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of his life, rose and fell with the funds. He never lay down or rose that he did not bless the first inventor of compound interest.

His constant saying was, that gold was the clouded cane of youth, and the crutch of old age.

For forty-two years he lived in Clare Market as journeyman butcher; and lodged thirty years in one gloomy apartment, which was never brightened up with coal, candle-light, or the countenance of

a visitant.

He never treated man, woman, or child, to a glass of any kind of liquor-never lent or borrowed a penny-never spoke ill or well of any one-and never ate a morsel at his own expense.

About three days before his dissolution, he was pressed by his employer to make his will. He reluctantly assented, but observed, as he signed his name, that it was a hard thing that a man should sign away all his property with a stroke of a pen. He left £2475 in the three per cents. to distant relations, not one of whom he had ever seen or corresponded with. About half an hour before he died he wanted to bargain for a coffin.

The following inventory of Pett's goods and chattels was taken after his death. An old bald wig.

A hat as limber as a pancake.
Two shirts that might pass for fishing-

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Yellow garlic flowers. Particolored flag, and most of the Iris tribe, now come into blow.

June 3.

THE NIGHTINGALE IN 1831.

FRIEND HONE,

27th April, 1831.

As you are, like me, fond of the song of Philomel, and may have as little leisure to go far to hear it, I give you notice that the nightingale was heard this year on the 17th of March, at Dartford, and may now be heard in full song near London.

On Monday morning, at day-break, I walked in company with a catcher (!) from Dartford to New Cross: he had been out for his third and last trip, and had sixteen with him, making forty-three birds caught since the 9th. All the way, on each side of the road, he called, and they answered him; so that I think at least twenty must have sung. They are now laired, and not worth catching, so the lovers of song may have a treat.

There is one at the end of the College, Blackheath Corner, the best I ever heard, and I suppose by this time they are to be found in Kensington Gardens; for they appeared to be travelling westward. The birds the catcher had were very lean.

Those who wish to hear nightingales in the day time may be gratified by going to Champion Hill, leading to Lordship-lane : I heard four yesterday at two o'clock. There is a beautiful view over Norwood, Dulwich, &c., from that spot: the sight of the green trees, the rich grass, and the hearing of those birds, with the song of a good robin, and some few chaffinches, joined to the warble of a fine lark, is worth the while of any one who has "music in his soul," and an eye for the beauties of nature.

S. R. J.

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Roaming on, the nightingale

Sang sweetly in my ear;

And, by the greenwood's shady side,
A dream came to me there;

Fast by the fountain, where right flowers
Of sparkling hue we see,

Close sheltered from the summer heat,
That vision came to me.

All care was banished, and repose
Came o'er my wearied breast;
And kingdoms seemed to wait on me.
For I was with the blest.
Yet, while it seemed as if away
My spirit soared on high,

And in the boundless joys of heaven
Was wrapt in ecstacy,

E'en then, my body reveiled still

In earth's festivity;

And surely never was a dream

So sweet as this to me.- VOGELWEIDE.

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BIRTH DAY OF KING GEORGE III.

Edinburgh Celebration.

From the time of the Restoration, when the magistrates celebrated the "glorious twenty-ninth of May" upon a public stage at the Cross, down to the year 1810, when the last illness of King George III. threw a damp over the spirits of the nation at large, Edinburgh was remarkable for her festive observance of the "King's BirthDay."

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By the boys, in particular, the "Fourth of June" used to be looked forward to with the most anxious anticipations of delight. Six months before that day, they had begun to save as many of their Saturday's half-pence" as could possibly be spared from present necessities; and, for a good many weeks, nothing was thought of but the day, and nothing was done but making preparations for it. White-washing and partly-painting stairfits was one of the principal preparations. A club of boys, belonging perhaps to the same street, or close, or land, would pitch upon a particular stair-fit, or, if that was not to be had, a piece of ordinary dead wall, as much out of the way as possible; and this became, for the time, the object

of all their attentions, and their ordinary place of meeting. Here, upon the great day, they were to muster all their arms and ammunition, kindle a fire, and amuse themselves from morning to night, with crackers, serpents, squibs, and certain Lilliputian pieces of ordnance, mounted upon the ends of sticks, and set off with matches or pee-oys.

