open grave, remarked: Ah, there will be somebody else wanting a grave before the week is out!' Strangely enough (the population of the place was then under a thousand), her words came true, and the grave was dug for her.

If a corpse does not stiffen after death, or if the rigor mortis disappears before burial, it is a sign that there will be a death in the family before the end of the year.

In the case of a child of my own, every joint of the corpse was as flexible as in life. I was perplexed at this, thinking that perhaps the little fellow might, after all, be in a trance. While I was considering the matter, I perceived a bystander looking very grave, and evidently having something on her mind. On asking her what she wished to say, I received for answer that, though she did not put any faith in it herself, yet people did say that such a thing was the sign of another death in the family within the twelvemonth.

If every remnant of Christmas decoration is not cleared out of church before Candlemas-day (the Purification, February 2), there will be a death that year in the family occupying the pew where a leaf or berry is left.

An old lady (now dead) whom I knew, was so persuaded of the truth of this superstition, that she would not be contented to leave the clearing of her pew to the constituted authorities, but used to send her servant on Candlemas-eve to see that her own seat at anyrate was thoroughly freed from danger.

Fires and candles also afford presages of death. Coffins flying out of the former, and winding-sheets guttering down from the latter. A winding-sheet is produced from a candle, if, after it has guttered, the strip, which has run down, instead of being absorbed into the general tallow, remains unmelted: if, under these circumstances, it curls over away from the flame, it is a presage of death to the person in whose direction it points.

Coffins out of the fire are hollow oblong cinders spirted from it, and are a sign of a coming death in the family. I have seen cinders, which have flown out of the fire, picked up and examined to see what they presaged; for coffins are not the only things that are thus produced. If the cinder, instead of being oblong, is oval, it is a cradle, and predicts the advent of a baby; while, if it is round, it is a purse, and means prosperity.

The howling of a dog at night under the window of a sick-room, is looked upon as a warning of death's being near.

Perhaps there may be some truth in this notion. Everybody knows the peculiar odour which frequently precedes death, and it is possible that the acute nose of the dog may perceive this, and that it may render him uneasy: but the same can hardly be alleged in favour of the notion, that the screech of an owl flying past signifies the same, for, if the owl did scent death, and was in hopes of it is not likely that it would prey, screech, and so give notice of its presence. Suffolk.

C. W. J.

THE HOT WEDNESDAY OF 1808.

Farmers, and others engaged in outdoor pursuits, men of science, and others engaged in observations on meteorological phenomena, have much reason to doubt whether the reported temperatures of past years are worthy of reliance. In looking through the old journals and magazines, degrees of winter cold and summer heat are found recorded, which, to say the best of it, need to be received with much caution; seeing that the sources of fallacy were numerous. There was one particular Wednesday in 1808, for instance, which was marked by so high a temperature,

PHILIP AUGUSTUS OF FRANCE.

as to obtain for itself the name of the 'Hot Wednesday;' there is no doubt the heat was great, even if its degree were overstated. At Hayes, in Middlesex, two thermometers, the one made by Ramsden, and the other by Cary, were observed at noon, and were found to record 90° F. in the shade. Men of middle age at that time, called to mind the 'Hot Tuesday: of 1790, which, however, was several degrees below the temperature of this particular Wednesday. Remembering that the average heat, winter and summer, of the West Indies, is about 82°, it is not surprising that men fainted, and horses and other animals died under the pressure of a temperature so unusual in England as 8° above this amount. In the shade, at an open window looking into St James's Park, a temperature of 94° was observed. In a shopwindow, on the shady side of the Strand, a thermometer marked 101°; but this was under the influence of conducted and radiant warmth from surrounding objects. At Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, two thermometers, made by Nairne and Blunt respectively, hanging in the shade with a northern aspect, marked 94° at one o'clock on the day in question. In the corresponding month of 1825, observers were surprised to find a temperature of 85° marked in the quadrangle of the Royal Exchange at four o'clock in the 19th, 86 at one o'clock on the same day, 87° at Paris, and 91° at Hull; but all these were below the indications noticed, or alleged to be noticed, in 1808. It is now known, however, better than it was in those days, that numerous precautions are necessary to the obtainment of reliable observations on temperature. The height from the ground, the nature and state of the ground, the direction in reference to the points of the compass, the vicinity of other objects, the nature of those objects as heat-reflectors, the covered or uncovered state of the space overhead-all affect the degree to which the mercury in the tube of a thermometer will be expanded by heat: even if the graduation of the tube be reliable, which is seldom the case, except in high-priced instruments. On this account all the old newspaper statements on such matters must be received with caution, though there is no reason to doubt that the Hot Wednesday of 1808 was really a very formidable day.

