JUST JUDGMENT.

A GOOD JUDGE, AND A GOOD JURY.

It is of most essential importance to the due administration of justice that Juries should be sensible of their own dignity; and, when occasion requires, that they should not implicitly and servilely bow, to the opinion of any judge, however high he may be held in estimation. An instance of the beneficial result of a jury asserting, in a respectful manner, the privilege of having an opinion of their own, occurred, not at the assizes now holding, but not very long ago. Two men were indicted for a burglary: after the counsel for the prosecution had opened, the amiable and learned judge who presided, addressing the jury, said, "Gentlemen, there does not appear to me any probability that a case of burglary can be made out against the prisoners, it is therefore needless to occupy your time any further." The jury having, however, conferred for a short time, the foreman replied, "With perfect deference to your lordship's opinion we should rather prefer hearing the evidence." To this his lordship readily assented the case went on, and the guilt of the prisoners was proved beyond the possibility of a doubt. After the verdict was returned, the learned judge said, "Well, gentlemen of the jury, I will not say that you are better lawyers than I am; but I am quite sure that in the present in stance you have proved yourself to be better judges."*

:

OLD ENGLISH ALE.

About 1620 some doctors and surgeons, during their attendance on an English gentleman, who was diseased at Paris, discoursed on wines and other beverages; and one physician, who had been in England, said, "The English had a drink which they call ale, and which he thought the wholesomest liquor that could be drank; for whereas the body of man is supported by natural heat and radical moisture, there is no drink conduceth more to the preser vation of the one, and the increase of the other, than ale: for, while the Englishmen drank only ale, they were strong, brawny, able men, and could draw an arrow an ell long; but when they fell to wine and beer, they are found to be much impaired in their strength and age:" and so the ale bore away the bell among the doctors.†

*Times, August 27, 1827. † Howell.

to obtain a sight of the "noted Captain Cooke, all alive! alive!"-the most public, and not the least important officer of its lively corporation.

A tract, published without a title-page, yet symbolically, as it were, bearing a sort of half-head, whereby it is denominated "A Pamphlet called Old England for Ever!" is the production of captain Cooke himself; and a lithographed print represents that "noted "personage "drawn from nature," in his full costume, as "Captain of the Sheriffs troop at 74 assizes for the county of Devon." An engraving from the print is at the head of this article; the original is "published by George Rowe, 38, Paris-street, Exeter," price only a shilling. The present representation is merely to give the reader some notion of the person of the captain, previously to introducing so much of his " particular confession, life, character, and behaviour," as can be extracted from his aforesaid printed

narrative.

The tract referred to, though denominated "Old England for Ever," seems intended to memorialize "Captain Cooke-for ever." Aspiring to eclipse the celebrated autobiography of "P. P. Clerk of this Parish," the captain calls his literary production "a pamphlet of patriotic home achievements during the late direful war from 1793 to 1815;" and, accordingly, it is a series, to adopt his own words, of "twenty-two years multifarious but abridged memoirs, novelties, anecdotes, genealogy, and bulletins, by the author's natural instinct."

The first most important information resulting from the captain's "natural instinct," "is this-that "the duke of Wellington, marshal Blucher, the allied officers, and armies, defeated the atheist, the enemy of the Sabbath and of peace to the world, on Sunday, 18th of June 1815, at half after eight o'clock in the evening:" which day the captain, therefore, calls "an indelible day;" and says, "I built a cottage that year, and have a tablet over my doorWaterloo Cottage, in memory of Europe's victory, Sunday, 18th June, 1815; and I went to Wellington-hill to see the foundation-stone laid for a Wellington column, in honour of the duke. So much for Buo

naparte's fanfaronade!-At daybreak of the 15th of July, he (Buonaparte) surrendered himself to the English captain Maitland, of the Bellerophon - an appropo name to the refugee.I was called up the next morning at one o'clock; I wrote twenty letters to country gentlemen of the

O!-be-joyful news, by the same morning's post. I have been often called up on express news."

From hence may be deduced the value of the captain and his opinions in the city of Exeter; and, no doubt, due importance will be attached to his proposition, that "parliament should always meet of a Friday or Saturday, and prorogue of a Monday, to prevent sabbath-breaking as little as possible;" and that "the mails should be prohibited from blowing their horns in the dead of the night or morning, in towns or villages." It was contemplated to carry these measures into effect by joint stock companies, wherein all the captain's friends were shareholders, when the "panic" came down from London by an opposition coach, and destroyed public confidence in the captain's plans. They are noticed here in the order wherein he states them himself; and, pursuing the like order, it is proper to state, in the first place, something of the house wherein this self-eminent person was born; then, something respecting "Ashburton Pop;" and, lastly, something respecting his apprenticeship, and his ser vices as a loyal man and a saddler to "the city of Exeter, and the corporation and trade thereof."

