whom he had cohabited. The father of Fanny was clerk to the parish of St. Sepulchre; and two years seem to have been employed by him, his wife, and daughter, in getting up this serio-comic drama, before the representation excited general attention. But in 1762, the report became very prevalent that strange and unaccountable noises were heard in the house of Parsons who lived in Cock-lane near West Smithfield, The whole town was soon agitated with the marvellous tale; and, though the noise was never heard till Fanny was in bed, yet it was some time before the imposition was discovered or the physical cause was known. The noises were believed to proceed from some departed spirit in order to bring to light the deed of blood, which is mentioned above. Many gentlemen of rank and character, at the invitation of the Rev: Mr. Aldrich of Clerkenwell, went into the church at midnight, and two of them descended into the vault where the person, who was said to have been poisoned, was interred. Here the ghost which tenanted the viscera of Fanny, had promised to give notice of its presence by a knock upon the coffin of the deceased. The spirit was adjured to perform its promise, but the invocation was in vain. The person, supposed to be accused by the spirit, then descended into the tomb with several others but no effect was perceived. The principal actors in this iniquitous scheme were afterwards brought to trial;-Parsons was ordered to be imprisoned for two years, and to stand three times in the pillory; his wife was imprisoned for one year and their servant for six months. The stock of popular credulity with respect to apparitions seems to have experienced a considerable diminution within the last fifty years; for a similar attempt to impose even on the belief of the vulgar would we believe, at present, meet with nothing but derision and neglect. In the beginning of the last century the tradesmen seem to have been constant attendants on the morning prayers;-but, if we may credit contemporary evidence, the practice did not exert any favorable influence on their morals. A weekly paper called the Dutch prophet which was published at the commencement of the century says,

Wednesday, several shopkeepers near St. Paul's, will rise before six; be upon their knees at chapel a little after; promise God Almighty to live soberly and righteously before seven; take half a pint of sack and a dash of gentiam before eight; tell fifty lies behind their counters by nine; and spend the rest of the morning over tea and tobacco at Child's coffee-house.

Fleet marriages were common in 1723. An author of the time says, It is pleasant to see certain fellows plying by

Fleet-bridge to take poor sailors, &c. into the noose of matrimony every day throughout the week, and the clock at their offices for that purpose still standing at the canonical hour, though perhaps the time of the day be six or seven in the afternoon.'

In p. 170-6. Mr. Malcolm exhibits from Read's Weekly Journal a long account of the marriage of the Prince of Wales, the father of his present majesty, which took place in 1736. There were some circumstances in that ceremony which must seem rather repugnant to the notions of modern delicacy and refinement. After a magnificent repast,

Their majesties retired to the apartment of his royal highness the prince of Wales; the bride was conducted to her bed chamber and the bride-groom to his dressing room, where the duke undressed him, and his majesty did his royal highness the honour to put on his shirt. The bride was undressed by the princesses, and being in bed in a rich undress, his majesty came into the room, and the prince following soon after in a night-gown of silver stuff, and cap of the finest Jace, the quality were admitted to see the bride and bridegroom sitting up in the bed, surrounded by all the royal family.

The ancient, rough, and intractable behaviour of John Bull, is not badly exemplified in the following. In August 1737 the prince of Wales, on account of the birth of a daughter, treated the populace with some barrels of beer and a bonfire before Carlton house. The liquor was pronounced bad, and the people threw it into each other's faces, and the barrels into the fire. The prince with great good humour ordered the same quantity of beer from a different brewer, with which he regaled his turbulent guests on the succeeding night, and they were pleased to be satisfied with the enter tainment. We believe that the manners of the populace of London, during the greater part of the last century, are not very inaccurately represented in M. Grosley's journey to the metropolis. Some slight allowance must indeed be made for the irritation of a Frenchman who had himself felt the want of civility, which he describes. They

" are as insolent a rabble as can be met with in countries without law or police. The French at whom their rudeness is chiefly levelled would be in the wrong to complain, since even the better sort of Londoners are not exempt from it. Inquire of them your way to a street; if it be upon the right they direct you to the left, or they send you from one of their vulgar comrades to another. The most shocking abuse and ill language make a part of their pleasantry upon these occasions. To be assailed in such a manner it is not absolutely necessary to be engaged in conversation with them, it is suf

ficient to pass by them. My French air, notwithstanding the simplicity of my dress, drew upon me at the corner of every street, a volley of abusive litanies, in the midst of which I slipped on, returning thanks to God I did not belong to them. The constant burthen of these litanies was French dog, French b- ; to make any answer to them was accepting a challenge to fight.'

