Of the expenses incurred for schoolboys at Eton early in the reign of Elizabeth, we find some curious particulars in a manuscript of the time: the boys were sons of Sir William Cavendish, of Chatsworth, and the entries are worth notice, as showing the manners of those days. Among the items, a breast of roast mutton is charged ten-pence; a small chicken, fourpence; a week's board, five shillings each; besides the wood burned in their chamber; to an old woman for sweeping and cleaning the chamber, twopence; mending a shoe, one penny; three candles, nine-pence; a book, Esop's Fables, fourpence; two pair of shoes, sixteen-pence; two bunches of wax lights, one penny; the sum total of the payments, including board paid to the bursars of Eton College, living expenses for the two boys and their man, clothes, books, washing, &c., amounts to twelve pounds twelve shillings and seven-pence. The expense of a scholar at the university in 1514 was but five pounds annually, affording as much accommodation as would cost sixty pounds, though the accommodation would be far short of that now customary at Eton.
AN EVENTFUL LIFE.
It is much to be feared that on the field of battle and naval actions many individuals, apparently dead, are buried or thrown overboard. The history of François de Civille, a French captain, who was missing at the siege of Rouen, is rather curious. At the storming of the town he was supposed to have been killed, and was thrown, with other bodies, in the ditch, where he remained from eleven in the morning to half-past six in the evening; when his servant, observing some latent heat, carried the body into the house. For five days and five nights his master did not exhibit the slightest sign of life, although the body gradually recovered its warmth. At the expiration of this time, the town was carried by assault, and the servants of an officer belonging to the besiegers, having found the supposed corpse of Civille, threw it out of the window, with no other covering than his shirt. Fortunately for the captain, he had fallen upon a dunghill, where he remained senseless for three days longer, when his body was taken up by his relatives for sepulture, and ultimately brought to life. What was still more strange, Civille, like Macduff, had "been from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd," having been brought into the world by a Cæsarean operation, which his mother did not survive; and after his last wonderful escape he used to sign his name with the addition of "three times born, three times buried, and three times risen from the dead by the grace of God."
FIRST BRIDGE OVER THE THAMES.
The humble village bridge which we here engrave is well deserving of a place in our pages as being the first of that grand series of bridges whose last member is London-bridge. What a contrast between the first bridge over the Thames and the last! Thames Head, where the river rises, is in the county of Gloucester, but so near to its southern border, that the stream, after meandering a mile or two, enters Wiltshire, near the village of Kemble. On leaving this village, and proceeding on the main road towards the rustic hamlet of Ewen, the traveller passes over the bridge which forms the subject of our woodcut. It has no parapet, and is level with the road, the water running through three narrow arches. Such is the first bridge over the mighty Thames.
THE VENETIANS.
The Venetians were the first people in Italy who had printed books. They originated a Gazette in the year 1600, and the example was followed at Oxford in 1667, and at Vienna in 1700. They also undertook the discovery of America, and the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope.