seven weeks of the day of his death; and at the age of fourscore, in 1787, he closed, in peace, a not inglorious life; for to the day of his earth, he never received a farthing in the way of parochial aid. His wife survived him about seven years; and though bent with age and infirmities, and little able to work, except as a weeder in a gentleman's garden, she also was too proud either to ask or receive any relief from the parish. For six or seven of the last years of her life, she received twenty shillings a year, from the person who favoured me with this account, which he drew up from her own mouth. With all her virtue and all her merit, she yet was not much liked in her neighbourhood: people in affluence thought her haughty, and the paupers of the parish, seeing, as they could not help seeing, that her life was a reproach to theirs, aggravated all her little failings. Yet the worst thing they had to say of her, was, that she was proud; which they said was manifested by the manner in which she buried her husband. Resolute, as she owned she was, to have the funeral, and every thing that related to it, what she called decent, nothing could persuade her from having handles to his coffin, and a plate on it mentioning his age. She was also charged with having behaved herself crossly and peevishly towards one of her sons in-law, who was a mason, and went regularly every Saturday evening to the ale-house, as he said, just to drink a pot of beer. James Strudwick, in all his life, as she often told this ungracious son-in-law, never spent five shillings in any idleness; luckily, (as she was sure to add) he had it not to spend. A more serious charge against her was, that, living to a great age, and but little able to work, she grew to be seriously afraid, that at last she might become chargeable to the parish (the heaviest, in her estimation, of all human calamities) and that thus alarmed, she did suffer herself more than once, during the exacerbations of a fit of distempered despondency, peevishly, (and perhaps petulantly) to exclaim, that God Almighty, by suffering her to remain so long upon earth, seemed actually to have forgotten her. Such are the simple annals of dame Strudwick; and her historian, partial to his subject, closes it with lamenting, that such village memoirs have not been often sought for and recorded.

JOHN WESSEL.

SEXTUS the Fourth, having a great esteem for this learned German, sent for him, and said, "Son, ask of us what you will: nothing shall be refused to you that becomes our character to bestow, and your condition to receive." "Most holy father," replied he, "I shall never be troublesome to your holiness; you know I never sought after great things; the only favour that I have to beg is, that you will permit me to take out of your Vatican library a Greek and a Hebrew Bible." "You shall have them," said Sextus; "but what a simple man you are! Why do you not ask for a bishopric?" "Because, holy father, I do not want one," replied Wessel.

TERMING.

IN former days, the natives in some parts of Wales were much addicted to terming; i. e. brewing a barrel of ale at some favourite ale-house, and staying there till it was all drunk out. They never went to bed, even should the term last a week; they either slept in their chairs, or on the floor, as it happened; then awoke, and resumed their jollity. At length, when the barrel was exhausted, they reeled away, and the hero of this bacchanalian rout always carried the spiggot in triumph. Coursing was very frequently the occasion of these terms; each gentleman brought his greyhound, and often made matches, more for the glory of producing the best dog, than for the value of the bet.

BENEVOLENCE.

WHEN Mr. Wilcocks left his estate at Barton, he resided for some time at Kettering, in Northamptonshire. There, as usual, his levee of the poor and the maimed, the halt and the blind, was pretty much crowded. Mr. G―, the person with whom he lodged, had often the curiosity to observe the distribution of his bounty. To one man, in particular, he saw him

*Mr. Wilcocks, who had all the benevolence of Howard, was the author of "Roman Conversations." He died, on the 23d of December, 1791, at the age of sixty-nine. His father was Bishop of Gloucester.----ED.

give a shilling; when, not being able to restrain his disapprobation of goodness so abused, he hastily exclaimed, "Sir, that man is one of the greatest rascals we have in the parish!" Mr. Wilcocks said nothing for the moment; but, after some time, he sent for the man back again, when Mr. G managed to get near enough to overhear him address the man as follows: "I find you have behaved so ill, that you have not a friend in the world; there is half-a-guinea for you, to keep you from immediate want; and now, endeavour to behave better."

BISHOP WARBURTON,

WHEN the first volume of the Divine Legation was shewn to Dr. Bentley (as his son-in-law, Bishop Cumberland, told Dr. Horne), he looked it over, and then observed of the author to his friend, "This man has a monstrous appetite, with a very bad digestion."

