some useful hints on equitation, where opportunity offers.

If, on the other hand, he is stationed in a city where there is no opportunity of riding, he will practise fencing on foot with some accomplished swordsman, native or foreign, equipped with target or buckler. He ought to do this in heavy armour of chain or plate, and a sword to correspond. If he wishes to be a proficient he will practise the tricks of offence and defence twice a day; never less than once, unless it be a holy day. All King's-men ought to learn these useful, nay, necessary arts. So thought the Dane Laertes, who by long practice was so dexterous in the use of the rapier, that M. Lamode must fair confess :

The scrimers of his nation Had neither motion, guard, nor eye, If he opposed them.'

In war be tenacious, but not headlong. Let others bear witness to your prowess; do not boast of your own exploits, lest, hereafter, the death of those you have slaughtered should be visited upon yourself, and that on your own provocation.' He does not here speak without warrant. Instances occur in the Sagas of Northmen bragging in Mickligardr (Constantinople) and elsewhere of their having done to death some redoubtable Viking; and, while the words are upon their lips, their skull is cleft suddenly from behind. It is the avenger of blood, a near relative of the deceased, who has tracked the manslayer with slow but sure foot, and found him out at last. Now comes a locus classicus for machines of war. And then follows a sentence which modern cheeseparers might study with benent: All these things ought to be provided and their use learned beforehand, for nobody knows how soon they require to be used. It is good to have a stock in hand, even if not wanted now.'

It was to their superior armour that the Irish author of The Gaedhill and the Gaill' attributes the victories of the Northmen over his countrymen. At Clontarf, 1014, while King Brian stands apart from the fray, reciting scores of paternosters, the lad Latean describes what passes before his eyes. The Norsemen he calls blue starknaked' men, having evidently never seen men sheathed in steel before. 'Azure Gentiles' is another and similar appellation given them. For a life-like picture of these Northern warriors, see an old Danish ballad (Grundtvig,' Part III., 180), describing the abduction of Thorsten's bride, which occurred 1287:

'Yond are three hundred warriors bold All as a cushat blue;

The steed that is cased in silk attire Rides the chieftain of the crew. 'Yond are three hundred warriors bold Near by the castle yard; Outside, they all in silk are clad, Inside, with ring-mail hard. 'Well whetted of each is the glaive, And bended is every bow; Stern wrath is within their bosoms,

Fell vengeance sits on their brow.' This reminds us of the Scotch ballad:

There were four-and-twenty bonnie boys,
A' clad in the Johnstone gray;

They said they would take the brid
again,

By the strong hand if they may.' At the youth's request, the principal machines used in sieges are enumerated. In one machine it is very interesting to see the principle of the modern ballast-truck, and of the bombshell combined.

The shooting-truck (skotvagn) is a goo contrivance. It is made like an ordinary carriage, either on two or four wheels. Thi must be loaded with stones cold or hot. Fixed to it are two chains, one on either side; so strong as to be able to hold the carriage when it is running full tilt down a planked incline. Great care must be taken that it does not leave the line. As soon as the chains begin to arrest its race (rás), it shoots out its load on those below. It is best to load it with stones of different sizes, some big, some little. Men of experience in defending a castle make balls of baked clay, so hard that they can bear being hurled. In these they put small hard stones. The moment the balls strike they burst, so that they cannot be slung back again.'

6

This is remarkable enough, but the list closes with an infernal machine, the Skialldar lotun, belching forth poisonous fire,' which is more remarkable still. The very short description of it forbids all trustworthy conjecture as to its precise nature. It is described as a curved and panelled giant,' and as surpassing everything else in its potency. Was it a cannon made after the fashion of Mons Meg in Edinburgh Castle, of hooped staves? But, according to good authorities, Villanous saltpetre' was not yet dug out of the bowels of the harmless, earth,' to hurl destruction as an ingredient of gunpowder;

'Nor those abominable guns yet found To send cold lead through gallant warrior's liver,'

at least not in Northern Europe. The first allusion to cannon by Froissart occurs in 1340. The first mention of cannon in England is in 1338. In fact, the use of ordnance is generally assigned to

the Battle of Crecy, 1346. But the date of this book is placed by none later than 1240. Could the poisonous fire belched forth by this giant be Greek fire-that happy mixture of naphtha, pitch, resin, and vegetable oil, which is said to have been invented by the Greeks of the Lower Empire? It was certainly employed by the Arabs at the siege of Damietta about this time (1218); and the Vikings might have brought the knowledge of it to Norway. But, after all, like the use of the magnet, which Humboldt shows to have been known to the Chinese B.C. 1000, gunpowder might have been invented long before Roger Bacon and Schwartz.

