ps ad ~ 
3308.) 
C 241 2D 
Extracts from the Port-folio of a Man of Letters, 
EXTRACTS FROM THR HARLEIAN MSS. NO. 
4776, RESPECTING THE MANNERS OF 
THE WELCH. 
T the sessions at Bewmaris, held May 
22, 9H. VIL, It was ordered that 
_ records of felonies be kept, and that there 
be no vexation or trouble for serving on 
jories. [The Welch are remarkable for 
never banging felons. ‘Phe following 
bon-mot is recorded of a modern counsel. 
The judge, upon the road, observing 
some sheep in an insulated spot, where 
the tide or the flood menaced them with 
speedy death, said, ‘“* Nothing can save 
those sheep.” My lord, replied a bar- 
rister, do not you think a Welch jury 
ean ?—A juryman being asked, in a case 
of palpable evidence, why he and his 
brethren gave a verdict of acquittal, re- 
plied ‘* What, would you have hur hang 
hur own countryman ?”} 
At the same sessions it was ordered 
_ that liveries and badges he forbid except 
to bailiffs, parkers, menial servants, and 
counsel retained in_the law. f. 114, 115. 
_ At the sessions at Caermarthen, 14. H. 7. 
it is said, Forasmuch as many and divers 
vicious priests and clerks in holy orders 
within the principality of North Wales 
defile many-women, wives and daughters 
of the prince’s tenants, by reason whereof 
the farmer of the Thamorbership in sun- 
drie comothe of N. Wales excessively 
distraines the suid tenants as well by their 
oods as their lands, it is ordered that 
instead] every priest and clerk so offend- 
mg shall be distrained in detault of goods, 
a process to issue from the Exchequer, f. 
115. [Distraining for cuckoldom or se- 
_ duction the unfortunate sufferers, is a no- 
velty in jurisprudence.] Where the sea 
was expected to gain upon'the land the 
_ permitting of the rushes called Moresk 
_ and their roots to grow, was thought 
' the best means of preventing the evil, f. 
i 115-6. 
id PROPORTION OF LUNATICS. 
~~ In Graunt’s Natural and Political Ob- 
_ $ervations made on the Bills of Mortality, 
_ and printed in 1662, it is stated, (at p. 21) 
_ that the number of lunatics is few, being 
158 out of 229,250 persons within the 
Yange of the authentic list: or about one 
im fourteen hundred and fifty. 
__ The prodigious increase of lunacy in 
our own times deserves more examina- 
‘than medical men have given to the 
subject, ’ 
~- Mowtury Mac., No, 176, 
[Communications to this Article are always thankfully reasived.] 
——e 
_ SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 
Dr. Darwin’s notion that animal exist- 
ence began in a worm may be traced in ~ 
Czrsalpinus. In his Peripatetic Questions 
(1, 5, c. 1.) the following passage occursa 
Quod si aliquando meminerim primam per- 
fectorum animatium generationem ex verme 
Sfieri, sic intelligimus primam, quia in tem 
pore infinito, guod supponitur a Peripate- 
licis, deficientibus in aliquo tempore omnis 
bus singuluribus alicujus specici, primum 
aliquod ex putredine oriri potest, ex cujus 
semine propagetur species, ut quibusdam 
contingit ex putredine tantum propagari. 
PASSAGE OF FLORUS. 
Some recent panegyrists of Lord Nel- 
son seem to have borrowed their turn of 
style from Florus, who says of Cassar$ 
More fulminis, venit, percussit, abscessit, 
SCEPTICISM. Y 
Beza, who edited the Testament in 
1582 at Geneva, was asked his opinion 
about some controverted point. Hoc 
unum me credere credo, quod nil credo, was 
his reply. 
AMADIS OF GAUL, 
The French translation of Amadis is 
said by an Italian monk, named’ Paciu- 
chelti, to have been superitended by Lus 
ther. He avers: Sceleratumillum virum, 
cum Germaniam execrabilt herest conta- 
minure decrevisset, profunis eam libris cor= 
rupisse, curapisseque, ut lingud Gallieé 
liber quidam donaretur, Amadis dictus et 
quidem omni elegantia exornatus per prin- 
cipum aulas spargeretur, This ~ shows 
not that Luther aided to translate Ama- 
dis; but that Amadis passed for a pros 
fae, licentious, and dangerous, book. 
EDITION OF THE KORAN. 
In the year 1788, the Russian empress 
Catharine ordered an edition of the Ko- 
ran to be struck off, in Arabic, at the im- 
perial press, for the use of her Mahome- 
tan subjects. Projects of conquest over 
Turkey were on the carpet probably at 
that time in her cabinet; and it was 
thought conducive to military success, 
thus to announce to the inhabitants of ci-« 
ties, that the mosque and its ritual would 
find, under Russian sway, both protection 
and patronage. : ; 
This sovereign edition of the Koran is 
become a great rarity and an expensive 
curiosity: and is now exhibited in the li- 
braries of Gottingen and Paris as one of 
their uncommon treasures. Itis printed 
at Petersburg in small folio, and. has se- 
di yenteen 
