"It is well known that the name of 'Frank' is not to be found in the long list of German tribes preserved to us in the Germania of Tacitus. Little or nothing is heard of them before the reign of Gordian III. In A.D. 240 Aurelian, then a tribune of the Sixth Legion stationed on the Rhine, encountered a body of marauding Franks near Mayence, and drove them back into their marshes. The word 'Francia' is also found at a still earlier date, in the old Roman chart called the Charta Peutingeriana, and occupies on the map the right bank of the Rhine from opposite Coblentz to the sea. The origin of the Franks has been the subject of frequent debate, to which French pa triotism has occasionally lent some asperity. At the present day, however, historians of every nation, including the French, are unanimous in considering the Franks as a powerful confederacy of German tribes, who in the time of Tacitus inhabited the northwestern parts of Germany, bordering on the Rhine. The etymology of the name adopted by the confederacy is also uncertain. The conjecture which has most probability in its favour is that adopted long ago by Gibbon, and confirmed in recent times by the authority of Grimm, which connects it with the German word frank (free). The derivation preferred by Adelung, from frak, (in modern German, frech, bold,) with the inserted nasal, differs from that of Grimm only in appearance. The first appearance of the Salian Franks, with whom this history is chiefly concerned, is in the occupation of the Batavian Islands in the Lower Rhine, in which territory they were attacked by Constantius Chlorus in A.D. 292.”

The reign of Pharamond the author is inclined to look upon as a myth, and he considers it more than doubtful if such a personage ever existed :"To this hero was afterwards ascribed not only the conquests made at this juncture (about A.D. 417) by the various tribes of Franks, but the establishment of the monarchy, and the collection and publication of the well-known Salic Laws. The sole foundation for this complete and harmonious fabric is a passage interpolated into an ancient chronicle of the fifth century; and, with this single exception, Pharamond's name is never mentioned before the seventh century. The whole story is perfected and rounded off by the author of the Gesta Francorum, according to whom Pharamond was the son of Marcomeres, the prince who ended his days in an Italian prison. The fact that nothing is known of him by Gregory of Tours, or Fredegarius, is sufficient to prevent our regarding him as an historical personage."

Of the character of Clovis, the founder on an enduring basis of the Frankish kingdom in Gaul, and, in the eyes of Catholic historians and chroniclers, "the Eldest Son of the Church," the learned author forms by no means a flattering estimate; considering him as debased by a cruelty unusual even in his times;" as also by "falsehood, meanness, cunning, and hypocrisy."

And yet, upon one occasion, Clovis seems to have met with a horsea veritable Houyhnhnm, one would almost think-that was at least his match in cunning; if, indeed, both king and Houyhnhnm were not acted upon by some one endowed with more cunning than either :

"In the Gesta Francorum we are told that Clovis returned to Tours, and enriched the church of St. Martin with many costly presents. Among other things he had given a horse, which he wished to re-purchase, and sent 100 solidi for the purpose; upon which being given-[we are doing Mr. Perry's work in translating the Latin]-the horse would not move an inch. Thereupon Clovis said, 'Give them another 100 solidi.' Another 100 solidi being paid down, the horse, the moment he was untied, took his departure. Then with joyousness did the king exclaim, 'Of a truth the blessed Martin is a good hand at helping, but a hard hand at making a bargain (carus in negotio).”

In the instance of Clotaire, who was cruel and licentious, " even for a Merovingian," we have a glaring exemplification of the flattery and partizanship of Gregory of Tours, our main source for the history of these remote and obscure times. Chramnus, the son of Clotaire, has rebelled against his father, who is represented by Gregory, not as a demon of wickedness, but as "marching to meet his son like another David against another Absalom :”—

"Look down,' he prayed, 'O Lord, from heaven, and judge my cause, for I am undeservedly suffering wrong at the hands of my son; pass the same judgment as of old between Absalom and his father David.' Therefore, continues the historian, when the armies met, the Count of the Britons turned and fled, and was killed upon the field of battle. Chramnus had prepared vessels to escape by sea, but in the delay occasioned by his desire to save his family he was overtaken by the troops of Clotaire, and by his father's orders was burned alive with his wife and children."

How loosely Gregory's morality sits upon him we may judge from another passage, where he is speaking of Guntram-Boso, one of the conspirators against Childebert II., king of Austrasia, a man whom he quaintly describes as 6.6 too ready to commit perjury" (ad perjuria nimium præparatus). "In other respects, however," adds the historian, "Guntram was sane bonus, a very good man"!!

The following miracle of St. Columbanus is really too good to pass unnoticed. We commend the anecdote to the notice of the teetotallers and Maine Liquor-law people:

"After his banishment by Theoderic and Brunhilda, Columbanus is said to have been well received by Theudebert, who bid him choose a suitable place for a monastery. Columbanus fixed on Bregentz, which was at that time inhabited by a Suabian people. Soon after his arrival, while exploring the country, he came upon some of the inhabitants in the act of performing a heathen sacrifice. They had a large vessel, called cupa (kufe), which held about twenty pailsfull [pailfuls], filled with beer [wort ?], standing in the midst of them. In reply to Columbanus's question, what they were going to do with it, they replied that they were going to sacrifice to Wodan (whom some call Mercury). When the Saint heard of this horrible work, he blew on the cask, and lo! it was loosed, and flew into pieces with a loud noise, so that all the beer ran out. This made it evident that the devil was in the cask, who wished to ensnare the souls of the sacrificers by earthly drinks. When the heathens saw this they were astonished, and said that Columbanus had a strong breath to burst a strongly-bound cask. But he rebuked them in the words of the Gospel, and bade them go home."

With reference to the Frankish " Mayors of the Palace," those hybrid but able sovereigns, the self-constituted guardians of the later Merovingian b kings, and the founders of the Carlovingian dynasty, the origin and growth of their anomalous authority are ably traced by the writer. So little, however, is known with certainty as to the origin of their title, that while major domus, "head servant of the palace," is more generally looked upon as such, Sismondi derives it from a source altogether different-the words mord dom, "judge of murderers." Pepin of Landen, Pepin of Heristal, Charles (Carl) Martel, and Pepin the Short (father of Charlemagne), were the names of these de facto monarchs, to whom France is so eminently indebted for much of her early progress in civilization.

Few modern readers have any acquaintance with the Salic Laws, beyond the somewhat ungallant enactment-or rather the enactment which has been wrongfullyd attributed to them-by which females are under all circumstances excluded from inheriting the throne. As being to a great extent

b The rois fainéans (do-nothing kings) of French history.

In 750, Childeric III., the last of the Merovingians, was shorn of his royal locks and deposed, and Pepin the Short assumed the name of King.

We say wrongfully, because by the Salic Law the exclusion of females was only to take place where there were males in the same degree of kindred to the ancestor, a principle which pervades our real property law at the present day. The fundamental law of France, however, which excludes females from the succession to the crown, received at a very early period the appellation of the Salic Law, being either supposed or feigned by the lawyers to have been derived from the ancient code.-Singular anomaly, that a nation which has always assumed credit for its chivalrous gallantry towards the fair sex should have adhered so tenaciously to so ungallant a provision.

the basis of our own feudal law, and, in many of its provisions, a singular monument of usages and notions long since bygone, we give a few extracts from the Tenth Chapter of Mr. Perry's work; the whole of which chapter"brief and superficial view" though he modestly calls it-is devoted by the author to an able review of the principal enactments of this remarkable code:

"The Salic Law," he says, "has been handed down to us in a barbarous and corrupted Latinity; but whether it was originally composed in the Latin language is still a subject of debate among antiquaries. The controversy has originated in the very singular fact that the oldest editions of the code contain a considerable number of words of unknown import, interspersed through the Latin text, but having no apparent connexion with the sense. These words, known under the name of the Malberg Gloss, are considered by some writers (Leo, for example) to belong to the ancient Celtic language; while Jacob Grimm declares them to be remnants of the German dialect in which the laws were originally composed, and which gradually made way for the bastard Latin of Merovingian times. In his eyes they are the only planks' and 'splinters' that have been washed on shore from the shipwreck of the old Frankish tongue, and on that account worthy of the notice both of the lawyer and the philologian."

