and places than it is in our own day and country. In order, therefore, to facilitate as much as possible the enjoyment of all the fine and expensive doings at the baths, by worthy burghers and nobles of limited means, their parents, relatives, and friends were in the habit of furnishing them with abundant stores of provisions from Zürich. These, however, soon changed into gifts of money, silver drinking vessels, and other articles of value. The Government of Zürich offered rich presents of this kind to any foreign princes or nobles who came to restore their health at Baden; and by degrees it became customary to send gold and silver plate of more or less value to such members of their own magistracy as visited the baths, and to distinguished clergymen. This usage grew to be so universal, that in time there was scarcely a head of a guild, parson of a parish, or judge of a district, who did not receive all manner of gifts from his fellow members, parishioners, or officials, during his stay in Baden. And when the gifts were not spontaneously offered, there were regularly appointed persons to suggest to the lukewarm the necessity of conforming to this custom, which thus grew into a veritable levy of black-mail. As early as the year 1414, the Confederation, despite its extreme poverty at that time, managed to make a present to the consort of Archduke Sigismund of Austria, consisting of oxen, sheep, butter, and wine, to the value of seventy florins. But the first bath-gift which excited great attention was made in 1534, to a burgomaster of Zürich, named Diethelm Roust, and was brought to Baden by one hundred and ninetyeight Zürich burghers and yeomen, on foot and horseback! It consisted of a fat ox, which cost over twenty-four florins. The beast was covered with trappings of blue and white cloth; his horns were gilded, and there was fastened between them a blue and white purse containing twenty Rhenish gulden. The hundred and ninety-eight men of the escort were all newly clothed in velvet and silk, with plumes of feathers in their caps, and well armed with spears and arquebusses. And in this state they marched with all their bravery to Baden. But the peaceful citizens of that town no sooner had news of the approach of this imposing body than they took fright, and began to conceive some ugly suspicions as to the object of a visit on so great a scale. Zürich had then but recently embraced the Reformed faith; the Badeners were (and are still) staunch Catholics; and sundry collisions and troubles-some of them very serious ones-had arisen between the adherents of the old and the new religion. In brief, the good citizens of Baden were so uneasy that they sent round to the representatives of the various Swiss Cantons who happened just then to be attending a Diet in Baden, to ask if they had not better shut their gates against the approaching posse of Zürichers! The members of the Diet, however, reassured them, and ordered them to let the escort with its fat ox and its purse of Rhenish gulden, and its fine garments of silk and velvet, pass peaceably through the town to the baths beyond, where Burgomaster Roust was taking the waters. All this was done accordingly; and the next day, when the Zürichers had presented their gift and were on their way home again, the men of Baden,-being perhaps a little ashamed of their previous suspicions,-entertained them hospitably with wine and meat, and presented them with three golden florins into the bargain. The list of names of all the hundred and ninety-eight men who took part in this singular cortége is still extant. In the year 1591 a deputation of the lower order of citizens in Zürich carried to their burgomaster, in Baden, two massive silver beakers, as a bath-gift, and were entertained free of cost during their stay there. It must have been in consequence of the pressure put upon the poorer citizens, to induce them to subscribe to this and other similar costly presents, that a proclamation of the Council of Zürich was made in 1595, forbidding all members of the city guilds to send silver goblets to their guild-masters, or to any other person at the baths of Baden, on pain of a fine of 10%. But how utterly vain such prohibitions were, and how the Zürich authorities themselves very speedily broke through and disregarded them, may be gathered from the following facts. In the year 1606 an ox and a sum of money collected amongst the citizens were presented to Burgomaster Bräm, at the Hinterhof in Baden, by a company of noble gentlemen, with much flourishing of trumpets and rolling of drums. In 1609 "my worshipful masters" (the Government of Zürich) sent a silver-gilt goblet, representing the terrestrial globe, and weighing 36 oz., to Duke Ernest, of Bavaria, Elector of Cologne, who was taking the waters in Baden, and at the same time a stag, some eels, and some salmon! During the last days of this same year (1609) there came out another severe decree of the Zürich authorities, forbidding, on pain of heavy fines, the sending of bath-gifts of silver or silver-gilt vases, goblets, and pitchers, to any person whatsoever, "except to the burgomaster;" and giving as one of the reasons for the decree, that "the custom led only to guzzling and drinking at the cost of those to whom the gifts were presented." But this stringent decree met with no better fate than its predecessors; for only three years after its promulgation we find sixty-eight members of the "Guild of the Titmouse" (!) sending a depu tation of twelve of their body to Baden, with a gift for Governor Keller of a double silver-gilt vessel, worth 100 florins five batzen. In 1615 the masters and companies of the Guild of Tanners sent a piece of silver plate to Governor Kamble; and in 1618 the Governor of Zürich sent to Burgomaster Holzhalb two silver flasks, weighing 219 ozs., and valued at 613 florins. As to the presents sent to Baden, about this period, by private individuals-parishioners to their priests and curates, tenants to their landlords, dependents and connections of great seigneurs to their masters and patrons, &c. &c.