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ralists, who rarely trave. farther than Exeter 'Change. From the inner or back door of the lodge, a winding stair-way conducts to the usual halting place-a large flat stone projecting into the water, and commanding a view of every part of the aquatic prison. When the tide is out, this stone is left completely dry, and here a stranger perceives with surprise, a hundred mouths simultaneously opened to greet his arrival.

The moment the fisherman crosses his threshold, the pond is agitated by the action of some hundred fins, and otherwise thrown into a state of anarchy and confusion. Darting from this, that, and the other corner, the whole population move as it were to a common centre, elevate their snouts, lash their tails, and jostle one another with such violence, that on a first view they actually seem to be menacing an attack on the poor fisherman, in place of the creel fuil of limpets he carries. Many of the fish are so tame, that they will feed greedily from the hand, and bite your fingers into the bargain, if you are foolish enough to allow them; while others again are so shy, that the fisherman discourses of their different tempers, as a thing quite as palpable as the gills they breathe, or the fins they move by. One gigantic cod, which seems to answer to the name of "Tom," and may well be described as the patriarch of the pond, forcibly arrests attention. This unfortunate, who passed his youth in the open sea, was taken prisoner at the age of five, and has since sojourned at Port Nessock, for the long period of twelve years, during all which time he has gradually increased in bulk and weight. He is now wholly blind from age or disease, and he has no chance whatever in the general scramble. The fisherman, however, is very kind to him, and it is affecting as well as curious, to see the huge animal raise himself in the water; and then resting his head on the flat stone, allow it to be gently patted or stroked, gaping all the while to implore that food which he has no other means of obtaining. In this pond, cod appears to be the prevailing species; there are also blochin or glassin, haddocks, flounders, and various other kinds. Salmon, which at spawning time visit the highest rivers, could not of course obey their instincts here, and accordingly there is only one specimen of this favourite fis in the pond at present. As the

fisherman remarked, "he is far soupler than any o' the rest," and by virtue of this one quality, chases, bites, and otherwise annoys a whole battalion of gigantic cod, that have only, one would think, to open their mouths and swallow him. To supply them with food is an important part of the fisherman's duty; and with this view, he must ply the net, and heave the line, during two or three days of every week. He has also to renew the stock, when the pond appears to be getting thin, from the con tributions levied on it by the cook.

A letter from Cairo, in a journal of January 1824, contains a whimsical exemplification of Turkish manners in the provinces, and the absurdity of attempting to honour distant authorities, by the distinctions of civil society. A diploma of honorary member of the Society of Frankfort was presented to the Pacha, at the divan (or council.) The Pacha, who can neither read nor write, thought it was a firman (despatch) from the Porte. He was much surprised and alarmed; but the interpreter explained to him that it was written in the Nemptchee (German) language, contained the thanks of the ulemas (scholars) of a German city named Frankfort, for his kindness to two Nemptchee travelling in Egypt.

But the most difficult part was yet to come; it was to explain to him that he had been appointed a member of their society; and the Turkish language having no word for this purely European idea, the interpreter, after many hesitations and circumlocutions, at last succeeded in explaining, "that as a mark of respect and gratitude, the society had made him one of their partners." At these words the eyes of the Pacha flashed with anger, and with a voice of thunder he roared that he would never again be the partner of any firm; that his partnership with Messrs. Briggs and Co. in the Indian trade, cost him nearly 500,000 hard piasters; that the association for the manufactory of sugar and rum paid him nothing at all; and, in short, that he was completely tired of his connections with Frank merchants, who were indebted to him 23,000,000 of piasters, which he considered as completely lost. In his rage, he even threatened to have the interpreter drowned in the Nile, for having presumed to make offer of a mercantile connection, against his positive orders.

The poor interpreter was confounded, and unable to utter a word in his defence. At this critical moment, however, Messrs. Fernandez, Pambone, and others who have access to the Pacha, interposed; and it was some time before they could reduce his Highness to reason; his passion had thrown him into an hysterical hiccup. When his Highness was a little recovered, Mr. Fernandez endeavoured to explain to him that there was no question about business: that the ulemas of Frankfort were pussessed of no stock but books, and had no capital. "So much the worse," replied the Pacha; "then they are sahhaftehi, Booksellers,) who carry on their business without money, like the Franks at Cairo and Alexandria." "Oh, no, they are no mhhafteki, but ulemas, kiatibs, (authors,) physicians, philoussoufs, &c., who are only engaged in science." "Well," said be," and what am I then to do in their society; I, a Pacha of three horse tails?" "Nothing at all, your Highness, like perhaps most of the members of their society, tut by receiving you into their society, these gentlemen intended to show you their respect and gratitude." "That is a strange custom, indeed," cried the Pacha, "to show respect to a person by telling or writing to him in funny letters-you

