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but the bed not having been lain in for about a year before was damp, and so increased his disorder that in two or three days he died.

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It is not to defame so great a man, the greatest of modern times, but merely to illustrate his well-known attachment to particular favourites, that a paper is here for the first time printed. It is a bill of fees to counsel, upon an order made in the court of chancery by lord Bacon, as keeper of the great seal, during the first year he held it. From this it appears that counsel had been retained to argue a demurrer, on the first day of Michaelmas term, 1617; and that the hearing stood over till the following Tuesday, before which day one of my lordkeeper's favourites" was retained as other counsel, and," being one of my lordkeeper's favourites," had a double fee for his services. The mention of so extraordinary a fact in a common bill of costs may perhaps justify its rather outof-the-way introduction in this place The paper from whence it is here printed, the editor of the Every-Day Book has selected from among other old unpublished manuscripts in his possession, connected with the affairs of sir Philip Hoby, who was ambassador to the emperor of Germany from Henry VIII., and held other offices during that reign.

(COPY.)

Termino Micalis, 1617. To Mr. Bagger of the Iner-Temple, Councellor, the firste day of the Tearme, for attending at the Chancery barr, to mayntain or. demurrer against Sr. Tho. Hoby, by my Lo: Keeper's order, that daye to attend the Corte, wch. herd noe motions that daye, but deferd it of until Tusday following.

Uppon Tusdaye following wee had yonge Mr. Tho: Finch, and Mr. Bagger, of our Councell, to attend there to mayntaine the same demurrer, and the cause be canceled; Upon (which) my Lo: Keeper ordered, that he refferred the cause to be heard before Sr. Charles Cesér King, one of the docters of the Chancery, to make

xxii. s.

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At Copenhagen-house, the eye and the stomach may be satisfied together. A walk to it through the fresh air creates an appetite, and the sight must be allowed some time to take in the surrounding prospect. A seat for an hour or two at the upstairs tea-room windows on a fine day is a luxury. As the clouds intercept the sun's rays, and as the winds disperse or congregate the London atmosphere, the appearance of the objects it hovers over continually varies. Masses of building in that direction daily stretch out further and further across the fields, so that the metropolis may be imagined a moving billow coming up the heights to drown the country. Behind the house the

"Hedge-row elms, o'er hillocks green,”

is exquisitely beautiful, and the fine amphitheatre of wood, from Primrose-hill to Highgate-archway and Hornsey, seems built up to meet the skies. A stroll towards either of these places from Copenhagen-house, is pleasant beyond imagination. Many residents in London to whom walking would be eminently serviceable, cannot "take a walk" without a motive; to such is recommended the “delightful task" of endeavouring to trace Hagbushlane.

Crossing the meadow west of Copenhagen-house, to the north-east corner, there is a mud built cottage in the wides part of Hagbush-lane, as it runs due north from the angle formed by its eastern direction. It stands on the site of one still more rude, at which until destroyed, labouring men and humble wayfarers, attracted by the sequestered and rural beauties of the lane, stopped to recreate, It was just such a scene as Morland would have coveted to sketch, and therefore Mr. Fussell with "an eye for the picturesque," and with a taste akin to Morland's, made a drawing of it while it was standing, and placed it on the wood whereon it is engraven, to adorn the next page.

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"Why this cottage, sir, not three miles from London, is as secluded as if it were in the weald of Kent."

This cottage stands no longer : its his tory is in the "simple annals of the poor." About seven years ago, an aged and almost decayed labouring man, a native of Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire, with his wife and child, lay out every night upon the road side of Hagbush-lane, under what of bough and branch they could creep for shelter, till" winter's cold" came on, and then he erected this "mud edifice." le had worked for some great land-holders and owners in Islington, and still 1oobed about. Like them, he was, to this extent of building, a speculator; and to eke out his insufficient means, he profited, in his humble abode, by the sale of small beer to stragglers and rustic wayfarers. His cottage stood between the Jands of two rich men; not upon the land of either, but partly on the disused road, and partly on the waste of the manor. Deeming him by no means a respectable

neighbour for their cattle, they "warned him off;" he, not choosing to be houseless, nor conceiving that their domains could be injured by his little enclosure between the banks of the road, refused to accept this notice, and he remained. For this offence, one of them caused his labourers to level the miserable dwelling to the earth, and the "houseless child of want," was compelled by this wanton act to apply for his family and himself to be taken into the workhouse. His application was refused, but he received advice to build again, with information that his disturber was not justified in disturbing him. In vain he pleaded incompetent power to resist; the workhouse was shut against him, and he began to build another hut. He had proceeded so far as to keep of the weather in one direction, when wealth again made war upon poverty, and while away from his wife

