but it was decreed that they, having broken the rule of chivalry, should be forever precluded from chiv alrous society; they must never seek the esteem of knights or ladies, and never show themselves in any court of love. "In contrast to this action for breach of promise, take the instance of a more humorous trial. It is the great case of The Kiss, in which a lady de manded damages for the felonious taking of that article. The defendant pleaded that he had long been deeply attached to the plaintiff, and that three months previously she had promised to bestow on him a kiss; yet, as often as he claimed the fulfil ment of the pledge, she put him off with some excuse or other. At last, he said, he could wait no longer; and when the lady's husband was out of the way, he took her and it by storm. The plaintiff rejoined that in making the promise she had limited herself to no period, and that, if left to herself, she would have fulfilled it in proper time. But the Court, which appears to have generally favored the distressed cavalier, overruled this excuse
as trivial, gave judgment against the plaintiff, con demned her to pay all costs, and, in addition, to furnish a supplementary kiss. "There is another kiss affair chronicled which, for the credit of the sex, we wish we could find reason to doubt. A knight summoned his mis tress before the Court on the charge of pricking one cheek while pressing her lips against the other, with the intent, etc. The lady asserted that the kiss had been taken, not given, and that the wound, if inflicted at all, was the accidental result of her proper resistance. But unanswerable evi dence was brought; medical certificates were pro duced, and her statement was clearly disproved. It was decreed that, by way" of reparation, she should kiss the injured cheek as often as the plain tiff chose until it was healed. "All these trials took place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and, alas! this is the nine teenth. The Court of Love is a dead thing; its last assembly took place about the year thirteen hundred and eighty-two."
WITCHCRAFT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. IT may surprise some of our readers to learn that, far from being a thing of the past, witchcraft has received the attention of the courts even in our day, and many a defendant who a century or two ago would have suffered death as a witch has had a more fitting punishment meted out to him or her, and has been sentenced as a cheat or a swindler. The following curious cases make it sufficiently evident that the belief in witches still exists to a considerable ex tent in England; and one has only to take up an American newspaper and glance over the advertisements of professed witches, for tune-tellers, and the like, to convince him self that the credulity of a large portion of our population fully equals that of our Eng lish cousins. No longer ago than 1857 a trial at the Stafford Assizes in England exhibited a farmer and his wife in such a light as would
appear almost incredible, were it not that the narrative came from their own lips. The farmer, Thomas Charlesworth, lived at Rugby. He married in 1856 against his mother's wish; she quitted his roof, and gave him a mysterious caution not to make cheese, as it would be sure to crumble to pieces. This warning seemed to imply that the young wife would bewitch the dairy; but the far mer's evidence did not tend to show what he himself believed in this matter. Very shortly everything seemed to go wrong; the cheese would not cut properly; the farmer, his wife, and the dairymaid all became un well. In this predicament he sought the advice of a neighboring toll-gate keeper, who suggested that he should apply to a " wise man " named James Tunnicliff. The farmer and his wife started off, visited the wise man, told their story, and obtained a promise that he would come to the farm on the following
