gerly feize every opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the fair fex. Their affiduity and lively converfation are accomplishments of the highest or der in the estimation of the ladies, who, charmed with their humourous compli ments, and the earnetnefs with which they urge their fuit, often terminate the amour by an elopement, and a trip to Gretna Green.

ANECDOTE of VOLTAIRE.

ACURIOUS circumstance is mentioned in a French paper, respecting the fecond reprefentation of Voltaire's celebrated trig dy of Zara. On its first representation, the play was received with the loudeft applaufe; but the author conceived that fome alteration in feveral paff ges would greatly increafe the effect of the piece. Valtaire accordingly did introduce fome alterations, and prefented the play in the improved fate to the feveral performers. Dufrefne, who perfonated the principal character, refufed to attend to the alterations, and no entreaties could prevail on him to give them the fm left notice. It was neceflary to have recourfe to a fratagem to gain Voltaire's object. He was apprifed that Defreshe was very fond of a good dinner, and he determined to addrefs him on this feere. Voltaire got a pie prepared, filled with partridges, and fent it to Durrefne's houfe by a perfon who' was carefully to conceal from him from whom the prefent came. The prefent was graciously received, and immedi⚫ ately made part of an entertainment which Dufrefne happened that day to be giving a party of friends.

The

pie was opened, and to Dufrefne's no fmall furprise, each partridge contained in its mouth a copy of the alterations in Zura. He was fo well pleated with the conceit, that he re-ftudied the part; and a prefent of a partridge-pie was the means of giving ftability to one of Vol. taire's best tragedies.

THE YELLOW FEVER.

Copies of the Letters of Capt. Ball, and Mr. M Bean, Purfer of his Majesty's Ship the Argonaut, published in the Halifax Jour., nal of Nova Scotia, the 28th Jan. 1797. A GREATER proportion of Officers, both in the Army and Navy, have died than privates, or failors, which I afcribe to their eating too much putrefcent food. The Phylician General:

told me last week, that this fever had baffled the fkill of all the faculty, both English and French; but the Master of a tranfport has found out a medicine, in the effence of fpruce, which has cured a great many people; it has fucceeded with all my men lately attacked, and it is equally well fpoken of in the other fhips; we only began trying it three days before we failed. The proportion is three table fpoonfuls of eflence to a quart of warm water; when cool it may taken in fmall tumblers, one every

be

half hour, or an hour's interval; lefs may do for a weak confitution: three tumblers have proved a cure. It fometimes acts as a purgative; but with fome people it has not any fenfible effect, but the fymptoms gradually going away. I had caught the fever, and on taking thrée tumblers of this medicine the fymptoms went away without any fenfible operation.

MR. M'BEAN'S LETTER.

Emetics and bleeding have been in general unfuccesful; the former weak, ens the stomach to much, that it refules to retain any thing afterwards, and bleeding rather accelerates the progrefs of the difeafe. We have lately, found that the effence of spruce has been efficacious, and has relieved several in the courfe of four or five hours.

The mixture is three table-fpoonfuls of the eflence diffolved in a quart of hot water, and taken cold, about a tumbler full every hour, till three tumblers have been taken; keeping the patient in the open air, and walking, if he is able; but when the fever is entirely gone off, the patient may go below. When the fpruce begins to purge, which it gene, rally does, more or lefs, the taking

fhould be diicontinued.

it from Edward the Confeffor to one Randolph Pepperkin,) was formerly termed the Foreft of Effex, an appellation perfectly appropriate, as it then included a great part of that county, and thrust itfelf into many hundreds "."

From the age of this monarch down at least to the reformation, this large fpace, like the foreft of Sherwood, and many others, which are now plains, was overgrown with wood, and has by gradual degrees fhrunk to its present boundaries in confequence of encroachments and enclosures; and has been occafionally denuded of its timber, &c. as convenience or neceflity required; which circumstance has been of real advantage to the public, as it was, for ages, the refort of a very fingular defcription of defperate banditti, compofed of hordes of the idle and diflolute from the metropolis, many of whom had fled for crimes of confiderable magnitude, and found fhelter from the violated laws, in woods almost impervious, and protection in their numbers; fo that, while they levied contributions on the travellers, and frequently in winter extended their depredations to the city itself, they fet any force that was fent against them at defiance.

Among the many villages and towns that, in the progrefs of time and the courfe of civilization, rofe in this foreft, one of the most ancient is Waltham Abbey, of the prefent ftate of which we have given a correct view. The name it derived from the place in which it is fituated, or more probably from a cluster of cottages belonging to the banditti we have mentioned, the Saxon Wealtham fignifying dwellings in woods. It is built on that fide of the river Lea or Lee, in which the divided freams enclofe feveral Islands. Its origin does not seem to claim higher antiquity than the latter time of the Saxons, when one Tovius, a man of confiderable wealth and authority, and ftandard-bearer to the king, ftationed there a guard of fixty-fix men, to protect the deer, and perhaps, even then, the paffengers. Athelston, his fon, foon fquandered his eftate, and the monarch, Edward the Confeffor, beftowed the village, &c. on Harold, fon to Earl Godwin, who built a monastery for an expiation, for having, impelled by his own ambition, taken advantage of the inadvertency of other men, in

* Nordon's Ellex, MS.

his endeavours to possess himself of the crown.

