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in the Gaelic language, or that spoken by the Highlanders of Scotland, may prove acceptable to many readers.

O Dhia! cum suas, ard Dheors' ar Righ,
Gleidh fad 'a slan an Righ,

Dhia tearn án Righ.
Cuir buaidh, air a shluagh 'sa chath,
Dion iad, fo d' sgiath 's mhagh
Gu'm fad a riaghlis é gu maith,
Dhia sabhal an Righ.

O Dhia! le d' sgiath dion da shliochd,
Gun choirp's gun chunart am feasd,
Crun 'oirdearg na Righachd.
Thoir dha, thar uile namhid, buaidh,
Air tir agus, air a chuan,
'S gliocas mòr an fheum uair,

Dhia bean'ichdo shluagh an Righ.

Bithidh ait'n diugh thar tir na 'n tònn,
Aoibhneas, aighar, ceol's fònn,

Air son deugh shlaint 'an Righ.

Deich agus da shichid bliadhna
Le cumhachd, onair agus cial,
Lion è caithir alba na buaidh,

Buanich O Dhia! sa' ol an Righ.

Among the translations of Dr. Owen Pughe, his version of " Non nobis Domine" is excellent. I subjoin it, that you may make what use of it you please.

O, nid i ni, ein Jor, o nid i ni,
Ond deled i dy Enw ogoniant byth,
Ond deled i dy Enw ogoniant byth.

GWILYM SAIS.

NATURALISTS' CALENDAR. Mean Temperature... 39.05.

December 13. Lucy.*

ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH.

Be virtuous; govern your passions; restrain your appetites; avoid excess and high-seasoned food; eat slowly, and chew your food well. Do not eat to full satiety. Breakfast betimes; it is not wholesome to go out fasting. In winter, a glass or two of wine is an excellent preservative against unwholesome air. Make a hearty meal about noon, and eat plain meats only. Avoid salted meats: those who eat them often have pale complexions, a slow pulse, and are full of corrupted

See vol. i. 1570.

humours. Sup betimes, and sparingly. Let your meat be neither too little nor too much done. Sleep not till two hours after eating. Begin your meals with a little tea, and wash your mouth with a cup of it afterward.

The most important advice which can be given for maintaining the body in due temperament, is to be very moderate in the use of all the pleasures of sense; for all excess weakens the spirits. Walk not too long at once. Stand not for hours in one posture; nor lie longer than necessary. In winter, keep not yourself too hot; nor in summer too cold. Immediately after you awake, rub your breast where the heart lies, with the palm of your hand. Avoid a stream of wind as you would an arrow. Coming out of a warm bath, or after hard labour, do not expose your body to cold. If in the spring, there should be two or three hot days, do not be in haste to put off your winter clothes. It is unwholesome to fan yourself during perspiration. Wash your mouth with water or tea, lukewarm, before you go to rest, and rub the soles of your feet warm. When you lie down, banish all thought.

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In December, 1738, was shown at the Linen Hall, in Dublin, a piece of linen, accounted the finest ever made; there were 3800 threads in the breadth. The trustees of the linen manufacture set a value of forty guineas on the piece, which contained 23 yards. It was spun by a woman of Down. About two years before, Mr. Robert Kaine, at Lurgan, county of Ardmagh, sold 24 yards of superfine Irish linen, manufactured in that town, for 40s. per yard, to the countess of Antrim which occasioned the following lines :Would all the great such patterns buy,

How swiftly would the shuttles fly,
Cambray should cease, and Hamburgh too,
To boost their art! since Lurgan! you
May, like Arachne, dare to vie,
With any spinning deity;
Nay, tho' Asbestos she should weave,
Thou, Lurgan, should'st the prize receive,

NATURALISTS' CALENDAR. Mean Temperature... 38.20

December 15.

A LITERARY DISASTER.

On a certain day, the date of which is uncertain, in the month of December, 1730, the books and MSS. of Dr. Tanner, bishop of St. Asaph, being on their removal from Norwich to Christchurch college in Oxford, fell into and lay under water twenty hours, and received great damage. Among them were near 300 volumes of MSS. purchased of Mr. Bateman, a bookseller, who bought them of archbishop Sancroft's nephew. There were in all seven cart loads.*

It may be recollected that bishop Tanner was the friend of Mr. Browne Willis, respecting whom an account has been inserted, with an original letter from that distinguished antiquary to the prelate when chancellor of Norwich.

NATURALISTS' CALENDAR.

Mean temperature.. 38.67.

December 16.

Cambridge Term ends.
O SAPIENTIA.

was probably erected about the time of the termination of feudal warfare, when defence came no longer to be an object in a country-mansion. Many circumstances in the interior of the house, however, seem appropriate to feudal times. The hall is very spacious, floored with stones, and lighted by large transom windows, that are clothed with casements. Its walls are hung with old military accoutrements, that have long been left a prey to rust. At one end of the hall is a range of coats of mail and helmets, and there is on every side abundance of old-fashioned pistols and guns, many of them with matchlocks. Immediately below the cornice hangs a row of leathern jerkins, made in the form of a shirt, supposed to have been worn as armour by the vassals. A large oak-table, reaching nearly from one end of the room to the other, might have feasted the whole neighbourhood; and an appendage to one end of it, made it answer at other times for the old game of shuffle-board. The rest of the furniture is in a suitable style, particularly an armchair of cumbrous workmanship, constructed of wood, curiously turned, with a high back and triangular seat, said to have been used by judge Popham in the

The meaning of this term in the calen- reign of Elizabeth. The entrance into

dar is in vol. i. 1571.

STORY-TELLING.

Is a diversion of necessity in winter,

when we are confined by the weather, and must make entertainment in the house, because we cannot take pleasure in the open air. Though at any time we may like, yet now we love to hear accounts of sayings and doings in former times; and, therefore, it seems that a description of an old house in the country, and an old and true story belonging to it, may be agreeable.

AN ANCIENT HALL.

Littlecotes-house, two miles from Hungerford, in Berkshire Berkshire, stands in a low and lonely situation. On three sides it is surrounded by a park that spreads over the adjoining hill; on the fourth, by meadows, which are watered by the river Kennet. Close on one side of the house is a thick grove of lofty trees, along the verge of which runs one of the principal avenues to it through the park. It is an irregular building of great antiquity, and

Gentlemans Magazine.

the hall is at one end by a low door, communicating with a passage that leads from the outer door, in the front of the house, to a quadrangle within; at the other it opens upon a gloomy staircase, by which you ascend to the first floor, and passing the doors of some bed-chambers, enter a narrow gallery, which extends along the back front of the house from one end to the other of it, and looks upon an old garden. This gallery is hung with portraits, chiefly in the Spanish dresses of the sixteenth century. In one of the bedchambers, which you pass in going towards the gallery, is a bedstead with blue furniture, which time has now made dingy and threadbare; and in the bottom of one of the bed-curtains you are shown a place where a small piece has been cut out and sown in again; a circumstance which serves to identify the scene of the following story :

It was a dark, rainy night in the month of November, that an old midwife sat musing by her cottage fire-side, when on a sudden she was startled by a loud knocking at the door. On opening it she found a horseman, who told her that her assistance was required immediately by a happened is still known by the named Darrell's hill: a spot to be dreaded by the peasant whom the shades of evenną have overtaken on his way."

NATURALISTS' CALENDAR. Mean Temperature.. 38.67.

December 17.

COUNTRY MANSIONS.

person of rank, and that she should be handso handsomely rewarded, but that there were reasons for keeping the affair a strict secret, and, therefore, she must submit to be blindfolded, and to be conducted in that condition to the bed-chamber of the lady. After proceeding in silence for many miles through rough and dirty lanes, they stopped, and the midwife was led into a house, which, from the length of her walk through the apartment, as well as the sounds about her, she discovered to be the seat of wealth and power. When the bandage was removed from her eyes, she found herself in a bed-chamber, in which were the lady, on whose account she had been sent for, and a man of haughty and ferocious aspect. The lady gave birth to a fine boy. Immediately the man commanded the midwife to give him the child, and, catching it from her, he hurried across the room, and threw it on the back of the fire, that was blazing in the chimney. The child, however, was strong, and by its struggles rolled itself off upon the hearth, when the ruffian again seized it with fury, and, in spite of the intercession of the midwife, and the more piteous entreaties of the mother, thrust it under the grate, and raking the live coals upon it, soon put an end to its life. The midwife, after spending some time in affording all the relief in her power to the wretched mother, was told that she must be gone. Her former conductor appeared, who again bound her eyes, and conveyed her behind him to her own home; he then paid her handsomely, and departed. The midwife was strongly agitated by by the horrors of the preceding night; and she immediately made a de. position of the fact before a magistrate. Two circumstances afforded hopes of detecting the house in which the crime had been committed; one was, that the mid- glasse is come to be SO

