Welsh Journals

^m 10 THE WELSH WEEKLY. July 29, 1892. The Daily Courier, amongst other things, relates an interesting incident in connection with the institute, resulting in the gift of £50 to its funds by an old lady in Liverpool. One of the students greatly pleased her by a polite bow, which resulted first in the gift of £1 Is., then £4, then two £5, and then another £5, and yet another £5, and finally in the handsome amount of £25, with the purse in which they had been kept. The President is being greatly encouraged in his work by continually receiving gifts of money from persons in England whose interest in the institution is being awakened by Press notices of it. No doubt some of the opposition felt and expressed against the institution arises from a notion that it is intended by the promoters of it to sever Wales from the English Missionary Society, and to substitute the Congo Institute in its place, making it a Welsh Foreign Missionary Society. This notion is absurd, and there is not the remotest ground for it. The Congo Training Institution should be judged on its own merits, and not have its case prejudiced by being mixed up with another matter'to which it has no relation whatever. The North Wales Baptist College has done a very wise thing—namely, in determining to add to its com¬ plete course in arts and theology a shorter course in theology alone, according to the qualification of stu¬ dents. This will be an invaluable boon to North Wales churches. It is what we have been contending for a long time, and we congratulate the class of students who are likely to be benefited by this scheme. It will bring the College into closer touch with the churches of North Wales especially. We make no doubt but that the tutors will do their best to make this part of the College work as efficient as any other of its work. COLLEGE NOTES. Several students of the Gwynfryn School, Ammanford, have recently distinguished themselves. Mr. D. Tafwys Jones, of London, successfully passed into Hackney Independent College; Mr. Tom Williams, of Pontar- dulais, passed first of twenty-fouv applicants into the Baptist College, Bristol; M •. Mathew Charles, of Cadle, passed fourth into the Bala-Bangor Independent College, and Mr. J. Richards, of Talybont, a student of the above school up to last Christmas, passed eighth to the same college. The school re-opens on Tuesday, August 9th, 1892. See advertisement in another column. The following students of the University College of North Wales, Bangor, have successfully passed Matricu¬ lation examination of the University of London, held in June :—First Division—Frances E. Flack, London ; David R. Hughes, Bangor; Thomas Griffith Roberts, Bala; Manai Rowlands, Bangor ; R. Festin Williams, Ffestiniog. Second Division—Erie Evans, Bangor ; John Evans, Liverpool ; Sarah E. Lumley, Machynlleth ; David Rees, Holywell j Robert Roberts, St. elens. Agricultural education is making strides both at Bangor and Aberystwyth. The details of last year's work have just been published- The grant to the University College of North Wales has been raised from £500 to £750, in view of the well appointed develoyments in the six counties of North Wales. The local subscriptions to this scheme have now reached the sum of £785, independent of all County Council aid. In the recent examination at the Edinburgh School of Medicine, Mr. W. Cobden Rowlands (son of Pro¬ fessor Rowlands, of Brecon Memorial College) obtained the first place in first class honours in Practical Pathology, and was awarded the silver medal. The employment of the parable may be traced, says Dr. Wright, to Hillel, the great rabbi, who died a few years before the Christain era. In the Midrash on Levit. xxv. 39, it is related that his scholars asked Hillel one day where he was going. "To perform a commandment," answered the rabbi. "What special commandment?" asked the disciples. "To bathe myself in the bath-house," said Hillet. "Isthat one of the commandments ?" inquired they. "Certainly," rejoined Hillel; " if the statues of kings placed in the theatres or circuses have to be kept clean and washed, how much more ought I not to keep my body clean, since I have been created in the image of God ? " ROMAN STATIONERY. Do the boys and girls of to-day, who use " Irish linen," smooth white paper, tablets, pens of the finest make, and jet-black ink, know what kind of paper and pens were in vogue nearly two thousand years ago ? At this time, when the youth of our land are forming clubs and circles for the purpose of studying the events of the present, when "current topics " are becoming a feature in school life, it may not be amiss to ask the readers of The Companion to look for a little while into the far-off past, to compare the writing materials of the ancient Romans with the elegant stationery of our time, to learn on what Caesar wrote