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Earl of Hardwicke: "Inform their lord- | it his soured and embittered temper conships whether before my lord came in centrated all its ill-feeling and hatred upon this manner to get the mare out of the one man, and with deliberate purpose he stable he had before sent any servant to planned, and with his own hand wrought demand the mare and had been refused." his death. “Yes, he had; the boy was gone to church "!!

One or two more witnesses were examined as to the reputation Lord Ferrers had of being a lunatic, and then the evidence closed. The clerk read the prisoner's summing up of his defence, and the solicitor general, in his reply, closed with these words:

"My lords, in some sense every crime proceeds from insanity. All cruelty, all brutality, all revenge, all injustice, is insanity. There were philosophers in ancient times who held this opinion as a strict maxim of their sect, and, my lords, the opinion is right in philosophy, but dangerous in judicature. It may have been a useful and a noble influence to regulate the conduct of men, to control their impotent passions, to teach them that virtue is the perfection of reason, as reason itself is the perfection of human

nature, but not to extenuate crimes nor to excuse those punishments which the law adjudges to be their due."

Then, without any charge by the lord high steward, their lordships, beginning with the youngest baron, gave their votes, and their verdict was a unanimous verdict

of guilty. Lord Byron, who was himself, five years later, to stand before the same tribunal for a similar charge, voted with the peers.

Earl Ferrers was executed at Tyburn on the 5th of May following his conviction. He drove to the place of execution in his own carriage, and during the two hours and three-quarters the procession was making its way from the Tower to Tyburn bore himself with dignity and selfpossession. His body, after dissection at Surgeons' Hall, was interred in St. Pancras churchyard, but in 1782 it was conveyed from thence and re-interred at Stanton Harold, so that the fourth Earl Ferrers, after his stormy and unhappy life was over, now rests amongst his ancestors.

From the short sketch of his life which I have given, I do not think any one can now doubt the justice of the sentence passed upon him. At the same time it is evident that the family taint of madness was in his blood, but not to such an extent as to render him incapable of knowing right from wrong. The strong control of the law kept him within bounds, but when he found that he beat unavailingly against

We must admit that he suffered justly the penalty of his crime, but that admis sion does not debar us from extending our pity to the miserable end of a sad and unfortunate life.

S. MCCALMONT HILL.

From Chambers' Journal.

CURIOUS AMERICAN OLD-TIME

GLEANINGS.

said Lord Macaulay, "is to be found in "THE only true history of a country," its newspapers." Sir George Cornewall Lewis expressed his conviction that the historian of the future will find all his materials in the Times. The American historian Mr. Bancroft seldom saw a newspaper without drawing from it materials for his works. The story-teller often obtains from the daily and weekly press suggestive notes. Charles Reade made excellent use of the romantic episodes His scraprecorded in the newspapers. books containing clippings from the papers his most cherished treasures. Many modwere numerous and valuable, and amongst who are alive to the importance of preern men of letters might be mentioned serving facts drawn from the journals of

the day.

Professor James Davie Butler, LL.D., a few years ago wrote an amusing and at the same time a valuable paper on scrapbooks. He related how he had corrected,

through seeing in an old Connecticut newspaper an advertisement, statements made by the leading historians of America. It

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was respecting the horse of General Stark, the hero in the American War who broke Stark's horse sunk under him." Everett Burgoyne's left wing. Headley says, the action." Irving writes, "The veteran states, "The general's horse was killed in had his horse shot under him." They were led to make the statement from a postscript of a letter the general wrote Saying: "I lost my horse in the action." Here is the advertisement referred to:

TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD. - Stolen from me, the subscriber, in the time of action, the 16th of August last, a Brown Mare, five years old; had a star in her forehead. Also a doeskin seated saddle, blue housing trimmed with white, and a

curbed bridle. It is earnestly requested of all Committees of Safety, and others in authority, to exert themselves to recover the said Mare, so that the thief may be brought to justice and the Mare brought to me; and the person, whoever he may be, shall receive the above reward for both; and for the Mare alone, one-half that sum. How scandalous, how disgrace-uted much to a profitable hearing of the ful and ignominious, must it appear to all friendly and generous souls to have such sly, artful, designing villains enter into the field of action in order to pillage, pilfer, and plunder from their brethren when engaged in battle!