Mr. Malcolm's fourth chapter is entitled eccentricity proved to be sometimes injurious though often inoffensive. We could willingly have spared Mr. Malcolm the necessity of exhibiting any proofs on this occasion; most of the anecdotes which he has scraped together are destitute of interest, We are more pleased with faithful delineations of general nature,than with the account of any anomalous productions. Among other pieces of information exhibited by Mr. Malcolm,we are told that two gentlemen laid a wager that they would eat a bushel of tripe, and drink four bottles of wine within an hour; that Mr. Elderton, an avaricious farmer at Bow, suffered himself to be confined in Newgate, where he died, rather than pay his assessments in common with his neighbours; that James Austin, out of gratitude to the purchasers of his Persian ink powder, determined to regale his customers with a pudding which was to be boiled for fourteen days and to consume a bushel of coals in the operaation; that Mr. Dyche an obstinate nonjuror made a solemn vow some time before his death not to shift his linen till the pretender was seated on the throne of these realms.' These, with many other instances of folly or caprice which it would be tedious to relate, are detailed by the author, and perhaps in the present rage for desultory reading, they will render his performance a favourite of the circulating libra

At p. 264, &c. we have an abridgment of the life, robberies, escapes, and death of John Sheppard who was exesuted at Tyburn in 1724. This celebrated depredator told a gentleman on the morning of his execution that he had then a satisfaction at heart, as if he was going to enjoy an estate of 2001. a year.' Next follows some account of Mr.Jo. nathan Wild, who had formed a sort of corporation of thieves, of which he was the acknowledged head, but he had such a sense of justice in his composition, that he took care to have those brought to the gallows, who concealed their booty or did not share it with him. This notable offender eluded the arm of the law for about fifteen years.

In 1736, a laudable attempt was made to suppress the excessive use of gin; and the resentment of the populace became so very turbulent that they even presumed to exclaim in the streets, No gin, no king;' Whatever respect

we may have for the exclamation, No bishop, no king;' we do not think that either monarchy or any other government needs the support of this pernicious distillation. In 1738 the numbers convicted under the act for preventing the excessive use of spirituous liquors, amounted to 4896. We pass over the numerous instances of popular vengeance and private outrage, which Mr. Malcolm details in his sixth chapter; and which are interesting as far as they shew the spirit of the times. The disposition and manners of the people have undergone a very considerable change since the period of which we are speaking; and the John Bull of 1808 is certainly a much more quiescent and passive animal than the John Bull even of the beginning of the present reign. The weight of taxation may have had some effect in producing this change; but perhaps the increase of civili zation has had more. As far as the influence of taxation has extended, it has been morally deleterious in its operation on the character of the people; it has at once increased the mass of indigence and idleness; but the malignant influence of taxation has been, in a great measure, counteracted in its vitiating tendencies, by the diffusion of knowledge and the improved modes of social life..

In 1701 the grand jury of the county of Middlesex presented that the plays which were acted in Drury-lane and Lincolns.inn fields were

Full of prophane, irreverent, lewd, indecent and immoral expressions, and tended to the great displeasure of Almighty God, and to the corruption of the auditory both in their principles and their practices. "We also present," say they " that the common acting of plays in the said play-houses very much tends to the debauching and ruining the youth resorting thereto, and to the breach of the peace, and are the occasions of many riots, routs and disorderly assemblies, whereby many murders and other misdemeanors have been frequently done,' &c.

Will the ranting methodist or the desponding religionist pretend that in this respect we are not only not worse, but preeminently better than our ancestors? Mr. Burder and many others of the same sect may rail against the present state of the theatres; yet we believe that the manner in which they are conducted merits extraordinary commendation when compared with the unrestrained profligacy and licentious practices of former times.

In 1715-16 was one of the hardest frosts ever known; the Thames was consolidated into a quarry of ice. Mr. Malcolm has extracted from Dawke's News Letter of Jan. 14th

the following curious account of the busy scene which prevailed on the frozen stream.

'The Thames seems now a solid rock of ice; and booths for the sale of brandy, wine, ale, and other exhilarating liquors have been fixed there for some time. But now it is in a manner like a town: thousands of people cross it, and with wonder view the mountainous heaps of water, that now lie congealed into ice. On Thursday a great cook's shop was erected there and gentlemen went as frequently to dine as at any ordinary. Over against Westminster, Whitehall, and White-friars, printing-presses are kept upon the ice, where many persons have their names printed to transmit the wonders of the season to their posterity.'

Among the humane amusements of the metropolis about this period, we read of a leopard being baited to death in an amphitheatre at the back of Soho-square; and soon after we are told of a proposal to

'Exhibit an African tiger on a stage four feet high and worried by six bull and bear dogs for one hundred pounds; a mad bull and a bear, both covered with fireworks; and lest those pleasant spectacles should fail to amuse, six young men were to play at blunts; or in other words, he that broke most heads obtained the prize.'

However much we may condemn the barbarism of the practice, we have still but little comparative objection to a number of human beings combining either for play or pay to break each others heads, with their own consent, but our indignation is most keenly excited when we behold human beings torturing dumb animals without their consent. When a bull gives permission to a greater brute than himself to bait him to death with dogs, we will allow that something like a sanction is given to the sport; but we do not conceive that we can plead any thing like a justifiable excuse for making a pastime of the sufferings of any part of the irrational creation. Some persons have thought that bull baiting and other savage sports have a tendency to keep up the courageous qualities, and to kindle a martial spirit in the breast. But as far as we have observed, we are conscious that the contrary is true; and that the cruelty which is evinced in the infliction of pain on the mute and unoffending creation, is always less intimately allied to courage than to cowardice. We have often heard of butchers shrinking from trials of danger or of suffering which the peaceful husbandman who never had his courage harden. ed by knocking down an ox, or cutting the throat of a sheep would encounter without fear. At the battle of Minden we