For a fortnight immediately before the day, great troops of boys used to go out of town, to the Braid and Pentland hills, and bring home whins for busking the lamp-posts, which were at that period of the year stripped of their lamps,- as well as boughs for the adornment of the "bower-like" stations which they had adapted for their peculiar amusement. whom had come from a great distance, to Of course, they were not more regular in these forages than the magistrates were with edicts, forbidding and threatening to punish the same.

One of the most important preliminaries of the Birth-day was the decoration with flowers of the statue of King Charles in the Parliament-square. This was always done by young men who had been brought up in Heriot's hospital,otherwise Auld Herioters,"—who were selected for this purpose, on accouut of the experience they had in dressing the statue of George Heriot, with flowers on his birth-day, which was always held on the first Monday of June.

The morning of the birth-day was ushered in by firing of the aforesaid pieces of ordnance, to the great annoyance of many a Lawn-market and Luckenbooths merchant, accustomed, time out of mind, to be awaked four hours later by the incipient squall of the sautwives and fish-wives at eight o'clock. As for the boys, sleep of course had not visited a single juvenile eye-lid during the whole night; and it was the same thing whether they lay in bed, or were up and out of doors at work. Great part of the morning was spent in kindling the banefires, preparing the ammunition, and

The obscure and long-disputed word, Luckenbooths, is evidently derived from Lucken, close or shut; and booths, shops or This anplaces for exposing merchandise.

cient row of houses must have been originally distinguished from other booths, by being shut in all round, instead of having one side open to the street. All shops may now be said to be luckenbooths.

adorning the public wells with evergreens. The wells thus honored were the Bowhead, Lawn-market, Cross, and Fountain Wells; and, besides branches of trees, there was always an oil-painting hung at the top, or a straw-stuffed figure set up against the bottom. Both around the fires and the wells were great groups of boys, who busied themselves in annoying the passengers with cries of "Mind the Bane-fire!" or "mind," the person whoever he might be, that wos repreented by the painting or the effigy. A halfpenny was a valuable acquisition, and of course added to the general stock of the company, to be expended in the purchase of gun-powder. These elegant exhibitions were the wonder and admiration of many a knot of country-people, some of witness the "fun" and the "frolics" of the King's Birth-day.

About seventy years ago, it was customary to fix figures of the sun, the moon, and the globe, upon the top of the Crosswell; and these being pierced with small holes, and communicating by a pipe with the cistern, water was made to play from their faces in a very beautiful manner. This continued from twelve to four, and was sanctioned by the magistrates. It was to this well that the ancient pillory of the city was fixed.

Towards the afternoon, the bane-fires were in a great measure deserted; for by that time the boys had usually collected a good sum, and began to bend their thoughts upon the great business of the evening. A new object of attention now sprung up namely, the meeting of the magistrates and their friends in the Parliament House, in order to drink the King's health. In the Great Hall, formerly the meeting-place of the Scottish Parliament, tables covered with wines and confectionaries were prepared at the expense of the city; and to this entertainment there were usually invited about two hundred persons, including the most respectable citizens of Edinburgh, besides the noblemen, gentlemen, and the chief military and naval officers who happened to be in the city or its vicinity. About five o'clock, the attention of the mob became concentrated in the Parliament Close. The company then began to assemble in the House; and those archenemies of the mob, yclept the "Town Rattens," drew themselves up at the east entry of the square, in order to protect the city's guests as they alighted from

at

their carriages, and to fire a volley at every toast that was drunk within the house. The gentlemen who came to honor the magistrates had often to purchase the good-will of the mob by throwing money amongst them; otherwise they were sure to be mal-treated before getting into the house. Dead cats, cod-heads, and every species of disgusting garbage, were thrown them, and sometimes unpopular persons were absolutely seized and carried to the box which covered a fire-pipe in the centre of the square, and there" burghered," as it was called-that is, had their bottoms brought hard down upon the ridge of the box three several times, with sever ty proportioned to the caprice of the inflictors, or determined by the degree of resistance made by the sufferer.

