The following is a specimen of an English
reciprocal verse by the poet Gascoigne.

     Lewd did I live, evil I did dwel.

Several writers have taken years of weary
labour, and have wasted ink and foolscap which
might have been put to a better purpose, in
order to prove things impossible of proof. They
have founded their preposterous labours on the
Old Testament. One of these, Hugh Broughton,
who lived in the time of James I., wrote a work
in which he discusses the colour of Aaron's
ephod, and the language spoken by Eve; also
frequent controversies took place as to the
season in which God made the world, and some
writers even settle the day and hour on which
Adam and Eve were created.

A climax of laborious trifling is reached by
the Irish antiquaries, who speak of antediluvian
public libraries. Paul Christian Ilsker gives a
catalogue of a library belonging to Adam!

ON THE GRAND JURY.

"KENT to wit. By virtue of a precept to me,
directed from the High Sheriff, I hereby
Summons and Warn you personally to appear at the
next Quarter Sessions, to be holden at Hopstone
on Thursday, the——of——, on the Grand
Jury, at Hall-past Ten of the Clock in the
forenoon of the above day. Hereof fail not. You
will be fined if you do not attend."

I am a mild, middle-aged gentleman, with a
small rural villa, and a wife, family, and servant
of similarly limited proportions; and this was
the awful document left one morning with an
imposing official double-knock, that threw my
diminutive household into that condition of
mind which I have seen described in the
newspapers as a state of the greatest alarm and
consternation. On returning from my customary
constitutional with that healthy glow which my
physician tells me is a satisfactory sign that I
am deriving direct benefit from my morning
walk and cool tankard of Kentish ale, I found
the features I had last seen beaming with placid
happiness darkened by clouds. There was
dismay on the face of the servant, who had
evidently got a notion that I was to be tried at the
Old Bailey forthwith for some dreadful offence,
and that my mildest fate would be banishment
for life to a penal settlement. There was a
timorous dread among my children (who are
deeply read in English history) that I had been
guilty of high treason, and that I was about to
be led forth for immediate execution on Tower-
hill. There was a painful apprehension on the
part of my wife that I was to be torn from her
for an indefinite period and locked up without
my usual carefully prepared meals, and after-
supper comforts of a glass of grog and a cigar,
until I should have been compelled at starvation
point to render up my independence, and agree
to whatever terms rny obstinate fellow-prisoners
might choose to impose. For myself, I received
the summons to serve my country as a good
citizen should; and, though I had never before
been called upon to appear in the elevated
capacity then impending, I was imbued with
enough of that proper patriotic pride, which
should exist in the breast of every Englishman,
to feel resolved to discharge, at any cost of self-
sacrifice, the claims of one of our oldest and
finest institutions. An institution, sir, as I
observed at the last annual dinner of our local
society for " Advancing Universal Progression,"
that must be remembered as the palladium of
our liberty and the glorious birthright of every
free-born Briton.

I will candidly admit, in strict confidence,
that my notions of the ordeal I had to go
through, were not of the clearest. I will further
confess that I privately looked into a cheap
encyclopaedia to discover, if possible, under the
head " Jury, Grand," what might be expected
from me, and, finding no kind of information
calculated to be of the slightest service, that I
borrowed a few legal volumes from a neighbour,
whose late lodger had left them behind in
discharge of a little liability for rent. I shall not
inflict the result of my researches on the reader,
nor lead him into the mazes of controversy
whether grand juries were established before the
Conquest; nor shall I mention so much as the
name of King Æthelred; nor relate that in the
first volume of Mr. Thorpe's Ancient Laws and
Institutes it is written, according to his version,
"And the twelve senior thanes go out, and the
reeve with them, and swear on the relic that is
given to them in hand that they will accuse no
innocent man nor conceal any guilty one." I
found reason to believe that the said relic had not
been handed down to my day, that the reeve had
gone with the relic, and that, though an elderly
gentleman, I should not be recognised as a senior
thane. So I abandoned my inquiries in despair.

The county town of Hopstone was to be
reached by railway in about an hour; but,
mistrustful of my abilities for early rising, I thought
it advisable to store my carpet-bag with a few
essentials for such an expedition as I was about
to undertake, and set forth overnight, that I
might be ready in the coolest manner to
discharge my patriotic duties in the morning.
Accordingly, in the close of the summer twilight
preceding the eventful day, I found myself (with
a greatly increased sense of my own importance,
as one who had the laws of his land to
administer) solemnly walking down the High-
street of Hopstone, and regarding with
becoming reverence the stately town-hall.

There was a rather discouraging absence of
excitement about the town, and I had no distinct
proof afforded me that my arrival caused any
sensation; but I attributed this to the fact that
the inhabitants were unconscious of the
distinguished position I was shortly to take amongst
them. Business appeared to be going on as
usual, and, as I advanced more into the heart
of the town, I found the shop shutters were
being elevated with a proper regard for early
closing, but with a careless whistling
accompaniment that was hardly the kind of prelude I
might have expected to the formal opening of