Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/125

 'EB.ii.rn] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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rqwnlow still possesses the lands at Pinchbeck hich were tilled by his yeoman forefathers.

THE article on ' Slavery in Modern Scotland ' in ie Edinburgh Review for January will come as a relation to many persons. That slavery existed i Scotland until about a century ago is, we need 3t say, a familiar fact to legal antiquaries and to lose who have made the condition of the working asses of our island a special object of study; but lough it has been mentioned over and over again i works easy of access, it has made little impres- ixm on the popular mind, and we believe that the orange and revolting facts which this article dis- loses will come as a revelation to many. How lavery could have continued to exist so long in the ister kingdom has been a puzzle to almost every ne who has speculated on the subject. It has ommonly been explained as a late survival from he Middle Ages ; but this is certainly not the case, or there were no slaves, properly so called, in Scotland after very early times, and to Scotland >elongs the credit (and a great honour it is) of laving got rid of bond-services at an earlier period han the other countries of Europe. Though a olitary vestige or two may be found at a later date, nfree labour had become virtually extinct in the xmrteenth century. We do not hear of much overty existing in Scotland previous to the >olitical changes of the sixteenth century. In earlier times the population was small and thinly scattered, and the people lived rudely, but, except in times of famine, rarely, if ever, fell into abject poverty. The fall of the monasteries with the trans- ference of their large estates, whatever good may have resulted from it in other respects, was a great immediate evil f9r the poor. The monks did not understand political economy, and many of the doles they gave would now be condemned by all thoughtful humanitarians. But they kept the people quiet ; perhaps we should not be going too far if we said they rendered their lives in a great degree happy. When, however, the religious houses fell and their charities suddenly came to an end, a change was effected with which the landowners and the official class did not know how to cope. The country was overrun by wandering beggars, sturdy men and women, often accompanied by young children, who must have been a terror to quiet folk who did not live in a fortified house or under the shadow of the walls of a castle. Scottish slavery was an endeavour to meet this evil by drastic legislation. Nothing can be said in defence of the means adopted, but we must not think too hardly of the legislators. They were at their wits' end, and no means occurred to them of pro- tecting the community except the one they adopted. It must be remembered that the repugnance to slavery is a plant of very modern growth. A Low- land laird or a Highland chieftain of the sixteenth or seventeenth century ought not to be severely blamed because he did not feel the same sympathy for the working man as is now professed by mem- bers of Parliament. That, as the writer says, "the serfdom of the Scotch colliers was really the creation of the social legislation of the period immediately succeeding the Reformation " does not admit of doubt, but the evil grew. When the poison had once entered the system of the body politic, laws progressively more and more severe were enacted until late in the seventeenth century. The paper on "Stonewall" Jackson is a review of Col.

Henderson s new book relating to the great Con- federate soldier. It is a very picturesque account ot one we must admire for his virtues and military genius, whatever we may hold to have been the rights or the wrongs of the cause for which he fought. The paper on ' Plunket and Catholic Emancipation is on the borderland of those sub- jects with which 'N. & Q.' abstains from dealing. It is a subject on which it is not easy to be bright but we think the writer might have put more life into his pages. The papers on the writings of Wagner and on Burne - Jones as an artist are excellent.

NEW LIGHT ON MARLOWE AND KYD' is the sub- ject of a paper by Mr. Frederick S. Boas which is likely to arrest much attention in the Fortniahtly. It is concerned with the charge of atheism freely brought against Marlowe by certain of his contem- poraries. The initial discovery on which the whole rests is that of Mr. Gordon Goodwin concern- ing Kyd's parentage, which saw the light in 'N. & Q ' 8&S. v. 305. The documents tie di" covery of which are announced are in Harl. MS. 6848, and consist of papers seized when Kyd in 1593 was arrested, ascribed to Marlowe, and giving the views then regarded as atheistical, but now likely to be simply classed as Unitarian. We cannot dwell upon the nature of the affirmations made. To all interested in the "Dead Shepherd " who was one of the first, if not the first, to tune the language to perfect lyrical utterance, the paper must necessarily commend itself. The first part of ' France since 1814,' by Baron Pierre de Coubertin is a thoughtful and philosophical paper, which may do something to simplify to English minds modern Irench history. Mr. Richard Davey has discovered in M. Albert du Bois ' A New Novelist.' M. du Bois seems to owe to Flaubert a portion of his inspiration. He is, we are told, an attache to the Belgian Legation in London. His work is welcome if only as a change from the pictures of moral disease and leprosy which have been set before us of late. Major Arthur Griffiths reviews Butler's 'Life of Sir G. Pomeroy-Colley.' Mr. Walter Frewen Lord, in the Nineteenth Century, attempts an apology for or shall we say a vindication of? -'Lord Beaconsneld's Novels.' He is eloquent in their defence, though we doubt whether his advo- cacy will bring them again into favour. In our early youth we read them all, and were disposed to rank ' Henrietta Temple ' as what would then have been called a "ripping" love story. We should hesitate before attempting a reperusal. Mr. Lord holds, however, that ' Tancred' "should take rank immediately after ' Esmond,' if not side by side with that masterpiece." That Disraeli's novels have wonderful spirit, vivacity, and cleverness must be conceded. That they are likely to interest the coming generation, or that which has already arrived, we doubt. The Hon. Emily Lawless give's a very Bright account of 'Florentine Gardens in March. One curious innovation in this amuses us. She speaks of the familiar single scarlet anemone in the masculine, and calls it a " fellow." We had always held that flowers were all feminine. Shak- speare, at least, speaks of marigolds and pale prim- roses as, by implication, brides of the sun. Mr. J. P. Wallis has some rather saddening reflections on ' Liberty of the Press in France.' Mr. C. D. E. Fortnum writes on ' The Maiolica of Faenza,' Mr A. S. Kurd pleads earnestly for 'An All-British Cable