means were omitted by which wise counsels could be spread abroad and kept in remembrance. That the qualities of prudence in action, or skill in war, might not die with a man whom they had eminently distinguished, the maxims by which he was guided were woven into verse, that they might be handed down as a legacy to his successors. Of these Testaments, as they were called, perhaps the best known is that of the good King Robert, which, as Sir Walter Scott has remarked, “would have saved his countrymen the loss of many a bloody day had they known how to avail themselves of the military art contained in it." A baron of the Mearns, who was "reputed a scholar and something of a poet," left as "advice to his son and successors the following lines:

Giff thou desire thy house lang stand,
And thy successors bruik thy land,
Above all things live God in fear;
Intromit nought with wrangous gear,
Nor conquess nothing wrangously;
With thy neighbour keep charity.

The sculptor was at times called to hew the Sciences, the Pagan Gods, or the Cardinal Virtues, into stone, often with indifferent success. On a castle in Forfarshire, Saturn is represented with a wooden leg.-Hutchison's Views of Edzell Castle, p. 9, plate vii. Edinb. 1838.

1 History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 166.

See that thou pass not thy estate;
Obey duly thy magistrate;

Oppress not but support the puire;
To help the common weill take cuire ;
Use no deceit; mell not with treason,
And to all men do right and reason;
Both unto word and deed be true,
All kind of wickedness eschew;
Slay no man, nor thereto consent;
Be nought cruel but patient;
Ally ay in some guid place
With noble, honest, godly race;
• Hate lechery and all vices flee ;
Be humble; haunt guid companie ;
Help thy friend, and do nae wrang,

And God shall cause thy house stand lang.1

Such was the moral code of the Laird of Mathers, the progenitor of the renowned Captain Barclay of Ury.

XXXIV.

A GERMAN D'ISRAELI.

ANDREAS FELIX EVELIUS was born at Munich in 1706, and died there in 1780. He held the office

'Nisbet's Heraldry, vol. ii. ; append. p. 239.

of conservator in chief of the electoral library, and published some historical essays, which excite less interest however than the titles of his inedited works.

In one which he inscribed Furiae Jugales he delineated the sufferings which the learned have endured from their wicked wives. To show the other side of the picture, he composed a sequel,

Charites Pronubae Virorum Doctorum.

For his Musae Ebriae, or Learning in Liquor, he must have had a wide and fertile field; and in his Musae Mendicantes, or Erudition in Rags, he perhaps anticipated "The Calamities of Authors."

One treatise, De Eruditis Deformibus, sive Nosocomium Doctum, he devoted to a general detail of the personal deformities of authors, illustrating the history of such as were afflicted by blindness or insanity in another, De Eruditis Caecis et Mente Captis.

But of all his works, perhaps that which promises most interest is the Amores Furtivi Virorum Eruditorum, or The Lawless Loves of the Learned.1

Do the manuscripts of this profound scandalmonger still exist? English versions, with "continuations to the present times," would exactly hit the reigning taste, and could hardly fail to make a bookseller's fortune.

1 Biogr. Univ. t. xxxi. p. 514.

XXXV.

POETRY FROM THE PULPIT.

"PERHAPS it may surprise my readers," says M. l'Abbé de la Rue, "but there can be no doubt that in the thirteenth century, at least among the Normans and Anglo-Normans, the clergy read to their people, on Sundays and holidays, lives of the saints in French verse, and even preached the truths of the gospel in the same manner. In the library of the Royal Society of London, there is preserved a sermon by Stephen de Langton, cardinal of Saint Chrisognon, and Archbishop of Canterbury, between the years 1206 and 1228, written in Latin prose, richly interlaced with French verse, and having for its text what appears to have been a fashionable song of the day:

p. 137.

Bele Aliz matin leva,

Sun cors vesti è para ;

Enz un verger s' en entra,
Cinq flurettes i truva,

Un chapelet fet en a
De rose flurie

Histoire des Trouvères Anglo-Normands, t. ii.

Par Deu, trachez vus en lá,
Vus ki ne amez-mie.1

The good prelate shows the mystical application of this ditty to the Blessed Virgin :

"Ceste (la Vierge) est la belle Aliz ;
Ceste est la flur, ceste est le liz.”2

Occasionally sermons were written altogether in rhyme; and two of these discourses have been lately printed :

Le Sermun de Guichard de Beaulieu. Paris, 1834,
8vo. pp. 32.

Un Sermon en vers, publié pour la première fois par
Achille Jubinal. Paris, 1834, 8vo. pp. 32.

There is little remarkable in them beyond the construction of the verse, thirty or more consecutive lines rhyming together.

XXXVI.

AFTER-DINNER ORATORY.

It is a serious inconvenience to many worthy gen

1 i. e. 'Par Dieu, allez vous en là, vous qui n'aimez pas.' 2 Mémoire sur les Trouvères Normands, par M. Pluquet; Mém. de la Soc. des Antiq. de la Normandie, t. i. p. 411.