The River Dove.—­The fertility of the land on the upper parts of this river has always been proverbial:  “as rich as Dove” being applied to any spot highly forced.  The land has a perpetual verdure, and the spring-floods of the river are very gratifying to the land-occupiers, who have this proverb—­

  In April, Dove’s flood
  Is worth a king’s good.

It is also said of Dove’s banks in spring, that a stick laid down there over-night shall not be found next morning for grass.

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St. Hellen’s Well, near Rushton Spencer, in Staffordshire, is remarkable in superstitious history, for some singular qualities.  It sometimes becomes suddenly dry, after a constant discharge of water for eight or ten years.  This happens as well in wet as in dry seasons, and always at the beginning of May, when the springs are commonly esteemed highest; and so it usually continues till Martinmas, November 12, following.  The people formerly imagined, that when this happened there would soon follow some stupendous calamity of famine, war, or some other national disaster, or change.  It is said that it grew dry before the civil war, and again before the beheading of Charles I.; against the great scarcity of corn in 1670; and in 1679, when the miscalled Popish plot was discovered; but we do not hear that St. Hellen’s Well withheld its supplies previous to, or upon, the breaking out of the last calamitous war.

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Prodigious Elm.—­At Field, adjoining Rushton Spencer, grew a prodigious witch elm, which was felled in 1680.  Two able workmen were five days in stocking or felling it.  It was 120 feet in length; at the butt-end it was seven yards in circumference; its girth was 25-1/2 feet in the middle.  Fourteen loads of firewood, as much as six oxen could draw, broke off in the fall; there were 47 loads more fire-wood cut from the top; they were compelled to fasten two saws together, and put three men to each end, to cut the body of it asunder.  Out of this tree were cut 80 pairs of naves for carriage-wheels, and 8,000 feet of sawn timber in boards and planks, at six score per cent.—­which, for the sawing only, as the price of labour then was, came to the sum of 12l.

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Newcastle-under-Line.—­The right of election in this borough has been several times the subject of parliamentary investigation.  At the last inquiry, the greater part of the borough appeared to be the property of the Marquess of Stafford; and it was found customary for the burgesses to live ten, fifteen, and even twenty years in the houses, without payment of rent!

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Monument to a Faithful Servant.—­In the church of King’s Swinford, Staffordshire, is a plain stone, erected by Joseph Scott, Esq., and his wife, in memory of Elizabeth Harrison, who had been thirty years in their service, and had conducted herself with such integrity, and anxiety for her master’s interest, as drew from him the following epitaph: