walls by excellent sculptors; that the angels have no particular houses, but go from one quarter to another for diversity; that they put on women's habits, and appear to the saints in the dress of ladies, with curles and locks, with waistcoats and fardingales, and the richest linens." This occupation of the angels agrees with the occupations that Henriques assigns to the saints; who, according to him, are to enjoy, with other pleasures, the recreation of bathing: "There shall be pleasant bathes for that purpose; they shall swim like fishes, and sing as melodious as nightingales; the men and women shall de light themselves with muscarades, feasts and ballads; women shall sing more pleasantly than men, that the delight may be greater; and women shall rise again with very long hair, and shall appear with ribands and laces as they do upon earth." Father Henriques was a Jesuit, and communicates this information in a book entitled, "The Business of the Saints in Heaven," published by the written authority of Father Prado, the Provincial of the order of Jesuits at Castille, dated at Salamanca, April 28th, 1631.* Moral Practice of the Jesuits. Lond. 12mo. 1670. out this long life enjoyed a state of uninterrupted health; and retained her memory and perception to the end with a clearness truly astonishing. Till the day previous to her decease she was not confined to her bed; and on the 105th anniversary of her birth, entertained a party of her relatives who visited her to celebrate the day she lived to see a numerous progeny to the fifth generation, and at her death there are now living children, grand-children, great-grand-children, and great-great-grand-children to the number of one hundred and twenty-one." Hannah Want, in common with all long-livers, was an early riser. The following particulars are derived from a correspondent. She was seldom out of bed after nine at night, and even in winter; and towards the last of her life, was seldom in it after six in the morning. Her sleep was uniformly sound and tranquil; her eye-sight till within the last three years was clear; her appetite, till two days before her death, good; her memory excellent; she could recollect and discourse on whatever she knew during the last century. Her diet was plain common food, meat and poultry, pudding and dumpling, bread and vegetables in moderate quantities; she drank temperately, very temperately, of good, very good, mild home-brewed beer. During the last twenty years she had not taken tea, though to that period she had been accustomed to it. She never had the small pox, and never had been ill. Her first seventy-five years were passed at Bungay in Suffolk, her last thirty at the adjoining village of Ditchingham in Norfolk. She was the daughter of a farmer named Knighting. Her husband, John Want, a maltster, died on Christmas-day, 1802, at the age of eighty-five, leaving Hannah ill provided for, with an affectionate and dutiful daughter,who was better than house and land; for she cherished her surviving parent when "age and want, that ill-matched pair, make countless thousands mourn.' Hannah Want was of a serious and sedate turn; not very talkative, yet cheerfully joining in conversation. She was a plain, frugal, careful wife and mother; less inclined to insist on rights, than to perform duties; these she executed in all respects, "and all without hurry or care." Her stream of life was a gentle flow of equanimity, unruffled by storm or accident, till it was exhausted. She was never put out of her way but once, and that was when the house wherein she lived at Bungay was burned down, and none of the furniture saved, save one featherbed. In answer to a series of questions from the Editor, respecting this aged and respectable female, addressed to another correspondent, he says, "What a work you make about an old woman! I'll answer none of your siliy questions; ax Briant!' as a neighbouring magistrate said to sir Edmund Bacon, who was examining him in a court of justice. The old woman was well enough. There is nothing more to be learned about her, that! how long a body may crawl upon the earth, and think nothing worth thinking -as if thinking was but an idle waste of thought; and how long a person to whom naught is every thing, and every thing is nothing', did nothing worth doing. I 6 suppose that the noted H. W. knew as much of life in 105 hours, as Hannah Want did in 105 years. All I know or can learn about her is nothing, and if you can make any thing of it you may. Some of our free-knowledgists,' with a pale cast of thought' have taken a cast of her head, and discovered that her organ of self-destructiveness was harmonized by the organ of long-livitiveness." This latter correspondent is too hard upon Hannah; but he encloses information on another subject that may be useful hereafter, and therefore what he amusingly says respecting her, is at the service of those readers who are qualified to make something of nothing. I always lov'd thee, and thy yellow garb, Can rival Derwent's-where proud Chatsworth's tow'rs Of gold-tipp'd mountains crown her lawns and bowers. Save where the murmuring of Derwent's wave, While shadowy forms seem gliding through the gloom To visit those again they lov'd this side the grave. HYDE-PARK-CORNER TOLL-GATE. Before the close of the sessions of parliament in 1825 an act passed for the removal of the toll-gate at Hyde-park-corner, with a view to the free passage of horsemen and carriages between London and Pimlico. So great an accommodation to the inhabitants of that suburb, manifests a disposition to relieve other growing neighbourhoods of the metropolis from these vexatious imposts. On the present occasion a gentleman, evidently an artist, presented the Editor with a drawing of Hyde-park-corner gate on the day when it was sold; it is engraved opposite. This liberal communication was accompanied by the subjoined letter: To the Editor of the Every-Day Book. Sir, I have taken the liberty of enclosing you a representation of a scene which took place at Hyde-park-corner last Tuesday, October 4th, being no less than the Rickman. public sale of the toll-house, and all