cat?"

showing how far the prejudices of the jury had gone, he asked when the verdict was given in, "whether they found her guilty upon the indictment for conversing with the devil in the shape of a The foreman answered, "we find her guilty of that!" It is almost needless to add, that a pardon was procured for her. And yet, frightful to think, after all this, in 1716, Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, aged nine, were hanged at Huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm, by pulling off their stockings and making a lather of soap! With this crowning atrocity, the catalogue of murders in England closes; the penal statutes against witchcraft being repealed in 1736, and the pretended exercise of such arts being punished in future by imprisonment and pillory. Even yet, however, the case of Rex v. Weldon, in 1809, and the still later case of Barker v. Ray, in Chancery, (August 2, 1827,) prove that the popular belief in such practices has by no means ceased; and it is only about two years ago, that a poor woman narrowly escaped with her life from a revival of Hopkins's trial by water. Barrington, in his observations on the statute 20 Henry VI., does not hesitate to estimate the numbers of those put to death in England on this charge at 30,000 !—Foreign Quarterly Review.

PERUVIAN DRINKING CUSTOMS.

ACCEPT with grateful acknowledgment the remains of a glass of rum; the more lips it has touched the more cordiality in the dram ;-off with it! and beware of wiping your mouth either before or after it. Should you be induced to wipe the brim of the glass before drinking, or turn it between yourself and the light to seek a little space free from humidity, your reputation is gone for ever!" Que barbaro!—Que hombre tan groséro !"—" Jesus! José! Jesus!" When a lady selects a gentleman from the company, by beckoning, or calling him to take her glass and sip after her, the compliment is then highly enviable; and whether her lips be pale and shrivelled by the wintry effect of years, or cherry-ripe and pouting in the fragrance of summer, he is bound by the well-understood laws of respect, etiquette, honour, gallantry, love, and all their little jealousies, to imprint his own lips upon the precise spot where those were placed which preceded him, and then to take off the very last drop in the glass.-Temple's Travels.

SILESIAN PEASANTRY.

IN passing through Silesia, the traveller will be often struck by the appearance of altars, raised amid the clump of trees scattered throughout the country, where the peasant offers up his prayer at leisure. The costume of the female, in these parts is singularly unbecoming. The head is enveloped in a large white napkin, covering the hair, none of which is visible, excepting a long plaited tail, hanging down the back, the end of which is ornamented with a knot of red and white ribbon. The person of the female is wrapped up in a large white sheet, beneath which is a blue cloth petticoat, bordered with red fringe, and in front a white or striped apron. The legs are covered with immense, thick, coarse, red stockings; and on the feet they wear large shoes. Altogether, the costume is one of the most strange appearance that can be met with.

SPIRIT OF THE

Public Journals.

DAVY JONES AND THE YANKEE
PRIVATEER.*

WE had refitted, and been four days at sea, on our voyage to Jamaica, when the gun-room officers gave our mess a blowout.

The increased motion and rushing of the vessel through the water, the groaning of the masts, the howling of the rising gale, and the frequent trampling of the watch on deck, were prophetic of wet jackets to some of us; still midshipman-like, we were as happy as a good dinner and some wine could make us, until the old gunner shoved his weatherbeaten phiz and bald pate in at the door. "Beg pardon, Mr. Splinter, but if you will spare Mr. Cringle on the forecastle for an hour until the moon rises.' ("Spare," quotha, "is his majesty's officer a joint stool ?")—“ Why, Mr. Kennedy, why? here, man, take a glass of grog.' "I thank you, sir. It is coming on a roughish night, sir; the running ships should be crossing us hereabouts; indeed more than once I thought there was a strange sail close aboard of us, the scud is flying so low, and in such white flakes; and none of us have an eye like Mr. Cringle, unless it be John Crow, and he is all but frozen."

"Well, Tom, I suppose you will go." Anglice from a first lieutenant to a mid "Brush instanter."

*See "Cruize of the Torch," in Mirror, vol. xv.

