LITTELL'S LIVING AGE-No. 529.-8 JULY, 1854.

AMIENS CATHEDRAL.

FROM THE AMERICAN IN EUROPE.

AMIENS has a noble cathedral, which holds have the peculiarity of giving forth a tone when one of the first places amongst the Gothic struc- touched or struck; one, called le pelier sonore, tures of France. It was erected in 1220, and, by startles by the intensity of its prolonged and a peculiarity in the stone, the flight of the 126 grave harmony, as though it were the string of delicate shafts that support an immense vault, some enormous harp. or the eccentricity of the builders, these shafts

LECTURES ON THE GREAT NOVELISTS.

AN interesting course of lectures by Mr. Cowden Clarke, at the London Institution, on "four of the Great European Novelists," was brought to a close on Monday. The authors selected were Boccacio, Cervantes, Lesage, and Richardson; but it is to the last of the four that our notice must be confined.

Richardson, said the lecturer, leaves nothing to the imagination. Every detail of every inci dent is given but this detail is always relevant. There is no digression, no episode even. The plots are at once simple and intricate. The elaborate indices appended to "Clarissa" and "Grandison" show the gravity with which Richardson regarded his productions. He wrote in perfect good faith; he never trifles with his subject; his matter seems real and momentous to himself, and becomes so to his reader. Of the latter fact, indeed, the lecturer gave proof positive by the earnest conviction with which he discussed and sympathized with the fortunes of Clarissa. Of the character of Lovelace he delivered an elaborate précis; as also of Grandison, that hero of "the malice prepense of goodness" of Miss Byron, whose mind, like the minds of more than one of the heroines, "is always in full dress"-of Clementina, and of Clarissa. The knowledge of women displayed by Richardson is most subtile. His finished portraiture reaches the subordinate no less than the principal characters. His morality is very high he inculcates the great truth that men must look into themselves for the paramount arbitration of their fate-on their own goodness or depravity for their happiness or wretchedness. In this respect he is the extreme opposite of Lesage. Richardson's wit and his pathos were then touched on; the former less convincingly than the latter. He is an author who never appears in his books, and yet he is incarnate in them. These you may admire deeply, or dislike altogether: you cannot read them with indifference. Lamb and Hazlitt were two of his greatest admirers; and very delightful it was," said Mr. Clarke, with the freshness of personal knowledge,

66 to hear them talk of him."

|nion as the speaker, but to incite them to become so.-Spectator.

A HISTORY OF ENGLAND, IN RHYME, FROM THE CONQUEST TO THE RESTORATION.-From which rejected burlesque or unperformed opera have been drawn the materials for this work its author does not explain to us :-his song having no symphony or preface. It is meant, we presume, principally to be jingled-after the fashion of coral and bells-in the ears of "the hope of England, from three years and downwards,"and there is not a page at which we could open the book without coming upon some chord or modulation, so much in the style of "Goosey Gander" as to take us back into Babyland, where the kings are made of elecampane and the queens of gingerbread. Listen, by way of specimen, to some of the rhymes devoted to our royal Bluebeard.—

CURIOUS TENDER." If any young clergyman, somewhat agreeable in person, and who has a small fortune independent, can be well recommended as to strictness of morals and good temper, firmly attached to the present happy establishment, and is willing to engage in the matrimonial estate with an agreeable young lady The question suggests itself, how far Richard- in whose power it is immediately to bestow a son, an author whom the novel-readers of the living of nearly £100 per annum, in a very pleaday may think comparatively oldfashioned, and sant situation, with a good prospect of prefer who is more talked of than read, may be suit-ment, any person whom this may suit may able as the theme of a lecture to a mixed audi-leave a line at the bar of the Union Coffee House ence. Boccacio is a great name, and the root in the Strand, directed to Z. Z., within three of the tree of modern fiction: Cervantes and days of this advertisement. The utmost secrecy Lesage are thoroughly popular: Richardson is and honor may be depended upon.”—London distinguished rather than cherished. Mr. Clarke Chronicle, March, 1758. retained the attention of his audience through

out.

He roused it into lively and even eager FLY-TAKERS OF CAPE COLONY.-A large wisp interest, where, as in the pictures he drew of of straw is dipped in milk and hung by a string Lovelace and Grandison, his own graphic touch-to the beams of the roof; when this is covered es presented a striking figure, and his power in with flies they come with a large bag slowly undescribing what his author had described demon-der the straw, and getting it in to a certain depth, strated the admirable truth of that, or stood by shake it so that the flies are shaken to the bottom its own strength: but, where lively delineation of the bag. In this manner they sometimes take gave place to critical statement, as it necessarily as many as a bushel of flies a day.-Lichtenstein. did towards the end, the hearers cooled in proportion to their coolness to Richardson himself. The function of a critical lecture, however, is not merely to find an audience of the same opi

TOPSY TURVY.-I have always understood this to be a corruption of " Topside t'other way." Notes and Queries.

