THE VERB "PROGRESS. - The opinion is widely spread among literary men that to use the word progress as a verb is to be guilty of an Americanism. How can this opinion be maintained, seeing that progress is used as a verb by Shakespeare, Ford, and Milton ? "Let me wipe off this honrable dew "Although the popular blast "In supereminence of beatific vision progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eternity."- Milton's Reformation in England. the glass manufactory on the island of Murano, where of late years the making of the famous Venetian glass, so prized by antiquaries, has been revived and carried to great perfection. To our English eyes this glass may appear dull, and imperfect in shape; but when we consider that all the beautiful vases, flowers, etc., we see, are made without model, simply shaped by the eye and hand of the workman, the marvel is that they are so true in form. A man will take a certain number of sticks of glass of equal length, resembling the peppermint-sticks so dear to children, and place them in a row on a sort of shovel; this he places in a furnace till the glass becomes partially fused; then he takes another round iron implement, and twists the melted glass round it, and by turning it in various ways, and frequently placing it in the furnace for a few moments, it at last assumes whatever shape you please either vase, goblet, or plate. When finished in shape, he takes a small quantity of dark red glass, passes it IN VENICE.- No one should leave Venice lightly round the edge, and thus forms the without well studying the curious mosaics in St. border. The preparation of the gold stoneMark's; that grand cathedral is at once a no- glass, and of the opal tint which is so much adble temple and an historical museum of unsur-mired, is a secret recently re-discovered, I bepassed interest. Here you may read of the re- lieve, by Salviati, to whom we are indebted also ligion, the riches, the liberality, the conquests, for the modern mosaics, which from their beauty and the progress made in the arts, by that wou- and durability will, I trust, ere long, be emderful Republic of the past. Here are treas-ployed largely in wall decorations in England. ures, war spoils, from Constantinople and from Greece. Over the great door stand the gilded bronze horses, said to be the work of Phidias, placed there, I conclude, to show the Venetians what a horse is like, as they have no opportunity of studying the living animal. These were taken to Paris as trophies by the first Napoleon, and restored, to the great joy of the people, after the battle of Waterloo. It is difficult to imagine a city full of life without horses and without wheels, in which you may walk certainly, but only through narrow lanes of houses, where you may touch the walls on either side with outstretched arms, where you come to bridges of steps every few yards over the numerous canals, NEW FOSSIL CONIFERS. - Mr. W. Carruthers and where the turnings are so intricate, and so has figured and described in the number of the much alike, that only by great care can you Geological Magazine for December 1871 two find your way back to your hotel; a city wholly new species of fossil coniferous fruits from the devoid of verdure, where all the vegetables and Gault beds of Folkestone. He states one species fruit consumed have to be brought in barges to be allied to the existing Wellingtonia, and daily from the mainland. In some of the court- shows that they point to the existence of a coniyards you see a few orange-trees in tubs, and ferous vegetation on the high lands of the Upper there is one square patch called a garden, con- Cretaceous period, which had a facies similar taining a few trees; but with these exceptions to that now existing on the mountains in the there is no green thing in Venice, and the near-west of North America between the thirtieth est approach to vegetation must be looked for on the Lido, that long, low, narrow tongue of land sheltering Venice from the waves of the Adriatic, which may be seen from the lagoon where all is calm, tossing and raging, as though vainly endeavouring to burst the slender barrier. One of the most interesting sights in Venice is The bugle and bead works are also curious. A and fortieth parallel of latitude. No fossil referable to Sequoia (or Wellingtonia) has hitherto been found in strata older than the Gault, and here, on the first appearance of the genus, we find it associated with pines of the same group that now flourish by its side in the New World. THE MERCHANTS AND BANKERS' ALMANAC FOR 1872 contains a list of 1,850 National and 500 State Banks; 2,200 Private Bankers in the United States, January, 1872; 300 Banks and Bankers in Canada; 120 Banks and Bankers in London; Daily Premium on Gold, 18621871; List of 1,000 Insurance Companies in the United States; 900 Railroads in the United States and Canada - length and cost of each, &c.; Review of the Cotton Market, four years; Fluctuations in Stocks and Bonds, (1868-1871), with engravings, &c. Price $2. Published at the Bankers' Magazine Office, 23 Murray Street, N. Y. NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. 