Apropos.-A colored print, a " Portrait of sir Jeffery Dunstan, M. P. for Garrett," with a legend beneath it.

"When you've got money, you're look'd upon

But when you've got none, you may go along,"

was familiar to me in my "days of childhood" it was one of a many "neatly framed and glazed," that "bedecked" the walls of a "low roofed cot" (in my native town of Baldock, in Hertfordshire), the dwelling-place of "the schoolmistress," an antiquated, and a venerated dame, who first taught me and other "luckless wights" to con the A B C, from a hornalphabet-book," a “literary article" then considered indispensable to the scholastic avocation, but now entirely disused.

E. H. B.

ROYAL ARMS, LIONS AND LEOPARDS. [For the Year Book.]

MR. EDITOR,

A few years ago it was a mooted point, among the unlearned in the science of Heraldry, whether the animals which adorn the British achievements were lions or leopards. I send you the opinion of the learned and judicious Alexander Nisbett upon the subject, which will, I should think, appear conclusive.

"Sir John Ferne, one of the learned in his time, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in his book, entitled The Glory of Generosity, p. 218, says thus (his own words): The Escutcheon of Normandy was advanced, as the ensign of our English Kings, by William the Conqueror, William Rufus, Henry I., and Henry II. The last having married Eleanor, heiress of Aquitain, whose arms were Gules a Leopard, Or, which being of the same field, metal, and form, with his own, joined them together in one shield, and composed the present blazon for England, viz.: Gules 3 Leopards Or; and, in an another place the same author adds, These two coats, viz. Aquitain and Normandy, were joined in one, and by them the addition of the inheritance of Eleanor, heiress of Aquitain, to our English crown, and therefore are borne as a quadrate royal, by our sovereign lady queen Elizabeth. The same says Guilliams, Chamberland, and others. And these arms, so composed, were placed on his funeral monument,

when he was interred in the abbey of Fontewrad in Anjou, and adorned with other shields of arms, as those of the Saxon race, upon the account that in him the Saxon blood was restored by his The grandfather's marriage as before. structure of which monument is given to us in Sandford's Genealogical History, p. 64. "Before I proceed further, I must insist a little upon the opinions of some late English writers, who will have the three Leopards not to be originally from Normandy, but first assumed by Henry II. or by Richard I., and that their predecessors had no arms before; they not fixing upon which of these two kinds to place their rise and first use in England, though these arms be of the same tinctures, form, position, and situation, and nothing different in any circumstance from those of Normandy and Aquitain! neither will they allow them to be blazoned Leopards, but Lions passant guardant, upon the account that the Leopards of Normandy and Aquitain are now thought derogatory to the royalty of England, as not being originally ensigns of kingdoms. These opinions were raised first, if I be not mistaken, upon King James VI.'s accession to the throne of England, when there were several considerations and consultations taken about the honors and precedency of his kingdom of Scotland and England; and especially in marshalling their armorial ensigns, the difficulty arising from the armorial figures being originally those of the dukedoms of Normandy and Aquitain, which as such gave place to the flower de lisses of France, as belonging to a kingdom. Upon the same reason the Scots claimed also precedency for their armorial figure, the lion rampant. The English being put to a stand were necessitated to assert that the figures they carried for England were not those of Normandy and Aquitain, though as like as one egg to another, but new ones assumed by their kings since the conquest. To make this appear, their principal herald, William Segar, garter king at arms, was employed; and how well he performed, any herald or historian may judge by his manuscript, which he gave in to king James, entitled the variation of the arms and badges of the kingdom of England, from the time of Brutus, 1000 years before the incarnation of Christ, till 1600 years after his incarnation, 1604. Though he promises in his

"Toutes bestes qui sont en armes len doivt blasonner léstal, a la fachon, except Lions et leopars. Car les lyons de leur nature sont rompans, et leopars sont passans, et ce est le premiere difference entre lyons et leopars. Et sil sont au contraire, on dit ung lyon leoparde, et ung leopart lyonne. Lautre difference est car le lyon en armes a tant seullement ung oeul, et le leopar en lautre costé en a denx."

