t a stick laid down
there over-night shall not be found next morning for grass.

* * * * *

_St. Hellen's Well_, near Rushton Spencer, in Staffordshire, is
remarkable in superstitious history, for some singular qualities. It
sometimes becomes suddenly dry, after a constant discharge of water
for eight or ten years. This happens as well in wet as in dry seasons,
and always at the beginning of May, when the springs are commonly
esteemed highest; and so it usually continues till Martinmas, November
12, following. The people formerly imagined, that when this happened
there would soon follow some stupendous calamity of famine, war, or
some other national disaster, or change. It is said that it grew dry
before the civil war, and again before the beheading of Charles I.;
against the great scarcity of corn in 1670; and in 1679, when the
miscalled Popish plot was discovered; but we do not hear that St.
Hellen's Well withheld its supplies previous to, or upon, the breaking
out of the last calamitous war.

* * * * *

_Prodigious Elm_.--At Field, adjoining Rushton Spencer, grew a
prodigious witch elm, which was felled in 1680. Two able workmen were
five days in stocking or felling it. It was 120 feet in length; at the
butt-end it was seven yards in circumference; its girth was 25-1/2
feet in the middle. Fourteen loads of firewood, as much as six oxen
could draw, broke off in the fall; there were 47 loads more fire-wood
cut from the top; they were compelled to fasten two saws together, and
put three men to each end, to cut the body of it asunder. Out of this
tree were cut 80 pairs of naves for carriage-wheels, and 8,000 feet of
sawn timber in boards and planks, at six score per cent.--which, for
the sawing only, as the price of labour then was, came to the sum of
_12l_.

* * * * *

_Newcastle-under-Line._--The right of election in this borough has
been several times the subject of parliamentary investigation. At the
last inquiry, the greater part of the borough appeared to be the
property of the Marquess of Stafford; and it was found customary for
the burgesses to live ten, fifteen, and even twenty years in the
houses, without payment of rent!

* * * * *

_Monument to a Faithful Servant_.--In the church of King's Swinford,
Staffordshire, is a plain stone, erected by Joseph Scott, Esq., and
his wife,