DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

The fights were the subject of wagers even more extravagant than are now bet on horse-racing. A story is told of one young man of fashion, Mr. Ardesoif of Tottenham, who, in 1789, to revenge himself for his loss on one of these encounters had the losing bird roasted alive; but by a just retribu- tion of Providence dropped dead himself before the wretched bird expired. But of all the abominations of which history tells us, perhaps none ever equalled those of the Slave-trade. Negro men, women, and even children, many of them in a high position among their race, were kidnapped by the thousand on the coast of Africa, crammed to suffocation into the holds of ships, where they became a prey to the foulest diseases, and were sold into slavery in the West Indies and America. It was chiefly owing to the exertions of Mr. Wilberforce, father of the late Bishop of Oxford, that this traffic in human life was abolished in 1806. A distinctive feature of the humanity of the age we live in, is the increased security which is afforded to navigation. In by-gone days the population along our coasts regarded a wreck as a stroke of. good fortune, considered the cargo a fair spoil, and did not attempt to save the crew. At some dangerous points of the coast there was a class of people who lived by the practice of luring storm-stricken vessels on to the rocks by means of false beacons, a practice which