loose by Cecropia for the purpose of destroying the royal family, and which are slain by Pyrocles and Musidorus, would be the two nobles, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. The attack of the peasants upon the royal lodges refers to the insurrection in November, 1569; and the band that afterwards attacked Pamela and Musidorus, would be the rebellious crew under Leonard Dacres of Gilsland.

Philanax, the king's friend, is most probably Sir Nicholas Bacon; his letter to Basilius reminds us of the weighty discourses of the Lord Keeper, holding the balance and seeking the golden mean. His younger brother, Agenor, may be Sir Christopher Hatton; "of a mind having no limits of hope, not knowing why to fear; full of jollity in conversation, and lately grown a lover."

Euarchus, the good chief, or deputy, is Sir Henry Sidney; he was born in 1529, and was consequently "above fifty years" in 1580. He is described as King of Macedon (President of Wales), a kingdom which in elder time had sovereignty over all the provinces of Greece (Great Britain); and "the worst kind of oligarchie" refers to the Irish chieftains. Sir Henry Sidney was still remembered in the next century by the people of Ireland as the good deputy.

In Pyrocles, fire of glory, the author represents Heroic Virtue :

"For what fortune only soothsayers foretold of Musidorus, that all men might see prognosticated in Pyrocles, both heavens and earth giving tokens of the coming forth of an Heroical Virtue."

If, then, Musidorus be, in a certain sense, Sir Henry Sidney, Pamela must also, in a similar sense, be Lady Mary Sidney; or, in Spenserian phraseology, the author may say of these two characters, in my particular I conceive my father and mother, but in my general intention Fulke Greville and Lady Penelope Devereux?

It seems a singular oversight, the supposition that Sidney could have painted his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, as Pamela in love with Musidorus, Fulke Greville; that would surely be overgoing Astrophel and Stella; but Lady Penelope and Lord Brooke would have made an excellent match, and, with mesmeric faith, I believe such was Sidney's wish. "Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, born in the same year with Sidney, 1554, was connected with him by a remote cousinship.' As the Arcadia was written chiefly for the entertainment of the Countess of Pembroke, such a solution must have been far more grateful to her feelings than the mere laudation of her own perfections.

With regard to Pamela, at first I imagined her to be the Protestant Church, but she manifested herself at last as Christian Philosophy, and is named Pa-mela, all honey, denoting thereby the sweetness of philosophy; whilst the severe treatment of poor Musidorus points to the arduous studies required to win her grace and favour.

"Sidney's faith appears to have been of that enlightlosophy, no less than the supreme Religion.” ened kind, which holds Christianity as the supreme PhiLloyd's Life of Sidney.

That I have not given a fanciful derivation of the word Pamela, is proved by the name of her daughter, Melidora. (To be continued.)

That Pyrocles is the author cannot be doubted; but that Maister Philip Sidney is lauding himself, weakly flattering his own vanity, is a most grave misapprehension. Sidney is a descriptive poet and not a dramatist; consequently we need not be surprised at the hero of the piece being formed out of the elements of his own character; but he would there be painting a being such as he might wish to be, and not what he was. This is very manifest throughout the whole performance; for Pyrocles and Musidorus are mainly allegories of SATIRICAL VERSES ON THE PRESBYTERIAN Valour and Wisdom, the attributes of his father, Sir Henry; and from the character of Palladius, it may be suspected, the author has in Musidorus shadowed forth his father rather than his friend; the two heroes at the beginning of the Arcadia pass under the names of Palladius, the wise man, and Daiphantus, shining in war; Palladius is thus

described: :

"For, having found in him, besides his bodily gifts beyond the degree of admiration, by daily discourses, which he delighted himself to have with him, a mind of most excellent composition, a piercing wit, quite void of ostentation, high erected thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy, an eloquence as sweet in the uttering as slow to come to the uttering; a behaviour so noble as gave majesty to adversity; and all in a man whose age could not be above one-and-twenty years."

MINISTERS.

An im

The ensuing verses are taken from a strange volume of Adversaria belonging to the Library of the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh. perfect copy occurs in the Scottish Pasquills from a MS. furnished by the late C. K. Sharpe, Esq.; but the present set is much better, and has two very pungent stanzas, formerly omitted. They are curious as indicating the intense hatred entertained by the Jacobite party against the Presbyterian ministers about the period of the union of the two crowns:

"Sweet Lammies,
Court Cammies,
Fool Tammies,

Lyk a theiffe.

approved of Marshall's views, and his opinions in 1799 remained unchanged; but, differing from him as I do very decidedly on this point, I have a pleasure in adding that, so far as I have examined his numerous late publications, he never reverted to the subject; nor ever, with this single exception, expressed an opinion at variance with the moral and religious observances of his country; while the zeal and perseverance with which he laboured to the very close of his life, to promote its welfare, by the improvement of its moral economy, justly entitle him to high respect.

He was born in the year 1745 (baptized July 28), at Sinnington, a village four miles west of Bickering, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. He tells us that he was "born a farmer, and that he could trace his blood through the veins of agriculturists for upwards of 400 years," but that, from the age of fifteen, he was "trained to traffic, and wandered in the ways of commerce partly in a distant climate (the West Indies) for fourteen years;" that then owing to "a violent fit of illness, he made his escape from the exchange, the coffee-house, and the desk, the business and the air of London - not for the sake of lucre, but for health, science, and the converse of nature; and, in 1774, undertook the management of a farm of 300 acres near Croydon in Surrey." Here he wrote his first publication, the Minutes, that Dr. Johnson criticised, which consisted of the memoranda made in the course of three years, and the general conclusions to which he had come. In 1779 he published Experiments and Observations on Agriculture and the Weather, 4to, and then began a General Survey, from Personal Experience, Observation, and Inquiry, of the Rural Economy of England, divided for his purpose, into six agricultural departments; Eastern (exemplified in Norfolk), Northern (Yorkshire), Midland (Leicester), Western (Gloucester), South-western (Devonshire), and Southern (Kent, &c.) In the Rural Economy of the Midland Counties he proposed the establishment of a " Board of Agriculture, or, more generally, of Rural Affairs," and his proposal was carried into effect by Parliament in 1793. Afterwards, his plan of provisional surveys was adopted by the Board, and he was urged to take a part in it, but he preferred going on with his own General Survey, which was completed in twelve octavo volumes in 1798. He had previously published a work on Planting and Rural Ornament (quoted in "N. & Q." 1st S. iv. 408), which passed through several editions, and in 1804 he brought out a large quarto volume on The Purchase, Improvement, and Management of Landed Estates.

The last ten or twelve years of his life were devoted to the composition of a Review and Abstract of the County Reports presented to the Board of Agriculture, which he published in five

volumes, the last appearing in the last year of his life. In this abstract he professed to give all the valuable parts of the forty-five volumes of Reports, as well as to point out and rectify their more dangerous errors. Every thing left unnoticed is," he says, "either erroneous or futile, and, to practical men, of no consideration or avail." Of the value of such a work, assuming the correctness of the author's judgment, there can be no question; and he blends with his abridgment much original thought, and not a little keen criticism.

In 1799 he had published Proposals for a Rural Institute or College of Agriculture, and the other Branches of Rural Economy, in which a course of instruction of the most comprehensive kind was suggested, to be carried out by Professors of Agriculture; of Fossilogy and Agricultural Chemistry; of Botany and the Vegetable Economy; of Farriery and the Animal Economy; of Mechanics; and lastly, of Estates-their Surveying, Valuing, Letting, &c.; and to the completion of this plan many of his last thoughts were directed, for he was raising a building at Pickering for the purpose, when death suddenly put a stop to his undertaking on the 18th of September, 1818, and left his friends to regret the loss of a highly honourable and estimable character-courteous, kind, and liberal-a warm friend to popular education and civil liberty, and not less in appearance than manners a model of an old English gentleman of that day. His monument in Pickering church tells us that "he was indefatigable in the study of rural economy," and that "he was an excellent mechanic, and had a considerable knowledge of most branches of science, particularly of Philology, Botany, and Chemistry."

His claims to notice as a philologist was owing to the interest he took in the provincial dialects of England, with which, from his intercourse everywhere with the rural population, he was necessarily familiar, and which he partially registered in his various publications; but by far the most complete of his glossaries is that of the dialect of his native district, appended to his Rural Economy of Yorkshire : —

"Finding," he says, "a declining language, which is unknown to the public, but which, it is highly probable, contains more ample remains of the ancient language of the central parts of this island than any other which is now spoken, I was willing to do my best endeavour towards arresting it in its present form, before the general blaze of fashion and refinement, which has already spread its dawn, even over this secluded district, shall have buried it irretrievably in oblivion."

dialect which, notwithstanding his anticipations, is still spoken in considerable purity in the Vale of Pickering and the eastern moorlands of Yorkshire.

D.

of his wife, but also gained something in the bargain. As for the woman, she exhibited few symptoms of either shame or sorrow, and drank her share of the beer." Stamford Mercury, March 27, 1863.

