this were he any where else." Buckingham replied, "Yes he would, and that he was a better man than himself." Dorchester said, "that he lyed." With this Buckingham struck off his hat, and took him by his periwigg, and pulled it aside, and held him. My Lord Chamberlain and others interposed, and upon coming into the House the Lords did order them both to the Tower, whither they are to go this afternoon.

'This day's work will bring the Lieutenant of the Tower £350.'

'Among other discourse we talked of Nostradamus, his prophecy of these times, and the burning of the city of London-and Sir George Carteret did tell a story, how at his death he did make the town swear that he should never be dug up, or his tomb opened after he was buried; but they did, after sixty years, do it, and upon his breast they found a plate of brasse, saying what a wicked and unfaithful people the people of that place were, who, after so many vows, should disturb and open him such a day, and year, and hour; which, if true, is very strange.'

It is indeed: it beats "that famed wizzard," Michael Scott. The following are traits of the bonhommie of the author, as well as of the times:

'February 14, 1666-7. This morning came up to my wife's bed-side, I being up dressing myself, little Will. Mercer to be her valentine; and brought her name writ upon blue paper in gold letters, done by himself, very pretty; and we were both well pleased with it. But I am also this year my wife's valentine, and it will cost me £5; but that I must have laid out if we had not been valentines.

25th. Lay long in bed, talking with pleasure with my poor wife, how she used to make coal-fires, and wash my foul clothes with her own hand for me, poor wretch! in our little room at my Lord Sandwich's; for which I ought ever to love and admire her, and do.'

A singular proof of the pecuniary distress to which the King was reduced will be found in the annexed quotation.

The King was vexed the other day (in 1667) for having no paper laid for him at the council-table, as was usual; and Sir Richard Browne did tell his Majesty he could call the person whose work it was to provide it: who being come, did tell his Majesty that he was but a poor man, and was out £400 or £500 for it, which was as much as he was worth; and that he cannot provide it any longer without money, having not received a penny since the King's coming in. So the King spoke to my Lord Chamberlain. And many such mementos the King do now-adays meet withall, enough to make an ingenuous man mad.'

April 26. To White Hall, and there saw the Duke of Albemarle, who is not well, and do grow crazy. While I was waiting in the Matted Gallery, a young man was working in Indian inke the great picture of the King and Queene, sitting by Van Dike; and did it very finely. Then I took a turn with Mr. Evelyn; with whom I walked two hours, till almost one of the clock; talking of the badness of the government, where nothing but wickedness, and wicked men and women command the King; that it is not in his nature to gainsay any thing that relates to bis pleasures; that much of it arises from the sickliness of our ministers of state, who cannot be about him as the idle companions are, and therefore he gives way to the young rogues; and then from the negligence of the clergy, that a bishop shall never be seen about him, as the King of France hath always: that the King would fain have some of the same gang to be Lord Treasurer, which would be yet worse, for now some delays are put to the getting gifts of the King, as Lady By. ron, who had been, as he called it, the King's seventeenth mistress abroad, did not leave him till she had got him to give her an order for £4000 worth of plate to be made for her: but by delays, thanks be to God! she died before she had it. He confirmed to me the business of the want of paper at the council-table the other day, which I have observed; Wooly being to have found it, and did, being called, tell the King to his face the reason of it. And Mr. Evelyn tells me of several of the menial servants of the court lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the King's coming in. He tells me the King of France hath his mistresses, but laughs at the foolery of our King, that makes his bastards princes, and loses his revenue upon them, and makes his mistresses his masters. And the

King of France did never grant Lavaliere any thing to bestow on others, and gives a little subsistence, but no more, to his bastards.'

Other characteristics of the age are here related.

'Comes news from Kate Joyce that, if I would see her husband alive, I must come presently. So I to him, and find his breath rattled in the throate; and they did lay pigeons to his feet, and all despair of him. It seems on Thursday last he went sober and quiet to Islington, and behind one of the inns (the White Lion) did fling himself into a pond: was spied by a poor woman, and got out by some people, and set on his head and got to life: and so his wife and friends sent for. He confessed his doing the thing, being led by the devil; and do declare his reason to be his trouble in having forgot to serve God as he ought since he came to his new employment;* and I believe that, and the sense of his great loss by the fire, did bring him to it; for he grew sick, and worse and worse to this day. The friends that were there being now in fear that the goods and estate would be seized on, though he lived all this while, because of his endeavouring to drown 'himself, my cosen did endeavour to remove what she could of plate out of the house, and desired me to take my flagons; which I did, but in great fear all the way of being seized; though there was no reason for it, he not being dead. So with Sir D. Gauden to Guild Hall to advise with the Towne-Clerke about the practice of the city and nation in this case: and he thinks it cannot be found selfemurder; but if it be, it will fall, all the estate, to the King. So I to my cosen's again; where I no sooner come but find that he was departed. So at their entreaty I presently to White Hall, and there find Sir W. Coventry; and he carried me to the King, the Duke of York being with him, and there told my story which I had told him; and the King, without more ado, granted that, if it was found, the estate should be to the widow and children: which indeed was a very great courtesy, for people are looking out for the estate.'

