292
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. in. APRIL is,
from each plantation he might make to the navy of
the country."
The numbers were : for bringing in the Bill, fifty-seven ; against it, fifty-eight.
The friends of education will find Mr. Brougham's Report of the Committee on General Education, given in the September number, of interest. Among other particulars it mentioned the case of a rector who was principal of a school, with a salary of 1,500.
Eer annum, and who assigned the whole to is brother, another clergyman. The latter, not choosing to perform the duties of his office, made a journeyman carpenter the schoolmaster, with an allowance of 40. a year. There was another instance of a school, with an endowment for the master of 4001. a year, in which there was but one scholar.
The Holborn Viaduct is anticipated in the October number, which contains a pro- posal that an iron bridge should be erected from Holborn Hill to Snow Hill, and that a toll should be charged for the first ten or twelve years to defray the cost. Considerable space is given in the same number and in that for November to an account of the trial and execution of Jeremiah Brandreth (" The Nottingham Captain "), William Turner, and Isaac Ludlam for high treason. (The number of prisoners arraigned was thirty- five.) The execution of the three men is graphically described. "Nothing could exceed the horror which the whole scene excited." The article concludes with the words :
"As this has been the first instance of the sort, of men being convicted of levying war against the King, since 1745, so we hope it will be the last."
More pleasant is it to read from Spain that Ferdinand VII., on visiting the prisons at Madrid lately, had ordered all the instru- ments of torture to be destroyed, and that he had abolished the torture in his dominions ; that the King of Wiirtemberg had abolished the censorship of the press ; and, with other- items of home news, that of the opening of Waterloo Bridge on Waterloo day by the Prince Regent, accompanied by the Duke of York and the Duke of Wellington, w r hen a salute of 202 guns was fired in commemoration of the number taken in the battle. It is also stated that the steamboats on the Clyde had come into general use, and that it was possible to dine on Monday in London and with the Duke of Argyll at his romantic seat at Inverary on the following Thursday ; and that the interior and exterior of the new Mint had been lighted with gas. The appa- ratus, which was on a new plan, was erected
within the walls of the Mint. The gas was
prepared, not by
" distilling coals in retorts in the usual manner, but by means of a cylinder kept red hot and revolving round its axis. The cylinder, xipwards of ten feet in diameter, produces during its revolution in 24 hours a sufficient quantity of gas to light 1,600 lamps."
In the November number considerable space is also devoted to an account of the death of the Princess Charlotte, taken from " the news- paper called the Day and New Times " ; and in the last number for the year a report is given of the three celebrated Hone trials, when, notwithstanding the severe summing- up of Lord Ellenborough, the jury in each case brought in a verdict of " Not guilty."
Among the many obituary notices we find the death at Paris, on the 15th of July, of Madame de Stael-Holstein , aged fifty -three. She had expressed a wish that
" for three days her corpse might be attended before being for ever inclosed in its coffin ; and for three days, in defiance of the distressing circumstances reflection suggests, Augustus de Stael did not quit the chamber of his departed mother. Her remains are to be conveyed to Copet for interment."
Her physicians were preparing for her oxy- genous air when she breathed her last.
The preface to the second part of the volume, dated the last day of the year, is full of congratulation and gratitude for "the patronage bestowed during the long period of Eighty-seven revolving years," as well as felicitations to "our countrymen on the improved prospects which Providence gener- ously offers to us at the opening of a New Year." It is said that sedition is melting away, that public credit is fresh and vigor- ous,* and that "the comforts of the poor, and the education of their children, are the incessant objects of the benevolent."
Full information about Cave and the estab- lishment of the Gentleman's Magazine _ is to be found in Timperley's 'Encyclopaedia,' as well as an account of the difficulties he had to contend with in including a re'sume' of the Parliamentary debates. In every depart- ment Cave took the most active interest; and Dr. Johnson, who succeeded William Guthrie in 1740 in the task of drawing up the Debates, relates of Cave that he
"used to sell 10,000 of the Gentleman's Magazin yet such was then his minute attention and anxiety that the sale should not suffer the smallest decrease, that he would name a particular person who he heard had talked of leaving off the magazine, and
- Lord Castlereagh stated in the House of Com-
mons, on the llth of July, that the Funds in the course of the session had risen from 62 to 80.
