Saxons called it Col; the Dutch, Kole; the Danes, Kul; the Irish, Ougal; and the Cornish, Kolan. COALS IN LONDON. Stowe says, coals were first used in London in the reign of Edward I., and the smoke was supposed to corrupt the air so much, that he forbade the use of them by proclamation. These proclamations are noticed in Prynne's Animadversions on the Fourth Part of Sir Edward Coke's Institutes, p. 182, where it is said, that "in the latter part of the reign of Edward I., when brewers, dyers, and other artificers using great fires, began to use sea-coals instead of dry wood and charcoal, in and near the city of London, the prelates, nobles, commons, and other people of the realm, resorting thither to parliaments, and upon other occasions, with the inhabitants of the city, Southwark, Wapping, and East Smithfield, complained thereof twice, one after another, to the king as a public nuisance, corrupting the air with its stink and smoke, to the great prejudice and detriment of their health. Whereupon the king first prohibited the burning of sea-coal by his proclamation; which being disobeyed by many for their private lucre, the king upon their second complaint issued a commission of Oyer and Terminer to inquire of all such who burned sea-coals against his proclamation within the city, or parts adjoining to it, and to punish them for their first offence by great fines and ransoms; and for the second offence to demolish their furnaces, kilns wherein they burnt sea-coals, and to see his proclamation strictly observed for times to come, as the Record of 35 Edw. I. informs us." Charles II., son of Charles the Martyr, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, a most gracious prince, commiserating the deplorable state of things, whilst the ruins were yet smoking provided for the comfort of his citizens, and the ornament of his city; remitted their taxes, and referred the petitions of the magistrates and inhabitants to the parliament; who immediately passed an act, that public works should be restored to greater beauty, with public money, to be raised by an imposition on coals; that churches, and the cathedral of St. Paul's, should be rebuilt from their foundations, with all magnificence; that the bridges, gates, and prisons should be new made, the sewers eleansed, the streets made straight and regular, such as were steep levelled, and those too narrow made wider, and markets and shambles removed to separate places. They also enacted, that every house should be built with party walls, and all in front raised of an equal height, and those walls all of square stone, or brick; and that no man should delay building beyond the space of seven years. CANDLES. The origin of candles is obscure. Frequent mention is made of them in the Scriptures; but from the description of the candlestick of gold made by Moses, it is more than probable that the Hebrew expression translated "candle" really means lamp; for in Leviticus xxiv. 4, the Lord directs that Aaron shall order the lamps upon the pure candlestick, and in verse 2 of the same chapter, the fuel used in the lamps is shown to have been olive oil. Wax was employed by the classical ancients for candles, the wick being made of rope and leaves of the papyrus; and such candles were carried by children at marriages, and were used at funerals. The Emperor Constantine, about the beginning of the fourth century, caused the whole city of Constantinople to be illuminated with lamps and wax-candles on Christmas Eve. That wax-candles were not made in the Saxon period by regular chandlers, as now, appears from the description of King Alfred's device for marking the hours of the day by the consumption of candles, six of which, lighted in succession, burned exactly twenty-four hours. There can be no doubt, however, that the occupation of the wax-chandler existed in England at a very early period, as well for the manufacture of tapers for religious rites, as for the preserving of the bodies of important personages in waxed cloths, which was called cering them. CALLIGRAPHY, OR THE ART OF WRITING. Writing, or the art of Calligraphy, is of uncertain data. Hieroglyphics were the first characters used, and there is little doubt but that we are indebted to the ancient Greeks for those less doubtful characters which we now employ. The English, French, and Italians, are considered to have cultivated this art with more success than other nations. It has, however, been stupidly considered as incompatible with the character of a gentleman to write a good hand. Dr. Parr used to observe, that he unfortunately accustomed himself to write rapidly, but not well, and lamented the consequences, as his MSS. were often returned as unintelligible. He concludes his lamentation over his own bad writing, by reminding those who deemed Calligraphy an accomplishment unworthy of a scholar and a gentleman, that in the art of writing Mr. Fox was eminently distinguished by the clearness and firmness, Mr. Porson by the correctness and elegance, and Sir Wm. Jones by the ease, beauty, and variety of the characters they respectively employed. RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE STAGE, ORIGIN OF VARIOUS POPULAR ANTHEMS, PLAYS, SONGS, &c., &c. TRAGEDY. Tragedy, like other arts, was rude and imperfect in its commencement. Among the Greeks, from whom our dramatic entertainments are derived, the origin of this art was no other than the song which was commonly sung at the festival of Bacchus. A goat was the sacrifice offered to that god. After the sacrifice, the priests, and all the company attending, sung hymns in honour of Bacchus ; and from the name of the victim rpayos, a goat, joined with w♪n, a song, undoubtedly arose the word tragedy. "At first, the tragedy was void of art; A song where each man danced and sung his part, And show'd his hero with a buskin dress'd. Increased the pomp and beauty of the stage; Engaged the chorus song in ev'ry part, And polish'd rugged verse by rules of art."