JULY 14.

St Bona

St Idus, bishop of Ath-Fadha, in Leinster. venture, cardinal and bishop, 1274. St Camillus de Lellis, confessor, 1614.

Born.-Cardinal Mazarin, 1602, Pescina, in Abruzzo; Sir Robert Strange, engraver, 1721, Orkney; John Hunter, eminent surgeon, 1728, Long Calderwood; Aaron Arrowsmith, publisher of maps, 1750, Winston, Durham; John S. Bowerbank, naturalist, 1797, London.

Died.-Philip Augustus of France, 1223, Mantes; Dr William Bates, eminent physician, 1699, Hackney; Dr Richard Bentley, editor, controversialist, 1742, Cambridge; Colin Maclaurin, mathematician, 1746, Edinburgh; General Laudohn, 1790; Gartner, German botanist, 1791; Jean Paul Marat, French revolutionist, assassinated, 1793; Baroness De Staël Holstein (née Anne Necker), 1817, Paris.

PHILIP AUGUSTUS OF FRANCE.

The name of Philip Augustus is better known in English history than those of most of the earlier French monarchs, on account of his relations with the chivalrous Richard Coeur-de-Lion and the unpopular King John. Philip's reign was a benefit

to France, as he laboured successfully to overcome feudalism, and strengthen and consolidate the power of the crown. He came to the throne when he was only fifteen years of age, and already displayed a vigour of mind which was beyond his years. One of the earlier acts of his reign, was the persecution of the Jews, who, on the charge of having crucified a Christian child at Easter, were stripped of their possessions, and banished from France; but this was less an act of religious bigotry, than probably an expedient for enriching his treasury. While King Henry II. of England lived, Philip encouraged the two young English princes, Geoffrey and Richard, in rebelling against their father, because he aimed at getting possession of the English territories in France; and after Henry's death, he professed the closest friendship for Richard, who succeeded him on the throne, and joined with him in the third Crusade. This, however, was the result neither of religious zeal nor of sincere friendship; for, as is well known to all readers, he quarrelled with King Richard on the way to the East, and became his bitter enemy, and soon abandoned the crusade and returned home. He was restrained by his oath, and still more by the threats of the pope, and by the fear of incurring the odium of all Western Europe, from attacking King Richard's possessions during his absence; but he intrigued against him, incited his subjects to rebellion, assisted his brother John in his attempt to usurp his throne, and when Richard had been seized and imprisoned by the emperor of Austria, he offered money to that monarch to induce him to keep him in confinement.

By the death of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Philip was released from a powerful and dangerous enemy, and he soon commenced hostilities against his successor, King John, with whom he had previously been in secret and not very honourable alliance. The result of this war was, that in 1204, King John was stripped of his Norman duchy, which was reunited to the crown of France, and the English king gained from his Norman subjects the derisive title of Jehan sans Terre, which was Anglicised by the later English annalists into John Lack-land. Philip's plans of aggrandisement in the north and west were no doubt assisted by the absence of the great barons of the south, who might have embarrassed him in another crusade, in which they conquered not Jerusalem, but Constantinople and Greece. Philip invaded and occupied Brittany, and other provinces which were under English influence and rule, while King John made a feeble and very short attempt at resistance. These events were followed by the terrible crusade against the heretical Albigeois, which Philip encouraged, no doubt from motives of crafty policy, and not from either religious bigotry or attachment to the pope. Nevertheless, the pope, as is well known, was so well satisfied with Philip's conduct in this cause, that he struck the English nation with the interdict, and nominally deposed King John from his throne, transferred the crown of England by his authority to the head of Philip Augustus, and authorised him to go and take possession of it by force, promising the privilege of crusaders in this world and the next to all who should assist him in this undertaking. This expedition was retarded by a war with the Count of Flanders, which led to a coalition between the count, the

PHILIP AUGUSTUS OF FRANCE.

emperor of Germany, and the king of England, against the French king; but the war was ended advantageously for Philip, by his victory in the battle of Bouvines. Philip now found sufficient occupation for a while in regulating the internal affairs of his own country, and in resisting the rather undisguised aspirations of his subjects for popular liberty; while his enemy, King John, was engaged in a fiercer struggle with his own barons; but there had been a change which Philip did not expect, for the pope, who hated everything like popular liberty, no sooner saw that it was for this object, in some degree, that the English barons were fighting, than he altered his policy, took King John under his protection, and forbade the king of France to interfere further. Philip had no love for the pope, and was seldom inclined to submit to any control upon his own will; and when the English barons, in their discouragement, sought his assistance, and offered the crown of England to his son, the prince Louis (afterwards King Louis VIII. of France), he accepted and sent Louis with an army to England, in defiance of the pope's direct prohibition. The death of King John, and the change of feelings in England which followed that event, finally put an end to his ambitious hopes in that direction. The remainder of Philip's reign presented no events of any great importance except the renewal of the war in the south, in which the first Simon de Montford was slain in the year 1218. Philip Augustus died at Mantes, on the 14th of July 1223, at the age of fifty-eight, leaving the crown of France far more powerful than he had found it.

