determined to step in and seize all that they could, and to get back the value of some of the Church goods already sold. With this object Commissioners were again sent into every county and town with precise instructions, first, to find out what plate, jewels, and ornaments had been sold since the issue of the first commission, and to demand the value of those goods from those who had received the price of them; secondly, to learn what goods each parish still possessed, taking away all plate, except one chalice in a small and two in a large parish, and selling copes and vestments of any value. They were instructed to deliver all plate and money so received to the King's use, and to cause exact inventories of all goods finally left behind in each parish. In Worsley's History of the Isle of Wight, Appendix No. xxxviii, will be found a note from the manuscript book of G. Brander, Esq., of all such plate, bells, vestments, and other implements as have been taken and sold out of the churches in the Isle of Wight by the parishioners of the same, as also of the names of those persons who are appointed and bound to appear for the answer of the same. With the accession of Queen Mary the mass replaced the communion service, and the stone altars which had been taken down to make way for wooden tables were directed to be restored. In spite of these doctrinal and ritual changes, the only silver vessels belonging to a church were, as a general rule, the one silver chalice and paten left behind by the Commissioners of Edward VI. This one chalice and paten are all that are found in the early years of Elizabeth's reign, when, in 1567, the ancient chalice was also included among the monuments of superstition, and was ordered to be exchanged for a new communion cup and cover. That order was enforced probably by an article of inquiry at the bishop's visitation, repeated at subsequent visitations, till the exchange had been effected in every parish. The little cup and paten cover thus procured was the only vessel of silver in most churches throughout the whole of this reign. Two pewter flagons and two pewter basins for the offertory completed the service of even the largest church. Pewter flagons were largely bought after 1604, in accordance with a canon of that year, which ordained that the 'wine should be brought to the communion table in a clean and sweet standing-pot of pewter, if not of purer metal.' These were not the days for making gifts for church uses. We must turn the century, and with the accession of the Stuarts to the throne of England we find Churchmen once more as in the days of old liberal benefactors to their parish churches. A stream of benefaction springs up and flows on continuously through nearly three centuries, only for a time checked by the opposition to the Church during the Puritan ascendency, when the services of the Prayerbook, both in public and private worship, were prohibited under penalties by Act of Parliament. The chief donor to the Carisbrooke Church communion plate was Lady Miller, of Alvington Manor in the parish of Carisbrooke, eldest daughter of Sir Henry Meux, third baronet of Kingston in the Isle of Wight, and the third wife of Sir John Miller, Bart., M. P. for Chichester, who died November 2, 1721. In 1751, as the inscription states, her ladyship presented to the Church of St. Mary's, Carisbrooke, two massive tankard-shaped flagons. This handsome gift was followed in 1754 by that of two silver cups with paten covers, on which is inscribed 'Carisbrooke, the gift of Lady Miller,' and also a salver-shaped silver paten. In 1757 a silver basin for the offertory was given by Mr. Mitchell of Saint Cross in the parish of Carisbrooke. Lady Miller commenced her benefactions to the communion plate of Carisbrooke Church by giving with thoughtful kindness a pocket communion service, consisting of a silver cup and patens, for the use of the sick of the parish in 1750. Whenever the duty of making a catalogue or inventory of the church plate of the Isle of Wight is taken in hand by the authority, it would be well that the identification of the donors should be carefully considered. Of course the name of the donor is easiest learnt when an inscription, as at Carisbrooke, has been engraved on the gift. Other particulars, such as the weight and the diameter of the sacred vessels and the hall-marks, might be added according to the discretion of the Archdeacon, with whom such an inquiry rests. It is needless to dwell on the use of such a catalogue, if thoroughly executed; its value is apparent to all who take an interest in the parochial history of the Isle of Wight, to church antiquaries, students of heraldry and genealogy, as well as to lovers of old silver-plate. Too often ancient plate has been exchanged for new, though this cannot legally be done without the consent of the diocesan. An inventory would prevent such proceedings. January 2, 1892. A VOYAGE IN SEARCH OF HEALTH I. In all ages of the world the brave and humane professors of the healing art have been urgent in recommending to their patients change of air and of scene. The fashionable physicians of the days of Homer-Machaon and Podaliriusno doubt had their favourite health resort for the chieftains of the Grecian host when those stout-hearted warriors were suffering from being overfed or overworried. So the practice has gone on. When the invalid-sick and sad—is summoned from the physician's waiting-room into the great man's presence, he is