friend left me in the world I can beg the favour of, and I being left so low that I am not able to perform his desire no other way but this: but if ever I am in a capacity, I will repay you, with a million of thanks. In the mean time, I hope God will reward you; and I shall continually pray for you, and your good lady and son, so long as ever I shall live, who is your poor, miserable, and unfortunate servant,

"RO. NORMANVEILDER."

Dr. Johnson, illustrating the early life of Addison, preserves the remembrance of a custom prevalent in Schools at the latter end of the seventeenth century. "Of this interval [about 1683]," he observes, "his biographers have given no account, and I know it only from a story of a barring-out, told me, when I was a boy, by Andrew Corbet of Shropshire, who heard it from Mr. Pigot his uncle. The practice of barringout was a savage licence, practised in many schools to the end of the last century, by which the boys, when the periodical vacation drew near, growing petulant at the approach of liberty, some days before the time of regular recess, took possession of the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade their master defiance from the windows. It is not easy to suppose that on such occasions the master would do more than laugh; yet, if tradition may be credited, he often struggled hard to force or surprise the garrison. The mas

ter,

ter, when Pigot was a school-boy, was barred-out at Lichfield; and the whole operation, as he said, was planned and conducted by Addison *."

Many families have been ruined by the custom of insuring, in all its varieties, depending upon chance. It would be vain to attempt to point out half those varieties; but it will be proper to shew, that insurance of contingences was known before 1682; as, in that year, a widow attempted to file a bill in Chancery, which implicated nearly five hundred individuals, whom she would have called upon to answer what sums were due from them to her deceased husband, "a kind of insurer," as he is termed by my authority — the London Mercury. This curious bill consisted of sixty skins of parchment, and "three thousand sheets of paper." The lord chancellor, amazed at the effrontery of the woman, and considering the enormous expence each defendant would incur by procuring a copy of it, dismissed it, and directed Mr. Newman (the counsellor who had signed it) to refund the charges already incurred, and to take his labour for his pains.

Proteus Redivivus (republished in 1684) presents us with the Shopkeeper. "Methinks I see him, standing at his shop-door, in cold weather, either blowing his fingers, eagerly waiting (if he be a young man) for a kick at the foot-ball,

Lives of the Poets, edit. 1810, vol. II. p. 74.

or

or basting his sides with his own hand; and so makes every cold day a Good Friday, to chastise him for the sins he hath committed. If any person pass by him, and but looks into his shop, he fondly imagines him a customer; and entreats for his own necessities, by asking others what they lack. If any chance to step in, he hath hocus tricks enough to delude them; and rarely shall they stir out (like sheep engaged in briers), but they shall leave some fleece behind them. Some have dark shops, with false lights, which wonderfully set off a commodity. Others (for want of that) make use of their tongues, arrogantly commending their own wares, and protesting whatever they exhibit to view is best in the town, though the worst in his shop; his words arè (like his wares) twenty of one sort, and he goes over them alike to all comers."

The same authority informs us that the moderns have broken through a custom of their ancestors, and made Monday instead of Saturday a day of terror to their creditors. "A Saturday is the melancholiest part of the whole week, not so much by reason of the froppish and humersome planet which governs it, but by reason of too many insufferable duns, who tread the streets in terror; and that is the reason some citizens can as well be hanged as keep out of nine-pin houses in Moorfields on this day, to be out of the sight of those ghastly apparitions that haunt their ghost

at

at the heel of the week. Poverty and Necessity, the god of the Andreans, that could stop the mouth of Themistocles, cannot appease the wrath of a city creditor, whose empty money bag, twisted about his hand, is as killing as a Gorgon's head, and therefore it is well the poor man is out of the way, and is only practising those sports which are like to be his only livelihood in short time; and what a kindness it is for a man to be removed from the cares and labours of this world to the sweet pleasures of drinking, smoking, and other sportive recreations.”

The prevalence of custom may be traced even into letter-writing; the manner and fashion of beginning and ending letters for two or three centuries might form a pleasing source of research. "After my hearty commendations" was for a long time common in the higher ranks of life, and of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I have seen letters begin thus: "Many months, Sir, have elapsed," &c., instead of the present mode, "Sir, Many," &c. Echard says, that in his time the young men of our universities counted it d-ble duncery and want of fancy to conclude a letter with your loving friend or humble servant, "therefore the young epistler is yours to the antipodes, or at least to the centre of the earth; and because ordinary folks love and respect you, therefore you are to him the pole-star, a Jacob's staff, a loadstone, and a damask rose."

From

From the moment money was coined from metal, it became the custom for depraved persons to imitate it; the more rude and shapeless the form, the easier the operation; the more debased the metal, the less the difficulty in deceiving during its circulation. There is nothing very pleasing to be derived from the history of Clippers, or those who reduced the real coin by cutting, for the value of the gold or silver, or false coiners; I shall therefore let the reader suppose the constant hostilities between the government, the police, and the coiners of antiquity, and confine myself to a presentment made by the Grand Jury of London, and inserted in the London Gazette of Feb. 27, 1687.

"It having been humbly represented to his Majesty, that the Grand Juries for the city of London and county of Middlesex have of late made several presentments, and orders, tending to suppress the offences of clipping and false-coining; and that the presentment lately made at Justice Hall, in the Old Bailey, is as followeth, viz.

We, the Grand Jury for the city of London, do present unto this Court the great mischief and prejudice which the trading body of this city, as well as the rest of the nation, do suffer, by the counterfeiting, diminishing, and embasing of the current coin of this kingdom, by clippers and false-coiners, whoboth mprove daily in that their wicked art, and increase also in their numbers;

not