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ANECDOTE

OF A YOUNG ITALIAN PRINCE.

IN the reign of Charles II. an Italian envoy informed his majesty, that a young prince in Italy, having married beneath him felf, had retired into England, and that his friends requested he might be fearched for, and fent back as foon as poflible. The prince hearing of it, made himself known to the king, acquainting him that he lived twenty five miles from town, in a country retreat, with his beloved Jacintha; and if his majesty would afford them kis protection, he should be happier there, than in the poffeflion of a

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SINGULAR FACTS

RELATIVE TO LEPROUS PATIENTS. [From Hutchinfon's Hiftory, &c. of Durham.]

THE leprofy was much more common in this part of the globe formerly than at prefent, and, perhaps, near half the hofpitals that were in England were for lepers. At the five gates of Norwich were five houfes of this fort; and lepers were fo numerous in the twelfth century, that by a decree in the Lateran Council, under pope Alexander III. 1179, they were empowered to erect churches for themfelves, and to have their own minifters (lepers, we may fuppofe) to officiate in them. This fhews at once how infectious and offenfive their distemper was; and on this account, in England, "where a man was a leper, and dwelling in a town, and would come into the church, or among his neighbours,

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What follows is remarkable. The writ is for thofe lepers who appear to the fight of all men that they are lepers, by their voice and fores, the putrefaction of their flesh, and by

the fmell of them. And fo late as

the reign of Edward the Sixth multitudes of lepers feem to have been in England; for in 1 Edward VI. for carrying the poor to the places c. 3. in which directions are given where they were born, &c. we read the following claufe:-" Provided always that all leprous and poor bed-rid creatures may, at their li berty, remain and continue in fuch houfes appointed for lepers or bedrid people as they now lie in."

ANECDOTE

OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

THE late Dr. Stukeley, one day by appointment, paid a vifit to Sir Ifaac Newton. The fervant faid he was in his ftudy. No one was permitted to disturb him there; but as it was near his dinner-time, the vifitor fat down to wait for him. In a fhort time, a boiled chicken, under a cover, was brought in for dinner. An hour paffed, and Sir Ifaac did not appear. The doctor then ate the fowl; and covering up the empty dith, defired the fervant to get another drefled for his master. Before that was ready, the great man came down. He apologized for his delay, and added-“Give me but leave to take my fhort dinner, and I fhall be at your fervice. I am fatigued and faint." Saying this, he lifted up the cover, and, without any emotion, turned about to Stukeley with a smile-“ See, he fays, "what we ftudious people are !-I forgot that I had dined."

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CHARACTERISTIC MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

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the time of Theodofius, these people always burnt their dead.

The use of coffee was not known in Europe till the fixteenth century. The tree which produces it, grows in great abundance in the kingdom of Yemen. For the cultivation of it we are indebted to the Dutch, who carried it from Moka to Batavia, and thence to Holland. The properties of coffee were discovered, as is faid, by the prior of an Arabian monaftery, who having obferved that cattle did not fleep when they eat certain finall beans, tried the effects of them upon his monks, to prevent them from falling afleep in the choir during night.

Among the Romans, at the end of December, during the Saturnalia, children drew lots with beans to fee who would be King; and this cuf tom was borrowed from that practifed at Athens for the election of magiftrates. Hence, perhaps, is the origin of our drawing for King and Queen on Twelfth Night.

tions, has experienced all the caprices of fashion. The Greeks preferved it until the reign of Alex ander, and the Romans till towards the year of Rome 454. Scipio Africanus introduced the custom of fhaving every day, and a long feries of emperors conformed to it; but Adrian refumed it again, and his example was followed by his fucceffors till Conftantine. It appeared again under Heraclius, and all the Greek emperors wore beards. The Goths and the Franks had only whiskers. Clodion ordered his fubjects to let their beards grow, that they might be diftinguished from the Romans. The ancient philofophers wore long beards. The ecclefiaftics of the east always had beards, but the clergy of the weft ufed a razor. There are fome countries where a long beard ferves to exprefs grief, and there are others where the want of a beard is a mark. Coaches, as well as all other kinds of mourning. of carriages which have been fince made in imitation of them, were invented by the French, and the ufe of them is of a modern date. Under Francis I. there were only two coaches; that of the queen, and that of Diana, natural daughter of Henry II. The kings of France, before they used thefe machines, travelled on horfeback; the prin ceffes were carried in litters, and ladies rode behind their fquires. The magistrates, who went to the palace on mules, oppofed the luxury of coaches as much as they could, In 1563 they petitioned Charles IX. to forbid them in the city, and pre ferved their ancient cuftoms till the commencement of the feventeenth century. The number of coaches began then to encreafe. The firit

The Egyptians are faid to have been the inventors of beer, in the year 1212 before the Christian æra. They named it the Pelufian liquor, because it was first made at Pelufium, a city near the mouth of the Nile.

