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One night her sister, who was at her father's, being in bed, heard the voice of her mother lamenting herself upon the death of her daughter. This much surprised her, knowing that her mother was then as far as Bristol. When she arose in the morning, her father seeing her look much concerned, asked her what was the matter with her. "Nothing," she says. Her father replied, "I am sure something is amiss, and I must know what it is." "Why then, father," says she, "I believe my sister Molly is dead, for this night I heard the voice of my mother lamenting her death." Says her father, "I heard the same myself, and her voice seemed to me to be in my study." Soon after, the same morning, came a message with tidings of her death. The deceased was brought to her father's to be buried, and after the funeral, her mother relating the manner of her daughter's illness, and that as soon as her daughter was dead, she being weary with watching and tired for want of sleep, lay down in her clothes, and dreamed that she was with them, telling her grief for the loss of her daughter. This surprised them, and asking the time it appeared to be much the same in which they heard the voice. The young woman was buried April 1, 1726. Her sister, who heard the voice, is now living in Bristol, and is ready to satisfy any enquirer of the truth of this fact.

This narrative was communicated to the Gentleman's Magazine by a Mr. John Walker, of Painswick, Gloucestershire, and appears in Vol. IX., p. 75, of that journal. It led to a discussion with a Mr. Martin, of Chichester, who raised very much the same arguments against the possibility of such a thing as are used now.

A PROPHECY CURIOUSLY VERIFIED.

"Not many years ago a gentleman from a considerable distance, came upon a visit to a friend's house, and on the last day of his journey was obliged to cross a great river, or arm of the sea, in a little ferry boat, which he did prosperously enough; and in his friend's house at night, being of the gay reasoning part of mankind, he, in the course of a mixed conversation, acquainted the company that his nativity had been calculated immediately upon his birth, which was that he would be drowned on such a day of the month, and such a year of his age, or when he should be so many years, months and days old. And, he added gaily, that this was the very day, pleasantly ridiculing the superstition of his mother and the good women about her at his birth, and declaring that when he crossed the ferry that day he did it with the more pleasure in order to expose the weakness of such idle conceits. The company joined heartily with him, and diverted

themselves much with the pitiable superstition of most women and common people. They sate up late, and were no doubt not very sober, and this gentleman taking it into his head to cross the yard alone in the dark, plunged headlong into a deep well which was open, and was drowned before any of the family knew what had become of him."-Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. XIV., p. 659.

WHAT HAS NOT BEEN DENIED?

There is a class of people whose conceit is so enormous that they think that if, like the fabled Atlas, they cannot support the heavens they can at least overthrow them. There is nothing which one or other of these people have not denied the existence of. They have denied God, a future world, revelation, Jesus Christ, and almost every thing and person of note. Homer has been declared a myth. Those who admitted his existence have denied him the authorship of the Iliad, and others who have allowed him to have composed the Iliad, have denied him the Odyssey. Father Hardouin, a Jesuit, in 1693, published Prolusio Chronologia, in which he showed from dates as well as internal evidence, that Virgil might have written the Georgics, but could not possibly have written the Eneid. Another of his reasons was the silence of Pliny on the subject-an argument of the kind employed against the history of Christ and Christianitynamely, that the Roman writers of the time made no mention of this or that historic fact stated as such in the Gospels. When told that Ovid, Juvenal, Statius, Martial, Tacitus, &c., expressly acknowledged the Eneid to be Virgil's, he then declared all these authors were for the most part as apocryphal as Virgil bimself, and asserted that on the revival of ancient learning, a club of learned but mischievous men compiled these works, and palmed them off on their contemporaries as ancient and genuine. Very clever fellows, indeed, these must have been; and the chief of them, he says, was one Severus Archontius, and the materials on which they based these forgeries were a few old inscriptions, coins, and a few fragments of Virgil and Horace, and the works of Cicero and Pliny the elder, which were all the genuine remains of Roman literature.

Since then Shakespeare's dramas have been denied him, and attributed to Lord Bacon by a Miss Bacon, of America.

CASE OF CURE OF SCROFULA BY TOUCH.

Mr. Carte, in his History of England, Book IV., p. 291, speaking of the practice of the Kings of England and France curing the King's Evil by touch, says, "But whatever is to be

said in favour of its being appropriated to the eldest descent of the first branch of the royal line of England and France, I have myself seen a very remarkable instance of such a cure, which could not possibly be ascribed to the regal unction." He then tells us of one Christopher Lovel, born at Wells in Somersetshire, but when he grew up residing in Bristol and working as a labourer. This man was so afflicted with scrofula that he was a most wretched object. His neck, head, arms, &c., abounded with sores, and on one side of his neck was such a tumour as obliged him to go with his head always on one side. No medical advice or remedy being of any use, he resolved to go abroad and get touched. By means of an uncle, an old seaman, in August, 1716, he managed to get across to France, and made his way to Paris, where he was touched by the eldest lineal descendant of the French kings, who had for ages cured that disease by touch. This prince, however, was then neither crowned nor anointed, so that it could not proceed from this regal act, but nevertheless the effect was the same. The man was completely cured, and got back to Bristol in perfect health in the beginning of January following, having been only four months and a few days on his journey. There Carte saw him in vigorous health, having no remains of his complaint except the red scars on the five places where the sores had been, but then entirely healed and as sound as the rest of his body. Dr. Lane and Dr. Pye, the latter of whom had tried in vain for three years to cure Lovel, took Mr. Carte to him, and declared it the most wonderful cure they had ever witnessed. Mr. Carte adds that he himself was perfectly sceptical of most cures till Mr. Anstis, Garter-King-of-Arms, furnished him with undoubted proofs of them in the English records, and such as were recorded by Tucker in his work on that subject. But nothing could be more surprising than this cure of Lovel's, and no case could be known to such infinite multitudes of people as this.

