malversations committed in the financial departments of the government during the late unhappy period. A Master of Requests, named Falhonet, together with the Abbé Clement, and two clerks in their employ, had been concerned in divers acts of peculation to the amount of upward of a million of livres. The first two were sentenced to be beheaded, and the latter to be hanged; but their punishment was afterward commuted to imprisonment for life in the Bastile. Numerous other acts of dishonesty were discovered, and punished by fine and imprisonment. D'Argenson shared with Law and the regent the unpopularity which had alighted upon all those concerned in the Mississippi madness. He was dismissed from his post of Chancelor to make room for D'Aguesseau; but he retained the title of Keeper of the Seals, and was allowed to attend the councils whenever he pleased. He thought it better, however, to withdraw from Paris, and live for a time a life of seclusion at his country-seat. But he was not formed for retirement; and becoming moody and discontented, he aggravated a disease under which he had long labored, and died in less than a twelvemonth. The populace of Paris so detested him, that they carried their hatred even to his grave. As his funeral procession passed to the church of St. Nicholas du Chardonneret, the buryingplace of his family, it was beset by a riotous mob, and his two sons, who were following as chief mourners, were obliged to drive as fast as they were able down a by-street to escape personal violence. As regards Law, he for some time entertained a hope that he should be recalled to France to aid in establishing its credit D'ARGENSON. upon a firmer basis. The death of the regent in 1723, who expired suddenly as he was sitting by the fireside conversing with his mistress, the Duchess de Phalaris, deprived him of that hope, and he was reduced to lead his former life of gambling. He was more than once obliged to pawn his diamond, the sole remnant of his vast wealth, but successful play generally enabled him to redeem it. Being persecuted by his creditors at Rome, he proceeded to Copenhagen, where he received permission from the English ministry to reside in his native country, his pardon for the murder of Mr. Wilson having been sent over to him in 1719. He was brought over in the admiral's ship-a circumstance which gave occasion for a short debate in the House of Lords. Earl Coningsby complained that a man who had renounced both his country and his religion should have been treated with such honor; and expressed his belief that his presence in England, at a time when the people were so bewildered by the nefarious practices of the South-Sea directors, would be attended with no little danger. He gave notice of a motion on the subject; but it was allowed to drop, no other member of the House having the slightest participation in his lordship's fears. Law remained for about four years in England, and then proceeded to Venice, where he died in 1729, in very embarrassed circumstances. The following epitaph was written at the time : "Ci git cet Ecossais célèbre, A mis la France à l'hôpital." His brother, William Law, who had been concerned with him in the administration both of the bank and the Louisiana Company, was imprisoned in the Bastile for alleged malversation; but no guilt was ever proved against him. He was liberated after fifteen months, and became the founder of a family which is still known in France under the title of Marqueses of Lauriston. Hereafter we shall give an account of the madness which infected the people of England at the same time, and under very similar circumstances, but which, thanks to the energies and good sense of a constitutional government, was attended with results far less disastrous than those which were seen in France. THE GROWTH AND INTRODUCTION OF GUTTA PERCHA. VER the primeval for OVER ests of Johore, on the Malayan peninsula; over the woods of Singapore, of Sarawak, of the wilds around Coti, on the southeast coast of Borneo, the sun rose and set through long ages upon large and magnificent trees of the sapotaceous order - trees which bore in their branches and trunks a product of almost unparalleled utility and consequent value, but which, however, were scarcely known for anything beyond an edible oil, (called by the inhabitants of Sarawak, Niaro,) which the natives of these various districts expressed from their fruit, and which served as a nourishing accompaniment to their food. We say scarcely known, because around Singapore -where the tree was named Percha - it was known to possess another and more valuable secretion in the form of an exudation termed gutta percha, literally gum of the percha, or, even more correctly, gum of Sumatra, the Malay name of that island being Pulo Percha, although, curiously enough, it cannot be ascertained that the tree has ever been known there. The exudation of which we have spoken was was assistant surgeon in the island, his used by a few