are worthy of being one of us.” "But this is the custom," added Divan Effendi (his Secretary.) "Your Happiness knows that the friends (Franks) have many cus toms different from ours, and often such as are very ridiculous. For instance, if they wish to salute a person, they bare their heads, and scrape with their right foot backwards; instead of sitting down comfortably on a sofa to rest themselves, they sit on little wooden chairs, as if they were about to be shaved: they eat the pillao with spoons, and the meat with pincers; but what seems most laughable is, that they humbly kiss the hands of their women, who, instead of the yashmak, (veil,) carry straw baskets on their heads; and that they mix sugar and milk with their coffee." This last sally set the whole assembly (his Highness excepted) in a roar of laughter. Among those who stood near the fountain in the middle of the hall, several exclaimed with respect to the coffee with sugar and milk, Kiafirler! (Ah, ye infidels!)

In the end the Pacha was pacified, and "All's well that ends well;" but it had been better, it seems, if, according to the customs of the east, the society of Frankfort had sent the Pacha the unquestionable civility of a present, that he could have applied to some use.

ST. BRIDE'S CHURCH. On the 11th of January, 1825, a sketch of this church was taken from a secondfloor window in the house No. 115, Fleetstreet, which stands on the opposite side of the way to that whereon the opening was made by the late fire; and the subjoined engraving from the sketch is designed to perpetuate the appearance through that opening. Till then, it had been concealed from the view of passenpers through Fleet-street by the houses destroyed, and the conflagration has been rightly deemed a favourable opportunity for endeavouring to secure a space of saffcient extent to render the church a public ornament to the city. To at least One person, professionally unskilled, the spare of St. Bride's appears more chaste and effective than the spire of Bow. In 1805, it was 234 feet high, which is thirty-two feet higher than the Monument, but having been struck by lightning in that year, it was lowered to its present standard.

St. Bride's church was built by sir Christopher Wren, and completed in 1680. It has been repeatedly beautified:

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its last internal decorations were effected in 1824. In it are interred Thomas Flatman the poet, Samuel Richardson the novelist, and William Bingley, a bookseller, remarkable for his determined and successful resistance to interrogatories by the court of King's Bench-a practice which that resistance abated for ever: his latter years ployed, or rather were supported, by the kindness of the venerable and venerated John Nichols, Esq. F. S. A. whose family tablet of brass is also in this church. As an ecclesiastical edifice, St. Bride's is confessedly one of the most elegant in the metropolis: an unobstructed view of it is indispensable therefore to the naAppeals which will tional character. enable the committee to purchase the interests of individuals on the requisite site are now in progress, and can scarcely be unheeded by those whom wealth, taste, and liberality dispose to assist in works of public improvement. The engraved sketch does not claim to be more than such a representation as may give a distant reader some grounds for determining whether a vigorous effort to save a build

mg of that appearance from enclosure this month, and are entitled to a place in a second time ought not now to be made. this sheet. The proceedings for that purpose are in

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ST. BRIDE'S CHURCH, LONDON, AS IT APPEARED JAN. 11, 1825. The opening in Fleet Street made by the Fire of Sunday, November 14, 1824.

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better man than bishop Jeremy Taylor." Certainly not; and therefore an objector to this pastime will do well to read the reasoning of the whole passage as it stands at the end of the archdeacon's printed sermon if he desire further, let him peruse Jeremy Taylor's "advices."

Cards are not here introduced with a view of seducing parents to rear their sons as gamblers and blacklegs, or their daughters to

This diversion, resorted to at visitings during the twelve days of Christmas, as of ancient custom, continues without abatement during the prolongation of friendly meetings at this season. Persons who are opposed to this recreation from religious scruples, do not seem to distinguish between its use and its abuse. Mr. Archdeacon Butler refers to the "harmless mirth and innocent amusements of society," in his sermon on "Christian Liberty," before the duke of Gloucester, and the university of Cambridge, on his roya. highness's installation as chancellor, June 30, 1811. The archdeacon quotes, as a note on that point in his sermon, a remarkable passage from Jeremy Taylor, who says, "that cards, &c. are of them selves lawful, I do not know any reason to doubt. He can never be suspected, in any criminal sense, to tempt the Divine Providence, who by contingent things recreates his labour. As for the evil appendages, they are all separable from these games, and they may be separated by these advices, &c." On the citation, which is here abridged, the archdeacon remarks, "Such are the sentiments of one of the most truly pious and most profoundly learned prelates that ever adorned any age or country; nor do I think that the most rigid of our disciplinarians can produce the authority of a wiser or a

