JUST JUDGMENT. A GOOD JUDGE, AND A GOOD JURY. It is of most essential importance to the due administration of justice that juries should be sensible of their own dignity; and, when occasion requires, that they should not implicitly and servilely bow to the opinion of any judge, however high he may be held in estimation. An instance of the beneficial result of a jury asserting, in a respectful manner, the privilege of having an opinion of their own, occurred, not at the assizes now holding, but not very long ago. Two men were indicted for a bur glary: after the counsel for the prosecution had opened, the amiable and learned judge who presided, addressing the jury, said, “Gentlemen, there does not appear to me any probability that a case of burglary can be made out against the prisoners, it is therefore needless to occupy your time any further." The jury having, however, conferred for a short time, the foreman replied, "With perfect deference to your lordship's opinion we should rather prefer hearing the evidence." To this his lordship readily assented: the case went on, and the guilt of the prisoners was proved beyond the possibility of a doubt. After the verdict was returned, the learned judge said, "Well, gentlemen of the jury, I will not say that you are better lawyers than I am, but I am quite sure that in the present instance you have proved yourself to be better judges."* OLD ENGLISH ALE. About 1620 some doctors and surgeons, during their attendance on an English gentleman, who was diseased at Paris, discoursed on wines and other beverages; and one physician, who had been in England, said, "The English had a drink which they call ale, and which he thought the wholesomest liquor that could be drank; for whereas the body of man is supported by natural heat and radical moisture, there is no drink conduceth more to the preser vation of the one, and the increase of the other, than ale: for, while the Englishmen drank only ale, they were strong, brawny, able men, and could draw an arrow an ell long; but when they fell to wine and beer, they are found to be much impaired in their strength and age:" and so the ale bore away the bell among the doctors.† Times, August 27, 1827. "You must be old?" said Napoleon. "Yes, I am either sixty or seventy." "Why, colonel, you have certainly lived little more closely?" long enough to know how to count years a reckon my money, my shirts, and my horses; "General," said the Hungarian, "I but as for my years, I know that nobody will want to steal them, and that I shall never lose one of them!" If you mean to buy a house that you intend to alter and improve, be sure to double the tradesman's estimate. YOUR STAIRCASE. Paint the steps a stone colour; it will save scouring and soap. HOUSEKEEPING. If you are in trade keep no more houses than you can support; a summer-house and a winter-house have forced many a man into a poor-house. ENOUGH SHOULD SUFFICE. A man who has obtained a competency, and ventures upon a speculation that may be capable of consuming all that he has already got, stakes ease and comfort against beggary and disgrace. LOQUACITY. A gossip has no home. to obtain a sight of the "noted Captain Cooke, all alive! alive!"-the most public, and not the least important officer of its lively corporation. A tract, published without a title-page, yet symbolically, as it were, bearing a sort of half-head, whereby it is denominated "A Pamphlet called Old England for Ever!" is the production of captain Cooke himself; and a lithographed print represents that "noted" personage "drawn from nature," in his full costume, as "Captain of the Sheriffs troop at 74 assizes for the county of Devon." An engraving from the print is at the head of this article; the original is "published by George Rowe, 38, Paris-street, Exeter," price only a shilling. The present representation is merely to give the reader some notion of the person of the captain, previously to introducing so much of his particular confession, life, character, and behaviour," as can be extracted from his aforesaid printed narrative. The tract referred to, though denominated "Old England for Ever," seems intended to memorialize" Captain Cooke-for ever." Aspiring to eclipse the celebrated autobiography of "P. P. Clerk of this Parish," the captain calls his literary production" a pamphlet of patriotic home achievements during the late direful war from 1793 to 1815;" and, accordingly, it is a series, to adopt his own words, of "twenty-two years multifarious but abridged memoirs, novelties, anecdotes, genealogy, and bulletins, by the author's natural instinct." The first most important information resulting from the captain's "natural in stinct," is this that "the duke of Wellington, marshal Blucher, the allied officers, and armies, defeated the atheist, the enemy of the Sabbath and of peace to the world, on Sunday, 18th of June 1815, at half after eight o'clock in the evening:" which day the captain, therefore, calls "an indelible day;" and says, 66 I built a cottage that year, and have a tablet over my doorWaterloo Cottage, in memory of Europe's victory, Sunday, 18th June, 1815; and I went to Wellington-hill to see the foundation-stone laid for a Wellington column, in honour of the duke. So much for Buonaparte's fanfaronade! -At daybreak of the 15th of July, he (Buonaparte) surrendered himself to the English captain Maitland, of the Bellerophon-an appropo name to the refugee. I was called up the next morning at one o'clock; I wrote twenty letters to country gentlemen of the O!