are two pretty conceits to be observed, the one at the very top, which is a clock with the images of two wild men by it, made in brass, a witty device, and very exactly done. At which clock there fell out a very tragical and rueful accident, on the 25th day of July, being Monday, about nine of the clock in the morning, which was this.-A certain fellow that had the charge to look to the clock, was very busy about the bell, according to his usual custom every day, to the end to amend something in it that was amiss. But, in the meantime, one of those wild men, that at the quarters of the hours do use to strike the bell, struck the man in the head with his brazen hammer, giving him such a violent blow, that therewith he fell down presently in the place, and never spoke more."

The following is the account of the Venetian theatres, given by the same traveller.

"I was at one of their playhouses, where I saw a comedy acted. The house is very beggarly and base, in comparison with our stately playhouses in England; neither can their actors compare with us for apparel, shows, and music. Here I observed certain things that I never saw before; for I saw women act, a thing I never saw before, though I have heard that it hath been sometimes used in London; and they performed it with as good a grace, action, and gesture, and whatsoever convenient for a player, as ever I saw any masculine actor. Also their noble and famous courtezans came to this comedy, but so disguised,that a man cannot perceive them. For they wore double masks upon their faces, to the end they might not be seen; one reaching to the top of their forehead, to their chin and under their necks, and another with twists of downy or woolly stuff, covering their noses; and as for their necks round about, they were so covered and wrapped with cobweb lawn, and other things, that no part of their skin could be discerned: upon their heads they wore blackfel caps, very like to those of the Clarissimoes, that I will hereafter speak of. Also they wore a black short taffata cloak. They were so graced, that they sat on high, alone by themselves, in the best room of all the playhouse. If any man should be so resolute as to unmask one of them, but in merriment only, to see their faces, it is said, that were he never so noble or worthy a personage, he should be cut to pieces before he should come forth of the room, especially if he were a stranger.

I saw some men also in the playhouse, disguised in the same manner with double vizards; these were said to be the favourites of the same courtezans. They sit not here in galleries as we do in London: for there is but one or two little galleries in the house, wherein the courtezans only sit. But all the men sit beneath in the yard or court, every man upon his several stool, for which he payeth a gazet.

TO A BEAUTIFUL QUAKER.

BY LORD BYRON.

Sweet girl! though only once we met,
That meeting I shall ne'er forget:
And though we ne'er may meet again,
Remembrance will thy form retain.
I would not say "I love," but still
My senses struggle with my will.
In vain, to drive thee from my breast,
My thoughts are more and more represt.
In vain I check the rising sighs;
Another to the last replies:
Perhaps this is not love, but yet
Our meeting I can ne'er forget.

What though we never silence broke,
Our eyes a sweeter language spoke.
The tongue in flattering falsehood deals,
And tells a tale it never feels.
Deceit the guilty lips impart,
And hush the mandates of the heart;
But souls' interpreters, the eyes,
Spurn such restraint, and scorn disguise.
As thus our glances oft convers'd,
And all our bosoms felt rehears'd;
No spirit, from within, reprov'd us,
Say rather "'twas the spirit mov'd us."
Though what they utter'd I repress,
Yet, I conceive, thou'lt partly guess?
Perchance to me thine also wanders.
For as on thee my memory ponders,
This, for myself, at least I'll say,
Thy form appears through night, through
day:

Awake, with it my fancy teems;
In sleep, it smiles in fleeting dreams.
The vision charms the hours away,
And bids me curse Aurora's ray,
For breaking slumbers of delight,
Which makes me wish for endless night.
Since, oh! whate'er my future fate,
Shall joy or woe my steps await;
Tempted by love, by storms beset,
Thine image I can ne'er forget.
Alas! again, no more we meet,
No more our former looks repeat;
Then let me breathe this parting prayer,
The dictate of my bosom's care:

"May Heaven so guard my lovely Quaker,

"That anguish never can o'ertake her; "That peace and virtue ne'er forsake her,

"But bliss be aye her heart's partaker. "Oh! may the happy mortal, fated "To be, by dearest ties, related; "For her, each hour, new joy discover, "And lose the husband in the lover. "May that fair bosom never know "What 'tis to feel the restless woe "Which stings the soul, with vain regret,

"Of him who never can forget."

SKETCHES OF FEMALE BIOGRAPHY.

No. I.

ISABELLA ANDREINI, A native of Padua, was a very celebrated actress, towards the beginning of the seventeenth century. But her excellence was not confined to the stage she was also an admirable poetess. Many learned and ingenious men have bestowed eulogiums upon her, and her own works sufficiently justify their panegyrics. The intenti of Pavia (so the academicians of this city style themselves) were of opinion that they did their society an honour by the admission of Isabella as a member of it. In acknowledgment of this honorary distinction, she never forgot amongst her titles that of Academica Infanta.-Her titles were these: "Isabella Andreini, comica getosa, academica infanta detta l'accessa. She had a singular advantage which is not frequent among the most excellent actresses: she was very handsome. Her beauty and her fine voice united, enabled her to charm both the eyes and the ears of all who saw and heard her. Under her picture the following inscription is written:-" Hoc histricæ eloquentiæ caput lector admiraris, quod si auditor scies ?"—" If you admire, reader, this glory of the theatre, when you only see her, what would you do if you heard her?"

