the wonder is, how rarely we come across a tyro, a novice ignorant of the less known and less important parts of the town. One might have almost thought that there was some cabman's college where examinations were passed in London topography; and truly were such the case, there would be much more appropriateness in the employment of the terms "little-go" and "great-go" now in vogue at the learned Universities, for those who are "going" all their lives.

Truly the cabman's is a peculiar mode of life, sad in sunshine, joyous in the rain, living mainly on his cab, sometimes sitting on the step, sometimes lounging by a lamppost with his fellows. What are his hopes, and joys, and fears? Is all centred in fares? There is little outwardly attractive in the cabman; in wet weather he is a dank, unpleasant looking creature, muffled about with old coats that do not seem to belong to him; in the finest weather, never trim or neat, without any mark of prosperity, and with no look of tidy well-darned poverty, the public-house most probably draining off no small portions of honest gains, and making inroads too on the over-fares charged to the ruddy country folks of green and verdant minds. A general acquaintance with various "Marquis of Granbys," and "Duke's Heads" and "Dragons," is generally formed by this wandering tribe, who are in a thousand parts of London in a day, and live it may be truly said every where; the exposure to cold and wet, a restless, homeless life, sharpens the edge of the temptation to drink; and when on a fine sunny day it is a walking world, and the cabman takes his place at the end of a long disheartening line of expectant cabs, it is a great trial to stand out in the street, a great temptation to regale himself at the Turk's Head with its well-known stout.

It is remarkable that they have no outward mark or token of their calling, no common corporate air in their dress and manner. The stage coachmen of old were wont to have, and grooms every where have still, a generic resemblance, a way, an air, a mode of dress, peculiar to themselves; they have their fashions, their ways, their own cut in their apparel; their tailors have to know what is "the thing" among them, what is worn by the class. The cabmen, however, seem a disjointed, disunited, isolated set, a body without class feeling, catching no manners from each other.

After all, it is a lot little to be envied, a restless, whirling life. This large mass of men in the midst of us, seem to be a sort of driving nomads, who have little care, little thought, bestowed upon them by others. We are not aware that even the busy philanthropists who are ever buzzing about to get up "causes" for Exeter Hall, have troubled themselves much about them. Perhaps, if they were thieves they would get some consideration: there is however something worth thinking about in the cabmen's condition; they are not parts of self-acting machines framed for our conveyance; they are not automatons with artificial hands for whips and shillings. We use them, but that is all; we pay them, and then,—why that is all; they go off to their stands. Can nothing be done to improve their condition? Are the pot-houses to have them? Are those spider publicans to spread their cobwebs without let or hindrance, or any endeavour to provide some comfort, some advantages, some good places of resort and rest? Something surely is practicable if prudent men would but set their wits to work. There is something besides six-penny fares which the public have to care about.

COLCHESTER CASTLE BUILT BY A COLONY OF ROMANS AS A TEMPLE TO THEIR DEIFIED EMPEROR CLAUDIUS CESAR. The substance of a Lecture delivered before the Colchester Archæological Society. By the Rev. H. Jenkins, B.D., Rector of Stanway, Essex. With eight Illustrations. London, Painter, 1853.

WE have transcribed the title-page of this extraordinary book in full, to satisfy our readers that we are not about to hoax them, and that such a book really does exist. If it were not actually lying open before us, so that we have the evidence of our senses to convince us of the fact, we should have thought it absolutely incredible that in the year 1853, a gentleman of mature years (as indicated by attaching B.D. to his name) could venture to print and publish such a wonderful affair as this. We can conceive the case of a worthy man, who has not had the opportunity of learning the Latin language, being unable to translate a page of Cæsar's Commentaries, without any disgrace attaching to his ignorance, but we cannot conceive that such a man should be induced to publish a Dissertation upon the work which he could not read. Yet this book is precisely a similar case.

