METEOROLOGICAL DIARY, BY W. CARY, STRAND. ARNULL and ALLENDER, Stock and Share Brokers, 3, Copthall Chambers, Angel Court, Throgmorton Street, London, J. . NICHOLS AND SON, PRINTERS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET, GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. AUGUST, 1847. BY SYLVANUS URBAN, GENT. CONTENTS. PAGE MINOR CORRESPONDENCE.-Manor of Cantelows, Kentish Town-MSS. at 115 ....... CHARACTERS FROM THE NEW ATALANTIS.-Dr. John Freind-The Duke of 135 ... ...... Cæsar's Eburonean Campaign-Cologne, Tongres, and the Chaussée Brunhault 137 Visit to Theobalds Palace in 1592 148 Statue of Her Majesty by Gibson-New Crown Piece by Wyon ..... 151 155 Gosse's Birds of Jamaica, 161; Speech of the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, 164; 172 ....... ...... .... .......... LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE.-Installation of Prince OBITUARY: with Memoirs of the Archduke Charles of Austria; Adm. Sir 182 183 185 187 194 198 Registrar-General's Returns of Mortality in the Metropolis-Markets, 223; Embellished with an EYE-SKETCH of the GROUND at TONGRES; POSITIONS occupied by CESAR'S ARMY previous to the REVOLT of the EBURONES; and CEILING of a ROOM in THEOBALDS PALACE, MINOR CORRESPONDENCE. GWILIM asks for the situation of the manor house of Cantelows, or Kentish Town. Also for the probable origin of the name of Parliament Hill, which is situate between Hampstead and Highgate. In the Ordnance map it is described as a tumulus. [It appears by Lysons (Environs, p. 614), that the demesne lands of the prebendal manor of CANTELOWS consist of about 210 acres, according to the survey taken by Parliament in 1649. About 1670 the lease came into the possession of John Jeffreys, esq. uncle of Sir Jeffrey Jeffreys, of Roehampton, alderman of London. By the marriage of the first Earl Camden with Elizabeth, one of the daughters and coheirs of Nicholas Jeffreys, esq. grandson of Sir John, it became vested in him in right of his wife, and is now the property of the present Marquis Camden.-EDIT.] In the letters from Professor Carlyle to the Bishop of Durham in 1801, printed in Walpole's "Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey," 4to. 1817, it is asserted that complete catalogues were made by himself and his fellow traveller, Dr. Hunt, of the whole of the Greek manuscripts existing in the monasteries at Mount Athos. Any information relative to these catalogues, and where they exist at present, would be very acceptable to F. M. RUSTICUS is residing in the country, and has several fish ponds very near to his house, and he is so much infested by those disgusting and noxious animals, water rats, that he shall feel greatly indebted to any of our correspondents who will, in reply to this, suggest to him the best mode of destroying them; the banks of his ponds are so perforated by those noisome creatures that they are becoming hollow and unsafe to tread upon. If recourse is had to poison, your dogs are poisoned, and are in equal danger from steel traps. Ferrets are of no avail. It is true that you may shoot them, but you must first see them, which seldom happens, as they are remarkably quicksighted. RUSTICUS, within the last month, saw in a newspaper (he thinks the Times) an account of a simple process by which some boys had destroyed a very large number of them; but he has forgotten both the process and the name of the paper, and should be glad to be reminded of either. The Rev. THOMAS DYER, of Abbess Roding, states that Mr. W. MORGAN, of Bradford, Yorkshire (in p. 2), has given wrong information respecting the family of Dyer the poet. "He had three brothers, Robert, of Aberglasney, co. Carmarthen, who died in 1752, and the Rev. Thomas Dyer, M.A. (my grandfather) who was student of Christ Church, Oxford, and some time perpetual curate of Paddington. He died in June 1780, at Marylebone, where he is buried. He left a son, Rev. W. C. Dyer, M.A. (my father), whom many of your readers must remember as a correspondent in your Magazine. He died in March 1828. The clergyman of that name who Mr. M. thinks was the brother of the poet was no relation." W. is anxious to learn whether the original MS. of Edmund Ludlow's Memoirs is in existence, and would be glad of any hint which might help him to ascertain where it may be. A. C. would be obliged by any information relative to the Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury, or to the political history of his times. ERRATA. In our June number, p. 678, we announced the death of Lieut.Colonel Pocklington, aged 72; but confused his description with that of one of his sons. The late Roger Pocklington, esq. of Carlton House, Notts, late Lieut.Colonel of the Nottinghamshire Militia, was the only son of Roger Pocklington, of Winthorpe Hall, co. Notts, esq. by Mary, eldest daughter and coheir of William Roe, esq. of Sudbrooke Hall, co. Linc. He married, in 1802, Jane, daughter of Sir James Campbell, of Inverneil, co. Argyll, Knight, and had issue three sons and two daughters, viz. the Rev. Roger Pocklington, M.A. Vicar of Walesby, Notts, who married, in 1831, Mary, second daughter of George Hutton, esq. of Carlton upon Trent, and has a numerous family: Joseph Pocklington-Senhouse, of Netherhall and Barrow house, co. Cumberland, esq. who assumed the latter name in 1842 in consequence of his marriage with Elizabeth, eldest daughter and coheir of the late Humphrey Senhouse, esq. and has issue; Evelyn-HenryFrederick, Captain in the 52nd regt.; Mary-Elizabeth-Agnes; and Jane-Augusta, who was married in 1832 to James-Archibald Campbell, esq. of Inverawe, co. Argyll, and died in 1842, July 1847, p. 24, for Jus read Tus. THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. Three Years' Wanderings in Northern China, &c. By R. Fortune. Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China. By T. T. Meadows. IT is said that a passage of the historian Ctesias,* as preserved by Ælian, may be considered as presenting the earliest traces to be found of any connection between China and the western world. "The Indians," says he, "who live near the Bactrians, make expeditions into the Gold Desert in armed companies of a thousand or two thousand men; but, according to report, they do not return for three or four years." Now, the Gold Desert is presumed to be the great desert of Cobi, and the Indians mentioned, to be the northernmost inhabitants of the country, or those who bordered on the Paropamisus. Though, however, in this passage gold is alone mentioned as the object of their early and distant commerce, yet a learned and philosophical modern writer observes, "It were superfluous to prove that silk might have been used as a medium of exchange for gold, and that the most valuable production of China would surely not have been suffered to remain an useless commodity in the hands of the merchant. The individuals, he goes on to say, then in question were the North Indians, that is, inhabitants of Cabul and Badakstan, who travelled in numerous caravans for the productions of China, which they either exported themselves, or transmitted for that purpose to their neighbours the Bactrians, in whose country the first principal mart of the carrying trade for Media, as well as India Proper, was probably situated." The author of the Periplus t also says, Πολίς μεσόγειος, μεγίστη λεγομένη Θῖνα, ἀφ' ἧς τὸ τε ἔριον, και τὸ ὀθόνιον τὸ Σηρικὸν ἐἰς τὴν βαρύγαζαν δια Βακτρῶν πεζή φέρεται; και εἰς τὴν Λιμυρικὴν πάλιν δια Tõu Páуyou TоTaμou. Here, northward of a country, which is the modern Eva, Pegu, and Malacca, lay a country, in the interior of which we found the large city of Thina, from whence raw and spun silk, and silk stuffs, were conveyed by land, through the country of the Bactrians, to Barygaza, and also by the Ganges to Limyrica." From these last words it is evident that silk was imported into India by two different routes, one towards the west, altogether by land, through Bactria, and the other toward the east, by the Ganges. That the Thina of the Periplus must be looked for in the north, that is, in Sinca or China, is quite evident. Whether it be Pekin,-" Paquin of Sinæan Kings" §-as some think, or the present Se-Chuen, or whether identified with the "Senim Metropolis" of *See Elian, Hist. Anim. iv. c. 27. + See Heerens' History of Asiatic Nations. See Periplus, p. 35, and Vincent, ii. p. 523. § Supposing that the modern Pekin is the place alluded to as the ancient metropolis of Sinca, the latitude given by Ptolemy is said to be nearly correct.-REV. Ptolemy, or some other large town in western China, it was in either case the great emporium of silk merchandize in these parts. Silk, however, was not the only article of commerce which India, in ages long past away, received from China. The Periplus mentions another, under the name of skins from Sinca (dépμara Enpikà), and also betel (betre) Terρós ; while the extreme antiquity both of Chinese trade and manufactures is made evident by a small vase of porcelain of the manufacture of the country having been not long since discovered among the tombs of Thebes. Now, when we reflect that these marks of high civilization were stamped in authentic characters on a country in those distant ages, when Ægypt with Assyria strove In wealth and luxury, and that, no doubt, it has steadily proceeded in the same course through all intermediate ages, it becomes a matter of astonishment that all this has passed under its primeval obscurity; that no one has been able to lift up the veil that covered this mysterious people; and that till a comparatively few years since we were scarcely better acquainted with the most ancient people of the globe, who, having survived all the changes which have destroyed all other of the earliest races of mankind, which have long since swept away Babylon, and Nineveh, and Thebes, still appear immovably fixed and rooted in their old hereditary domain, unchangeable in character, immovable in government, impenetrable in society, and unalterable by all the causes which are for ever acting on the other races of mankind. Whether this prolonged age, this continued prosperity, and this unusual duration of what among all other people it is so difficult even for a few centuries to preserve, has arisen from any peculiar excellence of their institutions, or from an hereditary character in the constitution of the people, or from their remoteness from all the influence of European action, or from whatever other principles, internal or external,-it would seem rash to determine. It is only, says a late intelligent inquirer, during the last twelve years, since the cessation of the East India Company's monopoly, that any number of the English people have had an interest or inclination to examine into the state of the nation; while, during these twelve years, there have been only two or three persons in China whose knowledge of the written or spoken language enabled them to get anything like accurate information on many interesting points;† while the Chinese, on their part, feel no interest whatever in anything relating to transactions with the West. They neither comprehend, nor wish to comprehend, the designs, and purposes, and objects of foreigners, and look on them much as the ministers of the Grecian empire did on their forced dealings with the northern barbarians. Whether the strong arm of war will forcibly burst open those iron barriers which have been so long closed against milder powers and influences it is also difficult to say. The moral tempest, like the natural, is generally the herald as well as the companion of change; and "sorrow and solitude" are not always, though so described by the poet, the only followers in the train of war. In the meantime some sounder knowledge seems to be acquiring, some little bye-paths and desul * See Vincent; Periplus, ii. p. 735; elsewhere in the Periplus the term to denote betel is paλá Balpov, of which three kinds are noticed.- REV. + See Meadows's Desultory Notes on China, p. 2. |