Lord Widdington, forfeited the estate in the rebellion of 1715; after which Widdrington Castle was valued at 100,000l. and sold by

the Crown.

The castle, though irregular, and the work of various ages, was a noble structure, especially the most ancient part of it, which was a gothic tower, finished with machicolations, and four round turrets, as shown in the print. It was burnt down about fifty-three years since; the only remaining part being an octangular embattled tower, to which a square modern edifice has been added. It commands an extensive sea prospect to the east, and a land view towards the south, as far as Tynemouth Castle.

The cut shows Widdrington to have been, in modern times, a strange admixture of castle and family dwelling: in it, however, are preserved the machicolations, the defensive characteristic of the old border man

sions.

The Naturalist.

STRAY FACTS.-BY M. L. B.

Luminous British Insects. LATELY, a gentleman walking in the country, (we forget whether in the county of Oxfordshire or Berks,) took up a small and very brilliant mass of what he conceived to be glow-worms; but, to his surprise, he found in his hand three strange insects, which crawled away at an amazing rate, but which he describes, from the glimpse he got of them, to have been more like ants than anything else, and about the length of his thumb-nail; they were fully as brilliant as the glow-worm.

Three or four summers since, a lady walking one evening, until it became quite dark, in her garden at Marlow, observed something moving along in a snake-like manner on the grass, wholly luminous, but not brilliantly so; resembling a piece of animated whip. cord, faintly lustrous, and four or five inches in length. She did not like to take up the creature, nor from the darkness could she distinguish what it was; it glided swiftly away; but, on mentioning the circumstance, a centipede, (for which it seemed too long,) or a slow-worm, (for which it was too slender,) were suggested as probable solutions of the mystery, both these reptiles being, we are assured, luminous in the dark.

A short time since, some friends drinking tea one summer evening at their residence near Maidenhead, with all the windows of the drawing-room open, there suddenly burst in a host of small flies, which covered the table and the furniture; every one of these emitted a sparklet of light, pure and intense like that of the glow-worm; and altogether they formed, for a few minutes, a spectacle as beautiful, as we should imagine it to be, in the British isles, uncommon.

Tenacity of Life in Insects.

An entomologist having caught a large species of moth, pinned it to the wall of a room, (the old method of putting an insect to death, which we believe is now more expeditiously performed, and therefore more humanely, by giving it prussic acid). In this situation it was left for above ten days, the gentleman having quitted home for that period; but, upon his return, the poor, impaled creature was yet in strong life, as it fluttered its wings when touched!

M. Lamotte, a French savant, to preserve stuffed birds, used a mixture, not, we believe, unknown to British ornithologists, of soap and arsenic, worked up to about the consistence of custard. A very small dose of this preparation would kill a man; but one day when it was in use, a Demoiselle (an extremely large, and beautiful species of dragon-fly, whose body is as thick as a lady's little finger,) flew in at the window, alighted upon the basin of deadly conserve, and sucked up with its capacious mouth, for at least five minutes, a considerable quantity of it. Its legs and thighs were covered with the mixture, and it flew to the window, where, apparently not affected by a dose which would have killed a human being in an hour, it endeavoured to cleanse them. It lived till the evening, a space of many hours after swallowing the poison, but whether it had seemed to suffer much was not known, nobody having watched it.

Tenacity of Life in Man.

Once upon a time, after some consideration upon a subject, to the positive knowledge of which we could not possibly attain, we did venture to introduce the following passage into a story; and we quote it here, because it forms an appropriate opening to this, our last stray fact," which will be found amply to confirm our idea :—

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"Is there a dream in life, so dark, so dread,

As that of those, who know themselves, the Dead!
Horrible knowledge! so, the soul's chief seat,
Instinct with sense, and warm with vital heat,
(Ere its sad tenant be dislodg'd) must feel
When rais'd fresh reeking from the headsman's
steel ;

Dimly, its sinking, dark'ning eye-balls see
The stir of life; it hears, but cannot flee
From shameful insult; whilst its agonies
Are visible, of horror, pain, surprise;

'Tis speechless, yet would speak! the lips move slow;

It feels, and shudders from the keen death-blow-
It lives,-ah, horrible! to know it can
No more hold dear companionship with man.'
Il Campanaro.