While the town-guard stood in the square, the mob were seldom remiss in pelting them with the same horrible missiles. Resistance or revenge in such a case would have been vain; and the veterans found it their only resource to throw all the articles of annoyance, as they reached them, into the lobby of the house; thus diminishing, and perhaps altogether exhausting, the ammunition of their persecutors.

The healths being drunk, the "rats " were ordered to leave the square, and march down the street to their guardhouse. Most of these veterans had no doubt participated in the distresses and hazards of many a march and countermarch; but we question if they were ever engaged in any so harassing and dangerous as this. In fact, the retreat of the 10,000 Greeks, or that of the British troops in the late peninsular war, was scarcely so beset with peril and horror, as this retreat of the " rats from the parliament square to the town-guardhouse-a distance of only 100 yards! The uproar was now at its height, and the mob, not content with a distant fire of missiles, might be said to charge bayonets, and attack their foes hand to hand. The ranks of the guard were of course entirely broken, and every individual soldier had to dispute every inch he proceeded, with a thousand determined annoyers. The temper of the worthy vete

rans

was put to dreadful trial by this organized system of molestation, but some warm exclamation was in general the only expression of their wrath. Some years ago, however, one John Dhu, a high-spirited soldierly man, was

so exasperated by the persecution of an individual, that he turned about at the Cross, and hewed him down with one stroke of his Lochaber-axe.

After the Town-guard was fairly housed, the mob was obliged to seek other objects, whereupon to vent their ignoble rage; and, accordingly, the High Street, from the Luckenbooths to the Netherbow, becoming now the field of action, every well-dressed or orderly-looking person who happened to intrude upon the hallowed district was sure to be assailed. Squibs and serpents blazed and flew about in all directions.

It was customary with the blackguards who headed the mob to commit "forcible abduction, sans remords," upon all the cats which they could find, either at the doors or the fire-sides of their disconsolate owners. These hapless innocents were sometimes killed outright, immediately on being caught, before commencing the sport; but, in general, were just tossed about till they expired. A fullsized dead cat was sometimes so far improved, by this process of jactation, as to be three feet long, and fit for being tied round the neck of a gentleman, like a cravat. Pieces of furniture, such as chairs and tables, were also occasionally seized in the Cowgate, and thrown about the streets in the same manner. Countrypeople were seldom permitted to escape abuse, when observed upon the street. Our informant once saw three unsophisticated rustics, dressed in their best skyblue coats, standing at the head of the Old Assembly Close, amongst the women and children who usually took such stations in order to "see the fun." The poor men were laughing heartily at the mischief they witnessed-their cachinnations being no more heard amidst the uproar than their persons were seen amongst the crowd. But suddenly, for some reason or other, the noise of the mob sinking down to a low note, like the sea subsiding round a stake, left the voices of the honest country folks quite prominent above the circumjacent hum; and of course had the effect of directing the attention of all towards the closehead where they stood. The eyes of the mob instantly caught their happy faces, and, in the course of the next moment, a hundred hands were raised with the purpose of throwing crackers, serpents, dead cats, &c., at their heads. Seeing themselves thus made objects of attack,

they turned in horror and dismay, and fled down the close. Having the start of their pursuers, they had almost effected their escape, when a stout fellow, more impetuous than the rest, rushing headlong through the "close-mouth," hurled after them a bruised and battered calf'shead, which had been a well-known aud familiar missile throughout the High Street during the whole afternoon, and which, striking the last of the fugitives full in the back, went to pieces where it alighted, darkening with blood and brains the shade of the coat, and laying the luckless rustic prostrate on the ground.

After the mob succeeded in chasing every proper object of mischief from the street, they usually fell to and attacked each other, in a promiscuous méllée, till, worn out by fatigue, and fully satisfied with "fun," they separated perhaps about ten o'clock, after having kept undisputed possession of the town for at least ten hours. The present system of Police has suppressed these outrages.*

ETON FETE.

[For the Year Book.]

In the Every-Day Book† there is a curious account of the manner in which some years ago the birth-day of his Mahill in Sussex; it may not therefore be jesty, King George III., was kept at Bexunamusing to describe the manter both in which it used to be kept, and, though years have elapsed since the demise of that aged monarch, it still honored by the students of Eton.

