HENRY GRATTAN. THE BOOK OF DAYS. demand was then made upon him (without revealing to him the present dwelling-place of the parents) to deliver up the children; he refused, unless the bill was paid; whereupon a suit was instituted against him. M. Charles Ledru, the advocate for the parents, passed the highest encomiums on the generous hotel-keeper, and said that he himself would use all his influence to induce the father to pay the debt so indisputably due; but added, that his own present duty was to contend against the detention of the children as a pledge for the debt. The president of the tribunal, M. Debelleyme, equally praised the hotel-keeper, but decided that the law of France would not permit the detention of the children. They were given up, irrespective of the payment of the debt, which was left to be enforced by other tribunals. JULY 3. St Phocas, martyr, 303. St Gunthiern, abbot in Brittany, 6th century. St Bertran, bishop of Mans, 623. St Guthagon, recluse at Oostkerk, 8th century. Born.-Louis XI. of France, 1423, Bourges; Henry Grattan, Irish parliamentary orator, 1746, Dublin. Died.-Mary de Medicis, mother of Louis XIII. of France, 1642, Cologne; Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, 1792, Brunswick. HENRY GRATTAN. Ireland has great honour in producing Henry Grattan, and she will never be politically beyond hope while she continues to venerate his memory. With every temptation to become the tool of the British ministry, he came forward as the unflinching advocate of the just rights and independence of his country; a Protestant, he never ceased to claim equal rights for an opposite class of believers. In the blotted page of Irish history, it is truly a bright spot where Grattan (1780) obtains in the native parliament the celebrated resolution as to its sole competency to make laws for Ireland. An irreproachable private life admirably supports the grandeur of his public career. An anecdote of Grattan's boyhood shews the possession of that powerful will without which there can be no true greatness: When very young, Mr Grattan had been frightened by stories of ghosts and hobgoblins, which nurses are in the habit of relating to children, so much so, as to affect his nerves in the highest degree. He could not bear being left alone, or remaining long without any person, in the dark. This feeling he determined to overcome, and he adopted a bold plan. In the dead of night he used to resort to a churchyard near his father's house, and there he used to sit upon the gravestones, whilst the perspiration poured down his face; but by these efforts he at length succeeded and overcame his nervous sensation. This certainly was a strong proof of courage in a child.'-Memoirs of Henry Grattan by his Son (1848), v. 212. EXPIRATION OF THE CORNISH LANGUAGE. The 3d of July is connected (in a very slight manner, it must be acknowledged) with an event of some importance-the utter death and extinction EXPIRATION OF CORNISH LANGUAGE. of one of the ancient provincial languages of England. Many have been the conjectures as to the person and to the locality, where lived the last individual who could speak Cornish. Dr Borlase, who published his History in 1758, says that 'the language had altogether ceased, so as not to be spoken anywhere in conversation;' while Dr Bryce of Redruth affirms that the language had its last struggles for life, at or about the wild prominences of the Land's End. This fact Lhwyd, in a letter, March 10, 1701, corroborates. Our doubts are, however, settled by the detailed account of Dorothy Pentreath, alias Jeffries, who, born in 1681, lived at Mouse-hole, near Penzance, and conversed most fluently in the Cornish tongue. Her father, a fisherman, sent this young Sibyl at the age of twelve with fish to Penzance. Cornish she sold them, no improbability, as not until over twenty could she speak a word of English. The name Pentreath signifies the end of the sand. The following lines, giving Cornish and English alternately, will serve to confirm the occupation of the Pentreaths: TO NEIGHBOUR NICHOLAS PENTREATH. There is all your true tythe. In The Hon. Daines Barrington, who travelled in Cornwall in 1768, had an interview with her, which is described in the Archæologia, vol. iii.: 'When we reached Mouse-hole, I desired to be introduced as a person who had laid a wager, that there was no one who could converse in Cornish. Upon which Dolly Pentreath spoke in an angry tone of voice for two or three minutes, in a language which sounded very much like Welsh. The hut in which she lived was in a very narrow lane, opposite to two rather better cottages, at the doors of which two other women stood, advanced in years, and who, I observed, were laughing at what Dolly Pentreath said to me. Upon this, I asked them whether she had not been abusing me; to which they answered: "Yes, very heartily, and because I supposed she could not speak Cornish." I then said they must be able to talk it; to which they answered, they could not speak it readily, but that they understood it, being only ten or twelve years younger than Dolly Pentreath.' Six years after