Mr. Brisband tells me in discourse that Tom Killigrew hath a fee out of the wardrobe for cap and bells, under the title of the King's foole or jester; and may revile or jeere any body, the greatest person, without offence by the privilege of his place."

My head being full of to-morrow's dinner, I to my Lord Crewe's, there to invite Sir Thomas Crewe; and there met with my Lord Hinchingbroke and his Lady, the first time I spoke to her. I saluted her, and she mighty civil: and, with my Lady Jemimah, do all resolve to be very merry to-morrow at my house. My Lady Hinchingbroke I cannot say is a beauty, nor ugly; but is altogether a comely lady enough, and seems very good-humoured. Thence home; and there find one laying of my napkins against to-morrow in figures of all sorts; which is mighty pretty; and it seems it is his trade, and he gets much money by it.

'Up very betimes, and with Jane to Levett's, there to conclude upon our dinner; and thence to the pewterer's to buy a pewter sesterne, which I have ever hitherto been without. Anon comes my company, viz. my Lord Hinchingbroke and his Lady, Sir Philip Carteret and his Lady, Godolphin and my cousin Roger, and Creed: and mighty merry; and by and by to dinner, which was very good and plentifull: (and I should have said, and Mr. George Montagu, who came at a very little warning, which was exceeding kind of him.) And there, among other things, my Lord had Sir Samuel Morland's late invention for casting up of sums of 8. d.; which is very pretty, but not very useful. Most of our discourse was of my Lord Sandwich and his family, as being all of us of the family. And with extraordinary pleasure all the afternoon, thus together eating and looking over my closet: and my Lady Hinchingbroke I find a very sweet-natured and welldisposed Lady, a lover of books and pictures, and of good understanding. About five o'clock they went; and then my wife and I abroad by coach into Moore-fields, only for a little ayre.'

We have avoided entering specially upon and connecting the historical details; and we have steered clear of the numerous and interesting anecdotes of the drama. Of a famous actress, however, both on the stage and off, we shall extract a few of the notices.

*He kept a tavern.'

*July 13th, 1667. Mr. Pierce tells us what troubles me, that my Lord Buckhurst hath got Nell away from the King's house, and gives her £100 a-year, so as she hath sent her parts to the house, and will act no more. And yesterday Sir Thomas Crewe told me that Lacy lies a-dying; nor will receive any ghostly advice from a bishop, an old acquaintance of his, that went to see him. It is an odd and sad thing to say, that though this be a peace worse than we had before, yet every body's fear almost is, that the Dutch will not stand by their promise, now the King hath consented to all they would have. And yet no wise man that I meet with, when he comes to think of it, but wishes with all his heart a war; but that the King is not a man to be trusted with the management of it. It was pleasantly said by a man in the city, a stranger, to one that told him the peace was concluded, "Well," says he, "and have you a peace?"-"Yes," says the other. -"Why, then," says he, "hold your peace!" Partly reproaching us with the disgracefulness of it, that it is not fit to be mentioned; and next, that we are not able to make the Dutch keep it, when they have a mind to break it.

14th. To Epsum, by eight o'clock, to the well; where much company. And to the towne to the King's Head; and hear that my Lord Buckhurst and Nelly are lodged at the next house, and Sir Charles Sedley with them; and keep a merry house. Poor girl! I pity her; but more the loss of her at the King's house.

August 22d. With my Lord Brouncker and his mistress to the King's playhouse, and there saw "The Indian Emperour:" where I find Nell come again, which I am glad of; but was most infinitely displeased with her being put to act the Emperour's daughter, which is a great and serious part, which she does most basely.

26th. Sir W. Penn and I had a great deal of discourse with Mall, who tells us that Nell is already left by my Lord Buckhurst, and that he makes sport of her, and swears she hath had all she could get of him; and Hart her great admirer now hates her; and that she is very poor, and hath lost my Lady Castlemaine, who was her great friend, also: but she is come to the play-house, but is neglected by them all.

October 5th. To the King's house; and there going in met with Knipp, and she took us up into the tireing-rooms; and to the woman's shift, where Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready, and is very pretty, prettier than I thought. And into the scene-room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit; and here I read the questions to Knipp, while she answered me, through all her part of "Flora's Figarys," which was acted to-day. But, Lord! to see how they were both painted, would make a man mad, and did make me loathe them; and what base company of men comes among them, and how lewdly they talk! And how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a shew they make on the stage by candle-light, is very observable. But to see how Nell cursed, for having so few people in the pit, was strange; the other house carrying away all the people at the new play, and is said, now-a-days, to have generally most company, as being better players. By and by into the pit, and there saw the play, which is pretty good.'

'May 1st, 1667. To Westminster; in the way meeting many milk-maids with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them; and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodgings' door in Drury Lane, in her smock sleeves and boddice, looking upon one: she seemed a mighty pretty creature.'

It may be acceptable to refer to what Grammont says of this beautiful frail one, whom Cibber victoriously defends, as being, with all her faults, infinitely superior to the demireps of title around her.

