Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/269

 12 s. ix. SEPT. io, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 219 year, I send the following on the chance of it being new to him : " And when I died, like Flora fair, I left the commonwealth my heir." Matthew Prior, ' Poetical Works,' edited by R. Brimley Johnson (1892), vol. ii., p. 251, being the concluding lines of one of Prior's more trivial epigrams that begins : " Reader, I was born and cried." EDWARD BENSLY. on Mlthraism and Christianity : A Study in Com- parative Religion. By L. Patterson. (Cambridge University Press, 6s. net.) WE desire to recommend this little book to the notice of students who are not prepared to tackle Cumont's monumental work, yet desire to acquaint themselves with the elements of Mithraism. The author has evidently gone care- fully into most of what has been written on this subject, whether controversial or scientific, and he puts before us succinctly pretty well all that is known of the cult of Mithra. We think he should have stated exactly what are the nature and amount of the material upon which our knowledge depends a point important in any historical study, but especially so in the history of comparative religion, and yet again in an account of a cult which plays a part, as Mithraism does, in living debate. We also think that a certain number of the writers whom he quotes as authori- ties are hardly weighty enough for his purpose, being rather authors of popular works than original scholars. TheMiscussion of the differences and resemblances between Mithraism and Chris- tianity is in some places rather feeble, descend- ing even to the unsupported pronouncement that " we must content ourselves with saying that the case for the wholesale borrowing from Mithraism by Christianity is not, in our judgment, demon- strated." Herein, it seems to us, the writer has missed an opportunity and does less than justice to a strong case. Nevertheless, although we would have wished for a more vigorous handling of disputed points, we recognize this as a careful piece of work, well plotted out within the limits drawn and deserving to be made use of by intelligent readers. The Origin and Evolution of the Human Race. By Albert Churchward. (George Allen and Unwin, 2 5s. net.) DR. CHURCHWARD commands respect by his immense industry and energy. His line of thought, as those who have read his ' Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man ' already know, is allied to that of Gerald Massey. Egypt has been the starting- place of his theories, and he works onward from his interpretation of the antiquities remaining in I^ypt. This book takes in its sweep all the known world and a good deal of the unknown. Dr. Churchward, having settled it that Man first arose in Africa, proceeds to classify the genus Homo on the basis of that assumption, and of the divers cults that prevail or have prevailed through- out the genus, announcing from the very first that the classification adopted by " our present and past Professors of Anthropology and Ethno- logy " is incorrect. Two million years is the age of Man according to Dr. Churchward ; and within this period there have been evolved pre-totemic and non-anthropophagous people ; people totemic and anthropophagous ; stellar mythos people ; and people of the Lunar and Solar cults. " From the ashes and decay of the Solar Cult Egyptians," he tells us, " Christianity and new nations arose- the Assyrian, the Persian, the Babylonian, the Greek, and the Roman followed by the rise and fall of other nations, and a dark and degenerate age for thousands of years ensued, from the downfall of the Egyptians, as far as a higher spiritual type of the human was concerned." We are not able to follow Dr. Churchward in his arguments. Indeed, he supports them rather by vehemence of statement than by reason- ing or show of proof. His detail is multitudinous, but his use of what he has amassed, uncritical. Only readers who have accepted his main posi- tions and these will be found difficult of accep- tance, except by a blind confidence in the author can be expected to acquiesce in his conclusions and in his general interpretation of man and the cosmos. The book, however, has one merit not to be ignored the abundance and high standard of its illustrations. As containing a collection of fresh photographs of types from primitive peoples all over the world it is worth noting by the student of anthropology. Old Works and Past Days in Rural Buckingham- shire. By G. Eland. (Aylesbury : De Fraine and Co.) MR. ELAND, in his preface, warns us that his pam- phlet is only concerned with facts and therefore contains no " purple patches." We found that announcement cheering, nor has there been the least need to qualify our approval on the score of dullness. Mr. Eland is an enthusiast. Every year for the last ten years, so he tells us, he has tramped more than a thousand miles up and down Bucking- hamshire. The eagerness which impelled him in this exercise, and the resoluteness with which he has examined, inquired, verified and tracked down, come through on to his pages and light them up with a pleasant vitality. He writes of Moats ; Furniture and Fittings ; Watermills and Windmills ; Dovecots ; Straw-plaiting and Duck- breeding as industries of the vale ; Barns and Threshing, and Old Farming Ways. On all of these subjects he gives definite infor- mation, and where, as in the chapter on Mills, this involves a certain amount of technical detail, his information is set out very deftly and clearly. This is the more to be valued because what he is chiefly concerned with is vanishing from the Eng- lish country-side. He had the luck one winter night to see men playing langterloo in an inn ; he can assure us that what are so often called gun- racks over country mantelpieces were put up in reality to hold the long-vanished and forgotten spit ; he has been told that the reason why the modern shepherd no longer uses the crook is the increased tractability of the sheep. The chapter on Dovecots is particularly delightful. Some fifteen of these out of a considerably greater num- ber are here described, the last and largest being