grandchildren. The second instance was even more wonderful. It represents Lady Temple of Stow, as dying in 1656, having given birth to four sons and nine daughters, and lived to see seven hundred descendants.

In as far as life itself goes in some instances considerably beyond an average or a rule, so does it happen that men occasionally hold office or practise a profession for an abnormally long time. Hearne takes notice of a clergyman, named Blower, who died in 1643, vicar of WhiteWaltham, which office he had held for sixty-seven years, though it was not his first cure. It was said he never preached but one sermon in his life, which was before Queen Elizabeth. Going after this discourse to pay his reverence to her Majesty, he first called her My Royal Queen, and afterwards My Noble Queen ; upon which Elizabeth smartly said, "What! am I ten groats worse than I was ?" Blower was so mortified by this good-natured joke, that he vowed to stick to the homilies for the future.'†

The late Earl of Aberdeen had enjoyed the honours of his family for the extraordinary period of sixty years, —a fact not unexampled, however, in the Scottish peerage, as Alexander, ninth Earl of Caithness, who died in 1765, had been peer for an equal time, and Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, was duke for seventy-five years, namely from 1752 to 1827. It is perhaps even more remarkable that for the Gordon dukedom, granted in 1684, there were but four possessors in a hundred and forty-three years, and for the Aberdeen earldom, granted in 1682, there were but four possessors in a hundred and seventyeight years! In connection with these particulars, we may advert to the long reign of Louis XIV. of France-seventy-two years.

Odd matrimonial connections are not infrequent. For example, a man will marry the niece of his son's wife. Even to marry a grandmother, though both ridiculous and illegal, is not unexampled (the female, however, being not a blood relation).

'Dr Bowles, doctor of divinity, married the daughter of Dr Samford, doctor of physic, and, vice versa, Dr Samford the daughter of Dr

In the Topographer and Genealogist, edited by John Gough Nichols (1846), vol. i., is given an enumeration of the progeny of Mary Honeywood, shewing how eleven of her children had each a considerable family, three as many as eleven, one twelve, and two thirteen, children; the eldest grandchild having twenty, &c. The Dean of Lincoln, one of the grandsons, used to relate that he was present at a dinner given by the old lady to a family party of two hundred of her descendants. She died in 1620, aged ninety-three, having outlived her marriage seventy-seven years.

Hearne found, in the register of White-Waltham, the figure of the key of the west door of the church, which Blower had there delineated, in accordance with a custom which had in view to prevent any alteration being made in the key. Formerly, the bishop of the diocese used to deliver the keys of a church in a formal manner to the ostiarii, or doorkeepers, the deacons at the same time delivering the doors; latterly the minister performed these formalities, always taking a sketch of the keys in the parish registers, so that, in case of their being lost or unwarrantably altered, they might have them restored.Leland's Itinerary, v. 153

THE RACE-HORSE ECLIPSE.

Bowles; whereupon the two women might say, These are our fathers, our sons, and our husbands.'-Arch. Usher's MSS. Collections, quoted in Reliquia Hearnianæ, i. 124.

The rule in matrimonial life where no quarrel has taken place is to continue living together. Yet we know that in this respect there are strange eccentricities. From the biography of our almost divine Shakspeare, it has been inferred that, on going to push his fortune in London, he left his Anne Hathaway (who was eight years his senior) at Stratford, where she remained during the sixteen or seventeen years which he spent as a player and play-writer in the metropolis; and it also appears that, by and by returning there as a man of gentlemanly means, he resumed living with Mrs Shakspeare, as if no sort of alienation had ever taken place between them. There is even a more curious, and, as it happens, a more clear case, than this, in the biography of the celebrated painter, George Romney. He, it will be remembered, was of peasant birth in Lancashire. In 1762, after being wedded for eight years to a virtuous young woman, he quitted his home in the north to try his fortune as an artist in London, leaving his wife behind him. There was no quarrel-he supplied her with ample means of support for herself and her two children out of the large income he realized by his profession; but it was not till thirty-seven years had passed, namely, in 1799, when he was sixty-five, and broken in health, that the truant husband returned home to resume living with his spouse. It is creditable to the lady, that she was as kind to her husband as if he had never left her; and Romney, for the three or four years of the remainder of his life, was as happy in her society as ill health would permit. It is a mystery which none of the great painter's biographers, though one of them was his son, have been able to clear up.