of the native woodmen of attention was attracted by the handle of a Singapore for the formation of handles to parang, or woodchopper, with the nature their tools, &c. And only so late as the of which he was unacquainted. He at year 1842, just ten years ago, these wood- once instituted inquiries, and learned that men were apparently the only persons in it might be molded to any form by simply the world to whom the value of this immersing it in boiling water, after which substance was known. Now, however, it would, on cooling, retain the given shape. through the ageney of Dr. Montgomerie, To have the attention aroused, and to every quarter of the globe has it in daily labor until its object is thoroughly invesand familiar use for purposes of the most tigated, are simultaneous impulses in the heterogeneous description. earnest mind. Dr. Montgomerie instantly In that year, when Dr. Montgomerie got possession of the parang handle in THE GUTTA PERCHA PLANT. question, and announced his desire to obtain as many more as possible. He also procured an account of the tree yielding this sap, and of the modes by which the latter was collected; but, unhappily, he was prevented by illness from personally visiting its native forests. In the following year he sent specimens of the gutta percha to the Medical Board of Calcutta, and also to England; where they were submitted to the Chemical Committee of the Society of Arts, with a suggestion by their discoverer that the substance might form a valuable substitute for Indian rubber in its application to surgical purposes. These early specimens were exhibited in four different states, namely, the still liquid juice inclosed in a bottle; some thin pieces "resembling leather;" a spongy mass, exemplifying the manner in which it hardens upon mere exposure to the surrounding atmosphere; and lastly, the before-mentioned leathery portions formed into a lump by immersion in boiling water-in fact, the gutta percha in the form in which we now so constantly see it. In the spring of the year 1844, several practical applications of the new substance were placed before the society; among which we may instance a pair of shoes mended with it, varnishes respectively prepared by dissolving it in turpentine and in naphtha, casts of medals, lathe-bands &c., &c. The gold medal of the Society of Arts was accordingly presented to its introducer to the civilized nations of the world; a testimonial which was indeed but a feeble shadowing forth of the gratitude which was soon to become his rightful due, for the valuable gift which he had placed within the reach of every class. Gutta percha was received with less of suspicion and prejudice than often falls to the share of a new and unknown substance, even in the present day; orders for continually increasing quantities flowed steadily toward its native shores, and the article became one of a regular and stated commercial interest. Yet even now, little is known of the natural history, or, indeed, of any thing beyond the manifold uses of the substance, so that we can offer but a meager account of it to our readers. Its principal known properties are, that it is combustible, and burns brightly like Indian rubber, yet will not inflame without an extremely great heat. It is unaffected VOL. II, No. 6.—MM by cold or any degree of moisture, while atmospheric heat merely makes it less rigid, without in any way discomposing its form or lessening its value. It is capable of solution in essential oils, but is little affected by unctuous oils. It mixes well with most coloring matters, and when heated is tenaciously adhesive. It is also slightly elastic, and possesses the very singular property of contracting with heat —a property which is quite at variance with every known law of physics. The tree is, as we have before mentioned, of the natural order Sapotacea, an order remarkable for the secretion of an abundant milky juice, which, unlike similar secretions in other tribes, is free from all acid or poisonous properties. The order includes also the celebrated Palo de Vaco, or cow-tree of South America, which yields an agreeable and nourishing substitute for animal milk; and the Indian Mava, or Madhuca, (Bassia bulyracea,) one of the many species of butter-tree, known to yield as much as three quintals of oil from a single specimen. The order Sapotaceæ, however, notwithstanding a very prevalent opinion to the contrary, does not include the caoutchouc, or Indian rubber, which is the secretion of a few plants that form rare exceptions in the otherwise acrid and even dangerous order of Euphorbiacea. But to return to the gutta percha, the Isonandria gutta of Professor Edward Forbes; it is described as a magnificent tree, averaging from three to six feet in the diameter of its trunk. The wood, as may be readily concluded, is of a loose, spongy, and fibrous texture, of a light color, and tracked with longitudinal lines of a deep black, which are in reality the reservoirs of