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THE FIRST EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.. hostilities; binations and unreasonable violent hatreds and unaccountable reconIt is perhaps the peculiar boast of Eng- ciliations; profound suspicions and openland and in a secondary degree the hearted credulity; the grossest corruption boast of the United States - that works and the most sublime self-devotion — all of great research, labour, and learning these jostle one another like the manyhave been produced in either country by coloured images of a kaleidoscope. The men belonging to the leisured class, who contrast of the age of Charles II. with the wrote not for gain, but for pure love of the age which preceded it, of the men of his subjects which employed their pens. To a reign with the men of the Protectorate, of list which includes the distinguished names his foreign policy with that of Cromwell, of Stanhope, Grote, Motley, and Prescott, gives to the history of his time and his may be now added that of Mr. W. D. ministers the interest of an historical puz- · Christie, who has devoted the horas subse-zle; and perhaps no one statesman of the cicas of official life and the leisure of retirement to an illustration of the lives of two Carolinian celebrities, John Dryden and Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury. It is true enough that in any society of average Engliomen very few will be found who know nach about Dryden or care anything for Shaftesbury. Yet the times in which these men flourished were amongst the most strange and stirring in the history of England; the parts played by both conspicuous and pronounced; the mark which one made on the history of his day only less than the impression which the other made on its literature, as the work of the statesman must always be less enduring than that of the poet. Both of these men have left a lasting mark on England. The one gave us the Ilabeas Corpus Act; the other in "Absalom and Achitophel" and the "Hind and Panther," bequeathed to English rhyme a finish, point, and terseness, at once a vigour and a smoothness, which made French models thenceforth superfluous, and inspired the future rivalry of Pope. period exemplifies its peculiarities more vividly than the one whom Mr. Christie. has undertaken not only to justify but to praise. Anthony Ashley Cooper was born in 1621, the nineteenth year of the reign of James I. His father was Sir John Cooper, of Rockborne, in Hampshire. His mother was the only daughter of Sir Anthony Ashley, of Wimborne St. Giles, in Dorsetshire. As he said of himself, "My parents on both sides of a noble stock, being of the first rank of gentry in those counties where they lived." Young Cooper was christened Anthony Ashley by the express desire of his maternal grandfather, who had stipulated that the lad should bear the name of Ashley along with that of his father. When he was seven years old he lost his mother. Three years after that he lost his father, who had married a second wife, Lady Morrison, daughter of Sir Baptist Hicks. Lord Campbell speaks of Anthony Ashley as being, while a boy, a baronet with 8000l. a year. He was indeed left rich; but he was rich after considerable losses. He inherited estates held of the Crown by tenure of knightservice, and therefore under the control of the Court of Wards. His grandfather's And the age in which they both lived is amongst the most interesting and perplexing in the annals of our country. To one who looks back on it from the age of Queen Victoria, it seems much as the tortuous brother, Sir Francis Ashley, who, as defiles of the Alps seem in the recollection of the traveller who has effected a safe descent on the rich and sunny plains of Lombardy. Unreasonble com * A Life of Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury, 1621-1683. By W. D. CHRISTIE, MA, formerly Her Majesty's Minister to the Argentine King's Serjeant, had considerable influence with that Court, showed himself less than kind to his young kinsman, for he obtained a decree by means of which some of the estates were sold to himself and others much below their value. Nor was this the only wrong attempted by this un Confederation and to Brazil. 