Then to the chest where evils rage-
You fix it on, in pewter dish.

It will when kept in warm condition
Completely ease you of inflation."

Marchaleus says that if we calcine the bones of the pike in a crucible, make a powder of them, and mix this powder with white sugar, it will prove effectual in eradicating films and specks from the eye. To candy the flesh of the fish, the same author gives the following directions: Take the flesh cleared from the bones, and cut it in long slips; then parboil in water and a little sugar; then take out and dip into honey boiled to a high consistence, and let them be taken out and laid to candy. This will be found of great use in asthmas, and deeply-seated chronic coughs.

Pike-fishing was carried on in Italy with great ardour during some sections of the middle ages. These fish were carefully preserved in ponds and private estuaries, and from some accounts attained a very great size. They formed a staple article for picnic fishing parties.; and are often alluded to in the fishing songs of Italy in the time of Calmo and others.

In the history of the bloody and long-continued feuds between the Guelphs and Ghibilline factions in Italy, there is an account of one affray which sprung out of pike-fishing. A nobleman had been caught on the pri vate fishing-grounds of another, and had made a capture of several large pike. This led to a civil action in the first instance, and afterwards to a personal encounter between the parties and their respective friends, wherein several lives were sacrificed on both sides.

Pope Leo VIII. was said to be so passionately fond of pike, that he never considered a fish dinner complete unless some of these fish were presented at table.

The pike is prolific of legends. Bodin, a French political writer of eminence, affirms that a niece of a Parisian haberdasher, residing in the Rue St. Honoré, in going down the banks of the Seine one fine evening, was accosted by a voice from the stream, and, turning round, saw a large fish of the pike species, which beckoned to her to come to it. It distinctly foretold the death of a wealthy uncle of hers, by whom she had been left a large sum of money. Miraille was hanged in 1567; Jeaune Collier in 1573; and Jeane D'Avesnes de Beavais in 1574, all of whom were accused as sorcerers, and with having played many tricks upon the credulity of the people of Paris, and its immediate neighbourhood, through the instrumentality of various kinds of fish, particularly with pike, both dead and living.

Bassompierre relates that, in 1612, having gone to visit the Marquis d'Aucre, who was sick, some person in the chamber said, "A monk of my acquaintance knows a person who promises, upon his life, to make a woman love any man that he wishes, and begged me to make the secret known to you." "You should send him," said Bassompierre, "to the Duke de Bellegrade, who is old.” Accordingly the monk went as directed, proposed to make known the magician and his secret to the Duke, who listened to it, and promised him a sum of money, if the device should succeed. His grace was given to understand that it would be through the agency of eating of a particular kind of fish, which had been taken out of

the royal fish-ponds in the vicinity of Paris, and which had been subjected to a holy and miraculous process. The Duke then inquired whether by this magical act he could make a lady hate the person to whom she was attached? The monk and the magician replied that this was quite possible. The Duke was in transports at hearing this, and communicated confidentially to the Princess de Conti, that he possessed an infallible secret to make the queen feel a liking to himself, and a fixed and steady hatred towards the Marquis d'Aucre and his wife. The charm was said to be made by broiled pikefish, seasoned highly with various kinds of herbs. This story got to the ears of the French court, and three days. after, the monk and the magician, and those who had introduced them to the Duke de Bellegrade's house, were committed to prison.*

In 1688, and in 1691, the Parliament of Paris condemned several shepherds of La Brie, who were charged with practising sorcery for the destruction of sheep. The philter which they employed was made of the flesh of the pike, caught in the river Rhone, mixed with oils, and a certain portion of the consecrated host, kept back at the sacraments. In England, similar absurd stories were once rife, particularly in the counties of Essex and Cambridgeshire. In 1514, a man was committed to prison, and afterwards tried and condemned to be branded with a hot iron, and to lose both his ears, for carrying about, from place to place, a live pike, in a water-case, which he pretended could tell fortunes, and predict future events with great accuracy.

"Histoire de Paris," 1798.

DR. PALEY'S "NATURAL THEOLOGY."

OUR remarks on this well-known publication have been suggested from the singular circumstances connected with it as a literary work. Its fame has been great; it has called forth distinguished commentators and editors; and yet there is not a work in the English language which owes so little to the labours of its author as this book does to the eminent divine.

There is not probably one out of a thousand of ordinary readers who does not believe the treatise on "Natural Theology" to have been entirely suggested by, and carved out of the natural resources of, Dr. Paley's mind- that he had collected all the materials, and arranged them according to his own ideas of method, and that he was, in the fullest sense of the words, an original thinker and illustrator of this department of human knowledge. We are in a position to prove this not to be the case. We can show that his work is a mere running commentary on another publication, to the author of which he has acted with great unfairness, and in flagrant violation of the literary moralities. We charge him with taking the leading arguments and illustrations of his "Natural Theology," from a book of the same nature written by Dr. Nieuwentyt, of Holland, and published at Amsterdam about the year 1700-full one

hundred years before the Doctor's treatise made its appearance in England.

Bernard Nieuwentyt was one of the most erudite philosophers of Holland in the seventeenth century. About the year mentioned, he published a work in Dutch "To Prove the Existence and Wisdom of God from the Works of Creation." This treatise excited considerable attention throughout Europe; and Mr. Chamberlayne, a member of the Royal Society of London, undertook its translation into English, under the title of "The Religious Philosopher." This was published in London, in three volumes octavo, in 1718-19. A French translation was afterwards published at Paris, in quarto, with numerous plates, under the title of "L'Existence de Dieu démonstrée par les Merveilles de la Nature."

To show the connection between Mr. Chamberlayne's "Religious Philosopher" and Dr. Paley's "Natural Theology," we give the plan of both publications in parallel columns. The reader will see their almost complete identity: