balustraded wooden galleries, with exterior staircases leading to the chambers on each floor; the fourth side being occupied by stabling, built against part of old London wall. The house was an inn with the sign of the Oxford Arms before the Great Fire, as appears by the following advertisement in the London Gazette for March, 1672-3, No. 762:-These are to give notice, that Edward Bartlett, Oxford carrier, hath removed his inn, in London, from the Swan, at Holborn-bridge, to the Oxford Arms, in Warwicklane, where he did inn before the Fire; his coaches and wagons going forth on their usual days,-Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. He hath also a hearse, with all things convenient, to carry a corpse to any part of England.' The Oxford Arms was not part of the Earl of Warwick's property, but belonged to the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, who hold it to this day. From the inn premises is a door opening into one of the back yards of the residentiary houses, and it is stated that, during the riots of 1780, this passage facilitated the escape of certain Roman Catholics, who then frequented the Oxford Arms, on their being attacked by the mob; for which reason, as is said, by a clause inserted in the Oxford Arms lease, that door is forbidden to be closed up. This inn appears to have been longer frequented by carriers, wagoners, and stage-coaches, than the Bell Inn, on the east side of the Lane; for in the list in Delaune's Present State of London, 1690, the Oxford Arms occurs frequently, but mention is not made of the Bell Inn.

At the Oxford Arms, in Warwick-lane,' lived John Roberts, the bookseller, from whose shop issued the majority of the squibs and libels on Pope.

In Warwick-square, about midway on the west side of the Lane, was the early office of the Public Ledger newspaper, in which Goldsmith wrote his Citizen of the World, at two guineas per week; and here succeeded to a share in the property John Crowder, who, by diligent habits, rose to be alderman of the ward (Farringdon Within), and Lord Mayor in 1829-30. The London Packet (evening paper) was also Crowder's property. The Independent Whig was likewise localized in the square; and at the southwest corner was the printing-office of the inflexible John Wheble, who befriended John Britton, when

cellarman to a wine-merchant, and set him to write the Beauties of Wiltshire. Wheble was, in 1771, apprehended for abusing the House of Commons, in his Middlesex Journal, but was discharged by Wilkes; of a better complexion was his County Chronicle, and the Sporting Magazine, which he commenced with John Harris, the bookseller. In this dull square, also, was the office of Mr Wilde, solicitor, the father of Lord Chancellor Truro, who here mounted the office

stool en route to the Woolsack.

Happy Accidents. In 1684, a poor boy, apprenticed to a weaver at his native village of Wickwar, in Gloucestershire, in carrying, according to custom on a certain day in the year, a dish called 'whitepot' to the baker's, let it fall and broke it, and fearing to face his mistress, ran away to London, where he prospered, and, remembering his native village, founded the schools there which bear his name. At Monmouth, tradition relates that one William Jones left that place to become a shopboy to a London merchant, in the time of James I., and, by his good conduct, rose first to the counting-house, and then to a partnership in the concern; and having realized a large fortune, came back in the disguise of a pauper, first to his native place, Newland, in Gloucestershire, from whence, having been ill received there, he betook himself to Monmouth, and meeting with kindness among his old friends, he bestowed £9,000 in founding a free grammar-school.

THE CAMERONIANS.

FEBRUARY 21.

Saints Daniel, priest, and Verda, virgin, martyrs, 344. St Severianus, bishop of Scythopolis, martyr, about 452. Blessed Pepin of Landen, mayor of the palace, 640. Saints German, abbot, and Randaut, martyrs, about 666.

Born.-Pierre du Bosc, 1623, Bayeux; Mrs Anne Grant, author of Letters from the Mountains, 1755, Glasgow.

