|
|
Nicholeto Chordiman Directory 18 Page 06
The Patricians were divided by Romulus into _three Tribes_; the Ramnes, or Romans of Romulus; the Tities, or Sabines of Titus Tatius; and the Luceres, or Etruscans of Caeles, a Lucumo or Etruscan noble, who assisted Romulus in the war against the Sabines. Each tribe was divided into 10 curiae, and each curiae into 10 gentes. The 30 curiae formed the _Comitia Curiata_, a sovereign assembly of the Patricians. This assembly elected the king, made the laws, and decided in all cases affecting the life of a citizen.
Manifestly the king would not grant so much. On the occasion of his confirming the charter he demanded that the oath of allegiance be taken by the people of the colony; that justice be administered there in his name; and that the franchise be extended to all freemen of sufficient substance, with the liberty to use in worship, public and private, the forms of the English Church. The people obeyed but in part, for they would not even appear to admit the king's will to be their law. The franchise was slightly extended, in a grudging way, but no new religious privileges were at this time conceded. Unfortunately political and religious liberty were now in conflict. It was worse for the Baptists and Quakers that the king favored them, and the treatment which they received in the colony inclined them to the royalist side in the controversy.
William Blake (1757-1827) was hardly a painter at all, though he drew and colored the strange figures of his fancy and cannot be passed over in any history of English art. He was perhaps the most imaginative artist of English birth, though that imagination was often disordered and almost incoherent. He was not a correct draughtsman, a man with no great color-sense, and a workman without technical training; and yet, in spite of all this, he drew some figures that are almost sublime in their sweep of power. His decorative sense in filling space with lines is well shown in his illustrations to the Book of Job. In grace of form and feeling of motion he was excellent. Weird and uncanny in thought, delving into the unknown, he opened a world of mystery, peopled with a strange Apocalyptic race, whose writhing, flowing bodies are the epitome of graceful grandeur.
|