there, though the Links be very plain. Only casting his eyes on the place where she stood, he saw two words drawn and written as it had been with a staff upon the sand,-SENTENCED AND CONDEMNED; upon which he came home very pensive and melancholy, and in a little sickens and dies. What to make of this," concludes the Presbyterian martyrologist, "or what truth is in it, I cannot tell ; only I had it from a minister who lives near Montrose." 1

V.

INEXPRESSIBLES.

THAT part of dress which it is now unlawful to name, seems of old to have had the singular virtue of discomfiting witches and demons.

Every one may have heard how the bare vision of St Francis' inexpressibles put the devil to flight.

In Thuringia, it is believed that, to keep the fairies from stealing babies, you have only to hang the father's breeches on the bed.2

1 Wodrow's Analecta, vol. i. p. 149. MS.

* Crofton Croker's Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland, pp. 50, 51. I think I have heard that in some parts of Scotland the father's breeches were placed under the pillow. Another preventive is described by Alexander Ross: "A clear brunt coal wi' the het tengs was taen Frae out the ingle-mids, fu' clear and clean,

And throw the corsy-belly letten fa',

For fear the wee ane sud be taen awa."

Fortunate Shepherdess.

Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, gives this "charme to find her that bewitched your kine":"Put a pair of breeches upon the cowe's head, and beat her out of the pasture with a good cudgell, upon a Fridaie, and she will runne right to the witches dore and strike thereat with her hornes." The same mystic spell prevailed against the famous Brownie of Blednoch in Galloway :

"On Blednoch banks, an' on crystal Cree,
For many a day a toil'd wight was he ;
While the bairns play'd harmless roun' his knee,
Sae social was Aiken-drum.

But a new-made wife, fu' o' rippish freaks,
Fond o' a' things feat for the five first weeks,
Laid a mouldy pair o' her ain man's breeks
By the brose o' Aiken-drum.

Let the learn'd decide, when they convene,
What spell was him an' the breeks between ;
For frae that day forth he was nae mair seen,
And sair miss'd was Aiken-drum.

He was heard by a herd gaun by the Thrieve, Crying, 'Lang, lang now may I greit an' grieve,

Retrospective Review, vol. v. p. 110.

For, alas! I hae gotten baith fee an' leave
O, luckless Aiken-drum!" "1

VI.

DAVID MALLET AND PIERRE PASCAL.

ONE of the least reputable actions of Mallet, whose character unfortunately is liable to several unpleasant charges, was his conduct towards the Marlborough family. For a thousand pounds bequeathed to him by the duchess, he undertook to write the life of the conqueror of Blenheim. From the second duke likewise he had a pension to promote his industry. He talked much of the progress he had made in this great work; but left not, when he died, the smallest vestige of it behind him! Dr Johnson (from whom we learn that he was the prettiest dressed puppet about town, and always kept good company) tells us that he was never deceived by Mallet's talk, but saw and always said that he had not written any part of the life of the Duke of Marlborough.2

Pierre Pascal, a Gascon, who died in 1565, was guilty of a like unworthy artifice. He had a pen

1 Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 276. Edin. 1826.

2 Croker's Boswell's Johnson, vol. ii. p. 408; vol. iv. p. 258.

sion of twelve hundred pounds a-year from Henry II. of France for his encouragement to write the history of that country. To keep the king's hopes awake he occasionally dropped a sheet inscribed, "P. Paschalii, Liber Quartus Rerum a Francis Gestarum;" but when he died, it was discovered that he had never begun the work.1

VII.

LIFE SAVED BY LAUGHTER.

"THE health of Erasmus," says Mr Charles Butler, "was always very delicate, and he now began to feel the infirmities of old age. He was afflicted by an imposthume, and the worst was feared, when he was cured of it in an extraordinary manner. The perusal of the celebrated 'Literae Obscurorum Virorum' threw him into a fit of immoderate laughter; the imposthume burst, and the laugher was cured.”2

A like tale is told of Dr Patrick Scougal, a Scotish bishop in the seventeenth century.3 An old woman earnestly besought him to visit her sick cow; the

1 Biog. Univ. t. xxxiii. p. 45. Menckenii de Charlataneria Eruditorum Declamat. Duae, p. 128. edit. Amstel. 1716.

2 Butler's Life of Erasmus, p. 199. Lond. 1825.

He died in 1682, in the seventy-third year of his age. (Keith's Catal. Scot. Bish. p. 133.) Bishop Burnet says

prelate, after many remonstrances, reluctantly consented, and, walking round the beast, said gravely, “If she live, she live; and if she die, she die ; and I can do nae mair for her." Not long afterwards he was dangerously afflicted with a quinsy in the throat the old woman having got access to his chamber walked round his bed, repeating the charm which she believed had cured her cow; whereat the bishop was seized with a fit of laughter, which broke the quinsy and saved his life.

An old English dramatist alludes to a third instance:

"I am come to tell you

Your brother hath intended you some sport:
A great physitian, when the pope was sicke
Of a deepe melancholly, presented him

With severall sorts of mad-men, which wilde object
(Being full of change and sport) forc'd him to laugh,
And so th' impost-hume broke: the self same cure
The duke intends on you."

of him, that "he had a way of familiarity by which he gave every body all sort of freedom with him, and in which, at the same time, he inspired them with a veneration for him, and by that he gained so much on their affections, that he was considered as the common father of his whole diocese, and the Dissenters themselves seemed to esteem him no less than the Conformists did."-Preface to Life of Bishop Bedell.

1 Webster's Dutchesse of Malfy, act iv. scene ii.