2 Vols. London and just grand-uncle. He endeavoured to New York: Macmillan and Co. 1871. bring other property of his nephew within the jurisdiction of the Court of Wards, divers of the activest of the lower rank with over which it had no legal control. The giving them leave to eat, when in distress, upon design was thwarted by the courage and my expense, it being no small honour among address of the intended victim. Young those sort of men that my name in the butteryCooper went to Noy, the Attorney-Gen-book willingly bore twice the expense of any in eral, who had drawn the deed of his mother's settlement, and succeeded in persuading that powerful lawyer to be his advocate in the Court of Wards. The issue of this application is thus narrated in Shaftesbury's own words, 66 My Lord Cottington was then Master of the Wards, who, sitting with his hat over his eyes, and having heard Sir Francis make a long and elegant speech for the overthrowing of my deed, said openly, Sir Francis, you have spoke like a good uncle.' Mr. Attorney Noy argued for me, and my uncle rising up to reply (I being then present in Court), before he could speak two words, he was taken with a sudden convulsion fit, his mouth drawn to his ear, was carried out of the Court, and never spoke more." the University. This expense, my quality, proficiency in learning, and natural affability, easily not only obtained the good-will of the wiser and the rough young men of that college, famous for the courage and strength of tall raw-boned Cornish and Devonshire gentlemen, which in great number yearly come to that college, and did then maintain in the schools coursing against Christ-Church, the largest and most numerous college in the University." * elder sort, but made me the leader even of all What schoolboys they were in those days the more thoughtful and serious students of modern Oxford may gather from the following extract. It was at that time "a foolish custom of great antiquity, that one of the seniors in the evening called the freshmen (which are such as came since that time twelvemonth) to the fire, and made them hold out their chin, and then with the nail of their right thumb, left long for that purpose, grate off all the skin from the lip to the chin, and then cause them to drink a beer-glass of water and salt. The time approaching when I should be thus used, I considered that it had happened in that year, more and lustier young gentlemen had come to the college than had done in several years before, so that the freshmen was a very strong body. Upon this I consulted my two cousin-germans, the Tookers, my aunt's sons, both freshmen, both stout and very strong, and several others, and at last the whole After all, as Mr. Christie estimates, Ashley lost about 1600l. a year, and still remained rich. He had, as he himself relates, "hawks and hounds" of his own. After spending his boyhood in the families of relatives and trustees, and under the care of three successive tutors, he was sent to Oxford at the age of sixteen, where he entered at Exeter College. It was his boast that he had "learned the world faster than his book," and his own account of his college days justifies the boast. The following extract from his autobiographical fragment testifies equally to the ease of his circumstances and his self-compla-party were cheerfully engaged to stand stoutly to defence of their chius. We all appeared at cency: "I kept both horses and servants in Oxford, the fires in the hall, and my Lord of Pembroke's and was allowed what expense or recreation I desired, which liberty I never much abused; but it gave me the opportunity of obliging by entertainments the better sort, and supporting * "Sir Richard Baker notes Sir F. Ashley's death as, by the will of God,' November 20, 1635. (Chronicle, p. 417, ed. 1684.) Noy, who was made Attorney-General in January 1634, died August 9, 1635. (Howel's Letters, i. 241; Notes and Queries, 1st Ser. i. 211.) There must therefore be a mistake in Baker's date of Sir F. Ashley's death. Sir F. Ashley was a conspicuous defender of the arbitrary system of Charles I., and was committed to custody by the House of Lords in 1628, on account of the violence with which he argued at the bar of that House for the Crown against the Petition of Right." son calling me first, as we knew by custom it would begin with me, I, according to agreement, gave the signal, striking him a box on the ear, and immediately the freshmen fell on, and we easily cleared the buttery and the hall; but bachelors and young masters coming in to assist the seniors, we were compelled to retreat to a ground chamber in the quadrangle. They pressing at the door, some of the stoutest and strongest of our freshmen, giant-like boys, opened the doors, let in as many as they pleased, and shut the door by main strength against the rest; those let in they fell upon, and had beaten very severely, but that my authority with them "Fragment of Autobiography." |