Philip's accession to the throne of France, when he was only a child, was accompanied by a rather romantic incident. His father, who, as was then usual, was preparing to secure the throne to his son by crowning him during his lifetime, and who was residing, in a declining state of health, at Compiègne, gave the young prince permission to go to the chase with his huntsmen. They had hardly entered the forest, before they found a boar, and the hunters uncoupled the hounds, and pursued it till they were dispersed in different directions among the wildest parts of the woods. Philip, on a swift horse, followed eagerly the boar, until his steed slackened its pace through fatigue, and then the young prince found that he was entirely separated from his companions, and ignorant of the direction in which he might hope to find them. After he had ridden backwards and forwards for some time, night set in, and the prince, left thus alone in the midst of a vast and dreary forest, became seriously alarmed. In this condition he wandered about for several hours, until at last, attracted by the appearance of a light, he perceived at a distance a peasant who was blowing the fire of a charcoal kiln. Philip rode up to him, and told him who he was, and the accident which had happened to him, though his fear was not much abated by the collier's personal appearance, for he was a large, strong, and roughlooking man, with a forbidding face, rendered more ferocious by being blackened with the dust of his charcoal, and he was armed with a formidable axe. His behaviour, however, did not accord with his appearance, for he immediately left his charcoal, and conducted the prince safely back to Compiègne; but fear and fatigue threw the child into

so violent an illness, that it was found necessary to postpone the coronation more than two months.

MARAT.

The sanguinary fanaticism of the French Revolution has no representative of such odious and repulsive figure as Marat, the original self-styled 'Friend of the People.' By birth a Swiss, of Calvinistic parents, he had led a strange skulking life for five-and-forty years-latterly, a sort of quack mediciner-when the great national crisis brought him to the surface as a journalist and member of the Convention. Less than five feet high, with a frightful countenance, and maniacal

MARAT.

ere, he was shrunk from by most people as men shrink from a toad; but he had frantic earnestness, and hesitated at no violence against the enemies of liberty, and so he came to possess the entire confidence and affection of the mob of Paris. His constant cry was for blood; he literally desired to see every well-dressed person put to death. Every day his paper, L'Ami du Peuple, was filled with clamorous demands for slaughter, and the wish of his heart was but too well fulfilled. By the time that the summer of 1793 arrived, he was wading in the blood of his enemies. It was then that the young enthusiastic girl, Charlotte Corday, left her native province, for Paris, to avenge the fate of her friend, Barbaroux. She sought Marat at his house was admitted to see him in his hot bathand stuck a knife into his heart. His death was treated as a prodigious public calamity, and his body was deposited, with extravagant honours, in the Pantheon; but public feeling took a turn for the better ere long, and the carcass of the wretch was then ignominiously extruded.

MARAT

seemed to know whence he had come, or how he had spent his previous life. There was, however, one notice of his past history published in a Glasgow newspaper, four months before his death, rather startling in its tenor; which, nevertheless, would now appear to have been true. It was as follows: 'From an investigation lately taken at Edinburgh, it is said that Marat, the celebrated orator of the French National Convention, the humane, the mild, the gentle Marat, is the same person who, a few years ago, taught tambouring in this city under the name of John White. His conduct while he was here was equally unprincipled, if not as atrocious, as it has been since his elevation to the legislatorship. After contracting debts to a very considerable amount, he absconded, but was apprehended at Newcastle, and brought back to this city, where he was imprisoned. He soon afterwards executed a summons of cessio bonorum against his creditors, in the prosecution of which, it was found that he had once taught in the academy at Warrington, in which Dr Priestley was tutor; that he left Warrington for Oxford, where, after some time, he found means to rob a museum of a number of gold coins, and medallions; that he was traced to Ireland, apprehended at an assembly there in the character of a German count; brought back to this country, tried, convicted, and sentenced to some years' hard labour on the Thames. He was refused a cessio, and his creditors, tired of detaining him in jail, after a confinement of several months, set him at liberty. He then took up his residence in this neighbourhood, where he continued about nine months, and took his final leave of this country about the beginning of the year 1787.

