gress of error: the uncial munerari must be changed to numerari, that it may correspond with the English version! Bosworth has faithfully re corded the participle in his Appendix, but MS. Arund. 60 would have suggested a better meaning than numbered. Yours, &c. E. THOMSON. THE CASTLE HILL AT THETFORD. (With a Plate.) THE ancient town of Thetford, once of superior importance to many of its younger sisters which have long since outstripped it in population and prosperity, stands on two navigable rivers, the Ouse and the Thet. It is generally supposed to have arisen from the ruins of the Roman Sitomagus, and it is on all hands agreed to have been once the seat of the East Anglian kings. The immense artificial hill forming the centre of the Castle is scarcely surpassed in magnitude by any other work of the kind to be found elsewhere. It is minutely described in Martin's History of the town, published in 1779, and we are not aware that any subsequent author has done more than copy or abridge it. We therefore think it best to extract Martin's account entire : "On the east side of the present town stands a famous hill, called the Castle Hill. Camden confessed himself unable to resolve whether it was a work of the Romans or Saxons. It is generally agreed at present that such kinds of fortifications as are accompanied by a keep are of a later work. This may, however, with great probability be ascribed to the Saxons, as well as that ancient boundary of this kingdom of the East Angles upon Newmarket Heath, known by the name of the Devil's Ditch; and it may be thought probable that it was the work of some of the first Saxon kings to secure their capital, in case of any sudden irruption or invasion. "The exterior figure of this work seems to have been a right-angled parallelogram with the angles rounded off, its greatest length lying from east to west. It consisted of two ramparts, each defended by a ditch. Within these, near and parallel to their west sides, is a high and steep mount or keep, entirely encompassed by a ditch. East of this is a large area or place of arms 300 feet square, evidently intended for parading the troops employed in its defence. This mount is about 100 feet in height, and the circumference at the base 984; its diameter measures 338 feet at its base, and 81 on its summit, which is dishing or concave upwards of 12 feet below its outer surface, owing probably to its having been once surrounded by a parapet, the top whereof may have been gradually melted away by the injuries of time and weather. The slope or ramp of this mount is extremely steep, forming an angle with the plane of the horizon of more than 40 degrees, and yet no traces remain of any path or steps for the purpose of carrying up machines or any weighty ammunition. The chief entrance seems to have been on the north side, where, in the second or inner rampart, a passage is so formed that troops attempting to enter must have presented their flanks to a double line of the garrison looking down upon them. Such was, it is presumed, its form when entire. At present the whole of the south side is covered with buildings, and towards the east it has been nearly levelled, and is cut through by the road, only part of its east side near the northeastern angle remaining. The inclosing ramparts are still near 20 feet high, and their ditches at bottom from 60 to 70 feet wide, which, considering the double slope of 45 degrees, gives a considerable width at the crest of the ramparts. The ditch round the mount measures 42 feet wide at bottom." A plan and section of the earthworks accompany this description in Mr. Martin's book. Bishopsgate, Aldersgate, Newgate, Ludgate, and Bridgegate; thus omitting Cripplegate, although he shortly afterwards says that this gate was so called long before the Conquest," and that it had been called "Porta Contractorum : a name that seems descended from the Roman times. In short, there is abundance of evidence to show that this gate existed immediately after, and even before, the Conquest. It may, I think, be safely concluded that Cripplegate was one of the original gates in the city wall; and it was, in my opinion, the principal one; that is, the one through which, in the Roman times, their great roads to the east, north, and west of London were approached. It is plain from the Itineraries, as I view them, that the stations of the Romans, next to London, to the north of the Thames, were only Durolitum and Sulloniaca. I have differed with former commentators on the Itineraries as to the site of these stations, by placing Durolitum on the river Lea about Cheshunt and Waltham, and Sulloniaca at or near Colney Hatch. It is not, however, material This rather confirms the notion, hinted at in your pages nearly six years ago, of the nane of Fore-street having been derived from some Roman forum which might have existed thereabouts: for the purposes of this paper to enter into my reasons for this opinion, as my object now is to endeavour to shew that these two stations were approached from London by Cripplegate; and I also think that the station Pontes, although it was, as I believe, at Walton-upon-Thames, in Surrey, and on the south of the Thames, was approached from London by that gate. My opinion is that from Cripplegate there was one short road to Old-street, from whence, at different points of that street, the road to each of the three above-mentioned stations diverged. It is observable that Dr. Stukeley imagined the road from Pontes (which he placed at Stanes) came to Old-street. It seems that this street has borne its name for many ages, which is a strong indication of its having been a highway in very early times. Mr. Maitland was of opinion that, in the year 1010, Cripplegate was the only gate in the north wall of the city, and that it was originally erected over a Roman military way which led from London to Hornsey: and it has been remarked that the custom of making proclamations at the end of Woodstreet may have arisen from the circumstance of its having been one of the old Roman military ways. It is absurd to derive the name of this gate (as Camden and many others have its name probably arose from some done) from Cripples begging there : subterranean passage there, which, according to Fosbroke, (quoting Dugdale,) was called Crypel-gate. Yours, &c. J. P. + See Gent. Mag. for March, 1841, p. 257; and the Minor Correspondence for the next month. I have long thought that this was the course of the Watling-street, which went to Verulam by Sulloniaca. Thus I repudiate Camden's opinion of its passing for Godwin in his Exposition of Roman"in a direct line from London to Verulam Antiquities (p. 8, edition 1680,) says, that forum is sometimes taken for a place of negociation. over Hampstead-heath, and so by Edgworth and Ellestre." Maitland's opinion confirms my idea of the site of Sulloniaca. THE MESNAVI OF JELALEDDIN RUMI. WHILE Thomas Aquinas was twisting his syllogisms, and, like the Roman retiarius of old, entangling his adversary in their inextricable net, he little dreamed that a far greater genius was teaching a far nobler philosophy in the east, building his lessons upon no cunning logic, or dexterous sophism, but on the eternal laws of the universe as enounced in the human heart, or, as Rabelais calls it, "dans l'autre petit monde, qui est l'homme." This unknown contemporary, Jelaleddin of Balkh in Khorassan, is the author whose book we now propose to glance at, and rich is the harvest which we may find in his pages. A great mind's thoughts are always new. His intellectual palaces are like an ancient Pompeii or Herculaneum in the midst of a modern Italy; the hand of the architect seems only just to have left the work, and the steps of the owner almost still reverberate along its courts. Thus the language of the Iliad even now bubbles up with all the freshness of the fabled fountain of youth, and Plato's dialogues have all the modern raciness of Scott; and we see the same thing in the Mesnavi of Jelaleddin. His pages wear all the freshness of modern thought, and at bottom must it not ever be so? For how can thought ever grow obsolete? Modes of speech may change, and the fashions of thought's dress (for such is language) alter like that of our bodily frames; but the living principle within cannot change or die, because it is an essential emanation from the soul of man. Our modern hopes and feelings are faithfully reflected in the great works of ancient days, just as their mirrors equally pourtray a Saxon or Athenian countenance; for the human heart beats the same under all our different habits and customs, and, as our Shakspere says, One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. The problems of life which puzzled Jelaleddin still puzzle us all to the present day; and the new German philosophy, which is now exercising such a marked influence on our literature, only grapples with the old difficulties which our author and Plato had encountered before in their journey through life. The metaphysical questions which meet the soul, whenever it would leave the guidance of the senses, and walk by itself, recur alike under every climate of the natural or the mental world, and probably they must continue to do so to every child of Adam as long as human nature continues the same, and until its intellectual sight is purged in a new state of existence (as was that of Æneas in the ancient fable), to see the real powers that shake our mental Troy! (Eneid ii.) The questions of freewill and necessity, and those other dark problems of our being, do not indeed admit of an absolute solution in this present life; but surely we can somewhat ap. proximate thereto, and hence every thinker's experience in his individual efforts gains a value and an interest for all his successors; for, at the least, he has worked out some tempting error which before his time had fured many from the truth, and his wanderings have proved that the path, which before stretched away so invitingly into the distance in its untrodden possibilities, is but a deceitful byeway, which leads its wayfarer nowhere. Thus even error is made useful to the progress of the rest, and (as some one has well said) each wanderer is a Curtius, who fills up some gulf that periled the safety of all. And if even error be thus rendered serviceable, how great is the value of those thoughts which are intrinsically true, and faithful interpreters of the various messages which Nature entrusts to their utter ance. By thus collecting and comparing the truths which we find scattered in the various thinkers of our earth, we, as it were, add the sum of their lives to our own, and are thus enabled to conduct our observations from different epochs of time, adding to the present all the resources of the past. With something of this spirit let us now spend an hour in the company of Jelaleddin Rumi, the solitary thinker of Khorassan, and let us listen for a while to the tidings which he may tell us of his own heart, and its relations to external things, as they appeared to his view. As life's sun set on Jelaleddin it rose on Dante, and the incident is not without its significance. He was the last great thinker of Asia, the lineal descendant of those ancient Brahmins who thought so deeply in the old centuries, before Alexander's invasion frayed a little footpath for history into the unknown recesses of Hindustan. The dawn of European civilization was breaking, while twilight was settling over Asia; and Dante's voice, like the cry of the derwish