Died.-Caius Cæsar Agrippa, A.D. 4; James I. (of Scotland), murdered, 1437, Perth; Pope Julius II., 1513; Henry Grey, duke of Suffolk, beheaded, 1555; Robert Southwell, poet, executed at Tyburn, 1595; Secretary John Thurloe, 1668, Lincoln's-inn; Benedict de Spinoza, philosopher, 1677; Pope Benedict XIII., 1730; Eugène de Beauharnois, Duke of Leuchtenberg, 1824, Munich; Rev. Robert Hail, Baptist preacher, 1831, Bristol; Charles Rossi, R.A., sculptor, 1839.

POPE JULIUS 11.

Julius de la Rovere, who ascended the papal throne in 1503, under the title of Julius II., is one of the most famous of all the Popes. He was the founder of the church of St Peter at Rome; but his most remarkable acts were of a warlike character. During his papacy of ten years, he was continually engaged in war, first, against the Venetians, to recover the Romagna, in which affair he was assisted by the French and Germans; afterwards with the Germans against the French, in order to get these dangerous friends driven out of Italy. It was not till he had formed what he called a holy league,' in which he united to himself Spain, England, Venice, and the Swiss, that he succeeded in his object. In this war, he assumed all the characters and duties of a military commander, and few have exceeded him in spirit and resolution. As examples of the far-reaching policy of the man, he sent a splendid sword of state to the King of Scotland (James IV.); it still exists among the Scottish regalia, exhibiting the armorial bearings of Pope Julius. In the great chest at Reikiavik cathedral in Iceland, are robes which he sent to the bishop of that remote island.

6

Julius struck a medal to commemorate the great events of his reign; it represented him in pontificals, with the tiara on his head, and a whip in his hand, chasing the French, and trampling the shield of France under his feet. When Michael Angelo was making a statue of the pope, he said to him, Holy Father, shall I place a book in your hand?' 'No,' answered his Holihandle it.' He was indeed much more of a soldier ness, a sword rather-I know better how to than an ecclesiastic, in any recognised sense of the term. He was the first pope who allowed his beard to grow, in order to inspire the greater respect among the faithful; a fashion in which he was followed by Charles V. and other kings, and which spread through the courtiers to the people.

THE CAMERONIANS-EPIGRAM BY BURNS.

In the churchyard of the parish of Balmaghie, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, are the gravestones of three persons who fell victims to the

boot-and-saddle mission sent into Scotland under the last Stuarts. One of these rude monuments bears the following inscription:

'Here lyes David Halliday, portioner of Maifield, who was shot upon the 21st of February 1685, and David Halliday, once in Glengape, who was likewise shot upon the 11th of July 1685, for their adherence to the principles of Scotland's Covenanted Reformation.

'Beneath This Stone Two David Hallidays

Do Lie, Whose Souls Now Sing Their Master's praise.

To know If Curious Passengers desire,
For What, By Whom, And How They Did Expire;
They Did Oppose This Nation's Perjury,
Nor Could They Join With Lordly Prelacy.
Indulging Favours From Christ's Enemies
Quenched Not Their Zeal. This Monument Then
cries,

These Were The Causes, Not To Be Forgot,
Why They By Lag So Wickedly Were Shot;
One Name, One Cause, One Grave, One Heaven,
Do Tie

Their Souls To That One God Eternally.'

The reverend gentleman who first printed this epitaph in his parochial contribution to the Statistical Account of Scotland (1794), made upon it the unlucky remark-The author of which no doubt supposed himself to have been writing poetry' unlucky when we consider the respect due to the earnestness of these men in a frame of religious opinion which they thought right, and for which they had surrendered life. Burns, who got the Statistical Account out of the subscription library of Dumfries, experienced the just feeling of the occasion, and rebuked the writer for his levity in a quatrain, which he inscribed on the margin, where it is still clearly

to be traced:

'The Solemn League and Covenant

Now brings a smile-now brings a tear-
But sacred Freedom too was theirs ;

If thou'rt a slave, indulge thy sneer.'

