ferred to another man of war, which had just arrived, short of hands, from a different station. What were his feelings of astonishment, and then of delight and ecstacy, when almost the first person he saw on board of his new ship was the identical boatswain for whose murder he had been tried, condemned, and executed, five years before. Nor was the surprise of the old boatswain much less when he heard the story. An explanation of all the mysterious circumstances then took place. It appeared, the boastwain had been bled for a pain in his side by the barber, unknown to his niece, on the day of the young man's arrival at Deal; that when the young man awakened him and retired to the yard, he found the bandage had come off his arm during the night, and that the blood was flowing afresh. Being alarmed, he rose to go to the barber, who lived across the street; but a press gang laid hold of him just as he left the public house. They hurried him to the pier, where their boat was waiting; a few minutes brought them on board a frigate, then under way for the East Indies, and he omitted ever writing home to account for his sudden disappearance. Thus were the chief circumstances explained by the friends thus strangely met. The silver coin being found in the possession of the young man, could only be explained by conjecture-that when the boatswain gave him the knife in the dark, it is probable, as the coin was in the same pocket, it stuck between the blades of the knife, and in this manner became unconsciously the strongest proof against him.

On their return to England, this wonderful explanation was told to the judge and jury who tried the cause, and it is probable they never after convicted a man on circumstantial evidence. It also made a great noise in Kent at that time.

STUKELEY, THE RECLUSE.

MR. STUKELEY, a gentleman of very ancient family, and of an estate of a thousand pounds a year, was bred to the law. During this time he appeared to have more of that principle in his soul which the Newtonians call the vis in

ertiæ in matter, than is to be found in almost any man; when put into motion he was extremely apt to continue so, and being at rest he hated moving.

On leaving London he retired into the country, filled with the project of perfecting the perpetual motion; this study naturally secluded him, and his habit of persisting in one way kept him at home entirely. During thirty years, he never went abroad but once, which was, when he was obliged to take the oath of allegiance to king George the first; this was the only time he changed his shirt, or garments, or shaved himself, for the whole time of his retirement. He was a very little man, and at once the most nasty and cleanliest person alive, washing his hands twenty times a day, and neglecting every other part. His family consisted of two female servants; one kept in the house, the other not. He never had his bed made. After he had given over pursuing the perpetual motion, he took pleasure in observing the works and policy of ants, and stocked the town so plenteously with that insect, that the fruits in the garden were devoured by them.

During the reign of Queen Anne, whenever the duke of Marlborough opened the trenches against a city in Flanders, he broke ground at the extremity of a floor in his house, made with lime and sand, according to the custom of that country, and advanced in his approaches regularly with his pick axe, gaining work after work, chalked out the ground according to the intelligence in the gazette; by which he took the town in the middle of the floor at Bideford, the same day the duke was master of it in Flanders; thus every city cost him a new floor.* He never sat on a chair, and when he chose to warm himself, he made a pit before the fire, into which he leaped, and thus sat on the floor. He suffered no one to see him, but the heir of his estate, his brother and sister; the first never but when he sent for him, and that very rarely; the other sometimes once a year, and sometimes seldomer, when he was cheerful, talkative, and a lover of the tittle tattle of the town. Notwithstanding his apparent avarice, he was by no means

There can be little doubt that Sterne had the eccentricity of Mr. Stukeley in his eye, when he drew the charac er of my uncle Toby.