from the minaret, woke the sleeping hum of thought and life among the nations to grow only louder and louder, we will hope, throughout the whole of Europe's eventful day! But little is known of our author's life, and that little, like most oriental biography, is vague and uncertain. The tradition runs that when he was quite young his father was driven from his native place, Balkh, by the tyranny of the sultan, who held his court there, and that he wandered with his son through various countries, where Jelaleddin probably picked up that sharp insight into life which we see in some of his tales, and which we should have hardly expected from his solitary habits of mind. It is related that on their way through Nishápur they visited the celebrated poet Ferideddin Attár, and tradition still remembers his prophetic exclamation on beholding his young visitor's thoughtful countenance. Another interesting anecdote is related of his later years when he lived in his retirement at Coniah, that, although he was universally looked up to as the wisest man of his time, he yet habitually attended the lectures of his friends on philosophy and morals, and listened to their instructions with all the deference of their youngest pupil. So true it is that simplicity is at the bottom of all greatness of mind,* and just as it is the strong who can be the most tender, so too the wisest are always the most humble. Jelaleddin's work in its very commencement gives the reader an expectation of something different from all other Eastern books. Other authors studiously choose the most elaborate titles for their volumes, and "Rose * Το ἔνηθες, δυ τὸ γεννᾶιον πλειστον Heréxe. Thucydides, iii. 83. 66 Gardens" and "Chains of Gold" are prosaic, compared with many that we have seen. Thus a dull biographical dictionary of the poets is called the "Fireworshipper's Temple," and a lexicon bears the name of the "Seven Oceans!" But Jelaleddin scorned all this, and he simply calls his book by the species of metre that he employed, as if Lucretius had named his poem "Hexameters," or Pope called his Essay on Man" only "Rhymes." Nor is this all, he studiously avoids all the elaborate prefaces and dedications which Persian fashion insists upon as rigorously as ever Western critics stickled for the three unities; and, instead of addressing the prophet and all the saints in the Mohammedan calendar, with long eulogies on living characters besides, Jelaleddin sternly plunges into his subject at once, and opens with an address to his reed-pen, comparing it, while absent from its fellow-reeds, and thus unconsciously pouring forth the writer's sorrows and complaints, to the human soul in its state of separation from its Maker, pouring forth its own vague longings in its aspirations after fame and art. This leads him at once into his subjectmatter, which he felt was far too vast to need any ornamental introductions. The book itself, in its form, is not unlike Plato, and, as the great Greek chose to dress his philosophy in the light attire of everyday conversation, Jelaleddin in the same way introduces his meditations under the guise of narratives and myths. Occasionally they remind us of the Platonic myths, but more generally they are fables, such as those of Pilpay and Lokman, which have for ages delighted the East, and often they are historical anecdotes, which he perhaps had heard or read in the course of his travels during his youth. But these lighter portions of his book are only the soavi licori,† on the edge of the vase, which are to allure us to take a deeper draught, and under them, in the form of moral, or more commonly around them, in the form of endless digression and comment, lie the thoughts and truths which are the real matter of the work. Not unfrequently the comments have but a slender connection + Tasso, i. 3. with the story which they are intended to illustrate, and universally the text is far easier to understand than its commentary; but this was doubtless foreseen and intended by its author. He was no romancer or mythologist, though he condescended to employ his talents in their ways; and everything with him is subservient to the grand aim of his work-the elucidation of his philosophical system. The graceful tales which are continually introduced, and which form the light bridges by which we cross from one speculation to another, are only intended to allure us onwards; and, however he may have laboured to beautify them with all the graces of art, (and he seems to have had every talent at his command, and the pathetic or the descriptive, the sportive or the earnest, are alike in his immediate control,) he everywhere manifests his original design, and every turn of the story leads into a digression, which at last winds round unexpectedly into the continuation of the narrative. This plan is maintained throughout the whole book, just as all Plato's works are in dialogue; and at the close we find his varied powers apparently as unexhausted as at the beginning. The The work consists of six long cantos Three pounds are here weighed,-now the meat which I brought Others are legendary; thus in one we have a fine tradition of some Mohammedan saint named Mustaphi. Early one morning he made his ablutions, And he washed his face and hands in the cool water; And out of it, lo! there fell a snake to the ground! And thus the good eagle saved the holy seer, There is another of this kind, which occurs in the earlier part of the first book; and, as it is probably a confusion of the history of Shadrach, Meshec, and Abednego, with an incident in I. Antiochus' persecution in the time of the Maccabees, I subjoin a translation of it, only occasionally condensing its digressions. Behold what that Jewish tyrant attempted! GENT. MAG. VOL. XXX. G |