TRACE OF A PAST CELEBRITY. When passing through a village in the Township of Toronto, some two summers ago, we chanced to enter into communing with a rough-spun, stalworth, sunbronzed English yeoman, who was engaged in excavating a well. At once unsophisticated and intelligent was the character of the man's countenance, and the impression thus created suffered no refutation from the tone and bearing of his observations upon the subject matters handled in our brief colloquy. Leaving the well-digger for a season, let us call to remembrance an ill-starred ecclesiastic, whose name formed a prominent item in the criminal annals of the last century. William Dodd, the son of a Devonshire clergyman, was born in 1729, and educated in Cambridge. Having married when destitute of the means of support he obtained holy orders in 1753, and being gifted with considerable rhetorical powers, soon became one of the most popular pulpit orators in the Anglican metropolis. All the rank and fashion of the day were found amongst the parties who statedly attended his prelections, and even royalty was to be met with occasionally in the chapel where he officiated. Wealth swelled the coffers of the fortunate preacher, to which professional honours lent an odorous garnishment, he being placed upon the list of His Majesty's Chaplains in 1764. It requires a steady hand to manipulate a full cup, and such a hand Dr. Dodd could not boast of. The transition from comparative poverty to a plethora of income shattered the man's moral equilibrium, and plunging recklessly into the mare magnum of extravagance, he soon, like the prodigal son, "began to be in want." Deeply involved in the meshes of debt, he offered a bribe to the spouse of the Lord Chancellor if she would procure his nomination to a valuable rectory which then chanced to be vacant. He had reckoned, however, without his hostess, and the lady informing her liege lord of the matter, the name of the simoniac was struck from the list of Court Chaplains. Ruined at once in character and purse, Dodd sought refuge at Geneva, where in an evil hour, as it so eventuated, he fell in with that Napoleon of "deportment," the Earl of Chesterfield, whose tutor he had been. This nobleman presented his ex-mentor with a small living, utterly inadequate to feed the cravings of the incumbent's fashion-vitiated tastes. 'Ere long the grewsome tide of debt surged wildly round him as ever, and driven desperate by duns, the unfortunate divine committed a forgery upon his patron by which he obtained a considerable sum of money. There is pregnant reason to conclude that Dodd honestly purposed to replace the sum thus fraudulently got, but before he could do so the delict was discovered, and the Earl, with constitutional callousness, prosecuted the offender, who was convicted and sentenced to the gallows. Much interest was employed to procure a mitigation of punishment, particularly by Samuel Johnson, then in the zenith of his fame, who composed the petition addressed by the criminal to the King. All these efforts, however, proved abortive, and the man upon |