Imatges de pàgina
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whether the insect elaborates it from the pollen of flowers, or from an animal secretion, we may leave naturalists to determine. The wax is used by the bee to construct the honeycomb. When separated by pressure, melting in hot water, subsidence, and cooling, it presents itself as a softish yellow substance. By subsequent melting, stretching out into a kind of ribbon, and exposure to bleaching agents, it becomes white or bleached wax, more pure than the yellow, and having a somewhat higher melting point. In making this substance into wax candles, several prepared wicks are suspended over a vessel of melted wax, the wax is poured to a sufficient thickness on the wicks by a ladle, and the candles when cooled are made cylindrical and polished by rolling on a smooth table.

There

rived from those favoured insects.
are some indications of such a use of wax
as far back as the third century; through-
out the whole history of the Roman Catholic
Church the usage has been maintained.
There was at one time in England a due
called wax-shot or wax-scot, a gift of wax
candles presented to churches three times
a year. What were called wax-rolls were
pieces or cakes of wax, flat circular discs,
presented to churches, for the use of which
they were made into candles or tapers, and
some other sacred things. It is known
that in the Anglo-Saxon times, under
Elfric and Edgar, lights were used on the
altar during mass, while others were held
in the hands of attendants during the read-
ing of the gospel; and at all times since,
the gift of candles, or of wax to make them,
was deemed an acceptable religious service.

Wax lights were indispensable accompaniments to the other adornments of Several illustrations of this subject are the royal palace, the feudal castle, and the to be met with in Mr. Toulmin Smith's baronial mansion of the olden time. In recently published work, an antiquarian the Wardrobe Accounts of Edward the book almost as pleasant as a romance. Fourth, somewhat less than four centuries We mean the Original Ordinances of more ago, there is a curious entry to the follow-than One Hundred Early English Gilds. ing effect: William Whyte, talloughchaundeller, for iij dosen and ix lb. of p's candell, for to light when the king's highness and goode grace on a nyght come unto his sayd grete warderobe, and at other divers tymes." From other entries it appears that p's was sometimes spelled peris, sometimes pares, sometimes parys; it is believed that the lights so used were called Paris candles. In that singular forerunner of our modern books of etiquette, called the Boke of Curtasye, written about the same period as the Wardrobe Accounts above adverted to, there is distinct mention of wax candles and Paris candles, but without any notification as to the materials whereof the latter were made:

In chambre no lyght ther shalle be brent But of wax, thereto yf ye take tent: In halle at soper schalle candels brenne Of Parys, therein that alle men kenne. Here we are told of wax candles in the chamber and Paris candles in the hall, the former probably more delicate and costly than the latter

The use of lighted wax candles in cathe drals, churches, and religious processions, and in connection with funerals, can be traced back through a long series of ages. There is an old Welsh legend to the effect that wax lights are used on the altar because bees derive their origin from Paradise, and are especially blessed by the Almighty; therefore mass ought not to be performed without the aid of the wax de

Wax candles, or

There is a dispute as to whether we should
say gild or guild; but this need not detain
us here. Very nearly five hundred years
ago, a parliament held at Cambridge in the
time of Richard the Second ordered that
returns should be made to the king in
council as to the ordinances, usages, and
properties of the English gilds. The re-
turns seem to have been duly made and
forwarded; and the original parchments on
which many of them were written still re-
main in the Record Office, where Mr. Toul-
min Smith has ferreted them out by dint of
great industry and care.
wax to make into candles, are frequently
mentioned in the records, sometimes as
presentations to churches, abbeys, and con-
vents, sometimes as forfeits or penalties.
The Guild of Garlekhith (near the present
Garlick-hill) had a rule that all the members
should meet four times a year, on pain of
forfeiting a pound of wax; and the same
forfeiture was imposed on any member who
neglected to attend the funeral of a brother
or sister of the guild. Many of the guilds,
of which this was an example, partook of
the nature of our modern friendly societies,
but with a marked attention to the incul-
cation and encouragement of piety and
morality. So singularly was the purpose
carried out in the Guild of St. Katherine,
Aldersgate, that each brother and sister on
admittance was to kiss all present, in token
of love, charity, and fellowship. Five round
tapers of wax, of the weight of twenty

