The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 576, November 17, 1832

Smoking.—A standing order of the House of Commons, in 1693, directs, "that no member of the house do presume to smoke tobacco in the gallery, or at the tables of the house sitting at committees." H.B. ANDREWS.

A Turn-coat.—De Dominis, Archbishop of Spalato, was notorious for his shiftings in religion. One of his friends ended a report of an interview with him as follows:—"It is clear he is a wily-beguily, rightly bred in the nest of the Jesuits."

A Turtle Mayor.—In the fourteenth century, one Roger Turtle was Mayor of Bristol no less than seven times, 1326 to 1341—a circumstance which elicited the following jeu d'esprit:—

If old Roger Turtle was seven times mayor,An honour which fell to no other man's share,His descendant, a Turtle, in this modern day,Bears, as mayor-elect, a perpetual sway.

Auctions.—In France, to this day, sales are announced with the drum. In this country they were formerly accompanied by trumpet; for, in a will of 1388, we find "that the tenements so bequeathed shall be sold separately, by the sound of the trumpet, at the High Cross (Bristol), without fraud or collusion."

Charters.—In one of the most valuable, but least known collections in the British Museum, are about ten thousand charters, which were indexed by Ayscough.

Cowley, the poet, was the son of a grocer, who lived in Fleet-street, near the end of Chancery-lane.

Epitaph, formerly in a Churchyard at Bristol.

Ye witty mortals! as you're passing by,Remark, that near this monument doth lie,Center'd in dust,Described thus:Two Husbands, two Wives,Two Sisters, two Brothers,Two Fathers, a Son,Two Daughters, Two Mothers,A Grandfather, a Grandmother, a Granddaughter,An Uncle and an Aunt—their Niece follow'd after.This catalogue of persons mentioned hereWas only five, and all from incest free.

G.K.

1

See the paper in part quoted in our pages from the Quarterly Review, No. 90.

2

Antiquarian and Topographical Cabinet, vol. i.

3

The strange taste, or rather Vandalism, which despoiled the Manor House, had well nigh led the Halton family to consider the valuable MSS. and correspondence of their philosophical ancestor as so much waste paper.

4

The passage to which our kindly Correspondent refers is as follows: "The serpent, instead of being the emblem of wisdom, should have been an emblem of stupidity."—See Mirror, vol. xviii. p. 343.

5

See Mirror, vol. xviii. p. 356.

6

Shaw's Zoolog. Lectures, vol. i. 1809.

7

Ornithologia, p. 206.

8

Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. iii. p. 517.