founded on original documents, and they are illustrated with views and plans, some of which are drawn by the authors, and others reproduced from the stores of the Public Record Office and the manuscript collections at Hatfield.
To a Londoner the paper on 'The Friars as Builders' will, perhaps, appeal most strongly. The writers say with perfect truth that "the modern history of the Tower is a long record of destruction and misguided restoration, and its position has sunk to the level of a show. To the average Londoner it ranks with the Zoo and the waxworks, and he regards a visit to the Tower as one of those childish things which he has long put away." But Fleet Street is the nerve-centre of the country, and makes a daily appeal to every one. History is recorded where history was made. The printing presses of The Times rest almost on the spot where Catherine of Aragon appeared to protest against her divorce before Cardinals Campeggio and Wolsey, while the offices of Punch have succeeded the walls within which the solemn offices of the Church were intoned by the White Friars four hundred years ago. The romantic side of their subject has not been lost sight of by the writers of this valuable contribution to exact antiquarian knowledge, and their information—aided by an adequate Index–is conveyed to the reader with commendable taste and lucidity.
Glasgow Cross, with a Suggestion as to the Origin of Scottish Market Crosses. By William George Black. (Glasgow and Edinburgh, William Hodge.)
Those of our correspondents who have been interested in the notes on the Rolandssäulen which have lately appeared in our columns should be glad to know of this interesting monograph. The Scottish burghal "cross," the writer argues, was not originally an ecclesiastical erection. Adopted as such in later days, and surmounted then by the Christian emblem, it was first the stone of justice, the station or platform of the judge or president of a market. Upon this, or in place of this, he would suggest, there then came to be set up a stone column, the significance of which was religious. These communal stones or pillars after the spread of Christianity in the country had next sometimes—but not invariably—a wooden cross fastened upon them (of which an example is preserved at Kilwinning) later exchanged for the stone carving of a cross either on the stone itself or on a top-piece affixed to it. Before the cross was thus used, and, in many examples, afterwards, the column was often crowned oy a ball, or, more characteristically, by a pine-cone; and to this day these columns, misnamed "crosses," are numerous in Scotland.
England furnishes no examples of the communal stone here intended, but Dr. Black finds their analogue in the well-known Perrons of Liège and other Belgian towns, and in the Rolands- and Erminsäulen of Germany. He here makes a very interesting connexion, which, if we follow D'Alviella, would link the Scottish market cross to the cone found on Etruscan tombs and to the cylindrical altars of Mycenæ.
We think, however, that further work along the lines he sketches out will cause Dr. Black to invert the order of the first two stages of development as he has set them down. It is surely more consonant with what is known of cults connected with stones to suppose that the judge or president took up his position by a sacred monolith, raised, for conspicuousness and veneration, upon a platform of stones, than to suppose that a sacred column took the place of a stone which was at first a judgment seat—that is, wherever the two coincided.
Dr. Black gives good reason for thinking that the puzzle of the Cross at Glasgow, about the demolition of which, and also its later whereabouts, a double tradition exists, was correctly solved by the conjecture that there were two structures known as "the Cross," the one a Tron stone and the other a Cross pillar, the latter being probably that octagon monolith, 20 feet long, and spangled with golden thistles, which came down so precipitately in 1745 or 1746.
Researches in Aryan Philology. By Rev. J. Parry. (Birmingham, Midland Educational Co.)
In philological matters Mr. Parry is a free-thinker, and holds himself unfettered by the laws of linguistic science. Curtius and Fick and Max Müller and Skeat give him no trouble; he is a law unto himself. He therefore does not feel himself bound to give any authority for his amazing verbal equations. A single quotation from his brochure will sufficiently indicate his method:—
"In Latin ambo is a couple. If we assume original form was gago we readily arrive at it: gago, gango, gnago, gnabo, nabo, anbo, ambo" (p. 16).
Goldsmith's method was simpler than this. To prove the identity of the Chinese Ko Ti with Julius Cæsar, we have but to change Ko into Julius and Ti into Caesar, and the thing is done. The strange thing is that Mr. Parry was formerly a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Winter's Pie (Offices of The Sphere and The Tatter) is, as all the former Pies have been, a delectable dish. It is certainly not a case of too many cooks, for each contributor adds to its perfection. This causes no surprise, for the names of both authors and artists tell at once the pleasure in store. We offer our hearty congratulations to Mr. Hugh Spottiswoode. May the result be a good addition to the funds of the institutions to be benefited!
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