pounds, were to burn on high feast days to the honour of God, of the Virgin Mary, of St. Katherine, and all saints, and to be used to light round the body of a dead brother, and in his funeral procession. The wardens of St. Botolph's Guild, Norwich, stated in their return that they had in hand twenty-six shillings and eightpence for the maintenance of a light. The Guild of St. George, in the same city, had in hand forty shillings for the support of a light and the making of an image. In relation to St. Katherine's Guild, another in old Norwich, "of the chattel of the guild shall there be two candles of wax, of sixteen pounds weight, about the body of the dead," whenever any brother or sister departed this life. The Guild of Young Scholars at Lynn was established chiefly to maintain an image of St. William, standing in a tabernacle in the church of St. Margaret, with six tapers of wax burning on festival days. The Guild of St. Elene at Beverley kept three wax lights burning every Sunday and feast day, in honour of St. Elene; while at the morning mass of Christmas Day thirteen wax lights were burned. There must have been a goodly amount of wax consumed on the Feast of the Purification by the Guild of St. Mary at Beverley; for the brethren got up a pageant, in which two youths representing angels carried a chandelier or compound candlestick, containing twenty-four thick wax lights; and the other members each carried a wax light. In the Guild of the Resurrection of our Lord, at Lincoln, at the funeral rites of a brother, thirteen wax lights were burned in four stands. In the Guild of the Fullers of Lincoln, no member was permitted to teach the craft to a learner unless the latter contributed "twopence to the wax," that is, to the fund for buying wax lights. The Guild of Tailors, of the same city, imposed a fine of a stone of wax for infringement of one of the rules. As wax was sevenpence per pound in those days, representing a manifold higher price now, this fine was certainly a heavy one. In the Guild of St. Katherine, at Stamford, a fine of one pound of wax, plus twopence, was imposed on any member absent from the guild feast; and as the feast itself was valued at twopence per head, the absentee paid for a dinner which he did not eat, besides losing a pound of wax. The altar use of candles is mentioned by Wordsworth in one of his stanzas:

Our ancestors within the still domain
Of vast cathedral or conventual gloom,
Their vigils kept: where tapers day and night
On the dim altar burned continuously.

And the Christmas candles, which our boys and girls still delight in, are they not relics of religious usages of old days?

The usages and traditions connected with Candlemas Day are associated with wax through the medium of the candles into which it was fashioned. There is an old Latin proverb to the effect that if the sun shines brilliantly on Candlemas Day, hard frost is coming. It got into English form as a couplet, that after Candlemas Day the frost will be more, if the sun then shines bright, than it has been before. A Norfolk saying tells us that:

As far as the sun shines on Candlemas Day, So far will the snow blow in afore May. Another is couched in very strong language, stronger, we will hope, than any countryman would really use :

When Candlemas Day is fine and clear,

A shepherd would rather see his wife on the bier.

Another, in four-line stanza, goes a little further into the weather-predicting line:

If Candlemas Day be fair and bright,
Winter will have another fight;

But if it be dark, with clouds and rain, Winter is gone and will not come again. Another version, somewhat different in its philosophy, is to the effect that whatever wind blows on Candlemas Day, will continue to blow for the next forty days. Candlemas Day, our almanacks tell us, comes on the 2nd of February, and is the anniversary of the Purification of the Virgin. On this day the Church of Rome directs the blessing of candles by the clergy, the distribution of them among the people, and the carrying of the lighted candles in solemn procession. The pope presides at a great ceremonial of this kind in the chapel of the Quirinal, on Candlemas Day; and minor celebrations take place at other churches. The candle is used symbolically in reference to a passage in the Song of Simeon. Very little notice of Candlemas, or of its origin, is now taken in England, beyond a few country customs and proverbs.

