"Monmouth."
SOUTH ON THE COMMONWEALTH PREACHERS.
Dr. South, in one of his sermons, thus reflected on the untrained and fanatical preachers of the time of the Commonwealth—many of whom but too well deserved the strictures:—"It may not be amiss to take occasion to utter a great truth, as both worthy to be now considered, and never to be forgot,—namely, that if we reflect upon the late times of confusion which passed upon the ministry, we shall find that the grand design of the fanatic crew was to persuade the world that a standing settled ministry was wholly useless. This, I say, was the main point which they then drove at. And the great engine to effect this was by engaging men of several callings (and those the meaner still the better) to hold forth and harangue the multitude, sometimes in the streets, sometimes in churches, sometimes in barns, and sometimes from pulpits, and sometimes from tubs, and, in a word, wheresoever and howsoever they could clock the senseless and unthinking babble about them. And with this practice well followed, they (and their friends the Jesuits) concluded, that in some time it would be no hard matter to persuade the people, that if men of other professions were able to teach and preach the word, then to what purpose should there be a company of men brought up to it and maintained in it at the charge of a public allowance? especially when at the same time the truly godly so greedily gaped and grasped at it for their self-denying selves. So that preaching, we see, was their prime engine. But now what was it, which encouraged those men to set up for a work, which (if duly managed) was so difficult in itself, and which they were never bred to? Why, no doubt it was, that low, cheap, illiterate way, then commonly used, and cried up for the only gospel soul-searching way (as the word then went), and which the craftier set of them saw well enough, that with a little exercise and much confidence, they might in a short time come to equal, if not exceed; as it cannot be denied, but that some few of them (with the help of a few friends in masquerade) accordingly did. But, on the contrary, had preaching been made and reckoned a matter of solid and true learning, of theological knowledge and long and severe study (as the nature of it required it to be), assuredly no preaching cobbler amongst them all would ever have ventured so far beyond his last, as to undertake it. And consequently this their most powerful engine for supplanting the church and clergy had never been attempted, nor perhaps so much as thought on; and therefore of most singular benefit, no question, would it be to the public, if those who have authority to second their advice, would counsel the ignorant and the forward to consider what divinity is, and what they themselves are, and so to put up their preaching tools, their Medulla's note-books, their melleficiums, concordances, and all, and betake themselves to some useful trade, which nature had most particularly fitted them for."
PETER THE GREAT AS DENTIST.
The Czar Peter, impelled by natural curiosity and love of science, was very fond of witnessing dissections and operations. He first made these known in Russia, and gave orders to be informed when anything of the kind was going on at the hospitals, that he might, if possible, be present to gratify his love for such spectacles. He frequently aided the operator, and was able to dissect properly, to bleed, draw teeth, and perform other operations as well as one of the faculty. Along with a case of mathematical instruments, he always carried about with him a pouch furnished with surgical instruments. The wife of one of his valets had once a disagreeable experience of his skill. She was suspected of gallantry, and her husband vowed revenge. He sat in the ante-chamber with a sad and pensive face, provoking the Czar to inquire the occasion of his gloom. The valet said that nothing was wrong, except that his wife refused to have a tooth drawn that caused her great pain. The Czar desired that he should be allowed to cure her, and was at once taken to her apartment, where he made her sit down that he might examine her mouth, in spite of her earnest protestations that she had no toothache. The husband, however, alleging that she always said so when the physician was present, and renewed her lamentations when he departed, the Czar ordered him to hold her head and arms; and, pulling forth his instruments, promptly extracted the tooth which he supposed to be the cause of the pain, disregarding the piteous cries of the persecuted lady. But in a few days the Czar learned that the whole affair was a trick of the valet to torment his wife; and his Majesty thereupon, as his manner was, administered to him a very severe chastisement with his own hands.
A MILD CRITICISM.
While Sir Busick Harwood was Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge, he was called in, in a case of some difficulty, by the friends of a patient, who were anxious for his opinion of the malady. Being told the name of the medical man who had previously prescribed, Sir Busick exclaimed, "He! if he were to descend into the patient's stomach with a candle and lantern, when he ascended he would not be able to name the complaint!"
HOUR-GLASSES IN CHURCH.
To restrain over-eloquent or over-zealous preachers in the length of their discourses, hour-glasses were introduced in churches about the period of the Reformation. In the frontispiece prefixed to the Bible of the Bishops' Translation, printed in 1569, Archbishop Parker is represented with an hour-glass standing on his right hand. Clocks and watches being then but rarely in use, the hour-glass was had recourse to as the only convenient public remembrancer which the state of the arts could then supply. The practice of using them became generally prevalent, and continued till the period of the Revolution. The hour-glass was placed either on the side of the pulpit, or on a stand in front. "One whole houre-glasse," "one halfe houre-glasse," occur in an inventory taken about 1632 of the properties of the church of All Saints at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Daniel Burgess, a Nonconformist preacher at the commencement of last century, alike famous for the length of his pulpit harangues and the quaintness of his illustrations, was once vehemently declaiming against the sin of drunkenness. Having exhausted the customary time, he turned the hour-glass, and said, "Brethren, I have somewhat more to say on the nature and consequences of drunkenness; so let's have the other glass and then—" The jest, however, seems to have been borrowed from the frontispiece of a small book, entitled England's Shame, or a Relation of the Life and Death of Hugh Peters, published in 1663; where Peters is represented preaching, and holding an hour-glass in his left hand, in the act of saying, "I know you are good fellows; so let's have another glass."