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parish. Robert Joy.-S. L. Curlewis.-|ceived any thing whatsoever, he was apt to James Sant, Churchwardens."

SIR ROWLAND HILL bought Dash, a favourite pointer of Colonel Thornton, for 120 guineas, and a cask of Madeira, on condition that if the dog were disabled for sporting at any time he should be resold to the Colonel for fifty guineas, to breed from. Which repurchase accordingly took place.

THE history of Baillie the renegade, who was going to cut off Arthur Aikin's head because I had spoken of him in the Annual Review, is to be found in DR. NEALE'S Travels, p. 232.

* MRS. WHITBREAD hired a servant in Cornwall, who at the time of hiring thought herself bound to let the lady know that she had once had a misfortune. When the woman had been some time in service, by a slip of the tongue she spoke of something which had happened to her just after the birth of her first child. "Your first," said Mrs. Whitbread, “ why, how many have you had then?" "O ma'am," said she, "I've had four." "Four!" exclaimed the mistress," why, you told me you had had but one. However, I hope you will have no more." "Ma'am," replied the woman, "that must be as it may please God."

"WHEN We reason in words of general signification, and fall upon a general inference which is false; though it be commonly called error, it is indeed an ABSURDITY, or senseless speech. For error is but a deception, in presuming that somewhat is past, or to come; of which, though it were not past, or not to come, yet there was no impossibility discoverable. But when we make a general assertion, unless it be a true one, the possibility of it is inconceivable. And words whereby we conceive nothing but the sound are those we call absurd, insignificant, and

nonsense.

"I have said that a man did excel all other animals in this faculty, that when he con

inquire the consequences of it, and what effects he could do with it. And now I add this other degree of the same excellence, that he can by words reduce the consequences he finds to general rules, called theorems, or aphorisms: That is, he can reason, or reckon, not only in number, but in all other things, whereof one may be added unto, or subtracted from another.

"But this privilege is allayed by another, and that is by the privilege of absurdity, to which no living creature is subject but man only. And of men, those are of all most subject to it who profess philosophy.". HOBBES, pp. 19, 20.

"They that have no science, are in better and nobler condition with their natural prudence, than men that by mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd general rules.-Ibid. p. 21."

Wortley Stuart's motion for a change of ministry: "The resolutions of a monarch are subject to no other inconstancy than that of human nature; but in assemblies, besides that of nature, there ariseth an inconstancy from the number. For the absence of a few that would have the resolution once taken continues firm, (which may happen by security, negligence, or private impediments,) or the diligent appearance of a few of the contrary opinion, undoes to-day all that was concluded yesterday."— Ibid. p. 96.

"GOOD reason had Xenocrates to give order that children should have certain aurielets or bolsters devised to hang about their ears for their defence, rather than fencers and sword players; for that these are in danger only to have their ears spoiled with knocks or cuts by weapons; but the others to have their manners corrupted and marred with evil speeches."-PLUTARCH, p. 52.

"THE reply of that great sufferer, the noble Marquis of Worcester, to the maior of Bala in Merionethshire, who came to ex

cuse himself and town for his lordship's bad lodging: 'Lord! what a thing is this misunderstanding! I warrant you, might but the king and parliament conferre together as you and I have done, there might be as right an understanding as betwixt you and I. Somebody hath told the parliament that the king was an enemy; and their believing of him to be such hath wrought all the jealousies which are come to these distractions; the parliament being now in such a case as I myself am in, having green ears over their heads, and false ground under their feet.' The parlour where the marquis lay was a soft and loose ground, wherein you might sink up to the ancles: the top of the house was thatcht with ill-threshed straw, and the corn which was left in the straw wherewith the house was thatcht, grew, and was then as green as grass."-BAYLY's Worcester Apothegms. FOULIS, Pretended Saints, p. 187.

"THERE is a place near St. Paul's, called in old records Diana's Chamber, where in the days of Edward I., thousands of the heads of oxen were digged up; whereat the ignorant wondered, whilst the learned well understood them to be the proper sacrifices to Diana, whose great temple was built thereabout. This rendereth their conceit not altogether unlikely who will have London so called from Llan-Dian, which signifieth in British the temple of Diana. And surely conjectures, if mannerly observing their distance, and not impudently intruding themselves for certainties, deserve, if not to be received, to be considered."— FULLER'S Church History, p. 1.

"THE learned know that the Tauropolia were celebrated in honour of Diana. And when I was a boy," says Camden, "I have seen a stag's head fixed upon a spear, (agreeable enough to the sacrifices of Diana) and

The learned Selden is the author of the conceit here alluded to. The reader is referred to the notes in the Clar. Press edit. of FULLER'S Church History.-J. W. W.

