het of this kind happened, when the city of Delft was destroyed by an exploson of gunpowder in 1654; a child, a year old, was found two days afterwards sacking an apple, and sitting under a beam, with just space left for its body. Two others at a little distance were in their cradles quite safe. At that time almost the whole of Delft was destroyed. Leyden is as large a city, but not so populous, as Rotterdam, the second city in Holland. Upwards of two hundred houses were overthrown on this occasion, besides churches and public buildings; the Stadt, or town-house, was among the latter. 1573, and by the plague in 1624 and 1635, in which year 15,000 of the inha bitants were carried off within six months In 1415 a convent was burnt, and most of the nuns perished in the flames. An explosion of gunpowder, in 1481, destroyed the council-chamber when full of people, and killed most of the magistrates. The misfortunes of this city have become proverbial, and its very name has given rise to a pun. "Leyden" is " Lijden;" Leyden, the name of the city, and Lijden, (to suffer,) have the same pronunciation in the Dutch language. The chirp of the crickets from the kitOne hundred and fifty-one dead bodies chen chimney breaks the silence of still were taken from the ruins, besides many evenings in the winter. They come from that died after. Upwards of two thou- the crevices, when the house is quiet, to and were wounded more or less danger- the warm hearth, and utter their shrill ously. It is remarkable that none of the monotonous notes, to the discomfiture of students of the university were either the nervous, and the pleasure of those killed or wounded, though they all lodge who have sound minds in sound bodies. in different parts of the city, or wherever This insect and the grasshopper are agreethey please. Contributions were imme- ably coupled in a pleasing sonnet. The diately began, and large sums raised." summoning brass" it speaks of, our The king of Holland gave 30,000 gilders, and the queen 10,000; a very large sum was collected in London. Leyden suffered dreadfully by siege in country readers well know, as an allusion To the Grasshopper and the Cricket. One to the fields, the other to the hearth, Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong L. Hunt. ture, an orator, a poet, wrote against the Arians, was banished for his orthodoxy, but returned to his see, worked miracles, and died on the 13th of January, 368. Ribadeneira says, that in a certain island, uninhabitable by reason of venemous serpents, they fled from his holiness; that he put up a stake as a boundary, commanding them not to pass it, and they obeyed; that he raised a dead child to life, prayed his daughter to death, and did other astonishing things; especially after his decease when two merchants 49 E at their own cost and by way of venture, offered an image at his shrine, but as one be grudged the cost of his share, St. Hilary caused the image to divide from top to bottom, while being offered, keeping the one half, and rejecting the niggard's moiety. The Golden Legend says, that St. Hilary also obtained his wife's death by his prayers; and that pope Leo, who was an Arian, said to him, "Thou art Hilary the cock, and not the son of a hen;" whereat Hilary said, "I am no cock, but a bishop in France;" then said the pope, "Thou art Hilary Gallus (signifying a cock) and I am Leo, judge of the papal see;" whereupon Hilary replied, "If thou be Leo tbou art not (a lion) of the tribe of Juaa." After this railing the pope died, and Hilary was comforted. St. Veronica. St. Kentigern. time and harvest, the long vacation between Midsummer and Michaelmas. Each term is denominated from the festival day immediately preceding its commencement; hence we have the terms of St. Hilary, Easter, the Holy Trinity, and St. Michael. There are in each term stated days called dies in banco, (days in bank,) that is, days of appearance in the court of common bench. They are usually about a week from each other, and have reference to some Romish festival. All original writs are returnable on these days, and they are therefore called the return days. 66 The first return in every term is, properly speaking, the first day of the term. For instance, the octave of St. Hilary, or the eighth day, inclusive, after the saint's feast, falls on the 20th of JaShe was a nun, with a desire to live nuary, because his feast is on the 13th of always on bread and water, died in 1497, January. On the 20th, then, the court sits to take essoigns, or excuses for non-apand was canonized, after her claim to sanctity was established to the satisfac-pearance to the writ; "but," says Blackstone, as our ancestors held it beneath tion of his holiness pope Leo X. the condition of a freeman to appear or to do any thing at the precise time appointed," the person summoned has three days of grace beyond the day named in the writ, and if he appear on the fourth day inclusive it is sufficient. Therefore at the beginning of each term the court does not sit for despatch of business till the fourth, or the appearance day, which is in Hilary term, for instance, on the 23d of January. In Trinity term it does not sit till the fifth day; because the fourth falls on the great Roman catholic festival of Corpus Christi. The first appearance day therefore in each term is called the first day of the term; and the court sits till the quarto die post, or ap pearance day of the last return, or end of the term. He was bishop of Glasgow, with jurisdiction in Wales, and, according to Butler, "favoured with a wonderful gift of miracles." Bishop