Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/288

 "234 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vm. MARCH w, 1921. village houses, in contradistinction to land ^which, at some more recent period, had been improved, or enclosed, from the waste. By the customs of many manors, new enclosures ^were held subject to different conditions from those governing the ancient cultivated .lands. WM. SELF-WEEKS. Westwood, Clitheroe. Do the notes at the latter reference throw any light on the place-name Austerfield, borne by a small village or hamlet near Bawtry ? C. C. B. "DEATH AS FRIEND" (12 S. viii. 191). Good Words for May, 1893 (vol. xxxiv., pp. 344, et seq.) contained an article by J. M. Gray, on the artist who produced the drawing entitled ' Der Tod also Freund,' from which I extract the following : " Alfred Eethel was bom at Aix-la-Chapelle on May 15, 1816 the 4th son of an official of the French Government from Strasburg, who married the daughter of a prosperous tradesman, and started a chemical manufactory at Diepenbend House near Aix. Before he had attained his 6th year he fell beneath the wheels of a passing waggon and his head was severely injured. His ?*ecovery was slow and gradual. At the age of 13 Jie executed a design which procured his ^admission to the Diisseldorf Academy. At the -age of 21 he went to Frankfort to study under Philip Veit, the painter of ' The Heavenly Stranger ' which has been regarded as the prototype of
 * Holman Hunt's ' Light of the World.' Bethel

decorated the restored Council Chamber of Aix with frescoes, which he commenced in 1843. He was married in 1850. His health failed, and liis mind became affected, and after a return from -a visit to Borne in 1852 his malady increased. He was placed in an asylum at Dusseldorf and died on December 1, 1859. In two of his works he deals with the power and presence of death. 'They delineate, in telling symbolism, two con- trasted modes of the coming to mortality of the King of Terrors. " The first design ' Death the Avenger ' was .suggested by the appearance of the cholera at a masked ball in Paris in 1831. The story goes that this drawing so haunted the artist friends of Bethel to whom it was shown, that it mingled with their dreams, and that they could not rid themselves of its memory, and it was in expiation that he produced the second design * Death the .Friend.' ". * $ The writer of the article observes that on r the technical side, the original woodcuts are not less remarkable than for their imaginative qualities. The method of draw- ing is founded on that of Albert Diirer, upon the broad, firm, clear line-work which he employs in the subjects, which were after- wards produced in facsimile by his wood engravers. They' show the keenest percep- tion of the various objects to be portrayed and the simplest and most direct use of the line to express the forms, and in these respects they afford valuable examples to the student. Not less remarkable are they in composition, in the dignified and monu- mental disposition of their masses, and in their telling and effective arrangements of light and shade. Both the technical excel- lence and the emotional power of these designs were recognized by Ruskin. In his ' Elements of Drawing ' he places them in his list of things to be studied, and in his ' Modern Painters ' he refers to ' Death the Avenger' and 'Death the Friend' as two inexpressibly noble and pathetic wooclcut grotesques. WM. SELF-WEEKS. Westwood, Clitheroe. It may interest your correspondent to know that there is a stained-glass window copied from the print he describes in Hawsker Church near Whitby, Underneath is the couplet : Be the day weary, be the day long At length it ringeth to evensong. JOHN A. KNOWLES. 23 Stonegate, York. ' Der Tod als Freund ' was one of a series of wood-engravings published by H. Biirk- ner at Dresden. The artist was Richard Julius Jungtow, who was born at Dresden on Sept. 12, 1828. I do not know when he died. The notice of him in the ' Allgemeines Kiinstler-Lexicon,' by H. A. Miiller and H. W. Singer (Frankfurt am M., 1896) runs as follows : " Jungtow, Bichard Julius, Holzschneider, geb. 12 Sept., 1828, in Dresden, Schuler von Biirkner. Er schnitt nach Zeichnungen von Bethel, Schnorr, Bichter, &c." This engraving was popular at Oxford and Cambridge in the nineties. JOHN B. WAINE WRIGHT. ROYAL BRITISH BANK (12 S. viii. 130, 175). The genesis of this ill-fated concern is thus given in Irving' s ' Annals of our Time,' 1848 : " Nov. 22. Meeting at the London Tavern of speculators desirous of establishing a ' British Bank ' on the principle of the Scotch companies." So shortly before the failure of the Royal British Bank on Sept. 3, 1856, as January 24 in that year, the Board of Trade had certi- fied an addition of 100,OOOZ. to the capital. The trial of the Directors occupied thirteen days and a subsequent application by the convicted directors and officials was refused. One director was at the trial fined a shilling ;
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