-be-joyful news, by the same morning's post. I have been often called up on express news.' From hence may be deduced the value of the captain and his opinions in the city of Exeter; and, no doubt, due importance will be attached to his proposition, that parliament should always meet of a Friday or Saturday, and prorogue of a Monday, to prevent sabbath-breaking as little as possible;" and that "the mails should be prohibited from blowing their horns in the dead of the night or morning, in towns or villages." It was contemplated to carry these measures into effect by joint stock companies, wherein all the captain's friends were shareholders, when the " panic” came down from London by an opposition coach, and destroyed public confidence in the captain's plans. They are noticed here in the order wherein he states them himself; and, pursuing the like order, it is proper to state, in the first place, something of the house wherein this self-eminent person was born; then, something respecting "Ashburton Pop" and, lastly, something respecting his apprenticeship, and his services as a loyal man and a saddler to "the city of Exeter, and the corporation and trade thereof." "I was born,"says the captain," at the Rose and Crown public-house on the old bridge, in the borough town of Ashburton, 1765; where à good woollen-manufactory has been carried on; and it has produced a great character, or so, for learning :" and "has been as famous for a beverage, called Ashburton Pop, as London is for porter. I recollect its sharp feeding good taste, far richer than the best small beer, more of the champaign taste, and what was termed a good sharp bottle. When you untied and hand-drew the cork, it gave a report louder than a pop-gun, to which I attribute its name; its contents would fly up to the ceiling; if you did not mind to keep the mouth of the stone bottle into the white quart cup, it filled it with froth, but not over a pint of elear liquor, Three old cronies would sit an afternoon six hours, smoke and drink a dozen bottles, their reckoning but eight-pence each, and a penny for tobacco. The pop was but twopence a bottle. It is a great novel loss to the town; because its receipe died with its brewer about 1785." Mr. Charter, whom I succeeded when I came of age, and have lived in the same house thirty-seven years, up to 1817, where my son now lives, under the firm of Cooke and Son." He evidently takes great pleasure in setting forth the names of his customers; and he especially relates, "I got to be saddler, through the late Charles Fanshawe, recorder of Exeter, to the late lord Elliott Heathfield, colonel of dragoons. His lordship was allowed to be one of the first judges of horses and definer of saddlery in the kingdom; his lordship's saddlehouse consisted from the full bristed to the demy pick, shafto, Hanoverian, to the Dutch pad-saddles; and from the snaffle, Pelham, Weymouth, Pembroke, Elliott, Mameluke, and Chifney bridles. Chifney was groom to the prince regent. Besides all this, the vast manage horse-tackling, tomies, dumb-jockies, hobbles, lunging, lifting, and side reins. His lordship's saddle and riding-house was a school for a saddler and dragoon. And I had the honour of being saddler to other colonels of dragoons, connoisseurs of saddlery, when they were at Exeter quarters." Here the captain's enthusiasm increases: "I could write," says he, "a treatise on all the parts of the bearings and the utility of all the kinds of saddles, bridles, stirrups, and harness-collars, made for the last thirty years, for the benefit of horse or rider; from the bullock-back horse to the finest withered." With just judgment, while on the saddle, the captain expatiates on the mode of riding to the best advantage. "As is said, keep your head cool, feet warm, and live temperate, and you won't need the doctor, without something is amiss; so let your saddle clear your finger with all your weight in the stirrups going down hill; the same on the hind part with all your weight on the seat going up hill; you won't need the saddler without something is amiss." A miss is as good as a mile, and the captain diverges to a "great mystery," which must be related in his own words: "The great mystery to know a horse's age is between five and eight years old. A horse may live to thirty; but not one out of a thousand but what are worked out of their lives at fifteen. From their sucking first teeth, they loose, and get their perma, nent teeth at five years old; at six they have a small pit-hole, a bean's eye, a cavity in two of their outer lower teeth; at seven they have this mark but in one, the outside tooth; at eight years old the teeth are all filled up; then the mark is out of the mouth. But dealers and judges look to the upper teeth; there is a mark to twelve years old, but no vestige afterward. An old horse has long large teeth, worn off on the top edge. The prime of a horse is between six and twelve years of age. He is weak and faint before six, and stiff and dull after twelve. Some say a horse is out of mark at seven; but it is at eight. The average age of horses is at twelve years the average of man not at the half of his time appointed on earth!" To a posey of poesy, occupying nearly a page in this part of the pamphlet, it is impossible to do justice with equal satisfaction to the reader and the captain; yet, in courtesy, it is proper to cull a twig, Or two, to stick about his wig. As a specimen of the materials whereon he relies for a laurel crown, the following lines are drawn out from his "snarl" of versifyings :— As few began the world, so I multiplied. After this poetical effusion the captain rises to "the height of his great argument," his undying doings. "Now," says the captain," now for my sixty home