The fashion which once prevailed of introducing historical anecdotes into addresses from the pulpit, is illustrated by the following extract from a sermon by the Martyr Bishop Ridley:—
Cambyses was a great emperor, such another as our master is; he had many lord-deputies, lord-presidents, and lieutenants under him. It is a great while ago since I read the history. It chanced he had under him, in one of his dominions, a briber, a gift-taker, a gratifier of rich men; he followed gifts as fast as he that followed the pudding, a hand-maker in his office, to make his son a great man; as the old saying is, "Happy is the child whose father goeth to the devil." The cry of the poor widow came to the emperor's ear, and caused him to flay the judge quick, and laid his skin in his chair of judgment, that all judges that should give judgment afterward should sit in the same skin. Surely it was a goodly sign, a goodly monument, the sign of the judge's skin: I pray God we may once see the sign of the skin in England.
STATE OF LONDON IN 1756.
The state of the police regulations in the metropolis at the above date, is exhibited in the following extract from an old magazine:—
"At one o'clock this morning (Oct. 4, 1756), the Hon. Captain Brudenel was stopped in his chair, just as it entered Berkeley-square, from the Hay-hill, by two fellows with pistols, who demanded his money; he gave them five-sixpences, telling them he had no more, which having taken, they immediately made off. The captain then put his purse and watch under the cushion, got out, drew his sword, and being followed by one of the chairmen with his pole, and the watchman, pursued them up the hill, where the Hon. Captain West, who was walking, having joined them, one of the fellows having got off, they followed the other into Albemarle-mews, where finding himself closely beset, he drew a pistol, and presented it, upon which the captain made a lunge at him, and ran him through the body. The fellow at the same time fired his pistol, which, the captain being still stooping, went over his head and shot the watchman through the lungs; at the instant the pistol was discharged, while the fellow's arm was extended, the chairman struck it with his pole and broke it; he was then seized and carried with the watchman to the round-house in Dover-street, where Mr. Bromfield and Mr. Gataker, two eminent surgeons, came; but the captain would not suffer the villain to be dressed, till he discovered who he and his confederates were; when he acknowledged they were both grenadiers in Lord Howe's company. The poor watchman died in half an hour after he was shot; and the soldier was so disabled by his wound that he was carried in a chair to Justice Fielding, who sent him to New Prison, where he died."
FROM A HANDBILL OF BARTHOLOMEW FAIR IN 1700.
The following extract is worth notice, inasmuch as it shows that in the matter of amusement, the tastes of the lower orders of the present day are not much improved since the last century:—
"You will see a wonderful girl of ten years of age, who walks backwards up the sloping rope driving a wheelbarrow behind her; also you will see the great Italian Master, who not only passes all that has yet been seen upon the low rope, but he dances without a pole upon the head of a mast as high as the booth will permit, and afterwards stands upon his head on the same. You will be also entertained with the merry conceits of an Italian scaramouch, who dances on the rope with two children and a dog in a wheelbarrow, and a duck on his head."
PASSAGE THROUGH THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA SUGGESTED THREE HUNDRED TEARS AGO.
Ancient Globe.—In the Town Library (Stadt Bibliothek) of Nuremberg is preserved an interesting globe made by John Schoner, professor of mathematics in the Gymnasium there, A.D. 1520. It is very remarkable that the passage through the Isthmus of Panama, so much sought after in later times, is, on this old globe, carefully delineated.