Patrick, in his "Devotions of the Romish Church," says, "St. Kentigern had a singular way of kindling fire, which I could never have hit upon." Being in haste to light candles for vigils, and some, who bore a spite to him, having put out all the fire in the monastery, he snatched the green bough of an hazel, blessed it, blew upon it, the bough produced a great flame, and he lighted his candles: "whence we may conjecture," says Patrick," that tinder-boxes are of a later invention than St. Kentigern's days." THE LAW TERMS. Term is derived from Terminus, the heathen god of boundaries, landmarks, and limits of time. In the early ages of Christianity the whole year was one continued term for hearing and deciding causes; but after the establishment of the Romish church, the daily dispensation of justice was prohibited by canonical authority, that the festivals might be kept holy. Advent and Christmas occasioned the winter vacation; Lent and Easter the pring; Pentecost the third; and hay In each term there is one day whereon the courts do not transact business; namely, on Candlemas day, in Hilary term; on Ascension day, in Easter term; on Midsummer day, in Trinity term; and on All Saints' day, in Michaelmas term. These are termed Grand days in the inns of court; and Gaudy days at the two universities; they are observed as Collar days at the king's court of St. James's, for on these days, knights wear the collars of their respective orders An old January journal contains a remarkable auecdote relative to the decease a M. Foscue, one of the farmers-geneof the province of Languedoc He had amassed considerable wealth by means which rendered him an object of universal detestation. One day he was andered by the government to raise a considerable sum: as an excuse for not complying with the demand, he pleaded extreme poverty; and resolved on hiding bus treasure in such a manner as to escape detection. He dug a kind of a cave in his wine-cellar, which he made so large and deep, that he used to go down to it th a ladder; at the entrance of it was a door with a spring lock on it, which on shutting would fasten of itself. He was suddenly missed, and diligent search made after him; ponds were drawn, and every suggestion adopted that could reasonably lead to his discovery, dead or alve. In a short time after, his house was sold; and the purchaser beginning to make some al ́erations, the workmen discovered a door in the wine-cellar with a sey in the lock. On going down they fed Foscue lying dead on the ground, with a candlestick near him, but no cande in it. On searching farther, they fund the vast wealth that he had amassed. It is supposed, that, when he had entered his cave, the door had by some accident shut after him; and thus being out of the call of any person, he perished for want of food, in the midst of his treasure. SIGNS OF FOUL WEATHER. The moon in halos hid her head. The boding shepherd heaves a sigh, Low o'er the grass the swallow wings The wind unsteady veers arouna, The tender colts on back do lie, "Twill surely rain, we see't with sorrow, January 14. Darwin. OXFORD LENT TERM begins. St. Hilary. Sts. Felix. Sts. Isaias and Sabbas. St. Barbasceminus, &c. terwards a priest, was, according to St. Felix of Nola, an exorcist, and afButler and Ribadeneira, a great miracu-. list. He lived under Decius, in 250; being fettered and dungeoned in a cell, covered with potsherds and broken glass, a resplendent angel, seen by the saint alone, because to him only was he sent, freed him of his chains and guided him to a mountain, where bishop Maximus, aged and frozen, lay for dead, whom Felix recovered by praying; for, straightway, he saw a bramble bear a bunch of grapes, with the juice whereof he recovered the bishop, and taking him on his back carried him home to his diocese. Being pursued by pagans, he fled to some ruins and crept through a hole in the wall, which spiders closed with their webs before the pagans got up to it, and there lay for six months miraculously supported. According to the Legend, his body, for ages after his death, distilled a liquor that cured diseases. CHRONOLOGY. In January, 1784, died suddenly in Macclesfield-street, Soho, aged 79, Sam. Crisp, esq., a relation of the celebrated sir Nicholas Crisp. There was a remarkable singularity in the character of this gentleman. He was a bachelor, had been formerly a broker in 'Change-alley, and many years since had retired from business, with an easy competency. His daily amuseinent, for fourteen years before, was going from London to Greenwich, and immediately returning from thence, in the stage; for which he paid regularly £27 a year. He was a good-humoured, obliging, and facetious companion, always paying a particular attention, and a profusion of compliments, to the ladies, especially to those who were agreeable. He was perpetually projecting some little schemes for the benefit of the public, or, to use his own favourite maxim, pro bono publico; he was the institutor of the Lactarium in St. George's Fields, and selected the Latin mottoes for the facetious Mrs. Henniver, who got a little fortune there. He projected the mile and half stones round London; and teased the printers of newspapers into the plan of letter-boxes. He was remarkably humane and benevolent, and, without the least ostentation, performed many generous and charitable actions, which would have dignified a more ample fortune. THE WINTER ROBIN A suppliant to your window comes, Who trusts your faith, and fears no guile : He claims admittance for your cruinbs, And reads his passport in your smile. For cold and cheerless