Manners & Customs of all Nations.

CUSTOMS RELATING TO THE BEARD.

(For the Mirror.)

It was a custom among the Romans to consecrate the first growth of their beard to some god; thus Nero at the Gynick games, which he exhibited in the Septa, cut off the first growth of his beard, which he placed in a golden box, adorned with pearls, and then consecrated it in the Capitol to Jupiter.

The Roman servants or slaves were not allowed to poll their hair, or shave their beards. The Jews thought it ignominious to lose their beards, 2 Sam. c. x. v. 4. Among the Catti, a nation of Germany, a young man was not allowed to shave or cut his hair till he had slain an enemy. (Tacitus.) The Lombards or Longobards, derived their Fame from the great length of their beards. When Otho the Great used to speak anything serious, he swore by his beard, which covered his breast. The Persians are fond of long beards. We read in Olearius' Travels of a king of Persia who had commanded his steward's head to be cut off, and on its being brought to him, he remarked, "what a pity it was, that a man possessing such fine mustachios, should have been executed," but added he, "Ah! it was your own fault." The Normans considered the beard as an indication of distress and misery. The Ancient Britons used always to wear the hair on the upper lip, and so strongly were they attached to this custom, that when William the Conqueror ordered them to shave their upper lip, it was so repugnant to their feelings, that many of them chose rather to abandon their country than resign their mustachios. In the 15th century, the beard was worn long. In the 16th, it was suffered to grow to an amazing length, (see the portraits of Bishop Gardiner, and Cardinal Pole, during Queen Mary's reign,) and very often made use of as a tooth-pick case. Brantome tells us that Admiral Coligny wore his tooth-pick in his beard.

C.B.Z.

SINGULAR CUSTOM AT ROUEN.

(For the Mirror.)

The chapter of Rouen, (which consists of the archbishop, a dean, fifty canons, and ten prebendaries,) have, ever since the year 1156, enjoyed the annual privilege of pardoning, on Ascension-day, some individual confined within the jurisdiction of the city for murder.

On the morning of Ascension-day, the chapter, having heard many examinations and confessions read, proceed to the election of the criminal who is to be pardoned; and, the choice being made, his name is transmitted in writing to the parliament, which assemble on that day at the palace. The parliament then walk in procession to the great chamber, where the prisoner is brought before them in irons, and placed on a stool; he is informed that the choice has fallen upon him, and that he is entitled to the privilege of St. Romain. After this form, he is delivered into the hands of the chaplain, who, accompanied by fifty armed men, conveys him to a chamber, where the chains are taken from his legs and bound about his arms; and in this condition he is conducted to a place named the Old Tower, where he awaits the coming of the procession. After some little time has elapsed, the procession sets out from the cathedral; two of the canons bear the shrine in which the relics of St. Romain are presumed to be preserved. When they have arrived at the Old Tower, the shrine is placed in the chapel, opposite to the criminal, who appears kneeling, with the chains on his arms. Then one of the canons, having made him repeat the confession, says the prayers usual at the time of giving absolution; after which service, the prisoner kneeling still, lifts up the shrine three times, amid the acclamations of the people assembled to behold the ceremony. The procession then returns to the cathedral, followed by the criminal, wearing a chaplet of flowers on his head, and carrying the shrine of the saint. After mass has been performed, he has a very serious exhortation addressed to him by a monk; and, lastly, he is conducted to an apartment near the cathedral, and is supplied with refreshments and a bed for that night. In the morning he is dismissed.

G.W.N.

THE SKETCH-BOOK

ABBOTSFORD,

And Sir Walter Scott's Study.

[The following extracts are from the private letter of a distinguished American gentleman, and form part of one of the most striking articles in "The Anniversary for 1829," edited by Allan Cunningham. We intended the whole article for our Supplementary "Spirit of the Annuals;" but as our engraving will necessarily occupy a few days longer, during which time this description of Abbotsford will be printed in fifty different forms, we are induced to take it by the forelock, and appropriate it for our present number. It is, perhaps, one of the most, if not the most, graphic paper in the whole list of "Annuals," notwithstanding there are scores of brilliant gems left for our Supplement. Certain arts must have their own pace; but, in our arduous catering for novelties for the MIRROR, we often have occasion to wish that block-machinery could be applied to engraving on wood.]