-they pass all computation. Decree fol lowed decree, inveighing in ever stronger terms against the extortionate practice of collecting money for bath-gifts, and forbidding them to be made, under ever-increasing penalties; but the laws were absolutely ineffectual to check the abuse, as, indeed, it was inevitable they should be, when the makers of them gave the example of being the chief breakers of them also. It would be tedious to enumerate even a small number of the enactments against Badschenkungen which may still be found in the dusty archives of Zürich, and impossible, within the limits of a stout volume, to describe all the various, singular, and costly gifts recorded to have been made. We must, however, find space for one curious extract from the private memoranda of a respectable citizen of Zürich, who was burgomaster of that town, and attended a Diet of the Confederation in Baden during the year 1665, in his official capacity. Herr Waser-for such was his worthy name, as the German hath it-availed himself of the opportunity of this official visit to the baths to "make the cure" there, and to bring with him to the Stadhof (the principal inn) the following members of his family, enumerated in his own phrase thus: " My beloved wife, her son by her first marriage, the Guild-master Werdtmiller my daughter's husband, Christopher Geiger, and my cousin Hans Rudolph Waser." And amidst the cares of office, Herr Bürgermeister Waser finds time not only to put down, like a careful father of a family, the expenses of his stay at the baths (they amounted to 206 florins nineteen schilling), but to enter, under the head of "receipts," all the presents he received while at Baden, and the names of those who sent them. These "receipts" are curiously miscellaneous in quality, and amusingly voluminous in quantity. Herr David Hess, of Zürich, in his book upon Baden in Aargau, has taken the trouble to sum them up under various categories, from which the following are selected: “In hard cash, fourteen florins, sixteen schilling, two Louis-d'ors, and three golden ducats; one great stag, one haunch of venison, one fore-quarter of wild boar, four hares, three sheep, two lambs, one quarter of mutton, eight sheep's trotters; one dish of sweetbread, twenty-five fishes larger and smaller, forty capons, one chicken, eighteen eggs, two geese, twenty pigeons, ten guinea-hens, sixty-three partridges, twelve ortolans, six quails, and two blackcocks; 226 crabs; one pasty; all sorts of salad and radishes, some artichokes, one head of cauliflower, two slices of breadand-butter (!), one freshly baked household loaf, two rolls, three eggcustards, two great cakes; one ham, eight boxes full of all manner of confectionery, currants, and macaroons, one box of truciscas (?), two almond-tarts, a loaf of sugar, melons, citrons, and various spices, several apricots. Moreover, a fine state-dinner, namely: one capon, one quarter of a turkey (!), one hare, one partridge, one piece of almond-tart, one ditto of quince-pie, and a candied citron. One little clock. In books, Plautin's Histoire Helvétique and Hottingeri Historia Ecclesiastica; and, finally, a gift from two poor Capuchin friars in the Hinterhof, of two little melons, a handful of fennel, and a bunch of flowers!" As a per contra he has carefully written down the few (very few) occasions on which he gave back a small portion of the provisions brought to him, as a fee to the bearer! The Rain-Cloud. (AFTER THE TAMIL.) Katir peru sen nel vâda Kâr kulam kandu sendru "Vivêka Sintâmani.” YE who are rich, and share One grain of rice to give, List to a Legend of a Cloud of Rain!* It was a land of rills And birds-and giant hills Rose westward: eastward thundered the broad main. The mild folk living there Smiled; and had quiet sleep; and loved the rain. So loamy was the soil There scarce was need of toil. So thick the plantains grew That men the young shoots slew, That the grown trees might drink up all the rain. * Music knows the "key-note." Tamil poetry acknowledges the “key-note of rhyme," or of an alliterative sound of some distinctive kind, in a poem. That rhythmic key-note, or continuously recurring cadence, is often based upon the subject of the poem. I know many verses in Tamil in which this rule-most arduous to the writer-has been strictly carried cut. I have tried to exemplify the custom in my English verses, taking the word Rain as the key-note of the rhyme employed. Great palnis grew o'er deep wells, Of yteens shook. The rajah who did reign Rendered the gods due fear, Loved men. And, year by year, From South-west and from North-cast Thus was it for a time, Whilst in that sunny clime, came the rain. Men like the "Lidless "t lived. Then came a wane ;- Howe'er so clear the sky -- And so it came to pass there fell no rain. Who knows, but that, one day, The idle gods at play, Cloyed of heaven's joys, and deeming good a bane, A dying nation's cry? Give they not poison, they who give the rain? That good and ill's their "play,"‡ Do not our sages say? May they not what they make, unmake again? They made your blood and mine; May they not shed it, as they shed the rain? * Alluding to the Indian monsoons. Those districts are, of course, especially favoured, which receive both the monsoons, unless their rainfall be exceptiorally heavy. The immortals, who never sleep, are called in Tamil imeiyôr, the "Unwinking Ones." Viramâmuni, "the Heroic Devotee,"-i.e. Beschi, the great Jesuit linguist-calls angels imeiyor, those who have no eyelashes-those who can stare, without closing their eyelids, at the Adi-Bagalôn, the Ancient Sun. A long dissertation, not here necessary, might be written concerning the stanza in which the term occurs in Viramâmuni's works—a stanza which is only second in its intrinsic beauty to one that wonderful Oriental scholar ever penned. ↑ A very large number of modern Hindûs believe (Tamil, tiru-vileiyâttu; English, "Divine Pranks") that the gods, in their bliss, like to see, from their unapproachable heights of supremacy, evil as well as good-sight of torture giving a fillip to their rapture. They like to watch the lights and shadows of mortal life. It is fun" to them to observe agony as well as bliss, in their mortal subjects. They laugh to see men writhe in pain. They are above sympathy. A large number of philosophic Hindûs regard it as an attribute of divinity to be above sympathetic considerations. VOL. XXXV.-NO. 206. 11. |