of these instruments is specially favourable. It
is attended also by the love of authorship, with
the tolerable certainty that the composition will
be received with a favour and consideration it
could not obtain under other circumstances,
and when dealing with less important matters.
When the testator takes pen in hand, the
temptation is to enlarge on his own piety
that is, on his own personal defects and
shortcomings—but as it were challenging
contradiction. The feeling in the reader's mind is to be,
"Here is this rich man, yet how humble, how
good, how he acknowledges his faults!" Of
this pattern, too, are the testators who bequeath
trifling articles, each accompanied with a sort
of homily supposed to be of far greater value.
Here, again, in dealing with the reception of
both these articles, a Molière or Balzac has the
most delightful field for dramatic effect, in the
disgust and impatience of the legatee, and the
struggle between a decent deportment, and
disappointment. Thus, a Yorkshireman, Mr.
North, who died in 1773, went into an elaborate
catalogue of pennyworth trifles, ballasted
by an intolerable quantity of what he thought
sack. " I give," said this gentleman, "to
Mrs. R. G., my English walnut bureau, made
large to contain clothes, but hope she will not
forget when she makes use of it that graces and
virtue are a lady's most ornamental dress." We
may conceive the toss of the head and
contemptuous sniff with which this double present
was received; with, perhaps, a " like his
impudence! his old trumpery rattletrap!" If
testators are sincere in wishing their parting
advice to go home and benefit the recipient,
they must surely know that their best chance is
to balance it handsomely; just as a person
wishing to send a note over a wall to a
prisoner wraps a heavy stone up in it. This
gentleman also gave his old sword to a lieutenant,
"hoping, if ever occasion require it, he will
convince a rash world he has learnt to obey his
God as well as his general." No doubt the
officer welcomed this present with the choice
words then fashionable in the army. Having
disposed of his property, the testator then
took "this opportunity of expressing my gratitude
to the Grand Original Proprietor," a
phrase that recals the speech of a strolling
manager which the writer once heard, and
who, in announcing the fresh engagements he
proposed making, devotionally qualified his
intentions, by submission to the decrees of  "The
Great Manager of All!"  " All my faults and
follies," goes on the testator, " almost infinite
as they have been, I leave behind me, with
wishes that they may be buried. My infant
graces and embryo virtues are, I trust, gone
before me into heaven." This is a faithful
precedent.

One would have liked a peep into the wicked
old heart of a certain Lambeth parishioner, who
died in 1772, and in whose fingers the pen must
have quivered with rage and senile spite. No
doubt the revenge was unfelt by its object, who
must have long since given up all hope of
receiving anything from his bounty, as indeed he
also knew. He—and people like him—had
only the bare satisfaction of a profitless spite.
"Whereas," wrote this precious testator, " it
was my misfortune to be made very uneasy by
Elizabeth G., my wife, for many years, by her
turbulent behaviour, for she was not content
with despising my admonition, but she
contrived every method to make me unhappy. She
was so perverse in her nature that she would
not be reclaimed, but seemed only to be born
to be a plague to me. The strength of Samson,
the knowledge of Homer, the prudence of
Augustus, the cunning of Pyrrhus, the
patience of Job, the subtilty of Hannibal, and
the watchfulness of Hermogenes, could not
have been sufficient to subdue her. And as we
have lived separate and apart from each other
eight years, and she having perverted her son
to leave and totally abandon me, therefore I
give her one shilling only." The shilling thus
contemptuously left was not meant, as is
sometimes supposed, as a compliance with the letter
of some obsolete legal form, which required
that the object should be mentioned, in some
shape, in the will. It was meant as an evidence
that the testator was aware of what he was
doing, and had not omitted the person thus
marked out, through forgetfulness.

An old Welshman, Mr. Morgan, within two
years of a hundred, left all he had to his " old
faithful housekeeper," with, however, this good-
humoured "hit" at her. "She is a tolerably
good woman, but would be much better if she
had not so clamorous a tongue."

That wealthy Mrs. Gatford, of Horsham,
who died in 1799, was certainly " odd" during
the later years of her life. For twenty years
she had never gone out once, and though she
kept a carriage, it was seen gradually rotting
away in the coach-house until it fell to pieces.
Her horses lived luxuriously all that time,
enjoying the richest pastures, and doing as they
pleased. But, at the end, the main portion of
her will was found to be sane enough, as she
left nearly all to the poor, with the exception
of fifteen pounds a year for the support of her
cats and dogs. She was of the class that is
morbidly solicitous as to what is done with
their remains, a feeling that is intelligible if
not pushed too far, as in the present instance.
She ordered that her remains were to be kept
a whole month in her room, and to be
diligently washed in spirits every night to keep
away decomposition. She was to be then laid
in no less than four coffins, and the outer one
was to be of marble. All these directions were
strictly carried out. Even this feeling, morbid
as it is, is more excusable than that of the man
who " does not care what is done with his
carcase," and says they "may throw him out on
a dunghill if they like." We can understand,
too, the feeling that thinks of " a sweet spot"
under trees or aisles, and longs to be laid
there, but scarcely that selfishness which
imposes upon sorrowing relatives the weary duty
of gratifying a whim, and of bearing away the
dead to some distant spot in a foreign land,
which was once seen and fancied. No one can
conceive the inconvenience, misery, and cost of
these mortuary shifting deportations. The wish