In reference to the above conflicting opinions, we fully coincide with the learned author in pronouncing against "the antecedent improbability" of a theory which maintains that "German laws brought by Germans from the German forests should contain the remnants of a Celtic dialect."

Premising that the leodis or weregeld of the Franks was a graduated price set upon life or limb, to be paid by the party inflicting the injury, we gather the following particulars from a large amount of curious information respecting it :

"The leodis for all free Germans who lived according to the Salic Law was 800 denarii, or 200 solidi. This was increased to 600 when the murdered person was a puer crinitus (a boy under twelve years of age), or a free woman capable of bearing children. The leodis of the latter was increased to 700 in case of actual pregnancy. The unborn child was protected by a leodis of 100 sols. Where a woman was killed, together with the unborn child, and the latter happened to be a girl, the fine was 2,400 sols! The fine for killing another man's slave was 30 sols, and exactly the same punishment was inflicted for stealing him; because he was regarded solely in the light of property. On the same principle, the leodis of the slave was greater if he were skilled in any art, because it made him of greater value to his master; other crimes, where the perpetrator was an ingenuus (free man), might also be atoned for by money; and we find in the Salic Law a nicely graduated scale of fines for wounds and other personal injuries: 100 solidi, a moiety of the weregeld, was paid for depriving a man of an eye, hand, or foot. The thumb and great toe were valued at 50 sols; the second finger, with which they drew the bow, at 35 sols. With respect to other acts of violence, the fine varied according to several minute circumstances, as whether the blow was with a stick or with closed fist; whether the brain was laid bare; whether certain bones protruded, and how much; whether blood flowed from the wound on to the ground, &c., &c."

In conformity with the enactments of these laws, it was the duty of every master (cl. 40) to have sticks always in readiness for the chastisement of his slave," which were to be of the size of the little finger, with a convenient bench at hand over which to stretch the slave." The author remarks that this reminds us of the popular error that a man may beat his wife with a stick "as big as his little finger." According to Justice Buller, however, one of our legal dignitaries at the beginning of the present century, the thickness was to be that of a full-grown person's thumb; a

So much so, that the very best key, it appears to us, to a fair understanding of the otherwise almost unintelligible texts of the laws of the Confessor and of William the Conqueror, is a copy of the Salic Laws, the origin of their models.

haughty Merovingians to the dignified clergy, we conclude. No wonder that such a dynasty soon required Mayors of the Palace to do the work of governing for it :

"When Severin approached Clovis for the purpose of healing him, the king worshipped him-adoravit eum rex. When Germanus, bishop of Paris, had one day been made to wait too long in the antechamber of King Childebert, the latter was (naturally) taken ill in the night. The bishop was sent for, and when he came, 'Rex adlambit sancti palliolum,'-The king licked the holy man's pall!"

Should the present volume "meet with any degree of public favour," Mr. Perry hopes to publish another on the Life and Times of Charlemagne. We sincerely hope that he will receive sufficient encouragement to induce him to carry out his laudable design. By way of parting advice, however, we would suggest that it would be as well to give translations of his Latin quotations. To illustrate an English text by notes more than one-half Latin, is in many instances to explain obscurum per obscurius, to "make darker what was dark enough before;" for it is not every Latin scholar even that is able to understand satisfactorily the crabbed and unclassical language of the Gesta Francorum, of Fredegarius, and of Gregory of Tours.

STROLLS ON THE KENTISH COAST.

DEAL BEACH AND THE SOUTH FORELAND.

THERE are various ways of reaching Deal beach, where we consider our present day's excursion to commence. We may take a boat at either Ramsgate or Pegwell, stretch across the bay, and be landed on a low shingly point called Shell-ness or Shingle-end, where we find gay-coloured flowers and well-polished shells in equal profusion; or we may walk to Stonar-cut, (already mentioned as well on towards Sandwich,) be there ferried over the Haven, and find ourselves in a marshy pasture overrun with wormwood, but soon changing as we make towards the sea into a sandy waste, which echoes under our feet-it being undermined by rabbits, whose burrows present a succession of pitfalls to the unwary pedestrian. We shall, however, by either of these courses lengthen our journey considerably, and therefore we save time by taking the railway to Sandwich, where we find ourselves betimes, and not more than two miles in a direct line from the sea.

