of his permission, and the horses, accustomed to this kind of language, soon set the coach at liberty.

DR FULLER'S MEMORY.

HE following anecdote will prove that Fuller's heart was as good as his memory. The reverend gentleman making a visit to the Committee of Sequestrators sitting at Waltham in Essex, they soon fell into a discourse and commendation of his great memory, to which he replied, “”Tis true, gentlemen, that fame has given me the report of a memorist, and, if you please, I will give you a specimen of it.” They all accepted the proposal, and told him they should look upon it as a favour, requesting him to begin. "Gentlemen,” said Fuller, "you want a specimen of my memory, and you shall have a good one. Your worships have thought fit to sequestrate a poor but honest parson, who is my near neighbour, and commit him to prison. The unfortunate man has a large family of children, and as his circumstances are but indifferent, if you will have the goodness to release him out of prison, I pledge myself never to forget the kindness while I live." It is said that this jest had such an influence on the committee, that they immediately released the poor clergyman, and restored him to his benefice.

PREACHING IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

IN 1552, Richard Tavorner, though a layman (there being a scarcity of preachers), obtained of Edward VI. licence to preach in any part of his Majesty's dominions, and preached before the king at Court, wearing a velvet bonnet, a damask gown, and a gold chain. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, being then high sheriff of the county of Oxford, he appeared at the pulpit at St Mary's with a sword, and a gold chain

EXTRAORDINARY FAREWELL SERMON.

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about his neck, and made a sermon to the scholars, which had this hopeful beginning: "Arriving at the Mount of St Mary's, in the stony stage, where I now stand, I have brought you some loaves baked in the oven of charity, carefully conserved for the chickens of the Church, the sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet swallows of salvation." Such was the general style of pulpit eloquence in the sixteenth century, that the flowers of Mr Sheriff Tavorner's eloquence would not have disgraced a bishop.

BATHOS.

HE Rev. Mr Fawkes, in the year 1739, being at that time curate of Doncaster, thought fit to preach a sermon on the erection of an organ in the church. After having wound up his imagination to the highest pitch in praise of church music, he adds, addressing himself to the organ, "But what! oh, what! what shall I call thee by? thou divine box of sound!"

EXTRAORDINARY FAREWELL SERMON.

HE Rev. Dr Henry Peckwell, chaplain to the Marchioness of Lothian, and rector of Blaxham, near Digby, in Lincolnshire, having been present at the autopsy of a body at the Westminster Hospital, he himself, some time after, at a friend's house, opened the body of a young lady who had died of consumption. The lungs were in a very diseased state, and the chest full of matter. In sewing up the body, the reverend gentleman unfortunately pricked his finger with the needle; he became infected, and the doctors who were called in pronounced the accident fatal. At that time service was performed at Tottenham Court Road Chapel on Friday evenings. Conscious of his approaching death, he ascended the pulpit, and preached a

sermon so affecting as to draw tears from many of his audience, adding, at the conclusion, that it was his farewell sermon. "Not like the ordinary farewell sermons of the world," he said, "but one more impressive, from the circumstances, than has ever been preached before. My hearers, I hope, shall long bear it in mind, when this frail earth is mouldering in its kindred dust." The congregation were unable to conjecture his meaning, but what was their surprise when, on the following Sunday, a strange preacher ascended the pulpit, and informed them that their pious minister had breathed his last the preceding evening. He died on the 17th of August 1787.

AN ORTHODOX TEXT.

HE first time that Pitt went to Cambridge after his election for the University, all the clerical host were, as might be expected, gaping for lawn sleeves and other good things in the gift of their representative. Dr- preached before the young premier, from the following text: "There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?"

S

CLERICAL ORIGINALITY.

JOME years ago the posthumous works of a popular American preacher were published by a respectable Transatlantic bibliopole. A review soon appeared of them in a widely-circulating periodical, replete with praises of the warmest kind, but ending with words to this import :-" Our raptures would have been still greater, if we had not chanced to read these same sermons some time ago as the productions of one Tillotson."

JOCULAR PREACHING.

JOCULAR PREACHING.

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[ATHER ANDRÉ, or as he was popularly known, "le petit Père André," was a French preacher who achieved

a kind of celebrity by the quaintness of his sermons. His character has been variously drawn ; by some he is represented as a buffoon, others, probably with more justice, hold that he only uttered humorous and lively things, in order to keep the attention of his audience awake. While his colleagues were straining their minds to catch at sublime thoughts, which no one understood, he lowered his talent to the most humble situations, and to the minutest things. From them he drew his examples and his comparisons, which never failed of success. A doctor of the Sorbonne, who went one day to hear little Andrew preach, was astonished to hear him compare the four great fathers of the Latin Church to the four kings of the suits of our gaming cards. We must give the passage in French, for though the figures are the same, we call the cards by other names, and thus the puns would be lost in English. "Saint Augustine," said he, "est le roi de cœur, par sa grande charité; Saint Ambroise est le roi de trèfle, par les fleurs de son éloquence; Saint Jerôme est le roi de pique, par son style mordant; Saint Gregoire est le roi de carreau, par son peu d'élévation."* On another occasion, when Anne of Austria, the mother of Louis XIV., came into church after the sermon had begun, he turned round in the pulpit, and addressed her in these not very complimentary words: "Madam, you are welcome, but we shall not put an extra pot on the fire on your account." This merry preacher, though a monk himself, could be witty at the expense of other monks. A thunderbolt fell on the convent of the Carmelites. "God has been very merciful

* Saint Augustine is king of hearts, by his great charity; Saint Ambroise, king of clubs (which the French call trefoil or clover), by the flowers of his eloquence; Saint Jerome, king of spades (French pique, a lance), by his pointed style; Saint Gregoire, king of diamonds (carreau a square, also a footstool), by his lowliness.

to those good fathers," said he, " in only sacrificing their library, in which there was not a single monk. If the lightning had fallen upon their kitchen, they must all have been in danger of their lives."

A CLERICAL DANDY.

NTHONY WOOD, in his "Athenæ Oxoniensis," says that Dr Owen, Dean of Christ Church, and Cromwell's vice-chancellor at Oxford, in 1652, used to go 66 like a young scholar, with powdered hair, snake-bow bandstrings, or bandstrings with very large tassels, lawn band, a large set of ribbands pointed at his knees, and Spanish leather boots with large lawn tops, and his hat mostly cocked."

DR DONNE'S MONUMENT.

R DONNE was of a somewhat eccentric turn of mind, and, on the persuasion of Dr Fox, was induced to give orders for his own monument. He sent for a carver to make in wood the figure of an urn, giving him directions for the dimensions, and ordered him to bring with it a board of the height of his body. These orders having been executed, a clever painter was summoned to paint his likeness, which was taken in this manner :-Several charcoal fires were made in his study; then Donne came in with his winding-sheet in his hand. He took off all his clothes, and wrapped himself up in the sheet, which was tied with knots at his head and feet; and his hands were placed just as was usual at that time to lay out dead bodies. Thus apparelled, he placed himself on the urn, with his eyes shut, and the sheet just sufficiently turned aside to show his pale, emaciated, and death-like face, which he turned towards the east, from whence he expected the coming of our Saviour. In this position he was painted life-size, and when the picture was