his, and a judgment far more comprehensive and discriminative. Nor are they as a whole worth such trouble. His more important materials are interspersed with many that are trifling, and many merely formal and uninteresting documents. Almost any thing that may be derived from his stores requires to be gleaned from several volumes of this absolute library of manuscript, and to be reduced to some proportions of form and arrangement by editorial care. These difliculties, however, are compensated by the advantage of a remarkably plain handwriting and the appliances of various indexes.

We are sorry that no Editor has hitherto had the courage to undertake the arrangement of Cole's collections for a work correspondent to Wood's great Walhalla of the sister university. -an "Athenæ Cantabrigienses." We have heard from time to time of such intentions, but we fear that the enterprise has ever and again proved too arduous for ordinary perseverance. It is a task which would be best accomplished by the co-operation of more labourers than one, and which would demand, of course, many other sources of information than those provided by Cole.

One of the most curious features of Cole's collections consists in his details of petty occurrences, and the gossiping anecdotes of his contemporaries, on account of the existence of which his manuscript library was for many years shut up from the scrutiny of his survivors. These garrulities, though they may not raise our estimation of the moral qualities of their writer, who certainly stretched his propensities both of prying and of chronicling to limits only exceeded by his cacoethes scribendi, have now become a source of information from which may at least be gathered some general impressions of the manners and sentiments of his day, after every allowance has been made for personal antipathies and a love of scandal and detraction.

MS. Cole, vol. xxxii. p. 139.

In the anecdotes of last-century Virtuosi which were extracted from Mr. Cole's MSS. in our September Magazine, occurred the name of his "friend" Dr. Ewin. This was a person who, from his position as a busy magistrate in the town of Cambridge, and other circumstances, appears to have been especially unpopular among the young men of the university. Cole has ever and anon made entry in his registers of the attacks which were made upon this obnoxious character by parties whose enmity or ill-opinion he had excited by his irritability and overbearing conduct, and on one occasion by a still more serious offence.

If we take the trouble to trace out the history of Dr. Ewin, it will not be in honour of the individual, but in illustration of University life and manners eighty years ago.

It appears that William Howell Ewin was the representative of an old Cambridge family. Thomas Ewen was one of the four bailiffs of the corporation of Cambridge in 1472.* John Ewin, who was an alderman of Cambridge, and died in 1668, had by his first wife Joseph Ewin of Cambridge, doctor of medicine, and by his third wife Thomas Ewin, who also was alderman of the town, and died in 1684. Cole gives a pedigree of the immediate connections of these parties; and in the same place he remarks:

1774, May 10. Dr. Ewin quarters 24 and 3d, Az. a wolf saliant holding a plate argent, on a chief gu. three towers arg. It is false heraldry; however, it was on his chariot when he and Sir Walter Rawlinson drank tea with me at Milton. I make no doubt for Howell, as it is made out of two different coats of that name. The Doctor's mother was only child to old Mr. Howell, coal-merchant, at Cambridge. I heard him say, a° 1779, at Sir John Cotton's table at Madingley, that his ancestor was a quack doctor at Haverill.

The name of "Thomas Ewin of Haveril in Essex" stands at the head of the pedigree, though the Doctor's descent is not completely traced out.

ol. xxi. p. 14.

racter:

The late Mr. Tho. Ewin, formerly a grocer, and latterly a brewer, in partnership with Mr. Sparks, was a very conceited and litigious man. He acquired a very large fortune, which he left to his son, now a brewer in Cambridge, but who was educated a pensioner in St. John's College. Mr. Ewin was a most zealous son of the Church of England, of the highest form: hardly ever missed going twice a day on Sunday to his own parish church of St. Sepulchre, in which parish he had a good house; twice to St. Mary's to hear the University Sermon; and constantly at vespers in Trinity College Chapel, to attend the musick of the Cathedral Service there. Notwithstanding all this, he married a daughter of old Mr. Howell, a coal-merchant in St. Clement's parish, with whom he had a large fortune, but a most rigid Dissenter: indeed, she and Mr. Finch's family were the supports and props of the Presbyterian interest at Cambridge, so that had she not been one of the most prudent, as well as best tempered women, and a most excellent wife, it would have been impossible for any peace or harmony to have existed between them. They had a daughter married to Mr. Cockayne of Soham.

