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were twenty-nine in number, some containing from 900 to 1000 members. The aspirant was blindfolded, a chain is put round his neck, when he is led to the Arch Druid who administers the oath. In some lodges this is administered by the Right Hand supporter, who holds a naked sword; in others, by the most worthy secretary, who wears a hideous mask and an enormous pair of spectacles. The aspirant kneels while he swears, and when the bandage is taken off, he is startled at seeing a ghastly hue thrown over all the persons present, by a flame which had been kindled during the ceremony. They wear beards à la Druid at their meetings.

EL mentir de las estrellas

es un seguro mentir, porque nadie puede ir

A perguntarselo a ellas.

DESCARTES used to say that though he could not promise to himself to render a man immortal, yet he was sure he might go

so far as to make him as long lived as the patriarchs.

A CAMBRIDGE dandy who found fault with Chauncy Townsend's neckloth, assured him that in Cambridge the neckcloth makes the man.

The neckcloths are sent home starched and folded, and kept in a rack made for the purpose. The aforesaid personage said that he often put on two or three before he could satisfy himself, and threw them aside to be fresh starched and folded. Another of these fellows said that when he undressed at night, it was like heaven; but that a man must suffer in order to be captivating.1

A. D. 1538. THE archbishop of York attempted to save Hexham at the suppres

At this time, it is well known there was a club at Cambridge called "the Beautiful Club,” in which dimples are said to have been painted But men outlive such follies!-J. W. W.

| sion of the religious houses. He wrote to Cromwell, saying, "that it was a great sanctuary when the Scotch made inroads; and so he thought that the continuing of it might be of great use to the king."-Burnet, vol. i. p. 251.

"BODY-stealing has commenced: the dissecting lectures will require more than 200 bodies every week to be dragged from the wood coffins. Several persons have been deterred, which they have lamented at our manufactory, from adopting the only means of safety by iron coffins, by interested persons stating they would not be received at the burial grounds. We are informed at the Bishop of London's office, they cannot be refused."

LAMPS, Middlesex, vol. i. p. 81. (Beauties of England.)

A PREACHER Who differed in opinion with Adolphus Gunn, called upon him, and being

known was denied admittance, "Mr. Gunn

being busy in his study." 'Tell him,' says the importunate visitor, that a servant of the Lord wishes to speak to him.' Gunn replied upon this message, "Tell the servant of the Lord that I am engaged with his Master."

PRESTON, the M. P. who published pamphlets upon the corn laws, and the ruined condition of the landed and agricul tural interests in 1816, was originally an attorney's clerk in Sussex (I believe). His master pushed him forward, finding him a clever fellow. He won the heart of his master's daughter, and they were to be married as soon as his circumstances would allow him to settle. He went to London, succeeded in business, and came down after a while to his old master, not to fulfil his promised marriage, but to break it off. “I know what you will do," he told the father;

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you will bring an action for breach of promise, but that won't do." So he desired

its place, with little or no diminution, in the driest seasons, from that time to the present (1807). It is situated near the summit of a mountain, and surrounded on all sides with limestone rock. The ground about it is remarkably dry; and though several springs, and among them the ebbing and flowing well itself, break out at the foot of the mountain, none of them appeared to be affected by the appearance of the pool.”

to see the lady in the presence of her father | well at Giggleswick, which has maintained and her brothers. "I promised to marry you," said he; "I acknowledge the promise. I am a man of my word, and here I am ready to fulfil it. I am ready to marry you, but mark what I say, I am a man of my word, and never break it. If you become my wife, I will treat you like a servant; you shall never associate with me; you shall live in the kitchen, do the work of a servant, dress like a servant, and clean my shoes. You know I never break my word, and now I am ready to marry you, and all who are present are witnesses to this." One of the brothers, as might be expected, took this excellent scoundrel out of the room, and horsewhipped him till he was tired. But Preston liked this when the smart was over, as it gave him an opportunity of bringing an action for an assault.

A QUAKER who was the proprietor of some wire mills, related to Talford an adventure of his in a double-bedded room. The stranger in the one bed snored intolerably, so much so that the Quaker got out, took him by the shoulder, shook him, and entreated him just to suspend his nasal trumpet till he (the Quaker) could fall asleep, which would require only a few minutes, and then he might blow away as he pleased. But before the poor Quaker was well warm in his bed, Sir Naso was trumpeting again; "Our wire mills," said the Quaker, 66 were a fool to him. I got out again, went to him, took hold of his nose, and held it not only till he was awake, but till he was so angry that he could not easily get to sleep again; and when I saw that, it was my turn. I jumped into bed again, got to sleep before him, and then I defied him."

In a window in Oxford Street is a paper announcing that Alderney double cream is sold there.

"IN 1791 a small pool of water suddenly appeared in a natural hollow of the ground, about a mile above the ebbing and flowing

I do not see much difficulty in accounting for these facts. A casual fall of stones and earth might accidentally block up the course of the spring beneath the surface; by which means the water, after accumulating in this hollow, may easily be supposed to have found another channel connected with the former, and to supply the springs beneath with the same uniformity and plenty as before.

At all events it is to be considered as a providential gift, since it supplies an herd of sixty cattle with water in the driest seasons, when they court the highest exposures, and had, till this appearance, to descend with great labour for their refreshment to the springs below.

The figure of the pool is nearly an ellipsis, of which the axis major is rather more than thirty yards; the axis minor rather more than twenty-three yards, and the greatest depth, three yards three inches.—WHITAKER's History of Craven, p. 134.

