In 1704 Defoe published a pamphlet, entitled The Christianity of the High Church considered, London, 1704, 4to., pp. 20. In 1705 a violent party work appeared, entitled

The Memorial of the Church of England, humbly offered to the Consideration of all the True Lovers of our Church and Constitution. London, 1705, 4to., pp. 56.

Defoe replied to it in

The High Church Legion; or, The Memorial examined. Being a New Test of Moderation; as 'tis recommended to all that love the Church of England and the Constitution. London, 1705, 4to., pp. 21.

The Memorial itself was subjected to the fashionable process. of the time, for it was presented at the Old Bailey, and ordered by the Court to be burnt by the common hangman.

In The Review for October 30, 1705, Defoe inserted the following advertisement, which was probably a jeu d'esprit, as the work never appeared:

Preparing for the press, and to be published in a few days, the first volume of twenty-six centuries of Highflying Churchmen in England, who have sworn allegiance to the Government, and get their bread under the protection of it; basely and villainously betray the nation and the Church, by openly and maliciously aiding, siding with, and abetting the Popish and non-juring party in England; abusing the queen, the bishops, and the best Churchmen in the kingdom; fomenting divisions amongst Protestants, and diligently widening the unhappy breaches of the nation. To which are added large collections of their wise sayings and common maxims in favour of Popery, and an abhorrence of moderation: together with the characters and abridgments of their respective histories; and a large examination of two new High-Church maxims: 1. I had rather be a Papist than a Presbyterian; 2. I had rather go to hell than to a meeting-house; both learnedly asserted by two vigorous defenders of High Church principles; one a man of the gown, and the other of the sword.

In the same year he wrote

The Experiment; or, the Shortest Way with the Dissenters exemplified. Being the case of Mr. Abraham Gill, a Dissenting Minister in the Isle of Ely,

and a full account of his being sent for a soldier, by Mr. Fern (an Ecclesiastical Justice of Peace) and other conspirators, to the eternal honour of the temper and moderation of High-Church principles. London, 1705, 4to., pp. 58. As this book did not sell well, it was issued with a new title-page as a second edition. It was then called-

The Modesty and Sincerity of those Worthy Gentlemen, commonly called High Churchmen, exemplified in a modern Instance. London, 1707.

ANTIQUITY OF THE POLKA.

The description of the lavolta, in Sir John Davies's poem on dancing, The Orchestra (1596), shows that it must have closely resembled the dance which we fondly boast of as one of the great inventions of the nineteenth century. It runs as follows:

Yet is there one, the most delightful kind,

A lofty jumping, or a leaping round,

Where arm in arm two dancers are entwined,,

And whirl themselves with strict embracements bound;

And still their feet an anapæst do sound;

An anapæst is all their music's song,

Whose first two feet are short, and third is long.

The "anapast" is conclusive; it points exactly to the peculiar nature of the polka, the pause on the third step. Moreover, it appears, that as there is no especial figure for the polka, so there was none for the lavolta; for it is classed among those dances

Wherein that dancer greatest praise has won,
Which, with best order, can all orders shun;

For every where he wantonly must range,
And turn and wind with unexpected change.

Who can doubt after that? The polka was certainly danced before Queen Elizabeth!

To this valuable historical parallel, it may be added that the galliard and coranto also were apparently danced ad libitum (ob

serving only a particular measure), just as our waltz and gallop

also are:

For more diverse and more pleasing show,

A swift, a wandering dance, he [Love] did invent,
With passages uncertain to and fro,

Yet with a certain answer and consent,

To the quick music of the instrument.

A CUSTOM OF "YE ENGLYSHE.”

