diventa heretico_, "With the gospel we become heretics,"--reflects the
policy of the court of Rome; and must be dated at the time of the
Reformation, when a translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue
encountered such an invincible opposition. The Scotch proverb, _He that
invented the maiden first hanselled it_; that is, got the first of it!
The maiden is that well-known beheading engine, revived by the French
surgeon Guillotine. This proverb may be applied to one who falls a
victim to his own ingenuity; the artificer of his own destruction! The
inventor was James, Earl of Morton, who for some years governed
Scotland, and afterwards, it is said, very unjustly suffered by his own
invention. It is a striking coincidence, that the same fate was shared
by the French reviver; both alike sad examples of disturbed times! Among
our own proverbs a remarkable incident has been commemorated; _Hand over
head, as the men took the Covenant!_ This preserves the manner in which
the Scotch covenant, so famous in our history, was violently taken by
above sixty thousand persons about Edinburgh, in 1638; a circumstance at
that time novel in our own revolutionary history, and afterwards
paralleled by the French in voting by "acclamation." An ancient English
proverb preserves a curious fact concerning our coinage. _Testers are
gone to Oxford, to study at Brazennose._ When Henry the Eighth debased
the silver coin, called _testers_, from their having a head stamped on
one side; the brass, breaking out in red pimples on their silver faces,
provoked the ill-humour of the people to vent itself in this punning
proverb, which has preserved for the historical antiquary the popular
feeling which lasted about fifty years, till Elizabeth reformed the
state of the coinage. A northern proverb among us has preserved the
remarkable idea which seems to have once been prevalent, that the
metropolis of England was to be the city of York; _Lincoln was, London
is, York shall be!_ Whether at the time of the union of the crowns,
under James the First, when England and Scotland became Great Britain,
this city, from its centrical situation, was considered as the best
adapted for the seat of government, or for some other cause which I have
not discovered, this notion must have been prevalent to have entered
into a proverb. The chief magistrate of York is the only provincial one
who is allowed the title of Lord Mayor; a circumstance which seems
connected with