Nice DayOne Day,One Nice!!!!

(Lord’s day). Lay long, merrily talking with my wife, and then up and to church, where a dull sermon of Mr. Mills touching Original Sin, and then home, and there find little Michell and his wife, whom I love mightily. Mightily contented I was in their company, for I love her much; and so after dinner I left them and by water from the Old Swan to White Hall, where, walking in the galleries, I in the first place met Mr. Pierce, who tells me the story of Tom Woodall, the surgeon, killed in a drunken quarrel, and how the Duke of York hath a mind to get him [Pierce] one of his places in St. Thomas’s Hospitall. Then comes Mr. Hayward, the Duke of York’s servant, and tells us that the Swede’s Embassador hath been here to-day with news that it is believed that the Dutch will yield to have the treaty at London or Dover, neither of which will get our King any credit, we having already consented to have it at The Hague; which, it seems, De Witt opposed, as a thing wherein the King of England must needs have some profound design, which in my conscience he hath not. They do also tell me that newes is this day come to the King, that the King of France is come with his army to the frontiers of Flanders, demanding leave to pass through their country towards Poland, but is denied, and thereupon that he is gone into the country. How true this is I dare not believe till I hear more. From them I walked into the Parke, it being a fine but very cold day; and there took two or three turns the length of the Pell Mell: and there I met Serjeant Bearcroft, who was sent for the Duke of Buckingham, to have brought him prisoner to the Tower. He come to towne this day, and brings word that, being overtaken and outrid by the Duchesse of Buckingham within a few miles of the Duke’s house of Westhorp, he believes she got thither about a quarter of an hour before him, and so had time to consider; so that, when he come, the doors were kept shut against him. The next day, coming with officers of the neighbour market-town to force open the doors, they were open for him, but the Duke gone; so he took horse presently, and heard upon the road that the Duke of Buckingham was gone before him for London: so that he believes he is this day also come to towne before him; but no newes is yet heard of him. This is all he brings. Thence to my Lord Chancellor’s, and there, meeting Sir H. Cholmly, he and I walked in my Lord’s garden, and talked; among other things, of the treaty: and he says there will certainly be a peace, but I cannot believe it. He tells me that the Duke of Buckingham his crimes, as far as he knows, are his being of a caball with some discontented persons of the late House of Commons, and opposing the desires of the King in all his matters in that House; and endeavouring to become popular, and advising how the Commons’ House should proceed, and how he would order the House of Lords. And that he hath been endeavouring to have the King’s nativity calculated; which was done, and the fellow now in the Tower about it; which itself hath heretofore, as he says, been held treason, and people died for it; but by the Statute of Treasons, in Queen Mary’s times and since, it hath been left out. He tells me that this silly Lord hath provoked, by his ill- carriage, the Duke of York, my Lord Chancellor, and all the great persons; and therefore, most likely, will die. He tells me, too, many practices of treachery against this King; as betraying him in Scotland, and giving Oliver an account of the King’s private councils; which the King knows very well, and hath yet pardoned him.¹ Here I passed away a little time more talking with him and Creed, whom I met there, and so away, Creed walking with me to White Hall, and there I took water and stayed at Michell’s to drink. I home, and there to read very good things in Fuller’s “Church History,” and “Worthies,” and so to supper, and after supper had much good discourse with W. Hewer, who supped with us, about the ticket office and the knaveries and extortions every day used there, and particularly of the business of Mr. Carcasse, whom I fear I shall find a very rogue. So parted with him, and then to bed.

1. Two of our greatest poets have drawn the character of the Duke of Buckingham in brilliant verse, and both have condemned him to infamy. There is enough in Pepys’s reports to corroborate the main features of Dryden’s magnificent portrait of Zimri in “Absolom and Achitophel”:

   In the first rank of these did Zimri stand; A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind’s epitome; Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong; Was everything by starts, and nothing long,

   But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking, * * * * * * * He laughed himself from Court, then sought relief By forming parties, but could ne’er be chief.

   Pope’s facts are not correct, and hence the effect of his picture is impaired. In spite of the duke’s constant visits to the Tower, Charles II. still continued his friend; but on the death of the king, expecting little from James, he retired to his estate at Helmsley, in Yorkshire, to nurse his property and to restore his constitution. He died on April 16th, 1687, at Kirkby Moorside, after a few days’ illness, caused by sitting on the damp grass when heated from a fox chase. The scene of his death was the house of a tenant, not “the worst inn’s worst room” (Moral Essays,” epist. iii.). He was buried in Westminster Abbey. ↩

