opposed to* criminal. Whitmore's edition 1 22 1, says: " Denique statuimus ut 24 of the Massachusetts Colonial Laws of 1660 civium qui prudentiores in civitate inveniri (Boston, 1889, 12-14) gives further quota poterunt, juramento confirment quod distions of the odd term, which appears to be ponant de mercatu et de universis que ad due to Nathaniel Ward, the " cobler of honorem et utilitatcm civitatis pertinent, Agawam," and had reference to such town sicut melius sciverint": It is ordained that matters as did not come under the immedi twenty-four of the more prudent citizens to ate control of the General Court, which was be found in the city shall act under oath the sovereign power in legislation, adminis- I and to the best of their discretion in what tration and the administration of law. Pru ever they may decide as to trade or what dentials, then, were municipal affairs, as ever pertains to the honor and good govern distinct from general Colony matters, and ment of the city. The Massachusetts pru administrative as distinct from judicial mat dentials, then, have something in common ters, the judiciary being vested in the Colony with the charter of Vienna; our selectmen alone. Ward may have picked up his term with Queen Elizabeth's method of securing prudential in his continental travels. There a loyal House of Commons; and our term the term was very common. Municipal "inhabitants" manifesth/ arose in conquered officers were usually addressed as " pru- Lombardy. The term " mayor" is French; dentes viri ac honesti," and the charter and Ireland, too, has given our municipal given to Vienna, the Austrian capital, in governments a name.
OLD-WORLD TRIALS. IV. 'THE STRANGE CASE" OF MRS. LYON AND MR. HOME. AMONG the many curious litigations to which Spiritualism has given rise, the strange case of Lyon vs. Home occupies a place of undoubted pre-eminence. The plaintiff, Mrs. Jane Lyon, a childless widow of more than seventy years of age, and the natural daughter of a tradesman at Newcastle, was left at the death of her hus band in 1859, absolutely entitled to a very considerable fortune, a great portion of which had been transferred to her by him during his lifetime; she had also received a fortune of from £ 5,000 to £20,000 from her father, and her income at the date of the transac tions in question was upwards of £5,000, while her modest expenditure did not exceed £600 a year. She had no relations of her own, and did not greatly covet the society of those of her husband, and lived in Lon
don, lodging at a rent of about thirty shill ings a week out of, and forty shillings a week during the season. She had no ser vant, saw little company, and had no friends about her who were capable of giving her good advice. Mrs. Lyon was of a fanciful and visionary turn of mind; was very de voted to her dead husband, and was under the impression, from something that he had said to her before, his death, that she would not survive him for more than seven years. In July, 1866, she called upon a Mrs. Sims, a photographer in Westgrove, to get a photograph taken from a portrait of her husband, and mentioned to her in the course of conversation both what the deceased had said and her conviction that she would speedily join him beyond the grave. Mrs. Sims replied that it was not necessary for