When a more than ordinarily doubtful matter is offered us for credence, we are apt to inquire of the teller if he "sees any green" in our optics, accompanying the query by an elevation of the right eyelid with the forefinger. Now, regarding this merely as a "fast" custom, I marvelled greatly at finding a similar action noted by worthy Master Blunt, as conveying to his mind an analogous meaning. I can scarcely credit its antiquity; but what other meaning can I understand from the episode he relates? He had been trying to pass himself off as a native, but—

The third day, in the morning, I, prying up and down alone, met a Turke, who, in Italian, told me, Ah! are you an Englishman? and with a kind of malicious posture laying his forefinger under his eye, methought he had the lookes of a designe.-Voyage in the Levant, performed by Mr. Henry Blunt, p. 60: Lond. 1650.

-a silent, but expressive, "posture," tending to eradicate any previously-formed opinion of the verdantness of Mussulmans!

THE FALLACY OF TRADITIONS.

Several communications have already proved how little reliance is to be placed upon the traditions repeated by vergers and guides to wondering lionizers. A collection of other instances, where the test of science and archaeological investigation have exposed their falsity, would be interesting and instructive. In spite of Sir Samuel Meyrick's judicious arrangement of the armor

in the tower, the beef-eaters still persist in relating the old stories handed down. At Warwick Castle the rib of the dun cow is ascertained to be a bone of a fossil elephant, and Guy's porridgepot a military cooking utensil of the time of Charles I. St. Crispin's chair, carefully preserved in Linlithgow Cathedral by insertion in the wall, is of mahogany-an American wood! The chair of Charles I. at Leicester bears a crown, which, having been the fashionable ornament after the Restoration, together with the form, betrays the date. Queen Eleanor's crosses, it now appears, were not built by her affectionate husband, but by her own direction and her own money. The fire-place and other objects in belted Will's bedroom, at Naworth Castle, are manifestly of later date. The curious bed treasured up near Leicester as that occupied by Richard III., immediately before the battle of Bosworth, is in the style commonly called Elizabethan. Queen Mary's bed at Holyrood is of the last century; and her room at Hardwicke is in a house which was not erected till after her death; the tapestry and furniture, however, may have been removed from the old hall where she was imprisoned. The tower of Caernarvon Castle, in which the first Prince of Wales is supposed to have been born, is not of so early a period. In short, archæologists seem to show that there is not only nothing new under the sun, but that there is also nothing true under the sun.

DESCENDANTS OF DEFOE.

A son of Daniel shines in Pope's Dunciad.

Does the follow

ing notice refer to a son of that son? It is extracted from an old Wiltshire paper:

On the 2 Jan. 1771, two young men, John Clark and John Joseph Defoe, said to be a grandson* to the celebrated author of the True Born Englishman,

* It appears from Wilson's Life that he was a great-grandson.

&c., were executed at Tyburn for robbing Mr. F———, the banker, of a watch and a trifling sum of money on the highway,

and the writer then proceeds to moralize on the inequality of that code of laws, which could visit with death the author of a burglary committed on another man, who, by the failure of his bank, had recently produced an unexampled scene of distress, in the ruin of many families, and was yet suffered to go scatheless.

Another notice, which is also extracted from a Wiltshire paper, is dated 1836.

In a street adjoining Hungerford Market, there is now living, "to fortune and to fame unknown," the great-grandson of the author of Robinson Crusoe. His trade is that of a carpenter, and he is much respected in the neighborhood. His father, a namesake of this great progenitor, was for many years a creditable tradesman in the old Hungerford Market.

It is doubtless of the latter that the Edinburgh Review (Oct. 1815, p. 487) speaks. It is there stated that he was then living in London, "a creditable tradesman in Hungerford Market. His manners give a favorable impression of his sense and morals. He is neither unconscious of his ancestor's fame, nor ostentatious of it." He is there stated to be a great-grandson of Defoe, and not a grandson, as is implied in the preceding notice.

ZACHARY BOYD.

The well known couplet about Pharaoh—

And was not Pharaoh a saucy rascal?

That would not let the children of Israel, their wives
And their little ones, their flocks and their herds, go
Out into the wilderness forty days

To eat the Pascal.

is from a certain History of the Bible or Bible History, by the Rev. Dr. Zachary Boyd, of Todrig, who was either Principal or Professor of Divinity at Glasgow in the seventeenth century.