Having changed my uniform, for shag trousers, pea-jacket, and south-west cap, I went forward, and took my station, in no pleasant humour, on the stowed jib, with my arm round the stay. I had been half an hour there, the weather was getting worse, the rain was beating in my face, and the spray from the stern was flashing over me, as it roared through the waste of sparkling and hissing waters. I turned my back to the weather for a moment, to press my hand on my strained eyes. When I opened them, I saw the gunner's gaunt, high-featured visage thrust anxiously for ward; his profile looked as if rubbed over with phosphorus, and his whole person as if we had been playing at snap-dragon. "What has come over you, Mr. Ken nedy? who is burning_the_bluelight now?"-" A wiser man than I am must tell you that; look forward, Mr. Cringle -look there; what do your books say

to that ?"

I looked forth, and saw, at the extreme end of the jib-boom, what I had read of, certainly, but never expected to see, a pale, greenish, glow-worm coloured flame, of the size and shape of the frosted glass shade over the swinging lamp in the gun-room. It drew out and flattened as the vessel pitched and rose again, and as she sheered about it, wavered round the point that seemed to attract it, like a soapsud bubble blown from a tobacco pipe, before it is shaken into the air; at the core it was comparatively bright, but faded into a halo. It shed a baleful and ominous light on the surrounding objects; the group of sailors on the forecastle looked like spectres, and they shrunk together, and whispered when it began to roll slowly along the spar towards where the boatswain was sitting at my feet. At this instant something slid down the stay, and a cold clammy hand passed round my neck. I was within an ace of losing my hold, and tumbling overboard. "Heaven have mercy on me, what's that?"-"It's that skylarking son of a gun, Jem Sparkle's monkey, sir. You, Jem, you'll never rest till that brute is made shark bait of." But Jackoo vanished up the stay again, chuckling and grinning in the ghostly radiance, as if he had been the "Spirit of the Lamp." The light was still there, but a cloud of mist, like a burst of vapour from a steam boiler, came down upon the gale, and flew past, when it disappeared. I followed the white mass as it sailed down the wind; it did not, as it appeared to me, vanish in the darkness, but seemed to remain in sight to leeward, as if

checked by a sudden flaw; yet none of our sails were taken aback. A thought flashed on me. I peered still more intensely into the night. I was now certain. "A sail, broad on the lee-bow." The ship was in a buz in a moment. The captain answered from the quarterdeck-" Thank you, Mr. Cringle. How shall we steer?"-"Keep her away a couple of points, sir, steady." "Steady," sung the man at the helm; and a slow melancholy cadence, although a familiar sound to me, now moaned through the rushing of the wind, and smote upon my heart as if it had been the wailing of a spirit. I turned to the boatswain, who was now standing beside me " Is that you or Davy steering, Mr. Nipper? if you had not been there bodily at my elbow, I could have sworn that was your voice." When the gunner made the same remark it startled the poor fellow; he tried to take it as a joke, but could not. "There may be a laced hammock with a shot in it, for some of us ere morning."

At this moment, to my dismay, the object we were chasing, shortened,gradually fell abeam of us, and finally disappeared. "The Flying Dutchman. "I can't see her at all now."

"She will be a fore-and-aft-rigged vessel that has tacked, sir." And sure enough, after a few seconds, I saw the white object lengthen, and draw out again abaft our beam. "The chase has tacked, sir, put the helm down, or she will go to windward of us." We tacked also, and time it was we did so, for the rising moon now showed us a large schooner under a crowd of sail. We edged down on her, when finding her manœuvre detected, she brailed up her flat sails, and bore up before the wind. This was our best point of sailing, and we cracked on, the captain rubbing his hands-" It's my turn to be the big un this time." Although blowing a strong north-wester, it was now clear moonlight, and we hammered away from our bow guns, but whenever a shot told amongst the rigging, the injury was repaired as if by magic. It was evident we had repeatedly hulled her, from the glimmering white streaks along her counter and across her stern, occasioned by the splintering of the timber, but it seemed to produce no effect.

At length we drew well up on her quarter. She continued all black hull and white sail, not a soul to be seen on deck, except a dark object, which we took for the man at the helm. "What schooner's that?" No answer. "Heave

to, or I'll sink you." Still all silent. "Sergeant Armstrong, do you think you could pick off that chap at the wheel?" The marine jumped on the forecastle, and levelled his piece, when a musketshot from the schooner crashed through his skull, and he fell dead. The old skipper's blood was up. "Forecastle there! Mr. Nipper, clap a canister of grape over the round shot, into the boat gun, and give it to him."-" Ay, ay, sir!" gleefully rejoined the boatswain, forgetting the augury and every thing else in the excitement of the moment. In a twinkling, the square foresail-top gallant-royal-and studding-sail haulyards were let go by the run on board of the schooner, as if they had been shot away, and he put his helm hard aport as if to round to. "Rake him, sir, or give him the stern. He has not surrendered. -I know their game. Give him your broadside, sir, or he is off to windward of you like a shot. No, no, we have him now; heave to, Mr. Splinter, heave to!" We did so, and that so suddenly, that the studding-sail booms snapped like pipe shanks, short off by the irons. Notwithstanding we had shot two hundred yards to the leeward before we could lay our maintopsail to the mast. I ran to windward. The schooner's yards and rigging were now black with men, clustered like bees swarming, her square sails were being close furled, her fore and aft sails set, and away she was dead to windward of us. "So much for undervaluing our American friends," grumbled Mr. Splinter.

We made all sail in chase, blazing away to little purpose; we had no chance on a bowline, and when our "Amigo" had satisfied himself of his superiority by one or two short tacks, he deliberately took a reef in his mainsail, hauled down his flying jib and gaff topsail, triced up the bunt of his foresail, and fired his long thirty-two at us. The shot came in at the third aftermost port on the starboard side, and dismounted the carronade, smashing the slide, and wounding three men. The second shot missed, and, as it was madness to remain to be peppered, probably winged, whilst every one of ours fell short, we reluctantly kept away on our course, having the gratification of hearing a clear well-blown bugle on board the schooner play up "Yankee Doodle." As the brig fell off, our long gun was run out to have a parting crack at her, when the third and last shot from the schooner struck the sill of the midship port, and made the white splinters fly from the solid oak like bright silver sparks in the

moonlight. A sharp piercing cry rose into the air-my soul identified that death-shriek with the voice that I had heard, and I saw the man who was standing with the lanyard of the lock in his hand drop heavily across the breech, and discharge the gun in his fall. Thereupon a blood-red glare shot up into the cold blue sky, as if a volcano had burst forth from beneath the mighty deep, followed by a roar, and a shattering crash, and a mingling of unearthly cries and groans, and a concussion of the air, and of the water, as if our whole broadside had been fired at once. Then a solitary splash here, and a dip there, and short sharp yells, and low choking bubbling moans, as the hissing frag. ments of the noble vessel we had seen fell into the sea, and the last of her gallant crew vanished for ever beneath that pale broad moon. We were alone, and once more all was dark and wild and stormy. Fearfully had that ball sped, fired by a dead man's hand. But what is it that clings black and doubled across that fatal cannon, dripping and heavy, and choking the scuppers with clotting gore, and swaying to and fro with the motion of the vessel, like a bloody fleece? "Who is it that was hit at the gun there ?"-" Mr. Nipper, the boatswain, sir. The last shot has cut him in two."-Blackwood's Magazine.

THE IMPALED TURK, A TALE OF THE DEAD.

THERE was a dead silence. The male portion of the audience drew their chairs closer to the speaker,-the women lay down their needles, and were all attention. Reader, have you ever remarked a group of female listeners? have you ever admired the animated countenances; the large speaking eyes; the heaving bosoms; the stately necks of ivory white, straining forward with intense anxiety? the dear little hands, so soft, so delicate, they scarce can wield a fan; the-the-the-in short, if like me you are a judge of such matters, get invited or invite yourself to a soirée, bring about the introduction of a tale of wonder or of pathos, and then feast your eyes, as I did whilst waiting for the Turk to digest his exordium.

"Blessed be the name of the holy prophet!" said he at length, "but on one occasion I penetrated to the seraglio of Mahomet's successor, I dared to cast a profane eye on the chaste spouses of the brother of the sun and moon."

