The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1880-06-02
For Tar RECORD.
TIRE OLD SQUARE ALMANAC.


We have said historic interest" And yet
the first item starts the grave questions, which,
however long disputed, are little likely to find
solution, What is history What, fable p
How can we draw the line between the two ?
For here, May 80, A. D. 542, it is set down
that King Arthur died ; yet there be many
who are ready to assure us that be never liv-
cd Godfrey of Monmouth, whose Chron-
icles came out A. D. LAT, is discredited by
the verdict of modern criticism, and his pleas
ant stories pronounced fabulous. 1t is much
to surrender, and we have not yet given IL
our allegiance to the destructive critics. They
may strangle the Wizard Merlin, indeed, and
bury the dragons deep out of sight and if
some of the dashing knights and fiashy danes
were put out Of existence, they would have
their deserts only. But Arthur's self, the
Hercules of the Britons," we cannot spare
Let his birth be natural, his origin obscure,
his Continental exploits all fiction yet allow
us, as reality, the golden knight, the pure
king, the wise father of his people. Caer-
leon upon Usk must not be a city on paper,
nor the possible adventures of the Table
Round, dreams of the imagination. They
live too really In our own fancy and our own
heart, for them not once to have been facts
And yet, alas 1t is a staggering blow-to our
credulity, that the British Hero had been
dead six hundred years before his name APP
pears in history And the historian Giraldus,
who was not long after Godfrey, testifies that
Geoffrey's stories were not Welsh.
We now know pretty well that in their
earliest forms the Legends of Arthur are
tlaceable to French originals, whether sung
first by the Trouveres, wandering minstrels
of Normany, or by the bards of Henry ii. IN
English halls but in what was then the liter
airy language of the nation, Norman French.
Happily, however, the charming tales OF
Arthur and his court are true in sense which
the crabbedist criticism cannot dispute.
higher truth than that Of mere event suggests
fable aud inspires romance and moral and
poetic truths are hundred times more infu
entail, though wrought out in those
same ETHEREAL elements that constitute the
fabric Of dreams than nine tenths of Mr..
GradgriDd's facts. )" The Arthurian Legends,
whether we hear them in their rude, quaint
Anglo Saxon rhythm, in the stately stanza Of
Spenser, or the charming verse of Tennyson,
touch the soul with conviction of truth, as
we'll as fill the fancy with the vivid scenes
through which that truth moves. 1t is the
Deep eternal truth, that lives in history and
breathes in art, and finds acceptance with ev-
cry honest heart, and is denied by none but
those who love and make lie The truth
which may not be written down in syllogisms,
and which can mover need demonstration.
The truth which is often obscured, and some
times seems falsified but which will, in the
end, come out clear--God's truth, of the
eternal difference between right and wrong /;
Of the infinite superiority, the certain success
of right, at the last
"For so the whole round earth Is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God"
This same day, that Chronicle has made
the date for :" the Passing of Arthur" May
Poets, whom We can but name, not dwell up
on, Alexander Pope, 1744, and Voltaire,
1878.
And strangely enough, two historic charac
ters were put to death, by burning, on this
day, fifteen years apart,-Jerome of Prague,
1416, and Joan d Arc, 1881. What supersti-
tion and religious hate were capable of in the
fifteenth century, these records show. The
impossbility of their repetition, in the nine
teenth, evinces an advancement in real civil
ization, at which the romantic Antquary can
rejoice and, as the centuries roll on, Solo
mons rebuke of the man discontinued with
his own place in the worlds ages, is still ap-
posite,-" Say not thou, what is the cause
that the former days were better than these
For thou dost not enquire wisely concerning
this"
May 81, 1855, Charlotte Bronte' died. Few
woman writers have ever equalled Courier
Bell " for such was her nom do plume in Wig
or of description and intense, passionate ex-
preston of personal character. Jane Eyre
and Villette are her greatest works. When the
latter appeared, Blachctcood said of il and her:
:. Her passionate and fearless nature, her wild
warm heart, are transferred into the magic
world she has created, IA world which no one
can enter without yielding to the irresistible
fascination of her personal influence
Aud this writer's life was spent almost
wholly in the seclusion of her fathers par
sonage, and the duh, repellant surroundings
of wretchedly poor and small parish in the
bleak mining districts of Western England.
Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte is the
best commentary on her novels, and possesses
an intense interest scarcely inferior to that
of those fictions, themselves.
June IL, commentaries Christian hero,
about whose name and life lurk no mists Of
uncertain fable whose character is as noble
as that which the highest eulogium has
ever pronounced on Arthur.
It is st. Barnabas day !; and the old, old
almanacs before the change of style, when
the 18th of June was the Summer Solstice,
had as one of England's weather proverbs
Rarnaby bright,
The longest day and the shortest night
For the story of st. Barnabas, refer to the
Acts of the Holy Apostles, written by ST.
Luke, the first of all Christian historians. He