altered; sir John Barleycorn is the man that is highly esteemed in every place. I am now but poor James Wheatly, and he is sir John Barleycorn at every word; and that word hath undone many an honest man in England; for I can prove it to be true, that he has caused many an honest man to waste and consume all that he hath. The prisoner, sir John Barleycorn, being called on for his defence, urged, that to his accusers he was a friend, until they abused him; and said, if any one is to be blamed, it is my brother Malt. My brother is now in court, and if your lordships please, may be examined to all those facts which are now laid to my charge. Court.-Call Mr. Malt. Court. Mr. Malt, you have (as you have been in court) heard the indictment that is laid against your brother, sir John Barleycorn, who says, if any one ought to be accused, it should be you; but as sir John and you are so nearly related to each other, and have lived so long together, the court is of opinion he cannot be acquitted, unless you can likewise prove yourself innocent of the crimes which are laid to his charge. Malt.-My lords, I thank you for the liberty you now indulge me with, and think it a great happiness, since I am so strongly accused, that I have such learned judges to determine these complaints. As for my part, I will put the matter to the bench. First, I pray you consider with yourselves, all tradesmen would live; and although Master Malt does make sometimes a cup of good liquor, and many men come to taste it, yet the fault is neither in me nor my brother John, but in such as those who make this complaint against us, as I shall make it appear to you all. In the first place, which of you all can say but Master Malt can make a cup of good liquor, with the help of a good brewer; and when it is made, it will be sold. I pray which of you all can live without it? But when such as these, who complain of us, find it to be good, then they have such a greedy mind, that they think they never have enough, and this overcharge brings on the inconveniences complained of, makes them quarrelsome with one another, and abusive to their very friends, so that we are forced to lay them down to sleep. From hence it ap pears it is from their own greedy desires all these troubles arise, and not from wicked designs of our own. Court. Truly, we cannot see that you are in the fault. Sir John Barleycorn, we will show you so much favour, that if you can bring any person of reputation to speak to your character, the court is disposed to acquit you. Bring in your evidence, and let us hear what they can say in your behalf. Thomas, the Ploughman.-May I be allowed to speak my thoughts freely, since I shall offer nothing but the truth. Court. Yes, thou mayest be bold to speak the truth, and no more, for that is the cause we sit here for; therefore speak boldly, that we may understand thee. Ploughman.-Gentlemen, sir John is of an ancient house, and is come of a noble race; there is neither lord, knight, nor squire, but they love his company, and he theirs; as long as they don't abuse him, he will abuse no man, but doth a great deal of good. In the first place, few ploughmen can live without him; for if it were not for him, we should not pay our landlords their rent; and then what would such men as you do for money and clothes? Nay, your gay ladies would care but little for you, if you had not your rents coming in to maintain them; and we could never pay, but that sir John Barleycorn feeds us with money; and yet would you seek to take away his life! For shame, let your malice cease, and pardon his life, or else we are all undone. Bunch, the Brewer.-Gentlemen, I beseech you, hear me. My name is Bunch, a brewer; and I believe few of you can live without a cup of good liquor, no more than I can without the help of sir John Barleycorn. As for my own part, I maintain a great charge, and keep a great many men at work; I pay taxes forty pounds a year to his majesty, God bless him, and all this is maintained by the help of sir John; then how can any man for shame seek to take away his life. Mistress Hostess.-To give evidence in behalf of sir John Barleycorn, gives me pleasure, since I have an opportunity of doing justice to so honourable a person. Through him the administration receives large supplies; he likewise greatly supports the labourer, and enlivens the conversation. What pleasure could there be at a sheep-clipping without his com. pany, or what joy at a feast without hi assistance? I know hin. to be an hones man, and he never abused any man, if they abused not him. If you put him to death, all England is undone, for there is not another in the land can do as he can do, and hath done; for he can make a cripple go, the coward fight, and a soldier neither feel hunger nor cold. I beseech you, gentlemen, let him live, or else we are all undone; the nation likewise will be distressed, the labourer impoverished, and the husbandman ruined. Court.-Gentlemen of the jury, you have now heard what has been offered against sir John Barleycorn, and the evidence that has been produced in his defence. If you are of opinion he is guilty of those wicked crimes laid to his charge, and has with malice propense conspired and brought about the death of several of his majesty's loving subjects, you are then to find him guilty; but if, on the contrary, you are of opinion that he had no real intention of wickedness, and was not the immediate, but only the accidental, cause of these evils laid to his charge, then, according to the statute law of this kingdom, you ought to acquit him. Verdict, NOT GUILTY. From this facetious little narrative may be learned the folly of excess, and the injustice of charging a cheering beverage, with the evil consequences of a man taking a cup more of it than will do him good. January 8. St. Lucian-Holiday at the Exchequer. St. Appollinaris. St. Severinus. St. Pega. St. Vulsin. St. Gudula. St. Nathalan. St. Lucian. The St. Lucian of the Romish church on this day was from Rome, and preached in Gaul, where he suffered death about 290, according to Butler, who affirms that he is the St. Lucian in the English Protestant calendar. There is reason to suppose, however, that the St. Lucian of the church of England was the saint of that name mentioned yesterday. lantern.' St. Gudula to have died about 712. She suffered the Is the patroness of Brussels, and is said misfortune of having her candle blown out, and possessed the miraculous power of praying it a-light again, at least, so says Butler; "whence," he affirms, "she is usually represented in pictures with a racle she performed. Surius however reHe particularizes no other milates, that as she was praying in a church without shoes, the priest compassionately put his gloves under her feet; but she threw them away, and they miraculously hung in the air for the space of an hourwhether in compliment to the saint or the priest does not appear. CHRONOLOGY. 1821. A newspaper of January 8, mentions an extraordinary feat by Mr. Huddy, the postmaster of Lismore, in the 97th year of his age. He travelled, for a wager, from that town to Fermoy in a Dungarvon oyster-tub, drawn by a pig, a badger, two cats, a goose, and a hedgehog; with a driver's whip in one hand, and in the other large red nightcap on his head, a piga common cow's-horn, which he blew to encourage his team, and give notice of this new mode of posting. Let us turn away for a moment from the credulity and eccentricity of man's feebleness and folly, to the contemplation of "the firstling of the year" from the bosom of our common mother. The Snow-drop is described in the "Flora Domestica"" as the earliest flower of all our wild flowers, and will even show her head above the snow, as if to prove her rivalry in whiteness;" as if -Flora's breath, by some transforming power, Had chang'd an icicle into a flower. Mrs. Barbauld. One of its greatest charms is its "coming Like pendent flakes of vegetating snow, Charlotte Smith. January 9. St. Peter of Sebaste. St. Julian and Basilissa. St. Marciana. St. Brithwald. St. Felan. St. Adrian. St. Vaneng. Or the seven Romish saints of this day scarcely an anecdote is worth mentioning CHRONOLOGY. 1766. On the 9th of January died Dr. Thomas Birch, a valuable contributor to history and biography. He was born on the 23d of November, 1705, of Quaker parents. His father was a coffee-mill maker, and designed Thomas for the same trade; but "took to reading," and being put the son to school, obtained successive usherships; removing each time into a better school, that he might improve his studies; and stealing hours from sleep to increase his knowledge. He succeeded in qualifying himself for the church of England, without going to the university; obtained orders from bishop Hoadley in 1731, and several preferments from the lord chancellor Hardwicke and earl Hardwicke ; became a member of the Royal Society before he was thirty years of age, and of the Antiquarian Society about the same time; was created a doctor of divinity, and made a trustee of the British Museum; and at his death, left his books and MSS. to the national library there. Enumeration of his many useful labours would occupy several of these pages. His industry was amazing. His correspondence was extensive; his communications to the Royal Society were various and numerous, and his personal application may be inferred from there being among his MSS. no less than twenty-four quarto volumes of Anthony Bacon's papers transcribed by his own hand. He edited Thurloes' State Papers in 7 vols. folio; wrote the Lives of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain, and a History of the Royal Society; published miscellaneous pieces of ord Bacon, before unprinted, and produced a large number of other works. The first undertaking wherein he engaged, with other learned men, was the 'General Dictionary, Historical and Critical," -a most useful labour, containing the whole of Bayle's Dictionary newly translated, and several thousand additional lives. He was enabled to complete his great undertakings by being a very early iser, and by usually executing the business of the morning before most persons had commenced it. WINTER. From "Poetic Vigils," by BERNARD BART, On matted weeds is seen. From leafy woods emerge; Seem now departed hence. The bliss that life can lend; The toys that charm, and leave us, Are fancy's fleeting elves; January 10. St. William. St. Agatho, Pope. St Marcian. St. William. This saint, who died in 1207, was archbishop of Bourges, always wore a hair shirt, never ate flesh meat, when he found himself dying caused his body to be laid on ashes in his hair shirt, worked miracles after his death, and had his relics burnt them without their manifesting mivenerated till 1562, when the Hugonots racles at that important crisis. A bone of his arm is still at Chaalis, and one of his ribs at Paris; so says Butler, who does not state that either of these remains worked miracles since the French revolution. 1820. The journals of January relate some particulars of a gentleman remarkable for the cultivation of an useful quality actual memory, in twenty-two hours, at two to an extraordinary extent. He drew from gentlemen, a correct plan of the parish sittings, in the presence of two well-known of St. James, Westminster, with parts of the recollecting what he hears. The dialogue of a comedy heard once, or even twice, would, after an interval of a few days, be entirely new to him. January 11. St. Theodosius. St. Hyginus. St St. Theodosius This saint visited St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar and had his fortune told. He ate coarse pulse and wild herbs, never tasted bread for thirty years, founded a monastery for an unlimited number of monks, dug one grave large enough to hold the whole community, when he received strangers, and had not food enough, he prayed for its miraculous increase and had it multiplied accordingly, prophesied while he was dying, died in 529, and had his hair shirt begged by a count, who won a victory with it. was buried according to Butler, who relates these particulars, in the cave wherein the three kings of Cologne were said to have lodged on their way to Bethlehem. parishes of St. Mary-le-bone, St. Ann, and out. He did this at lord Nelson's, at