Thou art a wise man, help me in this great strait, and thou shalt find thou dost it for a thankful master. ""* Returning to the tower, the lieutenant told the prisoner, that he had been with the king, and found him a most affectionate master toward him; but, said he, to satisfy justice, you must appear, although you return instantly again, without any farther proceeding, only you shall know your enemies, and their malice, though they shall have no power over you. With this trick of wit, he allayed his fury, and got him quietly, about eight in the morning, to Westminster Hall; yet feared his former bold language might revert again, and being brought by this trick into the toil, might have more enraged him to fly out into some strange discovery, that he had two servants placed on each side of him with a cloak, take him violently from the bar, and carry him away; for which he would secure them from any danger, and they should not want also a bountiful reward. Weldon. The lieutenant of the tower, may have thought of providing the two sentinels, and the hood winking cloaks, but all the rest had certainly been suggested before hand by Bacon, in a particular remembrance for his majesty." It were good, says this miracle of genius and proflicacy, "that after he is come into the hall, so that he may perceive he must go to trial, and shall be retired to the place appointed, till the court call for him; then the lieutenant shall tell him roundly, that if in his speeches he shall tax the king, that the justice of England is, that he shall be taken away, and the evidence shall go on without him; and then all the people will cry, "Away with him!" and then it shall not be in the king's will to save his life, the people will be so set on fire. Well may it be said, "Justice is lame as well as blind with us.' Somerset, however, when brought to the bar of the lords, was in a very composed easy humour, which Bacon took good care not to disturb, by any of those invectives that were usually employed against prisoners. He abstained, he said, from such things, by the kings order, though of himself, he were indisposed to blazon his name in blood. (This was a hard hit at Coke, who was a terrible dealer in invectives.) He handled the case most tenderly, never urging the guilt of Somerset, without bringing forward the hope or assurance of the royal mercy. But the prisoner, who displayed far more ability than he had ever been supposed to possess, though he abstained from any accusations or outpourings of wrath against James, was not * Weldon says, that Sir George More "was really rewarded with a suit, worth to him £1500, although Anandale, his great friend, did cheat him of one half, so was therefore falschood in friendship." † State Trials. willing to submit to a verdict of guilty, however sure of a pardon. "Proud as he is, that iron heart retains, His stubborn purpose, and his friend disdains." POPE. He maintained his innocence, and defended himself so ably, that the trial lasted eleven hours. In the end, the peers unanimously pronounced him guilty! He then prayed them to be intercessors for him with the king, adding, however, words which meant that he thought it would hardly be needed. But, who had seen the king's restless motion all that day, sending to every boat he saw landing at the bridge, cursing all that came without tidings, would have easily judged all was not right, and that there had been some grounds for his fears of Somerset's boldness; but, at last, one bringing him word he was condemned, and the passages clear, all was quiet. Weldon. A few weeks after sentence, James granted a pardon to the countess "because the process and judgment against her were not of a principal, but as of an accessory before the fact." A like pardon was offered to the guilty earl, who said that he, as an innocent and injured man, expected a reversal of the judgment pronounced by his peers. After a few years' imprisonment, Somerset and his wife retired into the country, there, as it is said, with much probability, to mutually reproach, and hate each other. The king would not permit the earl's arms to be reversed, and kicked out of the royal chapel of St. George, at Windsor; and, upon his account, it was ordered, "that felony should not be reckoned among the disgraces for those who were to be excluded from the order of St. George, which was without precedent." Here is a precious king, to be "the fountain of honour." Farther, to his eternal shame be it recorded, to keep the disgraced, the discarded favourite, and depositary of royal mysteries, from desperation, he was allowed for life, the then splendid income of £4,000 (equal to £12,000 at the present time, or very little short of $60,000,) a year. The vile countess died in 1632, in the reign of Charles 1st. the viler earl survived her thirteen years. Thus this originally contemptible thing, who, only a few years before, had set the court and the metropolis all a sport and merry-making, had his life saved by a cruel and crafty king;† but he was tamed down, and, like the harmless and principal character in a duck hunt, *Camden's Annals of King James. After calling down a curse upon himself, and his successor, if he pardoned them, which curse was actually executed upon his son, Charles I. who, when closely pursued, is compelled (if not snapped down by the equally active, but more honest