and who was in consequence admitted with extraordinary honours. He however ultimately submitted to be examined, and obtained a Doctor's degree from the University of Cambridge; but the rancour of the College remained unappeased, they found out that he had been born abroad, although he had lived in England ever since he was two years of age, and when after much trouble, delay, and expense, he had obtained an act of naturalization, fresh obstacles were raised, which he successfully obviated by an appeal to Westminster Hall. We cannot better close our annotations on this long and digressive story of the Cock Lane Ghost, than by giving the advertisement of the Bottle Conjuror, who with Miss Fanny present two of the most discreditable specimens of the credulity of the last century, and we should be better pleased if the popular delusions which this first half of the present has exhibited, were not in danger of incurring equal animadversion from posterity. "LITTLE HAYMARKET THEATRE. 16 January, 1749. "A Person then and there before the audience, will take a common walking cane from any one of the spectators on which he will play the music of every instrument now in use. "He next will present a common wine bottle to be examined by the spectators. This bottle being placed on a table, he will then without any equivocation go into it, and sing while there. During which time any person may handle it and see that it does not exceed a common tavern bottle. Those who come in masked habits to the entertainment, will, if agreeable to them, be told by the performer who they are. Stage 7s. 6d. Boxes 5s. Pitt 3s. Gallery 2s. To begin at half an hour after six o'clock. "After the above, in a private room, and for a fresh gratuity, he will shew the dead to any gentleman or lady requiring it, and tell the thoughts, however secret, of their past lives, and give a full view of the persons who may have injured them, dead or alive. "Most of the crowned heads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, have witnessed these performances. "There will be a proper guard to keep the house in due decorum." The house was crowded, the curtain drew up, when nothing appeared but a table covered with a green baize cloth and a common quart bottle on it; the swindler and all his associates had in the mean time decamped with the entrance money, when after some time the patience of the audience being exhausted, they wreaked their vengeance on the chandeliers, fittings up, and benches of the house, and dispersed in unspeakable confusion. Among the spectators was William Duke of Cumberland, who in the mele lost his diamond-hilted sword, on which the Jacobite portion of the crowd set up a cry of Billy the Butcher has lost his knife, and this formed the refrain of the veritable ballad of the Bottle Conjuror, written on the occasion. We subjoin extracts from Walpole's Correspondence of two of the incidents in the foregoing poem, of both of which he was an eye witness, and has described with much humour and apparent accuracy. COCK LANE GHOST. "You told me not a word of Mr. M. and I have a great mind to be as coolly indolent about our famous ghost in Cock Lane. I could send you volumes on it; and I believe if I were to stay a little, I might send its life dedicated to my Lord D- by the Ordinary of Newgate, its two great patrons. A drunken parish clerk set it on foot out of revenge, the Methodists have adopted it, and the whole town think of nothing else. E. Canning and the rabbit woman were modest imposters in comparison of this, which goes on without saving the least appearances. The Archbishop who would not suffer the Minor to be acted in ridicule of the Methodists, permits this farce to be played every night, and I shall not be surprised if they perform it in the great hall of Lambeth. I went to hear it, for it is not an apparition but an audition. We set out from the opera, changed our clothes at Northumberland House, the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady M. Coke, Lord Hertford, and I, all in one hackney coach, and drove to the spot: it rained torrents, yet the lane was full of mob, and the house so full, we could not get in ; at last they discovered it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another's pockets to make room for us. The house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small; when we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people, with no light but one tallow candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. At the top of the room are ropes to dry clothes. I asked if we were to have rope dancing between the acts. We had nothing; they told us, as they would at a puppet show, that it would not come that night till seven in the morning, that is, when there were only 'prentices and old women. We stayed, however, till half after one. The Methodists have promised them contributions; provisions are sent in like forage, and