and child, mis scarcely half raised hut was pulled down during a heavy rain, and his wife and child left in the lane shelterless. A second application for a home in the workhouse was rejected, with still stronger assurances that he had been illegally disturbed, and with renewed advice to build again. The old man has built for the third time; and on the site of the cottage represented in the engraving, erected another, wherein he dwells, and sells his small beer to people who choose to sit and drink it on the turf seat against the wall of his cottage; it is chiefly in request, however, among the brickmakers in the neighbourhood, and the labourers on the new road, cutting across Hagbushlane from Holloway to the Kentish-town road, which will utimately connect the Regent's-park and the western suburb, with the eastern extremity of this immensely growing metropolis. Though immediately contiguous to Mr. Bath, the landlord of "Copenhagen-house," he has no way assisted in obstructing this poor creature's endeavour to get a morsel of bread. For the present he remains unmolested in his almost sequestered nook, and the place and himself are worth seeing, for they are perhaps the nearest specimens to London, of the old country labourer and his dwelling.

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From the many intelligent persons a stroller may meet among the thirty thousand inhabitants of Islington, on his way along Hagbush-lane, he will perhaps not find one to answer a question that will occur to him during his walk. Why is this place called Hagbushlane?" Before giving satisfaction here to the inquirer, he is informed that, if a Londoner, Hagbush-lane is, or ought to be, to him, the most interesting way that he can find to walk in; and presuming him to be influenced by the feelings and motives that actuate his fellow-citizens to the improvement and adornment of their city, by the making of a new north re id, he is informed that Hagbush-lane, though now wholly disused, and in many parts destroyed, was the old, or rather the oldest north road, or ancient bridle-way to and from London, and the northern parts of the kingdom.

Now for its name-Hagbush-lane. Hag is the old Saxon word hæg, which became corrupted into hawgh, and afterwards into haw, and is the name for the berry of the hawthorn; also the Saxon word

huga sigrihed a nedge or any enclosure. Hag afterwards signified a bramble, and hence, for instance, the blackberry-bush, or any other bramble, would be properly denominated a hag. Hagbush-lane, therefore, may be taken to signify either Hawthornbush-lane, Bramble-lane, or Hedgebush-lane; more probably the latter. Within recent recollection, Whitcombstreet, near Charing-cross, was called Henge-lane.

Supposing the reader to proceed from the old man's mud-cottage in a northerly direction, he will find that the widest part of Hagbush-lane reaches, from that spot, to the road now cutting from Holloway. Crossing immediately over the road, he comes again into the lane, which he will there find so narrow as only to admit convenient passage to a man on horseback. This was the general width of the road throughout, and the usual width of all the English roads made in ancient times. They did not travel in carriages, or carry their goods in carts, as we do, but rode on horseback, and conveyed their wares or merchandise in packsaddles or packages on horses' backs. They likewise conveyed their money in the same way. In an objection raised in the reign of Elizabeth to a clause in the Hue and Cry bill, then passing through parliament, it was urged, regarding some travellers who had been robbed in open day within the hundred of Beyntesh, in the county of Berks, that "they were clothiers, and yet travailed not withe the great trope of clothiers; they also carried their money openlye in wallets upon their saddles."* The customary width of their roads was either four feet or eight feet. Some parts of Hagbush-lane are much lower than the meadows on each side; and this defect is common to parts of every ancient way, as might be exemplified, were it necessary, with reasons founded on their ignorance of every essential connected with the formation, and perhaps the use, of a road.

It is not intended to point out the tortuous directions of Hagbush-lane; for the chief object of this notice is to excite the reader to one of the pleasantest walks he can imagine, and to tax his ingenuity to the discovery of the route the road takes. This, the ancient north road, comes into the present north road, in Upper Holloway, at the foot of Highgate-hill, and

Hoby MSS.

went in that direction to Hornsey. From the mud-cottage towards London, it proceeded between Paradise-house, the residence of Mr. Greig, the engraver, and the Adam and Eve public-house, in the Holloway back-road, and by circuitous windings approached London, at the distance of a few feet on the eastern side of the City Arms public-house, in the City-road, and continued towards Old-street, St. Luke's. It no where communicated with the back-road, leading from Battle-bridge to the top of Highgate-hill, called Maidenlane.