JOHN STARK, B.D.G.

Bennington, 11th Sept., 1777.

The foregoing may be regarded as a good proof of the value of historical facts gleaned from newspapers.

outlaws. Mr. Felt, the compiler of the "Annals of Salem," has brought together some items of interest bearing on the introduction of stoves into the churches of the district. "For a long period," writes Mr. Felt, "the people of our country did not consider that a comfortable degree of warmth while at public worship contribGospel." He states that the first stove heard of in Massachusetts for a meetinghouse was put up by the First Congregation of Boston in 1773. Two stoves were placed in the Friends' Society meetinghouse at Salem in 1793, and one in the North Church, Salem, in 1809. "Not a few remember," writes Mr. Brooks, "the general knocking of feet on cold days and near the close of long sermons. On such occasions, the Rev. Dr. Hopkins used to say now and then: My hearers, have a little patience, and I will soon close.'

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cruel laws. It appears, from an address delivered before the Essex Bar Association in 1885, that the old-time punishments in America were much milder than the criminal laws of England at the time, and the number of capital offences was greatly reduced. Persons were frequently whipped. The following is an example drawn from the Essex County court records: "In 1643, Roger Scott, for repeated sleeping in meeting on the Lord's Day, and for striking the person who waked him, was, at Salem, sentenced to be severely whipped."

In recent years several interesting works have been compiled from old newspapers. One of Mr. Brooks's volumes deals with Perhaps the most important is a set of "Strange and Curious Punishments," and volumes entitled "The Olden Time Se-it gives particulars of many harsh and ries," prepared by Mr. Henry M. Brooks, a painstaking antiquary, and published in Boston, Massachusetts. Not the least interesting of volumes is one devoted to the "New England Sunday." The opening page proves that neither the rich nor the poor were permitted to break the strict Sabbath regulations. In Connecticut, in 1789, General Washington was stopped by the officer representing the State authorities for riding on the Sunday. The circumstances were reported in the columns of the Columbian Centinel for December of that year. "The president," it is stated, "on his return to New York from his late tour through Connecticut, having missed his way on Saturday, was obliged to ride a few miles on Sunday, in order to gain the town, at which he had previously proposed to attend divine service. Before he arrived, however, he was met by a Tythingman, who, commanding him to stop, demanded the occasion of his riding; and it was not until the president had informed him of every circumstance, and promised to go no farther than the town intended, that the Tythingman would permit him to proceed on his journey."

In the old days, little attempt was made to render the places of worship attractive, or even to warm the rooms in which the preachers delivered their long sermons, although the people were obliged by law to attend the services unless they were sick. It was a serious matter not to be a "meeting-goer ;" it was, as Mr. Brooks says, to be ranged with thieves and other

Whipping appears to have been a common means of punishing offenders who transgressed the laws. In the month of January, 1761, we see it stated that four men for petty larceny were publicly whipped at the cart's tail through the streets of New York. We gather from another newspaper report that a man named Andrew Cayto received forty-nine stripes at the public whipping-post for house robbery namely, for robbing one house, thirty-nine stripes; and for robbing the other, ten stripes. It appears in some instances prisoners had, as part of their sentence, to sit on the gallows with ropes about their necks. We read: “At Ipswich, Massachusetts, June, 1763, one Francis Brown for stealing a large quantity of goods, was found guilty; and it being the second conviction, he was sentenced by the court to sit on the gallows an hour with a rope round his neck, to be whipt thirty stripes, and pay treble damages."