From Chambers's Repository. CHRISTIAN SLAVERY IN BARBARY.

and their families became bound under the name of adscripti; and thus arose that mitigated system of slavery known as serfdom, We find in the records of the remotest an- which prevailed during the middle ages, and tiquity, slavery mentioned as an established which, in some of the northern parts of system as quite a common usage. Abraham Europe, is not yet abolished. War and conhad "318 servants born in his own house;" quest, however, were always the great sources and thousands of children have wept when of slavery. England, overrun by Romans, they heard how Joseph was sold by his un- Saxons, Norwegians, and Normans, was long natural brethren. That it is an "institution a country of slaves and slave-dealers. To the adapted to a rude state of society only, is circumstance of English captives being exposed satisfactorily proved by its complete extinction for sale in the market of Rome, we are inin almost all the more highly civilized and re-debted for the first gleam of the light of Gosfined communities of the earth; and also by pel truth. The Anglo-Saxons held a great its origin being clearly traceable to the lowest slave-mart at Bristol, where they sold large conditions of savage life. Women, being the numbers of slaves to the Irish traders. Wolsweaker, were undoubtedly the first slaves. ton, Bishop of Worcester, who died in 1095, The uncivilized man of the present day fol- went year after year to Bristol and preached lows the chase or sallies forth upon the war- against the odious traffic; and his zeal was path, all labor and drudgery falling to the lot crowned with success, for many of the leading of his female partner. The mere savage merchants discontinued it. In the canons hunter of antiquity compelled, by scarcity of of a council held at London in 1102, it is writgame and other circumstances, to tame and ten :-"Let no one from henceforth presume rear cattle for their flesh and skins, re-to carry on that wicked traffic, by which men quired more assistance than his wife could in England have hitherto been sold like brute afford, and, consequently, the life of the enemy, beasts." Still, however, to a very late period vanquished in war, was spared on condition prisoners taken in war were considered to be the of being the conqueror's slave. The wife property of their captors: the rich were held then became an overlooker, and woman was to ransom, and the poor condemned to slavery. raised the first step in the social scale. Agri- Another prolific source of slavery was reliculture, requiring more labor still, was next gious difference-it being long understood that discovered and practised; slaves became ar- any person who had the power, had also the right ticles of value and merchandise; and the to enslave any other person professing a dif victorious warrior, instead of slaying his pris- ferent faith. The Laws of Oleron, the marioners, sacrificing them to hideous heathen time code of the middle ages, described infidels deities, or eating them, as he had formerly who did not receive the Christian faith, as done, found it more advantageous to adopt "dogs to be attacked, despoiled, and enslaved the less cruel alternative of selling them. by all true believers." The Venetians long Thus we see that the horrible system of carried on a prosperous trade in Sclavonian slavery, the offspring of brute force and bar-infidel slaves from the shores of the Adriatic, barism, was, nevertheless, a forward step in and they honestly, as the word was then the world's march to civilization. So, as toil understood, bought and paid for them. But and suffering is the ordeal which mankind in- it was reserved for chivalry-Christian chivaldividually and nationally must pass through ry par excellence-to commence that hideous before their highest state of progress can be system of piracy and slavery, which so long achieved, we may confidently cheer ourselves stained with blood and tears the blue waters with the hope, that the last remnant of slavery of the Mediterranean. still existing in Christian lands, and now The ecclesiastical order of Hospitallers of writhing in its death-pangs, will be the means St. John of Jerusalem-originally instituted of raising a degraded race to their proper for the purpose of sheltering and relieving position among the people of the earth. sick pilgrims to the Holy Temple-assumed The ancient Greeks, puffed with the pride in course of time a military character and of their superficial refinement, deemed all the organization, becoming a rich and powerful rest of the world barbarians, and only fit to body of monastic warriors. When the Chrisbe their slaves. The haughty republican tian powers were driven from Palestine, the Roman, selfish and intolerant, demanding un- Knights Hospitallers took possession of Rhodes, limited and aggressive privileges for himself and a few other smaller islands in the group as a citizen, was a brutal master to his bonds- so well known in ancient history as the Spo man. Under the Empire, the number of rades. Shut up in these islands, yet bound by slaves increased so much by wealth and conquest, that the poorer class of freemen were glad to secure a subsistence by working on the estates of the great landowners, to which they

their vows to wage perpetual war against all infidels, the knights became a considerable naval power, and pursued a continual system of piracy upon their Mohammedan neighbors.

