and lifelessness reduced him to a helpless state, that a beggar had compassion on him, and gave him a recommendation to an hospital, where "by taking medicines proper for his disorder, and more substantial food, he soon grew well;" but relapsing into his "constant, uniform, and hidden life," he became worse. This opportunity of exhibiting Labre's virtues is not neglected by his biographer, who minutely informs us of several particulars. 1st. He was so careful to observe the law of silence, that in the course of a whole month, scarcely any one could hear him speak so much as a few words. 2dly. He lived in the midst of Rome, as if he had lived in the midst of a desert. 3dly. He led a life of the greatest self-denial, destitute of every thing, disengaged from every earthly affection, unnoticed by al mankind, desiring no other riches than poverty, no other pleasures than mortification, no other distinction than that of being the object of universal contempt. 4thly. He indulged in rigorous poverty, exposed to the vicissitudes and inclemencies of the weather, without shelter against the cold of winter or the heat of summer, wearing old clothes, or rather rags, eating very coarse food, and for three years living in the "hole in the wall." 5thly. To his privations of all worldly goods, he joined an almost continual abstinence, frequent fasts, nightly vigils, lively and insupportable pains from particular mortifications, and two painful tumours which covered both his knees, from resting the whole weight of his body on them when he prayed. 6thly. "He looked upon himself as one of the greatest of sinners;" and this was the reason why" he chose to lead a life of reproach and contempt," why he herded "among the multitude of poor beggars," ""why he chose to cover himself with rags and tatters instead of garments, why he chose to place a barrier of disgust between himself and mankind," why" he abandoned himself to the bites of disagreeable insects," and why he coveted to be covered with filthy blotches. says, “I never heard his confession but in a confessional, on purpose that there might be some kind of separation between us." The holy father's lively reason for this precaution, any history of insects with the word" pediculus" will describe accurately Thus Labre lived and died; and here it might be supposed would end his memoirs. But, no. In whatever odour he lived, as he "died in the odour of sanctity," an enthusiasm seized some persons to touch Labre dead, who, when living, was touchless. Labre being deceased, was competent to work miracles; accordingly he stretched out his left hand, and laid hold on the board of one of the benches On Easter-day being a holiday, he worked more miracles, and wonders more wonderful than ever were wondered in our days, as may be seen at large, in the aforesaid volume, entitled-" The Life of the venerable Benedict Joseph Labre, who died at Rome, in the odour of sanc tity." The portrait, from which the engraving on this page is taken, was published immediately after his death by Mr. Coghlan, Catholic bookseller, Duke-street, Grosvenor-square, from a drawing in his possession. Miracle at Somers Town. The authenticity of the following extraordinary fact can be verified. Mr. H— a middle-aged gentleman, long afflicted coat-tail, the horns of a mad bullock; by various disorders, and especially by when, to the equal astonishment of its the gout, had so far recovered from a pursuers, this unhappy gentleman in severe attack of the latter complaint, that stantly leaped the fence, and overcome he was enabled to stand, yet with so little by terror, continued to run with amazing advantage, that he could not walk more celerity nearly the whole distance of the than fifty yards, and it took him nearly field, while the animal kept its own an hour to perform that distance. While course along the road. The gentleman, thus enfeebled by suffering, and safely who had thus miraculously recovered the creeping in great difficulty, on a sunny use of his legs, retained his power of day, along a level footpath by the side speed until he reached his own house, of a field near Somers Town, he was where he related the miraculous circumalarmed by loud cries, intermingled with stance; nor did his quickly-restored fathe screams of many voices behind him. culty of walking abate, until it ceased From his infirmity, he could only turn with his life several years afterwards. very slowly round, and then, to his asto- This "miraculous cure" can be attested nishment, he saw, within a yard of his by his surviving relatives. tleman was deprived of his just reward by fraudful anticipation. He says, "I thought it advisable to secure the exclusive property of it by a patent; but in consequence of one of the patent instruments having been exhibited to one of the London opticians, the remarkable properties of the kaleidoscope became known before any number of them could be prepared for sale. The sensation excited in London by this premature exhibition of its effects is incapable of description, and can be conceived only by those who witnessed it. It may be sufficient to remark, that, according to the computation of those who were best able to form an opinion on the subject, no fewer than two hundred thousand instruments have been sold in London and Paris during three months." The Kaleidoscope. Trifle! let us from thy store April 17. St. Anicetus, Pope, 2d. Cent. St. Stephen, Abbot, a. D. 1134. St. Simeon, Bishop, and other Martyrs, a. D. 341. Hock, OR HOKE DAY OR TIDE. At Antiquaries are exceedingly puzzled respecting the derivation of this annual festival, which commenced the fifteenth day after Easter, and was therefore a movable feast dependent upon Easter.