this visit, though bending with old age, and in her 87th year, Dolly Pentreath could walk six miles in bad weather, her intellect was unimpaired, and her memory so good that she recollected the gentleman who had such a curiosity to hear the Cornish language. The parish maintained her in her poverty, while her fortune-telling and gabbling Cornish also contributed to her maintenance. She was short of stature, and towards the end of her life somewhat deaf, but positive that she was the only person who could speak or know anything about the ancient tongue 'Coth Doll Pentreath eans ha dean, Old Doll Pentreath, one hundred aged and two, Thus much for Dolly. We also learn that the 'Bluth vee Eue try Gevree a pemp, Me rig deskey Cornoaek termen me vee mave, Cea ves yen pobble younk. My age is threescore-and-five, I am a poor fisherman, I learned Cornish when I was a boy. With young people.' Archæologia, vol. v. Bodenoer died in 1794, leaving two sons, who knew not enough of the Cornish to converse in it. If the visitor to Penzance will direct his steps three miles west of that place, he will hear somewhat of Dorothy Pentreath, and of that language, which, now forgotten, found in her its last efficient representative. EXTRAORDINARY CALCULATORS. On the 3d of July 1839, some of the eminent members of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, including MM. Arago, Lacroix, Libri, and Sturm, met to examine a remarkable boy, whose powers of mental calculation were deemed quite inexplicable. The boy, named Vito Mangiamele, a Sicilian, was the son of a shepherd, and was about eleven years old. The examiners asked him several questions which they knew, under ordinary circumstances, to be tedious of solution--such as, the cube root of 3,796,416, and the 10th root of 282,475,249; the first of these he answered in half 4 minute, the second in three minutes. One question was of the following complicated character: What number has the following proportions, that if its cube is added to 5 times its square, and then 42 times the number, and the number 40 be EXTRAORDINARY CALCULATORS. subtracted from the result, the remainder is equal to 0 or zero?' M. Arago repeated this question a second time, but while he was finishing the last word, the boy replied: "The number is 5!' Such cases greatly puzzle ordinary mathematicians. Buxton, Colburn, and Bidder, have at different times exhibited this unaccountable power of accounting. Jedediah Buxton, although his grandfather was a clergyman and his father a schoolmaster, was so neglected in his education that he could not even write; his mental faculties were slow, with the one wonderful exception of his power of mental arithmetic. After hearing a sermon, he remembered and cared for nothing concerning it except the number of words, which he had counted during their delivery. If a period of time, or the size of an object, were mentioned in his hearing, he almost unconsciously began to count how many seconds, or how many hair'sbreadths there were in it. He walked from Chesterfield to London on purpose to have the gratification of seeing George II.; and while in the metropolis, he was taken much notice of by members of the Royal Society. On one occasion he went to see Garrick in Richard III.; but instead of attending to the performance in the usual way, he found occupation in counting the number of words uttered by each performer. After striding over a field in two or three directions, he would tell the number of square inches it contained. He could number all the pints of beer he had drunk at all the houses he had ever visited during half a century. He once set himself to reckon how much a farthing would amount to if doubled 140 times; the result came out in such a stupendous number of pounds sterling as required 39 places of figures to represent it. In 1750 this problem was put to him to find how many cubical eighths of an inch there are in a quadrangular mass measuring 23,145,789 yards long, 5,642,732 yards wide, and 54,965 yards thick; he answered this, as all the others, mentally. On one occasion he made himself what he called 'drunk with reckoning' the following: 'In 200,000 million cubic miles, how many grains of eight different kinds of corn and pulse, and how many hairs one inch long?' He ascertained by actual counting how many of each kind of grain, and how many hairs an inch long, would go to an inch cube, and then set himself about his enormous self-imposed task. He could suspend any of his problems for any length of time, and resume it at the point where he left off; and could converse on other subjects while thus employed. He could never give any account of the way in which he worked out his problems; nor did his singular but exceptional faculty bring him any other advantage than that of being invited to the houses of the gentry as a kind of show. Zerah Colburn, who excited much interest in London in 1812, was a native of Vermont, in the United States. At six years old, he suddenly shewed extraordinary powers of mental calculation. By processes which seemed to be almost unconscious to himself, and were wholly so to