Every nation from the Assyrians downwards, which had acquired any degree of civilization, has left behind it records of two kinds, the one in writing, the other in its buildings, either of stone or of brick. These two kinds of records require a different key to understand them; either we must know something of the

language in which the one is written, or we must know something of the general history of the art of building to understand the other. It is just as absurd for a man who is entirely ignorant of architecture to attempt to explain a building, as for one who cannot read to attempt to explain a book. We have not space to examine Mr. Jenkins' absurdities in detail, each page seems to contend with its predecessor as to which shall be the most absurd. Fortunately for his readers, the eight illustrations, though not of the best, do give a fair idea of the actual building; four of these are plans, the rest are views. To the eyes of any one who has seen half a dozen out of the hundreds of Norman castles which remain to our days, these plans and drawings are as palpably those of a Norman keep as that two and two make four: there is no room for the shadow of a doubt upon the subject, it seems impossible to make any thing else out of it; compare it with the tower of London, Rochester, Dover, or even Hedingham Castle, only a few miles from Colchester, or any other Norman keep, and no sane person can hesitate for a moment in saying that this is another example of the same class of buildings. Yet has Mr. Jenkins the assurance to call it a Roman temple, to which it does not bear the slightest resemblance; as if a Roman temple were not just as distinct from any other building, as the Latin language is from any other. But, says Mr. Jenkins, it is built of Roman tiles. Even if this were true, it proves nothing more than that the Norman builders used up the old materials which they found on the spot, which is likely enough; but it is much more probable that in those districts where stone is not to be had, the people continued to make bricks after the Roman fashion, long after that people had left our shores, probably down to the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The earliest example known in this country of the employment of bricks of the Flemish or usual modern shape, occurs within a few miles of Colchester at Little Wenham Hall, and seems to be merely a change of form in that material which had always been in use. Every early church in Colchester and the neighbourhood, is more or less built of brick. St. Botolph's priory is a mass of brickwork. Nor is there any thing remarkable in this; on the contrary, in all similar districts where stone is inaccessible, brick has always been used as a substitute; in Flanders, as at Bruges and Ghent, in the south of France, as at Alby and Toulouse, in many parts of Italy and Spain, brick buildings of all periods have come down to us in perfect preservation. In the face of these plain and notorious

facts, Mr. Jenkins has ventured to put forth his strange hypothesis. He begins by saying,

"Although many writers have delivered their opinions on the antiquity of Colchester castle, yet have they regarded it solely as a fortress. They have not considered, whether from its want of a keep, (the whole building being in fact a keep,) and the singular arrangement of its internal communications, (which are exactly the same as those of other Norman keeps,) it might not at first have subserved other than a military purpose." (It is calculated for this and nothing else.) He backs himself by the authority of the obsolete Fosbroke, and quotes with approbation this absurdity: "To exemplify its antiquity he referred to a bronze boiler found at Herculaneum, which he thought from the similarity of its outline, had been designed by its maker to represent this castle." p. 5.

Was any thing so preposterous ever imagined before? Such trash may have passed muster a hundred or even fifty years ago, when the difficulty of travelling limited the range of people's observation and consequently of their ideas also, but in these days we have a right to expect an author to exercise a little common sense, and go to see a few other castles before he presumes to publish an account of one drawn entirely from his own imagination.

The argument to prove that this was a hypethral temple is so extraordinary that we must give it in full.

"That Vandal was John Wheeley. In 1683 he purchased the castle with intent and on condition to demolish it entirely, and make money of the materials. For this purpose he unroofed all the rooms that were not vaulted, removed all the timber and the floorings-broke up all the pavements-destroyed all the upper stonework of a fine well-forced down with screws or blew up with gunpowder the tops of the main walls and towers; and to be brief, of two parallel walls, which crossed the interior of the castle lengthways, he totally demolished one, and indented the top of the other. In the midst however, of his work of destruction, he desisted from the task, on account of its difficulty and expense. But this imperfect demolition has led to an important and unlooked for result; for strange to say, both by what the speculating spoiler destroyed, and by what he spared-by leaving the apsis of the chapel and the vaulted bema, on which it rests, untouched, and by pulling down one of the two partition walls which supported the habitable apartments, and thus opening a large hypethral area, he has unwittingly developed the original plan and design of the building." p. 10.

Strange indeed, if it were only true!