'He was very ill-looked, of a diminutive size, a man of uncommon vivacity, a very turbulent disposition, and possessed of a very uncommon share of legal knowledge. It is said that, while here, he used to call his children Marat, which he said was his family name.'

These revelations regarding Marat were certainly calculated to excite attention. Probably, however, resting only on an anonymous newspaper paragraph, they were little regarded at the time of their publication. It is only of late years that we have got any tolerably certain light regarding Marat's life in England. It now appears that he was in this country in 1774, when thirty years of age, being just the time when the differences between the American colonists and the mothercountry were coming to a crisis. In that year he published, in English, a huge pamphlet (royal 8vo, price 12s.), under the title of The Chains of Slavery: a work wherein the clandestine and villainous attempts of princes to ruin liberty are pointed out, and the dreadful scenes of despotism disclosed; to which is prefixed An Address to the Electors of Great Britain, in order to draw their timely attention to the choice of proper representatives in the next Parliament.-Becket, London.' Most likely, this work would meet with but little encouragement in England, for the current of public feeling ran in the opposite direction. In 1776, we find him dating from Church Street, Soho,' a second and much less bulky pamphlet on a wholly different subject-An Inquiry into the Nature, Cause,

*Star of March 4, 1793: seo Notes and Queries,

and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes, hitherto unknown, and yet common, produced by the use of certain Mercurial Preparations. By J. P. Marat, M.D. He here vented some quackish ideas he had regarding eye-disease, and out of which he is said at one time to have made a kind of living in Paris. In the prefatory address to the Royal Society, he lets out that he had been in Edinburgh in the previous August (1775). It is stated, but we do not know on what authority, that, in the Scottish capital, he tried to support himself by giving lessons in French. He probably was not there long, but quickly migrated to the academy at Warrington. Nor was he there long either. The next incident in his life was the Oxford felony, adverted to in the Glasgow Star. At least there can be little doubt that the following extract from a letter of Mr Edward Creswell, of Oxford, dated February 12, 1776, refers to Marat under an assumed name:

I shall now tell you a piece of news respecting a robbery which was committed here lately. About a week ago, a native of France, who calls himself M. le Maitre, and was formerly a teacher in Warrington Academy, being invited here by a gentleman of this college to teach the French language, came over, and met with great encouragement in the university, but, happening to get acquainted with Mr Milnes, a gentleman of Corpus Christi College, who is the keeper of the museum and several other natural curiosities, he prevailed on him, by repeated importunities, to let him have a view of them. Accordingly, they both went together, and after M. le Maitre had viewed them a great while, Mr Milnes, from the suspicions he entertained of his behaviour, under pretence of getting rid of him, told him that several gentlemen were waiting at the door for admittance, and that he must now go out immediately; but the Frenchman excused himself by saying he would retire into the other apartments, and whilst the strangers that were admitted were surveying the curiosities with more than ordinary attention, this artful villain retired from them, and concealed himself under a dark staircase that led into the street, where he stayed till the company had gone out, after which he stole away medals and other coins to the amount of two hundred pounds and upwards, and got clear off with his booty. It was somewhat observable that he was often seen lurking near the museum some time before this affair happened, and very frequently desired to be admitted as soon as he had got a view of the medals. I am sorry I have not time to tell you a few more particulars concerning this transaction, but shall defer it till I know further about it.'

In a subsequent letter, Mr Creswell informed his correspondent that the Frenchman who robbed the museum was tried, and being found guilty, was 'sentenced to work on the river Thames for five years.'

These extracts appear, with due authentication, in the Notes and Queries (September 16, 1860), and they are supported in their tenor by the publications of the day. The robbery of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford by a person styled at first 'a Swiss hair-dresser,' and afterwards 'Le Mair, now a prisoner in Dublin,' is noticed in the Gentleman's Magazine for February and March 1776.

* Biographie Universelle, art. 'Marat.'

'DE HERETICO COMBURENDO.'

Subsequently, it is stated in the same work under September 1, that 'Petre le Maitre, the French hair-dresser, who robbed the museum at Oxford of medals, &c., to a considerable amount, was brought by habeas corpus from Dublin, and lodged in Oxford Castle.' Unfortunately, this record fails to take

notice of the trial.

