gen nourable and right honourable tlemen had not, in those days, to legislate upon bills for the construction of rail-ways. Letters of Marque.-Letters of marque and reprisal were first issued in 1295. A merchant of Bayonne, in Gascony, where Edward I. then was, had gone with a ship to Barbary, where he took on board a quantity of almonds, raisins, and figs; and on his voyage back from England, he and his ship and cargo were seized by some armed force from Lisbon, as he lay at anchor on the Portuguese coast, and were carried into Lisbon, where the captors paid the king of Portugal a tenth share (the ship and cargo being valued at seven hundred pounds sterling), although Peace then subsisted between England and Portugal. King Edward therefore granted the merchant letters of marque against the subjects of Portugal, where he could seize their effects, and especially against those of Lisbon, for five years, or until he shall reimburse himself for his losses, on condition that he accounted to the king for any surplus he might take over and above his real damages and expenses. Drunkenness in Kings.-Sully, in his memoirs, vol. ii. page 90, says, "that James's custom was never to mix water with his wine.' Sir Edward Peyton informs us, that when the king of Denmark (brotherin-law to James) was first in England, both kings were so drunk at Theobald's, that one king was carried in the arms of the courtiers, when one cheated another of the bedchamber, by getting a grant from king James, for that he would give him the best jewel in England for a pearl of 1007. he promised him; and so put king James in his arms and carried him to his lodging, and defrauded the bedchamber man, who had much ado to get the king into his bed. The Bishops in 1641.-It was the constant aim of that united and "compact phalanx," the bishops, to prevent all reformation in church state during the reign of Charles I., and to support him in all his arbitrary views and artifices. It was this which induced the Presbyterians and Puritans to get a bill passed through both houses of Parliament for the exclusion of the Bishops from their seats in the House of Lords;-the question of their right to sit there, having indeed long previously been agitated. This memorable bill passed the Commons on the 11th March, 1640-1, and passed the Lords on the 27th May following. The Act was repealed in 1661. Source of Mortality in Russia.In Russia the common people are frequently deprived of sensation, by vapours arising from the following cause. Persons of rank in that country have double windows to their houses in winter, but those of the poorer classes are only single. During frosty weather an incrustation is formed on the inside of those windows, from a condensation of the breath, perspiration, &c. of a number of persons living together in the same chamber. This mephitic crust is mixed with the noxious fumes of candles, and of the stove with which the chamber is heated. When a thaw succeeds, and this plate of ice is converted into water, a deletrious principle is disengaged, which produces effects similar to those arising from the fumes of charcoal. The method of recovering persons affected by this effluvia, is as follows:-They are immediately carried of doors und placed on the snow, with no other covering than a shirt and linen drawers. Their temples and stomach are then well rubbed with snow, and cold water is poured down their throats. The friction is continued till the livid hue of the skin disappears, and the surface acquires its natural colour. |