Among those impositions on public credulity, one of the most famous is that referred to by Bacon, in his twenty-fifth Essay, and which he, as was then the prevalent belief, attributed to the astronomer John Müller, usually known as Regiomontanus, of the fifteenth century, and so denominated by Bacon. Its first application was to the irruption of the French king, Charles VIII., into Naples, in 1488, when the impetuosity of the invasion was characterised by the epithet, ever since so well sustained, of "La Furia Francese." Again, in 1588 it was interpreted as predictive of the Spanish attack on England by the misnomed "Invincible Armada;" and the English Revolution of 1688 was similarly presumed to have been foretold by it, which always referred to the special year _eighty-eight_ of each succeeding century; while the line expressive of the century was correspondingly adjusted in the text. It was thus made applicable to the great French Revolution, of which the unmistakeable elements were laid in 1788, by the royal edict convoking the States-General for the ensuing year, when it burst forth with dread explosion. Its prediction, with the sole alteration of the century from the original lines, was then thus expressed:-- "Post mille expletos a partu Virginis annos, Et septingentos rursus ab orbe datos Octogessimus octavus mirabilis annus Ingruet: is secum tristia fata trahet. "Si non hoc anno totus malus occidet orbis Si non in nihilum terra fretumque ruant, Cuncta tamen mundi sursum ibunt atque deorsum Imperia; et luctus undique grandis erit." Though long ascribed to Regiomontanus, whose death preceded its first appearance, and therefore made its application to posterior events appear prophetic, the real author, according to the astronomer Delambre, was a German named Bruschius, of the sixteenth century, who pretended to have discovered it on a tomb (we may suppose that of Regiomontanus) in Bohemia, that learned man's country. Many other similar prophecies have deluded the world, of which the most celebrated were those of the Englishman Merlin. An early edition, printed in 1528, fetched sixteen guineas in 1812 at the Roxburgh sale, though preceded by three or four. It is in French, and at Gaignat's sale, in 1769, brought only thirty-one livres. It was No. 2239. of the Catalogue. J. R. Cork, Sept. 17. BOROUGH-ENGLISH. (Vol. iv., p. 133.) Since my former communication I have collected the following list of places where this custom prevails:-- In Surrey: Battersea.--Lysons' _Environs_, vol. i. p. 30. Wimbledon (Archbishop of Canterbury's Manor).--Lysons' _Environs_, vol. i. p. 523. Streatham (Manor of Leigham Court).--Lysons' _Environs_, vol. i. p. 481. Richmond, Ham, Peterham.--Lysons' _Environs_. Croydon (Archbishop of Canterbury's Manor).--Clement _v._ Scudamore, 6 _Mod. Rep._ 102.; Steinman's _Croydon_, p. 9. In Essex: Maldon.--_Blount's Tenures_ by Beckwith.