nous matter, sal petri (not thoroughly prepared), till at length relief was found, when well nigh given up, when she brought up with violent retching, a whole row of pins stuck on blew paper!! After that, these sons of Esculapius joyfully perceived that their potent drugs had wrought the designed cure -they gave her comfort, that she had subdued her bitter foe, nor-up to the present time has she ever been afflicted in any way; but having married an honest poor man, though well to do in the world, being steward to Sir John Heveningham, she has borne him four healthy children, and is likely to cover his house with more sweet

olive branches from her fruitful orchard. Whether this punishment was inflicted on her by the said old woman, an emissary of Satan, or whether it was meant wholesomely to rebuke her for frequenting wakes, may-dances, and candlemas fairs, and such like pastimes, still to me remains in much doubt. "Non possum solvere nodum."

Sir, your thankful Servant, T. G. Freston Parish nigh to Saxmondham, sent by the carrier.

P.S. I hear the physicians followed up their first medicine with castory, and rad. ostrutii, and sem: dauci, on Forestius his recommendation.

THE manor of Stone, situated within two miles of Dartford, towards the north-west, was given to the church of Rochester by King Ethelred, in the year 995; and the Bishops had afterwards a house there, in which they occasionally resided, particularly in their journeys to and from London. Like other churches so fortunately situated, under the immediate eye of the Bishop, that of Stone became an object of attention to some of the architectural prelates who filled the see of Rochester; and it still presents itself, to a distant age, a spacious and lofty edifice, worthy of the commanding situation upon which it is placed.

It is a fine specimen of the early English style; consisting of a nave and aisle (68 feet by 40), chancel (42 feet by 224), with a small chapel adjoining to the chancel on the north, and a massive tower at the west end, which is remarkable from its being open on three sides to the interior of the building. It was formerly crowned with a high octangular spire, which, having been greatly injured by lightning, was taken down in the year 1638.

The nave is separated from the aisles by pointed arches, rising from slender columns, and from the chancel by a similar arch, enriched with ornaments. The east window is large and handsome; and round the chancel runs a low range of trefoil-headed arches, in relief, springing from small pillars of GENT. MAG. VOL. VII.

grey marble, and displaying spandrils filled with finely sculptured foliage and animals.

The north door, which is represented in the accompanying engraving (Pl.II.) opens under an arch originally of much elegance, though now greatly injured and mutilated. Its height is 8 feet 4 inches; and its width, including the outer mouldings, 6 feet 10 inches. The height of the wooden door is 7 feet, and its width 3.

In the Chapel adjoining the chancel is a handsome altar tomb to the memory of Sir John Wiltshire, Comptroller of Calais in the reign of Henry VII. and who was owner of Stone Castle in this parish. He died in Dec. 1526.

There is also in the chancel a fine sepulchral memorial of John Lumbard, once Rector, who died in 1408. His figure is represented in a brass plate, within the head of an open flowering cross; this has been engraved both in Gough's Sepulchral Monuments and in Thorpe's Custumale Roffense,

We do not now enter at greater length into a description of this beautiful church, as we have been informed that two distinct series of architectural plates are now in the course of preparation, in illustration of its several features. One of these has been particularly announced by its editor, Mr. Wallen, in our Number for November, p. 450.

I

Mr. URBAN,

THE amicable controversy between J. R. and myself, seems now to be reduced to this single position, whether more credence is to be given to Bossuet making his own defence, backed by one or two modern French wits, than to Archbishop Wake, whose writings so irrefragably prove the point at issue, seconded by almost numberless corroborating testimonies as to names, dates, places, and details, some of which I have already adduced, and to which many more might be added." As to J. R's. solemn and grave judgment upon Wake's youthful incapacity in not being able to penetrate the fastnesses of Bossuet's famed cunning, from being some one or two dozen of years younger, it is really so French, and so like Barbier's style of argumentation, that one is tempted to smile upon so grave an occasion! If the celebrated Chateaubriand or Guizot of France, were now to publish a work, could not my son, who is a very little boy, some twenty years hence ascertain from indisputable living witnesses, every particular? If not, away with all evidence! J. R. cannot be ignorant that Wake, only fourteen years after Bossuet's death, had a long correspondence with some of the ablest divines of France, about the Union of the Churches.b Dupin, one of the most noted Gallican ecclesiastics, was of the number, and he, with many others whom Wake knew, were of course well conversant with Bossuet and all his literary manœuvres. The single-handed testimony of Bossuet himself, now seems to be the only real crux to be disposed of; but let us gratify J. R. by pronouncing the