told in peremptory language that he must go to the Riviera or Teneriffe, or further still to the Andes of South America, or take a voyage to Australia or to the slope of the sun. Should the purse of the seeker after health be well lined, he probably follows this advice; but if he has not the means for undertaking an expensive journey, he calmly listens and makes up his mind to stay at home and there get well again as best he can. He must be contented with his own Abana and Pharpar for cleansing since he cannot afford the expenses of a journey to some distant Jordan. More than a century ago the leading doctors of the day were wont to urge upon those who consulted them the advantages of Aix in the South of France, or Montpellier, or Lisbon, for the German springs were a terra incognita. An account of a voyage to this latter health resort--Lisbon in Portugal Should may be purchased for the small sum of threepence in Cassell's National Library, edited by Professor Henry Morley, No. 81. Nothing can give us a more life-like picture of the hardships which in those days of imperfect locomotion by land or by water a voyager in quest of that greatest of all earthly blessings a sound mind in a sound body-had to endure in travelling from London even for a spot so little remote as Ryde in the Isle of Wight. The writer of this narrative was Henry Fielding, 'the greatest novelist the world has known,' as writes a very competent judge, Professor Morley. some of us be inclined to place Cervantes and Sir Walter Scott on a higher pedestal in this most fertile portion of all literature than the author of Tom Jones, yet it is certain that no more vigorous painter of the manners of his own time can be found than Fielding, who has generally been looked upon as the father of our English novelists, or has shared that distinction with a very different kind of man, John Bunyan. Fielding, a descendant of the Earls of Denbigh, was born in 1707. As a young man he had his flings, and flung away both his money and his health. His first resource as a means of support was writing for the stage, and between 1727 and 1736 he produced eighteen comedies and farces, of which not more than two or three are now known and read. Happily for himself he did not fling away his character in his mad pursuit of what the world calls pleasure. A virtuous attachment for a young gentlewoman of his own station in life saved him from that wreckage. In 1736 he married this lady. His wife's fortune and a small estate inherited from his mother enabled him to retire from London, but his habitual extravagance again brought him into difficulties. He returned to London, was called to the bar, and as a briefless barrister supported his family by pamphlets and essays on the occurrences and party politics of the day. His wife, to whom he was fondly attached, died. After this sad event he published his first novel-Joseph Andrews-at the age of thirty-six, and a year afterward his history of The Life of Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great. In 1748 he was made a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex and Westminster. This honourable office had been dragged down into contempt by men who drew from it dishonourable profits. Fielding's higher sense of duty reduced an income of about £500 a year of the dirtiest money upon earth' to a little more than £300, a considerable portion of which, he said, 'remains with my clerk, and indeed if the whole had done so, as it ought, he would be ill paid for sitting sixteen hours in the twenty-four in the most unwholesome, as well as most nauseous, air in the universe, and which hath in his own case corrupted a good constitution, without contaminating his morals.' Fielding's iron constitution, impaired by early dissipation, was undoubtedly injured by his devotion to his duties as a London police magistrate. In 1749, the year in which he produced his novel of Tom Jones, as Chairman of the Sessions of the Middlesex magistrates he delivered a suggestive charge to the grand jury, aiming at social reforms, followed in 1751 by a published Inquiry into the causes of the late increase of robbers, &c. Meanwhile, though himself connected with the English peerage, he had so far defied the ordinary conventionalities of his rank and station, as to give a second mother to his children by marrying a faithful servant, who had been their affectionate nurse and in early days of trial humble friend and helper to their father and mother. She was the wife who with his daughter accompanied him to Lisbon when he had delayed the voyage in search of health until he had performed the duty he had laid upon himself of laying his scheme of reform, which was directed towards the object of practically diminishing the number of murders and robberies which were every day committed in the streets of London, before the fussy and absurd Duke of Newcastle, who had succeeded Henry Pelham as head of the administration and cabinet. On June 26, 1754, at mid-day, when the most melancholy sun he had ever beheld was at its meridian height, Fielding left his home at Fordhook, and in two hours arrived at Rotherhithe, from which the ship was to sail. To go on board the ship it was necessary to go into a boat. From not having the use of his limbs poor Fielding had to be hoisted into the vessel by an armchair lifted with pulleys. He was very ill and his countenance exceedingly ghastly. The brutality of the boatmen and sailors of those times is most |