* Though Matthew Paris, who is the oldest authority for the word Hoke-day, says it is "quindena paschæ," yet Mr. Douce assigns convincing reasons for taking it as the second Tuesday after Easter. Hock-tide, which seems to have included Monday and Tuesday, collections of Hockmoney were made in various parishes by the churchwardens, until the Reformation. Tuesday was the principal day. Hock Monday was for the men, and Hock Tuesday for the women. On both days the men and women alternately, with great merriment, intercepted the public roads with ropes, and pulled passengers to them, from whom they exacted money to be laid out for pious uses; Monday probably having been originally kept as only the vigil or introduction to the festival of Hock-day. Mr. Brand unaccountably, because inconsistently with his previous representations respecting the antiquity of the custom of heaving at Easter, derives that custom from the men and women Hocking each other, and collecting money at Hock-tide. It is a tradition that this festival was instituted to commemorate the massacre of the Danes in England, under Etheldred, in the year 1002; a supposition however wholly unsupportable, because that_event happened on the feast et St. Brice, in the month of November. Another and more reasonable opinion is, that the institution celebrated the final extinction of the Danish power by the death of Hardicanute, on the sixth day before the ides of June, 1042.1 66 men Yet, in relation to the former event, "certain good-hearted men of Coventry" petitioned, "that they might renew their old storial show" of the Hock-tide play before queen Elizabeth, when she was on a visit to the earl of Leicester, at his castle of Kenilworth, in July, 1575. According to Laneham's Letter," this "storial show" set forth how the Danes were for quietness borne, and allowed to remain in peace withal, until on the said St. Brice's night they were "all despatch ed and the realm rid ;" and because the matter did show "in action and rhymes" how valiantly our English women, for love of their country, behaved, the " of Coventry" thought it might move some mirth in her majesty. "The thing," said they, "is grounded in story, and for pastime (was) wont to be played in our city yearly without ill example of manners, papistry, or any superstition :" and they knew no cause why it was then of late aid down," unless it was by the zeal of certain of their preachers; men very commendable for their behaviour and learning, and sweet in their sermons, but somewhat too sour in preaching away their pastime." By license, therefore, they got up their Hock-tide play at Kenilworth, wherein capt. Cox," a person here indescribable without hindrance to most readers, "came marching on valiantly before, clean trussed and garnished above the knee, all fresh in a velvet cap, flourishing with his ton-sword, and another fence-master with him, making room for the rest. Then proudly came the Danish knights on horseback, and then the English, each with their alder-pole martially in their hand." The meeting at first waxing warm, then kindled with courage on both sides into a hot skirmish, and from that into a blazing battle with spear and shield; so that, by outrageous races and fierce encounters, horse and man sometimes tumbled to the dust. Then they fell to with sword and target, and did clang and bang, till, the fight so ceasing, afterwards followed the foot of both hosts, one after the other marching, wheeling, forming in squadrons, triangles, and circles, and so winding out again; and then got they so grisly together, that inflamed on each side, twice the Danes had the better, but at the last were quelled, and so being wholly vanquished, many were led captive in triumph by our English women. This matter of good pastime was wrought under the window of her highness, who 66 beholding in the chamber delectable dancing, and therewith great thronging of the people, saw but little of the Coventry play; wherefore her majesty com manded it on the Tuesday following, t have it full out, and being then accordingly presented, her highness laughed right well. Then too, played the "goodhearted men of Coventry" the merrier, and so much the more, because her majesty had given them two bucks, and five marks in money; and they prayed for her highness long happily to reign, and oft to come thither, that oft they might see her; and rejoicing upon their ample reward, and triumphing upon their good acceptance, vaunted their play was never so dignified, nor ever any players before so beatified.