Up, and to the office, where sitting all the morning, and among other things did agree upon a distribution of 30,000l. and odd, which is the only sum we hear of like to come out of all the Poll Bill for the use of this office for buying of goods. I did herein some few courtesies for particular friends I wished well to, and for the King’s service also, and was therefore well pleased with what was done. Sir W. Pen this day did bring an order from the Duke of York for our receiving from him a small vessel for a fireship, and taking away a better of the King’s for it, it being expressed for his great service to the King. This I am glad of, not for his sake, but that it will give me a better ground, I believe, to ask something for myself of this kind, which I was fearful to begin. This do make Sir W. Pen the most kind to me that can be. I suppose it is this, lest it should find any opposition from me, but I will not oppose, but promote it. After dinner, with my wife, to the King’s house to see “The Mayden Queene,” a new play of Dryden’s, mightily commended for the regularity of it, and the strain and wit; and, the truth is, there is a comical part done by Nell,¹ which is Florimell, that I never can hope ever to see the like done again, by man or woman. The King and Duke of York were at the play. But so great performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world before as Nell do this, both as a mad girle, then most and best of all when she comes in like a young gallant; and hath the notions and carriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess, admire her. Thence home and to the office, where busy a while, and then home to read the lives of Henry 5th and 6th, very fine, in Speede, and to bed. This day I did pay a bill of 50l. from my father, being so much out of my own purse gone to pay my uncle Robert’s legacy to my aunt Perkins’s child.

1. “Her skill increasing with her years, other poets sought to obtain recommendations of her wit and beauty to the success of their writings. I have said that Dryden was one of the principal supporters of the King’s house, and ere long in one of his new plays a principal character was set apart for the popular comedian. The drama was a tragi-comedy called ‘Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen,’ and an additional interest was attached to its production from the king having suggested the plot to its author, and calling it `his play.’” — Cunningham’s Story of Nell Gwyn, ed: 1892, pp. 38,39. ↩

A series of alabaster statues carved between 1443 and 1456 have never moved more than 200 feet away from the tomb they decorate in the city of Dijon, and even that tiny hop only happened once over 6 centuries.

In an unprecedented opportunity created by the renovation of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon where the tomb is housed, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City gets to be the first place to exhibit them away from their home. The beautifully detailed and realistic alabaster mourners usually process around the base of the tomb of John the Fearless, so being able to see them not just across the Atlantic but also in detail and from all angles is a unique treat.

Carved over a 25-year-period by sculptors Jean de la Huerta and Antoine le Moiturier, each statue represents a mourner — mostly ecclesiastical figures such as a bishop, a choirboy and rows of monks from the Carthusian order.

In their normal setting in Dijon they are only partially seen as they blend in between miniature Gothic arches lacing the base of the wealthy and powerful couple’s black marble tomb.

The open display at New York’s Met has allowed them to loosen up, emerging as individuals with sometimes surprising results.

Far from being pompous advertisements for the deceased couple’s religious devoutness and social standing, the monks and priests of the procession exude individuality, humanity and a cheeky strain of rebellion.

Each statuette is about sixteen inches high (the choirboys are the smallest), and they’re all totally different. There’s a solemn bishop, a nattily accessorized gent with his hands in belt, a choirboy holding the remains of a cross, and a whole lot more. A total of 39 statues are exhibited on a catwalk so they still have their funeral procession flair.

John the Fearless, the second duke of Burgundy, died in 1419 and these figures are meant to depict his actual funerary cortege, even though the artists only began to carve them 24 years later.

Learn about the mourners from the Court of Burdundy on their website where an intensive photography project has borne beautiful fruit with 360 degree views of each statuette.

Say that 20 times fast. But seriously, folks, researchers studying the Diepkloof Rock Shelter in the Western Cape of South Africa have found hundreds of engraved ostrich fragments.

These fragments are 60,000 years old, far older than the earliest writing. The symbols engraved are regular lines and hatches and so many in number that archaeologists think they may be communicative, or at least symbolic, rather than just decorative.

“What is extraordinary at Diepkloof is that we have close to 300 pieces of such engravings, which is why we are speaking of a system of symbolic representation,” Dr Texier said.

The team, which includes Dr Guillaume Porraz from the University of Tubingen, tried themselves to recreate the markings using pieces of flint.

“Ostrich egg shells are quite hard. Doing such engravings is not so easy. You have to pass through the outer layer to get through to the middle layer,” Dr Texier explained.

Some of the engraved cross hatchings and parallel lines are similar to later known symbols for water. The ostrich eggs seem to have had spouts, which could indicate they were used for transporting water, a technological breakthrough for early man.

The fragments are also intentionally colored. They aren’t the natural color of the ostrich eggs nor is an external pigment applied. The team was able to reproduce some of the colors by baking fragments of shell in a fire.

Before these ostrich fragments, 30,000-year-old cave painting like those at the Lascaux Caves were thought to be the oldest evidence of written human communication. If we can confirm a communicative symbolism in these etchings, we’ll push that major milestone 30,000 years further back.

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