As far as possible removed from the use of wax as a light-giving material, is its employment as an impressionable substance, a material that can be cast into moulds when melted, and impressed with a die or seal when in a semi-molten state. The Greeks were familiar with this use of wax; they adorned their rooms with statuettes, branches, fruit, flowers, and wreaths, made of this substance. We are told that that very unrespectable gentleman, Heliogabalus, liked to tantalise his guests by setting before them dishes of waxen luxuries, so cleverly imitative of the

originals as to deceive all but the initiated. Wax is largely employed in producing imitations of anatomical specimens. One of the palaces at Florence contains thirty rooms filled with coloured wax imitations of parts of the human body, and of vegetable productions. This anatomical use of wax is said to have originated as follows: Nones, of Genoa, a hospital physician, in the seventeenth century, wished to preserve a human body by embalming it; but not being able entirely to prevent putrefaction, he considered whether he could imitate the body in wax. The Abbate Zumbo, of Sicily, imitated the head so perfectly, under the direction of Nones, that many persons believed the coloured wax to be the real head; and this led to the further cultivation of the art by a Frenchman named Delacroix. Anatomical wax preparations were exhibited at Hamburg, by Courège, in 1721; and in 1737 others were publicly sold in London.

brated among artists in wax was Madame Tussaud, who, in the exercise of her art eighty years ago, lived and worked during the terrible scenes of the great French Revolution. She prepared waxen effigies of the half-savage Marat, of his murderess Charlotte Corday, of the beautiful Princess of Lamballe, of the arch-terrorist Robespierre; and was herself, on one occasion, in imminent peril of the guillotine. After many trials and struggles she settled in London early in the present century, and here she made waxen celebrities for forty or fifty years. The old lady used to sit near the entrance of her exhibition-room to receive her visitors, until at length she died, about twenty years ago, at the advanced age of ninety. Her name is still given to the establishment over which her descendants or representatives now preside; but that is no more than we see in other cases; for who can tell us whether there is still a Day or a Martin at the blacking factory, or a Pickford at Pickford's ?

Some of the waxen effigies produced and exhibited are made by modelling, some by casting. In the former case the wax is mixed with white turpentine and lard, forming a substance easily cut and modelled with tools. In making the figures by casting, molten wax is poured into a

being then taken to pieces, the wax cast is easily extricated. Sculptors sometimes form their first models in a composition of wax, Burgundy pitch, and lard; it works easily, and is convenient under many circumstances.

Wax images and effigies have been more or less in favour for ages past. The wax effigies of the kings of England were at one time borne in procession at their funerals. There were wax effigics in Westminster Abbey, and at St. Denis, in Paris. There is a curious paper in the Tatler, by Steele, purporting to be an account of a waxwork exhibition in Germany, represent-plaster-of-paris mould; and the mould ing the religions of Christendom. Seven figures were placed in a row, some decked out fantastically; while behind them were other figures moved by clockwork, representing Persecution and Moderation, and so arranged as to play a kind of ecclesiastical drama. Steele describes it as having been a show carried about Germany, but names and places are not mentioned, and we are left to put our own interpretation upon it. The date would correspond very well with the time of Courège just mentioned. Mrs. Salmon's waxwork exhibition was a famous attraction in those days. In Italy beautiful figures in wax were made by Ercole Celli, and by Giovanni and Anna Manzolini. Many fine specimens by these artists are preserved in the museums at Bologna, Turin, Paris, and St. Petersburg. Other famous Italian artists were Calzi, Phillippo, Balugani, Terrini, and Fontana, the last-named of whom employed quite a staff of anatomists, modelcutters, wax-moulders, and painters.

Pinson and Laumonier in France, and Vogt in Germany, were accustomed to illustrate their anatomical lectures by means of wax casts; and the plan has since been extensively followed. Not the least cele

Taking an impression in wax is another mode again of using this remarkable substance. Lapidaries, gem cutters, and scal engravers often want to ascertain how their work, whether in intaglio or in cameo, is progessing; they mix some very fine wax with sugar-candy, burnt soot, and turpentine; they warm this mixture, and press the stone or gem upon it, by which a reversed copy of the device is produced. Sealing-wax of the best kind is a misnomer; it is not wax at all, being made of shellac, Venice turpentine, and cinnabar or vermilion; in the black sticks ivory black is substituted for cinnabar. The cheaper kinds are equally without wax, common resin being used instead of shellac, common turpentine instead of Venice turpentine, red lead instead of cinnabar, and lampblack instead of ivory black. How beautifully defined are the impressions carefully taken in good sealing-wax most persons know.

