NERVES.-When the late Duchess of Bedford was last at Buxton, and then in her 85th year, it was the medical farce of the day, for the faculty to resolve every complaint of whim and caprice into a "a shock of the nervous system." Her Grace, after enquiring of many of her friends in the rooms what brought them there, and being generally answered, a nervous complaint, was asked in her turn, what brought her to Buxton, "I came only for pleasure,' replied the healthy Duchess, "for, thank God, I was born before nerves came into fashion."

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ROYAL POLITENESS.-The states of Valangin had deposed a reformed preacher for having preached against the eternal punishments of Hell. He applied to the king, who immediately issued a cabinet order to re-instate him, and to observe more toleration in future. The states protested against it; pleaded the privileges of their constitution; in short, totally refused, though in respectful expressions, to obey, since the people would not listen to any thing relative to a cessation of the punishments of Hell. king, who did not wish to infringe their antient previleges, returned the protest, after having written the following decree under it:-" If my subjects of Valangin will insist on boing damned eternally, I have nothing to say against it."

The

Enteresting Warieties. HOSPITALITY OF CHARLES 1.--There

were daily in his court eighty-six tables well furnished each meal, whereof the king's table had 28 dishes, the queen's 24; four other tables, 16 dishes each; three other, 10 dishes each; twelve other had seven dishes each; seventeen other tables had each of them five dishes; three other had four each, thirty-two other tables had each three dishes and thirteen other had each two dishes; in all about 500 dishes each meal, with bread, beer, wine, and all other things necessary, all of which was provided most by the several purveyors, who, by commission, legally and regularly authorised, did receive those provisions at a moderate price, such as. had been formerly agreed upon in the several counties of England, which price (by reason of the value of money being much altered) was become low, yet a very inconsi derable burthen to the kingdom in general, but thereby was greatly sup ported the royal dignity in the eyes of strangers, as well as natives.

THE JEWS.-In the year 1290, in the reign of Edward I., the property of all Jews in England was confiscated to the use of the Crown; two huudred and eighty of them were hanged in one day, charged with adulterating the coin; and about fifteen thousand of these unfortunate people were plundered of all their wealth, and banished the kingdom. In the present year, 1824, Mr. Rothschild, the celebrated Jew, is at the head of most of the loans to the European Kings and Emperors.

TO CORRESPONDENTS..

MANY articles which we hoped to insert ere now, are unavoidably delayed, but none shall ultimately be forgotten. Tudor will hear from us in a few days. Murmur is not quite mistaken.

RECEIVED. G. Serge L. P.-Al [Manchester]-Julia-J. W. B.—Pangloss and O. P.

REJECTED. Nosey-P. P. C.-A Finger-Post-and Tim. printer's.

A parcel, for Clio, lies at the

LONDON-Printed and Published by T. Walks, Camden Town ; and also i'ublished by C. Harris, Low Strpet, Covent Garden,

As for the Anthropophagi, or cannibals that eat each other, the same celebrated author tells us:-" At one of the outlets of Oronoco, we left on the right hand of us a nation of inhuman cannibals; they are but few, but very cruel to their enemies, for they bind, and eate them alive peece meale."

These extraordinary relations were universally credited, and therefore Othello, in the passage we have quoted, assumes no other character but what was very common among the celebrated commanders of his time-that of an adventurer and voyager into the East or West Indies. As for Sir Walter Raleigh's wonderful discoveries, the more remarkable passages were pub lished in several languages, accompanied with a map of Guiana, by Jodocus Hondius,a Dutch geographer, and adorned with copper-plates, representing these Amazons, monsters, and headless people, &c. in different points of view. The drawing in the preceding page is copied from the frontispiece to one of these pamphlets, intitled : "Brevis et admiranda Descriptio Regni Guiane, per Gualtherum Raleigh, Equitem Anglium. Noribergæ, 1599."

Shakspeare has again, in "The Tempest," mentioned men whose heads stand in their breasts," and there is an account of them in the Travels of Mandeville, a book of his time; he might also have read of them in Pliny's "Natural History," translated by P. Holland, 1601, and in Stowe's "Chronicle." The Cannibals and Anthropophagi, were, however, known to an English audience before he introduced them.

