* * * * *


CURIOUS EXTRACTS FROM CURIOUS AUTHORS, FOR CURIOUS READERS.

(_For the Mirror_.)


Hollingshed, who was contemporary with Queen Elizabeth, informs us,
"there were very few chimneys (in England in his time) even in the capital
towns; the fire was laid to the wall, and the smoke issued out at the
roof, or door, or window. The houses were wattled, and plastered over
with clay, and all the furniture and utensils were of wood. The people
slept on straw pallets, with a log of wood for a pillow."

Cambrensis, Bishop of St. David's, says, "It was the common vice of the
English, from their first settlement in Britain, to expose their children
and relations to sale;" and it also appears, "that the wife of Earl
Godwin, who was sister to Canute, the Danish King of England, made great
gain by the trade she made of buying up English youths and maids to sell
to Denmark."

Lord Bacon in his Apophthegms, says, "Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester,
in a famine, sold all the rich vessels and ornaments of the church, to
relieve the poor with bread; and said, 'There was no reason that the dead
temples of God should be sumptuously furnished, and the living temples
suffer penury.'" Ingulphus tells us, "For want of parchment to draw the
deeds upon, great estates were frequently conveyed from one family to
another, only by the ceremony of a turf and a stone, delivered before
witnesses, and without any written agreement." Andrews, in his History of