class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[17]." The elegant allusion to the olive tree, "honouring both God and man" with its "fatness" or oil, should not escape us, as corroborating this conjecture. This poem is dated by the learned antiquary "about 200 years before the beginning of the [Jewish] kingdom in Saul."

We have several instances in Scripture of the inauguration of the Jewish kings by anointing, and of its being performed at the express command of God[18]—a circumstance which was held to communicate an official sanctity to their persons, their attire, &c. The noble David twice spares the life of his bitterest enemy, Saul, upon this ground.—"Jehovah shall smite him," he says; "or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into the battle, and perish"—"Who can stretch forth his hand against Jehovah's anointed, and be guiltless[19]?"—and he finely alludes to the general reverence of his country for these appointments, when he exclaims, in his memorable ode over his fallen rival, "The shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as though it had not been anointed with oil!"

With the spread of Christianity, or rather of the papal domination, over the kingdoms of western Europe, came the adoption of this rite into the coronation ceremonies of its princes. It at once increased the influence of the church, and surrounded the monarch with a popular veneration. The three distinct anointings yet retained (i.e. on the head, breast, and hands or arms,) were said by Becket to indicate glory, holiness, and fortitude: another prelate, one of the greatest scholars of his age, assured our Henry III., that as all former sins were washed away in baptism, "so also by this unction[20]."

"Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed king,"—

Richard II. is made to say, by Shakspeare, on the invasion of Bolingbroke. Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to Marmion, speaks of a singular ancient consecration of the kings of arms in Scotland, who seem to have had a regular coronation down to the middle of the sixteenth century,—only that they were anointed with wine instead of oil[21].

No. 5. The Royal Swords

Are named, Curtana, or the Sword of Mercy; the Sword of Justice to the Spirituality; the Sword of Justice to the Temporality; and the Sword of State. Of these the last alone is actually used in the coronation, being that with which the king is girded after his anointing; the rest are only carried before him by certain great officers. But Curtana has been honoured with a proper name since the reign of Henry III., at whose coronation it was carried by the Earl of Chester[22]. It is a flat sword, without a point; looking to which circumstance, and to its being also entitled the Sword of Mercy, some etymologists have traced it to the Latin curto, to cut short; while other writers, among whom is the learned Mr. Taylor, would transfer our researches to the scenes of ancient chivalry, and the exploits of Oger the Dane, or Orlando, as affording the title to this appendage of the monarchy, "The sword of Tristan," says this writer, "is found (ubi lapsus!) among the regalia of king John; and that of Charlemagne, Joyeuse, was preserved to grace the coronations of the kings of France. The adoption of these titles was, indeed, perfectly consonant with the taste and feeling of those ages, in which the gests of chivalry were the favourite theme of oral and historical celebration; and when the names of Durlindana, of Curtein, or Escalibere, would nerve the warrior's arm with a new and nobler energy[23]."

The Sword of Justice to the Spirituality is obtuse, that of Justice to the Temporality sharp at the point. "Henry VIII.," says a writer in a respectable periodical publication for July, "seems to have exercised his taste in endeavouring to abolish this discrepancy."

No. 6. Of the Ring, Spurs, and Orb; and St. Edward's Staff.

In the book of Genesis we read of Pharaoh's ring being given by him to Joseph, as a method of investing him with power: and thus the Persian monarch Ahasuerus transferred his authority to Haman and to Mordecai[24]. What is added in the Scripture narration of one of these latter cases will illustrate the significancy of this mode of investiture. "Then were the king's scribes called, on the thirteenth day of the first month; and there was written according to all that Haman commanded unto the king's lieutenants, and to the governors that were over every province—to every people after their language; in the name of king Ahasuerus was it written, and sealed with the king's ring."

Of the golden ring with which our kings are invested, as "the ensign of royal dignity, and of defence of the catholic faith," there is yet another miracle of the coronation to relate. A certain "fayre old man" having asked alms of St. Edward the Confessor, he had nothing at hand to bestow upon him but his ring. Shortly after, two English pilgrims lost their way in the Holy Land, when "there came to them a fayr ancient man, wyth whyte heer for age. Thenne the olde man axed theym what they were, and of what regyon. And they answerde that they were pylgryms of England, and hadde lost theyr fellyshyp and way also. Thenne thys olde man comforted theym goodly, and brought theym in to a fayre cytee; and whanne they had well refreshed theym, and rested there alle nyhte, on the morne, this fayre olde man went with theym, and brought theym in the ryght waye agayne. And he was gladde to here theym talke of the welfare and holynesse of theyr kynge Saynt Edward. And whan he shold depart fro theym, thenne he tolde theym what he was, and sayd, 'I am Johan the Evangelyst; and saye ye vnto Edward your kyng, that I grete him well by the token that he gaff to me, thys rynge, with hys one handes[25].'"

By the exact mode that we have quoted from Scripture, do we find Offa, king of the East Angles, appointing Edmund as his successor; and with the