"I was born,"says the captain," at the Rose and Crown public-house on the old bridge, in the borough town of Ashburton, 1765; where a good woollen-manufactory has been carried on; and it has produced great character, or so, for learning:" and "has been as famous for a beverage, called Ashburton Pop, as London is for porter I recollect its sharp feeding good taste, richer than the best small beer, more the champaign taste, and what was termed a good sharp bottle. When you untied and hand-drew the cork, it gave a repor louder than a pop-gun, to which I attribute its name; its contents would fly up to the ceiling; if you did not mind to keep mouth of the stone bottle into the white quart cup, it filled it with froth, but no over a pint of clear liquor. Three o cronies would sit an afternoon six hours, smoke and drink a dozen bottles, then reckoning but eight-pence each, and penny for tobacco. The pop was but two pence a bottle. It is a great novel loss the town; because its receipe died with brewer about 1785."

From the never-enough-sufficiently to lamented and for-ever-departedPop the captain returns to himself. "My ther," says he, "put me apprentice at teen to the head saddler in Exeter, the

Mr. Charter, whom I succeeded when I came of age, and have lived in the same house thirty-seven years, up to 1817, where my son now lives, under the firm of Cooke and Son." He evidently takes great pleasure in setting forth the names of his customers; and he especially relates, "I got to be saddler, through the late Charles Fanshawe, recorder of Exeter, to the late lord Elliott Heathfield, colonel of dragoons. His lordship was allowed to be one of the first judges of horses and definer of saddlery in the kingdom; his lordship's saddlehouse consisted from the full bristed to the demy pick, shafto, Hanoverian, to the Dutch pad-saddles; and from the snaffle, Pelham, Weymouth, Pembroke, Elliott, Mameluke, and Chifney bridles. Chifney was groom to the prince regent. Besides all this, the vast manage horse-tackling, tomies, dumb-jockies, hobbles, lunging, lifting, and side reins. His lordship's saddle and riding-house was a school for a saddler and dragoon. And I had the honour of being saddler to other colonels of dragoons, connoisseurs of saddlery, when they were at Exeter quarters."

Here the captain's enthusiasm increases : *I could write," says he, "a treatise on all the parts of the bearings and the utility of all the kinds of saddles, bridles, stirrups, and harness-collars, made for the last thirty years, for the benefit of horse or rider; from the bullock-back horse to the finest withered. With just judgment, while on the saddle, the captain expatiates on the mode of riding to the best advantage. "As said, keep your head cool, feet warm, nd live temperate, and you won't need he doctor, without something is amiss; so et your saddle clear your finger with all our weight in the stirrups going down ill; the same on the hind part with all your weight on the seat going up hill; you Fon't need the saddler without somehing is amiss." A miss is as good as a nile, and the captain diverges to a "great nystery,' "which must be related in his wn words:

"The great mystery to know a horse's ge is between five and eight years old. horse may live to thirty; but not one rt of a thousand but what are worked out f their lives at fifteen. From their sucking rst teeth, they loose, and get their permaent teeth at five years old; at six they ave a small pit-hole, a bean's eye, a cavity 1 two of their outer lower teeth; at seven ey have this mark but in one, the outde tooth; at eight years old the teeth are Il filled up; then the mark is out of the

mouth. But dealers and judges look to the upper teeth; there is a mark to twelve years old, but no vestige afterward. An old horse has long large teeth, worn off on the top edge. The prime of a horse is between six and twelve years of age. He is weak and faint before six, and stiff and dull after twelve. Some say a horse is out of mark at seven; but it is at eight. The average age of horses is at twelve yearsthe average of man not at the half of his time appointed on earth!"

To a posey of poesy, occupying nearly a page in this part of the pamphlet, it is impossible to do justice with equal satisfaction to the reader and the captain; yet, in courtesy, it is proper to cull

a twig,

Or two, to stick about his wig.

As a specimen of the materials whereon he relies for a laurel crown, the following lines are drawn out from his "snarl" of versifyings:

As few began the world, so I multiplied.
Plain, at twenty-one, I did begin
Which in my manuscript was seen:
Tho' I did not know the use of grammar,
I was well supported by my hammer.
I sticked to my King, leather, and tools;
And, for order, wrote a set of shop rules.
Working with the hands only is but part,
The head's the essential to make the work smart.

After this poetical effusion the captain rises to "the height of his great argument," his undying doings. "Now," says the captain, now for my sixty home achievements during the late war for my king and country." Alas! the captain seems to have disdained the "use of numbers," except when inspired by the muses, or the "sweet voices" of the people of Exeter, when they, honoured him with a "Skimmington,' which he passes over with a modesty equal to that of the Roman general who never mentioned his great ovation. The captain's

66

sixty achievements" are doubtless in his pamphlet; but they in "wrong order go," and are past the arithmetician's art to enumerate. The chief of them must be gathered from his own account. Foremost stands" the labour I took in pleasing and accommodating my customers;" and almost next, "the many hours I have knocked my head, as it were, against Samuel John son, to find words for handbills and advertisements all at my own expense, to avoid inflammatory pamphlets. Î gloried in the name of John Bull,' and shall to my life's end. I went into the pot-houses at Exeter,