ANECDOTE OF WILLIAM HOLMES, Esq., M.P.

SIR,

In the last number of your Miscellany, in the articled entitled, "Memoirs of a Man of the World," there is much misrepresentation of matters affecting the character of a very old friend of mine. After an interval of nearly fifty-seven years, I dare say I am the only living authority competent to correct the errors, and to give the circumstances they affect to describe their true character and complexion. Billy Holmes, as the writer of the article calls him, was one of my earliest college friends; we were in the same class; and the student who actually proposed the bet referred to was not Holmes, but my chum, who, in the ambition to establish a reputation for a strong head, by a feather-spring impulse, before the bet could have been taken by any one, almost sacrificed his life, and certainly impaired his constitution, and defeated the distinction to which natural talents, of a very high order and highly cultivated, must have led. The event occurred at a supper given by two of our class-fellows,-at which there was no excess committed except by my chum,-Holmes and he sat next each other; Holmes said to him (I am sure more as an observation without meaning, than as a stimulant to provoke him to drink), “ You are not helping yourself," or, "You are not drinking anything." The reply was, "I'll hold you a supper for the present company, that I'll drink more than you to-night;" and, without waiting for an answer to his challenge, he emptied what remained in a bottle of rum (not whiskey!!) into a tumbler, swallowed it at one gulp, threw himself back in his chair, and in a few minutes was fixed in the stiffness of death; and in that attitude he remained, hardly breathing, from twelve o'clock to nine the next morning. Holmes rushed to the college gate in the hope of persuading the gate-porter to give him egress, but he could not open. The keys had been, as usual, sent to the provost, under whose pillow they were always deposited as soon as the clock struck twelve. Holmes made his way by a corridor to the provost's house, and with that promptitude which the circumstances demanded, and that fearlessness which characterized him, insisted on being conducted to the provost's bed-chamber, an awful intrusion, had it not been the chamber of the kind-hearted Murray. He at once gave the keys, and Holmes proceeded to Kildare Place, where Doctor Perceval resided. He knocked repeatedly at the hall door, until a servant reluctantly put his head through an open window, told him Doctor Perceval was in bed, and that his place would be the forfeit if he ventured to disturb him at that hour. "Tell him," said Holmes, "that a gentleman is dying in the college." "I dare not; he hears you himself." "Where does he sleep?" "In that room," pointing with his thumb, thrown back, to the adjoining window. Holmes wanted no other messenger than a missile, which he found at hand in a heap of paving stones, which were generally piled up in the area in front of the houses in the wide part of Kildare Street, where Dr. Perceval's house was situate. The first or second discharge, aimed at the Doctor's window, brought him to the hall door, and, with his accustomed humanity, to the college, where he remained during the remainder of the night, trying all the means that his consummate skill

could suggest to restore animation, but without any perceptible effect. The corpse-like form remained unmoved and immovable. At length, at nine o'clock in the morning, Doctor Perceval said, "I can do no more," and was preparing to withdraw. The late Doctor Whitby Stokes, then a junior fellow and a medical student, who had watched the process with intense anxiety, said, "If you can do no good, I can do no harm." He thrust a poker into the fire, and when he thought it sufficiently heated for his purpose, he applied it to the back of his neck, and seared it from ear to ear. Almost immediately every limb became convulsed, and the eyes, till then fixed as in death, rolled wildly,—I shall never forget that scene! To Doctor Stokes, and to his memory, the memory of a man of the most exalted benevolence, and the kindest heart, it is due to add that he attended the patient in our chambers for five or six weeks, visiting him twice or thrice every day until the cure was as complete as it could be, and in the end refused any fee, saying that he was not a physician, that he had not completed his studies, and that he was but a quack; and when pressed by my chum, who was a fellow commoner, and of very ample means, and quite sensible of the debt he owed, he suggested as a reward that the patient should give him a copy of Ayscough's Shakspeare, which had been reprinted in Dublin, and which I dare say is still in the possession of his son, the very eminent physician, with a Latin testimonial of his skill and attention, and of his own gratitude.

Of Holmes, the hero of my narrative, it may be amusing to add a characteristic anecdote connected with it. All the company except whose life still was in peril, and perhaps appeared to have been sufficiently punished for his excess, was called before the board, but Holmes alone was punished by rustication, mainly, as Holmes believed, through the influence of the vice-provost; and he placed himself in a position to retaliate, choosing for his exile a lodging in the neighbourhood of Dublin, on the side of a road by which Dr. F, the vice-provost, passed and repassed every week-day from and to his country residence, mounted on a remarkable grey horse, and, with his horse, forming a very noticeable combination. Holmes watched him night and morning. The doctor was punctual to a moment, and he never passed without finding Holmes at the gate, who seized the bridle, and pressed him with the most hospitable earnestness to alight and take some cake and wine. Whether they were forthcoming or not, I cannot say. Such was the interference with the doctor's punctuality, that he was obliged to choose another way on his avocations; and I need hardly add, that Holmes had resolved never to return to collegiate discipline before he brought his Christian virtues thus into practical operation.

I have reason to believe that the circumstances which first introduced Holmes to Parliament, and procured him a seat in the House of Commons, would reflect credit on himself and his patron (I believe, General C. J.).

In what I have stated, I can truly say that I was "pars magna,' of most an eye-witness; and I have said nothing which I do not implicitly believe.

I am, sir, your

obedient servant,

A. Z.

The Editor of "Bentley's Miscellany."

SOME NOTIONS OF THE ANCIENTS.

It is a favourite idea at the present day, as it has probably been at all times, that mankind is steadily progressing in enlightenment, and that we are more learned, more scientific, more advanced in arts and manufactures-in a word, more highly civilized than the world has hitherto seen; and we look back through the dim vista of ages, and see imperfectly at the end what we complacently term a race of people vastly inferior to us. Yet the marvellous discoveries of Dr. Layard and Colonel Rawlinson show to what a high degree of perfection all the arts of peace and of war had reached when Isaiah poured out his glowing prophecies, and we learn elsewhere that Egypt was not less advanced in humanization when the father of the Hebrew nation led his herds to drink of the waters of the Nile; at that time, too, the hundred-gated Thebes was in all its glory— a time when, as has been happily expressed, the Mede and the Persian were still warring with the panther and the wolf in the valleys of the Caucasus, when the oracles were dumb at Delphi and Dodona, and the marble slumbered in the quarry of Pentelicus; when not an oar had dipped in the haven of Carthage, and the Tiber was flowing through broad lagoons at the foot of solitary hills.

The more general diffusion of sound information in every department, and the thoroughly practical character of the age, constitute, however, a main difference between ourselves and our predecessors, and a natural consequence has been the gradual eradication of myths and superstitions, which are ever the offspring of ignorance.

It is, however, to more ancient times that we must look for fictions, and if we turn to the Greeks and Romans we shall find a very bountiful crop. We are largely indebted to Pliny for our knowledge of the views entertained by the ancients on a great variety of subjects, more especially those relating to his favourite study-the World and all things connected there with and it is interesting to see how here and there a gleam of truthful observation lights up, like the sparkle of a gem among a heap of sand.

Ethiopia seems to have been a favourite field for the imagination to develope all sorts of strange and wonderful objects. "No wonder," says Pliny, "that about the coasts thereof there be found both men and beasts of strange and monstrous shapes, considering the agilitie of the sun's fierie heat, so strong and powerful in those countries, which is able to frame bodies artificially of sundry proportions, and to imprint and grave in them divers forms. Certes, reported it is, that far within the country eastward there are a kinde of people without having any nose at all upon their face, having their visage all plain and flat. Others, again, without any upper lip, and some tonguelesse. Moreover, there is a kind of them that want a mouth framed apart from their nostrils; and at one and the . same hole, and no more, taketh in breath, receiveth drink by drawing it in with an oaten straw; yea, and after the same manner feed themselves with the grains of oats."

Now it is very possible that these ideas had their origin in one and the same thing, namely, the flattened nose and widely dilated nostrils of some of the Negro tribes. Seen at a distance, a person of fervid imagina

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tion, and looking out for marvels, may have really thought there was no nose, and others might have confounded the nostrils with the mouth, and so have spread the illusion last mentioned. Less easy, however, is it to account for some other of their fanciful creations. For instance, that wonderful people "that inhabit towards the Pole Articke, and not far from that climate that is under the very rising of the north-east wind, and about that famous cave, or whole, out of which that wind is said to issue, which place they call Gesclithron (that is, the Cloister or Key of the Earth) the Arimaspians, by report, do dwell, who are known by this marke of having one eie only in the midst of their forehead; and these maintain a war, ordinarily about the mettall mines of gold, especially with griffons, a kind of wild beasts that flye, and use to fetch gold out of the veins of those mines." If report speaks truly, there are Arimaspians and griffons at the present day to be found in California and in Australia; for whilst they have only an eye to gold, the atrocities and debaucheries committed by the godless crew who haunt some of these gold mines, could not have been exceeded even in the fables of old.