"a life of scandal, an old age of cards ;" but to impress upon them the importance of "not morosely refusing to participate in" what the archdeacon refers to, as of the "harmless mirth and innocent amusements of society." Persons who are wholly debarred from such amusements in their infancy, frequently abuse a pleasure they have been wholly restrained from, by excessive indulgence in it on the first opportunity. This is human nature: let the string be suddenly withdrawn from the overstrained bow, and the relaxation of the bow is violent.

Look at a juvenile card-party-not at that which the reader sees represented in the engraving, which is somewhat varied from a design by Stella, who grouped boys almost as finely as Fiamingo modelled their forms-but imagine a juvenile party closely seated round a large table, with a Pope Joan board in the middle;

though many of them were saved almost miraculously, yet no one dared to hope to see his child drawn alive from under a heap of smoking ruins.

"Flames soon broke out from four different parts of the ruins, and threatened destruction to the remaining part of Leyden. The multitude seemed as it were animated with one common soul in extricating the sufferers, and stopping the progress of the flames. None with drew from the awful task, and the multitude increased, every monent by people coming from the surrounding country, the explosion having been heard at the distance of fifty miles. Night set in, the darkness of which, added to the horrors of falling houses, the smothered smoke, the raging of the flames, and the roaring of the winds on a tempestuous winter night, produced a scene neither to be described nor imagined; while the heartrending cries of the sufferers, or the lamentations of those whose friends or children were under the ruins, broke upon the ear at intervals. Many were so entirely overcome with fear and astonishment, that they stared about them without taking notice of any thing, while others seemed full of activity, but incapable of directing their efforts to any particular object."

In the middle of the night, Louis Bonaparte, then king of Holland, arrived from the palace of Loo, having set out as soon as the express reached him with the dreadful tidings. Louis was much beoved by his subjects, and his name is still mentioned by them with great respect. On this occasion his presence was very useful. He encouraged the active and comforted the sufferers, and did not leave the place till he had established good order, and promised every assistance in restoring both public and private losses. He immediately gave a large sum of money to the city, and granted it many valuable privileges, besides exemption from imposts and taxes for a number of years.

Some degree of order having been restored, the inhabitants were divided into classes, not according to their rank, but the way in which they were employed about the ruins. These classes were distinguished by bands of different colours tied round their arms. The widely extended ruins now assumed the appearance of hills and valleys, covered with multitudes of workmen, producing

to the eye an ever-varying scene of dif ferent occupations. The keel of the vessel in which the catastrophe commenced, was found buried deep in the earth at a considerable distance, together with the remains of a yacht from the Hague with a party of pleasure, which lay close to it. The anchor of the powder vessel was found in a field without the city, and a very heavy piece of lead at the foot of the mast was thrown into a street at a great distance.

One of the most affecting incidents was the fate of the pupils of the different schools on the Rapenburg. At the destructive moment, the wife of the principal of the largest of them was standing at the door with her child in her arms; she was instantly covered with the falling beams and bricks, the child was blown to atoms, and she was thrown under a tree at some distance. Part of the floor of the school-room sunk into the cellar, and twelve children were killed instantly; the rest, miserably wounded, shrieked for help, and one was heard to call," Help me, help me, I will give my watch to my deliverer." Fathers and mothers rushed from all parts of the city to seek their children, but after digging five hours they found their labour fruitless; and some were even obliged to leave the spot in dreadful suspense, to attend to other near relations dug out in other quarters. They at last succeeded, by incredible efforts, in bringing up some of the children, but in such a state that many of their parents could not recognise them, and not a few were committed to the grave without its being known who they were. Many of these children, both among the dead and those who recovered, bled profusely, while no wound could be discovered in any part of their bodies. Others were preserved in a wonderful manner, and without the least hurt. Forty children were killed. In some houses large companies were assembled, and in one, a newly married couple, from a distance, had met a numerous party of their friends. One person who was writing in a small room, was driven through a window above the door, into the staircase, and fell to the bottom without receiving much hurt. Many were preserved by the falling of the beams or rafters in a particular direction, which protected them, and they remained for many hours, some for a whole day and night. A remarkable

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