Those who have occasion to pass through

that busy hive of lawyers, law stationers, the establishment, partly paralysed with and law writers, Southampton-buildings, horror, kept their mugs of beer suspended Chancery-lane, may once now and then in the air, as they listened to the footman's see a covered cart drawn up at a par- thrilling narrative of his discovery of the ticular doorway, and hundreds of bright tin body. True that Mr. Johnson, the butler, boxes removed from the cart into the build- had a select audience in the pantry of men ing to which the doorway leads. The boxes of his own standing, well-qualified judges are flat and circular, larger than snuff-boxes, of a bottle of excellent Madeira, which smaller than gentlemen's collar-boxes, say he had thought the solemnity of the occaabout as large as muffins. These boxes are sion warranted him in broaching. But the to contain wax seals, and they are being crowd of townspeople, which immediately delivered into the Patent Office, where so on the dreadful news being bruited abroad much money is spent every year by in- had come surging up from Springside and ventors of new machines and new pro- spread itself round the house, standing at cesses. In the accounts submitted annually tip-toe to peer over the hedges, staring up to parliament by the Commissioners of at the windows and over the chimney-pots, Patents is an item of expenditure for as though expectant of some revelation from seals for letters patent, and another item them, eagerly demanding news in feverish for boxes to contain the seals. Every whispers, and charging up to the lodge letter patent, as the official record of a gates to glare at any one going in or out patented invention is called, is obliged to of them, had dispersed. A large portion of carry about with it a large yellowish seal it had followed the fly, which, with the three or four inches in diameter, enclosed prisoner and superintendent of police, and in a flat circular tin box to prevent it from two constables on the box, had driven breaking, and fastened to the parchment away to the old Guildhall: followed it with by tapes or ribbons. The impression is roars of bitter execration and threats of taken in yellow wax from the Great Seal, personal violence; for not only had the and without this impression the patentee's dead man been well liked in Springside, claim would be invalid. but the rumour had got abroad that the murderer was his son-his son, who had always been a prodigal, a black sheep, and a castaway, and who had on more than one occasion threatened his father's life.

The seals here spoken of are really made of wax, though somewhat coarse in quality, mixed with Venice turpentine or some similar substance. This soft wax for legal seals was formerly used for sealing letters, until the introduction of the harder (miscalled) sealing-wax. At a time when sealing-wax was very costly in England, and before gummed envelopes were in use, an elderly lady, widow of a military officer, eked out a scanty income by begging the seals of old letters from friends and every one she knew, removing fragments, &c., by warm water, melting the wax, and re-making it into sticks.

CASTAWAY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "BLACK SHEEP," "WRECKED IN
PORT," &c. &c.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER X. ABANDONED.

Two hours after the event just narrated, the household at Wheatcroft began to settle down into something like order again. True that here and there in the passages were still to be seen women gathered together in knots, some weeping, some gesticulating, all talking. True that in the servants' hall a group comprising the gardeners, grooms, and out-door servants of

In the library, everything remained just as at the time of the struggle. The body, by Doctor Chenoweth's direction, had been placed upon the couch, where it lay, the dull outline of the profile and the projecting feet showing under the white sheet which had been thrown over it. But the overturned table on which the lamp had stood-the lamp itself bent and broken and surrounded with a thousand particles of shattered glass; the window-curtain torn away from its rings, and hanging over in a ragged festoon; the book which the dead man had been reading, and which had dropped from his hand when he first caught sight of his assailant-all these mute, inanimate objects lay just as they were at the time of the struggle. There was confusion and chaos, but there was no stain of blood on the carpet, nor anything to indicate the deadly end of the encounter that had taken place; the disorder might have been the result of some drunken frolic, save for the presence of that awful form which lay still and motionless on the couch, over which hung the picture of what it once had been in the prime of its life and the days of its glory.

