Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed.”

At a meeting of the French Academy of Medicine, a few years ago, a curious paper was read, on behalf of M. Dubois, of Amiens, entitled “Investigations into the death of Julius CÆsar.” M. Dubois having looked up the various passages referring to this famous historic incident to be found in Dion Cassius, Plutarch, Suetonius, Appian, &c., and compared them with one another, has fixed the spots where the four first wounds were inflicted, and the names of the conspirators who inflicted them. The first blow, struck by one of the brothers Casca, produced a slight wound underneath the left clavicle; the second, struck by the other Casca, penetrated the walls of the thorax toward the right; Cassius inflicted the third wound in the face. Decimus Brutus gave the fourth stab in the region of the groin. Contrary to the general opinion, Marcus Brutus, though one of the conspirators, did not strike the dictator. After the first blows CÆsar fainted, and then all the conspirators hacked his body. He was carried by three slaves in a litter to his house. Anstistius, the physician, was called in and found thirty-five wounds, only one of which was in his opinion fatal, that of the second Casca.

BILLS FOR STRANGE SERVICES.

The bill of the Cirencester painter, mentioned by Bishop Horne, (Essays and Thoughts,) is as follows:—

Mr. Charles Terrebee
To Joseph Cook, Dr.
To mending the Commandments, altering the Belief, and making a new Lord’s Prayer	£1—1—0

Here is a Carpenter’s bill of the Fifteenth Century, copied from the records of an old London Church:—

		s.	d.
Item.	To screwynge a home on e y Divil, and glueinge a bitt on hys tayle		vij
Item.	To repayring e y Vyrginne Marye before and behynde, & makynge a new Chylde	ij	viij

LAW LOGIC.

Judge Blackstone says, in his Commentaries (Vol. i. ch. xviii.), that every Bishop, Parson or Vicar is a Corporation. Lord Coke asserts, in his Reports (10. Rep. 32,) that “a Corporation has no soul.” Upon these premises, the logical inference would be that neither Bishops, Parsons nor Vicars have souls.

RECIPROCAL CONVERSION.

A curious case of mixed process of conversion was that of the two brothers, Dr. John Reynold’s, King’s Professor at Oxford, in 1630, a zealous Roman Catholic, and Dr. Wm. Reynolds, an eminent Protestant. They were both learned men, and as brothers held such affectionate relations, that the deadly heresies of which each regarded the other as the victim were matters of earnest and pleading remonstrance between them by discussion and correspondence. The pains and zeal of each were equally rewarded. The Roman Catholic brother became an ardent Protestant, and the Protestant brother became a Roman Catholic.

PITHY PRAYER.

We are indebted to Hume for the preservation of a short prayer, which he says was that of Lord Astley, before he charged at Edge-hill. It ran thus: “O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day; if I forget thee, do not thou forget me.” And Hume adds, “There were certainly much longer prayers in the Parliamentary army, but I doubt if there was as good a one.”

MELROSE BY SUNLIGHT.

The beautiful description of the appearance of the ruins of Melrose Abbey by moonlight, in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, has led thousands to visit the scene “when silver edges the imagery,” yet it is worth noting that the author never saw the ruined pile by “the pale moonlight.” Bernard Barton once wrote to Scott to request him to favor a young lady with a copy of the lines in his own handwriting. Sir Walter complied, but substituted for the concluding lines of the original the following:—

BACK ACTION.

Alphonse Karr, in his GuÊpes, speaking of the dexterities of the legal profession, relates a pleasant anecdote of the distinguished lawyer, afterward deputy, M. Chaix d’Est-Ange. He was employed in a case where both the parties were old men. Referring to his client, he said: “He has attained that age, when the mind, freed from the passions, and tyranny of the body, takes a higher flight, and soars in a purer and serener air.” Later in his speech, he found occasion to allude to the opposite party, of whom he remarked: “I do not deny his natural intelligence; but he has reached an age in which the mind participates in the enfeeblement, the decrepitude, and the degradation of the body.”

THE AUDITORIUMS OF THE LAST CENTURY.

