There was a "Devizes chaise" from London at this time which took a route through Reading, Newbury, and Marlborough.
There is a good house at Morcomb Lake, east of Charmouth, now no longer in the road, owing to this having been diverted. This was a road-side inn, where the judges slept. The Fly Coach from London to Exeter slept there the fifth night from town. The coach proceeded the next morning to Axminster, where it breakfasted, and there a woman barber shaved the coach.
AN AGED SPIRIT DRINKER.
Daniel Bull M'Carthy, of the county of Kerry, Ireland, died 1752, aged 111. At the age of eighty-four he married a fifth wife, a girl little more than fourteen years of age, by whom he had twenty children—one every subsequent year of his life. It was remarked that he was scarcely ever seen to expectorate; nor did any extent of cold ever seem to affect him. For the last seventy years of his life, when in company, he drank plentifully of rum and brandy, which he always took neat; and, if in compliance with solicitations he took wine or punch, always drank an equal sized glass of rum or brandy, which he designated a wedge. The temperature of his body was generally so hot that he could bear but little clothing, either by day or night upon his person.
GIANT TREE.
There are few trees in the world like the giant tree in the island of Pulo Penang, of which the annexed engraving is a correct representation. It is one of the various kinds of palm, and some idea may be formed of its height from the fact that it is twice as tall, and quite as straight, as the mainmast of a line-of-battle ship; there are no branches, no twigs anywhere to be seen, save just at the very summit, and here they bend over gracefully, something like what one would imagine a large-sized palm-tree to be if gazed at through Lord Rosse's telescope. It is a only specimen of its kind to be met with in the whole island.
PUNISHING FALSE ACCUSERS.
Wisdom may sometimes be learned at a Quarter Sessions, and it would be advantageous if we occasionally took a hint from our ancestors. The magistrates at sessions in Charles the First's reign could and did address themselves to questions arising between parties moving in humble life, very important to them, and who could now-a-day in vain seek redress in the same quarter. A modern Bridget might continue to charge men with a breach of promise of marriage without legal measures being available against her. This was not so in 1626. Her case was considered, and her injurious conduct and mode of life were duly estimated, with what result we shall learn from the following entry in the minute book of a quarter sessions in Devonshire of that date:—"Forasmuch as it hath appeared unto this Court that Bridget Howsley of Langton, spinster, liveth idly and lewdly at home, not betaking herself to any honest course of life, and hath lately falsely and scandalously accused one [left blank in the original] of Honiton, in Devon, challenging a promise of marriage from him, which tended much to his disgrace, and that she is a continual brawler and sower of strife and debate between her neighbours, inhabitants of Langton aforesaid, this court doth therefore think fit and order that the said Bridget Howsley be forthwith committed to the House of Correction, there to be set on work and remain for the space of six whole months, and from thenceforth until she shall find very good sureties for her appearance at the next Sessions, after the said six months shall be expired, or until she shall procure a master that will take her into service."