achievements during the late war for my king and country." Alas! the captain seems to have disdained the "use of numbers," except when inspired by the muses, or the "sweet voices" of the people of Exeter, when they, honoured him with a "Skimmington,' which he passes over with a modesty equal to that of the Roman general who never mentioned his great ovation. The captain's "sixty achievements are doubtless in his pamphlet; but they in “ wrong order go,' and are past the arithmetician's art to enumerate. The chief of them must be gathered from his own account. Foremost stands "the labour I took in pleasing and accommodating my customers;" and almost next, "the many hours I have knocked my head, as it were, against Samuel John son, to find words for handbills and advertisements all at my own expense, to avoid inflammatory pamphlets. I gloried in the name of John Bull,' and shall to my life's end. I went into the pot-houses at Exeter, and treated with mugs round, and gave loyal toasts and sentiments. I became a volunteer in the infantry, before the cavalry were equipped by my brother tradesmen, that they should not say my loyalty was for trade. After this, I joined the second troop of the first Devon Royal Cavalry. One of my advertisements in the difficult times, at a guinea each, in the Exeter, Sherborne, and Sun, which was then the ministerial paper, was reprinted for its loyalty and novelty in Philadelphia, and in two miscellaneous volumes of Literary Leisure, by Solomon Sumpter, Esq.; and from the attention I paid to the nobility, gentry, dragoon and militia officers, &c. when they tarried at Exeter or its neighbourhood, it was a pleasure and an honour mixed with fatigue. Besides my own business, I procured for them, gratis, manors, estates, houses, lodgings, carriages, horses, servants, fish, fowl, hunting, shooting, and trout fishing. I may say John Cooke, the saddler of Exeter, is known from England to the Indies; on the Continent, Ireland, in Scotland, by the lord chief baron Dundas, from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Penzance. I had two direction-posts at my door during the war, that no one had in the kingdom beside; one to the various places and distances, from Exeter to London 170 miles, &c. &c.; the other a large sheet of paper written as a daily monitor gratis, a bulletin of news, to cheer people in the worst of times, to guide them in the constitutional road. I even made myself a direction-post, and wore a conspicuous breastplate painted with this motto, Fear God, honour the king, and revere his ministers; which made not only the auditory, but the judges, sheriff, and counsel stare at me. I went from Exeter to London, to the funeral of lord Nelson, the late hero of the Nile, in 1805." The truth of the latter of the captain's achievements" nobody can deny." He did go to the funeral, and sat on a wall in solemn silence, fast asleep, while it passed, and then returned to Exeter, great as the great Bourbon, who with forty thousand men, Went up the hill, and then came down again. From hence the captain diverges to other of his achievements. "I used to rise, before we had firemen, at the dead of night or morning with my apprentices at any alarm of fire, desiring all women, children, and lookers on, if they did not help they were of harm, being in the way. I put in my bulletins, you are to take the left of all you meet in riding, and the right in walking. I was the means of the watering cart to lay the dust of the streets in summer. I have subscribed to all the institutions at Exeter, and at rejoicings of news I was not behindhand. When I saw the allied sovereigns in London, I compared colonel Hain of the North Devon, if he wore mustachios, to marshal Blucher, who came forward to his window at signals; Mr. Chubb, of St. Thomas, Exeter, and Mr. Gribble, attornies, of Newton Bushel, to the emperor Alexander in face; the king of Prussia and his sons like healthy English country esquires in their best clothes. I saw the duke of Wellington, who looked thinner than his picture. I saw Buonaparte at Torbay, exact like his picture; a huge stiff broad back, strong neck, big calf to his legs, he looked about fifty, and about five feet eight, resembling a country master builder, a sturdy one, full of thought as about a building.-I end this pamphlet. Four words: thought is the quickest; time the wisest ; the laws of necessity the strongest; truth the most durable. "This from a Devonshire Jog-trot, who has done enough to be termed a public character in his way; a John Bull trades"JOHN COOKE." man. "Waterloo Cottage, 18th Feb. 1819." So end the achievements of the chief of the javelin-men of Exeter, written by himself, concerning whom, give me leave, Mr. Editor, to inquire, if there be any thing more to be told than is set down in his book. I think that captain Cooke's Skimmington" took place after he favoured the public with appearing in print; and I remember to have heard that the procession was highly ludicrous, and honoured by every shop in the High-street of Exeter being closed, and every window above being filled. I may venture to affirm in behalf of your readers, that an account of it would be highly amusing; and if it be agreeable to your inclination, as I think it may, that such a narrative of the recent celebration of a very ancient custom should be permanently recorded, do me the favour to let me express an earnest hope that some of your Exeter readers will enable you to give particulars in the Table Book. I. V. [Communications respecting the ceremony referred to in the preceding letter will be very acceptable, and are therefore solicited,-EDITOR.] |