During the reign of Henry VIII., a even of Mary, they were, if we except their size, little better than cottages, beng thatched buildings, covered on the outside with the coarsest clay, and lighted only by lattices. When Harrison wrote, in the age of Elizabeth, though the greater num ber of manor-houses still remained framed of timber, yet he observes, " such as be latelie builded, are com'onlie either a bricke or hard stone, or both; their roomes large and comelie, and houses of office further distant from their lodgings." The old timber mansions, too, were then covered with the finest plaster, which, says the historian, " beside the delectable whitenesse of the stuffe itselfe, is laied on so even and smoothlie, as nothing in my judgment can be done with more exactnesse:" and at the same time, the windows, interior decorations, and furniture, were becoming greatly more useful and elegant. "Of old time our countrie houses," continues Harrison, " instead of glasse did use much lattise, and that made either of wicker or fine rifts of oke in chekerwise. I read also that some of the better sort, in and before the time of the Saxons, did make panels of horne instead of glasse, and fix them in woodden calmes. But as horne in windows is now quite laid downe in everie place, so our lattises are also growne into lesse use, because plentifull, and within a verie little so good cheape if not houses on the inner sides in like sort be either hanged with tapisterie, arras worke, or painted cloths, wherein either diverse histories, or hearbes, beasts, knots, and such like are stained, or else they are seeled with oke of our owne, or wainescot brought hither out of the east countries, whereby the roomes are not a little com manded, made warme, and much more close than otherwise they would be. As for stooves we have not hitherto used

wife, as she sat by the bed-side, had, with a view to discover the place, cut out a better then the other. The wals of our

piece of the bed-curtain, and sown it in again; the other was, that as she had descended the staircase, she had counted the steps. Some suspicions fell upon one Darrell, at that time the proprietor of Littlecote-house and the domain around it. The house was examined, and identified by the midwife, and Darrell was tried at Salisbury for the murder. By corrupting his judge, he escaped the sentence of the law; but broke his neck his horse in hunting, in a

by a fil few

1

In Dr. Drake's The place where this

Shakspeare and his Times," from sir Walter Scott's "Rokeby."

them greatlie, yet doo they now begin to be made in diverse houses of the gentrie. Like in the houses of knights, gentlemen, &c. it is not geson to behold generallie their great provision of Turkie worke, pewter, brasse, fine linen, and thereto costlie cupbords of plate, worth five or six hundred or a thousand pounds, to be deerned by estimation."

The house of every country-gentleman of property included a neat chapel and a spacious hall; and where the estate and establishment were considerable, the mansion was divided into two parts or sides,

NATURALISTS' CALENDAR. Mean Temperature... 39.50.

December 18.

Oxford Term ends.

OLD ENGLISH LIVING.

The usual fare of country-gentlemen, relates Harrison, was " foure, five, or six dishes, when they have but small resort," and accordingly, we find that Justice Shallow, when he invites Falstaffe to dinner, issues the following orders : "Some

one for the state or banqueting-rooms, pigeons, Davy; a couple of short-legged

and the other for the household;

general, the latter, except in baronial residences, was the only part to be met with, and when complete, had the addition of parlours; thus Bacon, in his Essay on Building, describing the household side of a mansion, says, "I wish it divided at the first into a hall, and a chappell, with a partition between, both of good state and bignesse; and those not to goe all the length, but to have, at the further end, a wirater and a summer parler, both faire: and under these roomes a faire and large cellar, sunke under ground: and likewise, some privie kitchens, with butteries and pantries, and the like." It was the custom also to have windows opening from the parlours and passages into the chapel, hall, and kitchen, with the view of overlooking or controlling what might be going on; a trait of vigilant caution, which may still be discovered in some of our ancient colleges and manor-houses.

The hall of the country squire was the usual scene of eating and hospitality, at the upper end of which was placed the orsille, or high table, a little elevated above the floor, and here the master of the mansion presided, with an authority, if not a state, which almost equalled that of the potent baron. The table was divided into upper and lower messes, by a huge saltcellar, and the rank and consequence of the visitors were marked by the situation of their seats above and below the saltcellar; a custom which not only distinguished the relative dignity of the guests, but extended likewise to the nature of the provision, the wine frequently circulating only above the saltcellar, and the dishes below it being of a coarser kind than those near the head of

the table.*

Dr. Drake

hens; a joint of mutton; and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell William Cook." But on feast-days, and particularly on festivals, the profusion and cost of the table were astonishing. Harrison observes, that the country-gentlemen and merchants contemned butcher's meat on such occa

sions, and vied with the nobility in the production of rare and delicate viands, of which he gives a long list; and Massin

ger says, "Men may talk of country Christmasses, Their thirty-pound butter'd eggs, their pies of

carp's tongues,

carcasses

Their pheasants drench'd with ambergris, the Of three fat wethers bruised for gravy, to Make sauce for a single peacock; yet their Were fasts, compared with the city's."

feasts

City Madam, act ii. sc. 1.