It was by Captain Cleethorpe's orders that the room had been left exactly as they found it, and that the door had been locked, not to be opened until the coroner's jury assembled for the inquest. It was with the greatest difficulty that Riley had been induced to obey these orders. The old soldier-servant pleaded in heart-piercing accents to be allowed to remain by the dead body of the master whom in life he had loved so well and served so faithfully. After his first wild shriek of horror and surprise when he recognised the man whom he had seized, the old man became strangely silent. In answer to the eager inquiries of the bystanders, to whom Gerald was unknown, he was compelled to admit that the young man standing there, closely guarded by two grooms whilst the assistance of the police was being summoned, was indeed Sir Geoffry Heriot's son, but more than this he would not say. He kept his back studiously turned upon the prisoner, who, deadly white, and quivering in every limb, yet preserved a certain proud appearance, and gazed fearlessly round, and seeming to ignore everything that was going on, knelt by the side of the body and apostrophised it in simple mournful lamentation. The old man was the last of all to quit the room, and when Mr. Drage gently led him away, he broke from the kind hand that was guiding his tottering footsteps, and rushing to his own chamber, flung himself upon his bed in an agony of grief.

In the dining-room, Captain Cleethorpe and Mr. Drage were seated, one on either side the fire. The fire had been lit for the first time that season, not that the evening was chilly, but rather in the vain hope of doing something to dispel the awful gloom which hung over the entire house; but the wood was damp, and only a thin smoky tongue of flame flickered fitfully in the grate. With the same hope, the butler had placed wine-glasses upon the table, but they remained untouched. Mr. Drage had evidently been unable to control his emotion; there were traces of tears upon his cheeks, his head was bowed down upon his breast, and from time to time a convulsive sob shook his wasted frame. When Captain Cleethorpe was at rest, he sat biting his nether lip and pulling at the ends of his moustache, but every now and then he would rise from his chair, plunge his hands into his pockets, and wander vaguely up and down the room, occasionally pausing to shrug his shoulders and rub his forehead, and then returning to his seat after the same dazed and puzzled air.

The silence, which had lasted for some time, was broken by the captain.

"It is of no use," he said, "it is perfectly impossible for me to realise what has occurred. There was a time when I was accustomed to look upon death in every shape, and when the excitement of my life was so great, that even an occurrence like this would not have struck me with any great amount of wonderment or dismay. But I am growing old I suppose, and the quiet time I have had of it down here for the last few years, has had the effect of robbing me of my pluck. I am as nervous and as weak as

"As I am-you were going to say," said the rector.

"On the contrary," said Captain Cleethorpe; "I was perfectly astonished to see how you, in your weak state of health, contrived to have all your senses about you, and to give exactly such orders as should have been given, under the effect of this sudden blow. That poor fellow, Riley, would never have suffered any one else to lead him from the room; and in several other instances your thoughtfulness and presence of mind were invaluable."

"I, too, am accustomed to death, though, of course, not under such fearful.circumstances as this," said the rector, quietly. "I have seen more of it recently than you. Perhaps, too, there is something in the fact of my knowing that, notwithstanding the little rally which he made, our poor friend was inevitably doomed; and Doctor Chenoweth had warned me that his stay with us was probably limited to two hours. the reaction is upon me now, and I feel myself rapidly giving way."

But

"It seems strange," said Cleethorpe, not heeding the last remark, "that a man whose lease from nature had so nearly expired should die a violent death!"

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It is by no means certain that such was the case."

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What do you mean ?" asked Cleethorpe, bending forward with astonishment.

"Simply this," said the rector, adding quietly, "don't mind my shuddering; the mere thought of the thing turns me sick. Chenoweth told me that from the cursory examination he had made of the-of the body, he found no indications of violence sufficient to bring about the fatal result."

"But I myself saw the poor face clotted with blood!" said Captain Cleethorpe.

"True; but this was merely surface blood produced by the blows which had been struck. These blows, Chenoweth

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