this time spread, and sumptuous elegance decorated the board. Mr. Wesley was asked to dine; and having consented, was thus addressed by his host: "Sir, your conversation has made such an impression on me, that henceforward I shall live only on bread and water; and to show you that I am in good earnest, I will begin immediately." The dinner was then ordered to be removed, and bread and water introduced; to the disappointment of the preacher, who, although an abstemious man, wished for something better than an anchorite's fare.

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S BLOOD JEWELS.

In the Parliamentary History, under date of 1601, the Lord Keeper is reported to say: "I have seen her Majesty wear at her girdle the price of her blood; I mean, jewels which have been given to her physicians to have done that unto her which I hope God will ever keep from her. But she hath rather worn them in triumph, than for the price, which hath not been greatly valuable."

THE POWER OF TAR-WATER.

Doctor Hill, a notorious wit, physician, and man of letters, having quarrelled with the members of the Royal Society, who had refused to admit him as an associate, resolved to avenge himself. At the time that Bishop Berkeley had issued his work on the marvellous virtues of tar-water, Hill addressed to their secretary a letter, purporting to be from a country surgeon, and reciting the particulars of a cure which he had effected. "A sailor," he wrote, "broke his leg, and applied to me for help. I bound together the broken portions, and washed them with the celebrated tar-water. Almost immediately the sailor felt the beneficial effects of this remedy, and it was not long before his leg was completely healed!" The letter was read and discussed at the meetings of the Royal Society, and caused considerable difference of opinion. Papers were written for and against the tar-water and the restored leg, when a second letter arrived from the (pretended) country practitioner: "In my last I omitted to mention that the broken limb of the sailor was a wooden leg!"

THE CURATE AND THE DUKE.

The Duke of Grafton, when hunting, was thrown into a ditch; at the same time a young curate, calling out, "Lie still, your Grace," leaped over him, and pursued his sport. On being assisted to remount by his attendants, the duke said, "That young man shall have the first good living that falls to my disposal; had he stopped to have taken care of me, I never would have patronised him"—being delighted with an ardour similar to his own, and with a spirit that would not stoop to flatter.

A LOYAL AND FATAL PRAYER.

It is related by Thoresby that Mr. John Jackson, a good old Puritan, and a member of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, "was yet so zealously affected for King Charles I., when he heard of his being brought before a pretended high court of justice, that he prayed earnestly that God would please to prevent that horrid act, which would be a perpetual shame to the nation, and a reproach to the Protestant religion; or, at least, would be pleased to remove him, that he might not see the woful day. His prayer was heard and answered as to himself, for he was buried the week before" the execution of Charles took place.

FLAVEL'S "DAY OF HEAVEN."

This distinguished Nonconformist divine, who lived about the end of the seventeenth century, in his Treatise on the Soul of Man relates of himself—so at least it is understood, though he speaks in the third person—that for a day he was wrapt in such intimate spiritual communion with heaven, as exhausted the powers of physical nature, and for a time appeared to leave him on the brink of the grave. This singular season of trance he used to style "one of the days of heaven;" and he affirmed, that in that time there came to him more insight into the heavenly life, than he had all his days gained from books or sermons.

"Being on a journey, he set himself to improve his time by meditation; when his mind grew intent, till at length he had such ravishing tastes of heavenly joys, and such full assurance of his interest therein, that he utterly lost the sight and sense of this world and all its concerns, so that for hours he knew not where he was. At last, perceiving himself faint through a great loss of blood from his nose, he alighted from his horse, and sat down at a spring, where he washed and refreshed himself, earnestly desiring, if it were the will of God, that he might then leave the world. His spirits reviving, he finished his journey in the same delightful frame. He passed all that night without a wink of sleep, the joy of the Lord still overflowing him, so that he seemed an inhabitant of the other world." It was taken by his religious friends as a special promise of heavenly favour, that at the birth of Flavel a pair of nightingales made their nest close to the chamber of his mother, and welcomed him into the world with their delightful warble.

A ROYAL MEDICINE.

Even so late as the days of Queen Elizabeth, ignorance and superstition continued prime regulating powers in the practice of physic; accomplished as some of the physicians of the day were, it was, as Lord Bacon has affirmed, in every department excepting those that immediately touched their own profession. Sir William Bulleyn was not one of the least prominent and enlightened; but some of the prescriptions which he has left on record, attest a very deplorable state of things, existing little more than half a century before Harvey achieved his great discovery. Take for example this recipe for an

"Electuarium de Gemmis."

"Take two drachms of white perles; two little peeces of saphyre; jacinth, corneline, emerauldes, granettes, of each an ounce; setwal, the sweate roote doronike, the rind of pomecitron, mace, basel seede, of each two drachms; of redde corall, amber, shaving of ivory, of each two drachms; rootes both of white and red behen, ginger, long peper, spicknard, folium indicum, saffron, cardamon, of each one drachm; of troch. diarodon, lignum aloes, of each half a small handful; cinnamon, galinga, zurubeth, which is a kind of setwal, of each one drachm and a half; thin pieces of gold and sylver, of each half a scruple; of musk, half a drachm. Make your electuary with honey emblici, which is the fourth kind of mirobalans with roses, strained in equall partes, as much as will suffice. This healeth cold diseases of ye braine, harte, stomack. It is a medicine proved against the tremblynge of the harte, faynting and souning, the weaknes of the stomacke, pensivenes, solitarines. Kings and noble men have used this for their comfort. It causeth them to be bold-spirited, the body to smell wel, and ingendreth to the face good coloure."

A SIGNIFICANT INTERPOLATION.

The most celebrated wits and bon vivants of the day graced the dinner table of Dr. Kitchener, and inter aliis George Colman, who was an especial favourite. His interpolation of a little monosyllable in a written admonition, which the Doctor caused to be placed on the mantlepiece of the dining parlour, will never be forgotten, and was the origin of such a drinking bout as was seldom permitted under his roof. The caution ran thus: "Come at seven, go at eleven." Colman briefly altered the sense of it; for, upon the Doctor's attention being directed to the card, he read, to his astonishment, "Come at seven, go it at eleven!" which the guests did, and the claret was punished accordingly.

THE SEAMAN-BISHOP.

Dr. Lyons, who was appointed to the Bishopric of Cork,