Hagbush-lane is well known to every botanizing perambulator on the west side of London. The wild onion, clownswound-wort, wake-robin, and abundance of other simples, lovely in their form, and of high medicinal repute in our old herbals and receipt-books, take root, and seed and flower here in great variety. How long beneath the tall elms and pollard oaks, and the luxuriant beauties on the banks, the infirm may be suffered to seek health, and the healthy to recreate, who shall say? Spoilers are abroad.

Through Hagbush-lane every man has a right to ride and walk; in Hagbushlane no one man has even a shadow of right to an inch as private property. It is a public road, and public property. The trees, as well as the road, are public property; and the very form of the road is public property. Yet bargains and sales have been made, and are said to be now making, under which the trees are cut down and sold, and the public road thrown, bit by bit, into private fields as pasture. Under no conveyance or admission to land by any

proprietor, whether freeholder or lord of a manor, can any person legally dispossess the public of a single foot of Hagbuslane, or obstruct the passage of any individual through it. All the people of London, and indeed all the people of England, have a right in this road as a commou highway. Hitherto, among the inhabitants of Islington, many of whom are opulent, and all of whom are the local guardians of the public rights in this road, not one has been found with sufficient public virtue, or rather with enough of common manly spirit, to compel the restoration of public plunder, and in his own defence, and on the behalf of the public, arrest the highway robber.

Building, or what may more properly be termed the tumbling up of tumbledown houses, to the north of London, is so rapidly increasing, that in a year or two there will scarcely be a green spot for the resort of the inhabitants. Against covering of private ground in this way, there is no resistance; but against its evil consequences to health, some remedy should be provided by the setting apart of open spaces for the exercise of walking in the fresh air. The preservation of Hagbush-lane therefore is, in this point of view, an object of public importance. Where it has not been thrown into private fields, from whence, however, it is recoverable, it is one of the loveliest of our green lanes; and though persons from the country smile at Londoners when they talk of being "rural" at the distance of a few miles from town, a countryman would find it difficult to name any lane in his own county, more sequestered or of greater beauty.

LINES

WRITTEN IN HAGBUSH-LANE.

A scene like this,

Would woo the care-worn wise
To moralize,

And courting lovers court to tell their bliss.

Had I a cottage here

I'd be content; for where

I have my books

I have old friends,

Whose cheering looks
Make me amends

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Mr. Howard, in his work on the weather, is of opinion, that farmers and others, who are particularly interested in being acquainted with the variations in the weather, derive considerable aid from the use of the barometer. He says, 66 in fact, much less of valuable fodder is spoiled by wet now than in the days of our forefathers. But there is yet room for improvement in the knowledge of our farmers on the subject of the atmosphere. It must be a subject of great satisfaction and confidence to the husbandman, to know, at the beginning of a summer, by the certain evidence of meteorological results on record, that the season, in the ordinary course of things, may be expected to be a dry and warm one; or to find, in a certain period of it, that the average quantity of rain to be expected for the month has already fallen. Ön the other hand, when there is reason, from the same source of information, to expect much rain, the man who has courage to begin his operations under an unfavouraole sky, but with good ground to conrlude, from the state of his instruments and his collateral knowledge, that a fair interval is approaching, may often be profiting by his observations; while his cautious neighbour, who waited for the weather to settle,' may find that he has let the opportunity go by. This superiority, however, is attainable by a very moderate share of application to the subject; and by the keeping of a plain diary of the barometer and raingauge with the

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hygrometer and the vane unde his day notice."

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Perforated St. John's Wort. Hypericum perforatum.

Dedicated to St. John.

June 28.

St. Irenæus, Bp. of Lyons, a. D. 202. St. Leo II., Pope A.D. 683. Sts. Plutarch and others, Martyrs, hout A.d. 202. Sts. Potamiana and Basilides, Martyrs. CHRONOLOGY.

1797. George Keate, F.R.S., died, aged sixty-seven. He was born at Trowbridge in Wilts, educated at Kingston school, called to the bar, abandoned the profession of the law, amused himself with his pen, and wrote several works. His chief production is the account of "Capt. Wilson's Voyage to the Pelew Islands;" his "Sketches from Nature," written in the manner of Sterne, are pleasing and popular.

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Blue Cornflower. Centaurea Cyanus. Dedicated to St. Irenæus

NOW,

A hot day.

Now the rosy (and lazy-) fingered Aurora, issuing from her saffron house, calls up the moist vapours to surround her, and goes veiled with them as long as she can; till Phœbus, coming forth in his power, looks every thing out of the sky, and holds sharp uninterrupted empire from his throne of beams. Now the mower begins to make his sweeping cuts more slowly, and resorts oftener to the

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