"Sir After a long contemplation of his measure, William," says he, "if you value this glass tie a good long string to it, to draw him up again, for I shall swallow him down at one time or another." 21. At the close of something read by a balladmonger in the street he cried, "God save the King and the Parliament!" Says a merry fellow that went by," God save the King, the Parliament will look well enough to save themselves!" LXIX. BEES. In some parts of Yorkshire it is the custom to place the bees in mourning when the head of a family dies. The Reverend George Oliver, in his History of Beverley, relates that "an instance of this observance took place in the month of July 1827, on the death of an inmate only, in a cottager's family. On the day of interment the important ceremony was performed with great solemnity. A scarf of black crape was formally appended to each beehive; and an offering of pounded funeral-biscuit soaked in wine was placed at its entrance; attended probably with secret prayers that the sacrifice might be efficacious to preserve the colony from fatuitous destruction."1 LXX. OMNIBUSES. "Multa renascentur quae jam cecidere." HORAT. ad Pisones, l. 70. SUCH is the motto of a small tract published at Paris in 1828, by M. Monmerqué, with the title of Les Carosses a cinq sols, ou Les Omnibus du dix-septième siècle,—“ Coaches at five sous, or Omnibuses in the seventeenth century." Hackney-carriages, he says, existed in the French capital so early as the minority of Louis XIV. One Nicolas Sauvage established himself in the rue SaintMartin, opposite to the rue de Montmorency, in a large house, where he hung up for a sign the image of Saint Fiacre;2 and hired out carriages by the hour 1 Oliver's History and Antiquities of the Town and Minster of Beverley, p. 499. Beverley, 1829. 2 Saint Fiacre lived in the seventh century. Butler claims him as a native of Ireland; Boece, Leslie, Dempster, Camerarius, King, and other Scotish martyrologists, assert that he was the son of King Eugenius the Fourth of Scotland; but it is unfortunately by no means clear that such a king ever reigned. Saint Fiacre was however held in good account in Scotland; the church of Nigg in the Mearns, and probably that of Moffat in Annandale, were 2 or day. These vehicles took the name which they still bear from the Saint, at least before the year 1645, as appears from a passage in the works of Sarrasin. Sauvage sought no privilege of monopoly, and his example being speedily followed, hackney-carriages were to be found in almost every part of Paris. At length, in January 1662, the Duke de Roanès, the Marquis de Sourches, and the Marquis de Crenan, obtained letters-patent by which the exclusive power was conferred on them of establishing coaches to run from one part of the city to another by certain fixed routes, and at determined hours, the fare of each passenger being five sous. These omnibuses began to ply on the 18th March dedicated to him. His celebrity on the Continent was much wider; he was the patron of Brye, and took special charge of a malady called le fic. The account of his miracles was a favourite book, and even furnished the theme for a rude dramatic performance: "La vie de Monseigneur S. Fiacre, également avec une farce," appears in the Mystères Inédits du Quinzième Siècle, lately published at Paris by M. Achille Jubinal. He still retains his place in the calendar of the French church. Those who wish to learn more of his pious exploits may be referred to the following sources, Dempsteri Hist. Ecclesiast. Gent. Scot. p. 278; Boetii Scot. Hist. fol. 173; Leslaeus de Reb. Gest. Scot. pp. 155, 156, edit. 1578; Breviarium Abredonense, prop. sanct., mens. Aug. die xxx ; Butler's Lives of the Saints, vol. ii. p. 379, and the authorities there cited; Book of BonAccord, pp. 268, 378, 379. Aberd. 1839. 1662; and the event was celebrated by Loret, a contemporary rhymer, who apparently belongs to the same school of poets with Dugald Graham, the bellman of Glasgow: "L'établissement des carrosses Tirés par des chevaux non rosses, A commencé d'aujourd'huy mesme ; Qu'on donne pour chaque voyage, Le dix-huit de mars nostre veine According to Sauval, a writer on the antiquities of Paris, these carriages were for some days followed by the populace, who hooted and pelted them with 1 "Loret, Muse historique, liv. xiii. Lettre onzième, datée du 18 mars 1662." U stones. M. Monmerqué thinks this doubtful; Loret says nothing of it; and a letter by Madame Perier,1 the sister of the famous Pascal, with a postscript by Pascal himself, speaks of the joy of the public at the appearance of the coaches at five sous. Pascal's connexion with the enterprise is unquestionable; and the writers of the period say that it was first devised by him. Sauval asserts this expressly; and Madame de Sévigné seems to allude to it by an abrupt transition in one of her letters from Pascal to Postilions: "Apropos of Pascal, I am quite enchanted with the politeness of Messieurs les postillons, who are constantly on the streets to fetch and carry our letters." M. de Monmerqué, however, does not think it probable that the author of the Lettres Provinciales invented the Omnibus. He was at that time so broken down by premature infirmities that he had abandoned all his studies, even the most favourite, and devoted himself only to works of piety: he had even ceased to write letters to his friends. It is more likely that he only advanced funds to the undertaking for the sake of his friend the Duke de Roanès, who had obtained the exclusive privilege. The first line of omnibuses was established on the 2 Gilberte Pascal, wife of Florin Perier, conseill à la cour des Aides de Clermont-Ferrand. She became a widow in 1672, and died in 1687. |