All their prisoners were unconditionally a little from the Greek and Roman historians. doomed to life-long slavery. Manacled to We know that in turn becoming the rulers of the oars, they rowed the galleys of their the seas, they explored and founded colonies knightly captors, who impiously used to and trading-depots in what were at that time boast, that they cared not how the winds of the most distant regions; extending their comheaven blew, as they carried their own winds mercial relations from the tropical banks of in the sinews of their slaves. Four times did the Niger to the frost-bound beach of the Balthe plundered Ottomans unsuccessfully en- tic. A powerful people ere Rome was built, deavor to expel the priestly pirates from their they long enjoyed their supremacy; at last, stronghold. At last Solyman the Magnificent the thirst of territorial conquest brought the beleaguered Rhodes with an immense fleet and two great nations into rivalry, and the rich army, and summoned the knights to surrender temples of Carthage fell a prey to the legions in the following words: The constant of Scipio. For a short period after the derobberies with which you molest our faithful struction of Carthage, the energetic subtlety subjects, oblige us to require you to deliver up of Jugurtha prevented the conquerors from to us the island and fortress of Rhodes." The extending their dominion; but in a few years, summons was treated with scorn; a series of the whole coast, as far as the waves of the sanguinary battles ensued; and ultimately, Atlantic, became a Roman province. It reafter performing prodigies of valor, the order mained so till about the year 428 of the was almost annihilated, and their feeble rem- Christian era, in the reign of the Emperor nant expelled from Rhodes. After some Honorius, when Genseric, king of the Vanyears' wandering in various parts of Europe, dals, crossed over to Africa, conquered the they received the island of Malta from Charles Roman territory, and founded a dynasty which V. Recruiting their numbers, they established reigned for about 100 years. The Greek themselves on that almost impregnable rock, emperor Justinian then sent Belisarius to reand pursued their former system of piracy conquer the country; he defeated the Vandals, with greater vigor than ever. Al Makbari, made their king prisoner, and added Northern an Arabic writer, speaks of Malta in language Africa to the Greek Empire. similar to that which, no doubt, our ancestors History presents us with a series of conhave used respecting Algiers. He terms it, quering races, following each other as the "that accursed island, from the neighborhood waves upon the sea-beach, each washing away of which whoever escapes may well say that the impression made upon the sand by its he has deserved favor; that dreaded spot which forerunner, and each leaving a fresh impresthrows its deadly shades on the pleasant waters; sion to be washed out by its successor. that den of iniquity; that place of ambush, irruption of the Saracens followed hard upon which is like a net to ensnare all Moslems who the conquering footsteps of Belisarius. Swarm sail the sea." after swarm of the Arabs came up out of Barbary is the general and somewhat vague Egypt, till Northern Africa was under the denomination adopted by Europeans to des- rule of the caliphs, excepting a small part of ignate that part of the northern coast of the sea-coast held by the Spanish Goths. They Africa which, bounded on the south by the at last were driven out by Musa, about the desert of Sahara, is comprised between the year 710; and then Tarik, Musa's lieutenant, frontiers of Egypt on the Mediterranean, and crossing the narrow straits, carried the war Cape Nun, the western spur of the lofty Atlas into Europe, defeated Roderick, the last range, on the Atlantic. Imperfectly known Gothic king, and laid the foundation of Arab even at the present day, in ancient legend it dominion in Spain. The ruthless spirit of was peculiarly the land of mystery and fable. religious fanaticism which inspired the followIt was there the Grecian poets, giving their ers of Mohammed, destroyed everything it airy nothings a local habitation and a name, could not change. Romans, Vandals, Greeks, placed the site of the delightful gardens of Goths, their laws, literature, and religions, all the Hesperides, whose trees bore apples of have disappeared in Northern Africa; the the purest gold; there dwelt the terrible recollection of the most powerful of them is Gorgon, whose snaky tresses turned all living only preserved in the word Romi-a term of things into stone; there the invincible Her- reproach to the Christians of all nations. Of cules wrestled and overthrew mighty Antæus; their more material works, the learned anthere the weary Atlas supported the ponder- tiquary still finds some traces of Roman edious arch of heaven on his stalwart shoulders. fices, and the remains of a sewer are supposed Almost as mythical and mysterious is the little to indicate the site of Carthage. The warlike we know of the Phoenicians, the greatest enthusiasm of the Saracens was better adapted maritime people of antiquity, who planted for making conquests than for preserving their most powerful colony, the proud city of them. The great distance from the seat of Carthage, on these furtile shores of Northern empire, the revolutions caused by rival houses Africa. Of the Carthaginians, we can glean contending for the caliphate, the ambitious

The