privileges of Scotland are endeavoured to be violated, I shall know how to make my porridge in my helmet, and stir it with my sword!"

AN ARCHBISHOP ON DUELLING.

The hold on society which the practice of Duelling had once attained is illustrated by an anecdote told by Walpole, of the Archbishop of York, who, when a sermon he had recently preached was attacked in the House of Lords as too servile in its advocacy of divine right, said openly that, "though as a Christian and a bishop he ought to bear wrongs, there were injuries that would provoke any patience; and that he, if insulted, should know how to chastise any petulance." We must take the story as we find it told by Walpole; but if it were true as he gives it, it shows the curious change society has undergone since-and which it underwent, indeed, during the time of George III. In 1820 it would have been thought as extraordinary as it would be thought now, if an archbishop, standing up publicly in ecclesiastical costume, were to declare that he could stand a good deal, but that he must shoot any one who criticised his sermons. Duelling also gives the text for another of Walpole's best stories. Hutchinson, Provost of Dublin, quarrelled with Tisdale, the Irish Attorney-General, and after having abused him in the grossest terms, sent him a challenge. Tisdale refused to fight him, urging that he himself was seventy-three, but laying

very little stress on that. His principal objection was that they were not on an equality with reference to the pleasure to be derived from the contest. "If I should kill Hutchinson," he said, "I should get nothing but the pleasure of killing him; whereas, if he kills me, he will get my place of Secretary of State, of which he has the reversion."

LET WELL ALONE.

Walpole was long of opinion that few persons know when to die i.e. when to go out of the world. He thought that when any personage had shone as much as possible, he should be heard of no more. Thus, Voltaire ought to have pretended to die after Alzire, Mahomet, and Semiramis, and not have produced his wretched last pieces: Lord Chatham should

have closed his political career with his immortal war: and how weak was Garrick, when he quitted the stage, to limp after the tatters of fame by writing and reading pitiful poems; and even by sitting to read plays which he had acted with such fire and energy ! We have another example in Mr. Anstey; who, if he had a friend upon earth, would have been obliged to him for being knocked on the head, the moment he had published the first edition of the Bath Guide; for, even in the second, he had exhausted his whole stock of inspiration, and has never written anything tolerable since. When such unequal authors print their works together, one may apply in a new light the old hacked simile of Mezentius, who tied together the living and the dead.

THE PULTENEY GUINEA.

William Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, was remarkable alike for his oratorical talents and his long and consistent opposition to the measures of Sir Robert Walpole, the great Whig Minister. On the 11th of February, 1741, a time when party feeling was at its height, Walpole received an intimation in the House of Commons that it was the intention of the Opposition to impeach him. To this menace he replied with his usual composure and self-complacence, merely requesting a fair and candid hearing, and winding up his speech with the quotation—

"Nil conscire sibi, nulli pallescere culpa."

With his usual tact, Pulteney immediately rose, and observed, "that the right honourable gentleman's logic and Latin were alike inaccurate, and that Horace, whom he had just misquoted, had written 'nullâ pallescere culpâ."" Walpole maintained that his quotation was correct, and a bet was offered. The matter was thereupon referred to Nicholas Hardinge, Clerk of the House, an excellent classical scholar, who decided against Walpole. The Minister accordingly took a guinea from his pocket, and flung it across the house to Pulteney. The latter caught it, and holding it up, exclaimed, “It's the only money I have received from the Treasury for many years, and it shall be the last." This guinea having been carefully preserved, finally came into the hands of Sir John Murray, by whom it was presented, in 1828, to the British Museum. The following memorandum, in the handwriting

of Pulteney, is attached to it:-"This guinea I desire may be kept as an heirloom. It was won of Sir Robert Walpole in the House of Commons; he asserting the verse in Horace to be 'nulli pallescere culpæ,' whereas I laid the wager of a guinea that it was 'nullâ palescere culpâ.' He sent for the book, and, being convinced that he had lost, gave me this guinea. I told him I could take the money without any blush on my side, but believed it was the only money he ever gave in the House where the giver and the receiver ought not equally to blush. This guinea, I hope, will prove to my posterity the use of knowing Latin, and encourage them in their learning."

DIVIDED DANGER.

When Lord Bath was told of the first determination of turning Pitt out of the ministry, and letting Fox remain, he said, it put him in mind of a story of the Gunpowder Plot. The Lord Chamberlain was sent to examine the vaults under the Parliament House, and, returning with his report, said he had found five-and-twenty barrels of gunpowder; that he had removed ten of them, and hoped the other fifteen would do no harm.