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carried about within the very church with great solemnity and sounding of horns. And I have heard that the stag which the family of Baud in Essex were bound to pay for certain lands, used to be received at the steps of the quire by the priests of the church, in their sacerdotal robes, and with garlands of flowers about their heads. Whether this was a custom before those Bauds were bound to the payment of that stag, I know not; but certain it is that ceremony savours more of the worship of Diana, and the Gentile errors, than of the Christian religion.”— Camden, p. 315.

NEIGHBOURHOOD of Smithfield and Warwick Lane. It is become a more fatal place for oxen, and perhaps also for the souls of the inhabitants; for of an idolater there is more hope than of a heretic. The true Diana's worship has disappeared.

THE seraphim or musical glasses, to which the above title is truly appropriate from their divine harmony, offer “ a powerful attraction to the lovers of harmony in general, and particularly to taste and science, in the decline of the wonted powers of instrumental performance, from the gentle movement whereby the music of the seraphim is produced; whilst to the sensibility of pain or sorrow it infuses the balm of consolation by the most soothing and delightful harmony." COURIER, January 1st,

1814.

A CEREMONY respecting a peculiar tenure for lands in the parish of Broughton, Lincolnshire, takes place at Castor church every Palm Sunday. A person enters the churchyard with a green silk purse, containing ten shillings and a silver penny, tied at the end of a cart whip, which he smacks thrice in the porch, and continues there till the second lesson begins; when he goes into the church and smacks the whip three times over the clergyman's head. After kneeling before the desk during the reading of the lesson, he presents the minister with the purse, and

then retiring to the choir, waits the remainder of the service.1

S. GUTHLAKE at Crowland, "that is, the raw or crude land, so raw indeed, that before him no man could digest to live thereon. The devils called it their own land. Could those infernal fiends, tortured with immaterial fire, take any pleasure, or make any ease to themselves, by paddling here in puddles, and dabbling in the moist dirty marshes?—If his prodigious life may be believed, ducks and mallards do not now flock thither faster in September, than herds of devils came about him."-FULLER, p. 95.

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few paces, wheeled round, and came up to the scale as usual.

In the golden speech of Queen Elizabeth to her last parliament, me and my are always printed with capital initials.

A NORFOLK gentleman farmer rode his own boar for a wager from his own house to the next town, four and-a-quarter miles distant, twenty guineas the wager, the time allowed an hour: Porco performed it in fifty minutes.

CARDS. The manufacturers work at them from seven in the morning till ten at night: and the consumers from ten at night till seven in the morning.

LEOMINSTER, 1796. One of the Oxford dragoon horses got loose in the stable, and probably scenting a better supply of provisions, found his way up a crooked staircase into the hay loft. The soldier who had the key of the stable in his pocket came back presently, and missing the horse, ran in the utmost consternation to his officer. But on his way he heard the horse, who had put his head out of the pitching hole, and was neighing as if to say, "Here I am.”

QUEEN CATHARINE buried at Peterbo- There was no enticing or forcing him down rough. See Fuller, p. 206.

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the stairs; and they were wearied with attempting it, when he trod upon a trap door which covered a hole for sacking hops; it gave way, his hinder part went first, for which there was just room; his feet touched the ground, and in a few moments the rest fol · lowed, and he alighted with very little injury, only the loss of a few hairs and a little skin.

BENJAMIN SMITH, of Peter House, Rector of Linton in Yorkshire, died 1777; a mighty dancer before the Lord. He paid twelve guineas for learning one dance in France; and when riding on a journey, or to visit a friend in fine weather, he would sometimes alight, tie his horse to a gate, and dance a hornpipe or two on the road to the astonish

ment of any who happened to pass. He was equally fond of cribbage, and when he met with a poor person who could play well, he would maintain them three or four months for the sake of playing with them.

THE house at Huntingfield in Suffolk where Lord Hunsdon entertained Queen Elizabeth. "The great hall was built round six straight massy oaks, which originally supported the roof, as they grew; upon these the foresters and yeomen of the guard used to hang their nets, cross bows, hunting poles, great saddles, calibres, bills, &c. The roots had long been decayed when I visited this romantic dwelling, and the shafts sawn off at bottom were supported either by irregular logs of wood driven under them, or by masonry. Part of the long gallery in which the queen and her attendants used to divert themselves, was converted into an immense

cheese chamber.

"Her oak still standing. Hearne made a drawing of it for Sir Gerard Vanneck; seven feet from the ground it is nearly eleven yards in circumference." - C. DAVY, Esq.

In the parish of Caer y Derwyddon, which is between Corwen and Kerneoge Mawr, lived a weaver who played admirably upon the violin by ear, without any knowledge of music. He was a great cocker, and was supposed to have the art of judging by the egg whether the bird would be a good one. He had procured some eggs of an excellent breed, and entirely to his liking, when the hen was carried off by a badger. No other hen was at hand, nor other bird to supply her place. He immediately went to bed himself, took the six eggs into his own care, and hatched them himself in about two days. Four of his brood died, a cock and hen were reared. The cock proved conqueror in a Welsh match, by which he won half a flitch of bacon, and he used to say that the cock and hen of his own hatching, had supplied him with bacon and eggs for half a year.

