WILKINS the clergyman at Pill sent to a poor man for his Easter dues. They amounted to two shillings. The man returned for answer that he "could not then pay the money, but on the Saturday next he should have his pay and would bring it." The poor fellow had offended a servant who had influence over his master, Wilkins, and prevailed upon him to put him in the Bishops' Court. Here the fees and expences daily increased, and when Saturday came, amounted to a sum which he could not pay. He was arrested and carried to Ivelchester: it was a cold season - he lay upon straw in the prison-he was seventy-eight-died there, and was buried in the grave with a felon who had been hanged. Mr. Kift related this at Danverses this evening. He had ascertained the facts. June 26, 1799.-Smart, the man's name, a tyler, the debt was two shillings, the law charges £30, and more, he ran away and was taken on venturing

to see his wife. His wife was seventyfour.1

WALKING from Sapey to Ledbury with Edmund Seward, he pointed out a cottage on a common. The cottager had planted two apple trees before his door on the common, to him important in value as furnishing him with cyder. The manor came to a clergyman, and he went with a man to cut down the trees.

RETURNING to Brixton I saw two instances of English credulity. A woman was shown for a wild Indian. I heard her singing in a true cracked St. Gileses voice. A child was shown as the most surprizing large child that ever was seen: 'twas a four years body, backward in mind, exhibited for one of eighteen months forward in body.

* AT Bristol I saw a shaved monkey shown for a fairy; and a shaved bear, in a check waistcoat and trowsers, sitting in a great chair as an Ethiopian savage.2 This was the most cruel fraud I ever saw. The unnatural position of the beast, and the damnable brutality of the woman-keeper who sat upon his knee, put her arm round his neck, called him husband and sweet-heart, and kissed him, made it the most disgusting spectacle I ever witnessed. Cottle was

with me.

My father's Aunt Hannah had a life-hold

estate, held at last upon the life of one labouring man. This fellow found out the importance of his life, and never would

strike a stroke of work afterwards-he run up a bill at the alehouse-then away went his wife to Aunt Hannah - her husband

1 The latter paragraph is of more recent date, --but not much. I may note here, that in Southey's early MSS. he wrote "Danverses," and "Gileses," &c. unmodernized.

2 I saw the like disgusting exhibition in Wol. verhampton about the year 1817. The poor beast was then called, as I well recollect, the Polo Savage.-J. W. W.

would be arrested - there was a bad fever in the prison, &c. The poor woman was thus perpetually harassed till the fellow died at last, and she was left destitute and dependant.

*DR. GRAHAM. I saw this half-knave, halfenthusiast twice at one time he was buried up to the neck in earth in the midst of his patients; at another, sitting up to the chin in warm mud, with his hair in full pigeon-wing dress. As he was haranguing upon the excellent health he enjoyed from the use of earth-bathing, I asked him why he was then in the mud-bath if he wanted no relief? it puzzled him why-he said, "Why-it was-it was-to show people that it did no harm-that it was quite innocent—that it was very agreeable-and -it gives me a skin as soft as the feathers of Venuses doves." A farmer once emptied a watering pot upon his head when he was buried, "to make him grow " he said. Latterly Graham was an evident enthusiasthe would madden himself with opiumrush into the streets, and strip himself to clothe the first beggar he met; but the electrical bed was the infamous pandarism of a scoundrel. He lived upon vegetables, and perpetually declaimed against making the stomach the grave, the charnel house of slaughtered bodies: in one of his pamphlets there is a page of epithets for wheat.

*IN 1797 there was a fellow, an old man, who professed himself to be the Wandering Jew. He did not adhere to the legend, but laid claim to higher antiquity; he had "been with Noah in the ark " he said, "and received from the he-goat a blow on the forehead" of which the scar still remained. Some person asked him what country he preferred of all that he had visited? he answered, Spain." The questioner remarked that that was singular as he was a Jew. "God bless you," replied the ready rogue, "it was long before Christianity that I was in Spain, and I shall not go there again till it is all over." Mr. Sloper told

66

* AT Royston in 1793, I saw a hand-bill announcing that a man whose name I do not remember, would give his annual dinner, on a specified day, where every person should be welcome. I learnt that he believed himself wrongfully kept out of a large estate: that he worked at some day labour, and lived very frugally the whole year, to spend his collected savings in this way, on his birthday every year, at an inn upon the estate which he claimed. In my childhood there was a man at Bristol possessed with the same idea. He had vowed never to wash himself, or put on clean linen, or comb his hair, cut his nails or shave till he had recovered his right. He kept the vow and died in his dirt: they called him black John.

THE Christ Church Smugglers say when a drowned comrade is enquired for, "he's on the other side the water."

THE mother of Pat who nursed me lived in service at London, in 1745. It was near Tower Hill, and on the day that some of the rebel lords were executed she was sent for beer to a pot house in that neighbourhood. While she was there a man brought in some liver, which he gave to be drest, affirming with bitter curses that it was the liver of one of the rebels. How have such stories been circulated against the French, as if the mad brutality of an individual characterized his nation!-But this was probably the lie of a brutal bravo.

ONE day in 1795, when Coleridge and I were dining at the ordinary at the Ship, | Small-street, Bristol, we heard a loud quar

captain. One night, in calm weather, the helmsman came to him,-"Boatswain" said he, "I wish I was out of this ship. Just now there came a boat along side with only one man in it-and he went round the vessel under the cabin window- and then they disappeared but the captain directly came up storming and cursing like a mad man.” This fellow shocked his whole crew -he used to look up to heaven, and curse the sky and the sun and moon and stars.

-

Stokes was most amusingly superstitious. He said many ships were haunted, and sailors who knew their character would not embark in them. A captain told him that his mate at daybreak called him, to say three vessels were in sight. After some time he came down again—he did not know what to make of the vessels-whether they were French or English-they vere 'em on-and he was coming up to them. At eight in the morning he again roused the captain-they were close and in dangerthey were three pinnacle rocks like the Eddystone. It was between the Azores and Cape St. Vincent. Stokes sailed in that course as near as possible to look for them -but in vain.

This Paschal Loaf is still common in Sussex,

for wit.

each year; and the remarkable point is, that many superstitiously keep it who cannot be persuaded to communicate.-J. W. W.

ella,

Pocock, the schoolmaster, by S. Michael's churchyard, has a machine to punish the boys, which they call the royal patent selfacting ferule.

SAYERS the schoolmaster put arms into his boys' hands, and had them exercised during the "alarm." They were taught that they ought to resist their natural enemies, and by an easy and obvious logic discovered that their natural enemies were the master and usher, whom they accordingly resolved to shoot. Some accident discovered the plan, and prevented murder; but it was necessary to call in the military to reduce them. This was hushed up, so many families of consequence here were concerned in it.

-a Roman Catholic.-J. W. W.