in the Annual Register' as early as the 6th. Southey wrote to Richmond on December 1 that so deep a snow had not been remembered since 1767, that the drifts were seven or eight feet deep, and that they had had no post for three days. It should have been mentioned that early in this year died the well-known Thomas Urwick. He was born, it is said, at or near Shrewsbury. Under any circumstances, he was a thoroughly good and excellent man, was educated by Dr. Doddridge, and became one of his fast disciples. He had long ministered to the Protestant dissenters at Clapham, and had recently resigned this post from advanced years and feeble health. He was well known and esteemed in this locality, and the reader will find a true account of him in the 'Annual Register.' I rather wonder not to find his name mentioned in Wilberforce's Diary.

Relative to the valley, I should mention that at this time pomoculture was greatly on the advance. The Last of the Old Squires and John Clavering Wood of the 'Marsh,' the godson of the Indian Sir J. Clavering, took up Mr. Knight's experiments of Downton, and, if many of them failed, he did good in his generation as a horticulturist. But I hardly like to speak of Downton Castle, or of R. Payne-Knight's 'Homer' now before me, on the Prolegomena of which dear old Butler lectured so well. Nobody anatomised his faults better, no one knew the Digamma so well. The copy before me belonged to the able Bishop Mynster of Copenhagen, and I bought it at his sale.

Meanwhile Buonaparte was striding with gigantic strides ; but, as Wilberforce said pithily, 'This man is manifestly an instrument in the hands of Providence; when God has done with him He will probably show how easily He can get rid of him.' One does not easily forget such words, nor those of the poet in his 'Pilgrimage to Waterloo' :—

For not, like Scythian conquerors, did he tread
From his youth up the common path of blood :
Nor like some Eastern tyrant was he bred

In sensual harems, ignorant of good:
Their vices from their circumstance have grown,
His, by deliberate purpose, were his own.

Not led away by circumstance he erred,

But from the wicked heart his error came;
By fortune to the highest place preferred,

He sought through evil means an evil aim;
And all his reckless measures were designed

To enslave, degrade, and brutalise mankind.

VOL. IV,

S

CHAPTER L.

THE PENINSULAR WAR.

Summon detraction to object the worst
That may be told, and utter all it can ;
It cannot find a blemish to be enforced
Against him, other than he was a man :

And built of flesh and blood, and did live here

Within the region of infirmity.

DANIEL, On the Death of the Earl of Devonshire:
SOUTHEY'S Brit. Poets, p. 574.

The great distinction which constitutes all the tranquillity of a nation is founded not only on religion, but on reason and nature, which never confound things really distinct in themselves, and which can only subsist in consequence of that very distinction.—MONTESQUIEU's Reflections, &c. cxxii. p. 213, Transl.

A king must make religion the rule of government, and not to balance the scale; for he that casteth in religion only to make the scales even, his own weight is contained in those characters, 'Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.' He is found too light; his kingdom shall be taken from him.-BACON's Essays: Of a King.

A patriot king-why, 'tis a name which bears
The more immediate stamp of heaven, which wears
The nearest, best resemblance we can show
Of God above, through all His works below!

CHURCHILL, Gotham, Book III. p. 4, 4to.

THAT eminent naturalist-an old Shrewsbury boy and my schoolfellow-Charles Darwin-writes in his recent work on 'Animals and Plants under Domestication': 'Parrots are singularly long-lived birds, and Humboldt mentions the curious fact of a parrot in South America who spoke the language of an extinct Indian tribe, so that this bird preserved the sole relic of a lost language.'

And there is an analogy between Humboldt's parrot and
Other books retain and recount the

a book like the present.

history of England, but it is only a collection of papers like these--with which might be compared Bishop Kennet's Parochial Antiquities, attempted in the History of Ambrosden, Buraster, and other adjacent Parts in the Counties of Oxford and Bucks'-which will preserve what would soon be the lost historical data, and, so to say, the 'lost language' of parishes like Pontesbury and Hanwood, and of houses like the old homestead of Cruck Meole. Perhaps, as the French proverb speaks, 'Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle,' but they are local histories which make up a county one, and although Mr. Eyton's 'Antiquities' is a great help, we want our county history still. Every educated man might quietly add much to the general fund

In his own pleasant fig-tree's shade,

Which by his household fountain grew,
Where at noonday his prayer he made,
To know God better than he knew.

It was an aged man-bent like a willow, but of a cheerful countenance, whose cheeks the morning frost had coloured like a red-streak apple-that was passing by the way and stopped to rest awhile beneath the venerable tree, and I knew him, as a boy, by the sobriquet of ' A bit of bread and cheese, and a bite of cold potato.' I asked my Talking Friend his name, and, strangely enough, he said he did not know, but that he had passed and repassed for half a century at least, and always went by that name. It was clear he was not quite as wise as his neighbours-some would have called him daft,' for my Talking Friend added, he was 'as free as a Tantony pig,' and welcomed by the children of every household. I wonder if he knew the meaning of the saying? If he did the people did not, for they had a rougher form of proverbial speech generally applied to what Stubbes in his 'Anatomie of Abuses' calls 'swill-bowls upon their alebenches,' and this was 'As drunk as David's sow,' an explanation of which may be seen in Grose's 'Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue,' most probably made up for the nonce by some wag.

Parliament met on January 31 this year (1808) when the expedition to Copenhagen was a subject of much discussion.

It was Mr. Windham who said so pointedly, 'He would rather Buonaparte was now in possession of the Danish fleet, by the means to which he would have resorted in the seizure of it, than that England should have got it in the way she did. The ships would be rotten when the effervescence of national feeling would live in the remembrance of national injury.' It was still alive and quick as late as 1834, but the Dane never returned evil for evil, but was the most hospitable of men.

Meanwhile reports reached the valley and the old colonel regarding Spain which excited him almost to a frenzy. And true enough, as it turned out, the King of Spain published his abdication at Aranjuez on March 19, and on April 5 was transmitted to Buonaparte, at Bayonne, 'the sword that Francis I., King of France, surrendered in the famous battle of Pavia, in the reign of the Emperor Charles V. of Spain, which had been kept in the royal armoury since 1525.' It was emblematic of the surrender of the crown. How could this proud and ancient people bear the intrusion of Joseph Buonaparte? How can these contrarieties agree?

May Day this year was a lovely day-but it was a borrowed one-and all the early part of the month was extremely cold, with frequent falls of snow, throughout the whole of the country. In the valley of the Rea the people suffered much from throat complaints and troublesome catarrh.

And I call to mind how one day, not many years ago, I observed a man with a large throat pass beneath the venerable tree, and I remarked to a companion-was it old John Price?-that although one often saw women with goitres, one rarely saw men. And this led me to ask my Talking Friend if he remembered many large throats in his time!

There was a humorous shake of his boughs as he replied, 'There were no throats in England better equal to swallowing good ale at the "Cock " and the " Lea Cross" than those of the valley!'-adding archly, ' But that is not what you mean, and all I can tell you is by hearsay, that the dwellers by the course of the Severn by Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester have always been more or less subject to such glandular enlargements