water prevents fouler pollutions. If so, it is pity a faculty does not appropriate it as a burial-place, and so rail up the

entrances.

Under the West tower is a moon clock; an impossible attempt at useless information*. And, lest this wretched tower should not be consummate in bad taste, the outside exhibits the statue of a modern centinel, stuck up in one of the upper windows, whose employment is to strike the quarters.

Over the vestry, where the surplices are kept, is a library. It contains the usual lumber of church libraries, the Fathers, who repose there in ancient dust. However, there is Walton's Polyglott, of much value; an odd volume of Venerable Bede; Camden's Life of Elizabeth; Barnes's of Edward III. Among the rest, Sanchez de Matrimonio is conspicuous. This Spanish casuist has entered so minutely into his subject as to render this the most indecent book in the world. It is satirised in the latter part of Martinus Scriblerus. The satire is almost as indecent as its object.

This library is so much neglected as to possess no tolerable catalogue. As the number of books does not appear to exceed two hundred, this defect might easily be supplied.

An almanack in an occasional frame might indeed be a useful appendage to a church; at least it would give better lunar information at less expence than the repair of this ingenious clock. It is intended as an orrery on the Copernican system. C. W.

1800, Dec. and Suppl.

APPENDIX,

CONTAINING CURIOUS AND INTERESTING ARTICLES TO WHICH ANY ALLUSION OR REFERENCE HAS BEEN MADE

IN THE PRECEDING PAGES.

I. PETER the WILD BOY.
(See p. 310.)

1. Lord MONBODDO's Account of Peter the Wild Boy, formerly brought from the Woods of Germany.*

"IT was in the beginning of June, 1782, that I saw him in a farm-house, called Broadway, within about a mile of Berkhamsted, kept there upon a pension which the King pays. He is but low of stature, not exceeding five feet three inches; and, although' he must now be about seventy years of age, has a fresh healthy look. He wears his beard. His face is not at all ugly or disagreeable; and he has a look that may be called sensible and sagacious for a savage. About twenty years ago he was in use to elope, and to be missing for several days; and once, I was told, he wandered as far as Norfolk; but of late he has been quite tame, and either keeps in the house, or saunters about the farm. He has been the thirteen last years where he lives at present; and before that, he was twelve years with another farmer, whom I saw and conversed with. This farmer told me, that he had been put to school somewhere in Hertfordshire, but had only learned to articulate his own name

* Lord Monboddo, in support of his hypothesis, that man, in a state of nature, is a mere animal, without clothes, house, the use of fire, or even speech, adduces the Oran Outan, or Man in the Woods, and this Peter the Wild Man, and others, as examples. He denies the want of the organs of speech as an objection, and insists, they only want the artificial use of them,

Peter, and the name of King George, both which I heard him pronounce very distinctly. But the woman of the house where he now is (for the man happened not to be at home) told me, that he understood every thing that was said to him concerning the common affairs of life; and I saw that he readily understood several things that she said to him while I was present. Among other things, she desired him to sing Nancy Dawson; which he did, and another tune which she named. He never was mischievous, but had always that gentleness of nature which I hold to be characteristical of our nature, at least till we became carnivorous, and hunters or warriors. He feeds at present as the farmer and his wife do; but, as I was told by an old woman (one Mrs. Collop, living at a village in the neighbourhood, called Hempstead,* who remembered to have seen him when he first came to Hertfordshire, which she computed to be fifty-five years before the time I saw her), he then fed very much upon leaves, and particularly upon the leaves of cabbage, which he eat raw. He was then, as she thought, about fifteen years of age, walked upright, but could climb trees like a squirrel.

"At present he not only eats flesh, but has also got the taste of beer, and even of spirits, of which he inclines to drink more than he can get. And the old farmer abovementioned, with whom he lived twelve years before he came to this last farmer, told me, that he had acquired that taste before he came to him, which is about twenty-five years ago. He has also become very fond of fire, but has not yet acquired a liking for money; for though he takes it, he does not keep it, but gives it to his landlord or landlady, which, I suppose, is a lesson that they have taught him. He retains so much of his natural instinct, that he has a fore-feeling of bad weather, growling and howling, and shewing great disorder, before it comes.

