THE DUCKING-STOOL. THE DUCKING-STOOL. Boswell relates that Dr. Johnson, in a conversation with Mrs. Knowles, the celebrated Quaker lady, said, Madam, we have different modes of restraining evil 66 313 the churchwardens of St. Andrewe's for a common scold and slanderer of her neighbours, adjudged to the ducking-stool." Every great town, at that time, appears to have had at least one of these penitential chairs in ordinary -stocks for the men, a DUCKING-use, provided at the expense of the STOOL for WOMEN, and a pound for corporation, beasts." In early times it was called the cucking-stool. Brand describes it as an engine invented for the punishment of scolds and unquiet women, by ducking them in the water, after having placed them in a stool or chair fixed at the end of a long pole, by which they were immerged in some muddy or stinking pond. Blount thought this last name a corruption of ducking-stool; and another antiquary guessed that choking-stool was its etymology. (See Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 442.) But in a manuscript of the "Promptorium Par 9966 Lysons, in his Environs of London, vol. i. p. 233, gives a bill of expenses for the making of one in 1572, from the churchwardens' and chamberlain's accompts at Kingston-upon-Thames. It is there called the cucking-stool. 1572. The making of the cucking-stool.. £0 8 0 Iron-work for the In Harwood's History of Lichvulorum esyn, or CUKKYN, is in-field p. 383, in 1578, we find a terpreted by stercoris; and the charge "for making a cuck-stool, etymology is corroborated by a with appurtenances, 8s." One was no less ancient record than the erected at Shrewsbury, by order of Domesday Survey, where, at Ches- the corporation, in 1669.—See the ter, any man or woman who brewed history of that town, quarto, 1779, bad ale, according to the custom of p. 172. the city, had their choice either to pay a fine of four shillings, or be placed in the cathedra stercoris." Blount says this chair was in use in the Saxon times. In the Saxon dictionaries its name is Scealking-stool. In Queen Elizabeth's time the ducking-stool was a universal punishment for scolds. Cole, the antiquary, in his Extracts from Proceedings in the Vice-chancellor's Court at Cambridge, in that reign, quotes the following entries: "Jane Johnson, adjudged to the ducking-stool for scoulding, and commuted her penance. "Katherine Sanders, accused by Misson, in his Travels in England, makes particular mention of the cucking-stool. He says, "This way of punishing scolding women is pleasant enough. They fasten an arm-chair to the end of two beams twelve or fifteen feet long, and parallel to each other; so that these two pieces of wood with their two ends embrace the chair, which hangs between them upon a sort of axle; by which means it plays freely, and always remains in the natural horizontal position in which a chair should be that a person may sit conveniently in it, whether you raise it or let it down. They set up a post upon the bank of a pond or river, and over this post was not confined to England. In the Regiam Majestatem of Sir John Skene it occurs as an ancient punishment in Scotland, under they lay, almost in equilibrio, the two pieces of wood, at one end of which the chair hangs just over the water; they place the woman in this chair, and so plunge her" Burrow Lawes," chap. 69, noticinto the water as often as the sentence directs, in order to cool her immoderate heat." Cole, the antiquary already mentioned, in one of his manuscript volumes in the British Museum, says, “In my time, when I was a boy and lived with my grandmother in the great corner-house at the bridge-foot, next to Magdalen College, Cambridge, and rebuilt since by my uncle, Joseph Cock, I remember to have seen a woman ducked for scolding. The chair hung by a pulley fastened to a beam about the middle of the bridge, in which the woman was confined, and let down under the water three times, and then taken out. The bridge was then of timber, before the present stone bridge of one arch was builded. The ducking-stool was constantly hanging in its place, and on the back panel of it was engraved devils laying hold of scolds, &c. Some time after, a new chair was erected in the place of the old one, having the same devices carved on it, and well painted and ornamented. When the new bridge of stone was erected in 1754, this was taken away; and I lately saw the carved and gilt back of it nailed up by the shop of one Mr. Jackson, a whitesmith in the Butcher Row, behind the town-hall, who offered it to me, but I did not know what to do with it. In October, 1776, I saw in the old town-hall a third ducking-stool, of plain oak, with an iron bar before it to confine the person in the seat; but I made no inquiries about it. I mention these things, as the practice seems now to be totally laid aside." Mr. Cole died in the year 1782. ing Browsters, that is, "Wemen quha brewes aill to be sauld,” it is said, “gif she makes gude Ail, that is sufficient; bot gif she makes evill Ail, contrair to the use and consuetude of the Burgh, and is convict thereof, she sall pay ane unlaw of aucht shillinges, or sall suffer the justice of the Burgh, that is, she sall be put upon the COCK-STULE, and the Ail sall be distributed to the pure folke." Gay mentions the ducking-stool, in his Pastorals, as a punishment in use in his time: "I'll speed me to the pond, where On the long plank hangs o'er the That stool, the dread of every scold- (The Shepherd's Week. Pastoral iii.) BOTANICAL SATIRE. Some of the systematic names of plants are