Curiosities Of The Search Room.*

recommending our friends to read the book themselves , and the editor of the Magazine to give us a good review of it in the October number . " The above review of this same Avork , which appeared in the . Freemason of September llth , seems to be a call upon us to continue the work there commenced , and to bring before our readers a little more in detail the contents of a very interesting work .

We echo the complaint of the reviewer that the wills are too modern , and we also regret that the " compiler " of this really amusing book did not give us the wills of Shakespeare , Pitt , and many more whom he specially mentions , because , as is well known to some of our student readers , they are still " caviare " to the mass ; and we say this feelingly , because many of the more modem wills interpellated might be dispensed with as being meaningless and

"jejune" in the highest degree . The history of wills is more or less the history of human weakness , folly , passion , ancl perversity . That there are " wills ancl wills " is perfectly true , and that many wills are good and kind , ancl sage , and satisfactory no one need doubt or deny . Still a large proportion only , to our mind , serve to demonstrate unmistakablyif any proof were neededthe inherent faults

, , , folly , and baseness even of human nature . That most of us make a will is probably true ; that many of us regret the wills when we do make them is equally a fact in humanitarian natural history . With some the fear of men , with others family pride , with others dread of death itself seem each and all to affect , for . good or evil , discomfort or comfort , us poor mortals here . The writer divides wills into eccentric willspuzzling willsvindictive

, , wills , and what we may term , perhaps , aesthetic wills , and , lastly , poetic wills . He also gives us four other categories of wills which relate ( 1 ) to bequests to wives ; ( 2 ) to servants ; . ( 3 ) to charities ; ( 4 ) for animals ; and he supplements these with two further sections , ( 1 ) disputed ancl ( 2 ) the wills of remarkable persons . Ancl so we will , kind readers , to-day follow his own division of the subject as is most convenient for you ancl me .

One word before Ave proceed . The Avriter alludes to wills in Roman and Grecian times , but does not allude , as he might Avell have clone , to Egyptian ancl Assyrian wills . Curiously enough there were no wills for some centuries in this country , the military law and feudal customs prohibiting the alienation of estates . So much so was this the case , says the writer of this book , that by the common law even a landowner could onl y bequeath a portion of his propertyhis widow and children being entitled

, to a certain part , ancl a " veto " against disposing of the whole of it held good in England until the time of Charles I . Be this as it may , there are a great many mediceval Avills extant , no doubt , though the law affecting land has always , as it still is , been different from that of personalty . But to proceed . The following three wills are early seventeenth century wills , and may be dubbed eccentric .

WILL OF A JILTED BACHELOR . ( 1610 . ) A French merchant dying in 1610 left a handsome legacy to a lady who had , hvenfcy years before , refused to marry him , in order to express his gratitude to her for her forbearance , and his admiration for her sagacity in leaving him a happy bachelor life of independence and freedom .

AS ABBREVIATED WILL . ( 1616 . ) A North-country peasant , North Riding of Yorkshire , dying in the year 1602 , dictated his will as follows : — " I , William Thorpe of Aldboro '; soul to Almighty God ; twelve shillings to poor-box ; lease of farm , one come wain , and the wood c \ Att tfcisyr , a \ so yoke of oxen , to sonne Robert ; two black lrine to my dau ' r Alison . Between dau ' i-s Anne and Eliza ' three kine ; to Anthony Eobinson a stall , of four yr old and a met . of beans , and another met . to his children . Sonne Eobert and three dau'rs all four exors . "