"These are the particulars concerning him which I observed myself, or could learn by information from the neighbourhood."

From all these facts put together, his Lordship makes the following observations:

"1st, Whatever doubts there may be concerning the humanity of the Oran Outan, it was never made a question but that Peter was a man.

EDIT.

Hemel Hempstead (here meant) has a considerable market for coru.

"2dly, That he was, as the Dean [Swift] says, of a father and mother like one of us. This, as I have said, was the case of two savages found in the dismal swamps in Virginia, of the one found in the island of Diego Garcia, and of him that was discovered by M. le Roy, in the Pyrenees, and in general of all the savages that have been found in Europe within these last three hundred years; for I do not believe that, for these two thousand years past, there has been a race of such savages in Europe.

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3dly, I think there can be no reason to doubt of what was written from Hanover, and published in the newspapers, that he was found going upon all four, as well as other solitary savages that have been found in Europe. It is true that others have been found erect; which was the case of the two found in the dismal swamp of Virginia; likewise of the man of the Pyrenees, and of him in the island of Diego Garcia. But these, I suppose, were not exposed till they had learned to walk upright; whereas Peter appears to have been abandoned by his parents before he had learned that lesson, but walked as we know children do at first.

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4thly, I think it is evident that he is not an idiot, not only from his appearance, as I have described it, and from his actions, but from all the accounts that we have of him, both those printed and those attested by persons yet living; for as to the printed accounts, there is not the east information of that kind in any of them, except in one, viz. Wye's Letter, No. 8; wherein it is said, that some imputed his not learning to speak to want of understanding; which, I should think, shewed rather want of understanding in those who thought so, when it is considered that at this time he had not been a year out of the woods, and, I suppose, but a month or two under the care of Dr. Arbuthnot, who had taken the charge of his education. The Dean, indeed, tells us, that he suspected he was a pretender, and no genuine wild man; but not a word of his being an idiot. And as to the persons living, not one with whom I have conversed appeared to have the least suspicion of that kind; though it is natural that men, who were not philosophers, and knew nothing of the progress of man from the mere animal to the intellectual creature, nor of the improvement of our understanding by social intercourse and the arts of life, but believed that man, when he came to a certain age, has from Nature all the faculties which we see him exert, and particularly the faculty of speech, should think him an idiot, and wanting even the capacity

a man of very good sense, who was quartered where Peter then lived for some months, and saw him almost every day, and who assured me that he was not an idiot, but shewed common understanding, which was all that could be expected from one no better educated than he.

"Lastly, Those who have considered what I have said* of the difficulty of articulation will not be surprised that a man, who had lived a savage for the first fourteen or fifteen years of his life, should have made so little progress in that art. I cannot, however, have the least doubt that, if he had been under the care of Mr. Braidwood, of Edinburgh, he would have learned to speak, though with much more difficulty than a man who had been brought up tame among people who had the use of speech, and who consequently must know the advantage of it. And I can have as little doubt that Mr. Braidwood could have taught the Oran Outan in Sir Ashton Lever's collection, who learned to articulate a few words, so as to speak plainly enough."

1785, Feb.

2. Authentic Account of Peter the Wild Boy.

MR. URBAN,

PETER the Wild Boy, of which you inserted Lord Monboddo's account, and related his death, having been buried in the church-yard of the parish where he resided, at the expence of Government, a brass plate, with a short inscription to his memory, was erected in the church, which has also been paid, on application, by the Treasury, and a more particular account has been inserted in the parish register. As both these inscriptions are worthy a place in your Magazine, I wish you to insert them, that the particulars of this extraordinary person may be transmitted to posterity.

Extract from the Parish Register of North-Church, in the County of Hertford.

"PETER, commonly known by the name of Peter the Wild Boy, lies buried in this church-yard, opposite to the

* Lord Monboddo, far from thinking speech or articulation natural to man, rather wonders how he can, by any teaching or imitation, attain to the ready performance of such various and complicated operations. Add to this, when the organs are completely formed to one language, how hard it is to model them to any other.