folk-lore are types of a primitive Aryan custom. But the parallel runs much closer than this. The yule-log custom of the Black Mountain people is parallel to a log custom of the Ovahereró in the worship of their ancestors. After the slaughter of the sheep, as noticed above, every son of the buried chief approaches the place of holy fire with a branch or a small tree. These they set up in a row on the south-west side of the building, and an ox is slaughtered for each of the sons. Can we help recognizing in this the parallel savage custom to that of the Black Mountain people? The South African custom definitely and distinctly appertains to the worship of ancestors, the Black Mountain Christmas custom absorbs so many features of this cult as known to Aryan society, that Mr. Evans rightly places his Papers on the subject as a fresh chapter of its history.

One word more. I cannot help connecting the Black Mountain log festival with the harvest festival. As the logs are brought into the house the house-mother sprinkles some corn and utters a wish or prayer. And this very nearly assimilates with a custom among the wild tribes of India. At the gathering of the harvest, the Lhoosai, or Kookies, have a festival called among them "Chukchai." The chief goes solemnly with his people to the forest, and cuts down a large tree, which is afterwards carried into the village and set up in the midst. Sacrifice is then offered, and "khong," spirits, and rice are poured over the tree. A feast and dance close the ceremony.† We do not here get the burning of the log at the housefire; but this, it appears to me, is the addition which Aryan society made to the primitive harvest festival, for many instances occur in which agricultural customs are connected with the household deities.

There are many other features of this interesting ceremony of Christmas tide as performed by the people of Eastern Europe which I should like to touch upon in illustration of their contributions to the study of comparative folk-lore, but space will not admit of it on the present occasion. In the meantime we shall have done something if

South African Folk-Lore Journal, i. 62.

+ Lewin's Wild Races of South Eastern India, P. 270.

this now eminently Christian festival has afforded an opportunity for a glance back through the centuries of its existence to times which, pagan and barbaric as they were, have given to modern society many of its most cherished and secret fancies. G. LAURENCE GOMME.

The Site of king's College, London, from 1552.

PON the fall of Somerset, the lordly mansion which he had built with so sacrilegious hands, and amidst so much odium, became the property of the Crown. It was still unfinished, the eastern ground-the ground that concerns us -left a wilderness-left very much as it was left when his Somerset House gave place to the present building. A large mound of rubbish and débris lay on the northern part of it; nearer the river grew a cluster of trees. There seems to be no record of improvements or additions till the time of Inigo Jones ; further alterations and completions were made just after the Restoration, when once more Queen Henrietta Maria held her Court here. And pretty much in the state to which it was then brought, it remained till its demolition, a little more than a century ago.

We are able to describe the condition of our site with fair exactness. The ground was not as now raised to an equal height all along, but still sloped down to the river, a stone balustrade running along the edge. This slope was divided into two parts, an upper garden which seems to have been called "the water garden," and a lower, connected with the former by a flight of steps. The lower was probably used as a bowling green. Around two sides of the upper garden ran buildings, on the west side what was called "the long gallery," which was used as a ball-room, and on the north "the cross gallery," where was the presence chamber, ending in an octagonal building, which contained on one story what seems to have been a breakfast or dressing room, called in the plan of 1706 "the yellow room,'

and on the story below a hot and a cold bath. At the back of this cross gallery was the maid of honour's court, and beyond it "the French buildings" (see plan of 1706). All down the eastern or Strand Lane side of this slope, from the octagon to the river, ran a broad walk with trees on either side of it. Thus our site became a real part of Somerset House; and was to a greater or less extent the scene of whatever great events and excitements happened or prevailed there.

Passing over the latter half of the sixteenth century, when in the reign of Queen Mary, Princess Elizabeth stayed awhile here, and when that princess, having succeeded her sister, Somerset House was lent to her kinsman Lord Hunsden, we come to the most brilliant period in the history of these precincts. Somerset House became in the seventeenth century the jointure house or dotarial palace of our queens; and was the favourite residence in London of Queen Anne of Denmark, of Queen Henrietta Maria, and of Queen Catherine of Braganza, and so the scene of many a strange spectacle-of much splendour and much woe.

Try for a few moments to forget the present, to be deaf to the roar of the Strand, and to plant green trees and lay down lawns where King's College now stands; and let some visions of the past arise from their graves and stand before us.

What gay revellers are these we see what phantoms in the wildest guises, laughing and sporting in the court below us? These are Queen Anne and her Court. She delighted in such merriment. Her Court, says one, was a continued masquerade, when she and her ladies, like so many sea-nymphs or nereides, appeared in various dresses to the ravishment of beholders. Another day you may see, by the side of her Majesty, her royal brother of Denmark, in whose honour, as one explanation goes, Somerset House was re-named Denmark House. And if you like you can imagine scenes less graceful than those sprightly sea-nymphs; for the convivial habits of the royal Dane were gross enough, and his English brother kept him in countenance, and often the two monarchs got royally drunk together, and perhaps these figures, reeling and stuttering there, one with

a strong Scotch accent, are the heads of two kingdoms.

The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering upspring reels.

And now there is silence for awhile, and the figures that tread our lawns speak in hushed tones of a mistress and sovereign departed. Not again will she trip it as a sea-nymph. Queen Anne of Denmark is lying dead here. A few years pass, and her royal husband is lying in state beneath a canopy designed by Inigo Jones.

The scene changes, and we hear loud cries in the French tongue of agitation and disgust, and behold certain mesdames and messieurs furiously remonstrating, and in spite of their wrath forced to pack up and betake themselves to the coaches and barges which the king has ordered to convey them back to their native land. These are the French that came over with her Majesty Queen Henrietta Maria; "for their petulancy, and some misdemeanours, and imposing some odd penances on the Queen, they are all casheered this week, about a matter of six score, whereof the Bishop of Mende was one." They had flattered themselves that they had found comfortable quarters, and were willing to forego their Belle France, and their grand Paris for a time, and were mad with rage at this sudden ejectment. The air is filled with foreign oaths. His Majesty has discreetly locked up his royal spouse in a bedchamber, that she may keep well out of the way of her excited countrymen. 'Do you catch a sound of broken glass? The Queen is in a violent passion-I quote from a contemporary letter-is breaking the windows of the room of her durance. She is also tearing her royal hair. We may be sure King Charles, who is inside with her, has a bad quarter of an hour. I do not suppose it was worse at Naseby. However, presently her Majesty recovers her composure.

What are these Anabaptists and Quakers doing on these premises? Tempora mutantur. It is the Commonwealth time now; and these and other sects have gained an entrance here, as we learn from the preface of a contemporary tract. Also Somerset House has a narrow escape of demolition. It was resolved (April, 1659) that it, with all its appurtenances, should be sold for the partial discharge of the great

arrears due to the army; and Ludlow states that it was sold for £10,000, except the chapel. The Restoration interrupted this bargain.

But before that event look at one more scene. On the night of the 26th of September, 1658, the body of the great Protector was brought here from Whitehall, and was presently laid in state in the Great Hall, "represented in effigy, standing on a bed of crimson velvet, covered with a gown of the like coloured velvet, a sceptre in hand, and a crown upon his head." And now that that great spirit has passed away, men muse and marvel what shall happen. With all his disinterested patriotism and devoted energy, he has failed to establish a perma nent system of government; and with his death the anarchy, from which he had delivered England, and from which so long as he lived he had preserved it, threatens to prevail once more.

The glare of light that now fills these courts, and the wild cheers outside, come from the bonfires that are blazing all along the Strand, and the crowds that are enthusiastically burning rumps in them, in honour of the Restoration.

Queen Henrietta Maria, now known as the "Queen Mother," is once more established here. Waller celebrates her return, and the new buildings she raised :

:

Constant to England in your love,
As birds are to their wonted grove;
Tho' by rude hands their nests are spoil'd,
There the next spring again they build.
But what new mine this work supplies?
Can such a pile from ruin rise?
This like the first creation shows,
As if at your command it rose.

*

Let foreign princes vainly boast
The rude effects of pride and cost
Of vaster fabrics, to which they
Contribute nothing but the pay,
This by the Queen herself designed
Gives us a pattern of her mind;
The state and order does proclaim
The genius of that royal dame.
Each part with just proportion graced
And all to such advantage placed,
That the fair view her window yields
The town, the river, and the fields,
Ent'ring beneath us we descry
And wonder how we came so high.
She needs no weary steps ascend,
All seems before her feet to bend ;
And here, as she was born, she lies
High without taking pains to rise.

