leagues). It is true that the wind was against us; and one-half of this time was employed in beating to windward, sometimes still less. There is a great difference between these dows and our vessels. Thus we may suppose that the introduction European vessels into the Red Sea by the canal of Suez would cause a complete revolution even in the internal commerce of this sea. adopted at Dunchurch. Now, Sir, I am curious to know whether the custom still exists in that parish, or whether any of your correspondents have witnessed it practised elsewhere.R. W. B.-Notes and Queries. -- HOW JURIES USED TO LAY THEIR HEADS TO-up the congregations, but not exactly in the way GETHER. I have been assured by an excellent legal friend of mine, that it used to be the custom in one of our nothern counties at the Quarter Sessions, when the chairman had summed up, for him to conclude his address to the jury with the advice given by Sydney Smith to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, "to lay their heads together," with a view of producing the best and hardest pavement. I am told that no sooner were the words uttered from the bench, "Now, gentlemen, lay your heads together and consider your verdict," than down went every head in the box, and an official approached armed with a long wand. If any unlucky juror inadvertently raised his head, down came the stick upon his pate; and so they continued till the truth was struck out, in their veredictum, an excellent plan for expediting business. I remember many years since witnessing a somewhat analogous case to this in the church at Dunchurch. I was an accidental attendant there, and an excellent sermon was preached; so good a one that I am reminded of a saying attributed to Chief Justice Tindal, who, speaking of a sermon that he had heard a long time before, said, "It was an excellent sermon I know; I only forgot all about it three weeks ago. Notwithstanding this, the weather being very hot, there were several parties fast asleep in different parts of the church. A respectable looking man, who had very much the air of a church-warden, bearing a long stout wand with, I believe, a fork at the end of it, at intervals stept stealthily up and down the nave and aisles of the church; and whenever he saw an individual whose senses were buried in oblivion, he touched him with his wand so effectually that the spell was broken, and in an instant he was recalled to all the realities of life. I watched THE BONAPARTE FAMILY. It is known that when Bonaparte had married the daughter of Francis of Austria, the latter took some pains in having researches made about the origin and lineage of the Bonaparte family. But Napoleon declined to take any notice of it, saying, "I am the Rudolph Habsburg of my family. Still, these documents have been partly published of late on the continent, and exhibit a most respectable appearance. Because, besides the known fact that the mother of one of the Popes was a Bonaparte, the pedigree branches off to Constantinople; and there is no doubt that the Bonapartes descended lineally from the Greek emperor. Amongst the numberless facts and data relating to the great Bonaparte, I do not recollect to have heard what was the coat of arms of the Corsican branch: and whether there had been any change in it when they had settled in Florence, or even sooner. In the coat of arms line, nothing is perhaps so interesting as the stone armorials which stood engraved on the house where Goethe was born at Frankfort: a winged lyre, surrounded by stars." bent sua fata lapides. - Notes and Queries. Ha ENTOMOLOGY.-Professor Agassiz says, that more than a lifetime would be necessary to enumerate the various species of insects and decollected and described 600 species of flies, scribe their appearance. Meiger, a German, which he collected in a district of ten miles circumference. There have been collected in EuIn Berlin two Professors are engaged collecting, rope 20,000 species of insects preying on wheat. observing, and describing insects and their habits, and already they have published five large volumes upon the insects which attack forest trees. as he mounted with wary step into the galleries. DID ARCHBISHOP CRANMER RECANT, IN THE PROPER SENSE OF THE TERM? Can any of the numerous readers of "N. & Q." inform me whether any original document, or anything approximating thereto, exists touching Cranmer's subscription to his supposed "recantation?" or are we to refer for information solely to the mendacious tract published by Cawood in 1556, under the direction and superintendence of Bonner? E. C. HARINGTON. - HAPPY PEOPLE. From Titan. BY THE AUTHOR OF "A LORD OF THE CREATION." I SUPPOSE it is natural (that is, humanly natural) that opinions should be at once so diversified and so generally inconsistent on the subject of happiness; for happiness is a thing that every one appears to judge of vicariously. How few, except children, experience it consciously, or recognize and acknowledge its presence with them. It seems to be an inevitable law with the majority of us, that you can no more see the peculiar good of your own estate, than you can see your own profile shadowed on the wall. You twist and turn to look at it, and in the very effort to behold, it is lost. But other people's profiles you can see, judge, and criticize. Other people's happiness you know all about; you look at it-wonder at it envy it, perhaps. How is it that men and women are so rarely able to see the sunshine It is a curious 199 This from you, most fastidious of Sybarites, who send back to your first-rate tailor the waistcoats that are half-an-inch too long or too short who dismissed your valet because