This they have promoted all along the coast of China up to Mantchou Tartary. As soon as the colonists amass sufficient money, they return home, which they leave again when all is spent.

hence à large field is open for extortion and oppression, to which recourse is had for supplies needed by the state, but not sanctioned by the law.

The officers employed in collecting the land-tax are named as being especially guilty of oppressive and iniqui

tous exactions.

During the south-west monsoon, or trade-wind, the merchants of Amoy lade their vessels at Formosa with sugar, which they sell at various ports to the northward, returning home with cargoes of drugs. Junks of the largest class, some of them of eight hundred tons burden, go to Borneo, Macassar, Java, and the Soo-loo islands; and many of them annually visit Sincapore in order to procure goods of British manufacture. The records of the East India Company inform us that this port has not always been closed against European vessels. In 1675 a proclamation was issued inviting foreign merchants to trade thither, and exempting them from the payment of all duties for three years. But on vessels resorting to the port, the exemption was soon withdrawn. The exactions of the mandarins finally put a stop to the trade. On a visit of the ship Amherst to Amoy in 1832, it was found that the obstacles to trade lay with the authorities and not with the people, who received our countrymen in the most friendly manner.

The authorities have not only thus checked the foreign trade of Amoy, but they have imposed such heavy exactions on the native vessels, as might have been supposed enough to check the spirit of commerce manifested by this enterprising people. Small junks pay more than a thousand dollars regular duties, besides tribute to the emperor in produce, in bird's nests, &c., each time they enter the port, unless they bring a cargo of rice, when considerable remission is made. The irregular and oppressive exactions of the local government have latterly caused some of the leading merchants to remove to Shanghai, Canton, and other places, where they conduct a trade with the aid of junks and men from their native district. While we are on the subject of duties and imposts, we may present to our readers some interesting details respecting taxation in general among the Chinese, which we gain from Professor Kidd's elaborate work on China.

Revenue is raised by taxes on the land, which are partly in grain, partly in money, according to the nature of the soil, and the kind of produce it yields. In the early history of the Tartar dynasty a census of the whole population was taken, for the two-fold objects of levying a poll-tax, and ascertaining the number of males capable of military service. This tax was afterwards blended with the land-tax, and finally interdicted, but the census was restored under other sovereigns.

Large resources of wealth and intelligence are requisite for the efficient support and control of such a vast population as that of China.

The sum raised annually for the service of the state in Pin-chih-le, the province where the court resides, is nearly 2,000,000 of taels of silver, (in round numbers, about 600,000l. sterling,) from which 280,000l. are retained for current expenses. Ho-nan, which is the most productive of all the provinces, remits nearly 3,000,000 of taels of silver; and retains little more than one-eighth of its revenue for current expenses. Canton raises something short of 900,000 taels, from which 244,000 are deducted. Kwei-chow, which is the least productive of the whole, raises 70,000 taels, out of which it expends 29,000. These sums are totally inadequate to the expenses of the empire, and

Mines of the precious and common metals are sources of public wealth, from which the government expects its prescribed proportion. Of the silver, copper, tin, iron, and lead mines in different parts of the empire, which might yield revenue, some are permitted to be worked, and others forbidden, without any reason being asssigned, but probably from fear of exhausting their resources. The precious metals, except by weight, as any other commodity, are not employed in circulation. Red copper is the only coin current in China, a thousand of which, (called tseen) make a tael or leang.

The transit of goods also affords an opportunity of taxing them, whether it refers to imports, exports, or internal trade. The various custom-house duties levied at the confluence of large rivers inland as well as on the sea-coast yield, doubtless, a considerable annual income; but the local officers are said to derive the greatest profit from such resources.

their European brethren have somewhat to endure in the shape of taxation, and stand on no vantage ground

Thus it will be seen that the Chinese, in common with

in this respect.

