(One.)"
John o' the Ford.
Malta.
Bishop Burnet again!—The following anecdote occurs in Mrs. Thistlethwaite's Memoirs and Correspondence of Dr. Henry Bathurst, Lord Bishop of Norwich, p. 7.:
"I have heard my father mention the following anecdote of my grandfather, Benjamin Bathurst, Esq., and the Duke of Gloucester (Queen Anne's son), during their boyhood. My grandfather and the Duke were playfellows; and the Duke's tutor was Dr. Burnet. One day, when the Doctor went out of the room, the Duke having as usual courted him, and treated him with obsequious civility, young Bathurst expressed his surprise that his Royal Highness should treat a person, whom he disliked as much as he did the Doctor, with so much courtesy and kindness. The Duke replied, 'Do you think I have been so long a pupil of Dr. Burnet's without learning to be a hypocrite?'"
J. Y.
Old Custom preserved in Warwickshire.—There is a large stone a few miles from Dunchurch, in Warwickshire, called "The Knightlow Cross." Several of Lord John Scott's tenants hold from him on the condition of laying their rent before daybreak on Martinmas Day on this stone: if they fail to do so, they forfeit to him as many pounds as they owe pence, or as many white bulls with red tips to their ears and a red tip to their tail as they owe pence, whichever he chooses to demand. This custom is still kept up, and there is always hard riding to reach the stone before the sun rises on Martinmas Day?
L. M. M. R.
English Diplomacy v. Russian.—A friend of Sir Henry Wotton's being designed for the employment of an ambassador, came to Eton, and requested from him some experimental rules for his prudent and safe carriage in his negociations; to whom he smilingly gave this for an infallible aphorism,—that, to be in safety himself, and serviceable to his country, he should always, and upon all occasions, speak the truth (it seems a state paradox). "For," says Sir Henry Wotton, "you shall never be believed; and by this means your truth will secure yourself, if you shall ever be called to any account; and 'twill also put your adversaries (who will still hunt counter) to a loss in all their disquisitions and undertakings." (Reliquiæ Wottonianæ.)
Alpha.