When we read of Patrick Henry’s wonderful displays of eloquence, we naturally figure to ourselves a spacious interior and a great crowd of rapt listeners. But, in truth, those of his orations which quickened or changed the march of events, and the thrill of which has been felt in the nerves of four generations, were all delivered in small rooms and to few hearers, never more than one hundred and fifty. The first thought of the visitor to St. John’s Church in Richmond, is: Could it have been here, in this oaken chapel of fifty or sixty pews, that Patrick Henry delivered the greatest and best known of all his speeches? Was it here that he uttered those words of doom, so unexpected, so unwelcome, “We must fight”? Even here. And the words were spoken in a tone and manner worthy of the men to whom they were addressed—with quiet and profound solemnity.

TRUE FORM OF THE CROSS.

The ancient and ignominious punishment of crucifixion was abolished by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who thought it indecent and irreligious that the Cross should be used for the putting to death of the vilest offenders, while he himself erected it as a trophy, and esteemed it the noblest ornament of his diadem and military standards. In consequence of his decree, crucifixion has scarcely been witnessed in Europe for the last 1500 years. Those painters, sculptors, poets and writers who have attempted to describe it have, therefore, followed their own imagination or vague tradition rather than the evidence of history. But they could hardly do otherwise, because the writings of the early fathers of the Church and of pagan historians were not generally accessible to them until after the revival of learning in the Fifteenth Century, and because the example of depicting the cross once given had been religiously followed by the earliest painters and sculptors, and universally accepted without question; and to object to the generally received form would have been deemed sacrilegious. These two reasons may have been sufficient to deter the great artists of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries from making any change; there may, however, have been a third, quite as potent (if not more so), and that is that the introduction of the lower projecting beam, astride of which the crucified person was seated, would have been both inartistic and indecent, yet this third piece was invariably used when the punishment was inflicted, except in the case where the sufferer was crucified with the head downward. The researches of two eminent scholars of the Seventeenth Century—Salmasius and Lipsius—have put it beyond a doubt that the cross consisted of a strong upright post, not much taller than a man of lofty stature, which was sharpened at the lower end, by which it was fixed into the ground, having a short bar or stake projecting from its middle, and a longer transverse beam firmly joined to the upright post near the top. The condemned person was made to carry his cross to the place of execution, after having been first whipped; he was then stripped of his clothing, and offered a cup of medicated wine, to impart firmness or alleviate pain. He was then made to sit astride the middle bar, and his limbs, having been bound with cords, the legs to the upright beam, the arms to the transverse, were finally secured by driving large iron spikes through the hands and feet. The cross was then fixed in its proper position, and the sufferer was left to die, not so much from pain (as is generally supposed) as from exhaustion, or heat, or cold, or hunger, or wild beasts, unless (as was usually the case) his sufferings were put an end to by burning, stoning, suffocation, breaking the bones, or piercing the vital organs. If left alone he generally survived two days or three, and there are cases recorded where the sufferer lingered till the fifth day before dying.

Referring to the earliest Christian writers, who witnessed the crucifixion of hundreds of their martyred brethren, it will be seen that the foregoing statement of Salmasius respecting the true form of the cross is well founded. IrenÆus, Bishop of Lyons, in the second century, says: “The structure of the cross has five ends or summits, two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which the crucified person rests.” Justin, another Christian writer of the same period, who acquired the surname of Martyr from the cruel death he suffered for his faith, also speaks of “that end projecting from the middle of the upright post like a horn, on which crucified persons are seated.” Tertullian, another Christian writer, who lived a little later, says: “A part, and, indeed, a principal part, of the cross is any post which is fixed in an upright position; but to us the entire cross is imputed, including its transverse beam, and the projecting bar which serves as a seat.”

This fact (of the sufferer being seated) will account for the long duration of the punishment; the wounds in the hands and feet did not lacerate any large vessel, and were nearly closed by the nails which produced them. The Rev. Alban Butler, in his Lives of the Saints, gives numerous instances of the lingering nature of this mode of execution, and of the wonderful heroism displayed by the Christians who underwent it. The Pagan historians also narrate instances of similar heroism on the part of political offenders, who were put to death on the Cross. Bomilcar, the commander of the Carthaginian army in Sicily, having shown a disposition to desert to the enemy, was nailed to a gibbet in the middle of the forum; but “from the height of the Cross, as from a tribunal, he declaimed against the crimes of the citizens; and having spoken thus with a loud voice amid an immense concourse of the people, he expired.” Crucifixion has been practised from the remotest ages in the East, and is still occasionally resorted to in Turkey, Madagascar, and Northern Africa. The Jewish historian, Josephus, states that the chief baker of Pharaoh, whose dream had been interpreted by Joseph, was crucified, though Scripture says he was hanged; but this may mean hanged on a cross, for the expression seems to be almost equivalent to crucified, as appears from Galatians, chap. III. v. 13. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, ‘Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.’” As regards art, it is not now to be expected that the example set by the great masters will be discarded. In this, as in other matters, custom is law, whose arbitrary sway will be exercised in spite of facts.