"Stepping westward," as Wordsworth says, from the hall, you find yourself in a narrow, low, arched room, which runs quite across the house, having a blazoned window again at either extremity, and filled all over with smaller pieces of armour and weapons, such as swords, firelocks, spears, arrows, darts, daggers, &c. &c. &c. Here are the pieces, esteemed most precious by reason of their histories respectively. I saw, among the rest, Rob Roy's gun, with his initials, R.M.C. i.e. Robert Macgregor Campbell, round the touch-hole; the blunderbuss of Hofer, a present to Sir Walter from his friend Sir Humphrey Davy; a most magnificent sword, as magnificently mounted, the gift of Charles the First to the great Montrose, and having the arms of Prince Henry worked on the hilt; the hunting bottle of bonnie King Jamie; Bonaparte's pistols (found in his carriage at Waterloo, I believe), cum multis aliis. I should have mentioned that stag-horns and bulls' horns (the petrified relics of the old mountain monster, I mean), and so forth, are suspended in great abundance above all the doorways of these armories; and that, in one corner, a dark one as it ought to be, there is a complete assortment of the old Scottish instruments of torture, not forgetting the very thumbikins under which Cardinal Carstairs did not flinch, and the more terrific iron crown of Wisheart the Martyr, being a sort of barred headpiece, screwed on the victim at the stake, to prevent him from crying aloud in his agony.

Beyond the smaller, or rather I should say, the narrower armoury, lies the dining parlour proper, however; and though there is nothing Udolphoish here, yet I can well believe that when lighted up and the curtains drawn at night, the place may give no bad notion of the private snuggery of some lofty lord abbot of the time of the Canterbury Tales. The room is a very handsome one, with a low and very richly carved roof of dark oak again; a huge projecting bow window, and the dais elevated more majorum; the ornaments of the roof, niches for lamps, &c. &c. in short, all the minor details, are, I believe, fac similes after Melrose. The walls are hung in crimson, but almost entirely covered with pictures, of which the most remarkable are—the parliamentary general, Lord Essex, a full length on horseback; the Duke of Monmouth, by Lely; a capital Hogarth, by himself; Prior and Gay, both by Jervas; and the head of Mary Queen of Scots, in a charger, painted by Amias Canrod, the day after the decapitation at Fotheringay, and sent some years ago as a present to Sir Walter from a Prussian nobleman, in whose family it had been for more than two centuries. It is a most deathlike performance, and the countenance answers well enough to the coins of the unfortunate beauty, though not at all to any of the portraits I have happened to see. I believe there is no doubt as to the authenticity of this most curious picture. Among various family pictures, I noticed particularly Sir Walter's great grandfather, the old cavalier mentioned in one of the epistles in Marmion, who let his beard grow after the execution of Charles I., and who here appears, accordingly, with a most venerable appendage of silver whiteness, reaching even unto his girdle.