very pretty little lampoons. Thus Sauvages having given the name Buffonia, in honour of Buffon, Linnæus added the epithet tenuifolia, which suits the slender leaves of the plant, and the slender pretensions of Buffon to the character of a botanist. Another plant he named Browallia, after Browal, a scholar of his; and as Browal was of humble fortune, he called one of its species Browallia depressa; but when Browal rose in the world, and forgot his old friends, Linnæus gave another species the name of Browallia elata. Thus, too, the Petiveria alliacea, while it commemorates the botanical zeal of Petiver, who a century ago was apothecary to the Charterhouse, at the same time points out by its acridity the defect of his The custom of the ducking-stool temper. THE BEE IN THE CRYSTAL PALACE. PUNNING TEXT. 315 Sometimes, again, the name of parallel chimneys, and at the top the plant, though equally epigram- of each crying-sweep! sweep!" matic, is kinder than in the inThus stances just mentioned. Linnæus gave the name of Bauhinia to a plant which has its leaves in pairs in honour of two brother-botanists, John and Gaspard Bauhins; and bestowed the name of Banisteria on a climbing-plant, in memory of M. Banister, who lost his life by falling from a rock while herborizing. In the name Salix Babylonica, there is an elegant allusion to a well-known passage in the Psalms. Rev. PULPIT CLIMAXES. The late Rev. Robert Hall was remarkably happy and apt at hitting off in conversation, by a few bold strokes, dashed occasionally with sarcasm, the peculiarities of his acquaintance, whether they happened to lie in their style, their manners, or their character. We have not seen the following instance in print. It was told us by the gentleman to whom it was addressed. When talking of the of one of the most popular preachers of the day among the Dissenters, in some of whose sermons there is a contrast between the plainness with which they begin, and the flights of metaphor in which they end, our friend asked Mr Hall how he liked this style of eloquence? He replied, Not at all, sir; not at all. Why, sir, every sentence is a climax, every paragraph is a climax, every head is a climax, and the whole sermon is a climax. And then, at the end of every head and division of his sermon he shouts out, though scarcely audible at first, in a shrill voice that makes one's ears tingle, some text of Scripture in the shape of an exclamation. Why, sir, he puts me in mind of a little sweep boy, running up a succession of James the First of England, and Sixth of Scotland, was, as every one knows, deficient in vigour and steadiness. Having heard of a famous preacher who was very witty in his sermons, and peculiarly so in his choice of texts, he ordered this clergyman to preach before him. With all suitable gravity, the learned divine gave out his text in the following words: "James, first and sixth, in the latter part of the verse, ‘He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven by the winds and tossed.'" "Ods chickens! he's at me already," exclaimed the king. THE BUSY BEE IN THE CRYSTAL The primary object of the Great Exhibition was to collect from all nations the products of human industry. It was of course not only consistent with this end, but necessary to its attainment, to bring together specimens of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdom, constituting the materials upon which man exercises his industry and ingenuity. The processes of nature had therefore no place in the plan and purpose of this temple of science and art. It is human thought alone that operates upon the products of nature exhibited in the Crystal Palace, moulding and transforming them for the purposes of use and ornament. The few specimens of vegetable growth formed no exception to the rule excluding the works of nature from the processes and products of art, since the three elm-trees in the transept were left there less in virtue of the permission of the royal commissioners, than by the will of the people of London, who prohibited their being hewn down; while the tropical plants in the transept, and the or taking their departure for the Wardian cases in the eastern gallery fields and flower-gardens in the -the meritorious but unrequited neighbourhood. For six months, invention of our estimable friend at they accommodated themselves to Clapham Rise, for the transportation their very peculiarcir cumstances; of living plants from foreign lands, and their curious operations, as seen -were introduced chiefly as orna- distinctly through the glass covermental accessories, to refresh the ing, were not the least pleasing and eye fatigued by the artificial splen- instructive portion of the exhibition dours of the Exhibition. The Irish of the world's industry. You looked Flax Society had indeed been allow-down into their miniature city, ed to add to its products exhibited in with its streets composed of houses the gallery a living specimen of the built of a material which the skill common flax plant (Linum usita- of the chemist cannot produce, and tissimum), which was the only in- on a plan of structural symmetry stance in the Exhibition, so far as and geometrical exactness which it we could discover, in which a vege- would puzzle the mathematican to table product was illustrated by a imitate. In the formation of their living plant. One exception there cells, the bees solve the problem of was also in favour of the animal accommodating the largest possible kingdom, and one more appropriate number in the least possible space, could not have