a lover of money; for, during his seclusion, he never re ceived nor asked for any rent from many of his tenants; those who brought him money, he would often keep at an inn more than a week, and pay all their expenses, and dismiss them without receiving a shilling. He lived well in his house, frequently gave to the poor, always ate from large joints of meat; never saw any thing twice at table; and at Christmas divided a certain sum of money among the necessitous of the town. He seemed to be afraid of two things only; one, being killed for his riches; the other, being infected with disease; for which reasons he would send his maid sometimes to borrow a half crown from his neighbors, to hint he was poor; and always received the money which was paid him, in a bason of water, to prevent taking infection from those who paid him. He did not keep his money locked up, but piled it on the shelves before the plates in in his kitchen. In his chamber, into which no servant had entered during the time of his tarrying at home, he had two thousand guineas on the top of a low chest of drawers, covered with dust, and five hundred on the floor, where it lay five and twenty years; this last sum a child had thrown down, which he was fond of playing with, by oversetting a table that stood upon one foot; the table continued in the same situation also; through this money he had made two paths, by kicking the pieces on one side, one of which led from the door to the window, the other from the window tc the bed. When he quitted the temple in London, he left an old portmanteau over the portal of the ante-chamber, where it had continued many years, during which time the chambers had passed through several hands; at length, a gentleman who had possessed them, ordered his servant to pull it down, it broke, being rotten, and out fell four or five hundred pieces of gold, which were found to belong to him from the papers inclosed. It was generally supposed at his death that he had put large sums into the hands of a banker, or lent it to some tradesmen in London, without taking any memorandum; all which was lost to his heirs, as he would never say to whom he lent it, through fear perhaps lest he should hear it was lost, which some minds can bear to suspect though not to know positively. After more than thirty years living a recluse, he was at last found

dead in his bed, covered with vermin. Thus ended the life of this whimsical being, at the age of seventy.

The gentleman who accompanied him to the town-hall, when he went to take the oath of allegiance, talked with him on every subject he could recollect without discovering in him the least tincture of madness. He rallied himself on the perpetual motion, laughed at the folly of confining himself in-doors, and he said he believed he should come abroad again like other men. He was always esteemed a person of good understanding before shutting himself up. At the time of his death he was building a house, the walls of which were seven feet thick. Probably his fears of being murdered increasing with age, induced him to build this castle-like dwelling to defend him from the attacks of thieves. If he was a lunatic, which none of his friends ever supposed him, he seems to have been so by putting all the reveries and whimsies of his brain into action.-Dr. Shebbeare.

KING RICHARD AND THE MINSTREL.

THE singular manner of discovering the situation of king Richard the First, when a prisoner to Leopold, Duke of Austria, which Fauchet relates from an ancient chronicle, is thus related in Mrs. Dobson's Literary History of the Troubadours.

A minstrel called Blondel, who owed his fortune to Richard, animated with tenderness towards his illustrious master, was resolved to go over the world till he had discovered the destiny of this Prince. He had already traversed Europe, and was returning through Germany, when, talking one day at Lintz, in Austria, with the innkeeper, in order to make this discovery, he learnt that there was near the city, at the entrance of a forest, a strong and ancient castle, in which there was a prisoner who was guarded with great care. A secret impulse persuaded Blon del that this prisoner was Richard; he went immediately to the castle, the sight of which made him tremble; he got acquainted with a peasant, who went often there to carry

up there; but the good

provisions; questioned, and offered him a considerable sum to declare who it was that was shut man, though he readily told all he knew, was ignorant both of the name and quality of the prisoner. He could only inform him, that he was watched with the most exact attention, and was suffered no communication with any one but the keeper of the castle and his servants. He added, that the prisoner had no other amusement than looking over the country through a small grated window, which served also for the light that glimmered into his apartment.

He told him that this castle was a horrid abode; that the stair-case and the apartments were black with age, and so dark, that at noon-day it was necessary to have a lighted flambeau to find the way along them. Blondel listened with eager attention, and meditated several ways of coming at the prison, but all in vain. At last, when he found that, from the height and narrowness of the window, he could not get a sight of his dear master, for he firmly believed it was him, he bethought himself of a French song, the last couplet of which had been composed by Richard, and the first by himself. After he had sung, with a loud and harmonious voice, the first part, he suddenly stopped, and heard a voice, which came from the castle window, continue and finish the song. Transported with joy, he was now assured it was the king, his master, who was confined in the dismal castle.

The chronicle adds, that, one of the keeper's servants falling sick, he hired himself to him, and thus made himself known to Richard: and informing his nobles, with all possible expedition, of the situation of their monarch, he was released from his confinement on paying a large ransom.

TRAGICAL FATE OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY.

WILLIAM BEADLE was born in a little village near London. In the year 1755, he went out to Barbadoes, with Governor Penfold, where he stayed six years, and then