er Hatheland hath been a professor of religion, a constant hearer of
the Word for these many years, yet a witch, as she confessed, for the
space of nearly twenty years. The devil came to her first between
sleeping and waking, and spake to her in a hollow voice, telling her that
if she would serve him she would want nothing. After often solicitations
she consented to him. Then he stroke his claw (as she confessed) into
her hands, and with her blood wrote the covenant.' Now, as the writer
gravely remarks, the subtlety of Satan is to be observed in that he did
not press her to deny God and Christ, as he did others, because she was a
professor, and he might have lost all his hold by pressing her too far.
Satan appears to have provided her with three imps, in the shape of two
little dogs and a mole.

As the home of Gainsborough Ipswich has enduring claims on the English
nation and on lovers of art and artists everywhere. That must have been
a Suffolk man who passed the following criticism on Gainsborough's
celebrated picture of 'Girl and Pigs,' of which Sir Joshua Reynolds
became the purchaser at one hundred guineas, though the artist asked but
sixty: 'They be deadly like pigs; but who ever saw pigs feeding together,
but one on 'em had a foot in the trough?' Gainsborough had an
enthusiastic attachment to music. It was the favourite amusement of his
leisure hours, and his love for it induced him to give one or two
concerts to his most intimate acquaintances whilst living in Ipswich. He
was a member of a musical club, and painted some of the portraits of his
brother members in his picture of a choir. Once upon a time,
Gainsborough was examined as a witness on a trial respecting the
originality of a picture. The barrister on the other side said: 'I
observe you lay great stress on a painter's eye; what do you mean by that
expression?' 'A painter's eye,' replied Gainsborough, 'is to him what
the lawyer's eye is to you.' As a boy at the Grammar School of his
native town, it is to be feared he loved to play truant. One day he went
out to his usual sketching haunts to enjoy the nature which he loved
heartily, previously presenting to his uncle, who was master of the
school, the usual slip of paper, 'Give Tom a holiday,' in which his
father's handwriting was so exactly imitated that not the slightest
suspicion of the forgery ever entered the mind of the master. Alas!
however, the crime was detected, and his terrified par