6. In vain I tried the cause to smoke, 7. But soon a mutual friend contrir'd Our quarrel up to botch; Fanny confess'd he temper warm'Twas natural-she was Scotch. 8. We married-snugly in my shop Fanny's become a fixture, And all the neighbourhood declare, We're quite a pleasant mixture. SAM SAM'S SON. THE LORD CHANCELLOR. The title of chancellor originated with the Romans. It was adopted by the church, and became a half ecclesiastic, and half lay office. The chancellor was intrusted with all public instruments which were authenticated; and when seals came into use, the custody of them was confided to that officer. The mere delivery of the king's great seal, or the taking it away, is all the ceremony that is used in creating or unmaking a chancellor, the officer of the greatest weight and power subsisting in the kingdom. The first chancellor in England was appointed in the reign of William the Conqueror, and with only one exception, it was enjoyed by ecclesiastics until the time of Elizabeth, when such officers were called keepers of the great seal. From the time of sir Thomas More's appointment, which took place in the reign of Henry VIII., there is only cne instance of a clergyman having been elevated to the office-namely, Dr. Williams, dean of Westminster, in the time of ames I.-The chancellor is a privy counsellor by office, and speaker of the house of lords by prescription. To him belongs the appointment of all justices of the peace throughout the kingdom. When the chancellor was an ecclesiastic, he became keeper of the king's conscience, and remained so. He is also visitor of all hospitals and colleges of the king's foundation. He is patron of all livings under twenty pounds per annum in the king's book. He is the general guardian of all infants, idiots, and lunatics, and has the superintendence of all charitable institutions in the kingdom. He takes precedent of every temporal lord, except the royal family, and of all others, except the archbishop of Canterbury. It is declared treason by statute of Edward III. to slay the chancellor in his place, and doing his office. In the year 1689, there were commissioners appointed for executing the office of lord chancellor. Anonymiana. THE GREAT LORD CHANCEllor. Sir Thomas More, when at the bar, is said to have undertaken only such causes as appeared just to his conscience, and never to have accepted a fee from a widow, orphan, or poor person; yet he acquired by his practice the considerable sum, in those days, of four hundred pounds per annum. When he rose to the height of his profession, his diligence was so great, that one day being in court he called for the next cause, on which it was answered, that there were no more suits in chancery. This made a punning bard of that time thus express himself: When More some years had chancellor been, The same shall never more be seen, CHANCERY. Cancella are lattice-work, by which the chancels being formerly parted from the body of the church, they took their names from thence. Hence, too, the court of chancery and the lord chancellor borrowed their names, that court being enclosed with open work of that kind. And, so, to cancel a writing is to cross it out with the pen, which naturally makes something like the figure of a lattice. DILIGENCE AND DELIGHT. It is a common observation, that unless a man takes a delight in a thing, he will never pursue it with pleasure or assiduity. Diligentia, diligence, is from diligo, to love. PAMPHLET, PALM, PALMISTRY. Pamphlet. This word is ancient, see Lilye's Euphnes, p. 5; Lambarde's Perambulation of Kent, p. 188; Hearne's Cur. Disc. p. 130; Hall's Chronicle, in Edward V. f. 2; Richard III. f. 32; Skelton, p. 47; Caxton's Preface to his Virgil, where it is written paunflethis; Oldys's British Librarian, p. 128; Nash, p. 3, 64; and also his preface, wherein he has the phrase, "to pamphlet on a person" and pampheleter, p. 30. The French have not the word pamphlet, and yet it seems to be of French extraction, and no other than palm-feuillet, a leaf to be held in the hand, a book being a thing of a greater weight. So the French call it now feuille volante, retaining one part of the compound. Palm is the old French word for hand, from whence we have palmistry, the palm of the hand, a palm or span, and to palm a card, and from thence the metaphor of palming any thing upon a person. CAMBRIDGE WIT. A gentleman of St. John's College, Cambridge, having a clubbed foot, which occasioned him to wear a shoe upon it of a particular make, and with a high heel, one of the college wits called him Bildad the shuhite. GRADUAL REFORM. When lord Muskerry sailed to Newfoundland, George Rooke went with him a volunteer: George was greatly addicted to lying; and my lord, being very sensible of it, and very familiar with George, said to THE CHILD OF MIGHT. For the Table Book. War was abroad, and the fleeting gale Brought the summoning sound of the clarion's blast- On the valour and youth that went forth to the tomb- Banner and spear gleam'd in the sun And the laugh was loud as the day were won : Woe to thee, Child of Pride and Might. 'Tis the hour of battle, the hosts are met, J. J. K. This is another of the criers of a hundred years ago, and, it seems, he cried "NewRiver water." The cry is scarce, though scarcely extinct, in the environs of London. I well remember the old prejudices of oldfashioned people in favour of water brought to the door, and their sympathy with the complaints of the water-bearer. "Fresh and fair new River-water! none of your pipe sludge!" vociferated the water-bearer. "Ah dear!" cried his customers," Ah dear! Well, what'll the world come to!-they wo'n't let poor people live at all by and by-here they're breaking up the ground, and we shall be all under water some day or other with their goings on-I'll stick to the carrier as long as he has a pail-full and I've a penny, and when we haven't we must all go to the workhouse together." This was the talk and the reasoning of many honest people within my recollection, who preferred taxing themselves to the daily payment of a penny and often twopence to VOL I.