DATE. DAYS.

DIARY.

CORRESPONDING CHRONOLOGY.

Hermit, St

Maurus St Main

Sun rises 53m aft

7. Sun sets 7 m. aft 4

St. Jerome in 365, who received the account from St Anthony, St. Paul when twenty-two years of age, fled from the persecutions of Decius to a cavern, and was fed the latter part of his life, by a raven, until he was ninety, and then died. The Duke of Gloucester born 1776.

The coron ation of Queen Elizabeth A D 1559.
Mar. Tull: Cicero, the illustrious Roman Orator and
Philosopher born B. c. 105.

16 St. Marcellus Pope enjoined such strict penances that the Christians disliked him, he was banished by Maxentius, and died Pope 310

Charles the Vth of Spain, resigned the crown to his son Philip, reserving nothing to himself but a small pension, 1556.

Edward Gibbon the historian died of a dropsy, 1794. Sir John Moore fell under the walls of Corunna, 1809.

17 St. Anthony, Patriarch of Monks, was born at Coma near Heraclea, in Egypt, in 251, and died T 105 years in 356. He lived the life of a recluse, and founded several monasteries, he is related to have been particularly solicitous about animals, regarding all created things worthy of protection, it is said from the time of his death there fell no rain for three years. On this day the blessing of beasts takes place at the shrine of St. Anthony at Rome. Battle of Falkirk in Scotland, 1746, the Pretender beating the King's troops under General Hawley. 18 St. Peter is considered to have been the first catholic bishop, and is said to have kept the key of heaven. Hence many churches dedicated to this saint have a vane on their steeples.

St. Prisca was a Roman virgin, and put to death
by order of the Emperor Claudius, A. D. 17.
John Baskerville the celebrated bible printer of
Birmingham died 1775.

19 St. Martha was married to St. Maris, and with their sons, St. Audifax, and Abachum, were put to death by the orders of Aurelian, A D 270. William Congreve the dramatist and poet died 1729 ÆT 57.

20 Saint Fabian was the nineteenth bishop of Rome, he was chosen to that office in the year 241, and suffered martydom in the Decian persecution. The Romish calender calls him pope.

The Vigil of St. Agnes. It used to be customary on
this night for the virgins to use charms, in order
to dream of the man they should marry.
On this day died the famed actor and author, David
Garrick, at his house in the Adelphi, 1779.
John Howard, the philanthropist died at Cherson,
in Russia 1790. "He was born in the parish of
Hackney, 1726.

21 St. Agnes the patroness of purity was beheaded at
the age of thirteen, by order of Dioclesian, whose
cruel edicts were issued March A D 303.
The unfortunate Louis 16th, beheaded at Paris, 1793
James Quin the celebrated player died 1766, he was
the teacher of elocution to George the Third, for
which he had a pension during his life-time.

22 St. Vincent was born at Ossa in Grenada, and suffered martyrdom by order of the Emperors Dio. clesian, and Maximian, in the year 304. The eminent statesman and philosopher Lord Bacon born 1651.

The successful poet Lord Byron born 1788. George Stevens, Esq. known as the Editor and Commentator of Shakespeare's Works, died at Hampstead, 1800.

THE following extracts are from the life of Judge Jeffreys, sometime Lord Chancellor of England, in the reign of James II, which we insert, to show as far as such illustration will allow, the infamous conduct of this inhuman judge, and how justly he deserved the opprobrium cast upon him by his countrymen in his own time, as well as at the present hour. The first extract exhibits his barbarous conduct on the western circuit, where his condemnations were immense. Our next is the severe speech of Lord Delamere against him for his corrupt character as a judge while holding the office of Lord Chief Justice of the County Palatine of Chester. The last is a petition against him, when a prisoner in the Tower, after the flight of his once great upholder in iniquity, James the II, from the widows and fatherless children in the West of England, (who had been deprived of their husbands and parents by his malignaut tyranny,) desiring that he might be delivered up to them, as a retaliation for the wrongs they had received from him; the VOL I. E

whole of which may be looked upon as curious memorials, and of sufficient interest to warrant our giving them a place within these pages:

CRUELTY OF JUDGE JEFFREYS IN DOR

SETSHIRE.

