WONDERFUL PRESERVATION.

In the church-yard at Keyshoe, in Bedfordshire, is the following inscription, now almost obliterated. The event to which it relates, together with the circumstances which are known to have been connected with it, appear too remarkable to be consigned to oblivion. No alteration has been admitted in copying the inscription from the stone, but in spelling and grammar.

"In memory of the mighty hand of the Great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who preserved the life of William Dickens, April 17, 1718, when he was pointing the steeple, and fell from the ridge of the middle window in the spire, over the south-west pinnacle. He dropped upon the battlement, and there broke his leg and foot, and drove down two long coping stones, and so fell to the ground, with his neck upon one end of his chair, when the other took the ground. He was heard by his brother to cry, when near the ground, "Christ have mercy upon me! Lord Jesus Christ help me!"

It is added that he died November 19, 1758, aged 73 years.

The height from whence this person fell, was not less than 132 feet, and his leg and foot were exceedingly fractured, but his injury in other respects so trifling, that he not only lived more than forty years afterwards, but within seven months from the time of his fall, he was capable of ascending the steeple a second time, and he then finished pointing the spire.

The chair in which he sat was suspended by a strong rope of four strands; yet it parted evidently through the rocking of the spire, occasioned by the striking of the church-clock, at eight o'clock in the morning. Upon examining the ropes, it appeared that three of the strands, out of the four that composed it, had been previously cut through with a knife.

Williams Dickens had been in company, the evening before this event, with a person of the same business; and a strong suspicion was entertained that this man had cut the rope in revenge for being disappointed of the job. Whether this suspicion was well or ill founded, must be referred to the unerring Judge of the hearts and lives of all. But one fact is as certain as it is awful; the same man having shortly after finished building a stack of chimnies, climbed to the top of them, to give an exulting cheer to the persons assembled there; when the work, not being dry, gave way, and falling with him, killed him on the spot.

THE END.