Mr. URBAN, PER March 20. ERHAPS some of your Correspondents can supply dates, or other circumstances, to the following anecdote, which I have no doubt is in substance correct and authentic, as I had it from a most accurate and most worthy man, who entered at Oxford about the year 1727. Abendana, a learned Jew, by whom I think there are some works extant (but I am not now within reach of Libraries or Catalogues to ascertain the fact) taught the Hebrew language, perhaps eighty or ninety years ago, at Oxford, where he was well received and esteemed; and some learned and grave men, in the number of his friends, said to each other, as he seemed to be an open, candid, and sensible man, "it was pity they should not take an opportunity to lay before him some of the evidences of Christianity." He was in consequence invited to sup with two or three of them; and, at a proper time, the subject was opened, the Jew listening, and apparently assenting to all that was said; so that, upon his withdrawing, they congratulated each other, and were pleased with the hope that a good foundation had been laid. In a few days, meeting one of his friends in the street, he accosted him, "Well! when will you convart me again?" No sincere Christian, having inters course with a son of Israel, would neglect to try whether there is any opening for the truth; but till it please God, in his promised mercy, to take away the veil from their heart (probably by some visible display of his Providence) there is litile hope of individual, and none at all of general conversion-as I believe the Jews Converting Society now know to their cost. R. C. Mr. URBAN, A Jan. 15. MONG the "Minor Correspondence" in the Mag. for Dec. (p. 482) there are a few lines relating to a subject of very general interest and importance-The British Fisheries. The tardiness of Government, and of Parliament also, in taking up this question, since the restoration of Peace, appears almost incredible. As a nursery for the future defenders of our country, as a means of ensuring the continuance of our maritime superiority, and of furnishing employment for vast numbers of seamen, the extension of our home fisheries is essential in a national point of view, were no subordinate advantages to result from it; whilst the monopoly of the London market toofrequently deprives almost two-thirds of the inhabitants of this vast metropolis,and the neighbourhood, of one source of food which Providence hath bountifully created for their use. "It is strange," observed the late Mr. Rose, "that in a maritime country like this, fish is rarely to be seen but at the tables of the rich; for the poor (he might have added the middle classes also) receive little benefit from that nutritious description of aliment *." Whatever laws have hitherto passed for the regulation of the traflick of fish, they are confessedly inefficient for rectifying abuses; and the quantity annually consumed in London, though it may seem great in the aggregate, is trifling compared with its overflowing population. The removal of this evil was one of those objects that engaged the attention of the late philanthropic Sir Thomas Bernard, whose active zeal in ameliorating the condition of the lower orders entitles his name to the lasting gratitude and respect of his countrymen. In bis "Account of a Supply of Fish for the Manufacturing Poor, with Observations," published in 1813, he has distinctly pointed out the remedies that ought to be applied ; and it would be well if this publication were in the hands of every Member of Parliament, and of every householder in the county of Middlesex. Sir T. Bernard stated that, with respect to Mackerel, all that arrives "beyond the estimated demand of the fishmonger, however fresh and good, is thrown into the Thames, and destroyed before it reaches Billings gate; with the consequence of enhancing the price of mackerel to the opulent part of the metropolis, and of excluding most of its inhabitants from a participation in this cheap and plentiful supply of food.". The Writer of this article can also testify, that a few years ago he saw a large basket of salmon emptied into the Thames from London Bridge, at an early hour of the morning, doubtless with a similar view; and he takes some blame to himself for not having *Speech on the Population of Great Britain, 1812, publicly publicly exposed at the time an act of such gross wickedness. A removal of the monopoly complained of, and giving to the lower orders what may be almost termed a new supply of food, will be of more solid benefit, than by obtaining for them either annual parliaments or universal suffrage. I AM directed by the Committee for conducting the subscription in behalf of the infant family of Mr. Clennell, to thank you for noticing and recommending their cause through the medium of your useful Magazine (see p. 230.) It will give you pleasure to learn, as it does me to communicate the fact, that the subscription is rapidly augmenting; that noblemen and gentlemen from all parts of the country are prompt and liberal in offering their services, and contributing to our funds. From the success we have already experienced we are confident of being enabled to do something substantial and perma. nent