In the same MS. the arms of the dukes of Acquitaine and Normandy are thus blasoned.

Le duc dacquitaine-de guilles, a ung lupart d'or en face, armè et lampaisse d'azur.

Le duc de Normendie, de Guelles a deux luppars d'or en fache armè et lampasse d'azur,

FECIALIS PERITUS.

SAILORS' OMENS.

Sailors, usually the boldest men alive, are yet frequently the very abject slaves of superstitious fear. Innumerable," says Scot on Witchcraft, p. 53, "are the reports of accidents unto such as frequent the seas, as fishermen and sailors, who discourse of noises, flashes, shadows, echoes, and other visible appearances, nightly seen and heard upon the surface of the water."

Andrews, in his "Anecdotes," says, "Superstition and profaneness, those extremes of human conduct, are too often found united in the sailor; and the man

who dreads the stormy effects of drowning a cat, or of whistling a country dance while he leans over the gunwale, will, too often, wantonly defy his Creator by the most daring execrations and the most licentious behaviour."

Dr. Pegge says, "Our sailors, I am told, at this very day, I mean the vulgar sort of them, have a strange opinion of the devil's power and agency in stirring up winds, and that is the reason they so seldom whistle on ship-board, esteeming that to be a mocking, and consequently an enraging of the devil.

And it ap

pears now that even Zoroaster himself imagined there was an evil spirit, called Vato, that could excite violent storms of wind."

Sir Thomas Browne has the following singular passage:-"That a king-fisher, hanged by the bill, showeth us what quarter the wind is, by an occult and secret propriety, converting the breast to

that point of the horizon from whence the wind doth blow, is a received opinion and very strange-introducing natural weathercocks, and extending magnetical positions as far as animal natures: a conceit supported chiefly by present practice, yet not made out by reason or experience."

At the present day common sailors account it very unlucky to lose a bucket or a mop. To throw a cat over-board, or drown one at sea, is the same. Children are deemed lucky to a ship. Whistling at sea is supposed to cause increase of wind, and is therefore much disliked by seamen, though sometimes they themselves practise it when there is a dead calin.

OLD NICK.

"Old

Mr. Brand alleges that the name Nick," as applied to the devil, is of great antiquity; and that there is a great deal of learning concerning it in Olaus Wormius's Danish monuments. We borrowed it from the title of an evil genius has often appeared on the sea, and ou among the ancient Danes. They say he deep rivers, in the shape of a sea monster, presaging immediate shipwreck and drowning to seamen." Keysler mention, a Deity of the waters, worshipped by the ancient Germans and Danes, under the name of Nocca, or Nicken, styled in the Edda Nikur, which he derives from the German Nugen, answering to the Latin the faces of drowned persons was ascribnecare. Wormius says, the redness in ed to this deity's sucking their blood out at their nostrils. Wasthovius, and LocRudbekius cenius, call him Neccus.

mentions a notion prevalent among his countrymen, that Neckur, who governed the sea, assumed the form of various animals, or of a horseman, or of a man

in a boat.

He supposes him the same with Odin; but more probably he was the Northern Neptune, or some sea-god of a noxious disposition. Archdeacon Nares says there is no doubt that Nick was a very old name among the northerns for the devil, and that from them we derive our "Old Nick."

This is another engraving from "Mr. Guest's History of the Cotton Manufacture." It represents roving and spinning, with the hand-cards, or combs (at the feet of the first female), from which the cotton, after being combed or carded, between them, was scraped off in rolls about twelve inches long, and three-quarters of an inch in diameter. These rolls, called cardings, were drawn out into rovings, or threads, by twisting one end to the spindle of a hand-wheel, and turning the wheel which moved the spindle with the right hand, at the same time drawing out the carding horizontally with the left. The motion thus communicated to the carding turned it spirally; when twisted it was wound upon the spindle, another carding was attached to it, and drawn out and twisted. This process formed a continued coarse thread, or roving, and the performance of it is shown by the

before-mentioned female, whose cardings are represented lying across the knee. The rovings from her spindle were then taken to the other female to be spun by her hand-wheel into weft, nearly in the same manner as the cardings for the weaver were made into rovings. The cardings were drawn out at the first wheel, in an angle of forty or fifty-five degrees from the point of the spindle; in spinning, the rovings weie drawn out nearly in a right angle. The hand-wheel was the first instrument used in spinning; the first deviation from the simple, ancient mode of spinning by the distaff, towards that system of manufacture which has converted Lancashire and Derbyshire, into the great machinery districts for spinning and weaving. It should be observed, however, that the hand-wheel was first used in the woollen manufacture.