others, he answered arithmetical questions of considerable difficulty. When eight years old, he was brought to London, where he astonished many learned auditors and spectators by giving correct solutions to such problems as the following: raise 8 up to the 16th power; give the square root of 106,929: give the cube root of 268,336,125; how many seconds are there in 48 years? The answers were always given in a very few minutes-sometimes in a few seconds. He was ignorant of the ordinary rules of arithmetic, and did not know how or why particular modes of process came into his mind. On one occasion, the Duke of Gloucester asked him to multiply 21,734 by 543; something in the boy's manner induced the duke to ask how he did it, from which it appeared that the boy arrived at the result by multiplying 65,202 by 181, an equivalent process; but why he made this change in the factors, neither he nor any one else could tell. Zerah Colburn was unlike other boys also in this, that he had more than the usual number of toes and fingers; a peculiarity observable also in his father and in some of his brothers. An exceptional instance is presented in the case of Mr Bidder, of this faculty being cultivated to a highly useful purpose. George Parker Bidder, when six years old, used to amuse himself by counting up to 100, then to 1000, then to 1,000,000; by degrees he accustomed himself to contemplate the relations of high numbers, and used to build up peas, marbles, and shot, into squares, cubes, and other regular figures. He invented processes of his own, distinct from those given in books on arithmetic, and could solve all the usual questions mentally more rapidly than other boys with the aid of pen and paper. When he became eminent as a civil engineer, he was wont to embarrass and baffle the parliamentary counsel on contested railway bills, by confuting their statements of figures almost before the words were out of their mouths. In 1856, he gave to the Institution of Civil Engineers an interesting account of this singular arithmetical faculty-so far, at least, as to shew that memory has less to do with it than is generally supposed; the processes are actually worked out seriatim, but with a rapidity almost inconceivable. JULY 4. St Finbar, abbot. St Bolcan, abbot. St Sisoes or Sisoy, anchoret in Egypt, about 429. St Bertha, widow, abbess of Blangy, in Artois, about 725. St Ulric, bishop of Augsburg, confessor, 973. St Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, confessor, 10th century. Translation of St Martin. That the Church of Rome should not only celebrate the day of St Martin's death (November 11), but also that of the transference of his remains from their original humble resting-place to the cathedral of Tours, shews conclusively the veneration in which this soldier-saint was held. (See under November 11.) The day continues to have a place in the Church of England calendar. In Scotland, this used to be called St Martin of Bullion's Day, and the weather which prevailed upon it was supposed to have a prophetic character. It was a proverb, that if the deer rise dry and lie down dry on Bullion's Day, it was a sign there would be a good gose-harvest-gose being a term for the latter end of summer; hence gose-harvest was an early harvest. It was believed generally over Europe that rain on this day betokened wet weather for the twenty ensuing days. THOMAS JEFFERSON. Born.-Christian Gellert, German poet and fabulist, 1715, Chemnitz, Saxony. Died.-Lord Saye and Seal, beheaded, 1450, London; William Birde, English composer of sacred music, 1623; Meric Casaubon, learned and controversial writer, 1671, bur. Canterbury Cathedral; Henry Bentinck, first Duke of Portland, 1726, Jamaica; Samuel Richardson, novelist, 1761; Fisher Ames, American statesman, President of Harvard College, 1808, Boston, U. S.; Richard Watson, bishop of Llandaff, 1816; John Adams, second president of the United States, 1826; Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, 1826; Rev. William Kirby, naturalist, 1850, Barham, Suffolk; Richard Grainger, the re-edifier of Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1861, Newcastle. THOMAS JEFFERSON. The celebrated author of the American Declaration of Independence, entered life as a Virginian barrister, and, while still a young man, was elected a member of the House of Burgesses for his state. When the disputes between the colonies and mother-country began, he took an active part in the measures for the resistance of taxation, and for diffusing the same spirit through the other provinces. Elected in 1775 to the Continental Congress, he zealously promoted the movement for a complete separation from England, and in the Declaration of Independence, which was adopted on the 4th of July 1776, he laid down the propositions, since so often quoted, that all men are created equal,' with 'an inalienable right' to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.' When the cause of independence became triumphant, Mr Jefferson naturally took a high place in the administration of the new government. He successively filled the posts of governor of