getable nature as to regale their friends at Christmas with asparagus and green peas.

There is also an infinite variety of puddings and pastry, among which the plum-pudding holds, by national preference, the first rank, as the inseparable companion or follower of roast beef: puddings also of semolina, millet, and rice; tarts of preserved fruit, apple-pies, and that delicious medley the mince-pie.

The appetite may be further amused by a succession of custards and jellies.

A dessert may be easily made up of Portugal grapes, oranges, apples, pears, walnuts, and other fruits, indigenous or exotic, crude or candied.

These supplies comprehend a great proportion of the alimentary productions of the year; and, indeed, many of the main articles of solid fare are in season either perennially, or for several months in succession.

Beef, mutton, veal, and house-lamb; seasalmon, turbot, flounders, soles, whitings, Dutch herrings, lobsters, crabs, shrimps, eels, and anchovies; fowls, chickens, pullets, tame pigeons, and tame rabbits, are perennials.

Grass-lamb is in season in April, May, June, July, August, September, and October; pork in the first three months and four last months of the year; buck-venison in June, July, August, and September; and doe-venison in October, November, December, and January.

There is scarcely an article of diet, animal or vegetable, the appearance of which, at table, is limited to a single month.

The fish in season during January are sea-salmon, turbot, thornback, skate, soles, flounders, plaice, haddock, cod, whiting, eels, sprats, lobsters, crabs, crayfish, oysters, muscles, cockles, Dutch herrings, and anchovies. There is also a small supply of mackarel in this and the preceding month.

The poultry and game are turkeys, capons, fowls, pullets, geese, ducklings, wild ducks, widgeons, teal, plovers, woodcocks, snipes, larks, tame pigeons, hares, herons, partridges, pheasants, wild and tame rabbits, and grouse.

Of fowls the game breed is most esteemed for flavor. The Poland breed is the largest. Dorking in Surrey, and Epping in Essex, are alike famed for good poultry. In the neighbourhood of Bethnal Green and Mile End are large establishments for fattening all kinds of domestic

fowls, for the supply of Leadenhall market, and the shipping in the port of London; these repositories have every convenience, such as large barns, enclosed paddocks, ponds, &c.; but, however well contrived and managed, every person of taste will prefer a real barn-door-fed fowl.

Norfolk has the reputation of breeding the finest turkeys; they are in season from November to March, when they are succeeded by turkey-poults.

The various birds of passage, such as wild-ducks, widgeons, teal, plovers, &c., which artive in the cold season, are to be found in most parts of England; but London is chiefly supplied from the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire. There are said to be more than a hundred varieties of the duck tribe alone; those with red legs are accounted the best.

Plover's eggs, which are abundant in the poulterers' shops, and esteemed a great delicacy, are generally picked up by shepherds and cottagers on the moors and commons, where they have been dropped by the birds during their annual sojourn

ment.

VEGETABLE GARDEN DIRECTORY.

In frosty weather wheel manure to the plots or quarterings which require it.

Protect vegetables, such as celery, young peas, beans, lettuces, small cabbage plants, cauliflowers, endive, &c., from severe cold, by temporary coverings of fern-leaves, long litter, or matting, stretched over hoops: remove these coverings in mild intervals, but not till the ground is thoroughly thawed, or the sudden action of the sun will kill them.

During fine intervals, when the surface is nearly dry, draw a little fine earth around the stems of peas, beans, brocoli.

Attend to neatness. Remove dead leaves into a pit or separate space to form mould; also carry litter of every kind to the compost heap.

Destroy slugs, and the eggs of insects. Dig and trench vacant spaces when the weather is mild and open, and the earth is dry enough to pulverize freely.

If the weather be favorable,

Sow

Peas; early frame and charlton about the first or second week: Prussian and dwarf imperial about the last week.

Beans; early mazagan and long pods about the first and last week.

Books were not only sent as presents on this day, but the practice occasioned numerous publications bearing the title, as a popular denomination, without their contents at all referring to the day. For example, the following are titles of some in the library of the British Museum::

"A New-Year's-Gift, dedicated to the Pope's Holiness 1579." 4to.

"A New-Year's-Gift to be presented to the King's most excellent Majestie: with a petition from his loyale Subjects, 1646."

4to.

Domestic Gardener's Manual. In the Every-Day Book.

"The complete New-Year's Gift, or Religious Meditations, 1725." 12mo.