the materials enumerated in the accompanying catalogue. If you were not present, the drawing I have sent may interest you as a view of the old toll-house and the last scene of its eventful history. You are at liberty to make what use of it you please. The sale commenced at one o'clock, the auctioneer stood under the arch before the door of the house on the north side of Piccadilly. Several carriage folks and equestrians, unconscious of the removal of the toll, stopped to pay, whilst the drivers of others passed through knowingly, with a look of satisfaction at their liberation from the accustomed remantled house without a turnpike man, striction at that place. The poor disseemed "almost afraid to know itself”— "Othello's occupation was gone." By this time, if the conditions of the auction have been attended to, not a vestige is event would interest a mind like yours, left on the spot. I have thought this which permits not any change in the history of improvement, or of places full of old associations, to take place without record. I remain, sir, Yours, &c. A CONSTANT READER. 9 Sale of Hyde-Park-Corner Toll-gate. "The last time! a going! gone." Auctioneer. The sale by auction of the "toll-houses" on the north and south side of the road, Public. October 5. 6th Cent. THE ASS. with the "weighing machine," and lamp- St. Placidus, &c. A. D. 546. house was also in five lots. At the same FLORAL DIRECTORY. Southernwood. Artemesia Aproxanum. St. Galla, The cantering of TIM TIMS startles him who told of his "youthful days," at "Starkey" cythe school wherein poor phered part of his little life. C. L. "getting well, but weak" from painful and severe indisposition, is "off and away" for a short discursion. Better health to him, and good be to him all his life. Here he is. THE ASS (For Hone's Every-Day Book.) Mr. Collier, in his "Poetical Decameron" (Third Conversation) notices a Tract, printed in 1595, with the author's initials only, A. B., entitled "The Noblenesse of the Asse: a work rare, learned, and excellent." He has selected the following pretty passage from it. "He (the Ass) refuseth no burthen, he Ante, p. 1308. goes whither he is sent without any contradiction. He lifts not his foote against any one; he bytes; not he is no fugitive, nor malicious affected. He doth all things in good sort, and to his liking that hath cause to employ him. If strokes be given him, he cares not for them; and, as our modern poet singeth, "Thou wouldst (perhaps) he should become thy foe, And to that end dost beat him many times; He cares not for himselfe, much lesse thy blow."* Certainly Nature, foreseeing the cruel usage which this useful servant to man should receive at man's hand, did prudently in furnishing him with a tegument impervious to ordinary stripes. The malice of a child, or a weak hand, can make feeble impressions on him. His back offers no mark to a puny foeman. To a common whip or switch his hide presents an absolute insensibility. You might as well pretend to scourge a school-boy with a tough pair of leather breeches on. His jerkin is well fortified. And therefore the Costermongers "between the years 1790 and 1800" did more politicly than piously in lifting up a part of his upper garment. I well remember that beastly and bloody custom. I have often longed to see one of those refiners in discipline himself at the cart's tail, with just such a convenient spot laid bare to the tender mercies of the whipster. But since Nature has resumed her rights, it is to be hoped, that this patient creature does not suffer to extremities; and that to the savages who still belabour his pcor carcase with their blows (considering the sort of anvil they are laid upon) he might in some sort, if he could speak, exclaim with the philosopher, Lay on you beat but upon the case of Anaxarchus." Contemplating this natural safeguard, this fortified exterior, it is with pain I view the sleek, foppish, combed and curried, person of this animal, as he is transmuted and disnaturalized, at Watering Places, &c. where they affect to make a palfrey of him. Fie on all such sophistications! It will never do, Master Groom. Something of his honest shaggy exterior will still peep up in spite of you -his good, rough, native, pine-apple coating. You cannot "refine a scorpion Who this modern poet was, says Mr. C., is a secret worth discovering.-The wood-cut on the title of the Pamphlet is-an Ass with a wreath of laurel round his neck. And truly when one thinks on the suit of impenetrable armour with which Nature (like Vulcan to another Achilles) has provided him, these subtle enemies dexterity in getting into his quarters. As to our repose, would have shown some the bogs of Ireland by tradition expel small deer in his fastnesses. toads and reptiles, he may well defy these It seems the latter had not arrived at the exquisite policy adopted by the human vermin "between 1790 and 1800." But the most singular and delightful gift of the Ass, according to the writer of this pamphlet, is his voice; the "goodly, sweet, and continual brayings" of which. "whereof they forme a melodious and proportionable kinde of musicke,” seem to have affected him with no ordinary pleasure." Nor thinke I," he adds, “that any of our immoderne musitians can deny, but that their song is full of exceeding pleasure to be heard; because therein is to be discerned both concord, discord, singing in the meane, the beginning to sing in large compasse, then following on to rise and fall, the halfe note, whole note, musicke of five voices, firme singing by four voices, three together or one voice and a halfe. Then their variable contrarieties amongst them, when one delivers forth a long tenor, or a short, the pausing for time, breathing in measure, breaking the minim or very least moment of time. Last of all to heare the musicke of five or six voices chaunged to so many of Asses, is amongst them to heare a song of world without end." There is no accounting for ears; or for that laudable enthusiasm with which an Author is tempted to invest a favourite subject with the most incompatible perfections. I should otherwise, for my own Milton: from memory. |