Sir Edward Harwood, Knt.—­“I have read of a bird, which hath a face like, and yet will prey upon, a man:  who coming to the water to drink, and finding there by reflection, that he had killed one like himself, pineth away by degrees, and never afterwards enjoyeth itself.[1] Such is in some sort the condition of Sir Edward.  This accident, that he had killed one in a private quarrel, put a period to his carnal mirth, and was a covering to his eyes all the days of his life.  No possible provocations could afterwards tempt him to a duel; and no wonder that one’s conscience loathed that whereof he had surfeited.  He refused all challenges with more honor than others accepted them; it being well known that he would set his foot as far in the face of his enemy as any man alive.”—­Worthies, article Lincolnshire.

[Footnote 1:  I do not know where Fuller read of this bird; but a more awful and affecting story, and moralizing of a story, in Natural History, or rather in that Fabulous Natural History where poets and mythologists found the Phoenix and the Unicorn and “other strange fowl,” is nowhere extant.  It is a fable which Sir Thomas Browne, if he had heard of it, would have exploded among his Vulgar Errors; but the delight which he would have taken in the discussing of its probabilities, would have shown that the truth of the fact, though the avowed object of his search was not so much the motive which put him upon the investigation, as those hidden affinities and poetical analogies,—­those essential verities in the application of strange fable, which made him linger with such reluctant delay among the last fading lights of popular tradition; and not seldom to conjure up a superstition, that had been long extinct, from its dusty grave, to inter it himself with greater ceremonies and solemnities of burial.]

Decayed Gentry.—­“It happened in the reign of King James, when Henry Earl of Huntingdon was Lieutenant of Leicestershire, that a laborer’s son in that country was pressed into the wars; as I take it, to go over with Count Mansfield.  The old man at Leicester requested his son might be discharged, as being the only staff of his age, who by his industry maintained him and his mother.  The Earl demanded his name, which the man for a long time was loath to tell (as suspecting it a fault for so poor a man to confess the truth); at last he told his name was Hastings.  ‘Cousin Hastings,’ said the Earl, ’we cannot all be top branches of the tree, though we all spring from the same root; your son, my kinsman, shall not be pressed.’  So good was the meeting of modesty in a poor, with courtesy in an honorable person, and gentry I believe in both.  And I have reason to believe, that some who justly own the surnames and blood of Bohuns, Mortimers, and Plantagenets (though ignorant of their own extractions), are hid in the heap of common people, where they find that under a thatched cottage which some of their ancestors could not enjoy in a leaded castle—­contentment, with quiet and security.”—­Worthies, article Of Shire-Reeves or Shiriffes.