esteem it the more. If I were to live till the sun that rises in the east were to grow dim with age, it never could be forgotten by me. But, raised as I am to the highest degree of honour in having the pleasure of providing you with this snuff-mull, which I have now in my hand, yet I feel much. I am much concerned that it bears no proportion at all to the worth and value of the receivers. Were it made of the finest gold, or set with the most brilliant diamonds, it would be of far too little value to lay before such personages as compose this meeting.. This mull, which never has yet had a snuff taken out of it by mortal man, I beg you to accept of it. . . . All I wish is, that every time that you place it upon the table in the name of the giver, inanimate as it is, it will rejoice with you when you rejoice; and when you take it in your hand, and read the inscription, Presented by Henry Macminn,' it will, when I am lodged in the dark caverns of the earth, bring to your recollection one that once lived, but now has taken his flight to that world of impenetrable darkness, never to return; but when he did live, amongst the happiest days he spent while on earth were with the members of the Widows' Society in Dumfries. . . I come now, Sir, to perform the pleasantest office I ever did in the whole course of my life, to present you with this snuff-mull, which I have

now in my hand :-In the name of Almighty God and the King receive it; in the name of God, that He may protect every good institution like this, for the relief of the distressed; and in the name of the King, that every good and charitable society in our land, for noble purposes like this, may be protected by the laws of our country, which are wisely calculated to protect every good subject."

XXXVII.

BUY A BROOM.

SONGS of broom-girls, with which all our theatres and streets rang but lately, were as much in fashion in the reign of Elizabeth. "A Pythie and Pleasant Comœdie of the Three Ladies of London, written by R. W., 1592," preserves the following stanzas:

"New broomes, greene broomes, will you buy any?
Come maidens, come quickly, let me take a penny.
My broomes are not steeped,
But very well bound;
My broomes be not crooked,
But smooth cut and round.
I wish it should please you
To buy of my broome,
Then would it well ease me

If market were done.

Have you any old bootes,
Or any old shoes;
Pouch, rings, or bussins,
To cope for new broomes?
If so you have, maydens,
I pray you bring hither,
That you and I friendly

May bargen together.

New broomes, greene broomes, will you buy any? Come maydens, come quickly, let me take a penny."

These lines may seem silly and uncouth to modern judgments; but will the most favoured ditties of Haynes Bayley appear otherwise two hundred years hence ?

XXXVIII.

PROOFS OF NOBILITY.

"THERE are gentlemen," says Menage, "who can produce no other proof of the nobility of their lineage, than the sentence by which some one of their ancestors was doomed to lose his head on the scaffold." The remark comes quite home to us in Scotland. Our greatest record of family antiquity is the Ragman Roll, a deed as disgraceful in itself

1 Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature, vol. ii. pp. 23, 24. 2 Menagiana, t. iii. p. 455.

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as its name is barbarous, which preserves lists of all the nobles and gentry in Scotland who swore fealty to the English Usurper in 1292 and 1296. Nor is the observation less applicable to our English neighbours. "In this country," writes a professed genealogist, it may be said that a family can have little claim to antiquity, if it cannot prove an attainder. Lord Chief Justice Crew (in the time of Charles I.), in delivering the opinion of the judges to the House of Lords on the disputed succession to the earldom of Oxford, after having alluded to the rank of the De Veres for above five centuries, stated by way of commendation, that he found but two attainders of that noble family in all that length of time."1

XXXIX.

OF EATING BOOKS AND PAPERS. JOHN-CHARLES-CONRAD ELRICHS, a German bibliographer, who died in 1798, wrote, among other works, Dissertatio de Bibliothecarum ac Librorum fatis, imprimis Libris comestis," A Dissertation on the fate of Libraries and Books, and particularly of Books which have been eaten." This piece, which it has not been my good fortune to see, is said to be prefixed to the Catalogue de la Bibliotheque de Jacques

] Origines Genealogicae, p. 183.

de Perard, printed at Berlin in 1756. The second part, it is said, treats of authors condemned to eat the books which they have written; a singular punishment, and apparently akin to that which the ancients inflicted on evil authors, by making them efface their compositions with their tongues.

Works of history or fiction record many instances of persons compelled to devour writings. Malone refers to Mill's Discourse of the Antiquity of the Star Chamber for an account of the manner in which one of the attendants of Bogo de Clare was forced to eat the parchment and seals of a citation of which he was the bearer. This was in 1290; and in the succeeding century another instance is furnished by Italian chronicles. His Holiness Pope Urban V., who reigned from the year 1362 to the year 1370, issued a bull of excommunication against Barnabas Visconti, and sent two legates to bear it to him; but Barnabas forced the messengers to eat in his presence the parchment on which the bull was written, together with the leaden seals and silken strings.2

More than one instance occurs in our Scottish annals. In the year 1547, a citation was issued against the Lord Borthwick by the official of the see of Saint Andrews, together with letters of

1 Ancient British Drama, vol. i. p. 325. Lond. 1810. 2 Sismondi's History of the Italian Republics, p. 174. Lond. 1832.