LINES ON THE GRAVE OF JACKSON THE PUGILIST,

In the West London and Westminster Cemetery.

Stay, Traveller,' the Roman record said,

To mark the classic dust beneath it laid; 'Stay, Traveller,' this brief memorial cries, And read the moral with attentive eyes : Hast thou a lion's heart, a giant's strength, Exult not, for these gifts must yield at length; Do health and symmetry adorn thy frame, The mouldering bones below possessed the same; Does love, does friendship, every step attend, This man ne'er made a foe, nor lost a friend; But death full soon dissolves all human ties, And, his last combat o'er, here Jackson lies.

THE RACE-HORSE ECLIPSE.

On the 28th of February 1789, died at Canons, in Middlesex, the celebrated horse Eclipse, at the advanced age of twenty-five. The animal had received his name from being born during an eclipse, and it became curiously significant and appropriate when, in mature life, he was found to surpass all contemporary horses in speed. He was bred by the Duke of Cumberland, younger brother of George III., and afterwards became the property of Dennis O'Kelly, Esq., a gentleman of large fortune, who died in December

1787, bequeathing this favourite horse and another, along with all his brood mares, to his brother Philip, in whose possession the subject of this memoir came to his end. For many years, Eclipse lived in retirement from the turf, but in another way a source of large income to his master, at Clay Hill, near Epsom, whither many curious strangers resorted to see him. They used to learn with surprise, -for the practice was not common then, as it is now,-that the life of Eclipse was insured for some thousands of pounds. When, after the death of Dennis O'Kelly, it became necessary to remove Eclipse to Canons, the poor beast was so worn out that a carriage had to be constructed to carry him. The secret of his immense success in racing was revealed after death in the unusual size of his heart, which weighed thirteen pounds.

FEBRUARY 29.

ARCHBISHOP WHITGIFT.

times the other at will, until, gained over by the superior holiness which Oswald's clergy appeared to display, they gradually deserted the old church, and the married canons found themselves obliged to yield.

In 972, Oswald was, through Dunstan's interest, raised to the archbishopric of York, and Dunstan, fearing for the interests of monachism in Mercia, where Oswald had still made no great progress, insisted on his retaining the bishopric of Worcester along with the archiepiscopacy. The triumph of Dunstan's craftiness as well as talents in the conference at Calne, in 978, finally turned the scale against the old Anglo-Saxon clergy; and soon after that event Oswald succeeded in turning the clergy (who, according to the phraseology of the old writers of his party, preferred their wives to the church') from most of the principal churches in the diocese of Worcester, and substituting monks in their places. In 986,

ST OSWALD.

Oswald was an Anglo-Saxon prelate who was rewarded with the honour of canonization for the zeal with which he had assisted Dunstan and Odo in revolutionizing the Anglo-Saxon church, and substituting the strict monachism of the Benedictines for the old genial married clergy; or, in other words, reducing the Church of England to a complete subjection to Rome. Oswald was Odo's nephew, and was, like him, descended from Danish parents, and having at an early age distinguished himself by his progress in learning, was called to Canterbury by his uncle, Archbishop Odo, who made him a canon of the Old Minster there. He had already, however, begun to display his passion for monachism, and became so dissatisfied with the manners of the married clergy of Canterbury, that he left England to enter the abbey of Fleury in France, which was then celebrated for the severity of its discipline; yet even there Oswald became celebrated for the strictness of his life. Archbishop Odo died in 961, and, as he felt his health declining, he sent for his nephew, who arrived only in time to hear of his death. He returned to Fleury, but was finally persuaded to come back to England with his kinsman Oskitel, Archbishop of York, who was on his way from Rome with his pallium. On their arrival in England they found Dunstan just elected to the see of Canterbury; and that celebrated prelate, fearful that the see of Worcester, which he had previously held, should fall into the hands of a bishop not sufficiently devoted to the cause of monachism, persuaded Oswald to accept it. The new bishop, in fact, found plenty to do at Worcester, for Dunstan himself had not been able to dislodge the married canons from the church, and they offered an equally resolute resistance to his successor. Having struggled for some time in vain, Oswald gave up the contest, left the church and the canons, and built a new church and monastery near it, within the same churchyard, which he dedicated to the Virgin Mary; he also established there a colony of monks from Fleury. The people, we are told, attended sometimes one church and some