At St. John's college Ewin had for his tutor Dr. William Samuel Powell, who in 1765 became Master of that house. He was a man who, as Cole tells us,* 66 was frugal and economic," made 500l. a-year out of the rectory of Freshwater, a college living in the Isle of Wight, the presentation to which more usually vacated a fellow ship, and left some 20,000l. to his niece Miss Jolland. In his passion for acquisition, Ewin may have been influenced by the example, as well as the instructions, of his tutor.

He took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1753, and his Master's degree in 1756; and we find that he was already "in commission of the peace for the town and county," when he was

admitted to the degree of Doctor of Laws, on the 11th June, 1766.†

The first notice which Cole gives of this amiable personage is in the year 1769, when a most useful scheme for new paving and lighting the town of Cambridge, to which the Duke of Grafton, the Chancellor, had offered to subscribe 500l. and Trinity hall as much, and which had been even carried into the House of Commons, was stopped by the aforesaid Dr. Powell and Dr. Caryl, " together with the mercenary views and objections of in particular, some of whom had greatly some of the townsmen, and Dr. Ewin encroached on the already too narrow streets, about which they expected to be called to account."‡

Dr. Ewin affected something of the virtuoso, as appears not only from Cole but from Mr. Tyson's letters to Mr. Gough.§ In the same year Cole him an introduction to Mr. Horace gave Walpole at Strawberry Hill: where he was very graciously received by letter written shortly after (June 6, the lord of that fairy mansion. In a 1769), Mr. Cole thus made his acknowledgments :

I will come there in July, if it is only to thank you for your civilities to Dr. Ewin and Mr. Rawlinson, who was with him the latter was lately a Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, and since married to one of Sir Robt. Ladbrooke's daughand in raptures, both from your politeness ters. Dr. Ewin was with me on Sunday, to him and the elegancies of your habitation. I told you in my last letter from Mr. Greaves's, at Fulburn,|| a little relating to the Doctor, who is much disposed towards virtù. He has brought from London with him all the apparatus for painting on glass; he has a forge, colours, in short, everything but the skill how to make use of them. The impertinence of such visits I know you abominate, but I knew not how to extricate you from this. If I had not

given you a line, I am satisfied a certain

thrown him in your way, perhaps in a forwardness of behaviour would have more disagreeable manner. Yet, after all, did you know or feel half the happiness you conveyed, I think your humanity

E

would readily sacrifice a little, in order to give so much pleasure to other people.

Walpole replied:

I was very happy to shew civilities to your friends, and should have asked them to stay and dine, but unluckily expected other company. Dr. Ewin seems a very good sort of man, and Mr. Rawlinson a very agreeable one. Pray do not think it was any trouble to me to pay respect to your recommendation.

Cole next commemorates "my friend Dr. Ewin" in his province as a magistrate, and a censor of the morals of the Undergraduates, who, as he says, were never more debauched than at this period.*

My friend Dr. Ewin, being much of his father's turn, busy and meddling in other people's concerns, got the ill-will of most persons in the town and university, when he acted as a justice of the peace. The Gownsmen bore him a particular grudge for interfering much in their affairs, though very justly; for they never were more licencious, riotous, and debauched. They often broke the Doctor's windows, as they said he had been caught listening on their staircases and doors.