It was the custom in the houses of the country-gentlemen to retire after dinner, which generally took place about eleven in the morning, to the garden-bower, or an arbour in the orchard, in order to partake of the banquet or dessert; thus Shallow, addressing Falstaffe after dinner, exclaims, "Nay, you shall see mine orchard: where, in an arbour, we will eat a last year's pippin of my own graffing, with a dish of carraways, and so forth." From the banquet quet it was usual to retire to evening prayer, and thence to supper, between five and six o'clock; for, in Shakspeare's time, there were seldom more than two meals-dinner and supper; " heretofore," remarked Harrison, "there hath beene much more time spent in eating and drinking than commonlie is in these daies; for whereas of old we had breakfasts in the forenoone, beverages or nuntions after dinner, and thereto reare suppers generallie when it was time to go to rest. Now these od repasts, thanked

be God, are verie well left, and ech one in manner (except here and there some yoonge hungrie stomach that cannot fast till dinner time) contenteth himselfe with dinner and supper onelie. The nobilitie, gentlemen, and merchantmen, especiallie at great meetings, doo sit commonlie till two or three of the clocke at afternoone, so that with manie it is an hard matter to rise from the table to go to evening praier, and returne from thence to come time enough to supper."

The supper, which, on days of festivity, was often protracted to a late hour, and often, too, as substantial as the dinner, was succeeded, especially at Christmas, by gambols of various sorts; and sometimes the squire and his family would mingle in the amusements, or, retiring to the tapestried parlour, would leave the hall to the more boisterous mirth of their household; then would the blind harper, who sold his fit of mirth for a groat, be introduced, either to provoke the dance, or to rouse their wonder by his minstrelsy; his "matter being, for the most part, stories of old time, -as the tale of sir Topas, the reportes of Bevis of Southampton, Guy of Warwicke, Adam Bell, and Clymme of the Clough, and such other old romances or historical rimes, made purposely for recreation of the common people, at Christmas dinners and

brideales."

The posset, at bed-time, closed the joyous day-a custom to which Shakspeare has occasionally alluded: thus Lady Macbeth says of the " surfeited grooms," "I have drugg'd their possets;" Mr. Quickly tells Rugby, "Go; and we'll have a posset for't soon at night, in faith, at the latter end of a sea-coal fire;" and Page, cheering Falstaffe, exclaims, "Thou shalt eat a posset to-night at my house." Thomas Heywood, a contemporary of Shakspeare, has particularly noticed this refection as occurring just before bed-time: "Thou shalt be welcome to beef and bacon, and perhaps a bag-pudding; and my daughter Nell shall pop a posset upon thee when thou goest to bed."

NATURALISTS' CALENDAR.

Mean Temperature

....

December 19.

AN UPSTART.

39 35.

clown, and differs only in the stuff of his clothes, not the stuff of himself; for he bare the king's sword before he had arms to wield it; yet, being once laid o'er the shoulder with a knighthood, he finds the herald his friend. His father was a man of good stock, though but a tanner or usurer: he purchased the land, and his son the title. He has doffed off the name of a country fellow, but the look not so easy; and his face still bears a relish of churne-milk. He is guarded with more gold lace than all the gentlemen of the country, yet his body makes his clothes still out of fashion. His house-keeping is seen much in the distinct famiüres of dogs, and serving-men attendant on their kennels, and the deepness of their throats is the depth of his discourse. A hawk he esteems the true burden of nobility, and is exceeding ambitious to seem delighted in the sport, and have his fist gloved with

his jesses. ses. A justice of peace he is to

domineer in his parish, and do his neighbour wrong with more right. He will be drunk with his hunters for company, and stain his gentility with droppings of ale. He is fearful of being sheriff of the shire by instinct, and dreads the assize week as much as the prisoner. In sum, he's but a clod of his own earth, or his land is the dunghill, and he the cock that crows over it; and commonly his race is quickly run, and his children's children, though they scape hanging, return to the place from whence they came."

NATURALISTS' CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature... 38.40.

December 20.

Ember Week. See vol. i.

AN OLD ENGLISH SQUIRE.

Mr. Hastings, an old gentleman of ancient times in Dorsetshire, was low of stature, but strong and active, of a ruddy complexion, with flaxen hair. His clothes were always of green cloth, his house was of the old fashion; in the midst of a large park, well stocked with deer, rabbits, and fish-ponds. He had a long, narrow bowling-green in it; and used to play with round sand bowls. Here, too, he had a banqueting-room built, like a stand, in a large tree. He kept all sorts of hounds, that ran buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger;

and short winged. His great hall was

Bishop Earle says, " he is a holiday and had hawks of all kinds, both long

• Dr. Drake.

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