Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/471

 ii. DEO. 10, -98.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

463

that "a man's life 'consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth" (St. Luke xii. 15) the great lesson which, in varied form, it was the main design of Boethius to teach, and in teaching which " he was not of an age, but for all time."

In the following extracts the page refer- ences are to the Antwerp edition, 1607, which, in addition to the text, contains the commen- tary and critical notes of the learned jurisconsult Joh. Bernartius.

" Quid est, O homo, quod te in msestitiam, luctumque dejecit? Novum credo aliquid, inusita- tumque vidisti. Tu, si fortunam putas erga te esse mutatam, erras. Hi semper ejus mores; haec natura est. Servavit circa te propriam potius in ipsa sui mutabilitate constantiam. P. 22.

" Fortunae te regendum dedisti, dominae moribus oportet obtemperes. Tu vero yolventis rotae inipe- tum retinere conaris? At omnium mortalium stoli- dissime, si manere incipit, sors esse desistit." P. 23.

"Vellem autem pauca tecum Fortunae ipsius verbis agitare. Tu igitur an jus poetulet, animad- verte. Quid tu, O homo, ream me quotidianis agis querelis? Quam tibi fecimus injuriam ? Quae tua tibi detraximus bona? Quovis judice de opum dignitatumque mecum possessione contende? Et si cujusquam mortalium proprium quidhorum esse monstraveris, ego ea tua fuisse, quae repitis, sponte

concedam Quid ingemiscis? Nulla tibi a nobis

illata est violentia. Opes, honores, ceteraque talium mei sunt juris. Dominam famulae cognoscunt; mecum veniunt, me abeunte discedunt. Audacter affirmam, si tua forent, quae amissa conquereris, nullo modo perdidisses." P. 24.

" Etsirara est fortuitis rebusmanendifides, ultimus tamen vitse dies mors quaedam fortunae est etiam manentis. Quid igitur referre putas ? ; Tune illam moriendo deseras, ilia an te fugiendo?" P. 28.

" Quid mortales, extra petitis intra vos positam

felicitatem? Si tui compos fueris, possidebis

quod nee tu unqnam amittere velis, nee fortuna possit auferre." P. 31.

" Verum illud est, permultis indigere eos qm per- multa possideant; contraque minimo, qui abund- antiam suam naturae necessitate, non ambitus superfluitate metiantur. Ita ne autem nullum esse proprium vobis, atque insitum bonum ut in exterius, ac sepositis rebus bona vestra quaeratis ? "P. 35.

"Si vitae hujas callem vacuus viator intrasses, coram latrone cantares. O prseclara opum mor- talium beatitude, quam cum adeptus fueris, securus esse desistis ! " P. 36.

"Taeeo, quod naturae minimum, quod avaritiae nihil satis est. Quare si opes nee summovere indi- gentiam, possunt et ipsae suam faciunt, quid est quod eas sufficientiam praestare credatis?"- P. 54.

"Hoc igitur (felicitas) quod est unum, simplexque natura, pra vitas humana dispertit, et, dum rei quse partibus caret, partem conatur adipisci, nee por- tionem, quse nulla est, nee ipsam, quam minime affectat, assequitur." P. 65.

R. M. SPENCE, D.D.

Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B.

THE ROMAN GHETTO. The Ghetto in Rome moved me to wide-eyed wonder in the first

days of 1843. The Jews at thao date were shut into that quarter, and had no egress except through gates of iron, at which a guard of soldiers was stationed. On the outer wall of the church nearest the principal gate a priest was frescoed in canonicals with arms uplifted and outspread, beneath the legend : "Tota die expandi rnanus meas ad

Bpulum non credentem, et contradicentem." lese words of the Latin Vulgate are in our version : "All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gain- saying people." Local tradition affirmed that Jews had been forced to crowd that church frequently and hear a sermon for their own conversion.

These memories are roused by a question recently asked by my neighbours, namely, Why were Jews at Rome obliged to wear a national badge, especially a large letter O of a yellow colour on the breast ? My answer has been that o is, in Italian, the initial of omicida, which means a murderer. Every Jew was classed among the murderers of Christ, and holy men found Scripture for this judgment in Matthew xxvii. 25, " His blood be on us and on our children " (" et super filios nostros"). If Jacob's blessing abided on his descendants through all generations, why should not the curse assumed by the chief priests and elders be equally lasting ?

But how came yellow to be counted the colour of shame 1 My answer is conjectural, and ventured with the hope of provoking a better one. Some popular artist early chanced to paint Judas or Cain with a beard or coat of yellow, and thus unawares put a curse on the colour which outlasted his picture. Yellow in Shakespeare's era was clearly in bad odour. He speaks of " a little yellow beard, a Cain-coloured beard" ('Merry Wives,' I. iv. 23), and of hair "of the dis- sembling colour," "something browner than Judas's" ('As You Like It,' III. iv.).

Socrates was more glad to find himself wrong than right. So must be every sincere seeker for truth. JAMES D, BUTLER.

Madison, Wis., U.S.

SEEKING A CORPSE WITH BREAD AND QUICKSILVER. At an inquest in Northamp- tonshire recently the following evidence was given :

"A man named Edward Bird said that his em- ployer (deceased's father) asked him one day last week to get a loaf and some quicksilver. Witness did so, and Mr. Walker, who was at present an invalid, poured some quicksilver on the loaf, and told witness to throw it into Fawsley Pond, because on the day Miss Walker disappeared she told him that the bodies of drowning persons could be found by those mea.ns, She said it the loaf was thrown