-Dryden. ORATORIOS. The oratorio commenced with the fathers of the Oratory. In order to draw youth to church, they had hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs, or cantatas, sung either in chorus, or by a single voice. These pieces were divided into two parts, the one performed before the sermon, and the other after it. Sacred stories, or events from Scripture, written in verse, and by way of dialogue, were set to music, and the first part being performed, the sermon succeeded, which the people were induced to stay and hear, that they might be present at the performance of the second part. The order has been recently revived in London under the auspices of Father Newman and Mr. Faber. The subjects in early times were the Good Samaritan, the Pro digal Son, Tobit with the Angel, his Father, and his Wife, and similar histories, which by the excellence of the composition, the band of instruments, and the performance, brought the Oratory into great repute; hence this species of musical drama obtained the general appellation of Oratorio. The Oratorio was introduced into England in 1720, when Handel set "Esther" for the Chapel of the Duke of Chandos at Cannons. This was, in the year 1732, performed by the children of the Chapel Royal at the King's Theatre. For a period of about a century, with few interruptions, Oratorios were performed at one or other of the London theatres on the Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent. Within the last few years they have been performed almost weekly at Exeter Hall. RELIGIOUS PLAYS. Apollinarius, who lived in the time of the emperor Julian, wrote religious odes, and turned particular histories, and portions of the Old and New Testament, into comedies and tragedies, after the manner of Menander, Euripides, and Pindar. These were called Mysteries, and were the first dramatic performances. The first dramatic representation in Italy was a spiritual comedy, performed at Padua, in 1243; and there was a company instituted at Rome, in 1264, whose chief employment was to represent the sufferings of Christ in Passion Week. The Rev. Mr. Croft, and the Hon. Topham Beauclerc, collected a great number of these Italian Plays or Mysteries; and at the sale of their libraries, Dr. Burney purchased many of the most ancient, which he speaks of as being evidently much earlier than the discovery of printing, from the gross manner in which the subjects are treated, the coarseness of the dialogue, and the ridiculous situation into which most sacred persons and things are thrown. In 1313, Philip the Fair gave the most sumptuous entertainment at Paris ever remembered in that city. Edward II. and his queen Isabella crossed over from England with a large retinue of nobility, and partook of the magnificent festivities. The pomp and profusion of the banquetings, the variety of the amusements, and the splendour of the costume, were unsurpassed. On the occasion, Religious Plays were represented of the Glory of the Blessed, and at other times with the Torments of the Damned, and various other spectacles. The Religious Guild, or fraternity of Corpus Christi, at York, was obliged annually to perform a Corpus Christi play. But the more eminent performers of mysteries were the Society of Parish Clerks of London. On the 18th, 19th, and 20th of July, 1390, they played Interludes at the Skinners' Well, as the usual place of their performance, before king Richard II., his queen, and their court; and at the same place, in 1490, they played the Creation of the World. The first trace of theatrical perform ance, however, in this country, is recorded by Matthew Paris, who wrote about 1240, and relates that Geoffrey, a learned Norman, master of the school of the abbey of Dunstable, composed the play of St. Catherine, which was acted by his scholars. Geoffrey's performance took place in the year 1110, and he borrowed copes from the sacrist of St. Albans to dress his characters. In the reign of Henry VII., 1487, that king, in his castle at Winchester, was entertained on a Sunday, while at dinner, with the performance of Christ's Descent into Hell; and on the Feast of St. Margaret, in 1511, the miracle play of the Holy Martyr St. George was acted on a stage, in an open field at Bassingborne, in Cambridgeshire, at which were a minstrel and three waits, hired from Cambridge, with a property-man and a painter. Thus, it appears that the earliest dramatic performances were of a religious nature, and that the present drama, as will be seen in another article, takes its data from the 16th century. PUBLIC THEATRES IN ROME. The first public theatre opened in Rome, was in 1671; and in 1677, the Opera was established in Venice. In 1680, at Padua, the opera of Berenice was performed, in a style which makes all the processions and stage parapharnalia of modern times shrink into insignificance. RISE OF THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND. William Fitzstephen, a monk of Canterbury, who wrote in the reign of Henry II., and died in 1191, in speaking of the performances of the stage, says, "London, instead of common Interludes belonging to the theatre, hath plays of a more holy subject; representations of those miracles which the holy confessors wrought, or of the sufferings wherein the glorious constancy of the martyrs did appear." In the reign of Edward III., it was ordained by the act of parliament, that the strollers should be whipt and banished out of London, on account of the scandalous masquerades which they represented. By these masquerades we are to understand, a species of entertainment similar to the performances of the mummers; of which some remains were to be met with, so late as on Christmas Eve, 1817, in an obscure village in Cumberland, where there was a numerous party of them. Their drama related to some historical subject, and several of the speeches were in verse, and delivered in good emphasis. The whole concluded with a battle, in which one of the heroes was subdued; but the main character was a jester, who constantly interrupted the heroics with his buffoonery, like the clown in the tragedies of Calderon, the Spanish Shakspeare. The play of Hock |