The man was a native of Lisbon, and described as a great thief. "We hear from Worcester," says the Boston Chronicle, November 20, 1769, "that on the 8th instant one Lindsay stood in the pillory there one hour, after which he received thirty stripes at the public whipping-post, and was then branded on the hand; his crime was forgery." It appears that it was the custom to brand by means of hot iron the letter F on the palm of the right hand.

We find at this period persons found guilty of passing counterfeit dollars were sentenced to have their ears cropped.

To illustrate his subject Mr. Brooks draws from Felt's "Annals of Salem "not a few quaint items. It is stated that "in 1637, Dorothy Talby, for beating her husband, is ordered to be bound to and chained

to a post." We see it is stated that "in 1649 women were prosecuted in Salem for scolding," and probably in many cases whipped or ducked. The ducking-stool appears to have been frequently employed. Under date of May 15, 1672, we find it stated: "The General Court of Massachusetts orders that scolds and railers shall be gagged or set in a ducking-stool, and dipped over head and ears three times."

We find particulars of one Philip Ratclif for making "hard speeches against Salem Church, as well as the government," sentenced to pay forty pounds, to be whipped, to have his ears cropped, and to be banished." The date of this case is 1631. In the “Annals of Salem," under date for May 3, 1669, it is recorded that "Thomas Maule is ordered to be whipped for saying that Mr. Higgenson preached lies, and that his instruction was the doctrine of devils.'"

The Quakers were very severely dealt with. At Salem, for making disturbances in the meeting-house, etc., Josiah Southwick, Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Buffum, and other Quakers, were whipped at the cart's tail through the town. After being banished, Southwick returned to Salem, and for this offence was whipped through the towns of Boston, Roxbury, and Dedham.

A negro

viously were then hanging.
hanged at Newport in 1769 was gibbeted
on the same hill.

A few lighter passages than those we have studied brighten up the records of American punishments, which were very severe, but not more severe than those of England of the same period. A prisoner in February, 1789, escaped through the jail chimney at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and wrote on the wall as follows:

have no fire to comfort myself with, and
"The reason of my going is because I
very little provision. So I am sure if I
was to stay any longer I should perish to
think it fit for any person to lie on?
death. Look at that bed there! Do you

If you are well, I am well;

Mend the chimney, and all's well! the gentlemen and officers of Portsmouth, from your humble servant,

To

"WILLIAM FALL.

think of this before, for if I had, your peo"N.B. I am very sorry that I did not ple should not have had the pleasure of seeing me take the lashes."

"Curiosities of the Lottery " is the title of another volume of Mr. Brooks's "Olden Time Series." Selling lottery tickets was regarded as a respectable calling. "The better the man," says Mr. Brooks, "the better the agent. Indeed, it was generally thought to be just as respectable to sell lottery tickets as to sell Bibles; and we have them classed together in the same advertisement." In England, we must not forget the fact that the business was conducted on the same lines in bygone times. The first lottery in this country was drawn day and night at the west door of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, from the 11th of January to May 6, 1569. The profit, which was considerable, was devoted to the repair of harbors. The prizes consisted of pieces of plate.

In the United States, lotteries were instituted for a variety of objects, including building bridges, clearing rivers, rebuilding Faneuil Hall, raising money to suc In bygone times, hanging the remains cessfully carry on the work of Dartmouth of persons executed was general in En- College, Harvard College, and other seats gland; but in America it was an uncom- of learning. The advertisements were mon practice. Mr. Brooks, however, gives extremely quaint, and illustrated with particulars of a few instances. At New- crudely drawn but effective pictures, support, Rhode Island, on March 12, 1715, a plying "a speedy cure for a broken forman named Mecum was executed for tune." Poetry as well as pictures was murder; and his body hung in chains on largely employed in advertisements for Miantonomy Hill, where the bodies of lotteries. Much has been spoken and some Indians executed three years pre- written against lotteries; but, nevertheless,

in some of the States of the Union they are still lawful.

