Having made a trip to Ireland, he was asked on his return what impression was made on him by the Irish peasantry; and replied, they gave him great satisfaction, as they settled a question which had long agitated his own mind: and that was, What became of the cast-off clothes of the English beggars?-Chambers Book of Days.

HOW TO INSURE LONG LIFE.

ARNOLD DE VILLENEUVE, who flourished in the thirteenth century, is said, according to Dr. Mackay, to have left the following receipt for insuring a length of years considerably surpassing the period which is generally supposed to be green old age. The person wishing to prolong his life almost indefinitely must rub himself well two or three times a week with the juice or marrow of cassia. Every night on going to bed he must put on his head a plaster composed of a certain quantity of oriental saffron, red rose leaves, sandal wood, aloes, and amber liquefied in oil of roses, and the best white wax. In the morn

ing he must take it off and inclose it carefully in a leaden box till the next night, when it must be again applied. If he be of a sanguine temperament, he is to take sixteen chickens; if phlegmatic, twentyfive; and if melancholy, thirty: these he is to put in a yard where the air and water are pure. Upon these he is to feed, eating one a day. But these chickens have to be fattened by a peculiar method, which will impregnate their flesh with the qualities that are to produce longevity to the eater: for, being deprived of all other nourishment till they are almost dying of hunger, they are to be fed upon broth made of serpents and vinegar, thickened with wheat and bran. After two months of such diet, they will be fit for the intending Methuselah's table, and are to be washed down with good hock or claret. Fancy living for a few centuries on eternal chickens! Possibly the serpents and vinegar might render that domestic fowl palatable for fifty years or so, but surely it would produce a most unhealthy manner in time. Besides, the experimentalist would have to catch his serpents, and a single bite might interfere unpleasantly with the theory. On the whole, I am inclined to think that we do pretty well as we are; and if we desire to live reasonably long, we shall achieve our end by the simpler rules of common sense.-" Free Lance" in London Society.

A COLLECTOR OF CORKS.

Nor very long ago, a poverty-stricken old man drew his last breath in a miserable attic in Paris, who left little else behind him save a heap of corks, souvenirs of long past—

"Reckless days and reckless nights,

Unholy songs, and tipsy fights;"

for he had been rich and gay once upon a time, and might have sung with Captain Morris

"In life I've rung all changes through,

Run every pleasure down!"

It had been a life-long custom with him to preserve every cork drawn for the delectation of himself and his friends, and inscribe upon it the date of drawing and the particular occasion upon which the bottle was opened; so his cupboard of corks was actually a record of his life. Upon a champagne cork was written: "Bottle emptied 12th May, 1843, with M. B- who wished to interest me in a business by which I was to make ten millions. This affair cost me fifty thousand francs. M. B escaped to Belgium-a caution to amateurs!" Upon another was written: Cork of Cyprus wine; of a bottle emptied on the 4th of December, 1850, with a dozen fast friends. Of these I have not found one to help me in the day of my ruin their names are annexed below."

66

AN ENTHUSIASTIC NATURALIST.

AN accident which happened to two hundred of my original drawings nearly put a stop to my researches in ornithology. I shall relate it, merely to show how far enthusiasm (for by no other name can I call the persevering zeal with which I laboured) may enable the observer of nature to surmount the most disheartening obstacles. I left the village of Henderson in Kentucky, situated on the bank of the Ohio, where I resided several years, to proceed to Philadelphia on business. I looked to all my drawings before my departure, placed them carefully in a wooden box, and gave them in charge to a relative, with instructions to see that no injury should happen to them. My absence was of several months; and when I returned, after having enjoyed the pleasures of home for a few days, I inquired after my box, and what I was pleased to call my treasure. The box was produced and opened, but-reader, feel for me!-a pair of Norway rats had taken possession of the whole, and had reared a young family amongst the gnawed bits of paper which, but a few months before, represented nearly a thousand inhabitants of air! The burning heat which instantly rushed through my brain was too great to be endured without affecting my whole nervous system. I slept not for several nights, and the days and nights passed like days of oblivion, until, the animal power being recalled into action through the strength of my constitution, I took up my gun, my note-book, and my pencils, and went forth to the woods as gaily as if nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I might now make much better drawings than before, and ere a period not exceeding three years had elapsed, I had my portfolio filled again. -Audubon's American Ornithology.