-24, the water-carrier, in preference to having "Company's-water" at eighteen shillings per annum. Persons of this order of mind were neither political economists nor domestic economists: they were, for the most part, simple and kind-hearted souls, who illustrated the ancient saying, that "the destruction of the poor is their poverty" they have perished for "lack of knowledge." The governing principle of Napoleon was, that "every thing must be done for the people, and nothing by them :" the ruling practice of the British people is to do every thing for themselves; and by the maintenance of this good old custom they have preserved individual freedom, and attained to national greatness. All our beneficial national works have originated with ourselves-our roads, our bridges, our canals, our water-companies, have all beer constructed by our own enterprise, and in the order of our wants. 735 Fel. Still in riddles ? Zel. Now he sees: This pinching wakes him by degrees. Zel. Of Parnass Green. Fel. Sleep I indeed, or am I mad? Zel. None serve thee but the Enchanted Queen? Too little happy to be vain.- Zel. Sir Gallant, not so fast. Fel. See thee I will. Zel. See me you shall: What says it, now the leaf doth fall? The tall and slender trunk no less divine, (He begins to know her.) This should be that so famous Queen Zel. What stares the man at? A Picture-I once mine did call- Zel. Fall'n again asleep you are: Ye poor human Shepherd Lasses Nor are pictured, nor use glasses. Who skip their rank, themselves and betters wrong? To our Dames, god bless 'em, such quaint things belong. Which fringed with borrow'd flowers (he has Is heaven's proper looking-glass Free from soothing, free from error, Fel. Art thou a Shepherdess? On a mountain, called THERE Fel. Wear'st thou ever heretofore Lady's clothes? Zel. I Lady's gear?— Yes-what a treacherous poll have I In a Country Comedy I once enacted a main part; Still I have it half by heart: Would fool, when she was in the vein, To my taste this is fine, elegant, Queenlike raillery; a second part of Love's Labours Lost, to which title this extraordinary Play has still better pretensions than even Shakspeare's: for after leading three pair of Royal Lovers thro' endless mazes of doubts, difficulties; oppositions of dead fathers' wills; a labyrinth of losings and findings; jealousies; enchantments; conflicts with giants, and single-handed against armies; to the exact state in which all the Lovers might with the greatest propriety indulge their reciprocal wishes-when, the deuce is in it, you think, but they must all be married now—suddenly the three Ladies turn upon their Lovers; and, as an exemlification of the moral of the Play, "Loving for loving's sake," and a hyper-platonic, traly Spanish proof of their affections demand that the Lovers shall consent to their mistresses' taking upon them the vow of a single life; to which the Gallants with becoming refinement can do less than consent. The fact is that it was a Court Play, in which the Characters; males, giants, and all; were played by females, and those of the highest order of Grandeeship. No nobleman might be permitted amongst them; and it was against the forms, that a great Court Lady of Spain should consent to such an unrefined motion, as that of wedlock, though but in a play. Appended to the Drama, the length of which may be judged from its having taken nine days in the representation, and me three hours in the reading of it-hours well wasted-is a poetical account of a fire, which broke out in the Theatre on one of the nights of its acting, when the whole Dramatis Persona were nearly burnt, because the common people out of "base fear," and the Nobles out of "pure respect," could not think of laying hands upon such "great Donnas;" till the young King, breaking the etiquette, by snatching up his Queen, and bearing her through the flames upon his back, the Grandees, (dilatory Æneases), followed his example, and each saved one (Anchises-fashion), till the whole Courtly Company of Comedians were got off in tolerable safety.-Imagine three or four stout London Firemen on such an occasion, standing off in mere respect! C. L. THE STUART PAPERS, IN POSSESSION OF THE KING. In the year 1817 the public, or, more correctly speaking, the English public at Rome, were much excited by the report of a very singular discovery. The largest and the most interesting collection of papers relating to the Stuart family, probably existing, was suddenly recovered. The circumstances connected with the discovery are curious. Dr. W., whose residence on the continent for many years had been unceasingly devoted to every species of research which could tend to throw light on the antiquities of his country and the history of her kings, had in the Scotch college at Paris, after much patient investigation, arrived at the knowledge of some Gaelic MSS., and, what may be perhaps deemed of more consequence, of several papers relating to the dethroned family. The Gaelic MSS., it was imagined, would throw some light on the quarrel de lana caprina of the Ossian "remains," a name which, as it has been given to the Iliad and Odyssey, cannot be considered as an insult to the claims of the Irish or Scottish phantom which has been conjured up under the name of Ossian: but the Journals, &c., though they added little to his actual information, and communicated few facts not hitherto before the public, had at least the merit of placing the end of the clue in his hand, and hinting first the probability of a more productive inquiry elsewhere. It occurred to him that after the demise of James II., as the majority of the family habitually resided at Rome, much the greater number of interesting documents ought still to be discoverable in that city, and, whatever facilities might originally have existed, they must have been increased considerably, and indeed enhanced by the late extinction of the direct line in the person of the cardinal de York.* His journey His Royal Highness the Cardinal de York, or as he was sometimes called," Your Majesty," reposes in the subterraneous church of St. Peter, under a plain sar |