In the Laurentius Saga' mention is made of one Thrand, the Fusileer, who came from Flanders to King Eric Priest-hater's Court in Bergen at Christmas 1294-i.e. nearly fifty years before cannon are heard of in England-and exhibited a Herbrest (warexplosion), which causes so great a report that few can bear to hear it. Pregnant women are brought to bed prematurely; men fall from their seats. To produce this explosion four things were wanted-fire, sulphur, parchment, and tow.

The date, therefore, of the invention and use of cannon seems by no means certain.

But from this sulphureous atmosphere we now emerge to one more savoury and inviting. Behaviour in society is now discussed. A polite man skills well in addressing women, whether young or more advanced in years, to use such words as are suitable to their condition, and are befitting alike for them to hear and him to speak. The ladies will be anxious to compare with this passage, which so explicitly inculcates deference to women, the sentiments of Lord Chesterfield. With a cynical humour he recommends his son outwardly to pay them great court and deference, on account of the power they undoubtedly wield in society; but inwardly to hold them in supreme con

The father proceeds :

'Good breeding consists also in the choice of your apparel, both in colour and other respects; in knowing when it is proper to wear your cloak, or hat, or coif, and when to go without them.'

If the reader objects that these rules are puerile, Counsellor Manners and Chesterfield come to our rescue. The former pithily says to his son: Let not thy beaver be made with a steeple crown, whilst the crowns of other men's hats are flat, lest they that meet thee take thee for a stalking antic, or an image broken loose from an old piece of arras.'

While my Lord might have drawn his awkward fellow from the Icelandic text: His hands are troublesome to him, when he has not something in them, and he does not know where to put them. They are in perpetual motion between his bosom and his breeches."

The salient features, nay, the finer nuances, of morality (mœurs) are next portrayed with much insight, though at times a slight confusion is made between it and politeness, between manners and morals.

There is a long and quaint episode on the Fall, wherein Lucifer, turning nithering' against his Lord, takes the shape of an asp. In those days this animal went on two legs,

Counsellor Manners,' 15. Chesterfield,'

with body upright and the face of a woman, but with a tail behind. * And so ends our budget of extracts from 'The Royal Mirror.'

In an age of acknowledged licentiousness, and when an essentially base code of morals prevailed, especially among the higher classes, not a syllable of a lax or immoral tendency escapes the author. While an English nobleman of the eighteenth century, in his letters to his son, did not scruple to postpone morals to manners, sincerity to complaisance, we have here a father of the twelfth century, not less noble by birth, exalted in station, and polished in utterance, who, albeit he pillories awkwardness and vulgarity as keenly and mercilessly as the Earl, never omits to extol morality and hold up virtue to admiration. Of women, though they are rarely mentioned, he always speaks with deference, and never in disparagement; though a contemporary English writer, Neckam, did not scruple to call the fair Fax Sathanæ. Again, in the chapter of state affairs, there is nothing crooked and Machiavellian; all is simple and sincere. In his monarchical ideas there is nought savouring of sycophancy and king worship; no court holy-water descends upon the sovereign. If he commits faults, he must himself smart for it; no whipping boy is at hand, no scapegoat to bear the penalty of his sins. Night and day, from his youth upward, he must give heed to his momentous duties. And, per contra, the writer is equally alive to what is required of the king's subjects. A genuine patriot, he is always deeply impressed with the importance of every Norwegian endeavouring in his own person, his dealings and behaviour, to uphold the honour and fair name of his country. His motto is rápтηv čλaxes ταύτην κοσμεί.

A most chequered miscellany the work no doubt is, but miscellanies were the fashion of the time. Nay, this very diversity of subjects is clear gain as far as modern inquiry is concerned, though the work may suffer thereby in point of artistic unity, for to this kind of writing we owe so much of our knowledge of out-of-the-way facts, which would otherwise have been lost in oblivion. Most books in those days compassed all creation in their scope, or by way of illustration. Everything was grist that came to the author's literary mill. No historian of

* Among the wall paintings in the Chapterhouse at Salisbury, dating, if we remember rightly, from 1158, there is none more curious than the Temptation,' where the figure of the Asp in the text is repeated to the most minute detail.

a country would think of commencing later than the siege of Troy; possibly he went further back still, and started ab ovo Ledæ. Every political effusion would be sure to embrace the Deluge. Again, natural wonders were always a popular topic. Our own Robert of Gloucester, in his rhymed Chronicle,' the most ancient professed history in the English language, is also a wonder-monger. After telling us that the vicinity of Salisbury abounded in wylde bestes' of the chace, and that the county of Lyncolne is celebrated for fairest men, he describes the waters of Bath, Stonehenge, and the Peak of Derbyshire.

6

With regard to our author's scientific knowledge, we have seen that it is by no means contemptible. Witness his inquiries into the cause of volcanoes and earthquakes, and say whether your Humboldts and Daubeneys have probed much deeper into the cause of the mysterious underground activities.