However, this second jubilee of the Etonians is perhaps not for the sole purpose of commemorating the natal day of one of England's kings, but may also have an equal reference to another circumstance, which is, that about this time the boys, as it is technically called, "take their removes," which simply means are admitted into higher classes. The day nominated

Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, ii. 221. + Vol. ii. col. 743-4. # 1819.

The "taking a remove" is in the lower part of the school generally, and in the upper invariably, made a matter of course, depending upon the time the boy may have been in the school, and forming no criterion of his literary acquirements.

for this purpose is, in fact, the 4th of June, but it does not, I believe, actually take place till some days after.

This Fête has no resemblance to the Montem, inasmuch as the former is aquatic, while the latter is performed on terra firma.

On the morning of the 4th of June, if, as a passenger is going over Windsor Bridge on the way to Eton, he should turn his eyes to the left, on a small island called the aits, he will perceive two poles erected, towards the upper part of which a black scroll is affixed, with the following words conspicuously inscribed on it in white letters, FLOREAT ETONA, i. e., "May Eton flourish." If it be near the meridian, or inclining towards afternoon, he may behold placed above it on a central pole the Eton arms; these are for transparencies; the arms are surmounted with a royal crown, and at the extremities of the scroll G. R.;§ both in various colored lamps ready for illumination. When evening approaches, at about six o'clock, several frames with fireworks are erected, and, among the most conspicuous of the preparations is a second transparency, to be lit up by fireworks, of the Eton arms surrounded with the motto "FLOREAT ETONA."

There generally at this time begins no slight bustle on the right bank of the river, called the brocas, which is occasioned by the " boats" being on the point of starting. Previously however to their departure the river begins to assume an animated appearance, and numerous skiffs with company in them, especially if it be a fine afternoon, are seen to move on the water. The Etonians, also, not belonging to the boats'-crews, get into skiffs and row up to Surly Hall, there to await the coming of the pageant flotilla.

There now appear on the river some way up the Buckinghamshire bank, so that they are not distinctly if at all visible from the bridge, the "boats" which are to play such a conspicuous part; they are generally eight in number, christened by some fine name or other, such as "Britannia!" "Victory!" "St. George!" "Etonian!" &c., and decorated with handsome and appropriate flags. Two of

So it was last time, when in the reign of George IV. they celebrated his father's birthday, whether they will be commuted to W. R. this time, or not, I am ignorant; probably they will not.

them have ten, and the remainder eight oars. When it is nearly half past six, or at a little before seven, the crews embark. They are all dressed in different uniforms, all however wearing blue jackets, shoes, and buckles. The great mark of distinction is the hat; a little, round, odd-looking, though sailor-like, affair, made of different colored beavers, and variously stained straws; in the front of which is placed a medal suitable to the name of the boat, as the cross of St. George, the anchor of Hope, &c. Each crew has moreover a shirt of a different check; for they assimilate themselves as much as possible to sailors, and invariably have a checked shirt.

The gayest person in each boat is the steersman, who is habited in a captain's full naval uniform, wearing a cocked hat and sword. The captain of the boat, however, pulls "stroke," and is habited as one of the crew.

An aquatic procession now commences, consisting of all the boats," belonging to the Eton boys, in order, the ten-oars taking the lead; the whole preceded by one or two bands of music in two boats, rowed by "cads."* The place of destination is Surly Hall, a house situated on the banks of the river, where refreshment, or rather a very substantial feast, in which wine makes a conspicuous figure, is provided. This is merely for the "boats," but, as I have mentioned before, numbers of the Eton boys go up in skiffs, and, by standing behind the chair of any of the "boats," they have whatever they wish. Each fifth form boy is moreover presented with a card, on which is inscribed "cider," or else "ale," and which entitles the bearer to a bottle of either. Though the "boats" do not stay long up at Surly, they generally contrive that above half are halfseas-over; though such a close familiarity with the jolly god adds in no little measure to their personal risk while on the water, and is calculated rather to throw a shade upon the manner of the Etonians than to enhance the pleasure of this juvenile regatta.

While the "boats" are yet carousing at Surly, the company on the river in boats,

Cads, low fellows, who hang about the college to provide the Etonians with any thing necessary to assist their sports.

+ Boats. This word, in Eton language, is applied to the boats' crews more frequently than to the boats themselves.

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