his warlike " Commentaries," Cicero his elegant speeches and charming letters, and Virgil his story of the trials of ^Eneas. The materials used as paper were of three kinds ; the rind of a plant or tree called papyrus, parchment made of skins, and wooden tablets covered with wax. The papyrus plant grew in swampy places, and was especially common in the valley of the Nile. The Romans called the inner rind or coat of the stem of this plant, liber, "book." Pieces of the thin rind were wetted and then joined together ; a layer of the pieces was placed on a board and a cross layer put over it ; these layers were pressed together and after¬ wards exposed to the hot Egyptian sun. The paper was then ready for use, but when a finer style was desired, the sheet was rubbed with the tooth of some animal, which rendered it smooth and glossy. Their sheets were about ten inches long and from three to twelve inches wide. At first an author or scribe of any kind Avrote upon the sheets and pasted them together at the sides in regular order, but after a time long rolls of the sheets already pasted together were sold. Sometimes a book occupied sheets pasted together which stretched fifty yards. Some rolls of papyrus sheets nearly fifty yards in length are now preserved in one or two museums in Europe. When a book was finished, a stick was fastened to the last sheet, and all the sheets were rolled together in a way similar to that in which we roll our maps. The name of the book was written in red ink on a piece of papyrus which was attached to the roll. Sometimes the author's portrait was placed on the first sheet. To give some idea of the antiquity of this kind of paper, it may be added that it was in use long before the year 484 B.C. Belonging to a period quite as ancient was the second kind of paper, that made from the skins of sheep and goats, and called membrane, parchment. The hair was taken off, and the skin was made smooth by the use of pumice. A remarkable fact in connection with writ¬ ing on parchment was, that the ancients often used the same piece twice or even three times. They did this by rubbing or washing the writing off. Such parch¬ ment was called palimpsest, which means "scraped again." In 1816, a famous scholar, Niebuhr, found a manu¬ script containing the writings of St. Jerome. His practised eye detected evidences of an older writing, and by the use of some chemical preparation he brought out the work of a celebrated Roman author. Writings of well-known ancient authors were found under por¬ tions of the Old Testament. The third kind of writing material was the waxen tablet, which the Romans used for almost any purpose, but chiefly in writing letters and making notes, and by school-boys for writing exercises or working out prob¬ lems. The writer once saw a photograph of a terra¬ cotta figure representing a Roman lad with a tablet in had, looking mournfully upward, as if appealing to his heathen gods to help him \%ith his knotty " sum." The tablets were made of wood, generally of beech or fir, sometimes citron-wood, covered with wax. There were several sizes, none of them very large, one kind, called pugillares, small enough to be held in a partly closed hand. The Romans took the wood, cut and polished it a little and then smeared wax on one side. In order to prevent the wax of one piece from rubbing against that of the other when they fastened two pieces together with wire, they left a rim around the wood. The wire fastening the backs of the tablets served as a hinge. When a writer had finished a letter, he placed the tablets together, bound them with a strong string, tied this into a knot, placed wax upon the knot and stamped it with his signet ring. Here a curious fact may be mentioned. Many of the Romans were either too lazy or else too industriously occupied in war or speech- making to write their own letters ; so their secretaries, who were nearly always slaves or freedmen, wrote for them, and as it was not the custom to sign names to letters, the only signature that letters had was this stamp of the signet ring. Letters began in this way: "M. Tullius Cicero to Julius Caesar, greeting." The shortest letter perhaps of ancient times, was the one written by Caesar'"to his lieutenant Cicero, brother of the orator, when Cicero was besieged by the Gauls. It was written in Greek, and the traaslation is, " Caesar to Cicero: Expect help." Now, as you have learned what the Romans used as paper, the next matter is to tell you what kind of ink they had. When they used paper made from papyrus, they wrote with ink composed of lampblack and gum. With parchment, they used a mixture of gum and oak-galls. Sometimes they made an ink by boiling and straining the dregs of wine. It is said that occasionally they used as ink the black fluid emitted by the cuttle-fish. That the ink was of excellent quality and