climb steeples and high trees, all spring time, to catch crows and daws. But this was nothing to the "saving knowledge" of a certain farmer of 'Prior's-Thorney, near to Swafham in Norfolk.' A workman of this worthy, growing weary of life, resolved to hang himself in a barn, cutting for that purpose a piece of a rope belonging to his master. Fortunately, however, he was detected in the act, and rescued from death; and his master at the next payday did not forget to deduct a penny, the value of the cord, from his wages!

From the section entitled 'The simple worth of a single penny,' we select a few examples.

"A penny bestowed in charity upon a poor body, shall not want an heavenly reward.

"For a penny you may hear a most eloquent oration upon our English kings and queens, if, keeping your hands off, you seriously listen to him who keeps the monuments at Westminster.

"You may have in Cheap-side your penny tripled in the same kind; for you shall have penny-grass, penny-wort, and penny-royal for your penny. "For a penny, you may have all the news in England and other countries, of murders, floods, witches, fires, tempests, and what not, in the weekly newsbooks.

"For a penny, an hostess or an hostler may buy as much chalk as will score up thirty or forty pounds; but how to come by their money, that let them look to.

“An hard-favoured and ill-bred wench made penny-white, may (as our times are) prove a gallant lady.

"For a penny, you might have been advanced to that height that you shall be above the best in the City-yea, the lord-maior himself; that is to the top of Pauls.

"For a penny you may buy the hardest book in the world, and which at sometime or other hath posed the greatest clerks in the land, viz., an Hornbook: the making up of which book imployeth above thirty trades.

"For a penny, you may buy as much wood of that tree which is green all the year and beareth red berries, as will cure any shrew's tongue, if it be too long for her mouth-viz., a holly wand!

"For a penny you may search among the Rolls, and withal give the Master good satisfaction,—I mean in a baker's basket!

"A penny may save the credit of many, as it did of four or five young scholars in Cambridge (some of them are yet living in London) who, going into the town to break their fast with puddings, (having sent to their colledge for bread and bear) the hostess brought them twelve puddings broil'd; and finding among themselves that they had but eleven pence, they were much troubled about the other penny, they not having any book about them to lay in pawn for it: quoth one, bolder than the rest, Audaces fortuna juvat :Fortune favours the venturous;--and, biting off a piece off the pudding's end, by wonderful luck spit out a penny that paid for it, which it seems was

buried in the oatmeal or spice; so that for the time they saved their credits. But I will leave this discourse of a pennie's worth to their judgments and experience, who, having been troubled with overmuch money, afterwards in no long time have been fain, after a long dinner with Duke Humphrey, to take a nap upon penny-lesse bench, onely to verifie the old proverb-A fool and his money is soon parted."

Then follow some practical hints on saving money by frugality in eating, and especially by the avoidance of tavern-dinners, for which the charges appear to have been most exorbitant, 8s. being mentioned as the price of a capon, 7s. or 9s. for a pair of soles, and 4s. for a dozen of larks in some instances. Our author denies the old libel of the French, that "Les Anglois sont les plus gros mangeurs de tout le monde," affirming that the Danes and Norwegians exceed us, and the Russians them. "I confess," he adds, "we have had, and have yet, some remarkable eaters amongst us, who for a wager would have eaten with the best of them, as Wolmer, of Windsor, and not long since, Wood, of Kent, who ate up at one dinner, fourteen green geese, equal to the old ones in bigness, with sawce of gooseberries,* according as I heard it affirmed to my lord, Richard earl of Dorset, at a dinner-time at his house, at Knowl, in Kent, by one of his gentlemen who was an eye-witness to the same." As a set-off against this monstrous piece of gluttony, we have the confession of a certain usurer, who, on his death-bed, declared that he was above £200 in his stomach's debt for breakfasts, dinners and suppers, of which he had defrauded it in term time, in London and elsewhere. Our author execrates "the miserable and base humour of many, who, to save their money, will live upon vile and loathsom things, as mushrooms, snails, frogs, mice, and young kitlings." We confess our own antipathy to at least two of the items in this curious bill of fare; but snails we know to be not only wholesome, but very agreeable to the palate, if properly dressed; and as for frogs, we leave the decision of the question to our neighbours over the water. Strange and unaccountable are our prejudices on the subject of food. Our ancestors of the days of Cassivelaunus, would not touch what we now regard as delicacies: "Leporem, et gallinam, et anserem gustare, fas non putant." (Cæsar, de Bell. Gall. v. 13.)† And with regard to * It is, we think, not generally known that this fruit derives its name from the old practice of eating it with young geese.

So lately as the last century, this antipathy was retained by some of the peasants of Cornwall, who could by no means be persuaded to eat "hollow fowl," under which designation hares, chickens, and geese were included.

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mushrooms-in our times the delight of epicures,-it would appear that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they occupied a kind of dubious ground between things clean and things unclean.* Snails, we venture to think, will, like mushrooms, outlive this disgust, and stand at least upon a par with things in their own nature much more objectionable, such as crabs, "cannibal” pike, and mutton fattened in a churchyard; but against mice and "young kitlings," we must once and for ever protest! Another nasty practice prevailed in the time of our amusing author: "I have known," he says, "Ladies, who, when they have eaten till they could eat no more of all the daintiest dishes of the table, yet they must eat the leggs of their larks rosted anew in a greasy tallowcandle, and if they carve but a bit of a burnt claw to any gentleman at the table, he must take it as an extraordinary favour from her ladyship!"