complicated testimonies against Bossuet's tricky artifices in regard to his publication of the "Exposition," to be gross calumnies; and then J. R. cannot but allow the fairness of putting Bossuet's own testimony to the test of veracity and principle. This can no otherwise be done, than by investigating Bossuet's general character for literary and moral probity. We will not put into the scale against Bossuet, the fact, that it was natural for him to falsify his unsupported statement, in order to avert the tremendous obloquy the papal cause must universally have sustained, by his revealing all the untoward contradictory circumstances about the " Exposition." We will only treat Bossuet as we would any other self-interested witness. If such a witness be convicted of a treacherous lie, for the furtherance of the interests of his suit, what man of common sense would regard his asseverations, when, in addition to his lies, there was every reason to doubt wholly his veracity. We will undeniably prove this to be strictly applicable to Bossuet. I presume that J. R., who seems from his last to be well conversant with the laws of charity, would join Dr. Murray in his recommendations of the "Exposition" as a true model of Christian charity. But, Sir, if from Bossuet's own lips, we prove him to be the veriest truest model for scathing the world with the inquisitorial flames of the papal Moloch and Aceldama, what then must be thought of Dr. Murray's and other brilliant recommendations of Bossuet, and what judgment also, in that case, is to be put upon Bossuet's own evidence for himself? I shall

Oxford.

therefore only state facts without comment; the good sense of J. R. will easily do the rest. But before I proceed, I must just observe, without meaning any reference at all to J. R., that the strange and various notices which my Strictures on Bossuet have elicited from various quarters, induce me to say, that one might as well chase an invisible echo, or grasp at a bodiless shadow, as screw Romish controversialists down to any one avowed principle. Pope Alexander VI. has piquantly and truly said of his emissaries, "That he would rather wage war against a mighty potentate, than against one of the begging brethren.''

In Dr. Murray's address to the Protestants of the empire, he solemnly renounces the wonted intolerance of his Church; he denounces it as "bygone" and "antiquated," and professes absolute love to Protestants; he calls them his "Beloved Fellow-Christians," and for an unimpeachable authority in doing so, he quotes Bossuet; nay more, he pledges himself that any one who reads Bossuet, will be "sure of a defeat!" So much for Dr. Murray and Bossuet. Now for Mr. O'Connell, whom, we may not inaptly, with Pope Alexander, address as "One of the Begging Brethren!" Mr. O'Connell, like Dr. Murray, continually professes universal charity and liberty of conscience. In the debate on the "Foreign Enlistment Bill," he said, "Religion was never instituted to be fought for. It was mixing the Cup of Blood with the Chalice of Salvation." On the 26th March, 1834, he said in the House, "The most sincere of his communion were the most convinced of the right of every human being to worship his God according to the dictates of his own conscience. It is a violation of what, he thought, the pre

Again,

rogative of the Lord, and the rights of man, to interfere by force, fraud, or temptation, between man and his God." In his address to the Dissenters, shortly before " Emancipation," he says, "The Catholics of Ireland are devoted with equal warmth, and if possible, with more persevering zeal, to the cause of religious freedom. The Catholic prelates eagerly join the Catholic laity in the assertion of the principle of liberty of conscience." But let us contrast Mr. O'Connell's professions with a few of the late and present most oracular "prelates." In Pastorini's "Prophecies," universally circulated by the Romish priests, some years ago, in Ireland, Protestants are called “ Lo custs," and "the Subjects of the Devil."'s The late Dr. Doyle declared, "If a rebellion were raging from Carrickfergus to Cape Clear, no sentence of excommunication would ever be fulminated by a Catholic prelate." he threatened that Catholics would league with Beelzebub against Protestants;" that they "deem the Altar of the Protestant Church profane,' and every "Parish Church" to be "" standing record of the right of conquest, or the triumph of law over equity!" The present Romish Archbishop of Tuam, Dr. McHale, in his Pastoral of 1831, says, that the people of Ireland looked, and ought to look, upon the Protestant Bishops as mere laymen; he calls for their immediate downfall, and adds, that the poor would rejoice on finding the funds, which the Bishops had so long wrung from them, restored to their proper owners! And when the interests of the Foreign Priest of the Vatican require it, the charitable professions of Mr. O'Connell himself, always embody themselves in the more tangible shape of "death's-head" threats, and other such substantial

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