2. IN THE SAME CHURCH.

Anno demi. 1760.

Beest here and neer,

in peace doe rest,

All they of these

that are deceast. Thomas Browne and Margery, Ralph Browne and Mary, Ralph Browne and Dorothy, Ralph Browne and Joyce, Ralph Browne, Ralph Browne, John Browne.

The two first Brownes of Caverswall were, But all the rest

were of the Meere. The fourth made this, in memorie

of parents to posteritie.

FRUIT and FLOWERS.-Sir Robert Southwell's Method to make them grow in the Winter; also to preserve them the whole year.

Take up trees by the roots in spring, just as they put forth their buds, retaining some of their own earth about the roots; set them upright in a cellar, until Michaelmas ; and then put them into vessels, with an addition of more earth, and bring them into a hot-house, taking care to moisten the earth every morning with rain-water; in a quart of which you must dissolve a piece of sal armoniac of the size of a walnut; and, about Lent, fruit will appear.

As to flowers, take good earthen pots, and therein sow your seed at Michaelmas, watering in the same manner with the like water; and by Christmas you will have flowers, as tulips, lilies, &c.

This and the other process may be done in a good warm kitchen; and, on such days as the sun shines, you may set the vessels forth for some hours.

Take salt-petre one pound, bolearmoniac two pounds, ordinary clean sand,hree pounds; mix all together, and observe the proportion in other quantities. Then, in dry weather, take fruits of any sort that are not fully ripe, each with its stalk; put them, one by one, into an open glass, till it be full; and cover it with an oily cloth, close tied down; then place

it in a dry cellar, with two fingers thick of the said mixture, above, below, and round it. Flowers may be preserved in the same manner.

Enteresting Varieties.

J. F.

ASIATIC FRIENDSHIP.-The following story was related by the Nabob of Arcot to an English lady :—A cer tain man fell asleep under a tree, whilst his friend was sitting beside him. A snake came down from the branches, and the friend endeavoured to kill it; but the snake said, "I will not depart until I have tasted of that man's blood; for this purpose was I sent hither. "Since it is so," replied the friend, "I cannot possibly avert the decrees of God;" then taking a knife, he opened a vein in the man's neck, who awoke, saw the knife, and the blood gushing forth, but closed his eyes again, and remained silent. The snake drank the blood and went away. The friend immediately applied to a surgeon, and adopted means to stop the bleeding. Some months after, a person asked this man why he had been so calm, and shut his eyes when he saw the bloody knife, "To this hour," he replied, not know the reason of that man's action; but I suppose it was for my good; therefore I would not mistrust him, nor make any inquiry into the circumstance. I believe him to be my friend-Friendship can never doubt— and to that man in whom my heart confides, I will intrust my body." This, and no less than this, said the young Nabob, we call Friendship.

I do

HYDRA, 1. 2. 7.

PROFITABLE HANGING. Not many years ago, a man was hanged at a country town in Ireland for highway robbery; but his friends having taken the body to a house, fancied that they discovered some signs of life, and immediately applied to a surgeon, who, with considerable difficulty, succeeded in restoring the man to his senses. Finding himself much annoyed by the multitude of

visitors, and the questions which they asked respecting his short excursion to the other world, the man declared that he would not gratify their curiosity until each person should have paid the sum of two-pence. With this demand they readily complied; and he very seriously informed them, that at the moment when he was recalled to this world by the surgeon's assistance, he had just arrived at the gates of heaven, where he saw St. Peter sitting with the KAYS in his hand. This anecdote was related by the surgeon as a matter of fact, to a gentleman now residing in London.

DR. DODD.-It is a curious facta fact throwing no little light on the character of the unfortunate Dr. Dodd-that no great while before the detection of the crime for which he suffered, he wrote a comedy, called "Sir Roger de Coverley," which he placed in the hands of Murphy, the dramatist, for the purpose of his perusing the piece; that if he deemed it worthy of representation, he might recommend it to Mr. Harris, the Covent Garden manager: and that the fate of this production, that is, its acceptance, or non-acceptance, at the theatre, was a subject of much anxiety to him, even during his incarceration in Newgate, that while he was writing his " Thoughts in Prison," and had before him the prospect of a speedy and ignominious death, he sent a note to Murphy, requesting his opinion of the comedy.

LONDON BRIDGE-Surveyors appointed by the City, in 1822, surveyed the depth of the water from the present bridge to Old Swan Stairs. They extended a rope across the whole of the river at Old Swan Stairs, and another from the point of one of the sterlings of the centre arch to the point of the other sterling]; a third rope was fastened to the middle of each of the two first ropes, and was divided into a scale, having every twelve feet made conspicuous by a piece of red cloth. The following is

SOME years ago, a niece of Lord G., a young lady about 12 or 13 years of age, rushed out of her chamber in great alarm, exclaiming that she had seen the ghost of a female servant who had lately quitted the family, but who was still living in London. In spite of all the expostulations and arguments used to remove this mental delusion, she persisted in declaring that she invariably saw the same phantom on entering the same chamber, and the terror of its appearance had such an effect upon her nervous system, that it was feared her faculties would become disordered; and it was deemed expedient to consult Sir F. M. After several ineffectual attempts to dispel the phantasy by which she was afflicted, he recommended that the servant whose figure was thus presented to her, should be procured, and placed in the room, in the exact attitude described by the young lady, that by this means she might be convinced of her existence, and be satisfied that the fancied vision was only the coinage of her own

brain. This was accordingly done, and the young lady was conducted to the chamber, which she had no sooner entered than she uttered a piercing shriek, clasped her hands, and exclaiming "two ghosts! two ghosts!" fell on the floor in a convulsive fit, which, in a few hours, terminated her existence !