K. P. D. E.

WIFE SELLING.

Many notes concerning this odious custom have appeared in these pages; they will be useful to the future historian. This practice has been so frequent during the last hundred and fifty years that we cannot blame foreigners for thinking that wife-selling is a publicly recog nised national custom. I have conversed with more than one person who has seen a husband offer his wife for sale in a public street, with a halter round her neck. Even at the present day the vendor rarely receives any punishment for his brutality; indeed, magistrates and policemen are usually alike unaware that it is a breach of the law. The only case of a wife-seller meeting with his desert that has come under my notice, is recorded in "N. & Q." 2nd S. viii. 258.

"A man and his wife falling into discourse with a grazier at Parham fair, in Norfolk, the husband offered him his wife in exchange for an ox, provided he would let him choose one out of his drove. The grazier accepted the proposal, and the wife readily agreed to it. Accordingly they met the next day, when she was delivered to the grazier with a new halter round her neck, and the husband received the bullock, which he afterwards sold for six guineas.” — Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxxiv. p. 542.

LAW OF LAURISTON.

An apparently worthless scrap of paper nevertheless has been the means of affording some curious information relative to the family of William Law of Lauriston, the father of the great financier. and he married Jean Campbell, who survived him. The old gentleman was a goldsmith in Edinburgh, This lady, being a prudent woman, contrived to preserve the little estate of Lauriston, situated about three miles from Edinburgh, for the benefit of her family. She is said by some folks to have been a distant relation of the Argyle family: so distant, however, that the evidence of the connecsaid, whatever has been lost on earth will be tion can only be recovered in the moon, where, it is

found.

I have met with the following instances of this Miss Campbell, there was a daughter Jean, who Of the marriage between the old tradesman and crime during the last week. They have not hitherto appeared in these columns: became the wife of Dr. John Hay, and who died leaving one daughter Margaret. Upon occasion of the nuptials of Miss Jean Law with Dr. Hay, a marriage contract was executed, to which his father Alexander Hay, therein designated his Majesty's Apothecary, was a party. By this deed children of the marriage. It would seem that certain provisions were created in favour of the both father and grandfather of the young lady had thought proper to overlook her interests, and were probably squandering her money; or perhaps the doctor was intending to take unto himself another wife; but whatever the inducing cause might have been, it became necessary to adopt some steps to preserve her claims.

"A young man in Bewcastle, Cumberland, who was not on good terms with his wife, resolved a few days ago to dispose of her by auction. Not being able to find a purchaser in the place where they resided, she persuaded him to proceed to Newcastle for that purpose. Accordingly they set out, and this modern Dalilah laid her plan so well, that immediately on his arrival a press-gang conveyed him on board a frigate preparing to get under weigh for a long cruise."-Evans and Ruffey's Farmer's Journal, May 5, 1810.

"Our friends in the Principality are commonly supposed to have many strange customs, but to their credit we must state that the brutal custom of selling a wife is, as in England, a rare occurrence. Last week, however, a wife was sold at Cyfarthfa Iron Works, by one of the workmen to another, and the wife seemed more amused than pained by the transfer. The price was 27. 10s., and the understanding that an additional 10s. was to be devoted to beer. This arrangement having been carried out the parties separated, neither husband nor wife apparently regretting the termination of their marriage state."-Leeds Mercury, March, 1863.

"This barbarous occurrence actually took place in Merthyr Tydvil a few days ago between a workman of the Cyfarthfa Iron Works and another. The price for which the workman sold his wife was 3l.: 27. 10s. in cash

and 10s. worth of beer, the latter to be drunk by the principal parties in the transaction. The husband seemed very well satisfied that he had not only got rid

The Earl of Roxburghe was at the time indebted to the Hays in some way or the otherperhaps for medicine and medical advice: to secure the money thus due, James Johnston, Messenger-at-Arms, upon the 24th day of March, 1707, used an arrestment in the hands of the noble lord of all sums which he might be indebted to the Hays, at the instance of Jean Campbell, the widow, and of "John, William, Robert, and Hugh, lawful brothers to the deceased Jean Law" or Hay, at whose instance execution might pass for implement. All this information is preserved in the " Schedule," or certified intimation of the arrestment, left with the Earl, and now singularly enough preserved amongst the muniments of the Roxburghe family.

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This Earl of Roxburghe was, a month afterwards, created a Duke (April 25, 1707), with remainder to the heirs entitled to succeed to the earldom.