Mr. Battiscomb, a man of very tolerable estate and engaging manner, was so ill-fated as to become an inmate of Dorchester Gaol, and so ill-advised as to defend the equity of his cause, which had liked to have choked Jeffreys, who furiously ordered him to a place of execution, there "to be hung by the neck till he should be dead." All the ladies in Dorchester were interested in the fate of the young man, who, by the way, when the judge's fit was over, had offers of life made him on the condition of his betraying some friends, which he resolutely repelled; and thus, having shut out the last hope of mercy, had become doubly an object of admiration several girls, one especially, went to Jeffrey's, and asked his life, but he is said to have repulsed them en brute. There are some lines extant written upon this unhappy damsel, 4-SATURDAY, FEB. 2, 1828.

The prisoner suffered at Lyme, and his character is thus given us:-" All that knew or saw him, must Mr. Battiscomb was very much a gentle

man.

own

Not that thin sort of animal that flutters from tavern to playhouse, and back again, all his life made of wig and cravat, without one dram of thought in his composition; but one who had solid worth. His body made a very handsome and creditable tenement for his mind; and 't had been pity it shou'd have liv'd in any other."

Here is another instance of the judge's brutality to females. Two persons named Hewling were among the condemned at Taunton, who had two sisters, and they hung upon the state coach imploring mercy at his hands; whereupon the incensed magistrate bade his coachman lash their fingers with his whip. And he moreover refused one of these sisters a respite of two days only for her brothers, though she offered him one hundred pounds for that little favour.

The miseries which were inflicted upon the inhabitants of this county are concluded with an account of a most hor

rible sentence of whipping which was pronounced upon one Tutchin, a young man of Hampshire. This fellow appeared to a charge of rebellion, under the assumed name of Thomas Pitts, and was acquitted for want of evidence. This happened at Taunton; but as Tutchin was a man of Dorset, and was to be punished in that county, we mention him here. Jeffreys soon found out his true name, and asserted, that "he was never so far outwitted by a young or old rogue in his life." He then tried to fish out of Mr. Tutchin the names of some of his confederates, but failed; upon which he grew furious, and not being able to hang him, issued forth the following sentence: Imprisonment for seven years, and once a year to be whipped through all the market towns in Dorsetshire: to be fined one hundred marks, and find security for his good behaviour during life." This was a blow indeed; and the ladies in court immediately burst into tears; but Jeffreys called out, "Ladies, if you did but know what a villain this is, as well as I do, you would say that this sentence is not half bad enough for him." And the clerk of the arraigns was so much astonished, that he could not help observing upon the number of markettowns in Dorset: he said, that "the sentence reached to whipping about once a fortnight, and that Mr. Tutchin was a very young man."-" Aye, he is, a very young man, but an old rogue,' retorted the invincible judge; "and all the interest in England shan't reverse the sentence I have passed on him." Tutchin himself had that keen regard for his bones, and was so fully sensible of the discipline intended him, that he actually petitioned the King to be hanged with his fellowprisoners. It seems that the court felt the enormity of the chastisement proposed; but all that transpired was, Mr. Tutchin must wait with patience." Then the young man tried to buy a pardon, but in vain; and then came the small-pox, a day or two before his first lashes were to have taken place, and reduced him so low, as to occasion a reversal of the sentence by Jeffreys himself.

"

bable his name is Sir George Jeffreys, who I must say behaved himself more like a jack-pudding, than with that gravity which beseems a judge: he was mighty witty upon the prisoners at the bar; he was very full of his jokes upon people that came to give evidence, not suffering them to declare what they had to say in their own way and method, but would interrupt them, because they behaved themselves with more gravity than he; and in truth, the people were strangely perplexed when they were to give in their evidence; but I do not insist upon this, nor upon the late hours he kept up and down our city: it's said he was every night drinking till two o'clock, or beyond that time, and that he went to his chamber drunk; but this I have only by common fame, for I was not in his company: I bless God I am not a man of his principles or behaviour; but in the mornings he appeared with the symptoms of a man that over night had taken a large cup. But that which I have to say is the complaint of every man, especially of them who had any law-suits. Our chief justice has a very arbitrary power, in appointing the assize when he pleases; and this man has strained it to the highest point: for whereas we were accustomed to have two assizes; the first about April or May, the latter about September; it was this year the middle (as I remember) of August before we had any assize; and then he dispatched business so well, that he left half the causes untried; and to help the matter, has resolved that we shall have no more assizes this year.”

PETITION AGAINST THE IMPRISONED

JEFFREYS.

"The humble Petition of the widows and fatherless children in the west of England:

"We, to the number of a thousand and more, widows and fatherless children, of the counties of Dorset, Somerset, and Devon; our dear husbands and tender fathers having been so tyrannously butcher'd, and some transported; our estates sold from us, and our inheritance cut off by the severe and harsh sentence of George Lord Jeffreys, now, we understand, in the Tower of London, a prisoner; who has lately, we hear, endeayoured to excuse himself from those tyrannical and illegal sentences, by laying it on information by some gentlemen who are known to us to be good Christians, true Protestants, and Englishmen. We, your poor petitioners, many hundreds of us, on our knees have begged mercy for our dear husbands and tender parents from his cruel hands, but his thirst for blood

was so great, and his barbarism so cruel, that instead of granting mercy for some, which were made appear to be innocent, and petitioned for by the flower of the gentry of the said counties, he immediately executed; and so barbarously, that a very good gentlewoman at Dorchester, begging on her knees the life of a worthy gentleman to marry him, and make him her husband; this vile wretch, having not common civility with him, and laying aside that honour and respect due to a person of her worth, told her, Come, I know your meaning; some part of your petition I will grant, which shall be, that after he is hanged and quartered,

* * * * * *

*

and so I will give orders to the sheriff. These, with many hundred more tyrannical acts, are ready to be made appear in the said counties, by honest and credible persons; and therefore your petitioners desire, that the said George Jeffreys, late Lord Chancellor, the vilest of men, may be brought down to the counties aforesaid, where we, the good women in the west, shall be glad to see him, and give him another manner of welcome than he had there three years since. And your petitioners shall ever pray," &c.

THE FALL OF THE ROSSBERG. By the Rev. F. A. Cox, LL.D.

From an unpublished tour through France and

Switzerland, in the year 1818.

AMIDST all the magnificence of Switzerland, there is nothing to surpass the grandeur of the scenery which encircles the summit of the Rigi, called the Rigi Culm. This mountain, situated near the lake of Lucerne; is not, however, so remarkable for its elevation, as for the singularity and advantage of its position. You might imagine that the Creator of all things had thrown up a standing-place for the intelligent admirers of his works, in the centre of a vast amphitheatre, which is a kind of world in miniature, where beauty and sublimity occur in endless diversities, in continued alternations, and in eternal rivalry. From this point the spectator contemplates on the one side, beneath his feet, the lakes and less mountainous regions of Switzerland, stretching like a map to the far distant horizon; and on the other, a semicircle of the Alps, with their mighty breadth and snow-covered peaks. The day which had been devoted to the ascent of the Rigi, was one of perfect serenity and clearness. Over all the azure skies not a cloud was to be

seen; not a sound was to be heard; all nature seemed to repose in sunshine and stillness: so that fancy might have deemed it a scene for angels to alight upon; a resting-place between heaven and earth!

A little below the Alpine ridges, was to be seen a streak of brilliant clouds, which lifted them to an apparent height far superior to their real elevation, bewildering the imagination with an indistinct impression of scenery, that partook of a kind of celestial character. What superadded to the effect was the circumstance of a small white cloud, occasionally detached from the fleecy girdle, and wafted by some gentle breeze along the pure and peaceful atmosphere.

There was, however, one spot which partook of a very different character from the rest. No mind endowed even with the common sensibilities of our nature, could survey it without emotions of melancholy interest, for it was the grave of multitudes who were suddenly precipitated into eternity by the fall of the mountain of Rossberg; an event distinctly traceable in the long strip of dusky brown, which bespoke ruin and desolation; and exhibited, as seen from the Rigi, a striking contrast with the surrounding verdure and fertility. In travelling towards the town of Art, we had previously stopped to examine the effects of the catastrophe, and to indulge in those reflections upon the uncertainty of life which are always calculated to benefit the mind, and which such a melancholy prospect was calculated to inspire.

The valley, once rich and fertile, but now partly filled up with huge and scattered fragments of earth, stretched along from the southern extremity of the lake of Zug to that of the lake of Lowertz, a distance of five or six miles. On one side, and in immediate proximity, the Rigi ascends to the height of about four thousand three hundred and fifty-six feet above the level of the lake of Lucerne ; on the other, the Ruffiberg, or Rossberg, (more familiarly called the Rouffi) rises to about three thousand five hundred and sixteen. Both these masses belong to a chain of mountains, which, geologically considered, seem to have been formed of the fragments or debris, and rolled flints of the primitive mountains, which, being mingled with sand, or gravel and calcareous sediment, have formed these conglomerations which are technically denominated puddingstone. In the neighbourhood they are commonly called Nagelflue, because they assume the appearance of a cement stuck all over with the heads of nails. It is obvious that from the nature of their formation, these masses