the secretion, filled with it in a dried state. We may here mention that we are indebted for the specimens of the wood which were first brought to England, to Mr. Thomas Lobb, the botanist of Mr. Veitch, the enterprising nursery gardener of Exeter. Sir James Brook, the rajah of Sarawak, mentions the mode of obtaining the gum in Borneo to be the wasteful one of felling the tree, stripping off the bark, and then collecting the juice which flows from the lacerated surfaces in troughs formed of the hollow stem of the plantain ; by this means, each tree furnishes from twenty to thirty pounds: but in Singapore, the more rational and fore-sighted mode is followed, of cutting notches in the bark, and so patiently collecting the milk as it ex- THE RISE AND DECLINE OF CHIVALRY udes. The appearance of this substance is too familiar to need description; but we may mention that when it reaches this country in thin shavings, or in rolls-the two forms in which it is usually imported— it is seldom found to be unmixed with various foreign substances, as leaves, straw, &c., for the removal of which it undergoes a process known as "kneading," which is done in hot water, and it is then ready to be formed into the various articles for which it is destined. It is worthy of especial remark that it is never worn out, for it is not injured in any way by reforming, or by repeated modeling. It may be melted and remelted any number of times without losing its native properties, or acquiring any foreign ones. cants IN ENGLAND. "Then life was a wild and gorgeous dream, A meteor glancing with #tful beam: And the knight prick'd forth with his lance in rest, And the Troubadour wander'd with barp in hand.” sense of the term, as it is now underYHIVALRY, in the full and romantic stood, was not prevalent in England until some time after the establishment of the Norman dynasty, nor indeed till the devotion of all Europe toward the East for the recovery of the Holy Land from the grasp of unbelievers, had imbued the whole system with that pervading feeling of religion which the earnest participation of the hierarchy in the purposes of the Crusades had communicated to it. Nevertheless, In the catalogue of the celebrated col- the honor and order of knighthood had lection of curiosities made by the Trades-long existed, even among the paladins of occurs the following remarkable Charlemagne, even in the dreary woods article:"The pliable mazer wood," of Germany; and in England it was in which, "being warmed in water, will work operation in the days of the Saxons, and to any form." "Doubtless," says a corits details were at that time imbued with respondent of "Chambers's Edinburgh a religious character which the Normans, Journal," for 1850, "this was gutta percha." at first, contemned. Dr. Montgomerie describes it in the very words of Tradescant: "This is a point which awakens much speculation, and which we would gladly see well examined, though but little light can, we fear, be thrown upon it after the lapse of so many years." Although we cannot suppose that the masur wood, mentioned in the "Red Saga" of Eric, can have a connection either with the mazer wood of Tradescant, or the gutta percha of Dr. Montgomerie, we must not omit, as a conclusion to this short paper, giving the following passage from that ancient composition; premising, however, that this mosur wood is usually supposed to be the bird-eye maple of America, and that we have no reason whatever to suppose the gutta percha tree to be a native of that continent, or that the Icelanders ever visited the southern hemisphere. The extract runs as follows:"When he (Karlsefne) was quite ready, and his ship was lying outside the pier, waiting for a favorable wind, there came to him a German man from Bremen, in Saxland: he asked Karl-who, with the means provided for the sefne to sell him his broom. I will not sell it,' said Karlsefne. 'I will give you half a mark in gold for it,' said the German man. Karlsefne thought this was a good offer, and thereupon they concluded the bargain. The German man went away with the broom. Karlsefne did not know what wood it was, but it was mosur, which had come from Wineland." Knighthood was never a birthright, though it became a necessary obligation to those of gentle birth after the Council of Clermont; for at this council it was decreed, that even so early as twelve years old, the noble-born boy should take an oath before his bishop to defend the oppressed, the widow, and the orphan; to exert himself to render traveling safe, and to destroy tyranny. Thus, says the historian of chivalry, all its humanities were sanctioned by legal and ecclesiastical power. When from various circumstances it became an onerous and expensive duty, laws were ordained compelling the owners of adequate portions of land to assume the dignity; and these laws were fully repealed only in the reign of Charles I. Before the establishment of a standing army, knights and their followers were the