Cardinal Cinthio Aldobrandini, nephew to Clement VIII. had a great esteem for her, as appears by several of her poems. When she went to France, she was kindly received by their majesties, and by all the highest quality at court. She wrote several sonnets in their praise, which are to be seen in the second part of her poems. She died

of a miscarriage at Lyons, the 10th of June, 1604, in the forty-second year of her age. Her husband, Francis Andreini, had her interred in the same city, and honoured her with the following epitaph :

"Isabella Andreini Patavina, mulier magna virtute predita, honestatis ornamentum, maritalisque pudicitiæ decus, ore facunda, mente fæcunda, religiosa, pia, muus amica, et artis scenicæ caput, hic resurrectionem expectat.

"Obabortum obiit 4 Id. Junii, MDCIV. annum agens 42.

"Franciscus Andreinus mæstissimus. posuit."

"Isabella Andreini, of Padua, a woman of great virtue and honour, the ornament of conjugal chastity, of an eloquent tongue, and an elegant mind, religious, pious, beloved by the muses, and the glory of the stage, here lies in expectation of the resurrection. died of a miscarriage, the 11th of June, 1604, in the forty-second year of her age. Francis Andreini, her sorrowful husband, erected this monument to her memory."

"

She

The death of this actress being matter of general concern and lamentation, there were many Latin and Italian elegies printed to her memory. Several of these pieces were printed before her poems, in the edition of Milan, in 1609. Besides her sonnets, madrigals, songs, and eclogues, there is a pastoral of hers entitled Mirtilla, printed at Venice in 1610. She sung with great taste, and played on several instruments in a masterly manner. She was also acquainted with philosophy, and understood the French and Spanish languages.

LADY CHUDLEIGH,

A very philosophical and poetic lady, was born in the year 1656. She was the daughter of Richard Lee, of Winsloder, in the county of Devon, Esq.; and married to Sir George Chudleigh, Bart. by whom she had several children: : among the rest, Eliza Maria, who dying in the bloom of life, caused her mother to pour out her grief in a poem, entitled," A Dialogue between Lucinda and Marissa." She wrote another poem, called "The Ladies' Defence," occasioned by an angry sermon preached against the fair sex.These, with many others, were collected into a volume, and printed a third time

in the year 1722. She published also a volume of essays upon various subjects, in verse and prose, in 1710, which have been much admired for a delicacy of style. These were dedicated to her Royal Highness the Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess Dowager of Brunswick. On this occasion, that princess, then in her eighteenth year, honoured her with a very polite epistle in French, of which the following is a translation:

"Hanover, June 25, 1710.

"LADY CHUDLeigh, "You have done me a very great pleasure in letting me know, by your agreeable book, that there is such a one as you in England, who has so improved herself, that she can communicate her sentiments in a fine manner to the world. As for me, I do not pretend to deserve the commendations you give me, but by the esteem which I have of your merit and good sense, which will always induce me perfectly to regard you, and to be, upon all occasions,

"Your affectionate friend,
"To serve you,
"SOPHIA, ELECtress.

"To Lady Chudleigh,

"in London."

This lady, it is said, wrote several other things, as tragedies, operas, masques, &c. which, though not printed, are preserved in her family. She died in 1710, in the 55th year of her age. She was a lady of great virtue, as well as understanding, and made the latter subservient to the former. She had an education in which literature seemed but little regarded, being taught no other than her native language; but her fondness for books, her great application, and her uncommon abilities, enabled her to make a considerable figure among the literati of her time. However, though she was perfectly in love with the charms of poetry, she devoted some part of her time to the severer studies of philosophy. This appears from her excellent essays upon knowledge, pride, humility, and many other subjects, in which she discovers an uncommon degree of piety and knowledge, with a noble contempt for those vanities which the generality of her sex so much regard, and so ardently

pursue.

[To be continued occasionally.]

ANECDOTE OF PETER THE
GREAT.

to the Empress Catharine, had an Miss Hambleton, a maid of honour amour, which, at different times, produced three children. She had alordered his physician to attend her, who ways pleaded sickness; but Peter soon made the discovery. It also appeared that a sense of shame had triumphed over her humanity, and that the children had been put to death as soon as born.

Peter inquired if the father were privy to the murder: the lady said she had always deceived him, by pretending they were sent to nurse.

Justice now called upon the emperor to punish the offence. The lady was much beloved by the empress, who pleaded for her. The amour was pardonable, but not the murder. Peter sent her to the castle, and went himself to visit her; he pronounced her sentence with tears: telling her, that his duty as a prince, and God's vicegerent, called on him for that justice which her crime had rendered indispensably necessary, and that she must, therefore, prepare for death. He attended her also on the scaffold, where he embraced her with the utmost tenderness, mixed with sorrow and some say when the head was struck off, he took it up by the ear, whilst the lips were still trembling, and kissed them: a circumstance of an extraordinary nature, and yet not incredible, considering the peculiarities of his character.

LONDON.

shall be completed, to contrast "LonPurposing, so soon as our materials don as it was" with "London as it is," duce our readers to the following old we beg, as a kind of beginning, to introfriends with new faces.

residence of hundreds of liberal, opulent, Finsbury Square-instead of being the and enlightened individuals, was a field of fruits and flowers, and as such, was granted by Richard the Second to Robert de Willingham, then prebendary of the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, under the title of the Garden of Vinesbury, and from that circumstance has been called Vinesbury, or Finsbury Square.

Houndsditch-where the tribes of Is

rael, and sects of Christ, swarm in such countless variety, was once a dirty dyke, piled with filth and dead dogs, and from the unfortunate fate of the latter, and

particularly their unhallowed burial, derived its name.

Fleet Market-one of the most populous, and one of the principal marts of the metropolis, was once a little navigable river, where the small craft of certain petty inland traders proceeded to Holborn-bridge; and

Holborn itself was a little village, then called Old Born, or Hill-born, from a stream which broke out there and ran to the aforesaid river of Fleet.

Smithfield-now encircled by lofty houses, and encircling innumerable cattle, that recline on its stony carpet, and wooden pens, was once a fine meadow, whose velvet-like softness procured for it the name of Smith or Smoothfield, but whose tenants were similar to those that now occupy it, save that the former went of their own con sent, whereas the latter are driven those had the grass, these have only stones to eat.

Covent Garden-where the high priestesses of Flora and Pomona are ever seen, with their variegated flowers and exhilarating fruits, and in whose precincts that arch-rogue Liston has so often with wicked waggery burlesqued our erudition, and our forgetfulness in the person of Dominie Sampson, gloomy friars and ghostly monks once walked in meditative thought and moody abstractionand the Convent Garden once had Trees, from whence issued delightful harmony, but not like the Tree that flourishes there yet-Knights of the holy temple, greatly inferior to Knight of the profane play house Abbotts of lordly paunch and severe learning, whose love of good things is the only feeling they inherited in common with their present namesake, and whose worship of St. Stephen, in the gallaxy of beatified spirits, reminds us of our adoration of the charming Miss Stephens in the gallery of Covent Garden Theatre.

Sadler's Wells-the waters here formerly were famous for the cure of all sorts of diseases, mental or bodily, accidental or hereditary, and from thence derived the name of The Wells, which when Mr. Sadler, a music master, built a house there, became Sadler's Wells; now their efficacy is confined to mental disorders, and they are absolute specifics for all attacks of the spleen, ennui, blue devils, bad weather, and low spirits.

It is an easy transition from Sadler's Wells, and its hero Bruin, to Dogwell Court, Whitefriars, which took its name

from a dog having fallen into the well, (which is still to be seen in the cellar of the upper house in the court,) and being thereby cured of a most inveterate mange. From this accident the well grew into very great repute, insomuch that in monkish times it was prodigiously resorted to by persons afflicted with cutaneous disorders; but, alas! since the unholy dissolution of the mo nasteries, and the banishment of those pious men and wonderful physicians, the monks, it has lost all its virtues, and is now only noted because it once had them, or, what is the same thing, was said to have them.

That celebrated building (now pulled down,) called Bedlem or Bethlem, which has held so many of the most illustrious of our brethren, whose sublime aspirations into the heaven of heavens were mistaken, by dull mortals, for flights of an insane imagination, derived its name from a priory of enthusiasts which once existed in the same place, calling themselves Bethlemites, and who wore red stars on their breasts, in commemoration of the star that directed the magi to the stable in Bethlehem.

Blossom's Inn,-in Laurence-lane, Cheapside, was so named from the rich border of flowers that formerly decorated its original sign, being that of St. Lawrence frying on a gridiron. These flowers were illustrative of the fact recorded in the holy legend, that they immediately sprung up after his cruel martyrdom, (a secret by the way well worth knowing to all florists,) and the gridiron we suppose being meant to indicate mine host, (wicked dog,) that something better than pious St. Lawrence's flesh might be had there, prepared in the same manner. Oh, how our mouth waters and stomach titillates at the savoury recollection of rumpsteaks and mutton-chops, "when shall we three meet again?"

The Minories—had its origin in certain Minoresses, or poor ladies of St. Clare, who were invited into England, and who had a convent built for them in this place, by Blanch, Queen of Navarre, and wife to Edmond Earl of Lancaster, in 1293.

Bermondsey Street-also took its name from a priory, or abbey, of St. Saviour, called Bermond's-eye, founded in 1081, and suppressed in 1539.

The Charter House-was so called from Chartreux, a monastery which stood there, and which was destroyed by Henry VIII.