OPENING LETTERS.

We have heard much of this "State necessity" in our day, but little that redounds so much to the honour of an English statesman as the following:-One morning, when Pulteney (afterwards Earl of Bath) was in office, a man came to him offering his service, that he could open any letter folded in any form, could take a copy of the letter, and make it up again in such a manner, that the writer of the letter himself could not distinguish whether the seal had been touched, or how the letter had been opened. The man withdrew into another room, a short letter was written, was folded up in the most artful manner, was sealed with a finely cut coat of arms, and then sent to the man in the room adjoining. In a quarter of an hour the man returned with the letter and the copy of the letter, and neither Mr. Pulteney, nor a friend who had been sitting with him at the time, could discover the least traces of the letter's having been opened. The man therefore hoped that his honour would employ him, or recommend him to some other person. He replied, that he

regretted that there existed such a dangerous enemy to society; so far from employing or recommending him, he would punish him if he had it in his power. 'Go your ways,' said he, and seek your reward elsewhere.' soon after taken into the Secretary of State's office.”—Newton, Life and Anecdotes, prefixed to his Works.

"TOTTENHAM IN HIS BOOTS."

The man was

This sobriquet was acquired by Charles Tottenham, Esq. of Tottenham Green, Co. Wexford, and a Member of the Irish Parliament, under the following circumstances: The Members of the House of Commons formerly attended in full dress, an arrangement first broken through as follows. A very important constitutional question was debating between Government and the Opposition-namely, as to the application of a sum of 60,000l., then lying unappropriated in the Irish treasury. The numbers seemed to be nearly poised; it had been supposed that the majority would be inclined to give it to the King, while the Opposition would recommend laying it out upon the country,-when the serjeant-at-arms reported that a Member wanted to force himself into the House undressed, in dirty boots, and splashed up to his shoulders. The Speaker could not oppose custom to privilege, and was necessitated to admit him. It proved to be Mr. Tottenham, covered with mud, and wearing a pair of huge jack-boots! Hearing that the question was likely to come on sooner than he had expected, he had (lest he should not be in time) mounted his horse at Tottenham-green, set off in the night, ridden nearly sixty miles up to the Parliament House direct, and rushed in, without washing or changing himself, to vote for the country. He arrived just at the critical moment, and his casting-vote gave a majority of one to the country party!

This incident could not die while the Irish Parliament lived: and "Tottenham in his Boots" remained to a very late period a standing toast at certain patriotic Irish tables. It should be added that, by an order of the Parliament, all members were to appear in the House in full court dress, under a penalty of 500l., which fine, Mr. Tottenham having incurred, had to pay; he was the last who did so, for his bold conduct put an end to its further exaction.

Soon after the affair, a portrait of the hon. member was

painted by Stephens, and engraved by A. Millar, in the attitude of ascending the steps of the Parliament House, in Dublin, in his travelling dress-in his boots. This picture is in the possession of the head of the house of Tottenhamthe Marquess of Ely.

BOYLE ROCHE'S BULLS.

Sir Boyle Roche, the Irish member, excelled in bulls. "I wish," said he, one day, when opposing an anti-ministerial motion, "I wish, Mr. Speaker, this motion at the bottom of the bottomless pit." At another time, in relation to English connexion, he observed-" England, it must be allowed, is the mother-country, and, therefore, I advise them (England and Ireland) to live in filial affection together like sisters as they are and ought to be." A question of smuggling practices in the Shannon being under consideration,-"I would," said Sir Boyle, "have two frigates stationed on the opposite points of the mouth of the river, and there they should remain fixed, with strict orders not to stir; and so, by cruising and cruising about, they would be able to intercept everything that should attempt to pass between."

A DROVE OF BULLS.

In a debate on the Leather Tax, in 1795, in the Irish House of Commons, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Plunkett, observed, with great emphasis, "That in the prosecution of the present war, every man ought to give his last guinea to protect the remainder." Mr. Vandeleur said, "however that might be, the tax on leather would be severely felt by the barefooted peasantry of Ireland." To which Sir Boyle Roche replied that "this could be easily remedied by making the under-leathers of wood."

A KING'S SPEECH.

When George the Second, in his Speech, told his Parliament his reason for dissolving it was its being so near dissolution, Lord Cornbury said it put him in mind of a gaoler in Oxfordshire who was remarkably humane to his prisoners: one day he said to one of them, "My good friend, you know you are to be hanged on Friday se'night; I want