far as the place where the gaoler usually waited on such occasions. They found him in a profound sleep, and the keys of the prison lying by his side. Taking up the keys, Mr Jackson said, "Poor fellow, let us not disturb him; I have already been too troublesome to him, in this way." He accordingly proceeded with his friend to the outer door, which he opened. Here the facility of escaping naturally struck him, and he became deeply agitated; but after a moment's pause, I could do it," said he, "but what would be the consequence to you, and to the poor fellow within, who has been so kind to me? No! let me rather meet my fate." He said no more, but locking the prison door, returned to his apartment. It is painful to add, that having been convicted upon the evidence of one witness, when brought up for judgment, he took poison, fell down, and died in the face of the court, before sentence of death could be pronounced. He had previously beckoned to his counsel, Mr Curran, to approach him, and making an effort to squeeze his hand in his damp and nerveless grasp, uttered in a whisper, and with a smile of mournful triumph, the dying words of Pierre, in Otway's Venice Preserved "We have deceived the Senate." LAYING A GHOST. HE following story of Parson Patten laying a ghost was told to Captain Grose, by the reverend gentleman himself. A substantial farmer, married to a second wife, and who had a son grown up to man's estate, frequently promised to take him as a partner in his farm, or, at least, to leave it to him at his decease; but having neglected to do either, on his death, his widow took possession of the lease and carried on the business, the son in vain urging the father's promise, and requesting she should at least take him as a partner. In order LAYING A GHOST. 147 to terrify his step-mother into compliance, he used to rise at midnight, and, with hideous groans, to drag the waggon chain about the yard and outhouses, circulating a report that this noise was occasioned by his father's ghost, and that the dead man would not rest quietly in his grave till his promise to his son was fulfilled. This was carried on for some time, till at length the widow, who had no relish for giving up any part of the farm, applied to Mr Patten (in whose parish the farm lay) for his advice, saying she would have the ghost laid in the Red Sea, if he could do it. Patten, though no believer in ghosts, resolved to turn this matter to his own advantage, and putting on a grave countenance, told her, that what she required was no small matter; that besides a good stock of courage, much learning was required to lay a ghost, as the whole form must necessarily be pronounced in Latin; wherefore he could not afford to do it under a guinea. The widow hereupon demurred for some time, but at length tired out with the freaks of the supposed ghost, who every night became more and more outrageous, agreed to pay the money. Patten, moreover, required a fire in the best parlour, two candles, and a large bowl of punch. These being all prepared, he took his post, expecting the nocturnal visitor. The farmer's son, who did not know the sort of man he had to deal with, thought he could frighten the parson, and accordingly at twelve began his perambulation. No sooner did Patten hear the chain and the groans, than he sallied forth, and, without any further ceremony, seized the supposed ghost by the collar, and commenced belabouring him heartily with a good oak sapling. Finding himself by no means a match for his opponent, the young farmer fell down on his knees, and confessed the contrivance; beseeching the parson, at the same time, not to expose him, nor to reveal it to his step-mother, who would have been glad of the pretence to turn him out of the house. The parson, on the young man's promise never to disturb the house again, let him go, and undertook to settle matters with his step-mother. Early next morning she came down, anxious to know what had passed the preceding night, when the parson, with a wellcounterfeited terror in his countenance, told her he had been engaged in a terrible conflict, the deceased being one of the most obstinate and fierce spirits he had ever met with; but that he had at length, with great difficulty and expense of Latin, laid him. "Poor wicked soul," says he, "I forgive him; though great part of his disquiet is owing to thirty shillings of tithes of which he defrauded me, but which he desired, nay, commanded, you should pay; and on that condition only he has agreed to trouble the house no more. He does not insist on your completing his promise to his son, but wishes you would, at least, let him have a share in the farm." To all this the woman assented, and Patten received the thirty shillings over and above the stipulated guinea. EXCHANGE OF COMPLIMENTS. RANCIS DE HARLEY, Archbishop of Paris, under Louis XIV., was remarkably handsome and affable in his manner. When he was appointed to his diocese, several duchesses waited upon him to congratulate him, and one of them, the Duchess of Mecklenburgh, addressed him in the following words :-" Though the weakest, yet we are the most zealous portion of your flock." The archbishop gallantly answered that they were the fairest portion of it, upon which the Duchess of Bouillon, who understood Latin, and was well read in Virgil, replied with a line from that poet "Formosi pecoris custos formosior ipse." BISHOP BERKELEY'S TAR-WATER. 149 REV. MR WINTER AND THE PIG. NE day when the Rev. Cornelius Winter was delivering a sermon to a crowded assembly, his gravity was sadly disturbed by casting his eye to a window next the causeway in the road, where he saw a country man staring into the meeting with a live pig on his shoulder, that also presented its vacant countenance, and appeared as much interested as its master. "Nothing in my whole life,” said the amiable divine, "ever so unhinged my ideas, or spoiled my discourse, as this serious but ludicrous and unconscious man and his pig." PREMEDITATED HEMMING. HE sermons of some of the mediæval French preachers, written in a barbarous jargon of French and Latin, gave the first idea of the macaronic style. Menot, Barelette, and Maillard are the trio of preachers who chiefly distinguished themselves by the strangeness of their expressions. Amongst the most singular productions of Maillard may be mentioned a sermon, which he preached at Bruges in A.D. 1500, on the fifth Sunday after Lent, and which was printed at Antwerp shortly after. In this sermon, the words "hem! hem!" are found in the margin, at those parts of the discourse where the reverend divine might with propriety pause to cough and clear his pipes. BISHOP BERKELEY'S TAR-WATER. |ISHOP BERKELEY having received benefit from the use of tar-water, when ill of the cholic, published a work "On the Virtues of Tar- Water." This was followed a few months before his death by a sequel, entitled “Further Thoughts on Tar-Water," and when accused of fancying he had discovered a nostrum in tar-water, he replied that, "To speak his mind, he freely owned, he suspected tar-water to be a panacea." Walpole has preserved the following epigram on the bishop's remedy, which appeared in the newspapers of the period : "Who dare deride what pious Cloyne has done? The Church shall rise and vindicate her son; She tells us all her bishops shepherds are, And shepherds heal their rotten sheep with tar." Owing to the high character of the prelate, the remedy acquired considerable popularity, and it became as common to call for a glass of tar-water in a coffee-house, as for a dish of tea or coffee. HALE OLD AGE. O excellent was the Rev. John Wesley's constitution, and so favourable were his habits to health, that he had reached his sixty-ninth year before he could be prevailed on to ride in a carriage. He had previously travelled on horseback, upwards of a hundred thousand miles; for the most part with the reins on his horse's neck, and reading works of history, poetry, and philosophy. At Kingswood, he preached under the shade of trees which he himself had planted; and in his seventieth year he addressed more than thirty thousand persons at Gwennap, in Cornwall, by all of whom he was distinctly heard. When seventy-two, his eyes were more powerful and his nerves firmer than they had been thirty years before: "the cause,” he says in his journal, “is God's pleasure. The chief means, my constantly rising at four for about fifty years; my generally preaching at five in the morning, one of the healthiest exercises in the world; my never travelling less than 4500 miles in a year; the ability, if I want sleep, to sleep immediately; the never losing a night's sleep in my life. Two violent fevers, and two deep consumptions; these, it is true, were rough medicines, but of admirable service." |