The island of Ko-long-soo is of an irregular oval form, stretching east and west, or nearly in such direction; it is about two miles long, and about twice that It consists of a mass of distance in circumference. granite which protrudes to a great height in severai places, in the form of immense rounded blocks. Among the rocks under their shelter were found a number of

stone jars with covers luted on. These jars contained perfect human skeletons disarticulated, each bone carefully packed, and numbered, and marked with red paint. The island is naturally barren, but most excellent water abounds at a few feet from the surface,—a circumstance which Chinese industry has taken advantage of in every situation at all favourable to cultivation. The sweet potato, and a sort of dhall, are the principal products. There are five villages, and in two of them large trees are to be seen, preserved apparently for the shade which they afford. The guava flourishes in the gardens, and the vine trailed over trellis is occasionally met with.

The province of Fokien, in which Amoy is situated, is the smallest of the provinces of China, but is reckoned among the richest, on account of its extensive commerce. We shall have to speak of this province on a future occasion, for in it also lies the port of Foo-choo-foo, the second in our list of the ports opened to British traders. immense magazines with all the munitions of war stored When our countrymen entered Amoy they found up there. Bullion to the amount of twenty thousand dollars was also found there.

We have already alluded the visit of the ship Amherst to the port of Amoy. An extract from Mr. Lindsay's description of the intercourse held by him, and by the Rev. Mr. Gutzlaff, with the natives of that place, will give a favourable idea of the population of Amoy.

During the six days we remained at this place we daily

landed for exercise, entered both the town and adjoining villages, and took long rambles about the country in every direction. When in the neighbourhood of Amoy we were generally attended by a party of soldiers and mandarins, who were uniformly polite, and assured us their only reason for accompanying us, was fear lest the unruly populace should do us an injury; but we always were anxious to escape from their offered protection, and to throw ourselves on the kind and friendly feeling of the people, which it was really gratifying to witness, whenever no mandarins or their satellites were present to check the spontaneous expression of their good will. On these occasions our party rarely consisted of above three or four, and always unarmed, (excepting a fowling-piece which I sometimes carried,) for my object was to show to the people that we reposed in perfect confidence on their hospitality, and that we had too good an opinion of them even to suspect that they could harbour a thought of injuring strangers, who had come as friends to visit them from a distance of many thousand miles. On many occasions when Mr. Gutzlaff has been surrounded by hundreds of eager listeners, he has been interrupted by loud expressions of the pleasure with which they listened to his pithy and indeed eloquent language. From having lived so long among the lower classes of the Fokien people, Mr. Gutzlaff has obtained a knowledge of their peculiarities, both of thought and language, which no study of books can convey; and this is coupled to a thorough acquaintance with the Chinese classics, which the Chinese are ever delighted to hear quoted, and a copiousness of lan guage which few foreigners ever acquire in any tongue besides their own. The power which this gives any person over the minds of the Chinese, who are peculiarly susceptible to reasonable argument, is extraordinary, and frequently caused me to regret my own comparative ignorance. Every day that I live in China convinces me more deeply that a very leading cause of the present degradation of foreigners in Canton, is general ignorance of the language of the country, and the substitution of a base jargon as the only medium of communication; so that foreigners are very generally spoken of in the most contemptuous terms before their face, of which they remain in perfect ignorance, from a want of knowledge of the language, a very limited acquaintance with which would ensure much more respect from natives of all ranks.

DRINKING HEALTHS.

II.

In the first portion of this paper we gave a sketch of the custom of drinking healths, as it prevailed amongst the Greeks and Romans of old, and showed also that to some extent it entered into certain religious practices of the early Christians. We now proceed with the history with reference more particularly to our own country.

Henry observes that the Danes and Anglo-Saxons were of a social disposition, and delighted to form themselves into guilds and fraternities of various kinds, which were cemented by frequent convivial meetings and compotations. The laws of the Anglo-Saxons rendered these associations compulsory, for every head of a family was obliged to belong to the decennany, or neighbourship, in which he lived, and to eat and drink at the common table. Severe fines were imposed on such as neglected friendly offices on such occasions, or employed offensive language towards each other. But these meetings, although they strengthened the ties of friendship, and restrained ferocity of disposition, yet encouraged the habits of excessive drinking to which the Saxons were addicted that this prevailed is evident from the statutes and laws passed to restrain excesses, and which, from the shameful degree of intoxication to which they were alone applicable, prove to what an extent that vice could be indulged with impunity. William of Malmesbury says, the nobility was much addicted to lust and gluttony, but excessive drinking was the common vice of all ranks of people, in which they passed whole nights and days without intermission. Even the religious festivals were not exempt from these excesses, and large draughts of liquor were drank to Christ, the Virgin and the saints. Dunstan persuaded Edgar the Peaceable to

abolish many of the houses for drinking ale, and to order that the drinking cups should have nails or pins fastseverely punishable. Like their German ancestors, the ened in them at intervals, to drink beyond which was Anglo-Saxons delighted in feasting. Their nobles expended the great bulk of their fortunes in providing entertainments for their friends and followers. Their kings entertained all persons of note for many days in succession at the great festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and this in the most sumptuous and expensive and substances were introduced at them, of which a famine manner. These feasts were more abundant than elegant, alone could induce persons of our own times to partake. Thus in a council held in Northumbria, in 785, we find the following injunction: "Many among you eat horses, which is not done by any Christians in the East:--avoid this." At the convivial meetings the guests were accustomed to sing in turns; and Bede mentions that formerly a harp used to be sent round also from person To this was often added the recital of poetry, the tricks of buffoons, jugglers, &c. As these scenes were believed to be ill-suited to ecclesiastics, the Council of Cloveshoo forbade monks to let their houses become the receptacles of "poets, harpers, mimes, and buffoons." The canons of Edgar notice with reproaches the gleemen or jugglers as frequenting the monasteries, and forbade a priest to become eala-soop (ale-poet) or to play the gleeman with himself or others.

to person.

The term pledging a person's health has been referred by some antiquarians to the time of the Anglo-Saxons. It is said that the Dares, being of a treacherous nature, were accustomed to invite the Saxons to their feasts, and At last the Saxons would never drink in company unstab them while in the act of lifting the glass to drink. less some one present pledged them that they should receive no hurt. Strutt says that the old manner of pledging each other was for the person who was going to drink to ask one of the company near him, whether he would pledge his safety. If the person so appealed to answered in the affirmative, he held up his sword or knife as a guard to his friend while in the exposed posture employed in drinking. To pledge signifies in old French to promise or guarantee, and it has been suggested that the original signification of the term employed in this sense was that persons, who at the banquets did not feel themselves able to reply to numerous challenges addressed to them, might choose some one as a pledge, or promise for them, to drink in their place.

Although the Normans were originally as great barbarians as any other of the Scandinavian nations, yet prior to their conquest of England, they had become much civilized through the influence of the Christian religion, and the example of the French nation, among whom they had become located, and with whose manners and customs they were identified before the time of their invasion. They were at this period favourably contrasted with the Saxons in respect to sobriety. Contemporary authors observe the difference in this respect. "The Normans were very unlike the English in respect to the excessive eating and drinking," says William of Malmesbury, "being delicate in the choice of food, but seldom exceeding the bounds of temperance. By this means the Normans lived in greater elegance, and at less expense than the English."

Some of the monkish writers, comparing the state of things prior and subsequent to the conquest, deplore the change which had taken place; one of them says: "The kings were then so generous and bountiful that they commanded four royal banquets to be served up every day to all their courtiers, choosing rather to have much superfluity at their tables than the least appearance of deficiency. But, alas! it has become the custom at court in our times, to have but one entertainment a day, out of politeness it is pretended, but in reality from a sordid economy." The custom, nowever, of drinking to

the pegs, instituted by Edgar, still prevailed; thus the Council of Westminster forbade, in 1102, the clergy to frequent the ale-houses, or to drink to the pegs.

If we are to believe the statement of Peter of Blois, which, however, is probably prejudiced or exaggerated, the Normans soon acquired some of the dissipated manners prevailing in Britain. He says,

When you behold our barons and knights going upon a military expedition, you see their baggage-horses loaded, not with iron but with wine, not with lances but with cheeses, not with swords but with bottles, not with spears but spits. You would imagine that they were going to prepare a great feast rather than to make war. There are even too many who boast of their excessive gluttony and drunkenness, and labour to acquire fame by swallowing great quantities of meat and drink.

The Normans soon became celebrated for the magnificence of their feasts, remarkable as they frequently were for the variety and costliness of their materials. William I. sent agents into different countries to collect the most admired and rare dishes for his tables. "By which means," says John of Salisbury, "this island, which is naturally productive of plenty and variety of provisions, was overflowed with everything that could inflame a luxurious appetite." He also says that he was present at an entertainment which lasted from three o'clock until midnight; at which luxuries were served up which had been brought from Constantinople, Babylon, Alexandria, Palestine, Tripoli, Syria and Phoenicia. It was especially at the festivities of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, that the splendid entertainments of the kings and great barons shone forth in all their magnificence. The clergy were by no means backward in partaking of these luxuries. The monks of St. Swithin's, at Winchester, made a formal complaint to Henry II. against their abbot, for having reduced their daily number of dishes from sixteen to ten. The monks of Canterbury had at least seventeen well seasoned dishes a day, besides a dessert. Disgusting species of entertainments, called glutton-masses, were celebrated five times in the year, (at a rather later period, however, than that to which we are now alluding,) at which all kinds of provision for eating and drinking were brought from the vicinity to the church, and the sacred edifice was for a while converted into a species of tavern, in which the most reprehensible excesses were committed-villages and congregations vying with each other in their outrage to religious purity.

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the former abstinence of the Normans became changed into habits of immoderate extravagance, as manifested not only in the grand entertainments which accompanied the various exhibitions of chivalry, but also in their every-day life. This was in vain attempted to be restrained by sumptuary laws, by Edward II. The coronation feast of Edward III. cost 28351. 18s. 2d., equivalent to about 40,000l. of our money. At the installation of Ralph, Abbot of St. Augustine, six thousand guests were entertained, at a cost equal to more than 4000l. of our money, while at the induction of George Neville into the see of York three hundred tuns of ale, one hundred of wine, and a pipe of hippocras, were among the articles consumed. Matthew Paris says it would require a long treatise to describe the splendour and magnificence, and festivity, with which nuptials of the Earl of Cornwall and the daughter of the Earl of Provence were celebrated in London, in 1243; thirty thousand dishes

were served at dinner.

The household expenses of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, for the year 1313, amounted to 109,6357. of our present money, and during this period no less than three hundred and seventy-one pipes of wine were consumed. The barons kept open house in the most prodigal style, all omers of condition being welcomed as well as their own vassals and followers. The produce of large quently thus entirely expended in this

ruinous description of hospitality. Towards the end of the fourteenth century this profusion began to decline in some measure; the barons frequently dining in their parlours, with their families and friends, instead of in the public halls amid their numerous dependents-an innovation, which, however, subjected them to many reproaches. One of the most expensive parts of the royal entertainments of this period was, what were called intermeats. They consisted of representations of battles, sieges, &c., introduced between the courses for the amusement of the guests. The French excelled in these exhibitions. At a dinner given by Charles V. of France, to the Emperor, Charles IV., all the details of the siege of Jerusalem, by Godfrey de Bouillon, were represented. In ordinary cases, intermeats consisted of certain delicate dishes introduced between the regular courses.

The wars in which this country was engaged with France during the fifteenth century, as also the civil wars of the Roses, in which so large a portion of the principal nobility perished, would naturally interrupt and prevent the exhibition of the splendid hospitality of former ages. Henry VII., after his accession, both from the avaricious nature of his disposition, and from the politic jealousy he bore towards the nobility, held out no encouragement for a renewal of these festive scenes.