In

earnest, some remarks upon certai Prophecies by Robert Nixon, the Cheshire seer, which appeared to me to have been fulfilled in a rather singular manner. Of Nixon's history I then knew very little; but since that period, my course of reading having lain a good deal amongst works relating to the affairs of his native county, I have met with some particulars of his reputed origin, &c. which interested me not a little, and may perchance prove as attractive to your readers, for though most people have heard of Nixon, few have read anything concerning him of a more authentic description than the absurd details prefixed to sixpenny editions of his Prophecies.

t

While upon the subject, allow me to suggest that if you, sir, or some one competent to the task, would undertake a corrected and revised edition of these Prophecies, pointing out such as have already been fulfilled, and furnishing all the particulars that can be gathered respecting him, it would form a very entertaining little work, which your printer might find his account in giving to the world in a neat and cheap form. Excuse this hint, which I offer solely with the hope of its being useful.

The first article I offer you relating to Nixon, is an extract from Lyson's Magna Britannia," 4to. 1810, vol. 2, page 814:

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"At Vale Royal, the seat of Thomas Cholmondeley, Esq. are deposited certain MSS., which are said to be the original prophecies of the celebrated Nixon. The popular story of this supposed prophet, which has been printed in various forms, and is current in every part of the kingdom," was we believe first published in the early part of the last century, for we cannot find that there is any earlier printed account than that prefixed to an edition of his prophecies by Oldmixon, which was published by Curl in 1714. The account given of him is, that he was an illiterate ploughboy, his capacity scarcely exceeding that of an idiot; and that he seldom spoke, unless when he uttered his prophecies, which were taken down from his mouth by some of the by

standers. Many traditions relating to him are still current in the neighbourhood of Vale Royal, where his story is implicitly believed, but there are many circumstances which combine to render it suspicious. An anonymous author of a Life of Nixon places his birth in the reign of Edward 4th. but Oldmixon, in the pamphlet just mentioned, says that he lived in the time of James the First, and annexes a letter, dated 1714, with the signature-"William Ewers, "which asserts that there was then a man living at Coppenhall, who remembered Nixon, could describe his person, and had communicated many particulars of his life. If this were true, however, the man must have been more than 100 years old, and have possessed a most tenacious memory. Even respecting Nixon's Christian name there appears to be some doubt: most of the printed accounts call him Robert, and he is generally known by that name; but in a periodical paper entitled "The Industrious Bee," printed in 1731, he is entitled William, which is also, we understand, the name by which he is spoken of in the MSS. at Vale Royal, which have been long preserved, with great care and secresy, in the exclusive custody of the possessor of the estate for the time being, who on account of certain prophecies they contain relative to the Cholmondeleys, and other Cheshire families, does not shew them to any one.

"The tradition at Vale Royal favours the notion that Nixon lived in the reign of Edward the 4th. and his story, certainly, if placed at an age so remote, bears a greater air of probability; but, on the other hand his prophecies are much connected with Vale Royal and the Cholmondeley family, who did not settle at that place before 1615. If, again, according to Oldmixon's account, so extraordinary a personage had lived at Vale Royal in the reign of James 1st. we might expect to find some mention of him in the parish register, either at Over, the parish in which he is said to have been born, or at Whitegate adjoining, both of which have been searched in vain; and it is, moreover,

almost incredible that he should not have been noticed by some of his contemporaries, yet no mention is made of him, either by Webb, who, in his Itinerary of 1622, speaks much of the Cholmondeley family, and relates a visit of James I. to Vale Royal for four days in 1617, or by the industrious Robert Holme, who has recorded all the remarkable events and circumstances of his time. Indeed, whatever be the era assigned to Nixon, if his story and his prophecies were known in the 17th century, 'tis very extraordinary that neither of the Holmes's should have inserted a single note concerning him, in their voluminous and multifarious collections relating to this county; and that Fuller, who published his Worthies' immediately after the Restoration, when many of Nixon's prophecies are said to have been fulfilled, should also have omitted to mention him. The story of Nixon's death is, that having been sent for by the king, he was accidentally starved, as he had himself foretold: this is said to have happened at Hampton Court, where two places are pointed out by the person who shews the Palace, each of which has been said to have been the scene of his famishment. This part of the story will not bear the test of inquiry better than the others; there is no entry in the parish-register of the burial of such a person, in the reign of James 1st.; one of the closets pointed out as that in which Nixon was by accident locked up, was built in the reign of William 3d.; and it is needless to observe that the whole palace was erected subsequent to the reign of Henry 7th. which is said by some to have been the time of Nixon's death. When, in addition to these cireumstances we observe that the particulars relating to the Cholmondeleys, in the printed accounts of Nixon, are at variance with the real and known history. of that family, we cannot help regarding his story as very sus picious, if not wholly legendary."