About Christmas, 1771, or in January, 1772, he was at a coffee-house near his own house, when some Fellow Commoners, who owed him a grudge, sitting in the next box to him, in order to affront him, pretended to call their dog Squintem, and frequently repeated the name very loudly in the coffee-house, and in their joviality swore many oaths, and caressed their dog. Dr. Ewin, as did his father, squinted very much, as did Whitfield, the Methodist teacher, who was vulgarly called Dr. Squintum, from the blemish in his eyes. Dr. Ewin was sufficiently mortified to be so affronted in public. However, he care

A PARODY OF AN OLD SONG.
Of all the blockheads in the town,
That strut and bully up and down,
And bring complaints against the Gown,
There's none like Dr. Squintum.
With gimlet eyes and dapper wig,
This Justice thinks he looks so big:
A most infernal stupid gig,

Is this same Dr. Squintum.
What pedlar can forbear to grin,
Before his Worship that has been,
To think what folly lurks within

This Just Ass Dr. Squintum ?

(There are more verses, but these are sufficient as a specimen.)

The coffee-house which was the scene of the incident above related, was the Union, opposite St. Radigund's (or Jesus) Lane, as is more fully described in another anecdote, which has for its scene the same fashionable rendezvous, about fifteen months after-Cole has entered the following in his "Athenæ," under the name of "Lord Stanley, son to the late Lord Stanley, and grandson to the Earl of Derby."‡

This young gentleman and his brother the Honble Mr. Stanley are now of Trinity College, Mar. 4, 1773, and about two or three months ago, my friend Dr. William Howell Ewin, a gentleman of large fortune, and who acts as a justice of the peace both for the town and county, and lives in his own house in Cambridge,

MS. Addit. 5881, f. 2106.

where he is not much beloved by any one on account of a natural and hereditary disposition to be prying into and meddling busily and impertinently in other people's concerns, and more especially by the younger and indeed all degrees in the university, for having various times interfered in business which they conceived no ways or little belonged to him: Dr. Ewin, I say, being at the Union Coffee House, almost opposite St. Radegunde's Lane, noted for the general rendezvous of all the young nobility and fellow commoners and spirited young men in the university, where he had been several times affronted before, and therefore imprudent to frequent that coffee-house; but it being very near his own house, which is almost opposite St. Sepulchre's Church, he was desirous not to be driven away from what was so convenient for him. He being there, one of these gentlemen said something reflecting on the Doctor, on purpose to affront him, it being spoken loud enough for him to hear it. On the Doctor's complaining of this usage to some friend, and saying at the same time that he had been told that the person who said the thing

which affronted him was one of these brothers, but that he did not believe it, for whoever was so rude could have none of the Derby blood in his veins. This being represented to Lord Stanley, he thought it such an indignity and reflec tion, that he told his brother Mr. Stanley that he ought to challenge Dr. Ewin. Accordingly he came to Dr. Ewin's house, and was introduced into the parlour, where the Doctor thought the errand had been to make up matters; but instead of that, Mr. Stanley, on repeating the circumstances, offered to fight him, which the Doctor very prudently declining, he desired to ring the bell, and called in the footman, with a request to retire to the other room, in which the Doctor's sister and another lady were sitting, in order that they might be witnesses, as he said, of his cowardice and dastardliness; but this being represented by the Doctor as improper, for fear of frightening the ladies, Mr. Stanley, desiring the servant to take notice of what he was going to do, took hold of the Doctor's nose, and spit full in his face, and then left him. Dr. Ewin wrote to the Bishop of Peterborough, the

Master of the College, who told him he could do nothing, but that the law was open. Accordingly the Doctor is at this instant prosecuting the affair in Westminster Hall, where I hope and wish, for the credit of our laws, that he may trounce the gentleman very smartly; for if young noblemen, upon these fancies, shall invade your own houses, and treat you like a scoundrel, because you are not in a humour to draw your sword or pistol, adieu all security but what they will please to allow you. In about a month after there came out a print representing this affair, called "The Justice in the Suds." I have it in my collection of prints.