With a dip into a volume called "Days of the Spinning-wheel," we will bring our old-time gleanings to a close, leaving sev eral of Mr. Brooks's books unopened. The items we will cull relate to a trade once very general in the United States, but happily now a thing of the past. Advertisements similar to the following ap. peared in all the American newspapers, and not a few of the publishers took an active part in the trade of buying and selling human beings. "To be sold," said the Boston Evening Gazette, 1741, "by the printer of this paper the very best negro woman in this town, who has had the small-pox and measles; is as hearty as a horse, as brisk as a bird, and will work like a beaver." The same publisher stated that he also had on sale "a negro man about thirty years old, who can do both town and country business very well, but will suit the country best, where they have not so many dram-shops as we have in Boston. He has worked at the printing business fifteen or sixteen years; can handle axe, saw, spade, hoe, or other instrument of husbandry as well as most men, and values himself and is valued by others for his skill in cookery."

In the Gazette of May 12, 1760, is of fered for sale "a negro woman about twenty-eight years of age; she is remark. ably healthy and strong, and has several other good qualities; and is offered to sale for no other reason than her being of a furious temper, somewhat lazy. Smart discipline would make her a very good servant. Any person minded to purchase may be further informed by inquiring of the printer." It will be gathered from the foregoing that the faults of the slaves were clearly stated.

Children were often given away; and many announcements like the following, drawn from the Postboy, February 28, 1763, appeared: "To be given away, a male negro child of good breed, and in good health. Inquire of Green and Russell."

Runaway slaves gave considerable trouble to their owners, and the papers include numerous advertisements, details respecting appearance, speech, dress, etc., of the missing persons. After describing his runaway slave, the owner concluded his announcement thus: "All masters of vessels and others are cautioned against harboring, concealing, or carrying off the said negro, if they would avoid the rigor of the law."

From The Spectator.

THE PLAGUE OF VOLES IN SCOTLAND.

THE inquiries of the committee appointed by the Chamber of Agriculture to report on the plague of field-mice which has for the past two years been devastating the hill-farms in the south of Scotland, will probably be an interesting contribution to our knowledge of a question which has often puzzled the world. The "genesis" of a pest is one of the most curious problems in nature, connected as it nearly always is with a sudden and overwhelming increase of some particular form of animal life, which at once becomes by its mere omnipresence and appetite a plague and a calamity. Fortunately, an almost inseparable condition of the pest proper is that its disappearance is usually as sudden as its impact. Generally speaking, the mice and locusts, flies and frogs, palmer-worm and canker-worm, as the case may be, disappear as if by the waving of some magician's rod. No doubt the explanation, when found, will be simple, for nature works by plain and simple means; but even when found, the cause may well be one which it is impossible either to foresee or to remedy. There can be no doubt as to the reality of the plague under which the farmers of the Border counties are suffering. The swarming hosts of mice have overrun the northern boundary of Dumfriesshire, the north-west of Roxburgh, the south of Selkirk, Peebles, and Lanark, and portions of Kirkcudbrightshire. In Roxburgh and Dumfries alone, the plague is estimated to extend over an area of from eighty to ninety thousand acres. In Teviotdale, nearly forty thousand acres are overrun, and a farmer describes them as "swarming in millions." They march on like a destroying army, leaving nothing but bare ground behind. The bog and rough pasture which covers nearly half of most of the Border sheepfarms, is first attacked, that part of the grass being eaten which lie between the roots and the surface of the ground; for the mice are somewhat particular, and prefer their grass, as epicures do asparagus, to be bleached, and not green. As the grass becomes exhausted, they spread into the bare "lea" lands, and even to the heather, of which they bark the stems and bite off the shoots. The rough pastures so destroyed, form the winter food of the flocks on their Lowland farms. The rough tufts and tussocks are always accessible for the sheep to nibble, even when the ground is covered with snow; and the hardy creatures, like the deer further

