liberties were established. Mr. Simon Littleworth, the father of the present Farmer Littleworth, loved getting money to his heart, but could not bear to spend it, even on a decent education for his children. He died about the year 1776, leaving a fortune among his children of about three hundred and fifty pounds each, entailing also upon them all the prejudices of an unhappy day and generation, conceiving higher notions of the religion of Dr. Sachevereil✶ than of that of Jesus Christ and his Apostles. According therefore to all probable circumstances, Farmer Littleworth would never have submitted to have heard the gospel, if he had not first heard it in a church. But the farmer, though still a churchman, was now happily delivered from the trammels of his former education, and began to entertain equal love to Christians of all denominations: yet not so the rest of the family, which now consisted only of himself, and two sisters; his elder brother and a sister having been dead some years ago. His elder sister, Polly, was the exact counterpart of Miss Polly, to whom she stood godmother. She was, in her younger days, so self-willed and perverse, that no person could ever venture to ask her the question, if she chose to alter her state; which also, by general report, will probably be the fate of the god-daughter, as well as the aunt. The farmer's sister continued to live in the neighbourhood of Mapleton ill she was near sixty; but on Dr. Sacheverell was the high church champion in the days of Queen Anne. He was impeached by the commons for his seditious high church principles; his sermon was ordered to be burnt, while he himself was suspended from his ministry for three years. account of the pressure of the times, has lately removed further north, to make a joint purse with another old maiden lady, known by the name of Madam Vixen. And though she was Miss Polly all the time she continued near her brother, yet since her remove she has submitted, though with some regret, to the graver appellation of Mrs. Mary. Thus convenience has brought those two old ladies together; though they are the frequent cause of vexation to each other, yet hereby they are just able to keep a maid servant between them, who is generally changed about six times in the year. Madam Vixen is often accustomed to boast that she had a superior education; and therefore attempts to correct Mrs. Mary for her vulgarity of expression; and also that her family was of much better blood than the family of the Littleworths. This is a frequent cause of mortification to Mrs. Mary, who plies her in return for her family pride and self conceit. Thus alternately they irritate and vex each other, till they make themselves so peevish and fretful thereby, that they scarcely exchange a word for several days together. During these intervals of ill humour, there are frequent threats of separation, till these little fracas are settled by the neighbouring gossips bringing them some new tales of the affairs of the neighbourhood, which they delight to hear, retail, and exaggerate. Then an innocent game at cards again sets them a quarrelling, and makes them guilty of the same sort of conduct against each other. Thus they rub on together from time to time: yet, if their dispositions are dissimilar in some instances, in others they are perfectly alike. In point of religion they are precisely agreed ; for, though they seldom trouble the church but when the weather is very fine, yet they do their duty in reading the Psalms and Lessons at home: while two or three times a year they submit to the penance of a gloomy week of preparation before they receive the holy sacrament; which is seldom done unless on the great festivals. But in nothing are they more similar than in their belief of various signs, and omens, and prognostications; on which they are ever exercising their minds, and tormenting each other, under the expectation of the most gloomy events. The prognostications of Moore's almanack are always received and read by them with prodigious avidity and glee; and though they are aware that the first Francis Moore, the original physician and astrologer, must long ago have been dead; yet they have no doubt but that the present Francis Moore is as much a real character, and a far wiser astrologer than his father; he being also the seventh son of his father, who was himself a seventh son. How far it was done with a design to impose on the credulity of the old ladies might be difficult to say; yet they seem fully persuaded that the present Francis Moore has also a seventh son, who, though but young, is now studying both physic and astrology in the town of Utopia, in the north of Ireland; and they have no doubt but that he is born to possess so supreme a degree of knowledge, by investigating the configurations of the stars, that he will be able to read the history of all future events beforehand, both private and public, as plainly as he can now read his A, B, C ; and that he will as far outshine those great luminaries, Count Swedenburgh, Mr. Brothers, and some other prophesiers on our late public events, as the vast Knowledge of a Newton outshines the intellectual powers of a goose*. Mrs. Mary, it seems, some years ago, in one of her superstitious fits, and wishing for some foresight as it respected herself, sent a guinea to the astrologer that he might-cast her nativity; and the prognosti cation was, that she was to be married to a surgeon. Through this unfortunate circumstance, she set her cap at every surgeon and apothecary for miles round the neighbourhood. She once went so far as to feign herself sick, that she might have an excuse to send for one of the gentlemen of the faculty: and though she gave him to understand how matters had been predicted respecting her future life; yet, alas! such was the Doctor's incredulity, that notwithstanding the prognostication, he could not believe that he was to be the man. No one can wonder that these ladies, who are so fond of hearing and telling "Old wives fables," and of attending to such absurdities, should also give way to all sorts of fears and apprehensions arising from other causes the most superstitious and absurd. Hence it is that they are kept in perpetual alarm; at one time by the death-watch, at another time by the croaking of a raven, or the screeching of an owl; then again by the winding-sheet in the candle, and a variety of such other absurdities; as though the all-wise God had given a commission to *Nothing can equal the sad disaster that must have attended the prognostications of this famous astrologer in the esteem of his admirers, in his political predictions on the two last years. On the year 1802 the predictions were all for bloodshed and war; and when war returned, for 1803, all his prophecies ran in favour of peace. In some former editions, these prophecies were presented to the reader more at large; but a page filled with such silly prognostications would as soon get out of date as the almanacks themselves. spiders, owls, and ravens, and even to tallow candles, to instruct mankind in the knowledge of different future events. This unfortunate turn of mind, however, had once proved nearly fatal, not only to the comfort, but the very life of Madam Vixen. She heard, three or four times, her chamber-bell ring, as it was supposed, of its own accord. This brought to her recollection the story of her grandmother's death, which was foretold by some such event three weeks before the time. She therefore possitively concluded that within that period she was to depart. This so worked upon her imagination as to bring on a serious illness. The apothecary was sent for only out of form, as she concluded it could be of no avail; the lawyer attended to alter and finish her will; and the poor clergyman, though as ill liked as the rest of his brethren, was sent for to prepare her for her change, and to fit her for the final reception of the holy sacrament; which it was her design to have received a day or two before her departure, which seemed for a while more fully confirmed by another event dreadfully similar to the former. Madam Vixen and her nurse one night evidently heard a bell ring, as though it had been from under the ground; but the fears excited * Some naturalists are of opinion that the death-watch is not the spider, but another much smaller insect, found in the wood of old houses. Then tell all your grannies it is a wood worm, With teeth or with claws it will bite or will scratch, Then woe be to those in the house who are sick; P |