Mr. URBAN,-In your Sept. number, p. 218, it is stated that "Mr. Robert Hendrie has shown in an article published in the Builder, that the picture by Murillo from Marshal Soult's collection, for which so unprecedented a sum was given by the President of the French Republic, has been incorrectly described as the Conception of the Virgin; " and it is added, that "Its subject is properly termed the Assumption, a legend which is conventionally represented by appropriating the ideas conveyed in Revelations, c. xii. v. i. as follows:-" And there appeared a great wonder in Heaven, a Woman clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her Head a Crown of twelve Stars." Allow me, Sir, to remark that I cannot agree that Mr. Hendrie is right; there is no such thing as a star in the picture, much less has the Virgin a crown of twelve stars upon her head; and the angels which are represented in the picture can derive no authority from the passage above cited. Besides, if that passage can be interpreted as referring to either subject, it must be the Conception, for in the verse immediately following it is written, "And she being with child, cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered." Murillo painted many pictures of this subject, of which he seemed very fond, and of which there are several in Spain, not exactly similar to the late Marshal Soult's, but varying in some very trifling details, and they are all called in Spain "The Conception," or "La Purissima Concepcion." The engravings in France, from the picture in question, are all called the Immaculate Conception. Yours, &c., HENRY GRIFFITH.

A Correspondent says, in the edition of Bishop Butler's Analogy, printed at Oxford in 1820 (p. lix.) it is stated that his epitaph on a flat stone in Bristol Cathedral was almost obliterated. This has been copied in Bohn's recent edition, noticed in Gent. Mag. for November, p. 505. The editor seems not to have been aware that in 1834 a mural tablet was erected to the

Bishop's memory. It was placed in the South Transept, with an English, instead of the former Latin inscription, and the following appropriate quotation. "He who believes the SCRIPTURE to have proceeded from HIM who is THE AUTHOR OF NATURE, may well expect to find the same sort of difficulties in it as are found

in the Constitution of Nature. ORIGEN, Philocal. p. 23." The earlier edition gives an applicable motto in the title-page from Quintilian, which is omitted, perhaps for want of room, in the later one. Ejus [Analogia] hæc vis est, ut id quod dubium est ad aliquod simile, de quo non quæritur, referat; ut incerta certis probet. Quintil. 1. i. c. 6.'"

In reference to the observations in our Magazine for April and May as to the improper use of the term " Anglo-Saxon," MR. JOHN YONGE AKERMAN sends by way of remark a note that Ethelwulf on his coins styles himself" Rex Saxoniorum" and that Ethelstan is styled " Ongal Saxna Cyning" in his charter of the year 933. See the Codex Diplomaticus Evi Saxonici, vol. v. p. 218.

In our Magazine for Sept. 1851, p. 226, a quotation was made from Dr. Johnson of a statement that A very savage parish was civilised by a decayed gentlewoman who came among them to teach a petty school." No answer having been given to the inquiry then made for the name of the gentlewoman alluded to, M.H.suggests that in all probability Dr. Johnson referred to Elizabeth Elstob, who, after her brother's death, opened a little day-school at Evesham, but not it is believed in her own name. See some notices of this circumstance in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. iv. pp. 133, 137.

In a volume of documents relative to Delinquents' Estates in various counties, now preserved in the British Museum, MS. Addit. 5494, at fol. 129 occurs a receipt for quit-rent which shows that Theodora Joceline (here called Theodocea) the object of "The Mother's Legacie to her unborne Childe" (see our May number, p. 497), remained unmarried on her 24th birthday, the same day when this document was written:

Octo: 12, 1646.

Rec: of Thomas Watts the sum of shilling foure pence for a yeares quitt rent due to Mris Theodocea Jocelin spinster and payable att Michaelmas last I say rec': 0 1 4d

John Alison his O marke.

On the same page is another receipt of John Allison for 78. 6d. quit rent due to Mr. Joslin, dated March 26, 1646; but neither receipt specifies the place where the rent accrued.

THEODORE HOOK remarks, in one of his sprightly romances, that if a man who had not seen his face for ten years were suddenly to behold it in a glass he would have very considerable doubts as to his own identity. I have been looking back at the face, form, and features of Mr. Sylvanus Urban as he instructed and interested the world a hundred years ago. The result of such inspection is alike to, and yet very different from, that which would follow in the case of Theodore Hook's hypothetical individual. would necessarily look all the worse for a ten years' wear - Mr. Urban veritably looks all the better after the wear, tear, struggles, and triumphs of a century.