* 1689. The infamous judge Jefferies died in the tower, whither he had been committed by the lords of the council, after he had been taken in the disguise of a common sailor for the purpose of leaving England. He was born at Acton, near Wrexham, in Denbighshire, and being raised to the bench, polluted its sanctity by perversions of the law. His habits and language were vulgar and disgusting. John Evelyn says, "I went this day to a wedding of one Mrs. Castle, to whom I had some obligation; and it was to her fifth husband, a lieutenantcolonel of the city. She was the daughter • Concerning the Coventry Hock-tide play, it is reasonable to expect curious information from a forthcoming "Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries, anciently performed at Coventry, chiefly with reference to the vehic 'e, characters, and dresses of the actors," by Mr. to the corporation manuscripts, and to other Thomas Sharp, of Coventry, who, with access sources hitherto unexplored, and, above all, with the requisite knowledge and qualifications, will drama, than has devolved upon it from the la probably throw greater light on the obsolete bours of any preceding antiquary. of one Bruton, a broom-man, by his wife, who sold kitchen-stuff in Kent-street, whom God so blessed, that the father became very rich, and was a very honest man; and this daughter was a jolly, friendly woman. There were at the wedding the lord mayor, the sheriff, several aldermen, and persons of quality; above all sir George Jefferies, newly made lord chief justice of England, who, with Mr. justice Withings, danced with the bride, na were exceeding merry! These great men spent the rest of the afternoon, till eleven at night, in drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath the gravity of judges that had but a day or two before condemned Mr. Algernon Sidney, who was executed the 7th of Dec. 1683, on Tower-hill, on the single witness of that monster of a man, lord Howard of Escrick, and some sheets of paper taken in Mr. Sidney's study, pretended to be written by him, but not fully proved." James II. found Jefferies a fit instrument for his arbitrary purposes. After the defeat of the duke of Monmouth in the west, he employed the most sanguinary miscreants, and Jefferies among the rest, to wreak his vengeance on the deluded people. Bishop Burnet says, that Jefferies's behaviour was brutally disgusting, beyond any thing that was ever heard of in a civilized nation; "he was perpetually either drunk or in a rage, liker a fury than the zeal of a judge." He required the prisoners to plead guilty, on pretence of showing them favour; but he afterwards showed them no mercy, hanging many immediately. He hanged in several places about six hundred persons. The king had a daily account of Jefferies' proceedings, which he took pleasure to relate in the drawing-room to foreign ministers, and at his table he called it Jefferies's campaign. Upon Jefferies' return, he created him a peer of England, by the title of earl of Flint. During these "bloody assizes," the lady Lisle, a noble woman of exemplary character, whose husband had been murdered by the Stuart party, was tried for entertaining two gentlemen of the duke of Monmouth's army; and though the jury twice brought her in not guilty, Jefferies sent them out again and again, until, upon his threatening to attaint them of treason, they pronounced her guilty. Jefferies, before he tried this lady, got the king to promise that he would not pardon her, and the only favour she obtained was the change of her sentence from burning to beheading. Mrs. Gaunt, a widow, near Wapping, who was a Baptist, and spent her time in acts of charity, was tried on a charge of having hid one Burton, who, hearing that the king had said that he would sooner pardon rebels than those who harboured them, accused his benefactress of having saved his life. She was burned at the stake. The excellent William Penn, the Quaker, saw her die, and related the manner of her death to Burnet. She laid the straw about her for her burning speedily, and behaved herself so heroically, that all melted into tears. Six men were hanged at Tyburn, on the like charge, without trial. At length, the bloody and barbarous executions were so numerous, that they spread horror throughout the nation. England was an acaldema: the country, for sixty miles together, from Bristol to Exeter, had a new and terrible sort of sign-posts or gibbets, bearing the heads and limbs of its butchered inhabitants. Every soul was sunk in anguish and terror, sighing by day and by night for deliverance, but shut out of all hope, till the arrival of the prince of Orange, on whom the two houses of parliament bestowed the crown. Jefferies had attained under James II. to the high office of lord chancellor. 1794. Died Charles Pratt, earl Camden, born in 1713. As chief justice of the common pleas, he was distinguished for having discharged the celebrated John Wilkes from the tower By that decision, general warrants were pronounced illegal ; and for so great a service to his country, lord Camden received the approbation of his fellow citizens; they conferred on him the freedom of their cities, an placed his picture in their corporation halls. He was equally distinguished for opposing the opinion of prerogative lawyers in matters of libel. At his death he was lord president of the council. Firm of purpose, and mild in manners, he was a wise and amiable man. It is pleasantly related of him, that while chief justice, being upon a visit to lord Dacre,at Alveley, in Essex, he walked out with a gentleman, a very absent man, to a hill, at no great distance from the house, upon the top of which stond the stocks of the village. The chief justice sat down upon them; and after a while, having a mind to know what the punishment was, he asked his companion to open them and $ |