The brutality and favage fury of the Barbarians, who, after a battle, took from their graves fuch of their enemies as had perifhed, that they might infult and ftrip them, introduced among the ancients the cuftom of burning dead bodies. The Greeks adopted it long before the Trojan war; and Sylla, fearing that the Romans would treat him in the fame manner as he had treated Caius Marius, ordered, when dying, that his body fhould be placed on a funeral pile. From that epoch, till

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lord at court who had one, was John de Laval de Bois-Dauphin, and feveral others followed his example. Nevertheless, about the middle of the last century, there were no more than three or four coaches in Paris; at prefent there are above fifteen thousand, without including hackney coaches, and thofe which are let for hire. A perfon of the name of Sauvage, who lived in the street of St. Martin, at the hotel of St. Fiacre, first formed the idea of eftablishing public carriages, which made the name of facre be applied both to the carriage and the driver * In 1650 Francis Villerme obtained the exclufive privilege of letting out for hire all kinds of chaifes; and feven years after one was granted for hackney coaches to Mr. Givri. The fuccefs of this enterprize excited many other individuals to folicit the fame favour, and carriages were foon feen in all the quarters of Paris. Some hiftorians, and especially thofe of Italy, give the name of coach to the principal ftandard of an army, which was fixed to a pole erected in a chariot covered with purple. This is faid to have been the invention of Heribert, archbishop of Milan, about the year 1124. The emperor Otho IV. and feveral kings of Hungary, employed carriages of the fame kind.

Afhes among feveral nations were a mark of grief and repentance. The Hebrews covered their heads with them in the time of public calamities, and the people of Niniveh expiated their faults with fackcloth and afhes. In the primitive church, the bishop marked with afhes the forehead of a finner who began his penitence, and hence came the practice enjoined by the council of Beneventum, in 1091, of going to receive fome on the Wednesday+ which precedes the first Sunday of

FIACRE, in French, fignifics both a coach and a hackney coachman.

Lent. There are still fome monafteries where the monks expire upon afhes. The Greeks and the Romans, who were accustomed to burn their dead, and to collect the afhes in urns, gave rife to that elegant expreffion of the poets, "the allies of the dead."

The ancient Gauls confidered long hair as a mark of honour and liberty; but Cæfar made them lay it afide as foon as he had fubdued them. Ecclefiaftics rendered homage to God by cutting their hair fhort, and imagined that in doing this they gave him a proof of their fpiritual fervitude, and of their perfect fubmiffion to his will. People formerly fwore by their hair; and to cut off this badge of dignity from any one, was to devote him to ignominy. Thofe who entered into a confpiracy, were obliged to cut off each other's hair. It was a piece of refined politenefs among the French to pull out a hair when they met a friend, and to prefent it to him. In the eighth century, great lords caufed the first hair of their children to be cut by thofe for whom they entertained the greatest esteem, and by this ceremony they became their fpiritual fponfors. About the year 1116, long hair was confidered as a luxury, and a mark of effeminacy. Eighty years after, whoever wore long hair was, by a canon, excluded from entering the church; and on Christmas-day at mafs, Godfroy, bishop of Amiens, refused at St. Omer, in prefence of Robert, earl of Flanders, the offerings of thofe who had preferved their hair. Francis I. wore his hair fhort, on account of a wound which he had received in his head; his courtiers followed his example, and the people imitated the courtiers.

The invention of bells is attributed to the Egyptians: however this may + Hence called Ash-Wednesday.

be,

be, it is certain that they were always used to announce the festivals in honour of Ofiris. Amongst the Hebrews, the high priest in grand ceremonies wore a kind of tunic, ornamented with fmall golden bells. At Athens the priests of Proferpine and Cybele used them during their facrifices, and in fome measure they made a part of their myfteries. Bells were known alfo among the Perfrans, the Greeks, and the Romans. Pope Sabinian, and St. Paulin of Nola, introduced them into the church, to call the faithful to divine worship, and to distinguish the canonical hours, but it does not appear that large bells were used before the fixth century. In 610 the army of Clotaire, who were befieging Sens, were fo frightened by the noise of the bells of the church of St. Stephen, which Loup, bishop of Orleans, ordered to be rung, that they raifed the fiege, and betook themselves to flight. About the beginning of the following century, bells were baptifed; for Alcuin, preceptor to Charlemain, confiders this ceremony as much older than the year 770.