"The Young Gentleman's New-Year's Gift, or Advice to a Nephew, 1729." 12mo.

Among the works published under this title, the most curious is a very diminutive and extremely rare volume called "The New-Year's Gift, presented at court from the Lady Parvula, to the Lord Minimus (commonly called little Jeffery), her majesty's servant-with a letter penned in short hand, wherein is proved that little things are better than great. Written by Microphilus, 1636." This very singular publication was written in defence of Jeffery Hudson, who, in the reign of Charles I., was a celebrated dwarf, and had been ridiculed by Sir William Davenant, in a poem called Jeffreidos,concerning a supposed battle between Jeffery and a vived the popularity of the little hero by turkey-cock. Sir Walter Scott has reintroducing him into "Peverel of the Peak. Jeffery Hudson

was born at Oakham in Rutlandshire. At about seven or eight years old, being then only eighteen inches high, he was retained in the service of the duke of Buckingham, who resided at Burleigh-on-the hill. On a visit from king Charles I. and his queen, Henrietta Maria, the duke caused little Jeffery to be served up to table in a cold pie, which the duchess presented to her majesty. From that time her majesty kept him as her dwarf; and in that capacity he afforded much entertainment at court. Though insignificant in stature, his royal mistress employed him on a mission of delicacy and importance; for in 1630 her majesty sent him to France to bring over a midwife, on returning with whom he was taken prisoner by the Dunkirkers, and despoiled of many rich presents to the queen from her mother Mary de Medicis: he lost to the value of £2500 belonging to himself, which he had received as gifts from that princess and ladies of the French court. It was in reference to this embassy that Davenant wrote his, mortifying poem, in which he laid the scene at Dunkirk, and represented Jeffery to have been rescued from the enraged turkey-cock by the courage of the gentlewoman he escorted. Jeffery is said to have assumed much consequence after his embassy, and to have been impatient under the teazing of the courtiers, and the insolent provocations of the don estics of the palace. One of his tormentors was

the king's porter, a man of gigantic height, who, in a masque at court, drew Jeffery out of his pocket, to the surprise and merriment of all the spectators. This porter and dwarf are commemorated by a representation of them in a well-known bas-relief, on a stone affixed, and still remaining,in the front of a house on the north side of Newgate Street, near Bagnio Court. Besides his misadventure with the Dunkirkers, he was captured by a Turkish rover, and sold for a slave into Barbary,

whence he was redeemed. On the breaking out of the troubles in England, he was made a captain in the royal army, and in 1644 attended the queen to France, where he received a provocation from Mr. Crofts, a young man of family, which he took so deeply to heart, that a challenge ensued. Mr. Crofts appeared on the ground armed with a syringe. This ludicrous weapon was an additional and deadly insult to the poor creature's feelings. There ensued a real duel, in which the antagonists were mounted on horseback, and Jeffery, with the first fire of his pistol, killed Mr. Crofts on the spot. He remained in France till the restoration, when he returned to England. In 1682 he was arrested upon suspicion of connivance in the Popish Plot, and committed to the gate-house in Westminster, where he died at the age of sixty-three.

As a phenomenon more remarkable of Jeffery Hudson than his stature, it is said that he remained at the height of eighteen inches till he was thirty, when he shot up to three feet nine inches, and there fixed.

His waistcoat of blue satin, slashed, and ornamented with pinked white silk, and his breeches and stockings, in one piece of blue satin, are preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.*

Dwarfs.

The Romans kept dwarfs, as we do monkies, for diversion; and some persons even carried on the cruel trade of stopping the growth of children by confining them in chests: most dwarfs came from Syria and Egypt. Father Kircher published an engraving of an ancient bronze, representing one of these dwarfs; and Count CayDwarfs commonly went unclothed, and lers another print of a similar bronze. decked with jewels. One of our queens carried a dwarf about for the admiration of spectators.† Dwarfs and deformed persons were retained to ornament the tables of princes.

Wierix's Bible contains a plate by John Wierix, representing the feast of Dives,

with Lazarus at his door. In the rich man's banqueting room there is a dwarf to contribute to the merriment of the com

pany, according to the custom among people of rank in the sixteenth century. This little fellow, at play with a monkey, ceding page. is the subject of the engraving on the pre

Pigmies.

Among vulgar errors is set down this, that there is a nation of pigmies, not above

Granger. Walpole's Painters. Fosbroke's Encyclopædia of Antiquities. Montaigne.