In this (the original abbey) he fo lemnly offered up his prayers for fuccefs against the Normans. After he was flain in the battle of Haftings, his mother having obtained his body by the most abject fubmiffions and entreaties, it was depofited in this place.

To this monastery the town of Waltham Abbey, like many others in times of popery, owes its rife. Wherefoever an establishment of this kind was erected, the grant of fairs and mar kets in its vicinity followed of course, though we find none of thefe with refpect to Waltham earlier than the reigns of Richard I, and Henry III, betwixt which and the period of its foundation, the cottages which first marked the fpot had gradually receded and given place to buildings of more fubftantial materials and larger dimenfions. The abbey, too, by the munificence of different monarchs who fucceeded the Conqueror, rofe in splendour. It was rebuilt, and became one of the richest and most important in the kingdom.

One of its greatest benefactors was that pattern of conjugal fidelity, Edward the Firft, who erected the magnificent crofs in its neighbourhood, which, like thofe of Coventry, Northampton, Charing, and others, was one of the places where the body of his beloved queen rested, when it was brought from the north to be interred at Westminster. This, though, in an. cient times, perhaps not a fingular mode of commemorating the deceased, must be confidered fo from the beauty of the edifices that were founded on the occafion. It is impossible to find more perfect fpecimens of architectu ral elegance than was exhibited in these croffes.

That at Coventry, the tafle, learning, and piety of the inhabitants have induced them to demolish; while that near Northampton, which, we think, has been repaired correctly in its ancient ftile, by the command of his prefent Majefty, and this at Waltham, remain, to fhew us that genius was to be found in the ifland before the present era.

The curious in antiquities will fee this fubject more largely treated by Dr. Fuller, who was once curate of Waltham, in his Hiftory of Waltham Abbey, printed at the end of his Church Hiftory, London, folio 1655.

VESTIGES,

in fupport of this propofition, are fo numerous, that they actually crowd upon and embarrass the mind. Recollection seems, in this respect, no effort; the only difficulty is felection and arrangement. But conceiving the thing to be fo felf-evident as not to stand in need of particular elucidation, I fhall only obferve, that the method of converting men after death into gods in the most remote, into heroes in ancient, and faints in the middle and latter ages, seems to have been the fame as the ingenious one to which I have alluded; that is, by ftripping, or, as the author whom I have quoted would have faid, denuding them, of all the inhumanity and its long train of favage propensities, the incidents of ambition, rendering them invulnerable to their enemies, finking their vices, the worst enemies to mankind, in the vortex of oblivion, enduing them with fupernatural powers, or fupernatural purity, and then, by a procefs called an apotheofis, or canonization, fending them up to the stars, or setting them down in the Calendar, to illuminate, or, occafionally, to give a boliday to the world.

The remarkable perfonage whom I have chofen for the fubject of this fpeculation, though a hero, had little pretenfions to an apotheofis, and still lefs to canonization. He knew but little of astronomy; and that little led him frequently, when the lightness of the hemifphere baulked him of what he called a job, to execrate his unlucky ftars; from which it has been fuggefted, that his mind was in fome degree tinc tured with judicial aftrology; which is further corroborated and confirmed from his having, upon more than one occafion, termed the Judges at the Old Bailey fortune-tellers.

But to return to the ftars: they were in fact the enemies of poor Buckhorfe; and as he had too much spirit to bear an injury without fome attempt at retaliation, therefore obferving that they were frequently inclined to take the bread out of his mouth, he, in his turn, endeavoured to outshine them, and, by throwing a blaze around, counteract their operation.

Small, indeed, as has been fhewn, were his pretenfions to deification, but ftill fmaller were the claims he had to canonization, as this operation would have led him into company with which he was totally unacquainted. He knew of no Saint but Saint Monday; and

I fear his learning did not extend fo far as to enable him to read the Calendar, although he had, I think, no ob jection to a holiday.

After this exordium, it will unqueftionably be afked, Of what ufe can the anecdotes of fuch a perfon be? To this I answer, Of the greateft; because I fhall, in the course of this difquifition, prove, notwithstanding, that he was both a hero and a philofopher; and if sketches of the lives of heroes and philofophers are deemed useless, what muft become of half the contents of our libraries Befides, I have feen it stated by fome modern authors, that they were more learned and better bred men than Buckhorfe *. Be it fo: I am not difpofed either to controvert or contradict their affertions; but as it is probable, that when their elegant and ela horate effufions defcend to pofterity, if they have not all defcended in another way already, pofterity will wonder who this Buckhorfe was. I therefore think it neceffary, in the hope that these pages will not alfo be destined to swim down the common fhore of learning with a number of their contemporary books and pamphlets, to freight them with a few more anecdotes refpecting him.

It has been traditionally handed down to us, that the firft situation in which Buckhorfe attracted the attention of the public was at a gaming-house in the Piazza, Covent Garden, which Smollet fays was privileged and patronized by an indigent Scotch Nobleman. Our hero, who was then just arrived at manhood, had gained fome experience as Mace-bearer at the Swan billiardtable: he was therefore retained by the principals of that houfe to act as Mederator; that is to fay, when lofers had fufpicions of the fairness of the parties with whom they had played, to convince them, (by a mode of reafoning which the ancients termed, we think incorrectly, Argumentum Baculinum, but which was rather by arguments which he had, as the faying is, at his fingers' ends, or rather, though more vu'garly, knuckle-bone arguments,) that his friends were men of the higheft honour and the most exemplary characters.