pile[391] who should be shot.

[Footnote 383: Job xxxviii. 4, 8, 11.]

[Footnote 384: There was a difference between the University terms and
the Law terms.]

[Footnote 385: Spencer Cowper (1669-1727), brother of Earl Cowper, and
afterwards a judge of the Common Pleas. He was one of the managers of
the impeachment of Sacheverell in 1710.]

[Footnote 386: See Nos. 25, 26, 29, 31, 38, 205.]

[Footnote 387: At Whitehall.]

[Footnote 388: _Cf._ "Wentworth Papers," p. 394: "June 29, 1714. The
changes at Court does not go so rug as some people expected and gave
out, that 'twas to be all intire Tory with the least seeming mixture of
Whigs."]

[Footnote 389: See _Spectator_, No. 97.]

[Footnote 390: A sword. Don Diego was a familiar name for a Spaniard
with both English and French writers in the seventeenth century. San
Diego is a corruption of Santiago (St. James), the patron saint of
Spain.]

[Footnote 391: A pillar, the design on one side of a coin, bearing on
the other a cross. Swift says, "This I humbly conceive to be perfect
boys' play; cross, I win, and pile, you lose."]

No. 40. [STEELE.

From _Saturday, July 9_, to _Tuesday, July 12_, 1709.

* * * * *

Will's Coffee-house, July 11.

Letters from the city of London give an account of a very great
consternation that place is in at present, by reason of a late inquiry
made at Guildhall, whether a noble person[392] has parts enough to
deserve the enjoyment of the great estate of which he is possessed. The
city is apprehensive that this precedent may go further than was at
first imagined. The person against whom this inquisition is set up by
his relations, is a peer of a neighbouring kingdom, and has in his youth
made some few bulls, by which it is insinuated, that he has forfeited
his goods and chattels. This is the more astonishing, in that there are
many persons in the said city who are still more guilty than his
lordship, and who, though they are idiots, do not only possess, but have
also themselves acquired great estates, contrary to the known laws of
this realm, which vests their possessions in the Crown. There is a
gentleman of this coffee-house at this time exhibiting a bill in
Chancery against his father's younger brother, who by some strange magic
has arrived at the value of half a plum, as the citizens call a hundred
thousand pounds; and in all the time of growing up to that wealth, was
never known i