SINGULAR COINCIDENCES.

A. was walking with a friend near Oxford, when a snipe rose within shot. They both “presented” their walking-sticks at the bird, remarking what a “pretty shot” it would have been for a gun. The snipe flew on a short distance, then towered, and fell dead. When examined, the bird was found to be apparently uninjured; but a close examination discovered the trace of a former injury, which had led to the rupture of a blood-vessel. If, instead of a walking-stick a gun had been presented and discharged at the bird, no one would have ventured to doubt that the death of the bird was due to the gun.

---

A young officer in the army of the famous Wolfe was apparently dying of an abscess in the lungs. He was absent from his regiment on sick-leave; but resolved to rejoin it, when a battle was expected. “For,” said he, “since I am given over, I had better be doing my duty; and my life’s being shortened a few days, matters not.” He received a shot which pierced the abscess, and made an opening for the discharge. He recovered, and lived to the age of eighty.

---

In the United Service Museum, (Whitehall Yard, London,) are exhibited the “jaws of a shark,” wide open, and enclosing a tin box. The history of this strange exhibition is as follows:—A ship, on her way to the West Indies, “fell in with” and chased a suspicious-looking craft, which had all the appearance of a slaver. During the pursuit, the chase threw something overboard. She was subsequently captured, and taken into Port Royal to be tried as a slaver. In absence of the ship’s papers and other proofs, the slaver was not only in a fair way to escape condemnation, but her captain was anticipating the recovery of pecuniary damages against his captor for illegal detention. While the subject was under discussion, a vessel came into port, which had followed closely in the track of the chase above described. She had caught a shark; and in its stomach was found a tin box, which contained the slaver’s papers. Upon the strength of this evidence the slaver was condemned. The written account is attached to the box.

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A. B. was present while some “tricks in cards” were being exhibited by a professional juggler. He took a fresh pack of cards, and directed the company to take out a card from the pack, to replace it, and shuffle the pack. This being done, A. B. took the pack in his hand and carelessly tossed on the table a card, which proved to be the correct one. The professor, in the utmost surprise and admiration, offered to give A. B. three of his best tricks if he would give him the secret of the trick which he had just exhibited. A. B. coolly declined the offer, and concealed the fact that it was all chance, in the purest sense of the word, that led to the selection of the proper card from the pack.

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Upon the death of a seaman, some money became payable to his widow, Elizabeth Smith, No. 20 (of a certain, say “King”) Street, Wapping. The government agent called at No. 20 King Street, and finding that Elizabeth Smith lived there, paid the money without further inquiry. Subsequently the true widow, Elizabeth Smith, turned up; and it was then discovered that, at the very time the money was paid, the street was being re-numbered, and there were two houses numbered 20; and what was most remarkable, there was an Elizabeth Smith living in each of them.

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Some time in the last century, a Mrs. Stephens professed to have received from her husband a medicine for dissolving “the stone in the bladder,” and offered to sell it to government. In order to test the virtue of this medicine, a patient was selected who had undeniably the complaint in question. He took the medicine, and was soon quite well. The doctors watched him anxiously, and when he died, many years after, he was seized by them, and the body examined. It was then discovered that the stone had made for itself a little sac in the bladder, and was so tightly secured that it had never caused any inconvenience.

Government, however, (somewhat prematurely,) rewarded Mrs. Stephens with a sum of £10,000. The cure appeared to have been purely accidental, as the remedy was nothing but potash, which has little or no virtue in such cases.

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A gentleman of fortune, named Angerstein, lost a large quantity of valuable plate. His butler was soon on the track of the thieves, (who had brought a coach to carry the plate), and enquired at the first turnpike gate whether any vehicle had lately passed. The gate-keeper stated that a hackney-coach had shortly before gone through; and though he was surprised at its passing by so early in the morning, he had not noticed the “number” on the coach. A servant girl, hearing the conversation, volunteered her statement, that she saw the coach pass by, and its number was “45.” As the girl could not read, they were surprised at her knowing the “number.” She stated that she knew it well, as being the same number she had long seen about the walls everywhere, which she knew was “45,” as every one was speaking of it. This allusion of the girl’s was in reference to the “Wilkes” disturbances, when the 45th number of the True Briton was prosecuted, and caused a great deal of public excitement. Mr. Angerstein’s butler went at once to London and found out the driver of the hackney-coach No. 45, who at once drove him to the place where the plate was deposited, and it was all recovered.

