behind it, and, at a bound, throws himself over the scymetar, pitches his head exactly in the space between the daggers, and turns over clear of them. A boy fixes a scymetar upright before him, with a bit of rag upon its point; he sits down, and bounding over the scymetar, strikes off the rag with the tip of his nose. The same boy, running, pitches a single stilt, of about ten feet in length, and rises on it upon a step fastened about half way up the stilt; then hops and jumps about, balancing the stilt the whole time. Another, scizing with his teeth the end of a cord, tied round the middle of a very heavy log of wood, nearly six feet long, raised up the log with his teeth, and cast it over his head. At Mocha and Juddah, in Arabia, and at Bussorah, in Persia, the porters, as I have been frequently told by captains of vessels, and supercargoes, trading to those places, will carry a bale of cotton, or a pipe of wine, upon their backs. They have a person, however, with them, it seems, of whose arm they take hold. The porters, too, at Canton, in China, both lift up and carry loads surprisingly heavy; but though I resided there some months, I do not recollect the exact weight of their burthens. LEGER DEMAIN. A man played very curiously upon four stones, or pieces of marble; they were each about seven inches long, one inch and a half broad, and as much thick, flattened, but with a little curvature on the lower or under side, but rounded off to an edge on the upper. He held two of these between each of his forefingers and thumbs, something in the manner in which castanets are held; and accompanied the music of an Hindustan violin, guitar, and drum, in a surprising manner. The under sides of the stones being a little inflected only, the ends of every pair hit against each other, sometimes with a clacking noise, but, when quickened to their utmost, with a quivering, far more tremulous and accelerated than the vibration of castanets, or the roll of a drum. And this shake or trill he executed with no apparent labour or motion of his hands or fingers, but all, as he told us. by the exertion of the muscles of his arms, brought to that perfection by long and continued practice. In the year 1756, a man was seen by most of the inhabitants and officers then residing at Fort St.George, to thrust a flat piece of iron, about an inch and a half broad, and one eighth of an inch thick, down his throat, into his stomach. A surgeon, who was present when I saw this performance, declared that the iron went into the thorax. For the sake of rendering the feat more surprising, the iron was shaped like a sword, but both the edges and point were rounded off. A little blood, and but little, appeared upon the iron when drawn out again. A man takes a small brass pan, and twirls it round upon the end of a sharp pointed stick, then tosses it high in the air, catches it again, in any part, upon the point of the stick, still contriving to twirl it round; he then ties another stick to the first, and a third to the second, each tie forming a kind of circular hinge; then rests the bottom stick upon his nose or chin, each stick moving round upon its joint, and the part still twirling round upon its centre, on the top of all, the whole keeping in equilibrio. Four, and sometimes six, according to the skill of the performer, light brass balls are tossed into the air; first strait up from his hands, then either behind his back, under his arms, or between his legs, so as to return again over his head: they are struck next in different forms, from one hand to the other, sometimes with his elbows, and sometimes with his knees, in wonderful order and facility. The same person kept up four balls continually in the air, tossing them round his back, hitting them with his elbows, his wrists, and his hands, and throwing them in various forms; he also tossed up one ball, and caught it in the hollow of his arm. In the like manner he throws up four daggers, in a variety of shapes, catching them all, as they descend, by their handles. To both ends of a flat board, about three inches wide, and three feet long, are fixed a couple of other pieces of flat board, of the same breadth, and about three inches high; through holes in these end pieces, are strung two pack-threads, much in the same manner as strings to a fiddle; three balls are placed upon the two strings; a man then takes this instrument, holding it up, at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and, turning round quickly, the balls rise, one by one, or all together, from the lower to the upper end of it, or to the middle part only, as he chooses to manage it. This instrument I take to be somewhat of the same kind, by which the centripetal and centrifugal force is demonstrated in experimental philosophy. A man takes three flutes of different tones; two he applies to his nostrils, and one to his mouth, and blows them all at one time; one of the flutes from his nostrils has three curvatures; at the extremity of these curvatures