gardening. Yet, in the midst of all this hardship, when he had not a coin for himself, he would take the silver drinking cups he had got as keepsakes from the princes, and give them to poor students.-Noble Traits of Kingly Men.

SHELLEY'S STRANGE FANCY.

ONE evening, Lord Byron and Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley, two ladies, and another gentleman, after having perused a German work called "Phantasmagoria," began relating ghost stories; when his lordship having recited the beginning of "Christabel," then unpublished, the whole took so strong a hold of Mr. Shelley's mind, that he suddenly started up and ran out of the room. The physician and Lord Byron followed, and discovered him leaning against a mantel-piece, with the cold drops of perspiration trickling down his face. After having given him something to refresh him, upon inquiring into the cause of his alarm, they found that his wild imagination having pictured to him the bosom of one of the ladies with eyes (which was reported of a lady in the neighbourhood where he lived), he was obliged to leave the room in order to destroy the impression.-Preface to the Vampire.

In reference to the above incident, Byron, in a letter to Murray the publisher, dated May, 1819, writes :-The story of Shelley's agitation is true. I can't tell what seized him, for he don't want courage. He was once out with me in a gale of wind in a small boat, right under the rocks between Meillerie and St. Gingo. We were five in the boat : a servant, two boatmen, and ourselves. The sail was mismanaged, and the boat was filling fast. He can't swim. I stripped off my coat, made him strip off his, and take hold of an oar, telling him that I thought (being an expert swimmer) I could save him, if he would not struggle when I took hold of him, unless we got smashed against the rocks, which were high and sharp, with an awkward surf on them at that minute. We were then about a hundred yards from the shore, and the boat in peril. He answered me with the greatest coolness, that he had no notion of being saved, and that I would have enough to do to save myself; and begged not to trouble me. Luckily, the boat righted, and, baling, we got round a point into St. Gingo, where the inhabitants came down and embraced the boatmen on their escape, the wind having been high enough to tear up some huge trees from the Alps above us, as we saw next day. And yet the same Shelley, who was as cool as it was possible to be in such circumstances (of which I am no judge myself, as the chance of swimming naturally gives self-possession when near shore), certainly had the fit of fantasy, which Polidore describes, though not exactly as he describes it.-Byron's Letters.

AN ECCENTRIC CLERGYMAN.

THE Rev. Thomas Priestly, who died in 1814, was a brother of the celebrated Dr. Priestly, and minister of the dissenting chapel in Cannon

Street, Manchester, from the pulpit of which he uttered many eccentricities, which have been attributed erroneously to other preachers. Observing one of his congregation asleep, he called to him (stopping in his discourse for the purpose), "Awake! I say, George Ramsay, or I'll mention your name." He had an unconquerable aversion to candles which exhibited long burned wicks, and often in the midst of his most interesting discourses, in the winter evenings, he would call out to the man appointed for that purpose, "Tommy! Tommy! top those candles." He was a man of great humour, which he even carried into the pulpit. He was the preacher, though others have borne the credit or odium of the circumstance, who pulled out of his pocket a half-crown, and laid it down upon the pulpit cushion, offering to bet with St. Paul, that the passage where he says "he could do all things," was not true; but reading on, "by faith," put up his money, and said, “Nay, nay, Paul, if that's the case I'll not bet with thee."

"PRESERVED" LADIES.

AMONGST the curiosities and objects of interest to be seen by visitors to the Museum of the College of Surgeons, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, there is the body of a woman preserved in spirits in a glass case. It is the body of the wife of an eccentric quack doctor, Martin van Butchel, who died at his residence in Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, London, on the 30th October, 1814, in his eightieth year. This odd personage had been originally a surgical-instrument maker of considerable note, but relinquished that respectable profession for the more than questionable occupation of an empirical practitioner. Every afternoon Van Butchel took a “constitutional" in Hyde Park, mounted on a little white pony, to whose head was attached an ingenious contrivance by which a pair of blinkers could be instantaneously drawn over its eyes, to prevent the pony from "shying" at any uncommon object. His personal appearance was rendered the more remarkable, at a period when shaving was so generally practised, by his wearing a magnificent beard of twenty years' growth, which an Oriental might well have envied. According to popular tradition, the body of Van Butchel's spouse was thus embalmed and kept in his surgery, "for the purpose of securing a handsome income, which he only was to enjoy whilst his rib' remained above ground." This crafty plan of the quack doctor was well known among his acquaintance, and suggested a clever jocular “Epitaph on Mary Van Butchel," of which the following are the concluding lines:

"O fortunate and envied man,

To keep a wife beyond life's span !

Whom you can ne'er have cause to blame;

Is ever constant and the same;

Who, qualities most rare, inherits

A wife that's dumb-yet full of spirits!"

This "lady in a glass case" reminds me of another and more distin

guished female personage, whose embalmed body the gallant secretary and garrulous diarist, Mr. Samuel Pepys, had the pleasure to kiss in Westminster Abbey. He has recorded the whimsical incident as follows:-"To Westminster Abbey, and saw, by particular favour, the body of Queen Catherine of Valois. I had the upper part of the body in my hands, and I did kisse her mouth, reflecting upon it that I did kisse a queen, and that this was my birthday, 36 years old, and that I did kisse a queen." Mr. Pepys apparently did not deem a living dog better than a dead lion; in other words, he did not consider that the 66 rud-red "lips of his own pretty Mistress Elizabeth, or, for the matter of that, the cherry lips of one of the tripping milkmaids he admired on a May-day, when on the way "to the office," were to be preferred to those of Catherine of Valois, "dead, and buried, and embalmed."— W. A. Clouston.

FOOTE'S MAD PRANKS.

AT college, while under the care of the provost Dr. Gower, Foote's reckless conduct drew down upon him severe lectures from the learned provost, who does not however appear to have administered them with much judgment, interlarding his objurgations with many sesquipedalian words and phrases. On such occasions Foote would appear before his preceptor with a huge folio dictionary under his arm, and on any peculiarly hard word being used, would beg pardon with much formality for interrupting him; turn up his book, as if to find out the meaning of the learned term which had just been uttered, and then, closing it, would say with the utmost politeness, "Very well, sir; now please go on."

Another of his tricks was setting the bell of the college church ringing at night, by tying a wisp of hay to the bell-rope which hung down low enough to be within reach of some cows that were turned out to graze in a neighbouring lane. The mishap of Dr. Gower and the sexton, who caught hold of the peccant animal whilst in search of the author of the mischief, and imagined they had made a prisoner of him, provided a rich store of amusement for many days to the denizens of Oxford.

The following is Dr. Johnson's declaration regarding him, as related to Boswell :-"The first time I was in company with Foote was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased; and it is very difficult to please a man against his will. I went on eating my dinner, pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him; but the dog was so very comical that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back in my chair, and fairly laugh it out. Sir, he was irresistible." On another occasion he thus contrasts him with Garrick: “Garrick, sir, has some delicacy of feeling; it is possible to put him out; you may get the better of him; but Foote is the most incompressible fellow that I ever knew: when you have driven him into a corner and think you are sure of him, he runs between your legs, or jumps over your head, and makes his escape."

Having made a trip to Ireland, he was asked on his return what impression was made on him by the Irish peasantry; and replied, they gave him great satisfaction, as they settled a question which had long agitated his own mind: and that was, What became of the cast-off clothes of the English beggars?-Chambers' Book of Days.

HOW TO INSURE LONG LIFE.

ARNOLD DE VILLENEUVE, who flourished in the thirteenth century, is said, according to Dr. Mackay, to have left the following receipt for insuring a length of years considerably surpassing the period which is generally supposed to be green old age. The person wishing to prolong his life almost indefinitely must rub himself well two or three times a week with the juice or marrow of cassia. Every night on going to bed he must put on his head a plaster composed of a certain quantity of oriental saffron, red rose leaves, sandal wood, aloes, and amber liquefied in oil of roses, and the best white wax. In the morning he must take it off and inclose it carefully in a leaden box till the next night, when it must be again applied. If he be of a sanguine temperament, he is to take sixteen chickens; if phlegmatic, twentyfive; and if melancholy, thirty: these he is to put in a yard where the air and water are pure. Upon these he is to feed, eating one a day. But these chickens have to be fattened by a peculiar method, which will impregnate their flesh with the qualities that are to produce longevity to the eater: for, being deprived of all other nourishment till they are almost dying of hunger, they are to be fed upon broth made of serpents and vinegar, thickened with wheat and bran. After two months of such diet, they will be fit for the intending Methuselah's table, and are to be washed down with good hock or claret. Fancy living for a few centuries on eternal chickens! Possibly the serpents and vinegar might render that domestic fowl palatable for fifty years or so, but surely it would produce a most unhealthy manner in time. Besides, the experimentalist would have to catch his serpents, and a single bite might interfere unpleasantly with the theory. On the whole, I am inclined to think that we do pretty well as we are; and if we desire to live reasonably long, we shall achieve our end by the simpler rules of common sense.- "Free Lance" in London Society.

A COLLECTOR OF CORKS.

NOT very long ago, a poverty-stricken old man drew his last breath in a miserable attic in Paris, who left little else behind him save a heap of corks, souvenirs of long past—

"Reckless days and reckless nights,

Unholy songs, and tipsy fights ;"

for he had been rich and gay once upon a time, and might have sung with Captain Morris

"In life I've rung all changes through,
Run every pleasure down!"

It had been a life-long custom with him to preserve every cork drawn for the delectation of himself and his friends, and inscribe upon it the date of drawing and the particular occasion upon which the bottle was opened; so his cupboard of corks was actually a record of his life. Upon a champagne cork was written: "Bottle emptied 12th May, 1843, with M. B—, who wished to interest me in a business by which I was to make ten millions. This affair cost me fifty thousand francs. M. B escaped to Belgium-a caution to amateurs!" Upon another was written: "Cork of Cyprus wine; of a bottle emptied on the 4th of December, 1850, with a dozen fast friends. Of these I have not found one to help me in the day of my ruin their names are annexed below."

AN ENTHUSIASTIC NATURALIST.

AN accident which happened to two hundred of my original drawings nearly put a stop to my researches in ornithology. I shall relate it, merely to show how far enthusiasm (for by no other name can I call the persevering zeal with which I laboured) may enable the observer of nature to surmount the most disheartening obstacles. I left the village of Henderson in Kentucky, situated on the bank of the Ohio, where I resided several years, to proceed to Philadelphia on business. I looked to all my drawings before my departure, placed them carefully in a wooden box, and gave them in charge to a relative, with instructions to see that no injury should happen to them. My absence was of several months; and when I returned, after having enjoyed the pleasures of home for a few days, I inquired after my box, and what I was pleased to call my treasure. The box was produced and opened, but-reader, feel for me!-a pair of Norway rats had taken possession of the whole, and had reared a young family amongst the gnawed bits of paper which, but a few months before, represented nearly a thousand inhabitants of air! The burning heat which instantly rushed through my brain was too great to be endured without affecting my whole nervous system. I slept not for several nights, and the days and nights passed like days of oblivion, until, the animal power being recalled into action through the strength of my constitution, I took up my gun, my note-book, and my pencils, and went forth to the woods as gaily as if nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I might now make much better drawings than before, and ere a period not exceeding three years had elapsed, I had my portfolio filled again. -Audubon's American Ornithology.

"PASSING RICH ON EIGHTEEN POUNDS A YEAR." A CLERGYMAN of the name of Matheson was minister of Patterdale, in Westmoreland, sixty years, and died lately at the age of ninety. During the early part of his life his benefice only brought him twelvę