Here the attention of the listeners

was redoubled a blooming Agnes who had scarcely numbered fifteen summers, and who, seated beside her mamma, had fixed her eyes on the speaker, at this juncture modestly resumed her work; but somehow or other the needle found its way into her finger instead of the sampler.

"My name is Hassan," continued the Turk; " my father was rich, and be queathed his wealth to me. Like a true believer, I have devoted my life to the softer sex; but my fastidiousness has always increased in proportion to the ardour of my passion. In vain did I in my youth frequent the most celebrated slave-markets: my delicate appetite could find no female worthy of partaking my flame. Each day the master of my harem paraded before me a new lot of female slaves- lovely creatures black as ebony; while now and then, to please my depraved taste, he would present a bevy of Circassians, white as ivory. All would not do. I became every day more difficult to please; and, by the prophet, it went to my heart to lavish upon a female of imperfect symmetry the price that would have purchased a well-shaped Arab mare! Still was I tormented by an undefinable longing; and one evening, when my restless fancy had wandered into the regions of ideal perfection, I was suddenly assailed with a horrible temptation: in short I deter mined to penetrate, if possible, even to the secret recesses of the imperial seraglio.

"I have always detested concealment, and I scaled the walls of his highness in as much fancied security as though neither janizaries nor mutes were on the watch. It pleased the prophet to crown my rash design thus far with success. I traversed without accident the three hitherto impenetrable enclosures which defend the entrance of the seraglio from unhallowed footsteps; and when daylight dawned, I gazed with impious curiosity upon the inviolable sanctuary. Conceive my surprise when by the pale light of the morning sun I could discern that the wives of Allah's vicegerent were formed like other women. The film fell from my eyes; I was completely undeceived, and yet my imagination could scarcely credit the sad reality. A fit of tardy repentance stole across my mind, when suddenly I found myself seized by the mutes on guard.

"Dreadful was my crime: yet so easy is the yoke with which true believers are governed, that even had my guilt been proclaimed, it would have been merely a matter of decapitation

for me and the slumbering females upon whose unveiled countenances I had sacrilegiously gazed. It was, however, decided that this momentary stain should be carefully concealed from the knowledge of his highness; and an aga having ordered me to be conducted with all possible secrecy from within the redoubtable enclosure, I was marched off to undergo the penalty which my heinous offence had merited.

66

Perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, you may require a description of the punishment of impalement. The instrument employed on such occasions is sharp and pointed, and, placed on the top of one of our loftiest monuments, is not unlike one of those spiral conductors with which you unbelievers blindly defy the fury of the elements, and even the immutable decrees of destiny. Upon this instrument was I placed astride; and that I might be enabled to preserve my equilibrium, to each of my feet were attached two heavy iron balls. My agony was intense: the iron slowly penetrated my flesh; and the second sun, whose scorching rays now began to glitter on the domes of Constantinople, would not have found me alive at the hour of noon, had not the iron balls by some accident been disengaged from my feet: they fell with a tremendous crash, and from that instant my tortures became more endurable. I even conceived a hope that I should have escaped with life. Nothing can surpass the beauty of the scenery around Constantinople: the eye rests with delight on the broad expanse of ocean, sprinkled with green islands, and ploughed by majestic vessels. Spite of my sufferings, the view which I enjoyed was sublime. From the eminence on which I was perched, I could easily perceive that Constantinople was the queen of cities. I beheld at my feet her brilliant mosques, her beauteous palaces, her gardens suspended in the air, her spacious cemeteries, the peaceful retreat of opium- eaters and hydromel - drinkers; and in the height of my gratitude for the glorious sight which the intercession of the prophet had procured me, I invoked the God of true believers. Doubtless my prayer was heard. An unbelieving dog

I crave your pardon, I mean a Christian priest-delivered me, at the peril of his life, and transported me to his humble dwelling. When my wounds were sufficiently healed I returned to my palace. My slaves prostrated themselves at my feet. The next morning I bought the first women that presented themselves, dipped my pipe in rose water; and if I occasionally thought on his

highness and his janizaries, it was prudently to remind myself that women must be purchased such as Allah has made them, and, above all, to recollect that God is God, that Mahomet is his prophet, and that Stamboul is the pearl of the East."-Monthly Mag.