*

*

So far Mr. Lysons. What follows is from "The History of Cheshire by

George Ormerod, L. Li, D. 1819." Vol. 2, page 100:

"To the township of Over, tradition has assigned the honour of being the birth place of William or Robert Nixon, an illiterate idiot, said to have been the author of certain Prophecies, which have been printed in all parts of the kingdom, and to which the lower orders in the North, and many better-informed persons, have given credence. They were a subject of general curiosity about the time of the Rebellion of 1745, to such a degree that Fielding has introduced them in his "Tom Jones," through the mouth of Partridge, among the current superstitions then popularly connected with the attempts of the Adventurer.

"The birth of this individual has been assigned to the time of Edward the Fourth; but a second story exists, which refers him to the time of James the First; a date palpably false, as many of the supposed Prophecies were to be fulfilled at an antecedent period. "He is said to have attracted the royal notice, by foretelling, in Cheshire, the result of the battle of Bosworth, on recovering from a sudden stupor with which he was seized while the battle was fighing in Leicestershire, and to have been sent for to Court shortly afterwards, where he was starved to death through forgetfulness, in a manner which he had himself predicted.

·

"The silence of registers respecting him is of course accounted for by the time he lived in that of the Harleian MSS. is more singular; but it must be remembered that those enormous Cheshire collections are mostly copies of deeds, and that the very few original narratives they contain, relate mostly to contemporary events. Webb, in his Itinerary,' may possibly allude to him as the author of old prophecies, in the account of Delamere, but obviously rejects the story, if he does allude to it. It is, however, not impossible that the fiction may be of some antiquity, for among all the prose vulgarly printed as his prophecies, and referring, in modern language, to places and families unknown at his

time, will be found some prophecies of a more general nature, running in metre which varies little from the poetry of the day.

Many instances of the fulfilment of his trivial predictions are maintained in Cheshire, such as the meeting of the Abbeys of Norton and Vale Royal in the building of Acton bridge; the removal of a mill to Luddington Hill, by Sir John Crewe; and the draining of Ridley pool: but by far the most important is that alluded to by Oldmixon, who says, in an edition of these Prophecies, that, in pursuance of Nixon's prediction that an eagle should visit Vale Royal when the heir of that house was to be born, an eagle did come, remained near the house three days, and was seen by thousands of people: among others, by the sister, and Mr. St. John, the brother, of Mrs. Cholmondeley, who were brought to the window by the acclamations of the people. Oldmixon states this story on the authority of Lady Cowper, who had it from Patrick, Bishop of Ely, chaplain to Sir Walter St. John, Mrs. Cholmondeley's father, and also from her sister.

"If this could be established, Nixon might be included in the list of certain individuals, among whom may be classed Henry the 6th., who are said to have possessed a gift of this kind, united with general weakness of understanding, Oldmixon states that when the above occurrence took place, snow was upon the ground, which may accord with the birth of the person referred to, viz. Charles, eldest son of Thomas Cholmondeley, Esq. by Anne St. John, on the 12th January, 1684-5; and he was also born heir of Vale Royal, his last surviving brother, by a former marriage, having died in 1679: but, it must be remembered that he died as late as 1755, and was only the grandfather of the present family, yet this fulfilment of a prophecy said to have been looked forward to for many generations, and to have drawn thousands to Vale Royal, is not supported by the slightest memorandum, or even a single tradition preserved in a family it so much