"PASSING RICH ON EIGHTEEN POUNDS A YEAR." A CLERGYMAN of the name of Matheson was minister of Patterdale, in Westmoreland, sixty years, and died lately at the age of ninety. During the early part of his life his benefice only brought him twelvę

pounds a year; it was afterwards increased (perhaps by Queen Anne's Bounty) to eighteen, which it never exceeded. On this income he married, brought up four children, and lived comfortably with his neighbours, educated a son at the university, and left upwards of one thousand pounds behind him. With that singular simplicity and inattention to forms which characterize a country life, he himself read the burial service over his mother, he married his father to a second wife, and afterwards buried him also. He published his own banns of marriage in the church, with a woman whom he had formerly christened, and he himself married all his four children.-European Magazine, 1814.

'JOANNA SOUTHCOTT.

POPULAR credulity in the most preposterous pretensions of religious impostors or fanatics is strikingly exemplified in the case of Joanna Southcott, whose followers at the beginning of the present century are said to have numbered over one hundred thousand,-most of whom, however, were of the ignorant classes. This woman is supposed to have been born of humble parentage, about 1750, and she was for many years a domestic servant at Exeter. When about forty years of age she seems to have commenced her career as a "prophetess," and boldly declared herself to be the woman mentioned in the twelfth chapter of Revelation. Though very illiterate, she scribbled a vast quantity of rubbish, which she called prophecies and fulfilments of prophecy, and drove a thriving trade in the sale of "seals," or sealed packets, at half a guinea each, which were to secure eternal salvation to the fortunate possessor; and as her followers continued to increase, she predicted that she was to become pregnant in the same miraculous manner as the Virgin Mary, and this was to take place in her sixty-fifth year. What lent some colour to this extraordinary "prophecy," was the circumstance that after she had passed her grand climacteric, her person did really exhibit apparent symptoms of pregnancy. Her "Books of Wonders" were freely advertised in the newspapers of the day, as will be seen from the following advertisement taken from a morning newspaper published in 1814 :—

"The Coming of Shiloh.—In a third Book of Wonders is announced, that Shiloh will be born this year, who is to gather the Jews, Gen. xlix. 10; and that all may bless the day the child is born, that do not treat the babe with scorn. That Shiloh is the branch mentioned by Isaiah in the eleventh chapter: ‘A branch shall grow out of his roots;' and by Zech. vi. 12: Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH ; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord: and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne,' etc. And it is said that Joanna Southcott will, in the sixty-fifth year of her age (which is this year), conceive and bring forth this child in the same marvellous manner that the Virgin Mary did the Child Jesus; and that, by the fulfilment of this prophecy, the truth of her mission and the truth of the gospel will be proved. In this book is strong argu

ment from Scripture and reason, calculated to remove the differences between Jews and Christians and it proves that the office of Shiloh, The Franch was not fulfilled by Jesus Christ at His first coming, for the Jews were then scattered and not gathered, so that there could be no falliment of Jacob's prophecy then. My countrymen! you who are desirous of knowing the truth will read this book, and judge of yourseives that you may be prepared to receive Shiloh, the Prince of Feace.

Lord Byron, in a letter to Murray his publisher, dated September 2nd 1814 calls Joanna" this new old virgin of spiritual impregnation : 7 and longs to know what she will produce;" and in another letter be expresses a fear that these matters will lend a hand to profane

scofers

The following is extracted from a magazine of the same date :— *Joanna Southcott's miraculous conception, and the cot made by Siddors of Aldersgate Street, for the new Messiah,' are become most as general a topic of conversation as the late Jubilee. In one of the prophetess's recent publications, entitled the Book of Wonders, the Coming of Shich is thus announced: "This year, in the svà year of the age, then shalt have a Son by the power of the Most High, which if they receive as their Prophet, Priest, and King, then I will restore them to their own land, and cast out the heathens for their sales as I cast out them when they cast out me, by rejecting me as their Saviour, Prince, and King, for which I said I was born, but not at that time to establish my kingdom.' In consequence of d's announcement, the followers of Joanna are making all sorts of preparators and she has been literally overwhelmed with presents. Locod curs en broidered bibs, and worked robes, a mohair mantle nd as chsa splendid stiver pap-spoons and caudle-cups (one Saved Se à dove have been poured in upon her, till she at length deseinad to receive re more. The word 'Shiloh' is drawn in gold Hebrew Caracters on the cct, and over a canopy the inscription, ‘A koow offering of Faith to the promised Seed.""

As the time of Joanna's predicted miraculous accouchement drew pear. Ar Avee in Lerden was besieged day and night by crowds of A cubilous followers; but they waited in vain. Poor Joanna herself Bimary dad misgivings as to the genuineness of her "mission,” and docland that “if she had been deceived, she had herself been the sit of see spirit either of good or evil." She died on the 27th Povember, 1814, but many of her disciples would not believe that she was realy dead, and kept her body unburied until it was far advanced A LÚSSMONTON examination of her body was made, prvutios was found to have died of dropsy! A section of aradeal $"owers believed that she would again appear in V der "mission ;" and some of her male disciples vowed Dave their beards till her resurrection. It is supposed a small bard of believers in her pretensions died this

A VERY ANCIENT FAMILY.

THE famous Lord Chesterfield had a relation, a Mr. Stanhope, who was exceedingly proud of his pedigree, which he pretended to trace to a ridiculous antiquity. Lord Chesterfield was one day walking through an obscure street in London, where he saw a miserable daub of Adam and Eve in Paradise. He purchased this painting, and having written on the top of it, “Adam de Stanhope, of Eden, and Eve his wife," he sent it to his relation, as a valuable old family portrait.

ZOZIMUS, THE DUBLIN BALLAD SINGER.

ABOUT thirty years ago a tall blind man used to stand at the corner of Essex Bridge, Dublin, singing and reciting ballads, which, if not remarkable for wit, were more or less attractive to his audience from their singularity. This Homeric beggar possessed some of the sturdiness of Edie Ochiltrie, and had a certain pride in his calling, and in the fact of his being looked up to as king of street minstrels. Even now, in Ireland, the street minstrel pursues his occupation in a more interesting fashion than that in which the same business is carried on by the fellows who chant vulgar ribaldry in our lanes or public parks ; but in the days when Zozimus flourished, the craft had retained an importance derived from its connection with the political history of the country. It is well known that Swift employed the Dublin balladsingers to chant and hawk about some of his rhyming squibs; and several of the chief opponents of the Union engaged the ragged followers of the gay science in a musical crusade against the Castle authorities.

The poet Zozimus derived his name from the fact of his having composed a lyric on the discovery of the desert of St. Mary of Egypt by a pious ecclesiastic called Zozimus. His biographer informs us that he was usually dressed in a heavy, coarse, long-tailed coat, and a very much worn hat, with exceedingly strong shoes. He recited or declaimed pieces of a sacred turn, interspersed with odd "asides” to the crowd, and always introducing himself with a sort of prologue:

"Ye sons and daughters of Erin attend ;
Gather round poor Zozimus, yer friend.
Listen, boys, until yez hear

My charming song.”

One of his most striking and effective readings was that of a romantic version of the story of Moses in the bulrushes. This he always prefaced by inquiring, "Is there a crowd about me now? Is there any blackguard heretic listenin' to me?" Having been satisfied on these points, Zozimus is reported to have delivered a series of stanzas, of which the following may serve as a specimen :

"In T
K

upon the banks of Nile,

aughter went to bathe in style ;
hen walked unto the land,

al pelt, she ran along the strand.