his shoes creaked, and parted with your horse when some two or three white hairs marred the perfect ebon of his glossy flanks! You who have waltzed with reigning belles at Almack's, and have flirted with ravissante comtesses, and marchesas charmante à distraction, at Paris, Rome, and Vienna ! You who have drained pleasure out of every civilized corner of the world! You who, by virtue of wealth, position, and connection, tread the great places of the earth with imperial assurance and a kind of "monarch-of-all-I-survey " air! You who have been on friendly terms Perhaps we are all too selfish to be ac- with princes, potentates, artists—the great credited appraisers of our personalities; and and grand in almost all phases of greatness although, as regards this particular one, our -you to at last come down to envy —s partiality takes the unusual direction of un- shrimp lad! I marvel at you. When you dervaluing what belongs to ourselves, the get well again, you will no doubt marvel at injustice is none the less. And the fatuous-yourself (if you ever think at all of the time ness of the judgment is as striking even as of your convalescence, and your friend the when you, my dear hard-featured friend, flatter yourself that the outline of your face is classical, and the turn of your head as noble as it is refined. that falls on themselves? problem in psychology. shrimp merchant), and you will retract, of course, before you go back again to the old whirl- the old wild hunt, which goes ou incessantly, I am told, among persons of After all, it may be wiser to leave ourselves your class-hunting, not for happiness, cerand our happiness alone. Egotism is the last tainly, even in name, but for amusementthing that the human race needs teaching in excitement-something, or anything, that these days. Therefore, without making "so will stand in place of it. Do you know, I much ado" about the bliss which falls to think you were a worthier individual when our own proper share, we might pursue our you envied Jack Baggs. Now you are inquiries among our friends, our lovers, and returned to Mayfair, and the Ring, and Alacquaintance. Let us try to discover who mack's, you never trouble yourself to wish are the happy, and wherein doth consist that for anything, except, perhaps, for soda-water, intangible, impalpable mystery which consti- and that you may be hanged if the opera tutes their happiness. doesn't get more of a "baw" every season. Happiness! how often has our ideal changed within a little time! It varies, we find, with every turn of our own fate, circumstance, or feeling. Is it not so with you also? Did not you, when you were laid up with that lingering illness last year, look with a sort of wondering sigh on the brightfaced, hearty lad, with ragged jacket and bare, blue feet, who brought shrimps to sell Probably you never stop to consider within yourself what it is you are living for. But you very often yawn during the morning hours, and, listlessly tapping your immaculate boot with a wonderful jewelled cane, "wonder how you shall get through the day." You find it tiresome that you have been to every place, and seen everything that you care to visit or to see. You lament that there are "no more worlds to' "Confound it, no!" - - travel about. Sometimes, | worldly gifts as you are rich, and that you even, you get as far as an aspiration, "that move in widely different circles of society. there was something new to be done, that Moreover, that he never neglects his own everything wasn't so worn out- -so stale, pursuits to chime in with your lazy emflat, and unprofitable." And if any one ployments, and, so far from flattering your asked you if you are happy, you would reply, vanity or courting your distinction, there is with emphatic candor, no one of your acquaintance who speaks to you with such candor, or behaves with such How odd! for you possess a considerable straightforward independence. Only the proportion of that "raw material" which other day, you remember, he informed you, even the most romantic of us admit to be half-seriously, under the light laugh with more or less adequate, if not necessary, to which he spoke, that he wouldn't lead such constitute happiness. Consider. You are a life as yours for all the worlds one ever young in the very bloom of a man's youth, has to give, all the riches in Fortunatus' cap. which need not and should not be rubbed " 'Although," he admitted, sighing, "I don't off much before thirty. You are strong and undervalue wealth, as you are aware. A vigorous, when you choose to lead a healthful little more of it would make me very happy." life. You have an average share of abilities, You know he alluded to his long-delayed and believe that you have more. You are marriage. He has been engaged for several tolerably well-looking, and more than toler-years, and to one as poor and prospectless, as ably well satisfied with your looks. You young men who have every morsel of their have a loving mother and affectionate sisters own bread to earn generally contrive to fall down at the old house in the country, where in love with. What do you think of this you don't very often go. And in London for a trouble, an anxiety to keep life's sunyou possess, O! what troops of admiring shine from being too enervating? To see friends! Finally, you have three thousand a-year unincumbered property. How dare you not be happy? 