MUTABILITY OF LANGUAGE-SO vague was the state of the French language, when M. Vaugelas wrote, (between the years 1585 and 1650), that, during his translation of Quintus Curtius, which occupied him for thirty years, it varied so much, that he was obliged to correct the former part of his work, to bring it to the standard of the latter. This occasioned M. Voiture to apply it to the epigram of Martial upon a barber, who was so slow in his operation, that the hair began to grow on the first half of the face, before he had trimmed the other. TUBAL.

SLINGS.-The Romans distributed slingers in their armies, procuring the most expert marksmen from the Belearic islands (Majorca and Minorca). Diodorus Siculus relates, that in besieging a town, these slingers wounded and drove the garrison from the walls, throwing with such exactness, as rarely to miss their mark: this dexterity they acquired by constant exercise, being trained to it from their infancy: their mothers placed their daily food upon the top of a pole, and gave them no more than they beat down with stones from their slings. In later times, the peasants of Britany, taking part with the English in a battle fought in that province, between some English troops and the army of Louis d'Espagne, effected the overthrow of the latter, by assaulting them unexpectedly with bullets and slings. Vide FROISSART, voli. c. 85, p. 304.

a sentence as a person coming underthe meaning of the word may generally address himself with. The term is Mendicant; and the sentence arising from its division, MEND-I-CANT; which most of them may too truly assert.

By adding an I after the letter E, in the word Jackanapes, we have again a complete sentence, expressive of the meaning of the term, viz. JACK-AN-APE-IS; which we believe to be the actual derivation of that word. LE CLAIR.

QUEER COURtship. The New Hollanders observe no particular ceremony in their marriages, though their mode of courtship is not without its singularity. When a young man sees a female to his fancy, he informs her she must accompany him home; the lady refuses, but he enforces compliance, not only with threats, BUT BLOWS: the gallant, according to custom, never fails to gain the victory, and bears off the willing, though struggling pugilist. The first colonists for some time entertained the idea that the women were compelled and forced away against their consent; but the young ladies informed them, that this mode of gallantry was the custom, and perfectly to their taste.

TO CORRESPONDENTS. D. is quite right as to the signature, which is strikingly inappropriate to so tragical a history, but the point is of no moment: "Nature" is safe, and will ap pear in due season. More unpaid let

ters

have been returned this week:Why will correspondents thus waste the postman's time as well as their own, after our repeated intimations that such communications are invariably refused?

ERRATA. P. 19, col. 1, line 31, read "middle aisle :”—p. 21, col. 1,1. 1, read "early hour"---line 3, read secrete himself:"-col 2. line 2, read "Roues de Cour"-p. 23, col. 2, line 26 dele "a.”

LONDON---Printed and Published by T. Wallis, Camden Town: and also l'ablished by J. Harris, Dow

round; afterwards it assumed an oval form; and the part opposite the direction in which it was moving, seemed to project a little, and terminate in a kind of tail; on each side of which were two or three smaller balls, tinged at their extremities with yellow and orange colours, and one or two with purple (A B). The whole body then continued to move forward, without any sensible alteration, till within about a second of its disappearance, when it suddenly transformed its figure to something like the shape of an egg, shooting forth a vivid blaze of light, and several brilliant stars (fig. 2). At this moment its glare became so intense, that the eye could scarcely bear to look at it: it seemed as if its external coat had burst, and exposed a bright interior, far surpassing its previous lustre.

In two minutes after its departure, a noise was heard, like distant thunder, which 'gradually became fainter and fainter, till it was no longer audible. The sound seemed to proceed from the quarter of the heavens in which the meteor had disappeared, and lasted about eighty seconds. The phenomenon, as it moved along, in its general aspect, resembled a magnificent sky-rocket.

This account, and the illustrative cuts, we have borrowed from the Monthly Magazine" for February, 1804.

66

MEMNON'S HEAD.

FEW persons who have visited that national receptacle for the rarities of nature and art, the British Museum, can have failed to notice this most curious specimen of ancient sculpture, which forms a prominent object in the room on the ground-floor containing Egyptian antiquities. Every one must behold so celebrated a figure with feelings of deep interest, but more particularly after reading Belzoru's narrative of its transportation to England, and the almost insur mountable difficulties he encountered in removing it from the sandy bed,

where it had lain untraced in majestic solitude for more than two thousand

years. The subjoined history of the statue shall therefore be followed up next week by the narrative in question.

This gigantic figure is formed of very hard granite, and lay for ages in a mutilated state among the ruins of Thebes in Egypt. Diodorus Siculus asserts that it was intended to represent the famous Egyptian King Ozymandias, who flourished about the time of Semiramis; and Strabo says that it was in his time called Ismandes; but writers in general give it the name of Memnon. The colossal figure, one of the feet of which was seven cubits long, originally represented, according to Philostratus, a young man, whose face was turned towards the east, and when the first solar rays fell upon it, it was said to speak, or utter harmonious sounds. Strabo says that he and some friends witnessed this phenomenon, which must be attributed either to some peculiar quality of the stone from which the figure was formed, or an imposture of the priests. Kircher, adopting the latter solution of the mystery, supposes that a kind of harpsichord was concealed within the body, the strings of which being first slacked by the moisture of the nightair, and then distended by the heat of the sun, broke with a noise resembling that of the string of a violin when snapped in two. This conjecture, we confess, does not appear to us to possess much probability. Cambyses, who invaded Egypt about 2300 years ago, being determined to discover whether any trick was practised, commanded the statue to be demolished, from the head to the middle of the body; but it does not appear that any discovery resulted from this violent procedure. Of the fact, however, that the figure uttered sounds, there can be no doubt, nor that it was caused by some contrivance of the priests; but how it was managed, must ever remain a matter of mere conjecture.-(Resumed at p. 50.)