Wedding Divination.—Being lately present on the occasion of a wedding at a town in the East Riding of Yorkshire, I was witness to the following custom, which seems to take rank as a genuine scrap of folk-lore. On the bride alighting from her carriage at her father's door, a plate covered with morsels of bride's cake was flung from a window of the second story upon the heads of the crowd congregated in the street below; and the divination, I was told, consists in observing the fate which attends its downfall. If it reach the ground in safety, without being broken, the omen is a most unfavourable one. If on the other hand, the plate be shattered to pieces (and the more the better), the auspices are looked upon as most happy.
Oxoniensis.
SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE.
Shakspearian Drawings.—I have very recently become possessed of some curious drawings by Hollar; those relating to Shakspeare very interesting, evidently done for one Captain John Eyre, who could himself handle the pencil well.
The inscription under one is as follows, in the writing of the said J. Eyre:
"Ye house in ye Clink Streete, Southwarke, now belonging to Master Ralph Hansome, and in ye which Master Shakspeare lodged in ye while he writed and played at ye Globe, and untill ye yeare 1600 it was at the time ye house of Grace Loveday. Will had ye two Rooms over against ye Doorway, as I will possibly show."
Size of the drawing, 12 × 7, "W. Hollar delin., 1643." It is an exterior view, beautifully executed, showing very prominently the house and a continuation of houses, forming one side of the street.
The second has the following inscription in the same hand:
"Ye portraiture of ye rooms in ye which Master Will Shakspeare lodged in Clink Streete, and which is told to us to be in ye same state as when left by himself, as stated over ye door in ye room, and on the walls were many printed verses, also a portraiture of Ben Jonson with a ruff on a pannel."