During the reign of Henry VIII. feasting was carried to a much greater extent. The ecclesiastics affected peculiar ceremony and state at their banquets. The entertainments of Cardinal Wolsey were pre-eminently distinguished for their magnificence and variety, and for the almost royal state with which they were accompanied. Stowe fairly gives up in despair the attempt to describe the luxuries of the period. Although this country, in the abundance which prevailed at these banquets, was unrivalled, yet was it surpassed in refinement by those of France and Italy. The Venetian ambassador coming to London during the reign of Mary, says that foreigners were astonished at the immense quantity of provisions which were consumed at the English court, although these were but a fourth part of what had been used in former reigns. During the reign of Elizabeth, the nobility kept up much of their old state and hospitality. The queen much objected to the large retinues of the aristocracy, some of whom were followed wherever they went by two hundred or three hundred retainers; she endeavoured to repress this habit by frequent proclamations; but the expenses of hospitality she did much to increase by her frequent progresses through her kingdom, during which she was provided with sumptuous entertainments by the nobility whom she visited. Leicester provided one for her at Kenilworth of extraordinary expense and splendour-the beer alone consumed amounting to three hundred and sixty-five hogsheads. Burleigh entertained her three times, each visit costing him from two to three thousand pounds: on these occasions his magnificent service of plate was displayed, the value of which independently of the fashion, according to Hume's calculation, was 42,000l. sterling.

In the place of the music, tumblers, and jesters of former times, a stately ceremony, and silence, and gravity prevailed at the banquets of the nobles in the time of Elizabeth. No less than fifty-six kinds of French wine are enumerated as being imported: and, from the quantity consumed, the charge against the English of excessive indulgence in the use of wine and intoxicating liquors seems to have been but too just.

The custom of drinking or pledging each other's health continued during the period we have now been reviewing. An affecting example will present itself to our reader's recollection in the unfortunate Mary Stuart, who, on the eve of her execution at Fotheringay, called for a cup of wine and pledged the healths of her attend

ants who crowded and knelt around her. During the civil wars of the seventeenth century the royalist party, wishing in every possible manner to contrast themselves with the rigid puritans to whom they were opposed, gave way to the most licentious excesses in drinking; and the character of a man of pleasure was affected by them as a sure pledge of attachment to church and state: even when ruined by confiscations and sequestrations, they endeavoured, says Hume, to maintain an appearance of careless and social jollity. After the restoration of Charles II. debauchery of every description became triumphant, and at no time in our history did monarch and courtiers lead such dissolute and abandoned lives. At this epoch the custom of drinking healths was carried to a disgraceful excess, and that to persons of even an abandoned character. The young gallants carried their phrensy so far as sometimes to stab their arms, in order to pledge their favourites in their blood.

The term toast has been explained by the fact of toasted bread being frequently added to the liquors drank.

Many writers directed their pens against these ex-, cesses of the seventeenth century. Thomas Young, in a work entitled England's Bane, or Description of Drunkenness, gives a sad picture of the dreadful debauchery which prevailed at the time he wrote (1617). In a sermon preached by Robert Harris (1653), he laments that drunkenness was reduced to an art, with its set terms, the teaching of which had become a profession : he mentions "the strange sauciness of base vermine,in tossing the name of his most excellent majesty in their foaming mouths." He recommends his readers to answer all those who wish to pledge them to drink under this pretext, in these words, "I will pray for the King's health, and drinke for mine owne.' The celebrated Prynne inveighs bitterly, in his book called Healthe's Sicknesse, against the custom of toasting. He thus concludes his address to the Christian reader :-" The unfained well-wisher of thy spiritual and corporeal, though the opposer of thy pocular and pot-emptying health, Wm. Prynne."

After the fall of the Stuarts, toast-drinking became one of the means of expressing political opinions. Party-toasts have continued in vogue from that time even to the present day; and while it cannot be denied that several great political principles have been kept more prominently in view by the observance of the toasts which embodied their enunciation in some neat or appropriate sentiment; yet on the other hand have they too often led to much ill-feeling and discord by the partyfeeling they have tended to create and foment.-J. C.

TO MUSIC.

AH! wherefore but to heighten mirth,
And lend a keener zest to joy,

O Music! do the sons of earth
Thine aid employ !

Why falls not from thy tuneful string
Some anodyne for pain and grief?
Some spell to charm the ear, and bring
The heart relief?

But since to such, my heart, mine ears

Are dull;-with songs of mournful sweep, Come, melt the thoughts that freeze my tears, And let me weep!

O! thus, in tears, the saddest hour}
That darkens o'er the sons of earth,
More homage pays to Music's power

Than years of mirth.-J. S. B.

WHEN pride rules in the heart, it necessarily hardens it, because it excludes divine grace, and shuts the ear, not only to all admonition both of God and of man, but even to the voice of our own interest.-WOGAN.