What a strange career for a Swiss adventurer from first to last! A pamphleteer for the illumination of British electors, a pamphleteer for a quack cure for the eyes, a teacher of languages at Edinburgh, an usher at the Warrington Academy under the sincere and profound Priestley, a felon at Oxford, a forçat for five years on the Thames, afterwards a teacher of tambouring at Glasgow, running into debt, and going through a struggle for white-washing by the peculiar Scotch process of cessio bonorum, which involves the preliminary necessity of imprisonment; finally, for a brief space, the most powerful man in France, and, in that pride of place, struck down by a romantic assassination-seldom has there been such a life. One can imagine, however, what bitterness would be implanted in such a nature by the felon's brand and the long penal servitude, and even by the humiliation of the cessio bonorum, and how, with these experiences rankling beyond sympathy in the wretch's lonely bosom, he might at length come to revel in the destruction of all who had deserved better than himself.

DE HERETICO COMBURENDO.' Amongst the last victims of the religious persecution under Mary, were six persons who formed part of a congregation caught praying and reading the Bible, in a by-place at Islington, in May 1558. Seven of the party had been burned at Smithfield on the 27th of June; the six who remained were kept in a miserable confinement at the palace of Bonner, bishop of London, at Fulham, whence they were taken on the 14th of July, and despatched in a similar manner at Brentford.

While these six unfortunates lay in their vile captivity at Fulham, Bonner felt annoyed at their presence, and wished to get them out of the way; but he was sensible, at the same time, of there being a need for getting these sacrifices to the true church effected in as quiet a way as possible. He therefore penned an epistle to (apparently) Cardinal Pole, which has lately come to light, and certainly gives a curious idea of the coolness with which a fanatic will treat of the destruction of a few of his fellow-creatures when satisfied that it is all right.

'Further,' he says, 'may it please your Grace concerning these obstinate heretics that do remain in my house, pestering the same, and doing much hurt many ways, some order may be taken with them, and in mine opinion, as I shewed your Grace and my Lord Chancellor, it should do well to have them brent in Hammersmith, a mile from my house here, for then I can give sentence against them here in the parish church very quietly, and without tumult, and having the sheriff present, as I can have him, he, without business or stir, [can] put them to execution in the said place, when otherwise the thing [will need a] day in [St] Paul's, and with more comberance than now it needeth. Scribbled in haste, &c.'

Bonner was a man of jolly appearance,

and

usually of mild and placid speech, though liable to fits of anger. In the ordinary course of life, he would probably have rather done one a kindness than an injury. See, however, what fanaticism made him. He scribbles in haste a letter dealing with the lives of six persons guilty of no real crime, and has no choice to make in the case but that their condemnation and execution may be conducted in a manner as little calculated to excite the populace as possible.

BEAR-BAITING.

In the account which Robert Laneham gives of the festivities at Kenilworth Castle, in 1575, on the reception of Queen Elizabeth by her favourite minister, the Earl of Leicester, there is a lively though conceited description of the bear and dog combats which formed part of the entertainments prepared for her majesty, and which took place on the sixth day of her stay (Friday, 14th July). There were assembled on this occasion thirteen bears, all tied up in the inner court, and a number of ban-dogs (a small kind of mastiff). 'The bears were brought forth into the court, the dogs set to them, to argue the points even face to face. They had learned counsel also o' both parts; what, may they be counted partial that are retain[ed] but a to [to one] side? I ween no.

BEAR-BAITING.

Very fierce both tone and tother, and eager in argument; if the dog, in pleading, would pluck the bear by the throat, the bear, with traverse, would claw him again by the scalp; confess an a [he] list, but avoid a [he] could not, that was bound to the bar; and his counsel told him that it could be to him no policy in pleading. Therefore thus with fending and fearing, with plucking and tugging, scratching and biting, by plain tooth and nail to [the one] side and tother, such expense of blood and leather was there between them, as a month's licking, I ween, will not recover; and yet [they] remain as far out as ever they were. It was a sport very pleasant of these beasts, to see the bear with his pink eyes leering after his enemy's approach, the nimbleness and weight of the dog to take his advantage, and the force and experience of the bear again to avoid the assaults; if he were bitten in one place, how he would pinch in another to get free; if he were taken once, then what shift, with biting, with clawing, with roaring, tossing, and tumbling, he would work to wind himself from them, and when he was loose, to shake his ears twice or thrice, with the blood and the slaver about his phisnomy, was a matter of goodly relief.'

In the twelfth century, the baiting of bulls and bears was the favourite holiday pastime of Londoners; and although it was included in a proclamation of Edward III., among 'dishonest, trivial, and useless games,' the sport increased in popularity

at Bankside, the public being admitted at the charge of a penny at the gate, a penny at the entry of the scaffold, and a penny for quiet standing. When Queen Mary visited her sister during her confinement at Hatfield House, the royal ladies were entertained with a grand baiting of bulls and bears, with which they declared themselves 'right