The Selector;

AND

LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

LIVES OF BRITISH PHYSICIANS.

WE scarcely think this a well-chosen volume for the "Family Library;" at least we did not expect it would fall so early in the Series. Still, it is a volume of extreme interest and value, although its reading is not just of the character for the drawing-room or family book-table.

The Memoirs are eighteen in number, (rather too many to be satisfactory,) Drs. Linacre, Caius, Harvey, Browne, Sydenham, Radcliffe, Mead, Huxham, Pringle, Fothergill, Heberden, Cullen, Hunter, Warren, Baillie, Jenner, Parry, and Gooch- or from the year 1460 to

1830.

We have gleaned the following from

the Memoir of Caius :

The Sweating Sickness. "This curious disease appeared, for the first time, in the army of the Earl of Richmond, upon his landing at MilfordHaven in 1485, and spread to London, where it raged from the beginning of August to the end of October. So for midable and fatal were its effects, that the coronation of Henry VII., the victor in the battle of Bosworth Field, was deferred till this strange pestilence had subsided. It was a species of malady unknown to any other age or nation, which occasioned the sudden death of great multitudes. Caius describes it, as it appeared for the last time among The treatment of it is perhaps the most interesting, at least affords us the most amusing particulars. It turns upon the sole idea of promoting the sweat, and Caius lays down the strictest rules for avoiding anything that might expose the patient to the least cold, or check this salutary and critical evacuation. On this point he is peremptory. "If two be taken in one bed, let them so continue, although it be to their unquiet ness; for fear whereof, and for the more quietness and safety, very good it is, during all the sweating time, that two

us.

To pro

persons lie not in one bed."'* mote perspiration they are ordered to drink posset ale, made of sweet milk, turned with vinegar, in a quart whereof parsley and sage, of each half one little handful, hath been sodden, &c. If under this treatment, loaded with bed-clothes, and almost stifled with heat, they happen to feel faint, cause them," says the doctor," to lie on their right side, and bow themselves forward, call them by their names, beat them with a rosemary branch, or some other sweet littlething-do not let them on any account sleep, but pull them by the ears, nose, and hair, suffering them in no wise to sleep, until such time as they have no luste to sleep; except to a learned man in physick, the case appears to bear the contrary. If under this discipline they happily recover, and find their strength be sore wasted, let them smell to an old sweet apple, and use other restoratives of similar efficacy; "for," concludes Dr. Caius, "there is nothing more comfortable to the spirits than good and sweet odours."

"The disease was of the most malig. nant and fatal character; it immediately killed some in opening their windows, some in one hour, many in two, and at the longest "to them that merrily dined, it gave a sorrowful supper."

"He called it 'Ephemera,' or a fever of one natural day, for it lasted only twenty-four hours. In the fifth year of the reign of Edward VI. it began at Shrewsbury in the midst of April, and proceeded with great mortality to Ludlow, and other places in Wales, then to Chester, Coventry, Oxford, and other towns in the south; it reached London > 7th July, from thence it went through the east part of England into the north, till the end of August, and entirely

*The manners and mode of life of our ances

tors, as may be inferred from this precept, were probably nearly the same at this time as they were described by Erasmus about thirty years before; the condition of which may be supposed to have contributed to deter him from accepting the splendid offers of Henry VIII., and Cardinal

Wolsey, made to induce that great scholar to fix his residence in England. "A magnificent apartment, a yearly pension of six hundred florins, and a benefice that produced yearly one hundred marks, were not sufficient to counterbalance the disgust he felt at the incommodious and bad exposition of the houses, the filthiness of the streets, and the sluttishness within doors. The floors," continues Erasmus in his Letters, "are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lie unmolested an ancient collection of lees, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and every thing that is nasty." To such a sordid and uncleanly mode of life, Erasmus was disposed to impute the frequent visits of the plague in England; and: there can be no question that it would also

mainly contribute to the spread and devastation of the epidemic sickness described by Caius.