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'Thrift and good husbandry in apparel' form the next topic, and it is one upon which Peacham declaims in a round style, declaring that we English are the apes of Europe, and Proteus-like "change our shapes every year, nay, every quarter, month, and week, as well in our doublets, hose, cloaks, hats, bands, boots, and what not." He is no friend to Parisian modes, and exhorts us not to dogg" the fashion, "by setting the tailor on work at the sight of every Monsieur's new suit... "I see no reason," he adds, "why a Frenchman should not imitate our English fashion as well as we his. What! have the French more wit than we in fitting cloaths to the body, or a better invention or way in saving money in the buying or making of apparel? Surely, I think not." "It may be," he concludes, "that our English, when they had to do in France, got a humour of affecting their fashions, which they could not shake off since -a sly hit at Monsieur this; as one should say, "Though we are a little servile in this one respect, there was a time when we were your masters!" But we must pass on to the little tract—The Art of Living in London.' In the early part of this brochure, the author states his design in writing it.

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"Now the citie being like a vast sea, full of gusts, fearfull dangerous shelves and rocks, ready at every storme to sinke and cast away the weake and unexperienced bark (with her fresh-water souldiers) as wanting a compass and skilfull pilot; my selfe, like another Columbus or Drake, acquainted with her rough entertainment and stormes, have drawn you this chart or map

* See our last number in the article on Borde's 'Boke of Knowledge,' p. 163.

for your guide, as well out of mine owne as my many friends experience. Who therefore soever shall have occasion to come to the city for the occasions before mentioned, the first thing he is to doe is to arm himself with patience, and to thinke that he is entred into a wood where there is as many bryers as people, every one as ready to catch hold of your fleece as yourself."

After a few more observations as complimentary as these to the honesty and morality of Londoners, the author proceeds to advise gentlemen how to dispose of themselves and their time. They are not to consume the day by lying in bed, nor by walking up and down from street to street; but should they be without business or "usefull company," they must read the Bible and books of piety, or works treating upon "Naturall and Morall History," mathematics, arithmetic, music, or heraldry; but in case the gentleman is not of a studious turn, he can engage a master in some of the arts which Tully calls venales, which are taught for money, as dancing, fencing, riding, painting, or the like.

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Next, have a care of saving and improving your money to the best: As who would bespeake a supper or dinner at all adventure at a taverne, and not know the price of every dish, as the Italians and other nations doe, while they laugh at our English for their vaine profuseness and simplicity, who, when the dinner is ended must stand to the curtesie of a nimble-tongued drawer, or a many-ringed whistling mistresse, whether they or you should be masters of your money. Beside, one dish well drest gives a good stomache more and better content than a variety of twenty. And above all things, beware of beastly drunkennesse. Next, let every man beware of play and gaming, as cards, and especially dice at ordinaries and other places; for in the citie there are many who live onely by cheating and cunning, that will so strip a young heir or novice but lately come to towne, and, wood-cocke like, so pull his wings, that hee shall in a short time never be able to flye over ten acres of his owne land. Let a moneyed man or gentleman especially beware in the city ab istis calidis et callidis solis filiabus: those over-hot and crafty daughters of the sunne, your silken and gold-laced harlots everywhere (especially in the suburbs) to bee found. These have been, and are daily the ruine of thousands; and if they happen to allure and entice him, which is only to cheat him and picke his pocket to boot with the bargain she makes, but let him resolutely say, as Diogenes did to Lais of Corinth, Non tanti emam pœnitentiam, I will not buy repentance at such a rate."

The gentleman-visitor to London is next warned to keep out of debt, especially with his tailor; and if he be a landed man, he is cautioned to beware of usurers "of whom he shall find as much mercy in cities as an oxe cheeke from a butcher's curre." On his first arrival in the dangerous city, he should, after setting up

his

horses and seeing them well used, take a private chamber, so as to be able to spend his spare hours there, in preference to going to taverns, theatres, or worse places. Next he should pay for whatever he orders on delivery. He would not do amiss to have his diet in his own chamber, "an hot joynt of mutton, veale, or the like,” and what remains should be retained in his apartment and covered with a fair napkin for the next morning's breakfast!

We, of the Retrospective Review, are among the number of those who like to look back, without any desire to go back, to old times. So far from being laudatores temporis acti, we rejoice at having been born in these later times. Thanks to railways, we have no apprehension when we visit London, on the score of neglected horses. For a moderate outlay, our club furnishes us with a sufficient dinner and breakfast, without the intervention of the "fair napkin ;" while the excellent police regulations of modern days defend us against most of the knavery of which honest Mr. Peacham complains. Similar contrasts suggest themselves throughout the whole of our worthy friend's publications; and the nineteenth century is, we venture to conclude, as much better as it is older, than the seventeenth, for intelligence, morality, and the comforts of life. Under this impression we have thought it worth while to reproduce in these pages as much as modern readers will care to peruse, of the writings of one of the most popular, graphic, and interesting delineators of the manners and habits of the former period.

ART. III.-James Gillray's Caricatures.

The Works of JAMES GILLRAY, from the Original Plates, with the addition of many subjects not before collected. Imperial folio. Bohn.

Historical and descriptive account of the Caricatures of JAMES GILLRAY, comprising, a Political and Humorous History of the latter part of the reign of George the Third. By THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq., F.S.A., and R. H. EVANS, Esq. 8vo. Bohn. HE history of the plates engraved by Gillray, as given in the octavo volume thus entitled, is not a little remarkable. For many years, this celebrated artist resided in the house of

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