he holds a single-handed fife, which, thus receiving his breath, he plays upon with his vacant hand. A ring is moulded up in clay, and put into a hole eighteen inches deep, filled up with water: a girl bends her head back into the water, and brings the ring out of the mud in her mouth. The same girl puts into her mouth a number of beads, as also one end of a horse hair; then placing her hands behind her, she strings the beads on the horse hair with her mouth alone. A cap, with a broad stiff rim, is fitted to a man's head, to which are tied about twenty strings, terminated each by small nooses; in his left hand is held a small basket, or brass pan, containing twenty eggs; then turning round with a quick but regular motion, (as the Turkish dervises are represented to do in their religious rites,) he fastens successively, with his right hand, an egg into each of the nooses, still turning round. When they are all fastened, he accelerates his rotation, till the eggs circulate swiftly as the flyer of a jack; after this, he rather slackens his motion, unties the eggs one by one, returns them into the basket, and stops; the strings measure from three to four feet; they are of unequal lengths, lest the eggs, as I suppose, should accidentally clash. To put the twenty eggs into the nooses requires as many minutes, but they are taken out in less than three. G. J. EPITAPHIANA. No. 7. Being a Collection of Epitaphs and Monumental Inscriptions from every source. "We'll read the Monuments Visit the Vaults, and dwell among the Tombs." Young. AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SCULPTURE IN ENGLAND. From its first Introduction, as applied to FUNERAL MONUMENTS, EFFIGIES, AND TOMBS. PREVIOUS to my entering upon my proposed Historical Survey, I beg to lay down the following distinctive marks of the age of funeral monuments in churches; and which will serve as a kind of introduction to the whole. 1. The most early [in my humble opinion*) were flat coffin-shaped stones, laid even with the pavement, on which were simply inscribed the name and rank of the person buried: this I think is fully exemplified in the monument of the great Earl of Devon, who lies buried under the steps of the high altar of Christ Church, Hampshire; his stone having only this inscription, BALDEWIN. FILI. WILLI. COMITIS. DEVONIÆ. and being destitute of any ornament whatever.† 2. To the flat coffin stone succeeded the shrine-like form or coffin, with a raised lid, having a ridge down the middle, and the ends and sides sloped off, like the roof of a modern house. This was in use about the For any corrections or additions to this and following articles on monumental sculpture I shall be indebted; as it is my particular wish to render my essay as free from error as possible.-G. C. + By the way, I may just remark, that the Cross as an Ornament, was first used on tombs in Scotland in the reign of King Kenneth, No. 38. K time of the Norman invasion of our island, and is exemplified by the tomb of king William Rufus, in the cathedral of Winchester. 3. The table tombs with cumbent figures lying under magnificent festoons, in buildings like oratories or chapels, were next used for kings and persons of rank bishops and dignitaries of the church being still buried under flat stones (coffin-shaped) ornamented with crosses and croziers (emblems of spiritual authority) as those which we find in the abbey cloisters of Westminster and various other places; and sometimes with the sword (expressive of temporal power) as that of the abbot of Bala Sala, in the Isle of Man. These monuments occur as early as the fourteenth century, but end with the fifteenth. The inscriptions were generally in old French, beginning with the words "Cy Gist," and they not unfrequently promise a certain number of days of indulgence and pardon to the good souls who shall pray for them. 4. The cumbent figures in armour, with their legs crossed, without doubt, had their origin in the Crusades, and denoted a warrior who had fought, (or made preparations for fighting) in the Holy Land or, in other words, a Crusader. Children, born in the Holy Land, were always distinguished in the same manner and ladies, who had accompanied their husbands thither, were represented with their arms crossed upon their breasts. The crusades began in 1096, and ended in 1291, so that allowing a crusader to survive the last crusade fifty years, I think I may with safety assert, that a cross legged monument (or, more properly, effigy) cannot be later than 1341; provided the son, or other immediate descendant, did not assume The word Croisade would, perhaps, be more proper. The Crusade was a coin stamped with a cross, and introduced about the year 1457, by Alphonso V. king of Portugal, chiefly with a view to encourage his soldiers in the new croisade instituted by Pope Calixtus. It has a cross on one side, and the arms of Portugal on the other; and is the coin mentioned by Shakespeare "Believe me, I'd rather have lost my purse, G. C. |