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Some years since, in the “Temple,” was a vertical sun-dial, with the motto, “Be gone about your business.” It is stated that this very appropriate motto was the result of the following blunder:—When the dial was erected, the benchers were applied to for a motto. They desired the “builder’s man” to call at the library at a certain hour on a certain day, when he should receive instructions. But they forgot the whole matter. On the appointed day and hour the “builder’s man” called at the library, and found only a lawyer in close study over a law book. The man stated the cause of his intrusion, which suited so badly the lawyer’s time and leisure that he bid the man sharply “Be gone about your business.” The lawyer’s testy reply was duly painted in big letters upon the dial, and was considered so apposite that it was not only allowed to remain, but was considered to be as appropriate a motto as could be chosen.

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Two men in France took shelter in a barn for the night. In the morning one of them was found dead, with severe injury to the head. The comrade was at once arrested, and told some “cock-and-bull” story about the terrible storm of the night in question, and attributed his companion’s death to the effect of a thunderbolt. He was not credited: and was in a fair way to be executed for the supposed crime. A scientific gentleman, hearing of the circumstance, examined the place, and found a hole in the roof of the barn, and an aËrolite close to the spot where the deceased had slept on the night in question. The innocence of the accused was at once considered as established, and he was released.

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Now, even in these cases, there is nothing supernatural, or even unnatural; i.e., there is nothing to prevent the occurrence. The improbability is only from the enormous number of chances against each. But when any German theologian, or other, pretends to explain a series of alleged miracles as mere accidents, he should be reminded that the chances are multiplied against each repeated occurrence. If, e.g., the chances against a person’s bagging a snipe, which died accidentally just as he pointed a stick or a gun at it, be only 1
1000, then, against his thus obtaining two, the chances would be 1
1000000, and so on. No one familiar with what is sometimes called the Doctrine of Chances but more correctly called the Theory of Probabilities, would believe that a sportsman could bring home a bag full of game, every bird having died accidentally just when shot at.

CHICK IN THE EGG.

The hen has scarcely sat on the egg twelve hours, when we begin already to discover in it some lineaments of the head and body of the chicken that is to be born. The heart appears to beat at the end of the day; at the end of forty-eight hours, two vesicles of blood can be distinguished, the pulsation of which is very visible. At the fiftieth hour, an auricle of the heart appears, and resembles a lace, or noose folded down upon itself. At the end of seventy hours, we distinguish wings, and on the head two bubbles for the brain; one for the bill, and two others for the forepart and hindpart of the head; the liver appears towards the fifth day. At the end of one hundred and thirty-one hours, the first voluntary motion is observed. At the end of one hundred and thirty-eight hours the lungs and stomach become visible; at the end of one hundred and forty-two, the intestines, the loins, and the upper jaw. The seventh day, the brain, which was slimy, begins to have some consistence. At the 190th hour of incubation, the bill opens, and the flesh appears in the breast. At the 194th, the sternum is seen, that is to say, the breastbone. At the 210th, the ribs come out of the back, the bill is very visible, as well as the gall-bladder. The bill becomes green at the end of two hundred and thirty-six hours; and if the chick is taken out of its covering, it evidently moves itself. The feathers begin to shoot out towards the 240th hour, and the skull becomes gristly. At the 264th, the eyes appear. At the 288th, the ribs are perfect. At the 331st, the spleen draws near to the stomach, and the lungs to the chest. At the end of three hundred and fifty-five hours, the bill frequently opens and shuts; and at the end of four hundred and fifty-one hours, or the eighteenth day, the first cry of the chick is already heard: it afterwards gets more strength, and grows continually, till at last it sets itself at liberty, by opening the prison in which it was shut up. Thus is it by so many different degrees that these creatures are brought into life. All these progressions are made by rule, and there is not one of them without sufficient reason. No part of its body could appear sooner or later without the whole embryo suffering; and each of its limbs appears at the proper moment. How manifestly is this ordination—so wise, and so invariable in the production of the animal—the work of a Supreme Being!

INNATE APPETITE.