It will perhaps be learned with some surprise that a remnant of those Cameronians who felt unsatisfied with the Presbyterian settlement at the Revolution, still exists in Scotland. Numbering about seven hundred persons, scattered chiefly throughout the south-west provinces of Scotland, they continue to decline taking the oath of allegiance to the reigning monarch, or to accept of any public office, holding that monarch and people have broken their pledge or covenant, by which they were bound in 1644 to extirpate popery, prelacy, and other errors. Holding out their testimony on this subject, they abstain from even exercising the elective franchise, alleging that to do so would be to sanction the aforesaid breach of covenant, to which they trace all the evils that befall the land. In May 1861, when this Reformed Presbytery met in Edinburgh, a trying question came before them; there were young men in their body who felt anxious to join in the volunteer movement; some had even done it. There were also some members who had exercised the elective franchise. To pursue a contemporary record: A lengthened discussion took place as to what should be done, and numerous reverend members urged the modification of the

FOLK-LORE OF PLAYING CARDS.

testimony, as regards the assumed identity of the representative and the voter, and as regards the interpretation of the oath of allegiance. Highly patriotic and almost loyal views were expressed on the Volunteer question, and warm expressions of admiration and love for Her Majesty were uttered, and of willingness to defend her person and protect the soil from invasion, so far as their service could be given apart from rendering fealty to the constitution. Another party in the Synod denounced the proposal to modify the testimony, as a backsliding and defection from the testimony. It was ultimately resolved, by 30 to 11, to appoint a committee to inquire into the soundness of the views contained in the testimony on the points mooted, and to relieve kirk sessions from the obligation to expel members who entertained doubts and difficulties on these matters, but meantime to recommend members of the Church to abstain from voting at elections. No similar recommendation having been made as to holding aloof from the Volunteer movement, it may be presumed that that point has been conceded.'

THE FOLK-LORE OF PLAYING CARDS.

The long disputed questions respecting the period of the invention of playing-cards, and whether they were first used for purposes of divination or gambling, do not fall within the prescribed limits of this paper. Its object is simply to disclose-probably for the first time in print the method or system of divination by playing-cards, constantly employed and implicitly depended upon, by many thousands of our fellowcountrymen and women at the present day. The smallest village in England contains at least

one

'card-cutter,' a person who pretends to presage future events by studying the accidental combinations of a pack of cards. In London, the name of these fortune-tellers is legion, some of greater, some of lesser repute and pretensions: some willing to draw the curtains of destiny for a sixpence, others unapproachable except by a previously paid fee of from one to three guineas. And it must not be supposed that all of those persons are deliberate cheats; the majority of them believe in the cards' as firmly as the silly simpletons who employ and pay them. Moreover, besides those who make their livelihood by card-cutting,' there are numbers of others, who, possessing a smattering of the art, daily refer to the pasteboard oracles, to learn their fate and guide their conduct. And when a ticklish point arises, one of those crones will consult another, and then, if the two cannot pierce the mysterious combination, they will call in a professed mistress of the art, to throw a gleam of light on the darkness of the future. In short, there are very few individuals among the lower classes in England who do not know something respecting the cards in their divinatory aspect, even if it be no more than to distinguish the lucky from the unlucky ones; and it is quite common to hear a person's complexion described as being of a heart, or club colour. For these reasons, the writer-for the first time as he believes-has applied the

well-known term folk-lore to this system of divination by playing cards, so extensively known and so continually practised in the British dominions.

The art of cartomancy, or divination by playing-cards, dates from an early period of their obscure history. In the museum of Nantes there is a painting, said to be by Van Eyck, representing Philippe le Bon, Archduke of Austria, and subsequently King of Spain, consulting a fortune-teller by cards. This picture, of which a transcript is here given, cannot be of a later date than the fifteenth century. When the art was introduced into England is unknown; probably, however, the earliest printed notice of it in this country is the following curious story, extracted from Rowland's Judicial Astrology

FOLK-LORE OF PLAYING CARDS.