been chosen, to and with the smallest possible exconnect the processes of human skill penditure of material. Here, as in and industry with the operations the great metropolis itself, were of instinct and the provident eco- streets of plebeian houses, each of nomy of nature. We refer to the them consisting of a six-sided cell, bees in the north transept gallery, the form best adapted for a cylinwhere, amongst different kinds of drical-bodied animal. These were hives, there was a crystal palace in inhabited by the workers. Houses miniature, in which these interesting of more spacious and palatial dimenlittle insects were seen busily ply- sions were tenanted by the males. ing their respective avocations. There were store-houses, deeper The hives were variously construc- and more capacious than the dwellted. There were cottage hive ing-houses, for the reception of the working bell glasses; the ladies' honey and pollen. And there was observatory hive, made of glass a Buckingham Palace for the Queen covered with straw; a collateral Bee. The workers of the hive illushive to obtain the honey without trated the advantages of the dividestroying the bees; besides other sion of labour, being classed into the curious contrivances for apiarians. nurse bees, whose function is to conThe Town Mansion Hive was in- struct and unite the cells, collect habited by four swarms of July, the honey, and feed the larvæ; and 1850, from four distinct families, or the wax-makers, or labourers, who stocks of bees, all living and work- carry the stone and mortar, and lay ing in perfect harmony. Till they the foundation upon which the nurse were brought to the Great Exhibi- bees, or builders, raise their supertion, they had been kept in a secluded structure. When you looked out place on the border of a heath. The in the bright sunshine, you might entrance to the hive was connected see that the arrivals and departures with an opening in the glass of the were incessant. Where did the Crystal Palace, and the bees were bees fly in quest of honey, and how seen constantly returning to the hive did they find their way back again? laden with their treasured sweets, How few of the strangers who went THE BEE IN THE CRYSTAL PALACE. 317 to London, like the bees, from bee constructed its cells on the secluded places on the borders of same architectural and geometrical heaths, from quiet English villages, principles as it does at the present or distant manufacturing towns, day, having neither fallen below could have gone as far from the nor improved upon the attainments Crystal Palace, and returned with- of that sagacious instinct with which out losing their way? But where the God of nature has so wisely the stranger in London had only and beneficently endowed it. Intwo eyes, the bee was possessed of stinct, perfect and persistent, conmyriads; and in addition to its structs the curious prisms of the compound eyes fitted for horizontal bee-hive, and governs the social sight, it was supplied with a sort economy of its industrious and of secondary eyes, or stemmata, for orderly community. It was well vertical vision. And thus clear to give a place to these social workand comprehensive of sight, it ers in the temple consecrated to the winged its way to the wild-flowers triumphs of reason and the troin the Parks, and the cultivated phies of art. In this the scene flowers in Kensington Gardens and of his proudest achievements, man Hammersmith to the banks of the might learn a lesson, fitted at once Thames "where Thames first rural to humble and exalt him, from grows"-perhaps to imperial Kew "the little busy bee." "One thing," -perhaps to the forest glades of says Kirby, "is clear to demonstrabeautiful Richmondtion, that by these creatures and their instincts, the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Great Father of the universe are loudly proclaimed; the atheist and infidel con futed, the believer confirmed in his faith and trust in Providence, which he thus beholds watching with incessant care over the welfare of the meanest of his creatures; and from which he may conclude that he, the prince of the creation, will never be overlooked or forsaken; and from these what lessons may be learned of patriotism and selfdevotion to the public good-of loyalty of prudence, temperance, diligence, and self-denial !"* "To lofty Harrow now, and now to where Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow; To royal Hampton's pile, The same wonderful instinct that guides the little busy bee in its wanderings amongst the fields and gardens, and brings it back again with unfailing certainty to the hive, laden with honey extracted from the nectaries of flowers, and pollen from their anthers, directs it also in selecting the plants suitable for its purpose, and in rejecting those which are pernicious or unproductive; and this discrimination the bee could exercise ages before the mind of man had elaborated the science which classifies plants according to their structure, and infers their qualities from their classification. În like manner, when the inhabitants of our island lived in huts of wattle and mud, painted their persons, and roamed about in the rude freedom of savage life, the THE WIG RIOT. In the year 1764, owing to changes in the fashion, people gave over the use of that very artificial appendage—the wig, and wore their own hair, when they had any. In consequence of this, the wig-makers, who had become very numerous in London, were suddenly thrown out of work, and reduced to great distress. For some time both town and country |