247

Pepys gives us a picture of the place in those days of frivolity and dissoluteness :

Meeting Mr. Pierce, the chyrurgeon, he took me into Somerset House; and there carried me into the Queene-Mother's presence-chamber, where she was with our own Queene sitting on her left hand (whom I did never see before), and though she be not very charming, yet she hath a good, modest, and innocent look which is pleasing. Here also I saw Madame Castlemaine, and, which pleased me most, Mr. Crofts, the king's bastard [afterwards Duke of Monmouth], a most pretty spark of about fifteen years old, who, I perceive, do hang much upon my Lady Castlemaine, and is always with her; and I hear the Queenes both are mighty kind to him. By and bye in comes the King, and soon the Duke and his Duchesse; so that they being all together, was such a sight as I never could almost have happened to see with so much ease and leisure. They staid till it was dark, and then went away; the King and his Queene, and my Lady Castlemaine and young Crofts, in one coach, and the rest in other coaches. Here were great stores of great ladies, but very few handsome. The King and Queene were very merry; and he would have made the Queene-Mother believe that his Queene was with child, and said that she said so. And the young English word that I ever heard her say which Queene answered "You lie ;" which was the first made the King very good sport, & he would have made her say in English "Confess and be hanged."

Do you hear some one shouting near the water gate? That is the voice of this same Mr. Pepys. The worthy quidnunc is trying the echo:

Mr. Povey [he writes to the date January 21, 1664-5] carried me to Somerset House, & there showed me the Queen Mother's chamber and closet, most beautiful places for furniture and pictures; and so down the great stone stairs to the garden, and tried the brave echo upon the stairs; which continue a voice so long as the singing [if one sings?] three notes concords one after another they all three shall sound in consort together a good while most pleasantly.

The Queen Mother did not tarry long. amongst us. She took herself back to France in June, 1665, and there, in '69, her strangely chequered life ended.

There is another lying-in-state in 1670. This is the body of Monk, Duke of Albemarle, who saved England from that threatened anarchy I have spoken of by recalling the Stuart. "His funeral was conducted with greater pomp than had ever before been conferred upon a subject."

And now we are in the midst of the furious panic and uproar of the Popish Plot. No wonder we now see here pale alarmed faces; for the story goes that it is within

these precincts that Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey has been murdered; and some of the Queen's attendants have been arrested, and who knows whose turn will come next, now that the gross lies of Titus Oates and Beddoe -the very cream of liars-are drunk in so eagerly by the public ear?

Queen Catherine of Braganza returned to Portugal, leaving Somerset House in the care of the Earl of Faversham; who lived here till the death of the Queen in 1692.

From this time, though Somerset House still remained the dotarial palace, it was only occasionally honoured with the royal presence. Distinguished foreigners were often lodged here-as William Prince of Orange in 1734, the Prince of Brunswick in 1764, the Venetian ambassadors in 1763. And here too masquerades and other Court entertainments took place. Once and again the place overflowed with life and mirth, as a century before and escaping from the heat and noise of the ball-room, gay grotesque forms sauntered into the gardens and watched the river's quiet gliding.

A little later a new association is formed. Art finds a home here, the Royal Academy, then a recent foundation, being permitted to hold here its exhibition.

In 1775, Buckingham House was settled on the Queen in lieu of Somerset House; and Somerset House was vested in the King, his heirs and successors, for the purpose of erecting and establishing certain public offices. And shortly afterwards the old house was demolished, and the present one begun.

The rooms that stood on the site of King's College had by that time been long disused. There is extant a curious account of an inspection of them just before their pulling down-an account not without its pathos. Traces of their old magnificence were still to be seen. "The audience-chamber had been hung with silk, which was in tatters, as were the curtains, gilt leather covers, and painted screens." The furniture was decaying, the walls were mouldering, the roof falling. "In one part were the vestiges of a throne and canopy of state." A strong contrast these old galleries, with their faded glory, to the boisterous fresh-flowing life of

the Strand outside.

Archæology is so wide a field of study that it is necessary to limit subjects to be treated of to certain definite groups. Commencing, then, with clearly stated arguments as to the scope and general bearings of Scottish Archæology, Mr. Anderson leaves the wide tract that lays open before him, and takes his stand upon the important subject of Scotland in Early Christian times. He is guided here in the narrower study by lessons taught by the facts of the whole range of archæological science; and hence he prefers taking his hearers from the known to the unknown, from the structural remains of the twelfth century, which existed side by side with historical records of all kinds, to the structural remains of earlier and, still earlier times, which fade into each other in regular sequence, the more complex gradually losing their complexity until we arrive at the primitive elements. This is as it should be. The student can grasp the facts clearly as he progresses up the stream of past ages, and

*Scotland in Early Christian Times. By Joseph Anderson. 8vo, pp. xiv. 262. (1881. Edinburgh: David Douglas.)