A STORY circulated, that, as a party were at the pharo-table at Mrs. Sturt's, having begun their game after returning from Saturday's opera on Sunday morning, a thunder-clap was heard, a slight shock of an earthquake felt, the club became the colour of blood, and the hearts black.

ROWLAND HILL made a good remark upon hearing the power of the letter H discussed, whether it were a letter or not. If it were not, he said, it would be a very serious affair for him, for it would make him ill all the days of his life.

Ar the cliffs about Seaford, Sussex, the eggs of the sea-fowl are taken as in Scotland, by lowering a man from above.

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"JUNE 18, 1796, a main at the Cock-pit Royal, Westminster, between J. H. Durand and J. Reid, Esquires, Bromley and Walter feeders, for bonâ fide twenty guineas a battle, and a thousand the odd, a more numerous assemblage of opulent sportsmen, or a greater field for betting money, has never been remembered."-" Candour compels us to confess the energetic fervour of each party could not be exceeded, nor could the honesty of feeders be ever brought to a more decisive criterion. Employed by gentlemen of the most unsullied honour, the cause became enthusiastically sympathetic, and it is universally admitted, a better fought main has never been seen in the kingdom. Walter had certainly a most capital accumulation of feather, the Lowthers, the Elwes, the Holfords, the Basingstoke, &c. &c., which (luckily for Bromley) were put in the back-ground of the Picture, by the old blood of the late Captain Bertie, Vauxhall Clarke, Cooper of Mapledurham, and a little of Bromley's Cock-bread from Berkshire."

A CRICKET match at Bury between the married women of the parish and the maidens. The matrons won. The Bury women

Such a match was played here at West

challenged all the women in their own county.

AN alphabetical cricket match between Lord Darnley and Lord Winchelsea. The former to choose players whose names began with the first eleven letters of the alphabet. Lord Winchelsea from the next eleven.

THE Duke of Queensberry betted 1000 guineas that he would produce a man who would eat more at a meal than any one whom Sir John Lade could find. The Duke was informed of his success (not being present at the achievement,) by the following bulletin from the field of battle :-" My Lord, I have not time to state particulars, but merely to acquaint your Grace that your man beat his antagonist by a pig and an apple-pie."

1796. Sunday afternoon, June 26, was interred in the churchyard of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, the remains of Mr. Patrick, the celebrated composer of church-bell music, and senior of the Society of Cumberland Youths. His productions of real double and treble bob-royal, are standing monuments of his unparalleled abilities. The procession was singular and solemn; the corpse being followed by all the ringing societies in the metropolis and its environs, each sounding hand-bells with muffled clappers, accompanied by those of the church ringing a dead peal, which produced a most solemn effect on the eyes and ears of an innumerable concourse of spectators. Mr. Patrick was the person who composed the whole peal of Stedman's triples, 5040 changes, (till then deemed impracticable), for the discovery of which the citizens of Norwich advertised a premium of £50, which was paid him about three years since, with the highest encomiums on his superlative

Tarring in the summer of 1850. The stool-ball is likewise kept up here.-J. W. W.

A pig is still a provincial term for an apple puff.-J. W. W.

merit. He was well known as a maker of barometers.

DOG tax. Dent received some hundred dead dogs packed up as game. The slaughter was so great, and the consequent nuisance, men not thinking themselves bound to bury their dogs, that the magistrates in some places were obliged to interfere. At Cambridge the high-constable buried above 400. About Birmingham more than 1000 were destroyed.

As a boy was climbing a tree in Gibside Wood, Durham, to rob a hawk's nest of its young, the old hawk attacked him, and he was soon covered with blood. After a most severe conflict of several minutes, hands proved superior to beak and claws, and the boy took his antagonist prisoner.

1796. A BET that within two years the beard would be commonly worn upon the upper lip and the point of the chin, à la Vandyke.

JULY 30, 1796, was rung by the Society of Cambridge Youths, at the church of St. Mary the Great, in Cambridge, a true and compleat peal of Bob Maximus, in five hours and five minutes, consisting of 6600 changes, which, for the regularity of striking and harmony throughout the peal, was allowed by the most competent judges that heard it to be a very masterly performance; especially, as it was remarked, that, in point of time, the striking was to such a nicety that in each thousand changes the time did not vary the sixteenth of a minute, and the compass of the last thousand was exactly equal to the first, which is the grand scope of ringing.

The time of ringing this peal shews that the late Professor Saunderson's calculation is pretty accurate, respecting the time it would take to ring the whole number of changes on twelve bells, which he stated at forty-five years, six days, and eighteen hours,

without intermission.

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