"The village of Faizer in Craven consists of ten houses, seven of which are in the parish of Clapham, one in the parish of Giggleswick, and the other two, one year in the one parish, and one in another, the inhabitants having seats in both churches, re

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sorting to them alternately, and paying their corn tithe to the rectors, and Easter dues to the vicars alternately; but all pay their assessed taxes to Stainforth."-Ibid. p. 137.

SCENE on the banks of Ullswater between Dr. May and Mrs. Cockbaine.

THE place at Enstone was called Bushell's Wells. Evelyn went to see it in 1664. “This Bushell had been secretary to my Lord Verulam. It is an extraordinary solitude. There he had two mummies, and a grot, where he lay in a hammock like an Indian." He published a pamphlet respecting his contrivances here, and there is a print of them in PLOTT's Oxfordshire.

IN Edward the Sixth's reign, when it was intended to establish a free mart in England, the mart was to begin after Whitsuntide, and to hold on five weeks, "by which means it shall not let St. James's fair at Bristol, nor Bartholomew fair at London." These then were the two great English fairs. BURNET'S Reform. vol. ii. part ii. p. 79.

THE introduction of railroads in the north of England, which were at first all made of wood, destroyed the New Forest, the colliers carrying wood back. So difficult is it to manage concerns of this kind, that the government's own wood from the forest, when delivered at Portsmouth docks, was found to cost 4s. 6d. per load more than that which they purchased.

Ar Moor Park near Farnham, Sir William Temple's heart, according to the directions in his will, was buried in a silver box under the sun-dial in the garden, opposite to the window from whence he used to contemplate and admire the glorious works of nature.

LITHGOW calls the river Weir, "Durham's dallying and circulating consort."

|

Shields would become the port town, if Newcastle had not a privilege, that no common baker or brewer shall set up between them and the sea.—Ibid. vol. i. p. 233. Canal coal.-Ibid. vol. i. p. 278.

It was a superstition concerning Stonehenge (noticed in the history of Allchester), "that if they be rubbed and water thrown upon them, they will heal any green wound or old sore."

KEW BRIDGE. Londres, vol. 1, p. 320, Est-il vrai?

WESTMINSTER HALL. — Ibid. vol. 3, p.

134-8.

IN York Castle, a collection of instruments which had been employed by robbers and murderers, brought into court, and deposited there by public authority.

MR. SENHOUSE's grandfather colonized the Solway Firth with good oysters, and they bred there,-but as the population of Maryport (which he founded) increased, the people destroyed them.

He was the first gentleman in Cumberland who sashed his windows.

ABOUT 1600, some strollers were playing late at night at a place called Perin (Penryn ?) in Cornwall, when a party of Spaniards landed the same night, unsuspected and undiscovered, with intent to take the town, plunder it, and burn it. Just as they entered the players were representing a battle, and struck up a loud alarm with drum and trumpet on the stage, which the enemy hearing, thought they were discovered, made some few idle shots, and so in a hurly-burly fled to their boats. And thus the townsmen were apprized of their danger, and delivered from it at the same time.-HEYWOOD, Somers' Tracts, vol. 3, p.

599.

Southey's oid and intimate friend, HumTHE Cob at Lyme.-Life of Lord Keeper phrey Senhouse, Esq. of Netherhall. Guildford, vol. i. p. 228.

J. W. W.

Ar the Lord William Howard's house at Naworth, a hare came and kennelled in his kitchen upon the hearth. Lilly gives this as a note to Mother Shipton's prophecy, that "the day will come that hares shall kennel on cold hearth-stones."

NEAR Cadbury, in Somersetshire, the Wishing Well,' where women fill their thimbles with the water and drink it, and form their wish. The story is, that a girl of low degree drinking there one day, wished she were mistress of that well and the estate to which it belonged,—and ere long the lord of the estate married her.

RICHARD II. when his queen died at Richmond, cursed the place and pulled down the palace.

TILLOTSON Was curate at Cheshunt in 1661-2, and lived with Sir Thomas Dacres at the great house near the church. (?) He prevailed with an old Oliverian soldier, who set up for an Anabaptist preacher there, and preached in a red coat, and was much followed in that place, to desist from that encroachment upon the parish minister, and the usurpation of the priest's office, and to betake himself to some honest employment.2 Some years afterwards, he and Dr. Stillingfleet hired that house for their summer residence.

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permit, and I left a direction. The next day it was sent, with a note, saying the chamber maid had found it under our bed,-which was most certainly false.

WE were at Stamford on a fair day in September. Among other things I observed a patchwork quilt for sale in the marketplace. A waggon laden very high with hay went through the crowd in so perilous a state that I verily expected every moment it would fall and kill somebody; the hay was so ill fastened that it was swaying from side to side. I stopped several persons, and made them get into the houses till it passed. A sudden jolt must have upset it. The man knew not what to do when I spoke to him. It was in such a state that no person could get upon it to secure it; and to have let it fall in the town on fair day, would have blocked up the street. So he went on at all hazards, and by God's mercy cleared the street.

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to penitence, and becoming a voluntary exile in this country, ended his days in solitary confinement.” Harold, after the battle of Hastings, where he lost an eye, is said to have retired to this city also. "The truth of these two circumstances was declared (and not before known) by the dying confession of each party."-HOARE'S Giraldus, vol. 2, p. 166. "The Countess and her mother keeping tame deer, presented to the Archbishop three small cheeses made from their milk a thing which Giraldus had never seen before."-Ibid.

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