Virginia, secretary of state under the presidency of Washington, and vicepresident under that of John Adams; finally, in 1801, attaining to the presidency, which he held for two terms or eight years. While Washington and Adams aimed at a strong, an aristocratic, and a centralising government, Jefferson stood up as the advocate of popular rights and measures. headed the Liberal Republican, or, as it was afterwards called, the Democratic party. He laboured for civil and religious liberty and education. He secured the prohibition of the slave trade, and of slavery over a vast territory, and was in favour of universal emancipation. In Virginia, he secured the abolition of a religious establishment, and of entails, and the equal rights of both sexes to inheritance. The most important measure of his administration was the acquisition of Louisiana, including the whole territory west of the Mississippi, which was purchased of France for 15,000,000 dollars. His administration was singularly free from political favouritism. It is remembered as one of his sayings, that he could always find better men for every place than his own connections.' He After retiring from the presidency, he founded the university of Virginia, carried on an extensive correspondence, entertained visitors from all parts of the world, and enjoyed his literary and philosophical pursuits. He was married early in life, and had one daughter, whose numerous children were the solace of his old age. At the age of eighty, he wrote to John Adams, with whom, in spite of political differences, he maintained a warm personal friendship: I have ever dreaded a doting age; and my health has been generally so good, and is now so good, that I dread it still. The rapid decline of my strength, during the last winter, has made me hope sometimes that I see land. During summer I enjoy its temperature; but I shudder at the approach of winter, and wish I could sleep through it with the dormouse, and only wake with him in the spring, if ever. They say that Stark could walk about his room. I am told you walk well and firmly. I can only reach my garden, and that with sensible fatigue. I ride, however, daily, but reading is my delight.-God bless you, and give you health, strength, good spirits, and as much life as you think worth having? The death of Jefferson, at the age of eighty-three, was remarkable. Both he and his friend John Adams, the one the author and the other the chief advocate of the Declaration of Independence each having filled the highest offices in the Republic they founded-died on the 4th of July 1826, giving a singular solemnity to its fiftieth anniversary. On the tomb of Jefferson, at Monticello, he is described as the author of the Declaration of Independence, the founder of religious freedom in Virginia, and of the university of Virginia; but there is a significant omission of the fact, that he was twice president of the United States. THE FOURTH OF JULY.' Where a country or a government has been baffled in its efforts to attain or preserve a hated rule over another people, it must be content to see its failure made the subject of never-ending triumph and exultation. The joy attached to the sense of escape or emancipation tends to perpetuate itself by periodical celebrations, in which it is not likely that the motives of the other party, or the general justice of the case, will be very carefully considered or allowed for. We may doubt if it be morally expedient thus to keep alive the memory of facts which as certainly infer mortification to one party as they do glorification to another: but we must all admit that it is only natural, and in a measure to be expected. The anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, has ever since been celebrated as a great national festival throughout the United States, and wherever Americans are assembled over the world. From Maine to Oregon, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, in every town and village, this birthday of the Republic has always hitherto been ushered in with the ringing of bells, the firing of cannon, the display of the national flag, and other evidences of public rejoicing. A national salute is fired at sunrise, noon, and at sunset, from every fort and man of war. The army, militia, and volunteer troops parade, with bands of music, and join with the citizens in patriotic processions. The famous Declaration is solemnly read, and orators, appointed for the occasion, deliver what are termed Fourth of July Orations, in which the history of the country is reviewed, and its past and coming glories proclaimed. The virtues of the Pilgrim Fathers, the General Stark, the victor of Bennington,' had just died at the age of ninety-three. THE FAIRLOP OAK FESTIVAL. heroic exertions and sufferings of the soldiers of the Revolution, the growth and power of the Republic, and the great future which expands before her, are the staple ideas of these orations. Dinners, toasts, and speeches follow, and at night the whole country blazes with bonfires, rockets, Roman candles, and fireworks of every description. In a great city like