towards the education and support of the three parentless children. Among many persons who have not merely subscribed for prints, but have sent handsome donations, I feel much pleasure in recording the following names. The Bishop of Durham has nobly presented 50l. to our list; and the following Ladies, Noblemen, and Gentlemen, have subscribed either ten or five guineas each:-The Duke of Grafton; Duke of Bedford; the Marquis of Anglesea; Earl of Bridgewater; Earl of Liverpool; Earl of Egremont; Lady Gordon; Lady Leices ter; Lady Swinburne; Lord Ribblesdale; Lord Charles Bentinck; Sir John E. Swinburne, bart.; Sir R. C. Hoare, bart.; Sir John Leicester, bart.; Sir M. W. Ridley, bart.; Sir Abraham Hume, bart; Sir Charles Flint, bart. Sir Carneby Haggerston, bart.; Sir Thomas Lawrence, R. A.; Sir William Domville; Francis Freeling, esq.; Jeremiah Harman, esq.; Samuel Rogers, esq.; John Miles, esq. These are only a very few of the names of donors and friends. In Glasgow, a Committee is formed to manage and promote the subscription; and, by the active zeal of its members, more than 100 names have been already procured in and near that city. At New castle, two or three early friends of the painter have eagerly and success» fully advocated the cause; and are still prosecuting their laudable efforts. I am convinced that you, as well as every true philanthropist, will be gratified with this report; will rejoice in witnessing the noble, national liberality that characterizes the Engglish; and will exult with me in being natives of such a country, and of being enabled to contribute, in some degree, to assist the forlorn orphan, and to succour, in the moment of distress the offspring of a man of talents. Yours, &c. J. BRITTON, Hon. Sec. Mr. URBAN, West Square, IN my paper on the proper tense for Latin dates, inserted in your last Number, p. 231, I promised some observations on a peculiar propriety of the preterimperfect tense, not always sufficiently noticed: and I now acquit my promise. Besides its two well-known meanings-that we were engaged in performing some unfinished act at a particular point of time mentioned *— or that we were, during a continued length of time, regularly accustomed to perform some act t-it is also used, to express a simple intention or preparation, without any positive commencement of the act itself, or any proceeding beyond the preparatory measures. A single example from Livy (43, 21) will sufficiently explain and prove this.-A plan (he says) was concerted for surrendering the city of Stratus to king Perseus: and, on his march thither, Perseus met Archidamus, "per quem ei Stralus tradebatur." -Now the intended surrender never took place, nor was even attempted; whence "tradebatur" can only signify that the town was intended, or about to be, surrendered; or (expressing it in the active voice ‡) that Archidamus intended, or was preparing, to surrender the town-in other words, that affairs were in train for a surrender. Thus, in Martial, 10, 75Mille dabam nummos: noluit accipere"dabam" signifies, not "I gave," or "I was giving" (for there could be no giving, without acceptance), but "I was preparing to give"-" I made the offer of giving"-or, simply, "I offered:" and in Terence, Andria, 3, 3, 13, "olim, cum dabam," "when I was willing [ready, or preparing] to give." In like manner, we find the present tense used to express the simple intention, or the preparation for a future action not yet commenced, as in this passage of Terence (Andria, 2, 1, 1) "Daturne illa Pamphilo?" and these of Virgil,"Mopso Nisa datur (Ecl. 8, 26), and Dutur tibi puella, quam petis; datur" (Catalect. 4, 2); in all which cases, the "Datur" implies nothing more than the intention of giving the fair one in marriage, and the preparations for the wedding In the Andria alone, may be found six other examples of the present tense thus used to express the intention, or preparation for a future act; viz. "Dat," 2, 2, 15-" Dare," 2, 2, 16 "Dat," 2, 2, 34-" Non dat" (will not give refuses to give) 2, 3, 2— "Ducere," 2, 4, 8—“ Nubere," 2, 3,3; ---to which let me add this one example from Plautus, Mostell. 1, 1, 16 "Quod te in pistrinum scis actutum tradier". who, being a great admirer of the Writings of the late Mrs. Macaulay Graham, erected a whole-length marble statue of her, while she was living, in that Church, with an Inscription from an unauthenticated work, greatly in her praise and the Court upon application ordered it to be reremoval of them, in cases of repair or moved. The only regular mode of rebuilding of Churches, is by an application for a faculty to the same Court. As to those which are placed on any other than Ecclesiastical ground, as upon a road, or upon a waste, or upon what is called public ground-to remove or destroy them, able by the Courts of Common Law, is a trespass, or an offence, punish at the instance of either Trustees of Parish Officers (who with the Recthe Roads, or Lords of Manors, or tor are a Corporation), Trustees of of the plot of land on which the Moa Market-place, or by the purchasers bound to concur in protecting their nument was erected; all of whom are own grant, and to secure the public against any breach of the peace. when a Church is to be repaired, to It is not an unfrequent measure, remove the flag pavement which coand on which there are Inscriptions, vers the remains of departed persons, and not to replace them by any copy of the Inscriptions on the new stones. The relatives of such persons have "that you will be”........ "that you are their remedy in the Ecclesiastical on the point of being”. Yours, &c. Mr. URBAN, JOHN CAREY. April 3. YOUR Correspondent P. p. 232, YOUR regrets the removal of Monu mental Stones; and seeks for information," who are the persons empowered to remove or destroy them?"-The question involves that of the right of their erection. In a case lately decided between the Rector of St. Alban Wood-street and his Parish-officers, this question was ably argued and set at rest by the Court; that no Monument could be set up in any Church without the Rector's consent-and it has for ages been the regular practice for the Ecclesiastical Court to grant faculties for the erection of Monuments and Inscriptions thereon: and I recollect the case of Dr. Wilson, the Rector of St. Stephen Walbrook, Court against the Rector and Churchwardens, who cannot recall their consent theretofore given for the Inscription, and for which fees were paid, constituting the right as purchased thereby, and for destroying a public record which may be of the highest importance when Parish Registers may have been destroyed. It is scarcely possible to suppose a case where any Monument was erected in any public place without some record or memorandum of the consent or grant from the owners of the soil, with a covenant or undertaking from the purchaser and his heirs, most frequently accompanied with an endowment of rent of a field or house to keep it in due repair, rendering the remedies mutual by this mutual compact; for it is equally disgraceful to a County, or a Town, lo suffer a Monument thus made public to to go to decay, as it is for them to infringe the grant for its erection and I should very little doubt that, among the records of either the County of Kent or the Corporation of Maidstone, a diligent search would discover some grant of this kind for the erection of the Monument alluded to by P. in the Watery-lane of Maidstone-and if this shall be found to be a grant for any term of years only, and not in fee or perpetuity, there is no doubt that the plot reverted to the heir of the grantor, at the expiration of the term, by effluxion of time, but not by any traditionary right in the people to remove it at the termination of 100 years. Yours, &c. Mr. URBAN, A. H. April 24. KNOWING that the que and the specting Copy-right, and the claims of the Libraries, is shortly to be agitated again in Parliament, I intended to have addressed you at considerable length upon some of the particular merits of that question; but fearing that by so doing, at this late period of the Month, I might prevent the timely admission of my Letter into your Magazine, it shall be confined to a few very brief remarks. It appears to me, that if a fair comparative view were to be taken of the respective means of the parties claiming, and the parties complaining against the claim; those who might be induced to take such a view of the subject would from that moment desire and endeavour that the onerose tax of eleven copies might be forth with and for ever extinguished: not less out of regard to the true honour and dignity of the Public Bodies, than out of regard to that great object, the Encouragement of Literature, the means of accomplishing which appear to have been so little understood. To nine out of ten, however, of unsophisticated minds it is now obvious that that end will be best accomplished by relieving the poor labourers in Literature, and the adventurers on literary property, from a demand which they with one voice declare to have had, and still to have, a most discouraging and oppressive operation upon them. Upon the authority of a Master of Arts in the University of Oxford, I presume I am at liberty to state, that the Convocation lately determined on presenting 1000l. towards building Churches, 500l. to the National Schools, and 500l. to the Society for propagating the Gospel in foreign parts: making a total sum of 20007.; and that, when the ways and means by which the money should be raised to meet this expenditure were considered, it was agreed to levy for the next three years an additional shilling per quarter from each of the 3785 Meinbers of that University. Hence it appears, Mr. Urban, that the Convocation do possess and exercise a power to tax the Members of the University, and that a tax of one shilling per quarter from each member will raise upwards of 7501. per anDum. It will be admitted that a tax of one shilling per quarter is less than a penny per week in the proportion of 48 to 52 and upon reference to the Report of the last Committee on Copy-right it will also appear, that less than 500l. per annum will answer every useful purpose in the supply of books; so that a contribution of a penny per week for this object will leave a considerable surplus. Adverting to these facts, I cannot but most respectfully, yet most seriously, recommend to the Universities (presuming that they value their character for patriotism and public spirit