is the day, And he has sought the hedges round; Secure his suit will be preferred, No fears his slender feet deter; January 15. St. Paul, the first Hermit. St. Maurus. The life of St. Paul, the first hermit, is said, by Butler, to have been written by St. Jerome in 365, who received an account of it from St. Anthony and others. According to him, when twenty-two years old, St. Paul fled from the persecution of Decius to a cavern, near which grew a palm-tree, that supplied him with leaves for clothing, and fruit for food, till he was forty-three years of age; after which he was daily fed by a raven-till he was ninety, and then died. St. Anthony, in his old age, being tempted by vanity, imagined himself the first hermit, till the contrary was revealed to him in a dream, wherefore, the next morning, he set out in search of St. Paul. "St. Jerome relates from his authors," says Butler, “that he met a centaur, or creature, not with the nature and properties, but with something of the mixt shape of man and horse; and that this monster, or phantom of the devil, (St. Jerome pretends not to determine which it was,) upon his making the sign of the cross, fled away, after pointing out the way to the saint. Our author (St. Jerome) adds, that St. Anthony soon after met a satyr, who gave him to understand that he was an inhabitant of those deserts, and one of the sort whom the deluded gentiles adored for gods." Ribadeneira describes this satyr as with writhed nostrils, two little horns on his forehead, and the feet of a goat. After two days' search, St. Anthony found St. Paul, and a raven brought a loaf, whereupon they took their corporal refection. The next morning, St. Paul told him he was going to die, and bid him fetch a cloak given to St. Anthony by St. Athanasius, and wrap his body in it. St. Anthony them knew, that St. Paul must have been informed of the cloak by revelation, and went forth from the desert to fetch it; but before his return, St. Paul had died, and St. Anthony found two lions digging his grave with their claws, wherein he buried St. Paul, first wrapping him in St. Athanasius's cloak, and preserving, as a great treasure, St. Paul's garment, made of palm-tree leaves, stitched together. How St.Jerome, in his conclusion of St. Paul's life, praises this garment, may be seen in Ribadeneira. FLOWERS. A writer, who signs himself" Crito" in the "Truth Teller," No. 15, introduces us to an honest enthusiast, discoursing to his hearers on the snow-drop of the season, and other offerings from Flora, to the rolling year. "Picture to your imagination, a poor, 'dirty' mendicant, of the order of St. Francis, who had long prayed and fasted in his sanctuary, and long laboured in bis garden, issuing out on the morning of his first pilgrimage, without money and with out provisions, clad in his mantle and hood, like a sad votarist in palmer's weeds, and thus, and in these words, taking leave of the poor flock who lived found his gothic habitation.- Fellowmen, I owe you nothing, and I give you a; you neither paid me tithe nor rent, yet I have bestowed on you food and clothing in poverty, medicine in sickness, and spiritual counsel in adversity. That I might do all these things, I have devoted my life in the seclusion of those venerable walls. There I have consulted the sacred books of our church for your spiritual instruction and the good of your souls; to clothe you, I have sold the embroidered garment, and have put on the habit of mendicity. In the intercalary moments of my canonical hours of prayer, I have collected together the treasures of Flora, and gathered from her plants the useful arts of physic, by which you have been benefited. Ever mindful of the usefal object of the labour to which I had condemned myself, I have brought together into the garden of this priory, the hay of the valley and the gentian of the mountain, the nymphæa of the lake, and the cliver of the arid bank; in short, I have collected the pilewort, the throatwort, the liverwort, and every other vegetable specific which the kind hand of zature has spread over the globe, and which I have designated by their qualities, and have converted to your use and benefit. Mindful also of the pious festivals which our church prescribes, I have sought to make these charming objects of floral nature, the timepieces of my religious calendar, and the mementos of the hastening period of my mortality. Thus I can light the taper to our Virgin Mother on the blowing of the white snowdrop, which opens its floweret at the time of Candlemas; the lady's smock and the daffodil remind me of the Annunciation; the blue harebell, of the festival of St. George; the ranunculus, of the Invention of the Cross; the scarlet lychnis, of St. John the Baptist's day; the white lily, of the Visitation of our Lady; and the virgin's bower, of her Assumption; and Michaelmas, Martinmas, Holy Rood, and Christmas, have all their appropriate monitors. I learn the time of day from the shutting of the blossoms of the star of Jerusalem and the dandelion, and the hour of the night by the stars." From kind feelings to the benevolence of the Franciscan mendicant's address, which we may suppose ourselves to have just heard, we illustrate something of his purpose, by annexing the rose, the tulip, and the passion-flower, after an engraving by a catholic artist, who has impressed them with devotional monograms, and symbols of his faith. Margaret. What sports do you use in the forest?— To see the sun to bed, and to arise, Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes, Go eddying round; and small birds, how they fare, |