66 one you love better than your life, one whom every fibre of your nature is drawn to, with the instinct to cherish most tenderly, to proAlas! you dare do all that should become tect most jealously to see her constrained a man, and discontent is as masculine an at- to fill a dependent position, while you are tribute as your hat, and, I must say, becomes toiling, toiling, in what sometimes appears a you as well. Not that I intend to quarrel hopeless endeavor to make a union prudent. with it in this instance. I think you are like To do you justice, you feel a great deal for an oyster, and what is in itself a disease, is your friend; you would fain render him the one hopeful and valuable part of your service, if you could. But he is neither a being. If you were satisfied with your life, soldier, to be lifted up by influence; nor a you would be in a still worse condition than doctor, to be brought forward by connecyou are. If you were "happy," you would tion; nor a barrister, to be helped to fame, be wretched indeed. But you have envied or raised at once to independence, by a governJack Baggs, and there is a chance for you. ment appointment. When he renounced the After all, you may grow into something church, for which he was educated, he took better than " Mr. Vavasour of the Albany." to tutorship and authorship- two "ships,” Now there is your friend Wentworth, he alas! which rarely bring a wealthy freight who was your chum at Oxford; although he to shore. He must make his own way, was a hard-working student in one of the "with difficulty and labor hard." A rough large colleges, while you, a gentleman com- way, a toilsome way, stones under foot, and moner in aristocratic Christ Church, dawdled oftentimes darkness over head. But he will your time in boating, racing, fencing, cricket-reach the goal sooner or later; there is little ing, and other devices with which well-born, to fear for him. wealthy young men season the sweets of knowledge, and add zest to the quiet attractions of Alma Mater. It is, however, a good trait in your character, that your friendship with Wentworth has hitherto been so steady and unbroken; seeing that he is as poor in acquaintance, who so often or so nearly Meanwhile, spite of labor, difficulty, and trial, do you know a man with whom you would sooner change places, when you come to reflect seriously on the subject? Do you know a man, in the whole circle of your trenches on the domain of happiness? What Only three times within the last two years a serene face is his, when, the labor of the has he been with Lucy; but I think it is day over, he unbends to the enjoyment of likely that many men in their whole span of the simple pleasures that are such delights to life do not taste a greater amount of pure him. He appears to have in perfection the and beautiful happiness than these two, who art of doing morally what clever chemists love one another so perfectly, crowd into their perform materially, when, from mean, and brief festivals. Once it was at Brighton; sometimes even noxious elements, they distil he went down for a week, while the family essences most fragrant. He is obliged to live with whom she lives was staying there. near London, though all his sympathies, his You would have thought it a very unmeet dearest associations, his most cherished memo- place for such a celebration - a crowded, ries, are in and with the wild, beautiful, far-fashionable, glittering watering-place, with away country, where his childhood was shops, and grand houses, and grand people passed, where was always his home till of all about to see the meeting of the twelvelate years, and where he first knew Lucy. months' separated lovers. But when he Yet he contrives to glean good even in his quiet came back, he remembered nothing- he had suburban lodging. When he first went there, evidently seen nothing of the many things fields stretched away in front of his windows, that, to him especially, would have been and a green lane wound at the right towards most distasteful and annoying. Of the shore, emerald meadows and wooded slopes-a fair and the cliffs, and the downs, he discoursed landscape even though within a walk of eloquently; of the bright weather, the endCheapside. How he exulted in it! What less variety of aspect under which he - they poetry he saw in the very fact that all this had watched their beloved sea. Ah! what quiet beauty was so near the stir, and smoke, a happy time it had been! And when other and turmoil of great London. But when people sigh over the remembrance of past builders came, and Prospect Place filled up happiness, he is more apt to suddenly keep one of the precious meadows, and blocked silence, while a light comes into his faceout the widest view, and Victoria Crescent visible thanksgiving, very beautiful to see. shut up the side glimpse of wood and field, when the Albert Tavern arose, glittering with gilt letters, at the corner, and omnibuses began to run from the turnpike, two minutes' walk from the door, then Mr. Wentworth took comfort in the three tall elm-trees that were still left in front of the house, and began to find that it is perhaps better to have such a simple suggestion of nature, than a more detailed manifestation of her presence, when you have a gas-lamp five doors off, and you hear the omnibus men shouting, "Bank, 'Obun-Reg'nt Circ's!" every half-hour. And the elm trees, he says, mark the seasons with a sweet graciousness to him a beautiful loyalty to poor deposed nature-as though they were denizens of a forest where she still reigned supreme. In the spring, he can watch the tender life gathering, and growing, and perfecting into the summer leafage; then, in autumn, they glow into gold, and fade into brown-and fall, fall, fall, with the wailing October winds, till they are left bare and black — the branches traced finely against the cold winter sky "As I love to see them," he says regularly every December. Then his faith in the future is at least as vital and steady as his gratitude for the past. He knows at least he trusts (which is bet ter than knowing, he says) that he and Lucy will be married one day; that one day they will be able to make their nest somewhere, like the birds, in some pleasant tree, with green branches all round, and the sky shining through. Meanwhile, though he waits, he does not despond. He attains more than serenity in his quick sympathies with all human interests, his keen appreciation of beauty, his love of flowers and sunshine, music and pictures (moving pictures, as well as those fixed to canvas), his sensitive perception of the good and true in all that is before him-whether people in the streets, flowers in the fields, or clouds in the sky. In all this—his heritage from nature, of which his own true heart recognizes the value-Wentworth unconsciously finds, and ever will find, a happiness that you, poor Dudley Vavasour, vainly look for half over the world, with three thousand a-year, position," connection-all appliances and means to boot. 66 Truly we may well ask, who are the happy! One-twentieth part of these said knew her. I heard she was once eminently appliances, which are all impotent to give attractive in look and manner as, indeed, ease or contentment to him who possesses so such a sweet simple nature and clear intellect much, would, how often! remove the sharpest as she possessed would make any woman. thorn from the path of those who tread their But, at the time I saw her, all this was seen hard way unaided, only drawing gladness through the cloud left by severe suffering, from the wealth of their own hearts. Thank both of mind and body, such as she had God for that wealth of the heart! His jus-known almost continuously during the past tice and even-handed wisdom even our finite vision can perceive, sometimes. Who are happy? Not they who, to our eyes, possess most means of happiness. Not Mrs. Courtly, who married for love, with the unusual appendage of plenty of money, and the thorough approbation of her friends, and who is cited by every one as an example of " a fortunate woman indeed." Fortunate she may be — happy she is notas I have known her ever since I spent three days with her at her Richmond vil. She has so many pleasures, she has no time to be pleased. All those things that to most people are enjoyments, are to her only soporifics. It needs strong wine indeed to exhilarate her. She is clearly not a denizen of this terra incognita — this happy land. ten years. Hers was a nature that lavished its love as summer clouds the rain-it fell noiselessly, abundantly, in simple, unquestioning delight of giving. In her earliest womanhood, a younger sister was the recipient of all this wealth of tenderness and care. The sister married went abroadalmost forgot her, or remembered her only in a way that was perhaps bitterer than oblivion. Then, Anna loved, in the woman's great sense of loving, one who was to her the model of all manliness, nobility, and greatness. Within a few weeks of the time that they last spent together, when he, by every eloquence of look and tone, had persuaded her of his love while winning hers, he married a rich woman, old, unloveable, and foolish. Anna lost not only her love, but her ideal. Neither is pretty Laura Haverill―the The beautiful fabric of her life's dearest belle of her circle- the idol of her family dream was shivered into a million pieces, and the universally admired and flattered the very fragments were of dross. Corinne of half-a-hundred evening parties. How many good gifts have fallen to her share? - beauty, talent, affluence, and love love as common to her as daylight, and, alas! as little thought of. Yet she is fretful, fastidious, blasé of the very blessings fate showers upon her. Her days seem to pass in an alternation of excitement and reaction. She is now in a whirl of gayety-anon plunged in the stagnant, unprofitable slough of ennui. What is it she needs, to convert her matériel into that mysterious, impalpable thing whereof we speak? I am not prepared to say. I do not pretend to tell why it is that these people, who appear to possess most of the means, appear farthest from the end: why they who receive most blessings are oftentimes least blessed. I only declare; I cannot profess to explain. Very likely you would smile (yet I think It would be in a sad sort), if you knew the whole life-history of the woman that always occurs to me as the truest example of happiness I have ever known. But you shall see her. She was already middle-aged when I first After that her health failed, and, all her relations being either far away, or indifferent to her fate, she went through the bitterness, worse than that of death, of a long illness in a hired home, attended by paid nurses; cared for at so much a-week. When she recovered, one or two of her kinder-hearted friends took her to stay with them for a time... It was on one of these occasions that I first met her. I remember what an impression I received from the sight of her cheerful face, that kindled anew with every new pleasure. And how many pleasures she had, and how intensely she enjoyed them! I did not know her history then, and I thought to myself how fairly apportioned must be the blessings of life, since she, who was poor and still suffering, evidently possessed compensating good gifts sufficient to make her happiness. I was right: but I did not know all. The good gifts were hers indeed, but they were of another and less tangible kind than I thought She very seldom spoke of herself, as may. be supposed. Nothing can be more incompatible with the sort of unconscious, praiseful thanksgiving which was her daily life, |