McKenzie, in his Phrenological Essays, mentions the following curious fact, witnessed by Sir James Hall. He had been engaged in making some experiments on hatching eggs by artificial heat, and on one occasion observed in one of his boxes a chicken in the act of breaking from its confinement. It happened that just as the creature was getting out of the shell, a spider began to run along the box, when the chicken darted forward, seized and swallowed it.

THE INDIAN AND HIS TAMED SNAKE.

An Indian had tamed a blacksnake, which he kept about him during the summer months. In autumn he let the creature go whither it chose to crawl, but told it to come to him again upon a certain day, which he named, in the spring. A white man who was present, and saw what was done, and heard the Indian affirm that the serpent would return to him the very day he had appointed, had no faith in the truth of his prediction. The next spring, however, retaining the day in his memory, curiosity led him to the place, where he found the Indian in waiting; and, after remaining with him about two hours, the serpent came crawling back, and put himself under the care of his old master.

In this case, the Indian had probably observed that blacksnakes usually return to their old haunts at the same vernal season; and as he had tamed, fed, and kept this snake in a particular place, experience taught him that it would return on a certain day.

ALLIGATORS SWALLOWING STONES.

The Indians on the banks of the Oronoko assert that previously to an alligator going in search of prey it always swallows a large stone, that it may acquire additional weight to aid it in diving and dragging its victims under water. A traveller being somewhat incredulous on this point, Bolivar, to convince him, shot several with his rifle, and in all of them were found stones varying in weight according to the size of the animal. The largest killed was about seventeen feet in length, and had within him a stone weighing about sixty or seventy pounds.

HABITS OF SHEEP.

Dr. Anderson, of Liverpool, relates the following amusing illustration of the singularly persevering disposition of sheep to follow their leader wherever he goes:—

A butcher’s boy was driving about twenty fat wethers through the town, but they ran down a street where he did not want them to go. He observed a scavenger at work, and called out loudly for him to stop the sheep. The man accordingly did what he could to turn them back, running from side to side, always opposing himself to their passage, and brandishing his broom with great dexterity; but the sheep, much agitated, pressed forward, and at last one of them came right up to the man, who, fearing it was going to jump over his head, whilst he was stooping, grasped the broom with both hands and held it over his head. He stood for a few seconds in this position, when the sheep made a spring and jumped fairly over him, without touching the broom. The first had no sooner cleared this impediment than another followed, and another, in quick succession, so that the man, perfectly confounded, seemed to lose all recollection, and stood in the same attitude till the whole of them had jumped over him, and not one attempted to pass on either side, although the street was quite clear.

REMARKABLE EQUESTRIAN EXPEDITIONS.

Mr. Cooper Thornhill, an innkeeper at Stilton, in Huntingdonshire, rode from that place to London and back again, and also a second time to London, in one day,—which made a journey in all of two hundred and thirteen miles. He undertook to ride this journey with several horses in fifteen hours, but performed it in twelve hours and a quarter. This remarkable feat gave rise to a poem called the Stilton Hero, which was published in the year 1745.

Some years ago, Lord James Cavendish rode from Hyde Park Corner to Windsor Lodge, which is upwards of twenty miles, in less than an hour.

Sir Robert Cary rode nearly three hundred miles in less than three days, when he went from London to Edinburgh to inform King James of the death of Queen Elizabeth. He had several falls and sore bruises on the road, which occasioned his going battered and bloody into the royal presence.

On the 29th of August, 1750, was decided at Newmarket a remarkable wager for one thousand guineas, laid by Theobald Taaf, Esq., against the Earl of March and Lord Eglinton, who were to provide a four-wheel carriage with a man in it, to be drawn by four horses nineteen miles in an hour. The match was performed in fifty-three minutes and twenty-four seconds. An engraved model of the carriage was formerly sold in the print-shops.

The Marquis de la Fayette rode in August, 1778, from Rhode Island to Boston, nearly seventy miles distant, in seven hours, and returned in six and a half.

Mr. Fozard, of Park Lane, London, for a wager of one hundred and fifty pounds against one hundred pounds, undertook to ride forty miles in two hours, over Epsom course. He rode two miles more than had been agreed on, and performed it in five minutes under time, in October, 1789.

Mr. Wilde, an Irish gentleman, lately rode one hundred and twenty-seven miles on the course of Kildare, in Ireland, in six hours and twenty minutes, for a wager of one thousand guineas.

