diligent. This good work he was, however, induced to relinquish, by finding that his hardened pupils, directly he had turned his back, spent these sums in intoxicating liquors. While so engaged, he was able to prevail upon Lord Halifax to commute a sentence of death against Richard Potter, found guilty of uttering a forged will, to one of transportation.

Still animated with a desire to regenerate the national morals, he besought the honour of knighthood-not, he declared, for the value of the title, but from a conviction that that dignity would give his voice more weight. In pursuit of the desired distinction, he seems to have given a great deal of trouble to the lords in waiting and secretaries of state, and probably exceeded the bounds of their patience, for, in a commendation of Earl Paulett, he admits that less-afflicted noblemen got quit of his importunities by flight. This earl, he says, in an account of his attendance at court, being goutish in his feet, could not run away from the Corrector as others were apt to do.' In 1754, he offered himself as a candidate to represent the city of London in parliament. In this contest, he issued the most singular addresses, referring the sheriffs, candidates, and liverymen to consider his letters and advertisements published for some time past, and especially the appendix to Alexander the Corrector's Adventures. If there is just ground to think that God will be pleased to make the Corrector an instrument to reform the nation, and particularly to promote the reformation, the peace, and prosperity of this great city, and to bring them into a more religious temper and conduct, no good man, in such an extraordinary case, will deny him his vote. And the Corrector's election is believed to be the means of paving the way to his being a Joseph, and an useful and prosperous man.' He also presented his possible election in the light of the fulfilment of a prophecy. But the be-wigged, and buttoned, and knee-breeched, and low-shoed electors only laughed at him. He consoled himself for the disappointment with which this new effort was attended, as in former ones, by issuing a pamphlet.

The most singular of Cruden's pamphlets detailed his love adventures. He became enamoured of

Miss Elizabeth Abney. The father of this lady, Sir Thomas Abney, was a successful merchant, who was successively sheriff, alderman, lord mayor of London, and one of the representatives of the city in parliament. He was a person of considerable consequence, having been one of the founders of the Bank of England, of which he was for many years a director; but his memory is especially honoured from the fact of its being interwoven with that of Dr Watts, who resided with him at Stoke-Newington. His daughter inherited a large fortune; and to become possessed of both, became the Corrector's sanguine expectation. Miss Abney was deaf to his entreaties. For months he pestered her with calls, and persecuted her with letters, memorials, and remonstrances. When she left home, he caused 'praying-bills' to be distributed in various places of worship, requesting the prayers of the minister and congregation for her preservation and safe return; and when this took place, he issued further bills to the same congregations to return thanks. Finding these peculiar attentions did not produce the desired effect, he

EXPULSION OF THE JEWS.

drew up a long paper, which he called a Declaration of War, in which he declared he should compass her surrender, by 'shooting off great numbers of bullets from his camp; namely, by earnest prayer to Heaven day and night, that her mind might be enlightened and her heart softened.' His grotesque courtship ended in defeat: the lady never relented.

The precision and concentration of thought required in his literary labours, the compilation and several revisings of his Concordance, his verbal index of Milton's works, his Dictionary of the Holy Scriptures, his Account of the History and Excellency of the Holy Scriptures, and his daily employment on the journal in which the letters of Junius appeared, as corrector of the press, render Cruden's aberrations the more remarkable. And a still more curious circumstance, consists in the fact that his vagaries failed to efface the esteem in which he was regarded by all who knew him, more especially by his biographers, Blackburn and Chalmers; the latter of whom said of him, that he was a man to whom the religious world lies under great obligation, whose character, notwithstanding his mental infirmities, we cannot but venerate; whom neither infirmity nor neglect could debase; who sought consolation where only it could be found; whose sorrows served to instruct him in the distresses of others; and who employed his prosperity to relieve those who, in every sense, were ready to perish.' Are there many men more worthy of a column in the Book of Days?

EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM ENGLAND.

In the course of the year of grace, 1290, three daughters of Edward I were married. The old chroniclers relate wondrous stories of the prodigal magnificence of those nuptials; nor are their recitals without corroboration. Mr Herbert, a late librarian of the city of London, discovered in the records of the Goldsmith's Company, the actual list of valuables belonging to Queen Eleanor, and it reads more like an extract from the Arabian Nights, than an early English record. Gold chalices, worth £292 each, an immense sum in those days, figure in it; small silver cups are valued at £118 each-what were the large ones worth, we wonder!-while diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies, sparkle among all kinds of gold and silver utensils. Modern historians refer to the old chroniclers, and this astounding catalogue of manufactured wealth, as a proof of the attainments in refinement and art which England had made at that early period. But there is a reverse to every medal, and it is much more prob able that these records of valuables are silent witnesses to a great crime-the robbery and expul sion of the Jews, proving the general barbarity and want of civilisation that then prevailed.