Merton, and likewise at the duke of Kent's, in the presence of two noblemen. He is known by the appellation of " Memory-corner Thompson." The plan of his house, called Priory Frognall, Hampstead, he designed, and built it externally and internally, without any workingdrawing, but carried it up by the eye only. Yet, though his memory is so accurate in the retention of objects subnitted to the eye, he has little power of FISH IN WINTER He In hard frosts holes must be broken in the ice that forms upon fish ponds, or the fish will die. It is pleasing to watch the finny tenants rising half torpid beneath a new-formed hole for the benefit of the air. Ice holes should be kept open during the frost: one hole to a pond is sufficient. At Logan or Port Nessock in Wigtownshire, North Britain, a large saltwater pond was formed for Cod in 1800. It is a basin of 30 feet in depth, and 160 feet in circumference, hewn out from the solid rock, and communicating with the sea by one of those fissures which are common to bold and pre cipitous coasts. Attached to it is a neat Gothic cottage for the accommodation of the fisherman, and the rock is surmounted all round by a substantial stone wall at least 300 feet in circumference. every state of the wind or tide, winter and summer, when not a single boat dare venture to sea, Colonel M'Dowal can command a supply of the finest fish, and study at his leisure the instincts and habits of the "finny nations," with a' least all the accuracy of those sage nati In ralists, who rarely trave. farther than Exeter 'Change. From the inner or back door of the lodge, a winding stair-way conducts to the usual halting place-a large flat stone projecting into the water, and commanding a view of every part of the aquatic prison. When the tide is out, this stone is left completely dry, and here a stranger perceives with surprise, a hundred mouths simultaneously opened to greet his arrival. The moment the fisherman crosses his threshold, the pond is agitated by the action of some hundred fins, and otherwise thrown into a state of anarchy and confusion. Darting from this, that, and the other corner, the whole population move as it were to a common centre, elevate their snouts, lash their tails, and jostle one another with such violence, that on a first view they actually seem to be menacing an attack on the poor fisherman, in place of the creel fuil of limpets he carries. Many of the fish are so tame, that they will feed greedily from the hand, and bite your fingers into the bargain, if you are foolish enough to allow them; while others again are so shy, that the fisherman discourses of their different tempers, as a thing quite as palpable as the gills they breathe, or the fins they move by. One gigantic cod, which seems to answer to the name of "Tom," and may well be described as the patriarch of the pond, forcibly arrests attention. This unfortunate, who passed his youth in the open sea, was taken prisoner at the age of five, and has since sojourned at Port Nessock, for the long period of twelve years, during all which time he has gradually increased in bulk and weight. He is now wholly blind from age or disease, and he has no chance whatever in the general scramble. The fisherman, however, is very kind to him, and it is affecting as well as curious, to see the huge animal raise himself in the water; and then resting his head on the flat stone, allow it to be gently patted or stroked, gaping all the while to implore that food which he has no other means of obtaining. In this pond, cod appears to be the prevailing species; there are also blochin or glassin, haddocks, flounders, and various other kinds. Salmon, which at spawning time visit the highest ivers, could not of course obey their instincts here, and accordingly there is only one specimen of this favourite fis in the pond at present. As the fisherman remarked, "he is ta soupler than any o' the rest," and by virtue of this one quality, chases, bites, and otherwise annoys a whole battalion of gigantic cod, that have only, one would think, to open their mouths and swallow him. To supply them with food is an important part of the fisherman's duty; and with this view, he must ply the net, and heave the line, during two or three days of every week. He has also to renew the stock, when the pond appears to be getting thin, from the con tributions levied on it by the cook. A letter from Cairo, in a journal of January 1824, contains a whimsical exemplification of Turkish manners in the pro- | vinces, and the absurdity of attempting to honour distant authorities, by the distinctions of civil society. A diploma of honorary member of the Society of Frankfort was presented to the Pacha, at the divan (or council.) The Pacha, who can neither read nor write, thought it was a firman (despatch) from the Porte. He was much surprised and alarmed; but the interpreter explained to him that it was written in the Nemptchee (German) language, contained the thanks of the ulemas (scholars) of a German city named Frankfort, for his kindness to two Nemptchee travelling in Egypt. But the most difficult part was yet to come; it was to explain to him that he had been appointed a member of their society; and the Turkish language having no word for this purely European idea, the interpreter, after many hesitations and circumlocutions, at last succeeded in explaining, "that as a mark of respect and gratitude, the society had made him one of their partners." At these words the eyes of the Pacha flashed with anger, and with a voice of thunder he roared that he would never again be the partner of any firm; that his partnership with Messrs. Briggs and Co. in the Indian trade, cost him nearly 500,000 hard piasters; that the association for the manufactory of sugar and rum paid him nothing at all; and, in short, that he was completely tired of his connections with Frank merchants, who were indebted to him 23,000,000 of piasters, which he considered as completely lost. In his rage, he even threatened to have the interpreter drowned in the Nile, for having presumed to make offer of a mercantile connection, against his positive orders. |