at something more than a penny per week out of the pocket of each member) to adopt the mode of moderately taxing themselves for the supply of their Libraries. For, unquestionably, Sir, it will and ought to be asked, whether, if the Members of the Universities are unable to endure a tax amounting to less than a penny per week on each Member, for the support of their Libraries, it can be supposed that the much smaller number of persons who are in the situation of Authors and Publishers of expensive and highlyembellished works, in small impres sions, can possibly be supposed capable of enduring the weight of the tax, taken at its lowest estimate, which the sacrifice of these eleven copies imposes? Should Parliament, however, in its wisdom, think proper to grant an aid equal to the exigency, this mode will possess the additional advantage, that the public benefit stated to arise from the support of these Libraries will be provided for by a public burden. But, should should this not be the case, I venture to hope that the Universities will see it to be their duty to abandon the claim, and that the Legislature will relieve Literature from the impost. Yours, &c. THOMAS FISHER. Mr. URBAN, IN Bromley, Kent, March 26. N the print given in vol. LXXXVIII. part ii. p. 393, of the very ancient vaulting discovered to the Westward of the gothic crypt in St. Martin's-leGrand, two of its arches are represented as pointed, a character totally fatal to the idea of its high antiquity, were the delineation correct: but the fact is, that these arches are decidedly circular, and the whole building of a very peculiar construction. The centres of these arches are turned with bricks and tiles, evidently “Roman," many of them being scored with waving lines, as the bricks at the Roman villa near Bignor. The piers are built of Kentish rag-stone, the coigns are of squared masonry; and a few feet to the North of these vestiges a wall has been discovered of surprizing strength and thickness, also formed of the ragstone. These circumstances appear to authorize a conjecture that the building is even of much higher antiquity than the foundation of a Church on the spot in the time of the Saxon Heptarchy, and I believe they will tend strongly to confirm some assertions of Sir Christopher Wren with respect to the site of the Roman Londinium. The words of the Conqueror's charter would lead us to suppose that the wall in question was that of the city, they describing the Church of St. Martin as "Infra muros Londini site." Every day is removing some portion of this interesting ruin; which if these hasty conclusions be correct should have been preserved to the Londoners as a proof of civic Antiquity, in the same manner as the "Palais des Thermes" is to the Parisians. But here, alas! the Antiquary sees every hour but "disjectas moles avulsaque saxis Saxa." If the hand of destruction should not make a too rapid progress, I may have an opportunity of collecting materials to offer some better digested observations concerning these venerable relicks. A. J. K. Mr. as you are in all that relates to the customs and usages of mankind, you will, I hope, pardon me for applying to you for information upon certain points which I cannot gain from any other source. 66 You are of course aware that the Archbishop of Canterbury possesses, and sometimes exercises the right of conferring degrees, as Blackstone expresses it, in prejudice of the two Universities." Some of the highest dignitaries of our Church possess degrees from His Grace. The Bishop of Chester (Dr. Gastrell) in the year 1721, refused to institute a Mr. Peploe to the Wardenship of Manchester College, because the statutes required that the person to be so instituted should have the degree of B. D.; Mr. Peploe, already M. A. of Oxford, had received his degree of B. D. from Lambeth, and not from one of the two Universities, the Bishop affecting to consider the Archbishop's degree as not a sufficient qualification, arguing that the degree ought to be an University degree: the Court of King's Beach, however, confirmed the authority of the Archbishop, and decided that his degree was sufficient. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are possibly jealous of his Grace being possessed of this power, and be on his part is cautious in exercising it. The Archbishops grant degrees in Divinity, Law, and Physick; and taking it for granted that he uses discretion in conferring them, it is well that a power should be vested somewhere of rewarding particular persons with titles of honour in their particular professions, which persons could not gain them at the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, without beginning anew as Under-graduates, and thus sacrificing uselessly a very considerable portion of their lives. If then Lambeth degrees are considered as equal to those granted by either of the two Universities, as the distinguishing dress of different graduates in the different faculties varies in each University, what dress are the Lambeth graduates entitled to wear? The dignitaries of the Church, who possess Lambeth degrees of D. D. wear the Doctor's hood and gown. What is the proper dress of the graduates in the different faculties? IGNOTUS. |