Condemned: Cuffe, an excellent Grecian, and secretary to the Earl of Essex, was told, twenty years before his death, that he should come to an untimely end, at which Cuffe laughed, and in a scornful manner intreated the soothsayer to shew him in what manner he should come to his end, who condescended to him, and calling for cards, intreated Cuffe to draw out of the pack any three which pleased him. He did so, and drew three knaves, and laid them on the table by the wizard's direction, who then told him, if he desired to see the sum of his bad fortune, to take up those cards. Cuffe, as he was prescribed, took up the first card, and looking on it, he saw the portraiture of himself cap-à-pie, having men encompassing him with bills and halberds. Then he took up the second, and there he saw the judge

that sat upon him; and taking up the last card, he saw Tyburn, the place of his execution, and the hangman, at which he laughed heartily. But many years after, being condemned, he remembered and declared this prediction.'

The earliest work on cartomancy was written or compiled by one Francesco Marcolini, and printed at Venice in 1540. There are many modern French, Italian, and German works on the subject; but, as far as the writer's knowledge extends, there is not an English one. The system of cartomancy, as laid down in those works, is very different from that used in England, both as regards the individual interpretations of the cards, and the general method of reading or deciphering their combinations. The English system, however, is used in all British settlements over the globe, and has no doubt been carried thither by soldiers' wives, who, as is well known to the initiated, have ever been considered peculiarly skilful practitioners of the art. In

deed, it is to a soldier's wife that this present exposition of the art is to be attributed. Many years ago the exigencies of a military life, and the ravages of a pestilential epidemic, caused the writer, then a puny but not very young child, to be left for many months in charge of a private soldier's wife, at an out-station in a distant land. The poor woman, though childless herself, proved worthy of the confidence that was placed in her. She was too ignorant to teach her charge to read, yet she taught him the only accomplishment she possessed,-the art of cutting cards,' as she termed it; the word cartomancy, in all probability, she had never heard. And though it has not fallen to the writer's lot to practise the art professionally, yet he has not forgotten it, as the following interpretations of the cards will testify.

dominion was the spur that drove them on. John Hampden, William Russell, Algernon Sydney, may have had motives as pure, and an ambition as sustained; but they fell. To George Washington alone in modern times has it been given to accomplish a wonderful revolution, and yet to remain to all future times the theme of a people's gratitude, and an example of virtuous and beneficent power.'-Earl Russell: Life and Times of Charles James Fox.

The pre-eminence here accorded to Washing ton will meet with universal approval. He clearly and unchallengeably stands out as the purest great man in universal history. While America feels a just pride in having given him birth, it is something for England to know that his ancestors lived for generations upon her soil. His great-grandfather emigrated about 1657, having previously lived in Northamptonshire. The Washingtons were a family of some account. Their history has been traced by the Rev. J. N. Simpkinson, rector of Brington, near Northampton, with tolerable clearness, in a volume

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

entitled The Washingtons, published in 1860, but more concisely in a speech which he delivered at a meeting of American citizens in London, on Washington's birthday, two years later:

"The Washingtons,' he says, were a Northern family, who lived some time in Durham, and also in Lancashire. It was from Lancashire that they came to Northamptonshire. It is a pleasure to me to be able to point out what induced them to come to Northamptonshire. The uncle of the first Lawrence Washington was Sir Thomas Kitson, one of the great merchants who, in the time of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., developed the wool trade of the country. That wool trade depended mainly on the growth of wool, and the creation of sheep farms in the midland counties. I have no doubt, therefore, that the reason why Lawrence Washington settled in Northamptonshire, leaving his own profession, which was that of a barrister, was that he might superintend his uncle's transactions with the sheep-proprietors in that county. Lawrence Washington soon became Mayor of

were great promoters of the sheep-farming move. ment. Thus, then, there was a very plain connexion between the Washingtons and the Spencers. The rector of the parish at that time was Dr Layton, who was Lord Cromwell's prime commissioner for the dissolution of monasteries. Therefore we see another cause why the lands of Sulgrave were granted to Lawrence Washington. For three generations they remained at Sulgrave, taking rank among the nobility and