OLD BRIDGET BOSTOCK, THE HEALER OF CHESHIRE, 1748.

Old Bridget Bostock, of Coppenhall, betwixt Sandbach and Nantwich, in her day was as famous as the Zouave of our time for curing almost every afflicted creature that came to her. The Nantwich papers of August and September, 1748, gave this account of her :-" Old Bridget Bostock fills the country with as much talk as the rebels did. She hath all her lifetime made it her business to cure her neighbours of sore legs and other disorders, but her reputation seems now so wonderfully increased that people came to her from far and near. A year ago she had, as I remember, about 40 under her care, which afterwards in

Sunday sen'night, wife went to this and Tom M

creased to 100 a week, and then to 160. after dinner," says the writer, "I and my doctress's house, and were told by Mr. S who kept the door and let people in by fives and sixes, that they had that day told off 600 whom she had administered to, besides making a cheese. She at length grew so faint, for she never broke her fast till she had done, that at six o'clock she was obliged to give over, though there were then more than 60 persons whom she had not attended to. Monday last she had 700, and every day now pretty nearly that number. She cures the blind, the deaf, the lame of all sorts, rheumatism, king's evil, hysteric fits, falling fits, shortness of breath, dropsy, palsy, leprosy, cancers, and in short almost every thing; and all the means she uses for cure are only stroking with fasting spittle, and praying for them. It is hardly credible to think what cures she performs. Some people grow well whilst in the house; others on the road home; and it is said none miss. People come 60 miles round. In our lane, where there have not been two coaches seen before these twelve years, now three or four pass in a day, and the poor come by cart loads. She is about 70 years of age, and keeps old Bostock's house, who allows her 35s. a-year wages; and though money is offered her she takes none for her cures. Her dress is very plain. She wears a flannel waistcoat, a great linsey apron, a pair of clogs, and a plain cap tied with a halfpenny lace. So many people of fashion now come to her, that several people make a comfortable subsistence by holding their horses. In short, the poor, the rich, the lame, the blind and the deaf all pray for her and bless her; but the doctors curse her."

This account was confirmed by two correspondents of the Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. XVIII., pp. 413 and 414, who had been and seen for themselves. One of them says that the clergyman of Coppenhall, the Rev. William Harding, gave her a good character; said that she was one of the most constant attendants of his church, and had immediately cured his son of lameness when all other doctors had failed; that Mrs. Gradwell, of Liverpool, had wonderfully recovered her sight by her assistance; but that it was not true that all were cured who came.

These accounts fetched out, as they were sure to do, one of the class of Senior Wranglers, who, without having gone to see, endeavoured to reason the facts away that thousands of others had seen. Bridget Bostock's cures could not, according to him, be supernatural, because supernatural ones are instant; they could not be natural, because she used no natural means; ergo, they must be what we now-a-days call humbug, an expressive word that the Wranglers of that day were not fortunate enough to have. What most offended this writer was, that Bridget

demanded a great deal of faith in her patients, which showed, he said, "what a daring, presumptuous and impudent mockery was being carried on." And the man did not see what an impudent mockery he himself was carrying on, in sitting at home at a distance and scribbling, without going to see what the real facts were, and contradicting those who did. That imposture is sometimes committed is just as likely as that truth is treated as imposture; and those only who look into such things can confirm the true and expose the false. A very impudent pretence of a great cure was made by one Charles Doe, at Colchester, in 1705-6, and published in pamphlets, with a list of numerous witnesses, which on being inquired into, was discovered to be an utter forgery. Those who instituted this inquiry did what every lover of truth should do, and rendered the public a real

service.

DIVINING ROD.

A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine asserts the virtues of these rods, and gives figures of them, and directions for their use, Vol. XXI., p. 507. Soon after, another writer gave a very striking instance of the reality of the power of such rods. He states, that Linnæus on a journey to Scania, hearing the virtues of the divining rod highly extolled, determined to try it. He hid a purse of one hundred ducats under a ranunculus, which grew by itself in a meadow, and bade his secretary, the operator with the wand, find it, if he could. The ranunculus was speedily trodden down by the throng of people, and, for some time, the rod discovered nothing. Linnæus then attempted to find the purse, but could not, and persisted in seeking it in a particular quarter. The secretary having tried that quarter, declared that it was not there, and, eventually, following his rod, found the purse in a different direction. Linnæus adds, that another such an experiment would have made a proselyte of him.

APPARITION AND VOICE OF A LIVING PERSON.

A correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. XXII., p. 173, states, that when he was a draper's apprentice, he used to dine at his father's on the opposite side of the street. Standing at the shop door on the 23rd of August, 1736, with his mistress, and the maid, and a Mr. Bloxam, afterwards a haberdasher of Cateaton Street, London, he heard his father's voice calling him. He replied, "Coming, sir," but continued to look at the book of

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