He

It would be something invidious, perhaps, to contrast the merits of the volume which this number closes with that which terminated the twentysecond volume of the Gentleman's Magazine a century ago. In 1752 the greater part of the ingenious and learned contributors" to the Magazine were men of modesty who concealed themselves with mysterious secrecy, and who were, as Mr. Urban tells us, "men of unquestionable erudition and abilities, too elevated to be bribed, and too distant to be courted." Against so high-minded and accomplished a class of writers (many of whose contributions, however, are recipes for infantile complaints, and whole papers from the then gloriously-expiring "Rambler," or the Covent Garden lucubrations of "Sir Alexander Drawcansir"), against such an array, the more liberally-pro

vided-for confraternity (quorum sum minimus) of the present day will not think of entering the lists. Let us be content with hoping that the plums in modern puddings are at least not inferior in quality to those which our great-grandsires eat when George the Second was king. When this is done I venture to think that reference may be made to the records of a hundred

years ago, which, compared with those Mr. Urban has set down during the current year, may afford something for profit, something for pleasure, and something for suggestion.

During the first quarter of the year 1752 the English public appear to have been very considerably occupied with two terrible murders, and with some lively Methodist riots at Norwich. Both the murders alluded to were committed allegedly for "love," but assuredly for "money," a fact which renders them barbarously prosaic. In the first case, Miss Blandy, of Reading, "rather plump than slender," and with

sprightly black eyes," killed her "papa," by poisoning his gruel. She had fallen in love with Captain Cranstoun, "an officer in the army, a sort of people who live in an eternal state of real hostility with the female sex." The captain was no Adonis: "his stature is low, his face freckled and pitted with the small pox, his eyes small and weak, his eye-brows sandy, and his shape no ways genteel, and, as a diurnal writer observes, he has nothing in the least elegant in his manner." Upon the desires of this pair the father looked favourably enough,

and used to boast that he might yet die the grandsire of a lord. Till his death, however, there was to be no dowry, and the Highland captain declined accepting the lady unless she brought with her a fortune equal in amount to what she was expected to inherit at her father's demise. The lovers accordingly grew impatient, and unwisely thought to expedite matters by drugging the paternal potion. The captain sent a packet of powders from Scotland "for cleaning pebbles." The lady chose to consider them as a love elixir, and dropped them into her sire's gruel, for the innocent purpose of compelling his affection to bend towards the man she loved, and who very much loved her prospective fortune. The harmless end was not accomplished; the father died, the captain evaporated, and the lady was transferred to close keeping in Oxford Castle. She was tried, condemned, and executed. I am not about to make a miniature Newgate Calendar of this article, and therefore avoid details; but I select circumstances which will serve to shew that there was something highly Fieldingian in the quality of the society of the period. Her first attorney does not appear to have been at all shocked at the circumstance of the murder, but he very incautiously expressed his surprise to her that she should have committed such a deed for the sake of such an ugly little rascal as the captain. This aspersion on the lady's taste nettled her, particularly as it came from a man who was quite as ill-favoured, lowstatured, and, as she intimated, even more of a rascal than the captain. Thereupon the officious attorney was dismissed, and a rival lawyer summoned to her assistance. Miss Blandy's spiritual counsellor was a thoroughbred gaol chaplain, after the fashion of their portraiture limned by the author of the "True History of Jonathan Wild the Great." This official was named Swinton. To him the wretched criminal confessed that there were sins of her early days which came rushing into her memory in that, her supreme hour. Mr. Swinton at once admistered an emollient, "by telling her that the devil frequently presented former sins as much more heinous than they really were to even some of the best of Christians when they were upon the

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confines of eternity, in order to ruffle and discompose them, and that therefore, probably, the scene that at present seemed to disturb her was nothing more than some of his illusions!" The chaplain was not even original in the composition of his emollient. The Gospel Preachers "-an early offshoot from the Wesleyans-were much given to this style of soothing overanxious souls, and the trouble they gave to John and Charles Wesley is well-known to all readers of the biography of the former. Like Mr. Chaplain Swinton, they had a salve for bruised sinners, even for those who had fallen from a pretended perfection, and they called by the name "animal nature what had been more correctly designated as "animal devil." I may add that Miss Blandy was hanged, "dressed extremely neat in a black bombazine short sack and petticoat, with her arms and hands tied with black paduasoy ribbon." As she ascended the ladder she said, "Gentlemen, don't hang me high for the sake of decency." She asserted her innocence, did not shed a tear, and, as she stood on the rounds of the ladder, merely expressed a fear lest she should fall. Up to the day of her death she took much interest in the fate of Miss Jeffreys, the heroine of the second murder above alluded to. This last lady lived with her uncle, a wealthy retired tradesman, at Walthamstow. She was what she called "in love" with the servant lad, and the two murdered the man who stood, as they thought, between them and a rich inheritance, when, in truth, by their own act, they only removed him to find that he had stood between them the gallows.