"This good-natured King began now to be rather peevish; nor was it altogether without reason: he disturbed no person in their amours, and yet others had often the presumption to encroach upon his. Lord Dorset, first lord of the bed-chamber, had lately debauched from his service Nell Gwyn, the actress; Lady Cleveland, whom he now no longer regarded, continued to disgrace him by repeated infidelities with unworthy rivals, and almost ruined him by the immense sums she lavished on her gallants."

Of travellers' tales Mr. Pepys's Diary contains some odd speci mens, and with one or two of these we must now conclude.

At noon to my Lord Crewe's, where one Mr. Templer (an ingenious man and a person of honour he seems to be) dined; and, discoursing of the nature of serpents, he told us some in the waste places of Lancashire do grow to a great bigness, and do feed upon larkes, which they take thus:-They observe when the lark is soared to the highest, and do crawl till they come to be just underneath them; and there they place themselves with their mouth uppermost, and there, as is conceived, they do eject poyson upon the bird; for the bird do suddenly come down again in its course of a circle, and falls directly into the mouth of the serpent; which is very strange. He is a great traveller; and, speaking of the tarantula, he says that all the harvest long (about which times they are most busy) there are fiddlers go up and down in the fields every where, in expectation of being hired by those that are stung.'

To Greenwich; and had a fine pleasant walk to Woolwich, having in our com. pany Captain Minnes, whom I was much pleased to hear talk. Among other things, he and the captains that were with us tell me that negroes drowned look white, and lose their blackness, which I never heard before.'

In taking leave of these entertaining and important volumes, we have only space to repeat our acknowledgment of not having been able to do them justice. The notices of the celebrated Duke of Monmouth are particularly interesting; but, indeed, King Charles, King James, and most of the prominent men, who flourished during the period included in these memoirs, are represented, as far as we have the means of judging, to the life. dramatic notices are also very curious;-in themselves they would make an excellent book, and one of extraordinary attraction to the amateurs of the stage. Upon the whole, we know of no work superior to the one here announced for variety of intelligence, honest simplicity, and historical value. [Monthly Review.

The

SELECTED FOR THE MUSEUM.

LAWYERS AND MERCHANTS.

THERE was a time when proud families, though very poor, thought themselves degraded by their sons entering into trade. Better notions now prevail, and, as long as England is a country, trade and commerce will be the main highway for the bulk of her middling classes to enter into wealth and competence. The profession of the law, nevertheless, receives a great many superfluous pupils, who prefer it solely from an aristocratic liking for its gentility. Many men enter on the profession, who, prone as men are to overrate their own abilities, know themselves quite well enough, to be conscious that their prospects of rising to legal honours and emoluments is a forlorn hope. Yet they prefer this forlorn hope to businesses which bring humbler associations to the mind with regard to precedence in society. This is, at least, one great cause of the profession of the law being overstocked; and connected with this aristocratic predilection, there may be also a more pardonable pride, in a young man choosing a profession that may lead him,

more than an unlearned vocation, into intellectual companionship and society. Looking at much of its business, the law is one of the meanest and most servile vocations that a man can follow-a vocation of hireable zeal-of eloquence to let, indifferently, for the purposes of justice and chicanery-a profession tending to give apathy, sophistry, and contractedness to the human mind. On the other hand, the increase of commerce, and of the intercourse of civilized nations, must contine to give new importance every day to the mercantile character; and in proportion as manufactures flourish, the successful manufacturer will cease to be a plodding and mechanical speculator, and will derive his success from scientific improvements and inventions. Perhaps the knowledge either becoming or requisite in a finished mercantile man is really more liberal, though less technical, than what goes to constitute a mere lawyer. The knowledge of foreign languages-of domestic and foreign statistics-and of political economy, ought to enter fully into the education of a British merchant of superior grade; and the manufactures of England have been the most important springs of national glory in the arts and sciences. As to the literature of taste and imagination, there is no reason why a merchant or manufacturer should not have as much time and leisure to addict himself to it, as the lawyer or any other professional man; and, in fact, there may be seen in that part of our community which lives by trade, a general fondness for polite literature, distinctly marked by the books which fill their libraries, and by the literary institutions which they support. The establishment of a College in London would promote the literary and scientific character of all that portion of the community-it would raise their respectability-it would occasion the young man, who is choosing his vocation for life, to anticipate no illiterate companionship, if he should go from his college to a counting-house-it would dissipate many prejudices about the comparative gentility of professions; and, instead of tending to overstock the profession of the law, would rather tend to diminish the number of its candidates. [New Monthly Mag.

Miscellaneous Intelligence.

DR. ABRAHAM REES.

Died, on Thursday, June 9, in the eighty-second year of his age, the Rev. Abraham Rees, D. D. the editor of the New Cyclopædia,

This eminent person, who long held a distinguished rank in the literary and scientific world, was a native of North Wales, where his father was greatly respected as a dissenting minister. After receiving the best elementary instruction which his native neighbourhood could afford, both in the classical languages and in the mathematics, he was removed to London, and placed in a dissenting collegiate institution at Hoxton, then under the direction