Died.-Pope Martin III., 946; Henry I. of France, 1060, Vitry en Brie; Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, killed at battle of Evesham, 1265; Wenceslaus III.,king of Bohemia, stabbed at Olmutz, 1306; Jacques d'Armagnac, Duc de Nemours, beheaded by Louis XI., Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, 1633, Croydon; William 1477; William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, 1598; George Cave, eminent scholar and divine (Lives of the Apostles), 1713, Windsor; William Fleetwood, bishop of Ely, 1723, Tottenham; John Bacon, sculptor, 1799; Viscount Adam Duncan, admiral and hero of Camperdown, 1804; John Banim, Irish novelist, 1842, near Kilkenny. SIMON DE MONTFORT. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester-the Cromwell of the thirteenth century-was a French noble possessed of English property and rank through his mother. We know little of the early years he spent in France; but, after establishing himself at the English court, he soon comes into notice. By the favour of the young king, Henry III., he was united to the monarch's widowed sister Eleanor, notwithstanding a difficulty arising from a vow of the lady's never to wed a second husband. This marriage involved De Montfort in many troubles, and lost him, for a time, the friendship of the king. After a temporary absence from England, he returned to raise the means of going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Duly provided, he journeyed to Syria, where he greatly distinguished himself by his military talents and achievements, and became extremely popular with the Christians. He returned to England in 1241, and appeared to have recovered all the favour at court which he had formerly enjoyed. In 1242, he distinguished himself in the war against the French. But he had now become well known as a political reformer, and as a champion of popular liberties; and it is not improbable that his known principles had been partly the means of raising him enemies at court. His name stood second among the signatures to the bold remonstrance against papal extortion and oppression in 1246, and in 1248 the king was driven by his remonstrances into a temporary fit of economy. Earl Simon had formed a design to return to the Holy Land, but King Henry, embarrassed at this time by the turbulence of his subjects in Gascony, persuaded him to remain and undertake the government of that country, where he soon reduced the rebels to submission. In consequence of King Henry's imprudence, the rebellion broke out with more fury than ever, and it not only required all the earl's military talents to suppress it a second time, but he was obliged to raise money on his own estates to carry on the war, in consequence of the miserable condition of the royal treasury. The rebel leaders now sought to injure in another way the governor with whom they could no longer contend openly, and they sent a deputation to England, to accuse him to the king of tyranny and extortion in his administration charges which seem, if true at all, to have been excessively exaggerated. Yet the king listened to them eagerly, and when Earl Simon arrived at court to plead his own cause, a violent scene took place, which shewed that the king could lose his dignity as easily as the earl his temper, and they were only reconciled by the interference of Prince Richard and the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford. From this moment the king no longer disguised his hatred to Simon de Montfort. Nevertheless, the latter consented to resume the command in Gascony, where he found affairs in greater confusion than ever. He was proceeding to execute his difficult task with his usual ability, when the king sent directions to his subjects in Gascony not to obey him, and Edward, to govern in his the SIMON DE MONTFORT. pope not only to absolve him from all oaths he had taken, or might take, but to interfere in his favour in a more direct manner. The pope's brief arrived in 1261, when the king, whose friends had gained over some of the less patriotic of the barons, ventured to throw off the mask, and proclaimed all to be null and void which had been done since the parliament of Oxford. The result of all this, after two or three years of turbulence and confusion, was the great battle of Lewes, Wednesday, May 14, 1264, in which the barons, under the command of Simon de Montfort, obtained so sanguinary and decisive a victory, that the king, his son Edward (afterwards Edward I.), and the king's brother, Richard, King of the Romans, remained among the prisoners, and the royal cause was for the time utterly ruined. The principles now proclaimed by Earl Simon and the barons, involved principles of political freedom of the most exalted character; which we can only understand by supposing that they were founded partly on older Anglo-Saxon sentiments, and that they were moulded under the influence of men of learning who had studied not in vain the writers of the classic ages. A rather long Latin poem, written by one on the baronial side soon after the battle of Lewes, and intended, no doubt, to be recited among the clergy of that party, who were very numerous, in order to keep constantly before their minds the principles which the barons fought for, gives a complete exposition of the political doctrines of what we may call the constitutional party of the middle of the thirteenth century, and they are doctrines of which we need not be ashamed at the present day. This curious poem, which is printed in Mr Wright's Political Songs (published by the Camden Society), appointed his younarl became aware of this lays it down very clearly, that the king derives stead. When the treacherous conduct, he left Gascony and repaired to Paris, where he was held in such esteem that the regency of France, in the absence of its king, was offered him. But he remained steady in his duties to his adopted country, declined this great honour, and soon afterwards, when Gascony was nearly lost by the misconduct of King Henry's officers, he voluntarily offered his services in restoring it, which were gladly accepted. When the province was by his means reduced to obedience and order, the earl, now reconciled with the king, returned to England, where King Henry's misgovernment had brought the kingdom to the eve of a civil war. Such were the antecedents of the great baron who was now to assume a still more exalted character. The events of the Barons' War are given in every history of England, and can only be told very briefly here. At the parliament of Oxford in 1258, the barons of the popular party overpowered the court, and compelled the king to consent to statutes which took the government out of his hands and placed it in those of twenty-four persons, twelve of whom were to be chosen by each of the two parties. The first name on the baronial list was that of Simon de Montfort, whom the barons now looked upon as their leader. The insolent and oppressive foreigners, who, under Henry's favour, had eaten up the land, were now driven out of England, and the government was carried on with a degree of justice and vigour which was quite new. The king, meanwhile, was behaving basely and treacherously, and he had taken steps to induce his power from the people; that he holds it for the public good; and that he is under control, and responsible for his actions. Even feudalism is totally ignored in it, and it was the plebs plurima, the mass of the people, for whom Earl Simon and his barons fought, it was salutem communitatis, the weal of the community, he sought, and the king's defeat was a just judgment upon him, because he was a transgressor of the laws.' 'For,' we are here told, 'every king is ruled by the laws.' The nobles are spoken of as placed between the people and the king as guardians of their liberties, to watch over the exercise of the royal power and prevent its abuse. "If the king should adopt measures destructive to the kingdom, or should nourish the desire of setting his own power above the laws-if thus or otherwise the kingdom should be in danger then the magnates of the kingdom are bound to look to it, that the land be purged of all errors.' The constraint to which a king is rightly subjected, is only a just power held over him to prevent his doing wrong, or choosing bad ministers-it is not making him a slave. He who should be in truth a king,' the poem says, 'he is truly free if he rule rightly himself and the people; let him know that all things are permitted him which are in governing convenient to the kingdom, but not such as are injurious to it. It is one thing to rule according to a king's duty, and another to destroy by resisting the law.' 'If,' it goes on to say, 'a king is less wise than he ought to be, what advantage will the kingdom gain by his reign? If he alone has the right to choose, he will be easily deceived, since he is not capable of knowing who This great revolution was too advanced for an age in which feudalism, though in a weakened form, was established in our island, and physical force was distributed into too few hands to remain united. Success only made place for personal jealousies, and selfish motives led many of the barons to desert the popular cause, while others were quarrelling among themselves. A succession of intrigues followed, and new leagues were formed among the barons, until, on the 4th of August 1265, the decisive battle of Evesham was fought, in which Simon de Montfort was slain, and the barons sustained a ruinous defeat. The joy of the royalists was shewn in the indignities which they heaped upon the body of the great statesman, but his work remained, and none of the substantial advantages of the baronial war of the middle of the thirteenth century have ever been lost. The short period of the battles of Lewes and Evesham stands as a marked division between two periods of English constitutional history. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. At the hour of eight, on the morning of Friday, 3d of August 1492, Columbus, with his little squadron of three ships, sailed from the port of Palos, in Spain, with the object of reaching India by a westerly course. The result of this voyage was, as is well known, the discovery of the continent now termed America; and thus the remarkable prediction of the old pagan philosopher and poet, Seneca, was almost literally fulfilled: "Venient annis secula seris, The life and voyages of Columbus, being matters of history, are without the pale of our limited sphere. It is not generally known, however, that CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. a very obscure point in the history of, his first voyage, has lately been most satisfactorily cleared up, Captain Becher, of the Royal Navy, aided by the practical skill of a thorough seaman, and the scientific acquirements of an accomplished hydrographer, having clearly proved that Watling's Island, one of the Bahamas, was the first land, in the New World, seen by Columbus, and not the Island of Guanahini, as had previously been generally supposed. The precise meaning of the curious form of signature, adopted by the great navigator, is still a subject for doubtful speculation; that he himself considered it to be of weighty importance, is evident from the following injunction in his will: Don Diego, my son, or any other, who may inherit this estate, on coming into possession of the inheritance, shall sign with the signature which I now make use of; which is an S, with an X under it, and an M, with a Roman A over it, and over that an S, and a great Y, with an S over it, with its lines and points as is my custom, as may be seen by my signature, of which there are many, and it will be seen by the present one. He shall only write The Admiral, whatever titles the king may have conferred upon him. This is to be understood, as respects his signature; but not the enumeration of his titles, which he can make at full length if agreeable; only the signature is to be The Admiral'-El Almirante. The signature thus specified, is the following: བ, ༤༤. The Xpo, signifying Christo, is in Greek letters; and, indeed, it is not unusual at the present day, in Spain, to find a mixture of Greek and Roman letters and languages in signatures and inscriptions. This signature of Columbus exemplifies the peculiar character of the man, who, considering himself selected and set apart from all others, by the will of Providence, for the accomplishment of a great purpose-great in a temporal, greater still in a spiritual point of view-adopted a correspondent formality and solemnity in all his actions. Named after St Christopher, whose legendary history is comprised in his name Christophorusthe bearer of Christ-being said to have carried the infant Saviour on his shoulders over an arm of the sea-Columbus felt that he, too, was destined to carry over the sea the glad tidings of the gospel, to nations dwelling in the darkness of paganism. Spotorno, commencing with the lower letters of the mysterious