magistrate, and was respected greatly by his
fellow-citizens. One day there was a case of
homicide to be tried, and he told his wife that
he should like something specially nice for
dinner, because there was a case of homicide to
be tried, and he should be tired and need
comfort. He went to church, and coming home
again, before going to take his seat among the
judges, looked into the pantry to see what had
been got for dinner. Now his wife had been
getting a calf's head, because that was a
favourite dish of his. But the head seemed to
him to be the bloodless head of a dead man. He
turned away with horror. His wife showed him
his error, but he went into court strongly
moved, and when, in opening the proceedings,
the law against homicide and the doom of
murder had been read out, he rose and said,
"By that doom I must die." Then he told from
his seat as a magistrate the story of the murder
he had himself long since committed. All
declared that his self-accusation was a freak of
insanity, for what man in the town was kinder
and more honoured than he, what man less
likely to be a murderer? He replied urgently
that it was not insanity but conscience, that his
future life was lost if he did not make in this
world full atonement for his crime. He told on
what spot he had not only slain the merchant,
but had also buried him, and he asked that the
scaffold for his own execution might be built
over his victim's grave. The place was searched,
the body found, and over the place of its burial
they struck off the head of the man whom a
white calf's head, seen in the gloom of his
pantry, had thus sent to confession.

Men will be gentle, generous, in love and
honour with the world, while they have great
crimes on their souls; and they will quarrel also
about nothing. Two disputants, one drunk, one
sober, were brought before Martin Luther.
"Are you a Lutheran?" asked the drunken man
of the other. "I am a Martinist," he answered.
Upon which both drew their swords, and they
could hardly be restrained from killing one
another because, zealous both for Martin Luther,
one called himself Martinist, the other Lutheran.
So men will often quarrel about mere words,
said Melander.

But there are names and names, and stones
and stones. The same names and the same
stones do not meet always the same fate.
Happy the stones, said Protarchus, of which
images are made. They are set up on the altars,
and we kneel to them. While other stone of
the same rock is trodden under foot and spat
upon.

Melander tells ghost stories from Pliny, of the
miserable old man in heavy chains who beckoned
to the place where his body had been left dead,
chained and unburied; and of the hair-cutting
ghosts whose hair-cutting was only a vague sign
of danger. Also of the image of a friend
recently dead that got into a man's bed and crept
close to him, and had feet colder than ice. And
this reminds one of another unpleasant story,
which our friend quotes from Erasmus, of a toad
that came and sat on a monk's mouth after he
had gone to bed. It fixed its claws in the
monk's upper and lower lips. To pull it away
was poison, and to let it sit was suffocation.
The monk's friends decided to carry him as he
lay to the window, where there was a great
spider, and place his head under the spider's
web. The spider attacked the toad, and his first
attack made the toad swell, but did not make
it loose its hold; the second attack made it
swell yet more, but did not kill it. After the
third attack the toad unfixed its claws and died.
So the spider paid the clergy for its lodging.

PULL DEVIL, PULL BAKER.

THIS old saying would appear to imply that
there is a perpetual contest between Devil and
Baker. The poor Baker gets the worst of the
struggle, to the best of our making out, even
down to this hour.

The bakers, poor fellows! do indeed lead an
unnatural life. Donald Mackenzie (for the
bakehouses are strong in Scotchmen) is at work
when we are asleep, and when he ought to be
asleep. Like many other men employed in
monotonous labour, his pay is rather small; but
the worst of it is that his working hours are
filtered through the whole of the twenty-four
in each day, in such a way as to forbid a good,
sound, honest sleep of several hours' duration.
His sleep is brief, broken, hot, stuffy, unwholesome.
He is trying whether parliament can
help him; but it is only some of the minor
parts of the evil that can be reached in this
way. Raw young men cross the Tweed
southward, and keep the market always
supplied with persons willing to enter a bakehouse
at low wages. The journeymen bakers are
many thousand strong (or weak?) in the
metropolis alone; and they certainly ought to get
into a decent mode of life.

It is not at all probable that London bread
was baked during the night in old times.
Families baked bread at home much more than
they do now, and the establishment of bakers'
shops was consequently exceptional. When
people had faith in the paternal relation between
the governors and the governed, and in the
fitness and power of the governors to determine
prices, the bakers were under regular
supervision as to their charges. The price of bread
was determined by that of wheat, and the weight
of the loaf was made to vary as the price of
wheat varied; this rule, called the assize of bread,
remained in force during many centuries. In
the time of Henry the Seventh, when a penny
was a mighty coin in value, the size or weight
of a penny loaf was authoritatively determined at
Michaelmas, according to the price of wheat, in a
way that settled exactly what amount of profit the
bakers should obtain; and that weight remained
in force for twelve months. From the time of
Queen Anne until that of George the Fourth, the
municipal authorities of any town had the power
of determining the price of bread, not according