Not long before this year of royal marriages, Edward, moaning on a sick-bed, made a solemn vow, that if the Almighty should restore him to health, he would undertake another crusade against the infidels. The king recovered; but as the immediate pressure of sickness was removed, and Palestine far distant, he compromised his vow by driving the Jews out of his French province of Guienne, and seizing the wealth and possessions of the unfortunate Israelites.

It may be supposed, from the wandering nature

of the Jewish race, that many members of it had been in England from a very early period; but their first regular establishment in any number dates from the Norman Conquest, William having promised them his protection. The great master of romance has, in Ivanhoe, given a general idea how the Jews were treated; but there were particular horrors perpetrated on a large scale, quite unfit for relation in a popular work. In short, it may be said that when the Jews were most favoured, their condition was to our ideas intolerable; and yet it should be recorded in favour of our ancestors, that even then the Jews were rather more mildly treated in England than in the other countries of Europe.

When Edward returned from despoiling and banishing the Jews of Guienne, his subjects received him with rapturous congratulations. The constant drain of the precious metals created by the Crusades, the almost utter deficiency of a currency for conducting the ordinary transactions of life, had caused the whole nation-clergy, nobility, gentry, and commoners-to become debtors to the Jews. If

FROM ENGLAND.

the king, then, would graciously banish them from England as he had from Guienne, his subjects' debts would be sponged out, and he, of course, would be the most glorious, popular, and best of monarchs. Edward, however, did not see the affair exactly in that light. Though, in case of an enforced exodus, he would become entitled to the Jewish possessions, yet his subjects would be greater gainers by the complete abolition of their debts. In fact, the king, besides his own part of the spoil, claimed a share in that of his subjects, but after considerable deliberation the matter was thus arranged. The clergy agreed to give the king a tenth of their chattels, and the laity a fifteenth of their lands; and so the bargain was concluded to the satisfaction and gain of all parties, save the miserable beings whom it most concerned. On the 31st of August 1290, Edward issued a proclamation commanding all persons of the Jewish race, under penalty of death, to leave England before the 1st of November. As an act of gracious condescension on the part of the king, the Jews were permitted to take with them a small portion

of their movables, and as much money as would pay their travelling expenses. Certain ports were appointed as places of embarkation, and safe-conduct passes to those ports were granted to all who chose to pay for them. The passes added more to the royal treasury than to the protection of the fugitives. The people-that is to say, the Christians rose and robbed the Jews on all sides, without paying the slightest respect to the dearly-purchased

protections. All the old historians relate a shocking instance of the treatment the Jews received when leaving England. Holinshed thus quaintly tells the story:

A sort of the richest of them being shipped with their treasure, in a mighty tall ship which they had hired, when the same was under sail, and got down the Thames, towards the mouth of the river, the master-mariner bethought him of a wile,

and caused his men to cast anchor, and so rode at the same, till the ship, by ebbing of the stream, remained on the dry sand. The master herewith enticed the Jews to walk out with him on land, for recreation; and at length, when he understood the tide to be coming in, he got him back to the ship, whither he was drawn up by a cord. The Jews made not so much haste as he did, because they were not aware of the danger; but when they perceived how the matter stood, they cried to him for help, howbeit he told them that they ought to cry rather unto Moses, by whose conduct their fathers passed through the Red Sea; and, therefore, if they would call to him for help, he was able to help them out of these raging floods, which now came in upon them. They cried, indeed, but no succour appeared, and so they were swallowed up in the water. The master returned with his ship, and told the king how he had used the matter, and had both thanks and rewards, as some have written.'

Nearly all over the world this cruel history is traditionally known among the Jews, who add a myth to it; namely, that the Almighty, in execration of the deed, has ever since caused a continual turmoil among the waters over the fatal spot. The disturbance in the water caused by the fall, on ebb-tide, at old London Bridge, was said to be the place; and when foreign Jews visited London, it was always the first wonderful sight they were taken to see. The water at the present bridge is now as unruffled as at any other part of the river, yet Dr Margoliouth, writing in 1851, says that most of the old Jews still believe in the legend regarding the troubled waters.

There are few relics of the Jews thus driven out of England. The rolls of their estates, still among the public records, shew that the king profited largely by their expulsion. Jewry, Jew's Mount, Jew's Corner, and other similarly named localities in some of our towns, denote their once Hebrew occupants. The Jew's House at Lincoln can be undoubtedly traced to the possession of one Belaset, a Jewess, who was hanged for clipping coin, a short time previous to the expulsion. The house being forfeited to the crown by the felony, the king gave it to William de Foleteby, whose brother bequeathed it to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, the present possessors. Passing through so few hands, in the lapse of so many years, its history can be easier traced, perhaps, than any other of the few houses of the same age in England. The head of the doorway of this remarkable edifice, as will be seen by the illustration on the preceding page, forms an arch to carry the fireplace and chimney of the upper room. There seems to have been no fireplace in the lower room, there being originally but two rooms-one above, the other below.

The number of banished Jews comprised about 15,000 persons of all ages. English commerce, then in its infancy, received a severe shock by the impolitic measure; nor did learning escape without loss. One of the expelled was Nicolaus de Lyra, who, strange to say in those bigoted days, had been admitted a student at Oxford. He subsequently wrote a commentary on the Old and New Testaments, a work that prepared the way for the Reformation. Both Wickliffe and Luther acknowledged the assistance they had received from it.

GREAT EARTHQUAKE AT LISBON.

From the expulsion down to the period of the Commonwealth, the presence of a few Jews was always tolerated in England, principally about the court, in the capacity of physicians, or foreign agents. Early in 1656, the wise and tolerant Protector summoned a council to deliberate on the policy of allowing Jews to settle once more in England. That all parties might be represented, Cromwell admitted several lawyers, clergymen, and merchants, to aid the council in its deliberation. The lawyers declared that there was no law to prevent Jews settling in England; the clergy asserted that Christianity would be endangered thereby; and the merchants alleged that they would be the ruin of trade. Many of the arguments employed on this discussion were again used in the late debates on the admission of Jews into parliament. The council sat four days without coming to any conclusion: at last Cromwell closed it by saying, that he had sent for them to consider a simple question, and they had made it an intricate one. That he would, therefore, be guided by Providence, and act on his own responsibility. A few days afterwards, he announced to his parliament that he had determined to allow Jews to settle in England, and the affair was accomplished. In May and June 1656, a number of Jews arrived in London, and their first care was to build a synagogue, and lay out a burial-ground. The first interment on their burial-register is that of one Isaac Britto, in 1657.

THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE AT LISBON IN 1755.

One of the most awful earthquakes ever recorded in history, for the loss of life and property thereby occasioned, was that at Lisbon on the 1st of November 1755. Although equalled, perhaps, in the New World, it has had no parallel in the Old. About nine o'clock in the morning, a hollow thunder-like sound was heard in the city, although the weather was clear and serene. Almost immediately afterwards, without any other warning, such an upheaval and overturning of the ground occurred as destroyed the greater part of the houses, and buried or crushed no less than 30,000 human beings. Some of the survivors declared that the shock scarcely exceeded three minutes in duration. Hundreds of persons lay half-killed under stones and ruined walls, shrieking in agony, and imploring aid which no one could render. Many of the churches were at the time filled with their congregations; and each church became one huge catacomb, entombing the hapless beings in its ruins. The first two or three shocks, in as many minutes, destroyed the number of lives above mentioned; but there were counted twentytwo shocks altogether, in Lisbon and its neighbourhood, destroying in the whole very nearly 60,000

disappeared completely, as if a cavern had closed in upon them. The seaport of Setubal, twenty miles south of Lisbon, was engulfed and wholly disappeared. At Cadiz, the sea rose in a wave to a height of sixty feet, and swept away great part of the mole and fortifications. At Oporto, the river continued to rise and fall violently for several hours; and violent gusts of wind were actually forced up through the water from chasms which opened and shut in the bed beneath it. At Tetuan, Fez, Marocco, and other places on the African side of the Mediterranean, the earthquake was felt nearly at the same time as at Lisbon. Near Marocco, the earth opened and swallowed up a village or town with 8000 inhabitants, and then closed again. The comparisons which scientific men were afterwards able to institute, shewed that the main centre of the disturbance was far out in the Atlantic, where the bed of the ocean was convulsed by up-and-down heavings, thereby creating enormous waves on all sides. Many of the vessels out at sea were affected as if they had struck suddenly on a sand-bank or a rock; and, in some instances, the shock was so violent as to overturn every person and everything on board. And yet there was deep water all round the ships.

Although the mid-ocean may have been the

focus of one disturbance which made itself felt as far as Africa in one direction, England in another, and America in a third, Lisbon must unquestionably have been the seat of a special and most terrible movement, creating yawning gaps in various parts of the city, and swallowing up buildings and people in the way above described. Many mountains in the neighbourhood, of considerable elevation, were shaken to their foundations; some were rent from top to bottom, enormous masses of rock were hurled from their sides, and electric flashes issued from the fissures. To add to the horrors of such of the inhabitants as survived the shocks, the city was found to be on fire in several places. These fires were attributed to various causes-the domestic fires of the inhabitants igniting the furniture and timbers that were hurled promiscuously upon them; the large wax-tapers which on that day (being a religious festival) were lighted in the churches; and the incendiary mischief of a band of miscreants, who took advantage of the terror around them by setting fire to houses in order to sack and pillage. The wretched inhabitants were either paralysed with dismay, or were too much engaged in seeking for the mangled corpses of their friends, to attend to the fire; the flames continued for six days, and the