We turn sharp to the right on leaving the station, and pass along the Mill-wall; we see on the left the great Norman tower of St. Clement's Church, apparently as firm as when its parson made his journey to London more than 500 years ago, to give evidence against the Templars; but the Castle, where the Bastard Faulconbridge withstood for a time the power of the House of York, has disappeared, as well as Sandown Gate, which stood Dear it. Beyond its site we find ourselves in the open country, but we keep on the beaten road for a mile, until we have crossed the sluggish

We can excuse him not giving a translation of the "free and easy" speech of Basina, the mother of Clovis, in p. 68.

North stream, when we roam rather more freely, having the spire of the church of Worth on the right, and at some distance ahead a heavy-looking round fort, beyond which the sea heaves and glitters in the sun. We soon pass a shallow reedy pool, known as the Old Haven, but we feel far more certain that it produces an abundance of flowering rush and other marsh plants, than that it is the site of Cæsar's naval camp, or that the hillocks around are sand-heaps piled by the winds on the remains of the intrenchments by which he protected his battered fleet. Some learned antiquaries have maintained the affirmative, but whether it be so or not, we know that war has raged in these parts. We see, in the mind's eye, the forlorn hope of the unfortunate who goes, rightly or wrongly, by the name of Perkin Warbeck, cut off by the train bands of Sandwich; and, 150 years later, a fierce skirmish between a force landed from Prince Charles's ships in the Downs and the Parliamentarians. The object of each body of invaders was to overthrow a government not long before established by force, and we cannot help musing on what a different aspect English history might have presented, had either attack succeeded.

We are aroused from our day-dream by coming on a Battery, as it is termed, one of the many memorials along our southern shore of the fears felt, or perhaps only affected, half a century ago of a French invasion. The work has evidently never been completed, as the enormously thick brick wall is but about four feet high; and it is overgrown with herbage, among which may be seen wild flowers enough to detain a professed botanist a summer's day. It now serves the purpose common to most of the Batteries and Martello Towers, of inclosing a coast-guard station. A mile further on we have another Battery, originally of a like kind, but now larger and much more pretentious, as all the buildings are inclosed by a wall loop-holed for musketry, and two guns are to be seen "in position," under a shed. Once when we passed, the men were just assembling for their great-gun exercise, and they looked as fine a body of sturdy, active, intelligent fellows as we could wish for the defence of our 66 sea-girt isle." Hard by we see a wretched thatched hovel called the "Hare and Hounds," but though there is no other house of entertainment near, we feel no inclination to enter it. At length, in about an hour from leaving Sandwich, we pause before the rude fort of Sandown, a memento, and an ugly one, of the suppression of the monasteries.

The fort is now a coast-guard station, but it is open to inspection, and will repay it. It consists of a low but large round tower, at the base of which are placed four lunettes, with odd oven-shaped openings for windows, now half choked with vegetation. The structure has been more encroached on by the sea than the kindred castles at Deal and Walmer, and seems likely one day to be washed away, unless protected by groynes. The waves, which leave but a narrow passage in its front at any time, and lave its walls at high water, have engulphed good part of the moat, and lay the rest (which is the coast-guardsmen's cabbage-garden) under water in heavy weather. We see the Tudor rose, in coloured brick, beside the only entrance, the bridge and stout gates of which have been recently re-edified after the most approved barrack fashion. Invited to enter, we do so. guide conducts us through a heavy archway and across a court-yard to a low door, which when opened displays a dismal flight of steps, and we fancy that we shall soon learn what a dungeon really is; nor are we disappointed. We descend, and find ourselves in a gallery wrought out of the thickness of the wall into one continuous series of dungeons, some GENT. MAG. VOL. CCIII.

H

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