His modest conjectures in the domain of physical science do him much credit; if we consider that he lived in an age when astrology, the cabala, and the philosopher's stone were firmly believed in. Always soberminded, he makes a point of weighing evidence before forming his conclusions, in the true spirit of a philosophical inquirer. If at times he indulges in the marvellous, gravely relating, on good authority, his tales of the Irish wehrwolf, of the stick petrified at one end and remaining real wood at the other, of the islands of the dead and of the living, all he can say is he has taken very great paius to ascertain the truth, and he states exactly what he had heard.

His natural history, again, is a remarkable production, evincing a great deal of patient. research, much of which, moreover, is partly corroborated by recent travellers.

In proof of our author's habit of independent thought we find him, counter to the opinion prevalent in the North, claiming the walrus for the seal tribe, rather than the cetacea; while our countryman Neckam glibly classes the hippopotamus among the fishes.

In describing Greenland's icy mountains,' what a grand opportunity he had for retailing such grotesque old fancies, as that snapped up by Rabelais :

Those uncouth islands where words frozen

bee,

Till by the thawe next yeare they'r voic't againe.'

But our author, on the contrary, prefers entering into an investigation whether Greenland is an island at all, and not rather part

to the north, or the puppet to move according as the string is pulled.'

The school of thought, on the other hand, whose starting-point is the investigation of man's intellectual and spiritual nature, commencing as it does with the facts of individual consciousness, is no less unwilling to contemplate any interference arising out of external laws with the absolute supremacy of individual freedom, than the materialists are to acknowledge the possibility of any arbitrary variation in them. In the earlier ages of society the facts of individual consciousness are the very first which attract, and all but monopolise, attention. Every force of nature is personified in the philosophy of a primitive people, no less than in their poetry and their mythology. Not only are the trees of the forest, and the brooks which run among them, identified with Dryads and Naiads, not only do Arès and Athenè symbolise the incarnation of brute force and sagacity, but the great problem (which presents itself in different shapes to every age) of reconciling to the imagination the two ideas of Liberty and Law, appears in the Homeric poems as a comparison between the strength of Fate and of Jupiter. Nothing can be more certain than that the notion of personality is a primitive one, of course for many ages altogether undeveloped and crude, but seen to be acted upon wherever there is any record of human doings, implied in every creation of the imagination which has excited human sympathies, and recognised in the language of every portion of the human race. Even when we come to later times, and professed philosophers, the old modes of thought still exhibit themselves where, to our modern judgments, they are most inappropriate. Affection and Strife are the forms under which the materialist Empedocles exhibits the properties which we call attraction and repulsion.

Whatever extension may be given in the immediate future to the cultivation of the physical sciences, and however widely they may come to be substituted in the higher schools for the studies which have hitherto nourished the mental growth of the upper classes of England, there is little fear that the effects will follow which some apprehend. The favourite study of mankind always has been, and always will be, man himself and not man as a machine, but as a living, acting, feeling, thinking being, the subject of hopes and fears, aspirations and aversions. If the Roman satirist, when he described his work

Quicquid agunt homines, vitium, timor, ira, voluptas,

Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli'— could have suspected that a time would ever arrive when the various features in the picture of human corruption which he painted, would be regarded by philosophers of reputation as mere symbols expressing the reflex action of nervous currents, he would undoubtedly have given vent to his spleen at the influence of foreign savants in even bitterer terms than those in which he indulges. But such indignation would have been as misplaced as the terrors of some modern divines are. Every new idea creates an enthusiasm in the minds of those who have first grasped it, which renders them incapable of viewing it in its true proportions to the sum total of knowledge. It is in their eyes no new denizen of the world of facts, but a heaven-sent ruler of it, to which all previously recognised truths must be made to bow. As time goes on, truer views obtain. The new principle ceases to be regarded either as a pestilent delusion or as a key to all mysteries. Its application comes to be better defined and its value more reasonably appreciated, when both idolaters and iconoclasts have passed away, and a new generation begins to take stock of its intellectual inheritance.

The book of Dr. Carpenter is an attempt to mediate between the extreme Psychologists and Physiologists. He regards the causative power of the human will, and the self-determined condition of the individual man in the exercise of it, as primary facts of which we have the complete evidence in our own consciousness. But not the less does he accept, with certain limitations, the doctrines which the Physiological School urge as incompatible with such a view. He frankly confesses their merits at the outset.

'What modern research seems to me to have done, is to elucidate the mechanism of Automatic action; to define with greater precision the share it takes in the diversified phenomena of Animal life, psychical as well as physical; and to introduce a more scientific of the inquiry. But in so far as those who mode of thought into the Physiological part profess to be its expositors ignore the fundamental facts of consciousness on which DesCartes himself built up his philosophical fabric, dwelling exclusively on Physical action as the only thing with which Science has to do, and repudiating the doctrine (based on the universal experience of Mankind) that the menal states which we call Volitions and Emotions have a causative relation, they appear to me to grasp only one half of the problem, to see only one side of the shield. That the principle of the conservation of Energy holds