us back upon our steps, in contradiction to the order of nature, to imitate an inceptive government subsisting in rude and unlettered times; the other exhorts us to regard with such veneration as nature inculcates towards individual men, the constitution which our ancestors have formed in a course of successive experience. As we cannot repay this debt of gratitude to our forefathers, let us discharge our bosoms by emulating their virtue in our love to posterity, and our solicitude to send down to our children a constitution entire in its principles, but improved in its practice. Thus, like the ancient husbandman in Tully's Old-age, we must answer, to those who demand for whom we are planting our oak, "For posterity and the immortal gods."

No man, whose mind is properly constructed, can abstain from venerating the first struggles of an infant people towards obtaining a correcter libertyit is another thing to imitate their conceptions; this is a homage which no thinking person would wish to see paid to them; as well might we set about pulling down St. Paul's, to make room for a metropolitan church after the model of the ruin on Salisbury Plain. But though upon the whole, the Saxon legislature, as it appears by such records as we have, was very inadequate to the purposes of good government, and to restrain the disorders of social life; yet, as it is always safer to borrow from former establishments than to follow our own inventions, it is both natural and right to consult the practice of these early times, and to copy, but with discrimination, what examples they may happen to afford us for the benefit of our own.

It would be clearly according to the spirit of that government, for not only every copyholder, but

every householder, to have the privilege of voting for a member of the representative body. In respect to the copyholders, I own I see no colour of justice or reason in the exception; their place in society is among the most respected orders, and they are capable of serving their country in parliament. It seems, therefore, an inconsistency to deny them the full rights of citizens, and to depress them below every freeholder of forty shillings a year. On the other hand, I know of no good that can result to the government of this country from extending this privilege to every householder: this measure, instead of giving purity to our constitution, would be stirring up the bottom of the stream, to sully its waters and obstruct its course. In the mean time, the system of borough-representation is intolerably corrupt in itself, and the source of incredible dissipation and immorality among the lower orders. I build nothing on the impurity of its origin, as having had its beginning in the interested partiality of princes and nobles. If it be notoriously corrupt and rotten, it demands an effectual remedy at the hands of the British legislature.

No. 39. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2.

Intenti expectant signum.-

Eager they wait the sign.

VIRG. ÆN. V. 137.

I PROMISED my readers the conclusion of the contribution that was sent me on the subject of signs; they afford us a sort of information that connects itself with the history of the mind, and displays some of its strange wanderings and capricious combinations.

"The junction of many animals, utensils, &c. upon the same sign may be accounted for in different ways. Some appear to be put together merely for the sake of alliteration, as the Lamb and Lark, and the Goose and Gridiron ; a figure so degraded by the abuse of it in modern poetry, that at present it can hardly be dishonoured by any application. Others have a sort of connection, as the Fox and Goose, the Dog and Duck, and the Ship and Star. The Bolt and Tun I take to have been a rebus upon the owner's name; and many others, it is probable, may be accounted for in the same manner. The Cock and the Bottle has, I imagine, some connection with the transactions of the Cockpit. The Cat and Wheel is a corruption of Catherine Wheel. The Bull and Mouth, and the Bull and Gate, are well known to be corrupted from Boulogne Gate and Mouth, very fashionable signs at the time of taking that city from the French. Many of these junctions, otherwise very unaccountable, have been occa

sioned by the removal of landlords from one inn to another, who, unable to forget their local attachments, have frequently incorporated their new sign with that of their old habitation, however monstrous the union might be. Some such idea as this will help us to account for the good understanding that subsists in this new creation between beings which have seldom or never met in any other; as, the Lamb and Dolphin, the George and Blue Boar, the Cock and Rose, the Black Lion and three Beehives, and the Blue Mare and Magpie. Of this sort likewise is the celebrated Bell Savage inn on Ludgate Hill, the most ancient perhaps in the city of London. This sign has been the subject of various conjectures, many of them ingenious, but all erroneous. By some it is attributed to a lady of the name of Arabella Savage; others suppose it to allude to an old romance, and to be a corruption of La Belle Sauvage. The sign formerly represented a savage man standing by a bell; and the truth is, that it arose from an union of two inns which bore these respective signs. This piece of information I gained from an ancient record, in which it is described as the Savage Inn, alias the Bell upon the Hoop. There is reason for supposing that most signs consisted formerly of carved representations fixed upon a hoop; and several old books mention the Crown upon the Hoop; the Bunch of Grapes upon the Hoop, the Mitre upon the Hoop, and the Angel upon the Hoop. A sign of this nature is still preserved in Newport Street, and is a carved representation of a bunch of grapes hanging within a hoop. The Cock on the Hoop may be seen also in Holborn, painted on a board, to which perhaps it was transferred on the removal of sign-posts. It is probable also that this sign may have given rise to

"

the phrase of Cock a Hoop.' The Mitre near the Temple is still called, according to the old manner - of spelling, the Hope and Mitre;' though some of your readers will be disposed to put a more literal construction upon this sign, and judge the connection to be by no means unnatural.

"When a tradesman abandons his original calling, and enters into what is termed the public line, he frequently engrafts on the sign some allusion to his old occupation; a circumstance which has likewise proved a source of many ill-sorted couples, as the Magpie and Horseshoe, the Angel and Sugar-loaf, the Ship and Artichoke.

"A sign is sometimes an indication of the favourite pursuits and amusements of the landlord, or of the prevalent sports for many miles round; thus, the Ring of Bells, the Cricket Players, and suchlike diversions, are very common upon every road. The Hand and Flower prevails among florists; though I have seen this idea greatly improved upon, in the late king's reign, by an eminent gardener, who, being possessed of a beautiful carnation called after the queen, procured an accurate portrait of it, and, placing it at his door as a sign, wrote underneath, My Queen Caroline.'

"Among signs distinguished by their singularity, may be reckoned the Tumble-down Dick, in the Borough; the Old Taberd Inn, in the same place, celebrated in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; the Two Sneezing Cats, in Houndsditch; and the Four Winds. The Bag of Nails, at Pimlico, formerly called the Devil and Bag of Nails, has been supposed to have been a representation of Pan and the Bacchanalians. I have seen a book, however, wherein it is called the Blackamoor and the Woolpack, alias the Devil and Bag of Nails. The La