Memorabilia; Or Recollections, Historical, Biographical, and Antiquarian — John Shaqi
Memorabilia; Or Recollections, Historical, Biographical, and AntiquarianSavage, James
History
Memorabilia; Or Recollections, Historical, Biographical, and Antiquarian
Savage, James
History -- Miscellanea; Savage, James, 1767-1845
The Rev. William Daddo was for many years head-master of Blundell’s Free
School, in Tiverton, where young Kennicott received the rudiments of his
classical education. Mr. Daddo having acquired a considerable fortune
from the emoluments of his school, quitted Tiverton, and retired to
Bow-hill House, in the neighbourhood of Exeter, and there died many
years ago, leaving a daughter, an only child, afterwards married to the
Rev. Mr. Terry.
REMARKABLE HISTORICAL COINCIDENCES.
Among the curiosities in the British Museum are shewn two helmets; the
one Roman, found in the ground on which the battle of Cannæ was fought,
216 years before Christ, and the other made of feathers, brought from
one of the South Sea Islands, by Captain Cook. On comparing these
helmets, the shape will be found exactly similar, though the latter was
made by an uncivilized people living at the distance of more than 2000
years since the battle of Cannæ was fought, and who had never even heard
of the Roman name.
A second coincidence is found in the same collection. Two breast-plates
are shewn to the visitors, exactly corresponding in uniformity of shape,
though made of different materials, the one taken from the bosom of an
Egyptian Mummy, which had been dissected, if I may be allowed to use the
term, in the Museum, and the other brought by Captain Cook, among
various other curiosities, from the South Sea Islands.
A third coincidence is the mode of cookery practised by the South Sea
Islanders as described by Captain Cook, especially in roasting their
hogs. This is by means of hot stones placed in a hole dug in the ground.
In Ossian’s Poems the reader will find that the Caledonians of that time
made use of the same method in cooking their hogs for the table.
The extinction of the Roman Empire in the West, about the year 476, by
Odoacer, King of Italy, was attended by one of the most memorable
coincidences in the history of mankind. The patrician Orestes had
married the daughter of Count _Romulus_, of Petovio in Noricum; the name
of _Augustus_, notwithstanding the jealousy of power, was known at
Aquileia as a familial surname; and the appellations of the two great
founders, the first of the city of Rome, and the second of the Roman
monarchy, were strangely united in the last of their successors. The son
of Orestes succeeded to the throne of the Western Empire, and assumed
and disgraced the names of ROMULUS AUGUSTUS; the first was corrupted
into Momyllus by the Greeks, and the second has been changed by the
Latins into the contemptible diminutive Augustulus. The life of this
inoffensive youth, the last Sovereign of the Roman Empire in the West,
was spared by the generous clemency of Odoacer, who dismissed him, with
his whole family, from the imperial palace, fixed his annual allowance
at 6000 pieces of Gold, and assigned the castle of Lucullus, in
Campania, for the place of his exile or retirement.
CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN.
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