THOMAS SUTTON was one of the ancient family of the Suttons, in Lincolnshire. His father resided in the parish of St. Swithin, in the city of Lincoln, and was steward to the courts there.

His mother was descended from the honourable family of the Stapletons, in Yorkshire. The year 1532 is cited as the date of his birth. He appears to have been educated at Eton, and thence removed to St. John's College, Cambridge, which he left without taking a degree. He entered as a student in Lincoln's Inn, travelled on the continent, and did not return till about 1562, when in consequence of the death of his father he became possessed of considerable property.

Sutton was one of the Duke of Norfolk's retainers, and afterwards secretary to the Earl of Warwick, and "in consideration of trewe and faitheful servyce" he was rewarded by an annuity of 31. 6s. 8d. He was also appointed master of the ordnance at Berwick, and afterwards master-general of the ordnance in the north.

He was (says Fuller) somewhat of pay-master by his place; much money therefore passing through, some did lawfully stick on his fingers, which became the bottom of

his future estate.

He is said to have behaved with much gallantry and courage at the siege of Edinburgh Castle. His military services were rewarded by the crown by the presentation of the manors of Gateshead and Wickham, near Newcastle upon Tyne, held by a long lease under the Bishop of Durham and the crown. In these demesnes he was so fortunate as to discover several rich veins of coal, which he worked with so much success that in the year 1580 he is said to have been worth 50,000l. About this time, in consequence of some misunderstanding with some persons of consequence in the north of England, he was induced to settle in London, where such a notion of his wealth had preceded him as to encourage the report that his purse was better filled than the queen's exchequer. Indeed, he is said to have brought two horses laden with money to London. No wonder highway robbers were plentiful when such booties as these were to be met with. On his arrival he was made a freeman of the City and became a liveryman of the

Mr. Sutton, I am more ashamed than afraid to come to you, being in your debt 2007. for myselfe, and 50%. for Sir Jo. Skinner, and able to pay neyther till Camps be sold. With moche suyt and no lytle charge I procured the act of parliament to passe, and that in so good a fashyon that all encombrances wear wypte of, saving Wines, which ye excepted. My hope was then that you shold buy yt, who I was sewr wold deal justly and pay trewely, and not wysh to buy yt undersolde.

Fuller, in his Worthies, prefaces an anecdote of Sutton with this remark:

Such who charge him with purblindness in his soul, looking too close on the earth, do themselves acquit him from oppression; that though tenax, he was not rapax,—not guilty of covetousness but parsimony.

Indeed, there was a merchant, his comrade, whose name I will conceal, (except the great estate he left doth discover it,) with whom he had company in common; but their charges were several to themselves. When his friend in in travell called for two faggots, Mr. Sutton called for one; when his friend for half-a-pint of wine, Mr. Sutton for a gill, -underspending him a moiety. At last, Mr. Sutton, hearing of his friend's death, and that he left but fifty thousand pounds estate, I thought,' (said he,) 'he would dye no rich man, who made such needless expences.' Indeed, Mr. Sutton's estate doubled his; and he bestowed it all on Charter House, or Sutton's Hospitall. This is the masterpiece of protestant English charity; designed in his life; compleated after his death; begun, continued, and finished, with buildings and endowments, sine causâ sociâ, solely at his charges; wherein Mr. Sutton appears peerless in all Christendom, on an equal standart and valuation of revenue.

Sutton appears to have served his country quite as effectually in his civil as in his military capacity. In con sequence of certain commercial manoeuvres suggested and conducted by him, he prevented Philip III., of Spain, from being supplied, as he confidently expected, by the bank of Genoa, with the means of equipping the Armada then preparing to invade England; and thus a delay in the completion of that armament was occasioned, which enabled Queen Elizabeth to prepare every possible force to resist it. Sutton, also, having received letters of marque, fitted out a bark, which he commanded in person, and succeeded in capturing a Spanish merchant vessel, of the value of 20,0007.