on land which he had obtained from the gift of Earl Aylwin; and he here established a school, which became one of the most celebrated seats of learning in England during the latter part of the tenth century, under the direction of the learned Abbo, one of the foreign monks whom Oswald had brought hither from Fleury. Oswald's favourite residence appears to have been at Worcester, where his humility and charity were celebrated. It was only towards the close of his life that he finally triumphed over the secular clergy of the old church of St Peter, and from that time his new church of St Mary superseded it and became the cathedral of the diocese. He was present to consecrate the church of Ramsey on the 8th of November 991, and, after some stay there, returned to Worcester, where, in the middle of his duties, he was seized with a disease which carried him off very suddenly, and he was buried in his church of St Mary. Oswald died on the day before the kalends of March, that is, on the last day of the previous month; and he is the only saint who takes his place in the calendar for that day.

Born.-Edward Cave, printer, 1692, Newton, Warwick; Gioacchino Rossini, 1792, Pesaro.

Died.-St Barbas, bishop of Benevento, 684; Archbishop John Whitgift, 1603-4, Croydon; John Landseer, engraver, 1852.

ARCHBISHOP WHITGIFT.-HIS

6

CROYDON.

HOSPITAL AT

Whitgift, one of the worthiest men that ever the English hierarchy did enjoy,' was the third primate of the Protestant Church of England after the Reformation, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, upon whose death the Archbishop was afraid lest King James should make alterations in the government and Liturgy of the church; and his death was accelerated by this anxiety. He took a prominent part in explaining and defending before the King the doctrines and practices of the church, and was at the head of the Commission appointed for printing a uniform translation of the Bible, but he did not live to assist in its execution. He caught cold while sailing to Fulham in his barge; and on the

following Sunday, after a long interview with the King, was seized with a fit, which ended in an attack of palsy and loss of speech. The King visited him at Lambeth, and told him that he would pray for his life; and if he could obtain it, he should think it one of the greatest temporal blessings that could be given him in this kingdom.' He died on the 29th of February, in the seventy-third year of his age, and was buried in the parish church of Croydon, on the second day after his death; his funeral was solemnized on the 27th of March, in a manner suitable to the splendour in which he had lived.

The Archbishop always took a lively interest in the management of public charities, and he left several instances of his munificence. He built and endowed, entirely from his own revenues, a hospital, free-school, and chapel, at Croydon, which he completed during his own lifetime. He commenced building the hospital on the 14th of February 1596, and finished it within three years. It is a brick edifice, in the Elizabethan style, at the entrance of the town from London: over the entrance are the armorial bearings of the see of Canterbury, and this inscription: QVI DAT PAVPERI NON INDIGEBIT.' The original yearly revenue was only £185,4s. 2d.; but, by improved rents and sundry benefactions, it now exceeds £2000 per annum. Each poor brother and sister is to receive £5 per annum, besides wood, corn, and other provisions. Amongst the crimes to be punished by expulsion, are obstinate heresye, sorcerye, any kind of charmynge, or witchcrafte.' In the chapel is a portrait of the Archbishop, painted on board; and an outline delineation of Death, as a skeleton and gravedigger. Among the documents are the patent granted to the founder, with a drawing of Queen Elizabeth, on vellum; and on the Archbishop's deed of foundation is a drawing of himself, very beautifully executed. In the hall, where the brethren dine together three times yearly, is a folio Bible, in black letter, with wooden covers, mounted with brass; it has Cranmer's prefaces, and was printed in 1596. Here also, formerly, were three ancient wooden goblets, one of which was inscribed :

'What, sirrah! hold thy pease! Thirst satisfied, cease.'

END OF LA BELLE JENNINGS.'