signature, and connecting them with those above, conjectures them to represent the words Xristus Sancta Maria Josephus. Captain Becher, however, has given a much simpler, and, in all probability, the correct solution of the enigma. It was from Queen Isabella that Columbus. after many disappointments, first received the welcome intelligence, that he should be sent on his voyage, and that his son would be received into the royal service during his absence. Moved to tears of joy and gratitude at the prospect of realising the grand object of his life, and the advancement and protection offered to his son, the great man, as soon as his feelings allowed utterance, exclaimed: 'I shall ever be the servant of your majesty!' We may readily believe that Columbus would retain this sentiment of devoted service, and bequeath it as a sacred heir-loom to his successors; and assuming that the concealed words are Spanish, and the letters are to be read in their regular order, they, in all probability, signify: SERVIDOR SUS ALTEZAS SACRAS Or in English and in full: THE SERVANT OF THEIR SACRED HIGHNESSES JESUS MARY AND ISABELLA, CHRIST BEARING. THE ADMIRAL. SHELLEY. It would be difficult to point out a career, as recent and familiar to us as that of Shelley, involved in so many obscurities. From some peculiar bias of temperament, or constitutional irregularity, his imagination stamped much more vivid impressions on his own mind than most men's imaginations are wont to do; so that it often happened to him that old fancies took the form of reminiscences, and he believed in a past which had never existed. His personal and familiar friends, Mr Hogg and Mr Peacock, both of whom have written down their kindly recollections, shew this very clearly. Mr Hogg uses strong language. 'He was,' he says, speaking of Shelley, altogether incapable of rendering an account of any transaction whatsoever, according to the strict and precise truth, and the bare naked realities of actual life; not through an addiction to falsehood, which he cordially detested, but because he was the creature -the unsuspecting and unresisting victim-of his irresistible imagination. Had he written to ten different individuals the history of some proceeding in which he was himself a party and an eyewitness, each of his ten reports would have varied from the rest in essential and important particulars.' Though this statement looks somewhat exaggerated, Mr Peacock, who quotes it, does not contradict it, and many of his anecdotes go to shew that it is, in the main, true; and the result is, that many stories, confidently reported-many tragic histories of nightly attempts to assassinate the poet, or mysterious visitants to his abode, or singular events in his ordinary life, resting only on his own testimony-will have to be quietly, though often, doubtless, reluctantly, passed over by a cautious biographer. Concerning Shelley, already much error has been corrected, and probably more remains to correct; even as many more particulars have still to be revealed. Strictly speaking, Shelley's life is still unwritten, and at present it will remain so, though the leading events are well known. SHELLEY. Percy Bysshe Shelley came of an aristocratic stock. At the time of his birth, the 4th of August 1792, his grandfather was a baronet, and before Shelley was many years old, his father succeeded to the title, as also did Shelley's son, Sir Percy, after the poet's death. At ten years old, he was sent to Zion House Academy, near Brentford, and in his fifteenth year he went to Eton. Being of a sensitive nature, he had to pass through many troubles, and his eccentricities brought him into more, before he had been at Oxford many terms, He and Mr Hogg, a college-friend, concocted a little pamphlet on religious subjects, and printed it for private circulation; and the master and fellows of University College saw good, in a fit of rigid orthodoxy, to expel both of them. Men who think little are often severely orthodox, but deep thinkers are mostly lenient towards the scruples of others. Nevertheless, we must admit that Shelley went far enough to startle more than mediocrity. Even at Zion House Academy he was given to raising the devil, and throughout his life he remained, let us say, a philosopher. That earnestness and love of truth which made comedy repulsive to him, conspired, with independent and original thinking, to make him very fearless in expressing and maintaining his many eccentric opinions. Young thinkers are generally sanguine and self-important; they seem to fancy that the world never existed till they themselves set eyes on it, and deem themselves inspired apostles specially raised up to set truth on its feet again. Shelley's circumstances, after his expulsion from Oxford, became straitened. His father, who was never kind to him, refused supplies, and he had to live on secret remittances from his kind-hearted sisters. They sent them to his lodging in London by the willing hand of a school-fellow, Harriet Westbrook, and the sympathy she shewed won the heart of the grateful youth. The two children, as we may call them, came to an understanding, and eloped to Scotland, and their marriage-ceremony was performed at Edinburgh in August 1811, Shelley being nineteen, and his wife not so old, Matters went on pleasantly for a time, and Harriet Shelley made an affectionate wife; but she did not prove exactly the partner fully to correspond to her husband. Love cannot do all the household-work, but requires some handmaidens. There was still a void, as the future revealed, ungraciously enough. Shelley did not allow it to himself, and in 1814, the marriage-ceremony was performed again, according to the English form; but soon afterwards he met with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and the strong current of his feelings changed. Mary Godwin was a woman of great intellectual energy and congenial tastes; and so, at once-let no man judge him!-he left his wife without her consent; he left her sister, whom he disliked intensely; and his children, whom he loved to carry in his arms, singing a strange lullaby of 'Ya'hmani, Ya'hmani, Ya'hmani, Ya'hmani;' and went abroad with the other lady. Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine two years later, and Miss Godwin became Mrs Shelley. Shelley's children by his first wife were taken from him, on the plea that their father held, and acted upon, opinions with respect to marriage 'injurious to the best interests of society.' It is |