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tiplied on the body of a single shilling from the age of sixteen to the age of seventy-two; one day he heard a woodman going by in summer, at which season they stock themselves with fuel for the winter; he agreed with him at the lowest rate possible, but stole from the poor man several logs with which he loaded himself to his secret hiding hole, and thus contracted, in that hot season, a fever; he then sent for the first time for a surgeon to bleed him, who asking half a livre for the operation, was dismissed; he then sent for an apothecary, but he was as high in his demand; he then sent for a poor barber, who undertook to open a vein for three pence a time; but, says this worthy economist, How often, friend, will it be requisite to bleed? Three times, said he. And what quantity of blood do you intend to take? About eight ounces each time, answered the barber. That will be nine pence!—too much, too much, says the old miser: I have determined to go a cheaper way to work: take the whole quantity you design to take at three times at one time, and that will save me six pence; which being insisted on, he lost twenty-four ounces of blood, and died in a few days, leaving all his vast treasures to the king, whom he made his sole heir. Thus he contracted his disorder by pilfering, and his death by an unprecedented piece of parsimony.

THEORETIC SPECULATION.

THE attention of philosophers and naturalists was at a certain period long and ardently excited by a number of fossil skeletons discovered in a marsh on the banks of Ohio. These were considered at the time as bones of the elephant, but afterwards proved, by an eminent and indefatigable anatomist, not to be remains of that animal, but of a species of the carnivorous kind, more enormous in bulk, and now wholly extinct or unknown.

The subject has been scientifically investigated by an ingenious German and well informed mineralogist, Mr. RASPE, who has resided long in England; he controverts some of the positions of the learned professor, and others he apparently confirms: but the difficulty of accounting for animals, no longer existing in countries where they seem at a certain time to have been numerous, still remains to be explained; it has escaped the sagacity of Gmelin, the genius of Buffon, and the minute research of Daubenton.

A modern theorist of a lively and eccentric cast has, in his own

opinion, easily solved the mystery, by supposing that the bones in question are the remains of certain angelic beings, the original tenants of this our terrestrial globe, in its primitive state, till for their transgressions both were involved in ruin; after which this shattered planet was refitted for the accommodation of its present inhabitants!!!

But, romance out of the question, is it not possible to account for such an assemblage of creatures, in a country where they no longer exist, by supposing that, at some remote period, the place in which they were found might have lain in the tract of a conqueror unknown to the historians of Europe; that it might have been the scene of a battle, and the animals in question part of the baggage train, destroyed by slaughter or disease, and left in the hurry of flight, or of pursuit, to puzzle and set at defiance generations then unborn? Chronology so remote is a terra incognita to the philosopher as well as the historian.

AN EXAMPLE FOR JUDGES,

(If they could be prevailed upon to imitate it) in the character of sir John Fitz-James. SIR JOHN FITZ-JAMES, Kt., was born at Redlinch in Somersetshire, of right ancient, and worthy parentage, bred in the study of our municipal laws; wherein he proved so great a proficient, by king Henry the Eighth, he was advanced to be chief justice of the King's Bench. There needs no more to be said of his merit, save that king Henry the Eighth preferred him; who never used either dunce or drone in church or state, but men of ability and activity. He sat thirteen years in his place, demeaning himself so, that he lived and died in the king's favour. He sat one of the assistants when sir Thomas More was arraigned for refusing the oath of supremacy, and was shrewdly put to it, to save his own conscience and not incur the king's displeasure; for chancellor Audly, supreme judge in that place, being loath that the whole burden of More's condemnation should lie on his shoulders alone, openly in the court asked the advice of the lord chief justice FitzJames, whether the indictment were sufficient or no: to whom our judge wisely replied, my lords all, by St. Gilian (which was ever his oath), I must needs confess, that if the act of parliament be not unlawful, then the indictment is not in my conscience sufficient. He died in the thirtieth year of king Henry the Eighth; and although there be now none left at Redlinch of his name and

family, they flourish still at Lenson in Dorsetshire, descended from Alured Fitz-James, brother to this judge, and to Richard bishop of London.

The two main principles that guide human nature (saith judge Dodderidge) are conscience and law: by the former we are obliged in reference to another world, by the latter in relation to this. Priests and judges are the dispensers of these principles: no prince more unhappy in priests than king Henry (whose unhappiness it was, that all the piggle, prevarication, and imposition of his time was in the pulpit); none more happy in his judges, (to whose reason his people were more willing to submit, than they were to hearken to his clergy's instructions), among whom none more renowned than sir John Fitz-James, who so fearful of the very shadow and appearance of corruption, that it cost his chief clerk his place but for taking a tankard, after a signal course of 15007. a year, wherein he had been serviceable, though not as a bribe, but as a servility.* Cæsar would have his wife without suspicion of lewdness, and Fitz-James his servants without the appearance of corruption. What was law always, was then a resolution, neither to deny, nor defer nor sell justice. When our judge came upon the bench, he knew no more than Melchisedeck or Livi, father or mother, neither friend nor interest: for when his cousin urged him for a kindness, come to my house (saith the judge), I will deny you nothing, come to the king's court and I must do you justice: and when the attorney general bespoke his favour in a public cause, trouble not yourself, (said he), I will do the king right: the king is cast, the attorney expostulates; the judge satisfieth him, that he could not do his majesty right, if he had not done justice.