A CHEAP MINISTERIAL FAVOUR.

A GENTLEMAN, who had been long attached to Cardinal Mazarine, and much esteemed by that minister, but little assisted in his finances by court favour, one day told Mazarine of his many promises, and his dilatory performance. The cardinal, who had a great regard for the man, and was unwilling to lose his friendship, took his hand, and leading him into the library, explained to him the many demands made upon a person in his situation as minister, and which would be politic to satisfy previously to other requests, as they were founded on services done to the state. Mazarine's companion, not very confident in the minister's veracity, replied, "My lord, all the favour I expect at your hands is this, that whenever we meet in public, you will do me the honour to tap me on the shoulder in the most unreserved manner.'" In two or three years the friend of the cardinal became a wealthy man, on the credit of the minister's attentions to him; and Mazarine used to laugh, together with his confidant, at the folly of the world, in granting their protection to persons on such slight security.

For the Pocket Magazine.

THE NOVICE OF SAN MARTINO:

A TALE.*

IT was early in the seventeenth century, that Ludovico Carantani, an aspiring Italian, the father of two daughters, whose personal and mental endowments far exceeded the attractions of any around them, aimed at aggrandizing his house by a princely alliance. The beauty of Victoria and Olivia was the theme of every youth; but, though the charms of each claimed admiration, the diversity of their dispositions would strike the most superficial observer. Victoria, to sprightly wit, added a capricious and perverse temper; while Olivia, to the natural softness of her sex, added an engaging amiability, and undesigning sweetness of manner, that formed a perfect contrast to the hauteur of her sister.

In their earliest years an uncle dying, had be queathed his vast fortunes between them; but, with a condition that, in case either of them entered a religious house, or died before attaining twenty-one, or before marriage, the whole accumulating mass should vest in the other.

Fernando, Duke of Milan, had long contemplated, with a sordid eye, the splendid fortunes of Carantani's daughters, and resolved, if both portions could be centered in one of them, he would offer her the ducal coronet. He perceived the insatiable ambition of Carantani, and held out the lure, which was eagerly caught at by the cold father, who, hoping to place the glittering bauble on Victoria's forehead, determined to immure the tender Olivia in the gloomy recesses of the Abbey of San Martino. Even Victoria, his everfavoured child, was unacquainted with his designs; but busy rumour at length whispered to her the tale. She was dazzled for a moment with the empty splendour of title and dignity; yet she could not be blind to the duke's motive in soliciting the hand of one he had never seen; neither could she be deaf to the cha

* Founded on Major Parlby's tragedy of "Revenge."

racter of avarice, which, from her earliest years, she remembered that every tongue coupled with his name. Her father's concealing from her a scheme so important to her interest, wounded her to the quick; but he now stooped to tell her, that the hour was speedily approaching that would introduce her to her intended lord; and the hope of being hailed throughout Italy as lady-duchess, aided by her father's arguments, quickly overpowered all other considerations.

The tender passions had but little root in the bosom of Carantani; his anxieties, however, were all alive, not to the interests of his offspring, but to the elevation of his house, and great were his fears lest Olivia should vehemently protest against taking her vows. The communication of his schemes be determined should devolve upon the prioress of San Martino; whose despotic sternness, he rightly conjectured, would compel prompt obedience to dictates, which were so strongly connected with the interests of the abbey.

Olívia, being three years younger than her sister, had scarce seen her eighteenth summer, and had, from her infancy, been almost a constant inmate of the convent. Her education was now completed, and she had begun to anticipate her emancipation from a confinement, which, to a young and ardent imagination, was rigid and galling, when she was thunderstruck by the prioress's intimation, that the hallowed walls of San Martino were to protect her for ever! Hoping to add to the riches of her house, the prioress, while she communicated this unwelcome news, spared no argument which she thought might induce Olivia to bow to Carantani's wishes.

The prioress left Olivia lost in dismay, and labouring under ill-concealed agony. Her thoughts had never, for a moment, dwelt upon the prospect that was now displayed to her, like the dreary expanse of a horrid waste. The abrupt communication of her father's mandate wrung her heart with a thousand pangs. Knowing his violent temper, and that she could scarce hope for any hand to rescue her, she sunk under the anticipation of revolving years of living death, ending only in the thick darkness of the tomb.