exports abroad, increased the demand for cottons, the demand of the cotton-weavers for cotton-yarn, or thread, for the purpose of manufacture, increased until the spinners were unable to supply the weavers with weft. Those weavers whose families could not furnish the necessary supply of weft, had their spinning done by their neighbours, and were obliged to pay more for the spinning than the price allowed by their masters; and even with this disadvantage very few could procure weft enough to keep themselves constantly employed. It was no uncommon thing for a weaver to walk three or four miles in a morning, and call on five or six spinners, before he could collect weft to serve him for the remainder of the day; and, when he wished to weave a piece in a shorter time than usual, a new ribbon, or gown, was necessary to quicken the exertions of the spinner. It is evident that an important crisis for the cotton manufacture of Lancashire was now arrived. It must either receive an extraordinary impulse, or, like most other human affairs, after enjoying a partial prosperity, retrograde. The spinners could not supply enough weft for the weavers. The first consequence of this would be to raise the price of spinning. In the then state of manners and prejudices, when the facilities of communication between places were less, and the population generally possessed much greater antipathy to leaving their native place than at present, this inducement would have failed to bring together a sufficient number of hand spinners, and a farther rise in the price of spinning must have been the consequence. This would have rendered the price of the manufactured cloth too great to have been purchased for home or foreign consumption, for which its cheapness must of course have been the principal induce

ment.

In this state of difficulty, about the year 1763, Thomas Highs, of Leigh, in Lancashire, is said to have produced the machine known by the name of the Spinning Jenny, and to have so called it after his daughter, whose baptismal name was Jane. This invention displaced the spinning-wheels. It performed the double operation of roving and spinning, as represented in the engraving, and worked six spindles, which were afterwards increased to twenty-five. James Hargrave, a carpenter, of Blackburn, in Lancashire,

improved that invention, and it was subsequently so perfected that a little girl could work from eighty to one hundred and twenty spindles, which spun cotton for weft or threads. Richard Arkwright, a barber of Manchester, with the assistance of the celebrated Mr. Jedediah Strutt, of Derby, ultimately produced the last great invention, the spinningframe. Arkwright acquired an immense fortune, and the honor of knighthood. The rest may be gathered from books, and from the inspection of the Manchester cotton mills. What is added as to the sale of cotton goods, and the change in the population, is derived from Mr. Guest's" History."

About 1750 the method of conducting the cotton manufacture was as follows:The master gave out a warp and raw cotton to the weaver, and received them back in cloth, paying the weaver for the weaving and spinning; the weaver, if the spinning was not done by his own family, paid the spinner for the spinning, and the spinner paid the carder and rover.

The master attended the weekly market at Manchester, and sold his pieces in the grey to the merchant, who afterwards dyed and finished them. Instead of travelling with their goods on pack-horses, the merchants or their travellers now rode from town to town, carrying with them patterns or samples, and on their return home the goods sold during the journey were forwarded by the carriers' waggons.

This practice, far more commodious than the rude and inconvenient mode of carrying their merchandize from town to town, has become general, not only in this, but in every other business; and it may now be asserted that the whole of the internal wholesale trade of England is carried on by commercial travellersthey pervade every town, village, and hamlet, in the kingdom, carrying their samples and patterns, and taking orders from the retail tradesmen, and afterwards forwarding the goods by waggons, or canal barges, to their destination :-they form more than one-half of the immense number of persons who are constantly travelling through the country in all di rections, and are the principal support of our inns, the neatness and comfort of which are so much celebrated throughout Europe.