"

"A memoir," says the Court Journal for 1833, p. 664, "has recently been presented to the Academy of Sciences, on the subject of death by decollation, which will cause an investigation to take place, under the authority of Messrs. Majendie and Flourens. Guillotin, the inventer of the guillotine, as well

66

as several other distinguished physiologists, was of opinion that no physical suffering attends the act of decapitation. Sne, Sommering, and Castel, entertain different views." (Here follows a series of experiments upon animals, whose sufferings, after the loss of their heads, seem to be extreme.) Mojou, Professor of Physiology at Genoa, having produced at Paris a system of investigation of the results of the guillotine, states, that having exposed two heads, a quarter of an hour after decollation, to a strong light, the eyelids closed suddenly. The tongue, which protruded from the lips, being pricked with a needle, was drawn back into the mouth, and the countenance expressed sudden pain. The head of a criminal named Tillier, being submitted to examination after the guillotine, the head turned in every direction from whence he was called by name. A report hitherto treated as fabulous, may therefore be believed, -that when the executioner gave a blow on the face to Charlotte Corday's head, the countenance expressed violent indignation. Fontenelle asserts, that he has frequently seen the heads of guillotined persons move their lips; and his memoirs contains many other apparently incredible, but equally well authenticated facts. Siveling declares, that by touching the spinal marrow, the most horrible demonstrations of agony succeed. *** It appears on the present showing, that the guillotine is the most cruel mode of destruction ever yet devised; since no limit can be placed to the agonies of death after its operation."

The late Mr. Mathews, we believe, (not the comedian,) in his Diary of an Invalid, mentions having been present at an execution in France, by the guillotine, in which he says, the head being held up to the execration of the people, by the executioner, he plainly distinguished on the countenance, the expression of the emotions of pain, anger, astonishment, and horror! (We have not the book by us to quote Mr. M.'s exact words, but remember being singularly horrified by the account.)

A young and beautiful Vendean heroine, who had thrown herself upon the protection of General Marceau, was, with himself, (for affording her that protection,) condemned to death. He had saved the life of one, who in turn saved his: "mais, les larmes de Marceau, ne puvrent sauver la jeune infortunée de la fureur des juges qui etaient dignes de servir sous un maitre tel que Robespierre. ** Ces juges, firent arracher la belle Vendéenne de l'asile où Marceau l'avait cachée." "Condemned," the account goes on to say, "at the age of seventeen to die, she confided her portrait to a friend, to offer to the warrior, whose pity and whose features were too deeply engraven on her heart. On going to execution, she placed between her lips an artificial rose,

with which, one day, the hand of Marceau had ornamented her beautiful hair. The executioner showed her head after it was cut off, when the frightened people believed that she vomited blood; but it was the rose, which the yet animated mouth clenched with gnashings of the teeth, (grincemens,) in the convulsions of death. This horrible image ever pursued the hero, and when he recalled it, grief suspended his recital, and he shed burning tears of indignation." But, besides these instances of life, passions, and consciousness, in the human head when severed from the body, and either experimented upon, or displayed to the multitude, the bereaved trunk has been known to start upright with the board to which it was strapped, and even to walk some steps on the scaffold.

The following circumstance has never been published, but it is perfectly authentic. A few years since, a great criminal was to be guillotined at Abbeville, and a very worthy man, a glazier, (one of the Fréres de ia Charité, who see to the burial of malefactors and others, who have nobody besides to give them decent interment, without remuneration,) sought, and obtained from the proper authorities, the favour of undertaking at his own expense, the burial of the condemned. The kind brother stood on the scaffold with a coffin, ready to receive the body so soon as the head was taken off, (every one knows that decapitation by the guillotine is instan taneous,) which, when done, it was imme diately unstrapped from the board, thrown into the chest, whose lid was put down, but not fastened, and our Frére de la Charité, bearing his burthen on his shoulder, set off with it through the Place de where the execution took place, and which was a tolerably spacious area, to the place where he prepared it for interment.-This worthy brother was glazier, at the period, to the gentle. man, then resident in France, from whom we have the anecdote, and told him voluntarily, "that the trunk of the guillotined criminal kicked so violently whiist he was carrying it through the square, that he thought the lid of the coffin would have been kicked off, or the bottom out!"

These horrible, and to us, most plainly speaking, circumstances, will, probably, in these sceptical days, be, by certant philosophers, attributed solely to "muscular motion;"-a favourite theory with some individuals, but to us far indeed from satisfactory; since who can certainly know that life is extinct-sensation and consciousness quite gone-as soon as the head is separated from the body?-Who shall certainly affirm that the dismissal of the sentient soul from its mortal tenement, immediately takes place upon the severing of the spinal marrow? No one; for no one who asserts it has ever been guillotined; and no decapitated sufferer

has ever been able to tell the unsuffering spectator, (though his lips may have moved to do it,) what an eternity of agony of which he little dreams, may be endured for the first quarter of an hour after execution!-M. L B.

