he stomach: the heart, remained true, but the stomach turned.
At this the patient commenced cursing, swearing, and blaspheming, in a way
which will be found fully detailed with all due dashes --! --! --! &c. &c.
in the last number of a Northern magazine. "Zounds!" cried he, starting up
on his _seant_--"Who are you? who sent for you? May the fiends catch you
and cleave to you for ever! Give us the hips! a small glass of brandy! ha!
ha! ha! O my back! D--n all doctors! Here am I stung and tortured with
_gastritis, hepatitis, splenitis, nephritis, epistaxis, odontalgia,
cardialgia, diarhoea,_ and a whole legion of devils with Latin names! D--n
all doctors again, say I!" And with this exclamation, he hurled a curious
crown of crockery at my head, which fitted on so tightly, that only by
breaking it, could I disengage myself from the delfic diadem. I hastily
ran down stairs, and, meeting the man of six and forty in the passage, I
inquired of him very minutely concerning the state of his master. He
answered all my questions with perfect candour, and not without a certain
archness of look and manner rather unusual among men of six and forty in
his rank of life. From all I elicited, and also from certain corroborative
proofs, which I do not think it necessary now to specify, I have no
hesitation in declaring, for the information of the profession to which I
do not belong, and of the public generally, that in this case my abstruse
remedies had not a fair trial, inasmuch as the patient's state was
vulgarly simple. He had been _drunk_ the night before!

J. ST. J.L.

_Fraser's Magazine_.

* * * * *

RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.

HISTORY OF THE PENNY.

(_For the Mirror_.)

"She sighs and shakes her empty shoes in vain,
No _silver-penny_ to reward her pain."

_Dryden_.

According to Camden and Spelman, the ancient English penny[2] was the
first silver coin struck in England, and the only one current among our
Saxon ancestors.

In the time of Ethelred, it was equal in weight to our threepence. Till
the time of King Edward I. the penny was struck with a cross, so deeply
indented in it, that it might be easily broken, and parted on occasion
into two parts, thence called _half-pennies_; or into four, thence called
_fourthings_, or _farthings_; but that prince coined it without indenture,
in lieu of which he struck round halfpence and farthings. He also reduced
the weight of the penny to