visibly dying, a friend met him, and said:
"Well, I am glad to see you better, alderman.
How are you, sir?"

Craddock shook his head, and laughed and
chuckled as he tapped his chest:

"Booked, sir, booked; but not directed."

The corporation of Salisbury in Craddock's
time were fond of their wine, and sometimes a
little too convivial. At the close of one great
Tory dinner an enthusiastic reveller (he ought
to have been a barber), to humour the fun of
the moment, took off his wig, and threw it on
the fire. The joke took, and was infectious;
one by one every wig followed, until a frizzling
pile had smoked upon the flames. The evening
went off; out sallied the bald corporation, bare as
billiard-balls; a tottering procession, that
Rowlandson's gross but droll pencil should have
immortalised.

On another occasion, two staid aldermen,
men of substance, portly, and usually grave
as church mice, were returning from a
corporation dinner, when, opposite a poulterer's
shop, a sudden whim struck one of the
two. On a slab in the front window lay two
fowls, white, plump, trussed, singed, and
powdered, ready for some prebendal spit. The
back parlour was closed by a glass partition,
behind which a light was visible. With sly
rapidity the elevated alderman snatched up the
fowls and propelled them through the glass at
the astonished poulterer and his wife, who
were at supper. They burst out angry and
storming. " A mere joke, madam," said the
alderman, taking off his hat—"a mere joke.
What's to pay ?"

In those simple and quiet times the corporation
was divided into two parties—the old-fashioned
men who wore the three-cornered cocked-hat,
and those who wore the low-crowned buttoned
hat. Politics ran high. No Tory, except by
accident, ever entered the Radical or
Revolutionary club, which Jacobins, followers of Tom
Paine, atheists, and members of the
Corresponding Society, were alone supposed to
frequent. On one occasion, an alderman, a
friend to the French revolution, happened, in
"a vinous flight," to stroll into the wrong
tavern, and fraternise with the wrong club.
The moment he had left, the chair which he
had desecrated was taken and broken up and
burned, by common consent.

When Alderman Loder, the stationer, banker,
and brother of the great surgeon, Sir Josiah
Loder, was mayor of Salisbury, the volunteers
of that town were very enthusiastic in their
military exercises. Engravings still extant
represent the worthy mayor as colonel of the
gallant Wiltshire regiment in full uniform, a
huge shako on his head, his calm face full of the
quiet energy of command, and an enormous
broad-bladed bare sword in his hand. When
the alarm of the French having landed, reached
Salisbury, the regiment turned out at a moment's
notice, sounded bugles, and away started the
volunteers on the Winchester-road, accomplishing
the twenty miles' march in an incredibly
short time. On catching sight of the town,
the colonel leaped over a gate, to show how
little he was fatigued. Alderman Loder's
bank broke eventually, entirely owing to his
carelessness in accounts, for there were good
assets. A Mr. Crofton, a lawyer of those days,
who had thirty thousand pounds in Loder's
bank, at the time the London agents became
involved was travelling on the Continent.
One day, at a table d'hôte in Germany, he
chanced to sit next an Englishman. The
conversation turned on home matters, and finally
on Wiltshire. The lawyer, with the true subtlety
of his profession, did not mention that he was a
Salisbury man, but talked of the country as a
casual visitor. The stranger grew friendly and
communicative over his wine, and disclosed the
news just then most upon his mind: "There is
going to be a grand burst up at Salisbury," he
said—"a tremendous burst up. Loder's bank
is going. I hear to-day that the London agents
will soon stop payment."The lawyer's heart
came into his mouth, but he gulped down some
wine, rose, thrust back his chair, and wished the
stranger good night. An hour afterwards, he had
started with post-horses on the road to France;
night and day he rode and drove, and then sped
across the Channel. From Dover he rushed to
London, and drew out his money. The camel
wanted but that last straw. The sudden
withdrawal of so large a sum broke the bank. On
his return to Salisbury, the lawyer instantly
went to inform his friend, Dr. Peters, of the
danger; but Dr. Peters—a stolid, eccentric,
stubborn man—would not believe it for a
moment. "Mere mare's nest, sir. Posh!
Break the Bank of England next. What!
Loder's bank go? Posh!" So, off went the
unbeliever to Mr. Loder's house in the Close: a
luxurious mansion, kept up in the best style.
There, he found Mr. Loder, dinner over, with no
wine before him, but a huge brown jug of ale, the
worthy banker's favourite beverage. Without
sitting down or shaking hands, Dr. Peters blurted
out his errand. "Why, Loder," he cried, " do
you hear the absurd report? They say your London
agents have failed." To the doctor's surprise
and horror, the banker looked up from his
tumbler quite unmoved, and said: "Oh, it's come
to that at last, has it?" The failure of the
bank, however, being chiefly the result of careless
accounts, Mr. Loder retired to his property in
Dorsetshire, with character unstained, to end
his days in a pleasant and refined retirement.

The canons, too, in those old times were
characters; sturdy hearty men, respectable
ceremonialists, good livers, proud of their cathedral
and their old port, keeping up a good hospitable
style of living, and fond of displaying it,
haters of radicals, good-naturedly tolerant of
the poor man, sticklers for precedent and social
distinctions, and fond of society. How trim
and luxuriously neat were those snug houses
in the Close, how snowy white the door-steps,
how glittering the knockers and bell-handles,
how gay the gardens, how like three-piled velvet
the green lawns, how pleasant the music oozing