New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, the day, and even the night previous, is insufferably noisy with the constant rattle of Chinese-crackers and firearms. In the evening, the displays of fireworks in the public squares, provided by the authorities, are often magnificent. John Adams, second president of the United States, and one of the most distinguished signers of the Declaration of Independence, in a letter written at the time, predicted the manner in which it would be celebrated, and his prediction has doubtless done something to insure its own fulfilment. Adams and Jefferson, two of the signers, both in turn presidents, by a most remarkable coincidence died on the fiftieth anniversary of Independence, in the midst of the national celebration, which, being semi-centennial, was one of extraordinary splendour. THE FAIRLOP OAK FESTIVAL. local festival in Essex, arising through a simple yet The first Friday in July used to be marked by a curious chain of circumstances. In Hainault Forest, in Essex, there formerly was an oak of prodigious size, known far and wide as the Fairlop Oak. It came to be a ruin about the beginning of the present century, and in June 1805 was in great part destroyed by an accidental fire. When entire though the statement seems hardly credible-it is said to have had a girth of thirty-six feet, and to have had seventeen branches, each as large as an ordinary tree of its species. A vegetable prodigy of such a character could not fail to become a most notable and venerated object in the district where it grew. Far back in the last century, there lived an estimable block and pump maker in Wapping, Daniel Day by name, but generally known by the quaint appellative of Good Day. Haunting a small rural retreat which he had acquired in Essex, not far from Fairlop, Mr Day became deeply interested in the grand old tree above described, and began a practice of resorting to it on the first Friday of July, in order to eat a rustic dinner with a few friends under its branches. His dinner was composed of the good old English fare, beans and bacon, which he never changed, and which no guest ever complained of. Indeed, beans and bacon became identified with the festival, and it would have been an interference with many hallowed associations to make any change or even addition. By and by, the neighbours caught Mr Day's spirit, Pedlars' stalls with glitt'ring toys are laid, Here the tight lass, knives, combs, and scissors spies, Mr Day had thus the satisfaction of introducing the appearances of civilisation in a district which THE FAIRLOP OAK FESTIVAL. had heretofore been chiefly noted as a haunt of banditti. Fun of this kind, like fame, naturally gathers force as it goes along. We learn that for some years before the death of Mr Day, which took place in 1767, the pump-and-block-makers of Wapping, to the amount of thirty or forty, used to come each first Friday of July to the Fairlop beans-and-bacon feast, seated in a boat formed of a single piece of wood, and mounted upon wheels, covered with an awning, and drawn by six horses. As they went accompanied by a band of musicians, it may be readily supposed how the country-people would flock round, attend, and stare at their anomalous vehicle, as it hurled madly along the way to the forest. A local poet, who had been one of the company, gives us just a faint hint of the feelings connected with this journey: 'O'er land our vessel bent its course, Guarded by troops of foot and horse; Our anchors they were all a-peak, Our crew were baling from each leak, On Stratford bridge it made me quiver, Lest they should spill us in the river.' The founder of the Fairlop Festival was remarkable for benevolence and a few innocent eccentricities. He was never married, but bestowed as much kindness upon the children of a sister as he could have spent upon his own. He had a female servant, a widow, who had been eight-and-twenty years with him. As she had in life loved two things in especial, her wedding-ring and her tea, he caused her to be buried with the former on her finger, and a pound of tea in each hand-the latter | circumstance being the more remarkable, as he himself disliked tea, and made no use of it. He had a number of little aversions, but no resentments. It changed the usual composed and amiable expression of his countenance to hear of any one going to law. He literally every day relieved the poor at his gate. He often lent sums of money to deserving persons, charging no interest for it. When he had attained a considerable age, the Fairlop Oak lost one of its branches. Accepting the fact as an omen of his own approaching end, he caused the detached limb of the tree to be fashioned into a coffin for himself, and this convenience he took care to try, lest it should prove too short. By his request, his body was borne in its coffin to Barking churchyard by water, in a boat, the worthy old gentleman having contracted a prejudice against all land vehicles, the living horse included, in consequence of being so often thrown from them in his various journeys.* *Fairlop and its Founder, printed at Totham, 1847. |