north, only require artificial food in the teenth and eighteenth centuries, similar severest weather. But in the past winter plagues were recorded in the eastern thousands of sheep had to be sent else counties. In 1814, in the New Forest where. "I saw droves of them going and the Forest of Dean, immense destrucaway," writes one visitor, "and tons of tion was caused not only to grass, but Dutch hay being driven up to feed those trees and young plantations, by mice, that remain. The mice have eaten up probably the long-tailed field mice as well every green thing." "It is impossible for as the voles; and in 1836, the Forest of any one to believe the ground is so sore Dean was again attacked. But the part destroyed, unless they see it," writes of Scotland now infested by the voles has another. "They have missed nothing. had such recent and disastrous experience Everything is cropped to the earth. The of the plague, that there seems ground for future is a terrible looking to." "Think supposing that the conditions there may of the extent of the country ravaged, and perhaps be such as to invite the vole to see the millions of holes in which the voles take up a permanent residence in the disshelter, and one cannot imagine how hu-trict; though even there the suddenness man power, at any rate, can now do any good," writes yet another sufferer. "I see in the papers that one man killed thirty-two thousand on one farm."

The little creature which is the cause of | the devastation, though generally called the "short-tailed field-mouse,” is, properly speaking, neither a mouse nor a shrew, but a vole, like the water-rat. Like the water-rat also, it has a blunt, rounded muzzle, short ears almost hidden in the fur of its head, and little, beady eyes; in all points, except in color, it resembles the lemmings, whose wonderful migrations form the subject of so much legend in northern Europe. Unlike the mice, which seem omnivorous, or the shrews, which live on insects, these field-voles are strictly vegetable feeders; and so long as other conditions favor their existence, there is

no

reason why the plague should not spread in an ever-widening circle over the great expanse of moorlands on the Border. The Scotch farmers may, however, derive some comfort from the reflection that for the last four centuries similar plagues of voles have been recorded as taking place in different parts of the country, while in no case have they, like the rabbits in Australia, remained to mar the land" forever. That excellent field-naturalist, Mr. J. E. Harting, the librarian of the Linnean Society, who has been named secretary to the committee of inquiry appointed by the Board of Agriculture, quotes in his essays on "Sport and Natural History " a notice written in 1600 by Childrey, in his "Britannia Baconica," of an extraordinary swarm of field-mice which appeared in 1580 in the Hundred of Denge, in Essex, and ate up all the roots of the grass. "A great number of owles," he says, "of strange and various colors assembled, and devoured them all; and after they had made an end of their prey, they took flight again whence they came.' In the seven

of their appearance and disappearance has
still the character of a true "pest," rather
than of an abiding source of mischief.
In the winter of 1875, they appeared in
Eskdale and Ettrick, and disappeared as
suddenly as they came.
But in this case,
a heavy fall of sleet and snow, followed by
a frost which sealed up the surface for
weeks, was probably the natural means of
their destruction. The present plague
appeared in the winter of 1890-91. The
preceding summer had produced an un-
usually abundant and high crop of grass,
which completely covered the voles when
nesting from their natural enemies, the
owls, hawks, and crows; and owing to the
complete immunity which the bounteous
cover then conferred on this small prolific
species, it has since maintained its in-
creased numbers in spite of natural checks.
The farmers unanimously demand that
the winged "vermin" shall no longer be
killed on the hills; and owls and sparrow-
hawks are now increasing. But as there
are no woods or plantations near for them
to roost in, they do not assemble in such
numbers as might be expected from the
accumulation of food-supply afforded by
the voles.

The causes and incidents associated with a similar plague on a far greater scale are well shown in an interesting chapter in Mr. Hudson's recent work, "The Naturalist in La Plata." As in Scotland, a fine summer produced an unusual crop of grass which concealed the mice at the breeding-season; and the crea tures became so numerous, and were so easily caught, that many animals, both wild and domestic, lived wholly on mice, and almost changed their natural way of life. The dogs caught and ate them all day. The fowls, from constantly pursu ing and killing them, "became quite rapacious in their manner;" whilst the sulphur tyrant-birds and Guira cuckoos preyed on

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