the spies of Cromwell appeared on a certain dark night, after a suspicious vessel had been seen from the village of Egmond, when an armed band of the Protector's Puritans, led by a guide, marched over the heath to the house Ypenstein, seized all the inhabitants, and carried them off, by the way they had come, to the coast, put them on board, and transported them most probably to England. In such secresy and silence was this violation of territory and the rights of hospitality perpetrated, that no one in the neighbourhood perceived anything of the occurrence, except a miller who saw the troop crossing the pathless heath in the direction of the coast, but could not conceive what had brought so many persons together in such a place at midnight.

I would gladly learn whether anything is known of this transaction; and if so, where I may find farther particulars of this English family, their probable political importance, &c. To investigate the truth of this tradition, that we may acquit or convict the far-famed Cromwell of so foul a crime, cannot certainly be untimely now that two celebrated learned men have undertaken to vindicate his memory.—From the Navorscher.

Inquaeritor.

Minor Queries.

Petrarch's Laura.—Mr. Mathews, in his Diary of an Invalid in Italy, &c., p. 380., in speaking of the outrages and indignities which, during the Revolution, were committed throughout France on the remains of the dead, and were amongst the most revolting of its horrors, mentions, on the authority of a fellow-passenger, an eye-witness, that the body of Petrarch's Laura had been seen exposed to the most brutal indignities in the streets of Avignon. He told Mr. Mathews that

it had been embalmed, and was found in a mummy state, of a dark brown colour. I have not met with any mention of these these circumstances elsewhere. Laura is stated to have died of the plague (which seems to render it unlikely that her body was embalmed): and according to Petrarch's famous note on his MS. of Virgil, she was buried the same day, after vespers, in the church of the Cordeliers. The date was April 1, 1348. That church was long celebrated for her tomb, which contained also the body of Hugues de Sade, her husband. The edifice is stated to be ruined, its very site being converted into a fruit-garden; but the tomb is said to be still entire under the ground: and more than twenty years after the French Revolution, a small cypress was pointed out as marking the spot where Laura was interred.

Is the circumstance of the desecration of her tomb mentioned by any other writer? If it really took place, are we to conclude that the tree—if it still exists—marks only the place where she had been interred: for, that the body was rescued and recommitted to the tomb, can hardly be supposed?

Wm. Sidney Gibson.

"Epitaphium Lucretiæ."—The following lines are offered for insertion, not because I doubt their being known to many of your readers, but with a view to ask the name of the author: