Our next selection will be interesting to those who are curious on the subject of insurance, which must have been decidedly in its infancy on July 6, 1685, the day on which the following appeared in the _London Gazette_:-- THERE having happened a Fire on the 24th of the last month by which several houses of the friendly society were burned to the value of 965 pounds, these are to give notice to all persons of the said society that they are desired to pay at the office Faulcon Court in Fleet Street their several proportions of their said loss, which comes to five shillings and one penny for every hundred pounds insured, before the 12th of August next. Advertisements are so far anything but plentiful, there being rarely more than two or three at most beyond the booksellers’ and quack notices; and although nowadays the columns of a newspaper are supposed to be unequalled for affording opportunities for letting houses and apartments, the hereunder notice was, at the time of its publication in the _London Gazette_, August 17, 1685, perfectly unique:-- THE EARL of BERKELEY’S HOUSE, with Garden and Stables, in St John’s Lane, not far from Smith Field, is to be Let or Sold for Building. Enquire of Mr Prestworth, a corn chandler, near the said house, and you may know farther. Any one who passes through St John’s Lane now, with its squalid tenements, dirty shops, and half-starved population, will have to be possessed of a powerful imagination indeed to picture an earl’s residence as ever standing in the dingy thoroughfare, notwithstanding the neighbourhood has the advantage of a beautiful brand-new meat-market, in place of the old cattle-pens which formerly stood on the open space in front of Bartholomew’s Hospital. Yet as proof of the aristocratic meetings which used to be held in St John’s Lane, the Hospitallers’ Gate still crosses it--the gate which even after the days of chivalry had departed had still a history to make, not of bloodshed and warfare certainly, but of a connection with the highest and finest description of literature. We now come to the year 1688, when advertising was more common than before, and when Charles having passed away, James held temporary possession of the throne. One, published in the _Gazette_ of March 8, is suggestive of the religious tumult which would shortly end in his downfall:-- CATHOLIC LOYALTY, ☞ upon the Subject of Government and Obedience, delivered in a SERMON before the King and Queen, in His Majesties Chapel at Whitehall, on the 13 of June 1687, by the Revnd. Father Edward Scaraisbroke, priest of the Society of Jesus. Published by His Majesty’s Command. Sold by Raydal Taylor near Stationers Hall, London.