very last¬ ing, we know from the fact that even to this day on certain fragments of ancient Egyption papyri • the writing is legible. In addition to the commonly used black ink, the Romans had red, green, and purple ink. The emperors wrote their names with a costly red ink which all others were forbidden to use.' There was also invisible or sympathetic ink which would appear only when heat was applied, or some chemical prepara¬ tion was poured upon the paper. A Roman author (Ovid) tells us that the people occasionally wrote with fresh milk, and that the characters could be seen only when coal dust was sprinkled upon the paper. Single and double ink¬ stands, the latter for ink of two kinds, some round in shape, others hexagonal, with covers, were fouud at Pompeii. All the stationery needed by a writer has now been mentioned except the pen and pencil. With the papyrus and with parchment the pen used was called calamus, a reed of nearly the same shape as our old- time quill pen. It was split like our pens, and so had the name "cloven-footed." Certain Asiatic peoples use this reed even now. With the waxen tablets, a sharp iron instrument called stilus was in use. One end was sharpened for scratching on the wax ; the other end was fiat, and was used as an eraser. Erasing was performed by smoothing the wax, and thus rendering it capable of receiving new impressions. When a writer desired to draw lines on parchment, he used a leaden plummet, made out of a small round plate. This served as a pencil and ruler. It may be interesting next to consider how the ancients sent their letters and other mail-matter. There were no post offices or post routes. Under the Empire there was a system of couriers, but they car¬ ried only state despatches. When a person wrote to a friend, he had to send his letter by a special mes¬ senger, or by some friend who happened to be going in the desired direction. In the former case, when a man in Rome wished to write to a friend in Greece, he had, of course, to pay his messenger's expenses. Naturally, therefore, only the well-to-do could afford the luxury of letter-writing. Poor people wrote no letters at all if they had to be sent to a distance. On the walls of a house in Pompeii, Dr. Rich tells us, was found the picture of a letter folded and sealed, with the directions. Near this picture were repre¬ sentations of the pens and pencils of the old times. These pictures and others found there have thrown a wonderful light upon the subject of Roman stationery. — Youth's Companion. A HERO IN HUMBLE LIFE. '' The Queen has been pleased to confer the decora¬ tion of the Albert Medal of the Second Class on Lawrence Hennessey, boatman of the Hythe Coast¬ guard Station." " On the morning of November 11th, 1891, at 4-45 a.m., when the French schooner, Eider was wrecked on the seawall at Seabrook, Lawrence was on watch. A heavy gale was blowing and tremen¬ dous seas were sweeping the seawall. He obtained a heaving line and cane, and unaided at the risk of his life, saved the lives of four sailors belonging to the French schooner, which broke up as she struck, and was totally wrecked. The French Ambassador has represented the courageous conduct of Hennessey in saving the lives of the four French sailors on this occasion, at the peril of his own. At 8 a.m. on the same day Lawrence Hennessey, as coxwain of the lifeboat, attempted to go afloat from Sandgate, but the boat was thrown on to the beach. Again at noon, a whole gale blowing at the time, with a very heavy sea breaking on the beach, Lawrence Hen¬ nessey went out in the lifeboat from Hythe. Just as the breakers were cleared the lifeboat capsized, Hennessey with the rest of the crew being washed ashore in an exhausted condition, one man being drowned. Hennessey, though bruised and exhausted, directly he recovered his feet, ran into the surf and assisted in rescuing his comrades, who were still struggling in the breakers. On the evening of the same day at 9 p.m. Lawrence Hennessey went out from Seabrook as coxswain of the lifeboat, and succeeded in reaching the wreck of the Benvenue and rescuing the 27 survivors, subsequently taking the lifeboat safely to Folkestone.—London Gazette. "Now, my hearties," said a Yankee captain, "You've a tough battle before you. Fight like heroes till ypur powder's gone, then run. I'm a little lame and I'll start now." In our national cemeteries, there are rows on rows of vmknown bodies of our soldiers—men who did a work and put a meaning to to their lives ; for the mother and the townsman say, '' He died in the war ! " But the men and women whose lives are aim¬ less, reverse their fates. Our bodies are known, and answer in this world to such or such a name ; but as to our inner selves, with real and awful meaning our walking bodies might be labelled, '' An unknown man sleeps here ! "—Blessed be Drudgery.