I have spoken above of the Gospel preachers. The early numbers of this Magazine speak of the terrible riots that were then almost devastating Norwich. The chief of these preachers was the cause of these riots, and in the record of the illegality of the rioters, no mention is made of the immorality of the greater offender. His name was Wheatley. He was at the head of a party which had not indeed separated from Wesley, but which had been in constant opposition against him. The Gospel preachers called the true Wesleyans the "legal wretches," because they had some respect for the

Church established by law. Wheatley went down to Norwich to preach. His success was immense with the women, but he rendered the men ferocious and

frantic. He was a spiritual mesmeriser, and his first object was to fling into profound sleep the moral faculties and sensitiveness of his female hearers. He was of the class of men against whom the apostle cautions Timothy "Of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women, laden with sins, led away by divers lusts." He argued with women as Tartuffe did with Elmire:

Le ciel defend de vrai certains contentemens; Mais on trouve avec lui des accommodemens.

:

He was a luscious preacher, quite of the Chatband school. He quieted fears that he might awaken love, a love of a very particular and objectionable sort. If he professedly cultivated the sympathies for virtue, he said nothing to maintain antipathies against sin. He was full of the promises, but was silent upon the threatenings; and he held that "love one another" was an apostolical injunction which only concerned himself and his individual female followers, married or single, good-looking and under forty. When I read Mr. Urban's record of the riots caused by this crafty hypocrite in Norwich, I wonder not that the rioters did so much, but that their well-founded and healthy rage did not impel them to something more. The husbands, fathers, brothers, and true-hearted lovers of Norwich were simply indignant against a villain who had, in return for hospitality, endeavoured to corrupt every woman in the town who came in his way and had but ordinary attractions. Charles Wesley declared that he had done more to prevent for ever the reception of the Gospel in that locality than if Satan himself had occupied the place with a legion of unclean angels. He was an unsavoury traitor against society and its laws, and if ever the ungodly united in fury against him, he got but his deserts, Wesley himself hastened to expel him from the community which his talents might have adorned, but which his vices disgraced. It was the excesses of Wheatley which stirred up the people of Denbigh also to serious rioting. These, failing to hang the Methodist ministers who went among them to

teach a knowledge that was sadly lacking then in Wales, executed a couple of the "Gospel preachers" in effigy.

It is amusing to find that in 1752 churchmen were as divided on the question of Convocation as they are now; and that all men are as unanimous now as they were then in the reasonableness of taxing anybody but themselves. The aggrieved tax-payers then forwarded their petitions to a mysterious power hinted at as "St. Steph. Ch-p-l." A century ago Ramsgate Harbour was in its first course of construction, and the "many were of opinion that the labour and expense will be thrown away;" a singularly unlucky opinion, as we now know in 1852. At the former period our prisons were crowded not only with criminals, but with acquitted persons, proved innocent, but kept in durance till they could pay their goalers' fees! As for the criminals, a suggestion is made to decrease their number by suppressing diversions and shutting up infamous houses: a suggestion against the first half of which Mr. Urban very decidedly protests. But criminals themselves must have been puzzled with the logic of the law which executed on the same gallows, "Rachel Beacham, for the murder of a girl of four years old, by inhumanly cutting her throat out of revenge to the mother with whom she had a quarrel;" and luckless John Dickenson, a petty larceny rascal who robbed his master of a handful of money, and might as well have murdered him for any the worse the law would have visited the offender.

The account I gave in the "Baths of Bath" of the morals of London in 1726, almost raised mistrust in my own mind; but Mr. Urban's Chronicle for 1752 shows that society was then, if possible, deeper sunken in iniquity. When we read that a nobleman's ears are cut off by a friend whom he had criminally assaulted, and that serious essays are written against a practice which called down destroying fire from heaven upon two cities of old, we see that vice reigned sovereign over virtue in the land. The consequences of vice were never more frightfully illustrated than by the details here given of the condition of the Lock Hospital. was half filled with children, but the

It