among others to Dr Carr, now Bishop of Worcester; he had received it for a year and a half, when the proprietors sent in the account. The Bp called at the Office, when J. H. H. was there; the Bp said that he should not pay for the paper, he had never ordered it, and would not be diddled and humbugged; they observed that he had received the paper regularly, had never counterordered it, and could not expect to be allowed to have it so long for nothing. This same Bishop's daughter died at Leamingon, and was left to be buried by strangers; he refused to pay the undertaker's demand as extravagant; the latter brought an action and obtained a verdict.

CCLXXXI. TITHES IN FRANCE AND IN ENGLAND.

Arthur Young, in his Travels in France, wrote thus. "In regard to the oppression of the clergy as to tithes, I must do that body a justice, to which a claim cannot be laid in England. Though the ecclesiastical tenth was levied in France more severely than usual in Italy, yet was it never exacted with such horrid greediness as is at present the disgrace of England. When taken in kind, no such thing was known. in any part of France, where I made inquiries, as a tenth: it was always a twelfth, or a thirteenth, or even a twentieth of the produce. And in no part of the kingdom did a new article of culture pay any thing; thus, turnips, cabbages, clover, chicoree, potatoes, &c. &c. paid nothing. In many parts meadows were exempt: silkworms nothing; olives in some places paid, in more they did not; cows nothing; lambs, from the 12th to the 21st; wool nothing. Such mildness in the levy of this odious tax is absolutely unknown in England."

VIRGIL seems to have made the mirmillo the same with the secutor, and thus all the comments explain him: yet LIPSIUS contends that the mirmillones were a distinct order, who fought completely armed, and therefore he believes them to have been the crupellarii of TACITUS, so called from some old GALLIC word, expressing that they could only creep under the pressure of their armour. A principal part of the choicest gladiators were THRACIANS, that nation having the general repute of fierceness and cruelty beyond the rest of the world; the particular weapon they used, was the sica or faulchion, and the defence consisted in a parma, or small round shield proper to their country.

CCLXXXIV. FOOL-HARDY.

A parson, who had quarrelled with a Mr Hardy, his neighbour, turned upon him the following Sunday, and gave out as his text "There is no fool like the fool-Hardy."

CCLXXXV. THE DOG AND SERJEANT.

A serjeant ran his halberd through a dog which had attacked him. The angry owner said he might as well have used the butt end. "So I would," said the Sergeant, "if the dog had run at me with his tail."

CCLXXXVI. Malta Buonaparte, &c.

THE FLEET, March 26, 1838. BUONAPARTE took Malta on his way to Egypt, as Mr Chambers considers, by treachery of the knights of Malta; one of them, Baron Hompesch, asked Mr Chambers to discount some bills given by Buonaparte on that occasion. MR C. said that he would, if he could shew to him how he could arrest Buonaparte in case of non-payment.

CCLXXXVII. Original letter from Germany.

Strasbourg, Hotel de la ville de Paris, Ap. 2, 1838.

My dear Mr Barker,

You have doubtless long before this classed me among the "loose fish" of your acquaintance, and not without apparent reason. I am not certain, that I have any very good defence, for, although I am now sitting in a room in a hotel, in the midst of a city much renowned for its cathedral, and its clock, but still more for its pates de foie gras, yet by "holy Paul "it is not easy to say how or why I am here. I will however, narrate a plain unvarnished tale.

On the 9th of last month, H........, a gentleman of the name of Thompson, a surgeon H. E. I. C., and myself left Paris for Lille, on our way to Holland through Belgium. By slow journeys, seeing every-where all that was to be seen, we reached Brussels, remained there a few days, went from thence by the railway to Antwerp, with which town, although it is now too large for the number of inhabitants it contains, I was perfectly delighted. I there learnt the complete distinction that exists between the Dutch and the Flemish painters; and with reverence visited the scene of, and traced out the glories of old General Chassé, who, to the disgrace of the obstinate old king of Holland, now languishes, or I should say frets, in disgrace at Bergen-op-Zoom. From what I saw of Belgium, I am con

vinced that its existence, as a kingdom, is merely temporary, and that the termination of the first general war will see its apportionment between France, Prussia and Holland. The fact is that the people of Belgium, who are to be distinguished from the inhabitants of Brussels, and the other large towns, that warmly participated in the late change, the former being the descendants of the Flemings, the latter almost entirely of French extraction had no share in the revolution, and although they disliked the connection with Holland, yet they still more dislike being compelled to keep up an immense standing army in time of peace, from which they derive no advantage. The influence, which their priests have over them, prevents their expressing their opinions in strong terms. The clergy, to a man, detest William and a union with Holland; their bigotry is extreme.

At Antwerp we lodged in a hotel, which, in the days of that city's former glory, had been the Goldsmiths' Hall, and which is still preserved in its ancient condition. Our bed-room was formerly the Hall of Audience, and contained paintings and curiosities, for which our host had refused £500. The character of Boniface in the Beaux Stratagem was the exact counterpart of the landlord at Antwerp: his attention was as great as his hospitality was unbounded his first words, in the morning, were a hope that his dinner of the preceding day had not caused indigestion. "Come, come," said he one morning to H., as he was loitering over the table, " dont spoil my breakfast by your delay." There was a secret in the management of his hotel, which it is impossible to teach English inn-keepers,— low charges.

:

Finding the delay in procuring permission from the Hague, to enter Holland through Belgium, would add much to the expense of our journey, we determined to proceed thither by way of Prussia. We went from Antwerp to Tirlemont by a railway, upwards of fifty miles, for less than 1s. 6d., and from Tirlemont proceeded to Liege, a fine venerable old town, still important, and tolerably flourishing from its iron-works. Aix

la-chapelle was the first town that had the honour of receiving us in his Prussian majesty's dominions; the principal objects to be seen in which, are the veritable coronation-chair of Charlemagne, and the damage the French did, during the late war, to the cathedral: several beautiful columns are still lying in it, which they cut down, and proposed taking to Paris. No wonder the Germans hate the French: the marks of their devastations every-where disfigure the face of the country.

Cologne, in which Coleridge says that he discovered 70 distinct smells, but in which I saw nothing that was not sweet and clean, was the next city we visited, from which we intended to have gone down the Rhine to Rotterdam. Fortune, however, had ordained that our route was not to be down but up the Rhine. At the hotel, in which we stayed in Cologne, we had the good fortune to meet with another English traveller, Captain Walker of the Lancers, brother to the M. P. for the town of Wexford, to whom German and Germany were as familiar as his native country and brogue; and, by his recommendation, and in his company, we determined to ascend the Rhine as far as Mannheim, and then to return to Cologne, and proceed to Holland. Accordingly we left our "sticks and coin" at the hotel in Cologne: hence the source of unutterable grief. Our first day's passage in the steam-boat brought us to Coblentz, where we staid a day, and visited the celebrated Prussian fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, of the strength of which the duke of Wellington is reported to have said, that, when it was attacked, the commanding officer had only to conduct his antagonist over it, and so save him further trouble. The French, when in possession of Coblentz, in the beginning of 1812, erected in the Grande Place a column, on which they inscribed

1812. To commemorate the Russian campaign.

When the allied forces, in 1814, drove the French across the Rhine, the Russian general saw the column, and instead of destroying it, coolly added to the previous inscription