His prudence so tempered his zeal for his sovereign, that he overstrained not the prerogative to bring in fears and jealousies of tyranny on the one hand; and his integrity so balanced his popularity, that he never depressed it to broach bold opinions and attempts of liberty, on the other: complying with none of those humors that an imaginary dread of oppression, or a dangerous presumption of freedom, may transport irregular excesses either for the one, or against the other.

As his majesty was secured by his loyalty, so his subjects were

* This acceptation of presents, whether before or after service performed, is most admirably defined and distinguished by Foigard. " Before," says he "it is (Logice) a bribe, after, it is only a gratification.

by his patience, a virtue he carried with him to the bench, to attend each circumstance of an evidence, cach allegation of a plea, each plea in a cause; hearing what was impertinent, and observing what was proper. His usual saying (as sergeant Mandevil reports it) being, we must have two souls, as two sieves, one for the bran, the other for the flour; the one for the gross of a discourse, the other for the quintessence.

The same day that there was no cause to be tried in the chancery in sir Thomas More's time, there were but three in King's Bench, in sir John Fitz-James's time,* the reason whereof some imagine was Cardinal Wolsey's extraordinary power that engrossed all causes to his legatine court; others know it was the judge's integrity, who was too honest to allow, as that age was too plain to contrive, delays and obstructions.

Lewis the Twelfth would say, when he was advised to take revenge of those who had affronted him before he came to the crown; that it became not the king of France to revenge injuries done to the duke of Orleans. A person that had notoriously wronged sir John when a templar, in the case of his chamber, was to be tried before him for his whole estate when he was judge. The adversaries among other shifts made use of this old quarrel; whereupon sir John said it doth not become a judge upon the bench to revenge a wrong done in his chamber.

Two things upheld him in those boisterous times: 1st, silence; 2d, patience; both wary virtues that seldom endanger their owner or displease their superiors. The people of those times would live and die with the pope and council; and this judge with the king and parliament. The grand article of his faith was, I believe as the church believes; and the great rule of his practice was, I will live as the law directs.

He was a tried man, whose faith and honour were above his life and fortune: whose generosity was above that first temptation of

*This was a most extraordinary time indeed; but we are inclined to attribute the paucity of business in the courts above mentioned to the reason assigned for it, viz. the unbounded power of the Cardinal, and the predilection of the people for the legatine court. Shakspeare, who lived near his time, and was no inaccurate detailer of events or delineator of characters, makes the duke of Buckingham, speaking of Wolsey, exclaim,

"The devil speed him! no man's pie is free

From his ambition's finger."

money, as his spirit was above the second of danger; no fear had he of delivering up privileges to day, for fear of the king; or prerogative tomorrow, for fear of the subject: no, an unbiassed temper between both, makes up an honest man; who came into preferment with great expectations, and went off with great applause; being one of the three men of whom it is said, that because they never pleased their master in doing any thing unworthy, they never displeased him in doing any thing that is just. When base compliance goeth off with the contempt of those it hath honoured, a noble resolution comes off with the reverence of those it hath discontented.

EMPLOYMENT FOR A WIFE.

Ir a man had presumed to hint to the late Mrs. WOLSTONCRAFT, that a married woman, who followed these directions, might be as happy in herself, and as useful a member of society, as one formed upon her plan and exhibited in a certain singular and reprehensible book, published since her death, the bare supposition would probably have produced a sneer from the heroine, and a contemptuous frown from the philosopher who, in the memorial he has left of his deceased wife, has palpably overleaped the boundaries of decorum and good sense: perhaps the sceptic, who is for discussing and unveiling every thing, had in his mind the sentiment of a certain poet, and was of opinion that he was

Never so sure our wonder to create

As when he touch'd the bounds of all we hate.

But the old-fashioned doctrine of domestic duties and female occupations must not be forgotten.

"When first thou awakest in the morning lift up thy heart and voice in thankfulness to God, who made thee; thus calling to mind thy Maker at thy early rising, thou shalt speed better for it in the rest of the day.

"Having arrayed thyself as becometh a decent housewife, sweep thy house and dress thy dishboard, and see that all things be set in due order within and without; that the kine be milked, the calves suckled, and the milk skimmed; then let the young children be taken up, washed right wholesomely all over them in spring water, combed and kirtled, and sit down, with thy family, to breakfast.

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