The famous Count de Montgomery escaped from the massacre of Paris in 1572, through the swiftness of his horse, which, according to a manuscript of that time, carried him ninety miles without halting.

WONDERFUL HORSE.

In the year 1609, an Englishman named Banks had a horse which he had trained to follow him wherever he went, even over fences and to the roofs of buildings. He and his horse went to the top of that immensely high structure, St. Paul’s Church. After many extraordinary performances at home, the horse and his master went to Rome, where they performed feats equally astonishing. But the result was that both Banks and his horse were burned, by order of the Pope, as enchanters. Sir Walter Raleigh observes, that had Banks lived in olden times, he would have shamed all the enchanters of the world, for no beast ever performed such wonders as his.

Fortunately, for men like Thorne, and Rice, and Franconi, who have been so successful in training the noblest animal in creation for the stage-representations of Mazeppa, Putnam’s Leap, &c., and for the various and fantastic tricks which have won so much admiration and applause, the present age is not disgraced by such besotted ignorance and superstition.

WONDERFUL LOCK.

Among the wonderful products of art in the French Crystal Palace was shown a lock which admits of 3,674,385 combinations. Heuret passed a hundred and twenty nights in locking it, and Fichet was four months in unlocking it; now they can neither shut nor open it.

CELERITY OF CLOTH-MANUFACTURE.

Many accounts have been published of the celerity with which manufacturers of cloth, both English and American, have completed the various parts of the process, from the fleece to the garment. In England the fleece was taken from the sheep, manufactured into cloth, and the cloth made into a coat, in the short space of thirteen hours and twenty minutes. Messrs. Buck, Brewster & Co., proprietors of the Ontario manufactory at Manchester, Vermont, on perusing an account of this English achievement, conceived, from the perfection of their machinery and the dexterity of their workmen, that the same operations might be accomplished even in a shorter time. A wager of five hundred dollars was offered, and accepted, that they would perform the same operations in twelve hours. The wool was taken from the sack in its natural state, and in nine hours and fifteen minutes precisely, the coat was completed, and worn in triumph by one of the party concerned. The wool was picked, greased, carded, roped, and spun,—the yarn was worked, put into the loom and woven,—the cloth was fulled, colored, and four times shorn, pressed, and carried to the tailor’s, and the coat completed,—all within the time above stated. The cloth was not of the finest texture, but was very handsomely dressed, and fitted the person who wore it remarkably well. The only difference between this and the English experiment was the time occupied in shearing the fleece; and any wool-grower knows that this part of the operation may be performed in ten minutes.

CRUDE VALUE versus INDUSTRIAL VALUE.

Algarotti, in his Opuscula, gives the following example to show the prodigious addition of value that may be given to an object by skill and industry. A pound weight of pig-iron costs the operative manufacturer about five cents. This is worked up into steel, of which is made the little spiral spring that moves the balance-wheel of a watch. Each of these springs weighs but the tenth part of a grain, and, when completed, may be sold as high as $3.00, so that out of a pound of iron, allowing something for the loss of metal, eighty thousand of these springs may be made, and a substance worth but five cents be wrought into a value of $240,000.

An American gentleman says, that during a recent visit to Manchester, England, a pound of cotton, which in its crude state may have been worth eight cents, was pointed out to him as worth a pound of gold. It had been spun into a thread that would go round the globe at the equator and tie in a good large knot of many hundred miles in length.

QUANTITY AND VALUE.

When emeralds were first discovered in America, a Spaniard carried one to a lapidary in Italy, and asked him what it was worth; he was told a hundred escudos. He produced a second, which was larger; and that was valued at three hundred. Overjoyed at this, he took the lapidary to his lodging and showed him a chest full; but the Italian, seeing so many, damped his joy by saying, “Ah ha, SeÑor! so many!—these are worth one escudo.”

Montenegro presented to the elder Almagro the first cat which was brought to South America, and was rewarded for it with six hundred pesos. The first couple of cats which were carried to Cuyaba sold for a pound of gold. There was a plague of rats in the settlement, and they were purchased as a speculation, which proved an excellent one. Their first kittens produced thirty oitavas each; the next generation were worth twenty; and the price gradually fell as the inhabitants were stocked with these beautiful and useful creatures.

AMOUNT OF GOLD IN THE WORLD.