Mr. Cole sent a copy of this print to the Hon. Horace Walpole on the 18th April, 1775. It was accompanied with the following remarks :—

Stanley, and Fellow Commoner of Trinity
The Hon. Mr. Stanley, brother to Lord
College, is spitting in Dr. Ewin's Face.
The likenesses are tolerably well preserved.
Dr. Ewin does not squint enough. He
Hall, made him pay, and ask pardon.
cast Mr. Stanley on a trial in Westminster

In another letter of Cole's to Wal

pole, Dr. Ewin is again mentioned. It is dated July 25, 1774, and Cole is writing of Dr. Cooke, the Provost of King's

He dined here (at Milton) about a fortnight ago, when he took occasion to speak slightingly of Antiquaries. In order to please him, I showed him that part of your late letter respecting the Society. In a day or two after, he was one of the auditors with Dr. Ewin at the Conservators' meeting in Cambridge, when in speaking of the same fraternity he expressed himself exactly in your words. This I mention as a compliment to you, and none to himself.

Dr. Ewin, who is going a tour into Scotland this week, drank tea here on Friday, and told us the story.

But Dr. Ewin after this became still more notorious in the annals of the University. The story of that business, however, must be deferred to another occasion.

Otto Wenckstern.

A SHORT TIME previous to the first arrival of Mr. Layard at Nineveh, the locality had been visited by a wellknown and highly esteemed clergyman of the Church of England, the Rev. J. P. Fletcher. This worthy minister found himself one day in the house of a Yezidee, or "Devil Worshipper," where the conversation of host and guest was interrupted by the appearance of a crowd of visitors, at the head of whom was the priest of the Papal Syrians. The leader of the invasion was rich in self-sufficiency. He was lengthy of speech, short of stature, and about as pompous as a pumpkin. The visitors were no sooner seated on the ground than they began to describe to the astonished Englishman the manners and customs of his own countrymen! "They have no religion; wonderful to say!" exclaimed one. A second and more enlightened stranger questioned this assertion, except in as far as it applied to "not believing in our Father the Pope." "At all events," remarked a third, "they have no churches!" The Yezidee, master of the house, here courteously struck in to the assistance of his foreign guest, by asserting that he had seen our service performed in the British chapel at Mosul; where, he said, there was consecration every Sunday, and prayers every day; and he had read in a book, he added, that the English also fasted occasionally. The general chorus of visitors shouted that even if it were so, there was a bad object at the end of it. The Yezidee was afraid of offending the priest, at whom he looked timidly while he ventured to make the apologetic remark, that "they are a good people!" At this observation, the pipe departed from between the lips of the priest; at which sign of approaching oracular eloquence all were silent, for all felt that the priest, having been in Europe, could "speak by the card;" and as he was well-versed in Arabic, Syriac, Chaldee, and Kurdish, he was of course, and as a necessary consequence, wellskilled also in all that concerned those

London. 1853.

far-off infidels, the Britons; and this was his daguerreotyped description of our very worthy selves.

"The English," said he, "are Christians and have churches; but they only go to them once a month, and take the Lord's Supper once in twenty years. On the latter occasion," he continued, "the priest stands on a high place that he may not be torn in pieces by the crowd, who rush tumultuously forward, snatch the consecrated bread out of his hands, and scramble for it. They are also allowed," said this faithful depictor of our morals, "to marry as many wives as they please, and some of them have more than twenty. They are a poor and beggarly people, and have a heavy debt, which they are unable to pay. They are obliged to borrow_large sums of the King of France, who has obtained by this means a kind of dominion over them." And he clinched this rough nail driven through our reputation, by coolly turning to Mr. Fletcher, and asking, "Ma hu saheck?"

"Is it not true?" The English minister calmly took his pipe from his mouth, and replied, "It is a great falsehood!" An assertion which by no means disposed the majority of the company to put faith in it.

The above is an amusing instance of an English portrait painted by a Syrian hand. For such an artist some allowances may be made; but what excuse can be offered by travellers nearer home who profess to draw English portraits and English landscapes from nature, and who do in one sense draw them a very great way indeed from nature?

An instance occurs to us in the case of M. Alexandre Dumas, an accomplished gentleman who gilds refined gold, paints the lily, alters the catastrophes of Shakspere's plays, and enriches Hamlet with a new and original (very much so indeed!) fifth Act?

M. Dumas is the author of a story called "Pauline," a story which has been both translated and dramatised in England. It is exciting, dramatic,