all the taverns and ale houses in the neighbourhood make fortunes. The most diverting part is to hear people wonder when it will be found out? as if there was any thing to find out; as if the actors would make their noises when they can be discovered." FUNERAL OF GEORGE II. “Do you know, I had the curiosity to go to the burying the other night: I had never seen a royal funeral; nay, I walked as a rag of quality, which I found would be, and so it was, the easiest way of seeing it. It is absolutely a noble sight. The prince's chamber hung with purple and a quantity of silver lamps, the coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, and six great chandeliers of silver on high stands had a very good effect. The ambassador from Tripoli and his son were carried to see the chamber. The procession through a line of foot guards, every seventh man bearing a torch, the horseguards lining the outside, their officers with drawn sabres and crape sashes on horseback, the drums muffled, the fifes, bells tolling, and minute guns,-all this was very solemn. But the chan was the entrance of the abbey, where we were rerevet by the dean and chapter in rich robes, the choir and aimsmen bearing torches; the whole abbey so illuminated, THE ONE SEW E to greater advantage than by day; the tombs, song misies, and fretted roof, all appearing distinctly, and with The harnes: chiaroscuro. There wanted nothing but incense and little chapels here and there, with priests saying mass for the repose of the defunct; yet one could not complain of is not being Catholic enough. When we came to the chapel of Henry ViL al solemnity and decorum ceased; no order was observed, people sat or stood where they could or would ; the permen of the guard were crying out for help, opprest by the immense weight of the coffin; the bishop read sadly, and blundered in the pravers; the fine chapter, 'Man that is born Of A WINNER." Was chanted, not read; and the anthem, besides being immeasurably tedious, would have served as well for a BUGAL The real serious part was the figure of the Duke of Cenderim, bagined by a thousand melancholy circumstances. He had a dark brown adonis, and a cloak of black cumt, with a train of five yards. Attending the funeral of a father could not be pleasant; his leg extremely bad, yet forced V SAMÉ UNE É Dear two hours; his face bloated and distorted with his law paralytic stroke, which has affected one of his eves, and pinced near the mouth of the vault, into which, in all probability, he must himself so soon descend; think how ENZORSKIN & STuation! He bore it with a firm and unaffected evernance. This grave scene was fully contrasted by the dariesque Pike of Newcastle. He fell into a fit of crying the moment be came into the chapel, and flung himself into a stall, the archbishop hovering over him with a smelling bocce, but in two minutes his curiosity got the better of his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel with his glass to spy wie was er was not there, spying with one hand, and mopping his eyes with the other. Then returned the fear of catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, fit himself weighed down, and turning round, found it was the Duke of Newcastle standing upon his train to avoid the chill of the marble. It was very theatric to look down into the vault where the coffin lay, attended by mourners with lights." THE CANDIDATE.* HIS Poem was written in 1764, on occasion of the con TH test between the Earls of Hardwicke and Sandwich, for the High-stewardship of the University of Cambridge, vacant by the death of the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. The spirit of party ran high in the University, and no means were left untried by either candidate, to obtain a majority. The election was fixed for the 30th of March, when, after much altercation, the votes appearing equal, a scrutiny was demanded; whereupon the Vice-Chancellor adjourned the senate sine die. On appeal to the Lord High-Chancellor, he determined in favour of the Earl of Hardwicke, and a mandamus issued accordingly. On a supposition that Lord * Churchill's repeated allusions in this poem to the political predilections of the University of Oxford, derive some of their pungency, no doubt, from the rejection he had there experienced. Those predilections had been invariably displayed in favour of the Stuarts and their adherents, so much so, that on the accession of the present reigning family, Oxford was in so disturbed a state as to render it necessary to station a troop of horse there under the command of General Pepper, in order to secure its obedience, about the same time that a munificent donation of books had been presented by the King to the University of Cambridge, on which the following epigram, by an Oxonian, was circulated: The king, observing with judicious eyes, To Oxford sent a troop of horse; and why? This was thus answered by Sir William Browne : |