only military defenders of the country. Thus we find that the all-important Castle of Dover was committed to John de Fiennes, purpose, appropriated to its defense the services of eight other knights and their followers by turns. And thus it was elsewhere. All estates and property were held under the feudal obligation of providing knights at the call of the sovereign, in number proportionate to its value. The "legal service of a knight, for the land which he held by military tenure, was to serve forty days at his own costs, when the king went against his enemies." This obligation was equally attached to ecclesiastical property; and it is owing to this circumstance that we frequently read of the knights attached to ecclesiastical foundations: and, as state and pomp increased, a domestic array-so to term it of knights, became a necessary item of baronial state. Thomas à Becket had no less than seven hundred knights as part of his household; and William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, Chancelor and Lord Chief Justice in Richard the First's time, traveled with fifteen hundred horsemen in his suite. Though gentle birth was usually considered a necessary requisite for a knight, inferior birth, so that it were honest, was not an insurmountable obstacle to the investment of one of approved valor. But to the higher grades of the order a pure origin was indispensable. No bastard, even of a king, could be a templar or a knight of St. John. Perhaps the most remarkable instance on record of the elevation of a man of low birth to knighthood, fame, wealth, and honor, is that of Sir John Hawkwood, better known as "John of the Needle," a tailor's apprentice, and the son of a tanner of Sible Hedingham, Essex, who was pressed into the service of Edward III. Turning, as Fuller says, "his needle into a sword, and his thimble into a shield," he went to the French wars, stood like a valorous knight at the hottest of the brunt at the battle of Poictiers; flying, like his own needle, at the back of his general, the Black Prince; hewing down the obdurate with his sword as smoothly as erst he had a crooked seam with his goose; winning his knighthood by valor alone he made all Europe resound with his fame. He married the Duke of Milan's niece, and when he died (as even a tailor must, though he have as many lives as a cat) he had the whole city of Florence as mourners. The mode of investiture of a knight was anciently very simple. Charles the Great merely girded a sword on his son Louis the Good; and in ancient Germany the handing of a shield or javelin to the ardent and eager aspirant conferred on him on the instant the dignity of manhood, and the honor of a defender of his country. But gradually pomp and circumstance accumulated on the ceremony. Edward the Elder, our Saxon king, had Athelstan arrayed in a scarlet robe ere he girt him with a belt ornamented with precious stones, bearing a sword in a sheath of gold. Shortly after this we hear of absolution and confession as necessary preliminaries to the ceremony, and of religious offices accompanying the ceremonial itself; of the sword being blessed, and of the eucharist being administered to the new-made knight; and, though, as we before remarked, the Normans at first despised these religious accompaniments, it seems as though it might be only the iron-hearted Conqueror who set them at naught; for we find that his rude and licentious son, the Red-haired, was consecrated knight by Archbishop Lanfranc. Still chivalry, which ever took its hue from the general aspect of the times, was now in its very rudest state. The feudal system was in many respects productive of anarchy and misrule; each baron was omnipotent in his own domain, the extent of which was limited only by his power and strength, and, at a period when "might made right," it is easy to be supposed that no domestic or personal virtue would secure the possession of an estate to any one more remarkable for these qualities than for the more potent consideration of military force, or the wealth to purchase it. In fact, any occupant of a domain was at the mercy of another who could muster a greater number of armed retainers. The numerous forests were occupied by banditti, who bribed the neutrality if not the connivance of those neighboring barons who might, had they been so disposed, have somewhat assisted the feeble laws in their feebler enforcement. The abduction of females of wealth and rank was an every-day occurrence; and they were kept in rigid confinement, and oftentimes subjected to cruel usage, as a means of forcing them into a marriage which should give their brutal ravishers a legal claim to their possessions. Even the royal dignity was not exempted from this degrading and abhorrent risk; for Matilda of Scotland, afterward wife of Henry I., was obliged to assume the veil in Rumsey Abbey to avoid the risk of a forced marriage. The cruelties practiced by these lawless marauders are abhorrent even to |