At

29th February, 1730, in a small private nunnery of Poor Clares, in King-street, Dublin, an aged lady was found in the morning, fallen out of bed, stiff with cold, and beyond recovery. The person who died in this obscure and miserable manner had once been the very prime lady of the land, the mistress of Dublin Castle, where she had received a monarch as her guest. an early period of her life, she had been one of the loveliest figures in the gay and luxurious court of Charles II. She was, in short, the person celebrated as La Belle Jennings, and latterly the wife of that Duke of Tyrconnel who nearly recovered Ireland for King James II. She entered life soon after the Restoration, as maid of honour to the Duchess of York, and in that position had conducted herself with a pro

JOHN DUNS SCOTUS.

priety all the more commendable that it was in her time and place almost unique. As wife of the Duke of Tyrconnel, during his rule in Dublin in 1689-90, her conduct appears to have been as dignified, as it had formerly been pure. It is presented in a striking light in Mrs Jameson's account of what happened after the battle of the Boyne-'where fifteen Talbots of Tyrconnel's family were slain, and he himself fought like a hero of romance.' 'After that memorable defeat,' says our authoress, King James and Tyrconnel reached Dublin on the evening of the same day. The Duchess, who had been left in the Castle, had passed four-and-twenty hours in all the agonies of suspense; but when the worst was known, she showed that the spirit and strength of mind which distinguished her in her early days was not all extinguished. When the King and her husband arrived as fugitives from the lost battle, on which her fortunes and her hopes had depended, harassed, faint, and so covered with mud, that their persons could scarcely be distinguished, she, hearing of their plight, assembled all her household in state, dressed herself richly, and received the fugitive King and his dispirited friends with all the splendour of court etiquette. Advancing to the head of the grand staircase with all her attendants, she kneeled on one knee, congratulated him on his safety, and invited him to a banquet, respectfully inquiring what refreshment he would be pleased to take at the moment. James answered sadly that he had but little stomach for supper, considering the sorry breakfast he had made that morning. She, however, led the way to a banquet already prepared; and did the honours with as much self-possession and dignity as Lady Macbeth, though racked at the moment with equal terror and anxiety.'*

JOHN DUNS SCOTUS.

It is a pity that such obscurity rests on the personal history of this light of the middle ages. He was an innovator upon the stereotyped ideas of his age, and got accordingly a dubious reputation among formalists. If he had been solely the author of the following sentence-Authority springs from reason, not reason from authority-true reason needs not be confirmed by any authority'-it would have been worth while for Scotland to contend for the honour of having given him birth.

to the school of

He

there was a liberal rule that the boys should have an School Exercise.-In several old grammar-schools hour from three till four for their drinkings. Sometimes the schoolmaster, for want of occupation, employed himself oddly enough. One day a visitor observing some deep-coloured stains upon the oaken floor, inquired the cause. was told that they were occasioned by the leakage of a butt of Madeira, which the master of the grammar school, who had grown lusty, not having had for some time any scholar who might afford him the opportunity of taking exercise, employed himself upon a rainy day in rolling up and down the schoolroom for the purpose of ripening the wine, and keeping himself in good

condition.

* Memoirs of the Beauties of the Court of Charles II., vol. ii. p. 223.

SPENSER.

hands and the figures that were scarcely visible two hours later a few weeks ago.

The streams now hurry along with a rapid motion, as if they had no time to dally with, and play round the impeding pebbles, but were eager to rush along the green meadow-lands, to tell the flowers it is time to awaken. We hear the cottagers greeting each other with kind 'Good morning,' across the paled garden-fences in the sunrise, and talking about the healthy look of the up-coming peas, and the promise in a few days of a dish of early spinach. Under the old oak, surrounded with rustic seats, they congregate on the village-green, in the mild March evenings,

and talk about the forward spring, and how they have battled through the long hard winter, and, looking towards the green churchyard, speak in low voices of those who have been borne thither to sleep out their long sleep since last primrosetime,' and they thank God that they are still alive and well, and are grateful for the fine weather it has pleased Him to send them at last.'

Now rustic figures move across the landscape, and give a picturesque life to the scenery. You see the ploughboy returning from his labour, seated sideways on one of his horses, humming a line or two of some love-lorn ditty, and when his memory fails to supply the words, whistling the remainder of the tune. The butcher-boy rattles merrily by in his blue-coat, throwing a saucy word to every one he passes; and if he thinks at all of the pretty lambs that are bleating in his cart, it is only about how much they will weigh when they are killed. The old woman moves slowly along in her red cloak, with basket on arm, on her way to supply her customers with new-laid eggs. So the figures move over the brown winding roads between the budding hedges in red, blue, and grey, such as a painter loves to seize upon to give light, and colour, to his landscape. A few weeks ago those roads seemed uninhabited.