and zealous, pursuers,) to make a dive; and then the only interest excited, is to know on which side the pond it will reappear; he once poked his head up toward the end of this vile reign, but drew it in, and never rose again: and thus, "When men of infamy to grandeur soar, They light a torch to show their shame the more." PRISONS. "Where little villains must submit to fate, That great ones may enjoy the world in state." GARTH. THE principal one was the Tower of London, this place combined in itself a palace, a fortress, and a prison; in the latter capacity, the last trial shows how woefully it was managed. The county prisons were not so numerous as at present, nor were there so many ordinary criminals. The judges went the circuits twice a year, but this year, I have seen it announced, they are to go the circuits thrice.* They were, however, continually occupied by various religious sectarians, who could not, or would not, consent to the various alterations continually making in religion. How could they? "He who complies against his will, Is of the same opinion still." HUDIBRAS. In George Fox's Journal, 1662, he states, "there were 3173 of the Society of Friends imprisoned," himself often among the number. This journal gives a horrible account of the filth and management of these dreadful dens. *The reviewer of "Essays on the Principles of Chritable Institutions," 1836, states: "The fact is, that our great wealth has brought with it its usual concomitants-profusion, excess, idleness, want, and crime! While our commerce, says our author, had increased one half, from 1821 to 1823, crime had nearly quadrupled! In London alone, there are about 70,000 persons who subsist on the profit of crime. We have 52,600 licensed public houses, and 33,450 beer shops, in England. The quantity of spirits sold has nearly doubled since 1823. In a period of twelve years, from 1821 to 1833, population has increased 17 per cent, and the consumption of beer 102 per cent; the pawnbrokers' shops have multiplied during the same year from 690 to 1468. Dr. Gordon, physician to the London hospital, states, that at least 65 per cent of all the diseases under his notice are directly referable to intemperance." Gentleman's Magazine, 1837. Colonel Lovelace, a royalist and member of parliament, was imprisoned in the gate-house, Westminster, for merely presenting an excellent petition of grievances from the county of Kent, Therein he wrote the following beautiful poem: TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON. When love, with unconfined wings, When flowing cups run swiftly round, Our careless hands with roses bound, When, like committed linnets, I With shriller notes shall sing The sweetness, mercy, majesty, When I shall voice aloud, how good He is, how great should be, Th' enlarged winds that curls the flood, Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage, A writer of such sentiments as these would not be driven from any abstract idea, by a residence in a prison; if he was wrong, this was not the way for his opponents to teach him what they thought was right. The following lines are by Charles Cotton, Esq., an adopted son of Izaac Walton, author of the "Complete Angler." "A prison is a place of woe, Wherein no man can thrive, A touch-stone sure, to try a friend, At times a place of right, At times a place of wrong, Hanway, in his "Virtues of Humble Life," 1777, says, "there were then no fit prisons for houses of correction. There was one at Trim, in the county of Meath, Ireland, fitted up for that purpose, some years before there was one in England." Yes, gentle reader, hundreds of our pious forefather, whose souls were inspired with holy truths, could not, and did not, like the pliant reed, bend with every gentle breeze or raging blast, were cruelly immured in them; and if they had had a Scott, to give elegant words to their oppressed thoughts, they might have said:" "I hate to learn the ebb of time, From yon dull steeple's drowsy chime; Or mark it to the sunbeam's crawl, Lady of the Lake. MEDICINE. "For the Lord hath created medicines out of the earth, and he that is wise will not abhor them." ECCLESIASTICUS. "Garth, generous as his muse, prescribes and gives, The shopman sells, and by destruction lives." DRYDEN. On this important science, I have not much useful, but some curious information to give; this science was at a very low ebb glad should I be, if this century had furnished me with some certain remedies, for the cure or mitigation of any prevalent disorder. There were many of the same complaints that now afflict us, but the most prevalent were the plague, the ague, the small pox, the scurvy, "And lordly gout wrapt up in fur, And wheezing asthma loth to stir." SWIFT. Thomas Gale, quoted in Ballingal's Military Surgery, states, 66 they use such trumpery as is put to horses' heels, and laid upon scabbed backs, and cobblers' wax, in the time of Henry VIII." Some of the practitioners were mere animal farriers, and animal operators. The following amusing extract may be found in a modern publication, from the original, in Her Majesty's State Paper Office, in which Lord Audelay prescribes for Mr. William Cecil, afterwards the great Lord Burghley, then one of Queen Mary's Secretaries of State. The orthography is modernized. "Good Mr. Cecil, "Be of good comfort, and pluck up a lusty merry heart, and |