Mr. Evans adverts to the old tax by which persons, not being in the receipt of alms, had to pay two shillings on the birth of a child. The nobility and gentry were taxed at a much higher rate, for example, a duke, for his eldest son, had to pay L30. Another epigrammatist addressed the king as follows: "Taxed to the bone, thy loving subjects see! But still supposed, when dead from taxes free; Now to complete, Great George, thy glorious reign, Excis'd to death, we're then excis'd again." The Curfew Bell. Few points of national history have given rise to so much discussion as the facts and inferences connected with what is known as the curfew law. The testimony of the various writers on ancient jurisprudence differs widely as to the period at which the law originated, and yet more widely as to the object and intention of those who imposed it upon the people of England. We will first briefly outline the regulation or custom as we find it under the Normans. At eight in the evening, a bell was rung, the sound of which was the signal for everyone to put out, or rather cover, their fires, extinguish all lights, and go to bed. This was the curfew law, which it has been the custom to regard as a repressive measure adopted by the tyrant Conqueror to prevent seditious meetings of the turbulent Saxons. We "find the name of curfew law employed as a bye-word denoting the most odious tyranny, and historians, poets, and lawyers, speaking of it as the acme of despotism, levelled alone at the vanquished English." We will endeavour to show that, on the contrary, the law was in existence and force before the Normans trod the conquered fields of Angle-land, and that its intention was to cherish the good of the country by preventing the rise of conflagrations.