really was. "Le Boucher étoit anciennement un surnom glorieux qu'on donnoit à un general, après une victoire, en reconnoissance du carnage qu'il avoit fait de trente ou quarante mille hommes." --Essais Historiques sur Paris, par Saintfoix. Whoever will take the pains to turn to Bayle's Dictionary, Art. Capet, may see what strange endeavours were made to fix this meaning upon the expressions used by the poet Dante, and which very clearly seemed to say, that the head of the Capetian Stock was the son of a Butcher, which gave great offence to Francis the First, when the passage became known to him. The celebrated Djezzar, Pacha of Acre, of whom Dr. Clarke has given so remarkable an account in his Travels, assumed the name he bore out of pure ostentation; and which, in the Turkish language, expressly signifies Butcher. I have already spoken of several good old country customs, which in too many parts of the kingdom have been suffered to become obsolete, particularly Christmas festivities: as I am writing this at Christmas time, the following lines seem so admirably adapted both to the season and the subject, that I shall venture to conclude the Section with them. "Get ivye and hull, woman, deck up thyne house: And feaste thy poor neighbour, the great and the small.” ANCIENT ETIQUETTE. WE must not fancy that questions of etiquette, rank and precedence, family prejudices, &c. are of modern date, or confined to any species of government, or order of society. The Romans paid as great attention to these things, as any people perhaps on the face of the earth; as the following law, in the famous Theodosian Code, may particularly serve to shew, being a matter of public authority—“ Si quis indebitum sibi locum usurpaverit; nulla se ignorantia defendat: sitque plane sacrilegii reus, qui divina præcepta neglexerit." Surely etiquette could not well be carried higher, than by making an involuntary breach of it, in ignorantly taking a wrong seat, tantamount to sacrilege; for such is very evidently the spirit and purport of the above citation. The first place was however almost the exclusive object of contention, for as Ausonius says, " Nulla est quidem Contumelia Secundi, sed ex duobus, Gloria magna prælati." In our own country, by 1 the laws of Canute, a person sitting above his station, was to be pelted out of his place by stones, without the privilege of taking offence; but this is not quite so bad as in India, where by the Gentoo laws, which for what we know may be as old as any, "a Sooder who should be convicted of sitting upon the carpet of a Bramin, was either to have a hot iron applied to the part offending, and be banished, or, suffer positive excision of the part." An ex post facto law with a witness! Aulus Gellius supplies us with some curious cases of Roman etiquette. A father and a son came to visit the Philosopher Taurus at Athens; the son happened to be Prætor (at the time) of the Province of Crete. Being arrived at the house of the Philosopher, a seat was offered to the father, which he declined in favor of his more dignified son, and in deference to his public and magisterial character. The Philosopher disputed the propriety of this, alleging that though such deference on the part of the father might be proper enough in public, such ceremonies, on all private occasions, should give way to claims and pretensions more fixed and natural. Aulus Gellius upon this introduces another story from the Roman History, as particularly applicable. A son who was Consul, happening in his rides to meet his father, who had served the office the year before, and was therefore only Proconsul at the time, the latter forbore to pay the respect of getting off his horse, on the ground of his being the Consul's father. The lictors in attendance upon the son, knowing the harmony subsisting between them, were at first at a loss how to act, till the son absolutely bade them to compel his father to dismount; to which the latter was not only wise enough to submit, but at the same time failed not highly to commend his son, for supporting his public dignity. The Romans seem to have had too great credit given them, in general, for that high-minded spirit of republicanism, which overlooks all accidental differences, in estimating the worth and merits of individuals; and is gratified rather than otherwise, with the unexpected elevation of the humble and lowly. Horace in his IVth Epode, though it must be confessed, the subject of the Ode, Menas, Pompey's Freedman, seems to have been a very shabby sort of gentleman, speaks with rather too much contempt of the |