But in the midst of all his successes he was distinguished among those "whom," (as Pennant says,) "Heaven hath_blessed with the luxurious power of doing good." He was accustomed in years of scarcity to buy large quantities of grain, and cause it to be retailed at lower prices to his poor neighbours. The year 1595, in particular, was marked with great distress, on account of the failure of the harvest, and the price of corn became so exorbitant that the poor people were entirely without bread. During thirty successive weeks of this year Sutton supplied the poor with the produce of his estates. The order to his steward for this most charitable purpose is preserved in his own hand-writing among the records of the Charter-house.

His loyalty also shone as conspicuous as his charity. In the year 1594 he executed a will by which he amply provided for his wife, and then,

as a proof of his true and faithful hearte borne to his dread

sovereign Queen Elizabeth he bequeathed her Majesty two thousand pounds in recompense of his oversights, careless dealing, and forgetfulness in her service, beseeching her to stand a good and gracious lady to his poor wife.

The various manors and estates which afford so firm a support to the Charter-House were purchased by Sutton one by one from persons of quality, whose lands and houses were more at command than ready money. But his money was not always so profitably invested, as appears from the piles of bonds found among his papers, and the letters of ungrateful debtors, who seem to have considered their benefactor as a mere dotard, ready to throw his gold to avert the threats of heaven's vengeance, which they lavish on him in case of denial. There is, however, abundant proof of the high estimation in which he was most generally held, as well as matter curiously illustrative of the times in the applications for money and the various effects produced on different persons by his loans or gifts as the case of the borrower might be. In the list of borrowers Queen Elizabeth stands first for 1001. for one year, in the 39th of her majesty's reign. The Earl of Sussex was in the habit of borrowing freely, and even entreating for 501. at a time, for which he commanded the keeper of his park "to furnish Mr. Sutton, during life, with a buck in summer, and a doe in winter." The Countess of Cumberland, writing to Sutton about her money affairs, says―

I wholy relyed upon you, presumyng partly upon your owne promyse, as comying from your owne kynde proffer thereof, and partly upon that former and accustomed kyndnes, and good parts of frendship wh. for hir sake that is nowe gone you seemed to have borne to me. This last allusion seems to refer to Sutton's deceased wife. In other letters one prays for assistance on his marriage; a second to pay her dead brother's debts, in order to save his body from arrest; a third offers to shed all his blood for a return to his kindness; a shipwrecked sufferer solicits relief in Latin. He was beset with verse as well as with prose. One Richard Williams wrote verses "in twoo severall sortes, on the letters of his worshipful name." worship in the termes of a gardener," a specimen of Another wrote a "prayer for his which may amuse.

Plante, Lorde, in hym the tree of Godlie life,

Hedge him aboute with thy stronge fence of Faithe, And if it thee please use eke thie proyninge knife, Leaste, that O Lorde, as a good gardyner saythe, If suckers drawe the sappe from bowes on hie, The toppe of tree in time perhaps may die. The following letter contains a pleasing tribute to Mr. Sutton's worth.

Right wll., I am a musitian, who formerly have brought upp noblemen's daughters, as well knights' as gentlemen's daughters, in the arte of musicke; who through a long onlye staye and sole mayntenance beinge long sithence continuance of syckness (my schollers wch. were my departed into the countrye and not yet returnd,) am for wante of schollers brought into such pinchinge penurye, as that I am not able to protect myself, much lessse my wyfe and children. And, hearinge of the generouse reporte yor. wrps. worthinesse and worthye disposition towardes rather to set my sorrowes to sale to so wll. a gent as yor. distressed gentlemen, to schollers, and men of arte, chose self, beinge endued wth. wisdome, mercye, and charitable rior person. commiseration, then to break foorth my miseries to any infe

my bold attempte, not wthout blushinge cheekes, I cease. Thus cravinge yor. wrps. patience for this By nowe the unworthy chief gent now lyving of the name, John Hardinge, 1611.

There are many proofs that the declining years of letters from ungrateful debtors, as by certain foul reports Sutton were made uneasy, not so much by vexatious that he had not come honestly by some of his estates. Sir John Harrington was one of his tormentors; he not only abused the confidence reposed in him, but placed Mr. Sutton in an unpleasant and mortifying situation by promulgating a report that the purchase of Castle Camps,