With this and a sum which he borrowed he purchased a small farm at Carnbridge in Cumberland, and thenceforward resided upon his little estate. He never married, nor hired a servant into his house, but lived alone, and principally cultivated his land with his own hands.

His great object was to save money; and, to that end, he denied himself not only the conveniences, but what, by most, are considered the necessaries of life. His food was of the most homely kind, and used sparingly; the contents of his wardrobe were scarcely sufficient to clothe his shivering limbs, or to hide his nakedness; and, being covered with dirt and vermin, were consigned to the flames immediately after his death. A razor had not been applied to his face for many years, nor a brush nor broom to his house. His bed was half filled with chaff and straw, and a fleece of wool supplied the place of a pillow. This, with a few other miserable articles of household furniture, when drawn from the wilderness of streaming cobwebs, which had been accumulating for the last twenty years, were sold at a public sale for less than ten shillings.

By a continued observance of the most rigid parsimony, Milbourne soon cleared himself of his pecuniary incumbrances, and, in the end, had scraped together property in land, money and cattle, to the amount of near 1000l. His love of money did not desert him even on his

death-bed; lying in a very languid state, his friends, by his desire, were searching for some concealed treasure. They drew forth a large bunch of promissory notes, on which he exerted his remaining strength in a loud exclamation of "There you see, now!" But, although Thomas was the great banker of the neighboring villages, he had no idea of usury; and few of his neighbors, who deserved any credit, asked his assistance in pecuniary matters in vain; sometimes even his too great confidence in the honesty of others. was imposed on by artful knaves. He died at Carnbridge, in the parish of Cumwhitton, near Carlisle, in 1800, aged between 70 and 80.

M. OSTERVALD, AND M. FOSCUE.

Mr. Ostervald, a well-known French banker, died at Paris in 1790, literally of want. This man, originally of Neufchatel, felt the violence of the disease of avarice (for avarice surely is. rather a disease than a passion of the mind) so. strongly, that, within a few days of his death, no importunities could induce him to buy a few pounds of meat for the purpose of making a little soup. ""Tis true," said he, "I should not dislike the soup, but I have no appetite for

the meat; what is then to become of that?" At the time that he refused this nourishment, for fear of being obliged to give away two or three pounds of meat, there was tied round his neck a silken bag, which contained 800 assignats of 1000 livres each. At his outset in life, he drank a pint of beer, which served him for supper every night, at a house much frequented, from which he carried home all the bottlecorks he could come at. Of these, in the course of eight years, he had collected as many as sold for 12 louis-d'or, a sum that laid the foundation of his fortune, the superstructure of which was rapidly raised by his uncommon success in stock-jobbing. He died possessed of three millions of livres, or 125,000l. sterling.

Another extraordinary instance of avarice, and of a still more miserable death, was exhibited in the same country in the person of M. Foscue. This man, one of the farmersgeneral of Languedoc, under the former government, had amassed considerable wealth by grinding the poor within his province, and every other means, however low, base or cruel; by which he rendered himself universally hated. He was one day ordered by the government to raise a considerable sum: on which, as an excuse for not complying with the demand, he pleaded extreme poverty; but fearing lest some of the inhabitants of Lan

guedoc should give information to the contrary, and his house should be searched, he resolved to hide his treasure in such a manner, as to escape the most rigid examination. He dug a kind of cave in his wine-cellar, which he made so large and deep, that he used to go down with a ladder; at the entrance was a door with a spring lock on it, which, on shutting, would fasten of itself. Soon afterwards, M. Foscue was missing; diligent search was made after him in every place; the ponds were drawn, and every method which human imagination could suggest was taken to find him, but in vain. In a short time after his house was sold, and the purchaser beginning either to rebuild, or to make some alterations in it, the workmen discovered a door in the cellar, with a key in the lock, which he ordered to be opened. On going down they found M. Foscue lying dead on the ground, with a candlestick near him; but the candle he had eaten; and, on searching further, they discovered the vast wealth that he had amassed. It is supposed, that when M. Foscue went into his cave, the door, by some accident, shut after him, and being out of call of any person, he perished for want of food. He had gnawed the flesh off both his arms, as is supposed, for subsistence. Thus did this miser die of want, in the midst of his useless heaps of hoarded treasure!

ISAAC BARROW.

THIS eminent mathematician and divine was born in 1636. He was first placed in the Charter-house, and afterwards removed to a school at Felsted, in Essex; whence he was sent to Cambridge, where he entered of Trinity College. When King Charles advanced him to the dignity of master, his majesty was pleased to say, "He had given it to the best scholar in England ;" and he did not speak from report, but from his own knowledge. The doctor being then his chaplain, he used frequently to converse with him, and, in his humorous way, to call him "an unfair preacher," because he exhausted every subject, and left nothing for others to say after him. He was appointed Gresham professor of geometry, 1662, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1663. He resigned his Gresham professorship on being appointed Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, 1664, which chair he resigned to his illustrious pupil, Sir Isaac, then Mr. Newton, in 1669. He was created D. D. in 1670, and two years afterwards was appointed Master of Trinity College. In 1675, he served the office of vicechancellor. He died in 1677, and was interred in Westminster Abbey.

He was a man of considerable courage and