The Romans invented lotteries, to enliven their Saturnalia. This feftival began by the distribution of tickets which gained fome prize. Auguftus made lotteries which confifted of things of little value, but Nero eftablished fome for the people, in which a thousand tickets were distributed daily, and feveral of those who were favoured by fortune got rich by them. Heliogabalus invented fome very fingular: the prizes were either of great value or of none at all; one gained a prize of fix flaves, and another of fix flies; fome got valuable vafes, and others vafes of common earth. A lottery of this kind exhibited an excellent picture of the inequality with which Fortune diftributes her favours.

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The first watches were made at Nuremberg in 1500, by Peter Hell, and called "Nuremburg eggs, on account of their oval form. fame year George Purbach, a mathematician of Vienna, employed a watch that pointed to feconds, for aftronomical obfervations.

The art of making perukes was invented at Paris, about the end of the reign of Lewis XIII. and people then gave over the ufe of calottes ornamented with a double row of hair, quite ftraight or frizzed. The abbé la Riviere first fet the example; his peruke weighed two pounds. Thefe head-dreffes were heavy, and of an enormous fize, until 1680, when the Sieur Ervais devised a method of curling the hair. - Perukes then became real ornaments, and feemed to banish the marks of old age.

Nonius Marcellus refers the origin of New-year's gifts among the Romans to Tatius, king of the Sabines, who reigned at Rome conjointly with Romulus, and who having confidered as a good omen, a prefent of fome branches cut in a wood confecrated to Strenia, the goddefs of ftrength, which he received on the first day of the new year, au thorised this cuftom afterwards, and gave to these prefents the name of Stren. However this may be, the Romans on that day celebrated a feftival in honour of Janus, and paid their refpects at the fame time to Juno; but they did not pafs it in idlenefs, left they should become indolent during the rest of the year, They fent prefents to one another of figs, dates, honey, &c. to fhew their, friends that they wished for a happy and agreeable life. Clients, that is to say, those who were under the protection of the great, carried prefents of this kind to their patrons, adding to them a fmall piece of filver.

Antimony

Antimony, that remedy fo celebrated, was discovered by a German monk, named Bafil Valentine, who, fearching for the philofopher's ftone, and having thrown to the hogs what remained after fome of his experiments, obferved, that those who fwallowed it, after being violently purged, became much tatter. He took it into his head to make a trial of it upon fome of his brother monks; but, as the dose was too strong, they all died. Hence comes the name of antimoine in French, which has been given to this mineral fubftance.

The cuftom of faying "God bless you" to thofe who fueeze, is faid to have originated from pope Gregory, furnamed the Great, during the time of an epidemical diforder, which carried people off in a fit of fneezing. Some, however, pretend that this custom is much older, and that it was known to the Greeks and the Romans long before the chriftian

æra.

Cards were invented under the reign of Charles VI. king of France, to amufe him during the intervals of that diforder which conducted him to the grave.

Burying grounds were not eftablished until the year 200. People

before were interred in the highways, and ancient tombs are ftill to be feen on the roads leading to Rome. Hence thefe words, fo often repeated in epitaphs, Sta viatorStop traveller.

In 1474, the phyficians and furgeons of Paris reprefented to Louis XI. that feveral people of diftinction were afflicted with the stone, and that it would be of the higheft utility to anatomy to examine, in a living fubject, that part of the human body which is the feat of this diforder. They therefore requested his majefty, that he would order a perfon, named Franc-Archer, who had been fubject to this malady, and who was condemned to be hanged, to be delivered into their hands. This being granted, the first operation of cutting for the ftone was performed publicly at Paris, in the burying ground of St. Severin. The cri minal was completely cured in the fpace of a fortnight, and obtained, befides his pardon, a confiderable reward. We cannot here help obferving, that this is a ftriking inftance of the viciffitudes of life, fince, to be cured of his diforder, it was neceffary that this unhappy man fhould be condemned to the gallows.

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