The Public Journals.

THE ART OF DINING.

(Continued from page 111.)

A PASSAGE in Bewick also tends to prove that ruffs and reeves have always been esteemed great delicacies in York:

In a note communicated by the late George Allan, Esq., of the Grange near Darlington, he says,—I dined at the George Inn, Coney-street, York, August 18, 1794, (the race week,) where four ruffs made one of the dishes at the table, which in the bill were separately charged sixteen shillings."

It may not be deemed beside the purpose to state that Prince Talleyrand is extremely fond of them, his regular allowance during the season being two a-day. They are dressed like woodcocks. Dunstable larks should properly be eaten in Dunstable; but Lord Sefton has imported them in tin boxes (in a state requiring merely to be warmed before the fire) with considerable success. Larks are best in January. Surrey and Sussex are the counties for the capon-and also for the same animal in his more natural though less aristological condition; Norfolk and Suffolk, for turkeys and geese. We are not aware that any marked superiority has been accorded to any district as to game. The largest pheasant ever known of late years was sent a short time since, (by Fisher,) to Lord William Bentinck at Paris. It weighed four pounds wanting an ounce, but we are not aware in what county it was killed. It is a singular fact with regard to woodcocks, that the average weight is full fifteen ounces, yet the largest invariably falls below sixteen. The largest common grouse ever known weighed twenty-eight ounces. A cock of the woods, weighing very nearly ten pounds, was sent, a few weeks since, to Lord Balcarras, by Fisher of Duke-street, St. James's, confessedly the best poulterer in London. He certainly defies comparison in one particular -having actually discovered the art of sending fowls with two liver wings to his friends. He enjoys the unlimited confidence of Lord Sefton, which is one of the highest compliments that can be paid to any man directly or indirectly connected with gastronomy.

It may prove a useful piece of information to know that turkeys and pheasants, ready stuffed with truffles, are regularly imported from Paris by Morel of Piccadilly. The saving in the duty thus effected is such as to make nearly a third difference in the price, that of a turkey stuffed in England being

about 31. 10s., and that of a turkey stuffed before landing 21. 10s., the advantage in respect of flavour being (if anything) in favour of the latter. Morell will send his own cook, Le Fortier, an artist of merit, to dress the whole dinner for you if you like. Another capital thing, occasionally imported by Morell from Strasburg, is the far-famed Hure de Sanglier aux truffes-none of your common pigs' heads with a lemon in the mouth, but the head of a regular wild boar from Westphalia or the Black Forest, such as might grin with credit on the banner of an old noble of Germany. But these are foreign delicacies, and therefore foreign to the principal object of this enumeration, which is to vindicate the genuine old English cookery from reproach, and show that it is, in fact, equally distinguished for goodness and variety. Our next topics, however, shall not be open to the reproach which with some semblance of reason might be thrown out against our last; for our next topics will be mutton and beef in their unadulterated simplicity.

Most people know that a roast leg of mutton (it were superfluous to expatiate upon the haunch) with laver served in the saucepan is a dish of high merit, but it ought never to be profaned by the spit, which lets out the gravy, and shocks the sight with an unseemly perforation just as you are cutting into the Pope's eye. Neither is a boiled leg of mutton and turnips, with caper sauce, to be despised. Besides it gave rise to a fair enough mot of Charles Lamb. A farmer, his chance companion in a coach, kept boring him to death with questions in the jargon of agriculturists about crops. At length he put a poser" And pray, sir, how are turnips t' year?"-" Why that, sir, (stammered out Lamb,) will depend upon the boiled legs of mutton."

If you resolve on roast beef, you should repair at an early hour, with a competent adviser, to Leadenhall market; but if your affections are fixed on boiled, order a round of from 26 lbs. to 30 lbs. from the shop (Finch and Austin) at the corner of St. Martin's Court, to be sent hot precisely at a quarter after six. Sixty years' experience has taught them the policy of punctuality, and no butcher can send it so perfectly cured, no cook can serve it hotter or better. Any distance within the bills of mortality will suit : many a round has been sent to George IV. at Carlton House, many to the Duke of Sussex at Kensington; and we collect from Dr. Lardner's evidence before the Lords' Committee that, so soon as the rail-road is completed, it will be quite practicable to send a round to Birmingham, without any injurious reduction in temperature, or so much as spilling a drop of gravy on the way. Perhaps he contemplates the possibility of applying the boiler to

the beef.