There were few organs or members of the body that were not either multiplied or diminished by the ancients; as for example, the inhabitants of "a certaine mountain named Milus," who not only had the extremely liberal allowance of eight toes to each foot, but whose feet were turned so that the heels were in front; rather awkward perhaps, unless they ran backwards. But not only did they multiply organs, but, in certain cases, favoured nations were gifted with power of life and death, killing, like Medusa, with a look.

Such like there be among the Triballians and Illyrians, who with their very eiesight can witch, yea, and kil those whom they look wistly upon any long time, especially if they be angered, and their eies bewray their anger. This also is in them more notable and to be observed, that in either eie they have two sights or apples. Philarchus witnesseth that in Pontus also the whole race of the Thibians and many others besides, have the same quality, and doe the like: and known they are," saith he, "by these markes. In one of their eies they have two sights; in the other the print or resemblance of a horse." He reports besides of these men, that "they will never sinke or drowne in the water, be they charged never so much with weighty and heavy apparel." Now this is principally sand, but now for a gem. The same writer (Isogonus) affirmeth, moreover, that "in Albanie there be a sort of people borne with eies like owls, whereof the sight is fire red; who from their childhood are grey-headed, and can see better by night than day." Perfectly true, oh Pliny in every point; and these Albinos (as they are called) are to be found among all nations, as also in the brute creation. It is an unnatural condition, arising from the absence of colouring matter throughout the body, and the want of the dark pigment which in ordinary eyes absorbs the excess of light and prevents reflections within the globe, compels them to avoid all glare, and they are never so comfortable as when, owl-like, flitting about in the gloom of the evening. There is a family at present earning their subsistence by exhibiting their snow-white locks and pink eyes in the streets of London, and there are few fairs in which a lady or gentleman of this description is not to be found cheek by jowl with the pig-faced lady, who by the way is generally a shaved bear in a fashionable bonnet and polka mantle.

The satisfaction with which Pliny and other writers describe the most

improbable marvels and the coquetry they show in admitting the truth of other things which are really facts, reminds us of a certain elderly lady who, dearly loving a dish of chat, never lost an opportunity of partaking of this luxury. Sitting on a bench on the esplanade at Weymouth, warming her feet in the sun, she addressed a rough looking old tar who was lounging near, and after asking his age, whether he had fought under Nelson, if he was married, the number of his children, and whether they had been vaccinated, she proceeded to generalities.

"You must have seen some wonderful things in your travels, Mister Sailor? "

"Yes, marm. I've seed a few."

"I suppose you are familiar with the wonders of the deep?"

The old boy looked at her, as if taking the measure of her faith, turned his quid, and replied

"I be-lieve you, marm. Why, I've knowed it blow so hard that it blew the very teeth out of a handsaw, and I've seed fishes as bigaye, as big as from here to that 'ere flagstaff (rather more than a quarter of a mile)."

"Dear me ! Have you indeed! I suppose those are the Leviathans that Solomon-no, David, mentions. And, pray, what do those monsters feed upon?"

Why, little fishes, to be sure, marm.”

"But do they eat them raw?"

The sailor gave a slight cough, hitched up his waistband, and replied, "Raw, marm! No; every tenth big fish carries a kettle on his tail to bile 'em in."

"La! Do they indeed? And now tell me what else you've seen." "Why, I've seed oysters a-growin' on trees "-(alluding to the mangrove trees in India, which dip their branches deep into the water and are covered with shell-fish in consequence; presenting a singular appearance when left bare by the ebbing of the tide).

Up got the old lady, gave a flourish with her parasol and a toss of her head, as she with an injured air replied

"Well, Mister Sailor! I suppose you take me for a fool; but it is not very civil of you, I think, to attempt to impose on me in that manner. I wish you good morning, sir;" and away she sailed with virtuous indignation.

At the present day the power of serpent-charming in India and Arabia is supposed to be hereditary in certain families; all members of whom have a sovereign power over the snake-world; so the ancients attributed marvellous properties of the same description to certain nations. Crates, of Pergamus, saith that "in Hellespont about Parium, there was a kind of men that if one were stung with a serpent, with touching only, will ease the paine and if they doe but lay their hands upon the wound, are wont to draw forth all the venome out of the bodie; and Varro testifieth, that even at this day there be some there who warish and cure the stinging of serpents with their spittle. The Marsians in Italy at this present continue with the like naturall vertue against serpents, whom being reputed for to have descended from Lady Circe's son, the people in this regard do highly esteem, and are verilie persuaded that they have in them the same facultie by kind."

To serpents themselves was attributed a most convenient power of discrimination between their countrymen and foreigners; for "in Syria