A narrower passage leads to a charming breakfast room, which looks to the Tweed on one side, and towards Yarrow and Ettricke, famed in song, on the other: a cheerful room, fitted up with novels, romances, and poetry, I could perceive, at one end; and the other walls covered thick and thicker with a most valuable and beautiful collection of watercolour drawings, chiefly by Turner and Thomson of Duddingstone, the designs, in short, for the magnificent work entitled "Provincial Antiquities of Scotland." There is one very grand oil painting over the chimney-piece, Fastcastle, by Thomson, alias the Wolf's Crag of the Bride of Lammermoor, one of the most majestic and melancholy sea-pieces I ever saw; and some large black and white drawings of the Vision of Don Roderick, by Sir James Steuart of Allanbank (whose illustrations of Marmion and Mazeppa you have seen or heard of), are at one end of the parlour. The room is crammed with queer cabinets and boxes, and in a niche there is a bust of old Henry Mackenzie, by Joseph of Edinburgh. Returning towards the armoury, you have, on one side of a most religious looking corridor, a small greenhouse, with a fountain playing before it—the very fountain that in days of yore graced the cross of Edinburgh, and used to flow with claret at the coronation of the Stuarts—a pretty design, and a standing monument of the barbarity of modern innovation. From the small armoury you pass, as I said before, into the drawing-room, a large, lofty, and splendid salon, with antique ebony furniture and crimson silk hangings, cabinets, china, and mirrors quantum suff, and some portraits; among the rest glorious John Dryden, by Sir Peter Lely, with his gray hairs floating about in a most picturesque style, eyes full of wildness, presenting the old Bard, I take it, in one of those "tremulous moods," in which we have it on record he appeared when interrupted in the midst of his Alexander's Feast. From this you pass into the largest of all the apartments, the library, which, I must say, is really a noble room. It is an oblong of some fifty feet by thirty, with a projection in the centre, opposite the fireplace, terminating in a grand bow window, fitted up with books also, and, in fact, constituting a sort of chapel to the church. The roof is of carved oak again—a very rich pattern—I believe chiefly a la Roslin, and the bookcases, which are also of richly carved oak, reach high up the walls all round. The collection amounts, in this room, to some fifteen or twenty thousand volumes, arranged according to their subjects: British history and antiquities, filling the whole of the chief wall; English poetry and drama, classics and miscellanies, one end: foreign literature, chiefly French and German, the other. The cases on the side opposite the fire are wired and locked, as containing articles very precious and very portable. One consists entirely of books and MSS. relating to the insurrections of 1715 and 1745; and another (within the recess of the bow window), of treatises de re magica, both of these being (I am told, and can well believe), in their several ways, collections of the rarest curiosity. My cicerone pointed out, in one corner, a magnificent set of Mountfaucon, ten volumes folio, bound in the richest manner in scarlet, and stamped with the royal arms, the gift of his present majesty. There are few living authors of whose works presentation copies are not to be found here. My friend showed me inscriptions of that sort in, I believe, every European dialect extant. The books are all in prime condition, and bindings that would satisfy Mr. Dibdin. The only picture is Sir Walter's eldest son, in hussar uniform, and holding his horse, by Allan of Edinburgh, a noble portrait, over the fireplace; and the only bust is that of Shakspeare, from the Avon monument, in a small niche in the centre of the east side. On a rich stand of porphyry, in one corner, reposes a tall silver urn, filled with bones from the Piraeus, and bearing the inscription, "Given by George Gordon, Lord Byron, to Sir Walter Scott, Bart." It contained the letter which accompanied the gift till lately: it has disappeared; no one guesses who took it, but whoever he was, as my guide observed, he must have been a thief for thieving's sake truly, as he durst no more exhibit his autograph than tip himself a bare bodkin. Sad, infamous tourist, indeed! Although I saw abundance of comfortable-looking desks and arm chairs, yet this room seemed rather too large and fine for work, and I found accordingly, after passing a double pair of doors, that there was a sanctum within and beyond this library. And here you may believe, was not to me the least interesting, though by no means the most splendid, part of the suite.

The lion's own den proper, then, is a room of about five-and-twenty feet square by twenty feet high, containing of what is properly called furniture nothing but a small writing-table in the centre, a plain arm-chair covered with black leather—a very comfortable one though, for I tried it—and a single chair besides, plain symptoms that this is no place for company. On either side of the fireplace there are shelves filled with duodecimos and books of reference, chiefly, of course, folios; but except these there are no books save the contents of a light gallery which runs round three sides of the room, and is reached by a hanging stair of carved oak in one corner. You have been both at the Elisée Bourbon and Malmaison, and remember the library at one or other of those places, I forget which; this gallery is much in the same style. There are only two portraits, an original of the beautiful and melancholy head of Claverhouse, and a small full length of Rob Roy. Various little antique cabinets stand round about, each having a bust on it: Stothard's Canterbury Pilgrims are on the mantelpiece; and in one corner I saw a collection of really useful weapons, those of the forest-craft, to wit—axes and bills and so forth of every calibre. There is only one window pierced in a very thick wall, so that the place is rather sombre; the light tracery work of the gallery overhead harmonizes with the books well. It is a very comfortable-looking room, and very unlike any other I ever was in. I should not forget some Highland claymores, clustered round a target over the Canterbury people, nor a writing-box of carved wood, lined with crimson velvet, and furnished with silver plate of right venerable aspect, which looked as if it might have been the implement of old Chaucer himself, but which from the arms on the lid must have belonged to some Indian prince of the days of Leo the Magnificent at the furthest.

The view to the Tweed from all the principal apartments is beautiful. You look out from among bowers, over a lawn of sweet turf, upon the clearest of all streams, fringed with the wildest of birch woods, and backed with the green hills of Ettricke Forest. The rest you must imagine. Altogether, the place destined to receive so many pilgrimages contains within itself beauties not unworthy of its associations. Few poets ever inhabited such a place; none, ere now, ever created one. It is the realization of dreams: some Frenchman called it, I hear, "a romance in stone and lime."