For a small party, the flank part of a brisket from the same shop may be found preferable.

The capabilities of a boiled edgebone of beef may be estimated from what happened to Pope the actor, well known for his devotion to the culinary art. He received an invitation to dinner, accompanied by an apology for the simplicity of the intended fare, a small turbot and a boiled edgebone of beef. "The very things of all others that I like," exclaimed Pope; "I will come with the greatest pleasure ;" and come he did, and eat he did, till he could literally eat no longer; when the word was given, and a haunch of venison was brought in, fit to be made the subject of a new poetical epistle ;

"For finer or fatter

Never rang'd in a forest, or smok'd in a platter; The haunch was a picture for painters to study: The fat was so white, and the lean was so ruddy." Poor Pope divined at a glance the nature of the trap that had been laid for him, but he was fairly caught, and after a puny effort at trifling with a slice of fat, he laid down his knife and fork, and gave way to an hysterical burst of tears, exclaiming" A friend of twenty years' standing, and to be served in this manner!"

The late Duke of Devonshire's passion was a broiled blade bone of mutton, which was every night got ready for him at Brookes's; and the late Duke of Norfolk was accustomed to declare that there was as marked a difference between beef-steaks as between faces; and that a man of taste would find as inuch variety in a dinner at the beef-steak club (where he himself never missed a meeting) as at the most plentifully served table in town. Both their graces were men of true gusto; yet we doubt if either of them could have given the reader the valuable information we here think it proper to communicate. What ever the subject of your broil-steak, chop, or devil-take care that the gridiron be heated before the article is placed upon it; in the case of a fry observe the same precaution with the frying-pan.

It may encourage many a would-be Amphytrion to learn from our own experience by what simple expedients the prosperity of a dinner may be insured, provided only it possess the interest of novelty.

We have seen an oyster soup prepare the way for a success, which was crowned by blackpuddings from Birch's. We have seen a kidney dumpling perform wonders, and a noble-looking shield of Canterbury brawn

from Grove's diffuse a sensation of unmi

tigated delight. One of Morel's pátés de gibier aux truffes-or a woodcock pie from Bavier's of Boulogne, would be a sure card, but a home-made partridge pie would be more likely to come upon your company by surprise, and you may produce a chef d'œuvre by

simply directing your housekeeper to put a beef-steak over as well as under the birds, and place them with their breasts downward in the dish. Game, or wildfowl, for two or three is never better than broiled; and a boiled shoulder of mutton or boiled duck might alone found a reputation-but these things can only be attempted by a bachelor; for the appearance of either at a married man's table is regarded as a sure token of the complete subjection of his wife.

The delicacy of a roasting pig, except in the case of flagellation, depends on his being nurtured on mother's milk exclusively from his birth to his dying day. The most delicate rabbits are nurtured in the same manner, and we have known them kept sucking till they were bigger than their mammas.

The comparative merits of tarts and puddings present a problem which it is no easy matter to decide. On the whole, we give the preference to puddings, as affording more scope to the inventive genius of the cook, but we must insist on a little more precaution in preparing them. A plum-pudding, for instance, our national dish, is hardly ever boiled enough, and we have sometimes found ourselves, in England, in the same distressing predicament in which Lord Byron once found himself in Italy. He had made up his mind to have a plum-pudding on his birthday, and busied himself a whole morning in giving minute directions to prevent the chance of a mishap, yet, after all the pains he had taken, and the anxiety he must have undergone, it appeared in a tureen, and about the consistency of soup. "Upon this failure in the production (says our authority) he was frequently quizzed, and betrayed all the petulance of a child, and more than a child's curiosity to learn who had reported the circumstance." As if the loss of a whole day's thought and labour was not enough to excite the petulance of any man, let alone his belonging to the genus irritabile!

Instead of icing punch, the preferable mode is to mix it with a proportion of iced soda-water. The gin punch made on this principle at the Garrick Club is one of the best things we know, and we gladly take this opportunity of assigning the honour of the invention to the rightful patentee, Mr. Stephen Price, an American gentleman, well known in the theatrical circles and on the turf. His title has been much disputed— Grammatici certant et adhuc sub judice lis estand many, misled by Mr. Theodore Hook's frequent and liberal application of the discovery, are in the habit of ascribing it to him. But Mr. Thomas Hill, the celebrated "tre

Pour half a pint of gin on the outer peel of a lemon, then a little lemon-juice, sugar, a glass of Maraschino, about a pint and a quarter of water, and two bottles of iced soda-water. The result will be

three pints of the punch in question,