The early-yeaned lambs have now become strong, and may be seen playing with one another, their chief amusement being that of racing, as if they knew what heavy weights their little legs will have to bear when their feeders begin to lay as much mutton on their backs as they can well walk under-so enjoy the lightness of their young lean days. There is no cry so childlike as that of a lamb that has lost its dam, and how eagerly it sets off at the first bleat the ewe gives: in an instant it recognises that sound from all the rest, while to our ears that of the whole flock sounds alike. Dumb animals we may call them, but all of them have a language which they understand; they give utterance to their feelings of joy, love, and pain, and when in distress call for help, and, as we have witnessed, hurry to the aid of one another. The osier-peelers are now busy at work in the osier-holts; it is almost the first out-of-door employment the poor people find in spring, and very pleasant it is to see the white-peeled willows lying about to dry on the young grass, though it is cold work by a windy river side for the poor women and children on a bleak March day. As soon as the sap rises, the bark-peelers commence stripping the trees in the woods, and we know but few country smells that equal the aroma of the piled-up bark. But the trees have a strange ghastly look after they are stripped-unless they are at once removed-standing like bleached skeletons when the foliage hangs on the surrounding branches. The rumbling wagon is a pretty sight moving through the wood, between openings of the trees, piled high with bark, where wheel never passes, excepting on such occasions, or when the timber is removed. The great ground-bee, that seems to have no hive, goes blundering by, then alights on some green patch of grass in the underwood, though what he finds there to feed upon is a puzzle to you, even

if you kneel down beside him, is we have done, and watch ever so narrowly.

How beautiful the cloud and sunshine seem chasing each other over the tender grass! You see the patch of daisies shadowed for a few moments, then the sunshine sweeps over them, and all their silver frills seem suddenly touched with gold, which the wind sets in motion. Our forefathers well named this month March manyweathers,' and said that it came in like a lion, and went out like a lamb,' for it is made up of sunshine and cloud, shower and storm, often causing the horn-fisted ploughman to beat his hands across his chest in the morning to warm them, and before noon compelling him to throw off his smock-frock and sleeved waistcoat, and wipe the perspiration from his forehead with his shirt sleeve, as he stands between the ploughstilts at the end of the newly-made furrow. Still we can now plant our foot upon nine daisies,' and not until that can be done do the old-fashioned country people believe that spring is really come. We have seen a grey-haired grandsire do this, and smile as he called to his old dame to count the daisies, and see that his foot fairly covered the proper number.

Ants now begin to run across our paths, and sometimes during a walk in the country you may chance to stumble upon the nest of the wood-ant. At a first glance it looks like a large heap of litter, where dead leaves and short withered grass have been thrown lightly down upon the earth; perhaps at the moment there is no sign of life about it, beyond a straggler or two at the base of the mound. Thrust in the point of your stick, and all the ground will be alive in a moment; nothing but a mass of moving ants will be seen where you have probed. Nor will it do to stay too long, for they will be under your trousers and up your boots, and you will soon feel as if scores of red-hot needles were run into you, for they wound sharply. If you want the clean skeleton of a mouse, bird, or any other small animal, throw it on the nest of the woodant, and on the following day you will find every bone as bare and clean as if it had been scraped. Snakes may now be seen basking in some sunny spot, generally near a water-course, for they are beautiful swimmers and fond of water. They have slept away the winter under the dead leaves, or among the roots, and in the holes of trees, or wherever they could find shelter. In ponds and ditches may also be seen thousands of roundheaded long-tailed tadpoles, which, if not devoured, will soon become nimble young frogs, when they have a little better chance of escaping the jaws of fishes and wildfowl, for no end of birds, fishes, reptiles, and quadrupeds feed on them. Only a few weeks ago the frogs were in a torpid state, and sunk like stones beneath the mud. Since then they left those black spots, which may be seen floating in a jellied mass on the water, and soon from this spawn the myriads of lively tadpoles we now see sprang into life. Experienced gardeners never drive frogs out of their grounds, as they are great destroyers of slugs, which seem to be their favourite food. Amongst the tadpoles the water-rat may now be seen swimming about and nibbling at some leaf,