Estimate the yard of gold at £2,000,000, (which it is in round numbers,) and all the gold in the world might, if melted into ingots, be contained in a cellar twenty-four feet square and sixteen feet high. All the boasted wealth already obtained from California and Australia would go into a safe nine feet square and nine feet high; so small is the cube of yellow metal that has set populations on the march and occasioned such wondrous revolutions in the affairs of the world.

The contributions of the people, in the time of David, for the sanctuary, exceeded £6,800,000. The immense treasure David is said to have collected for the sanctuary amounted to £889,000,000 sterling, (Crito says £798,000,000,)—a sum greater than the British national debt. The gold with which Solomon overlaid the “most holy place,” a room only thirteen feet square, amounted to more than thirty-eight millions sterling.

The products of the California mines from 1853 to 1858 are put down at $443,091,000; those of Australia, since their discovery, at $296,813,000; or $739,904,000 in all,—an increase of about one-third, according to the best statistical writers, on the value of this precious metal known in 1850. The total value of gold in the world at the present time, then, is but little more than $3,000,000,000.

Crassus’ landed estate was valued at	$8,333,330
His house was valued at	400,000
CÆcilius Isidorus, after having lost much, left	5,235,800
Demetrius, a freedman of Pompey, was worth	3,875,000
Lentulus, the augur, no less than	16,666,666
Clodius, who was slain by Milo, paid for his house	616,666
He once swallowed a pearl worth	40,000
Apicius was worth more than	4,583,350
And after he had spent in his kitchen, and otherwise squandered, immense sums, to the amount of	4,166,666
He poisoned himself, leaving	416,666
The establishment belonging to M. Scarus, and burned at Tusculum, was valued at	4,150,000
Gifts and bribes may be considered signs of great riches: CÆsar presented Servilia, the mother of Brutus, with a pearl worth	200,000
Paulus, the consul, was bribed by CÆsar with the sum of	292,000
Curio contracted debts to the amount of	2,500,000
Milo contracted a debt of	2,915,666
Antony owed at the Ides of March, which he paid before the Calends of April	1,666,666
He had squandered altogether	735,000,000
Seneca had a fortune of	17,500,000
Tiberius left at his death, and Caligula spent in less than twelve months,	118,120,000
Caligula spent for one supper	150,000
Heliogabalus in the same manner	100,000
The suppers of Lucullus at the Apollo cost	8,330
Horace says that Pegellus, a singer, could in five days spend	40,000
Herrius’ fish-ponds sold for	166,000
Calvinus Labinus purchased many learned slaves, none of them at a price less than	4,165
Stage-players sold much higher.

Wine at two millions of dollars a bottle is a drink that in expense would rival the luxurious taste of barbaric splendor, when priceless pearls were thrown into the wine-cup to give a rich flavor to its contents; yet that there is such a costly beverage, is a fixed fact. In the Rose apartment (so called from a bronze bas-relief) of the ancient cellar under the Hotel de Ville in the city of Bremen is the famous Rosenwein, deposited there nearly two centuries and a half ago. There were twelve large cases, each bearing the name of one of the apostles; and the wine of Judas, despite the reprobation attached to his name, is to this day more highly esteemed than the others. One case of the wine, containing five oxhoft of two hundred and four bottles, cost five hundred rix-dollars in 1624. Including the expenses of keeping up the cellar, and of the contributions, interests of the amounts, and interests upon interests, an oxhoft costs at the present time 555,657,640 rix-dollars, and consequently a bottle is worth 2,723,812 rix-dollars; a glass, or the eighth part of a bottle, is worth 340,476 rix-dollars, or $272,380; or at the rate of 540 rix-dollars, or $272, per drop. A burgomaster of Bremen is privileged to have one bottle whenever he entertains a distinguished guest who enjoys a German or European reputation. The fact illustrates the operation of interest, if it does not show the cost of luxury.

CAPACIOUS BEER-CASKS.

A few years before Mr. Thrale’s death, which happened in 1781, an emulation arose among the brewers to exceed each other in the size of their casks for keeping beer to a certain age,—probably, says Sir John Hawkins, taking the hint from the tun at Heidelberg, of which the following is a description:

At Heidelberg, on the river Neckar, near its junction with the Rhine, in Germany, there was a tun or wine-vessel constructed in 1343, which contained twenty-one pipes. Another was made, or the one now mentioned rebuilt, in 1664, which held six hundred hogsheads, English measure. This was emptied, and knocked to pieces by the French, in 1688. But a new and larger one was afterwards fabricated, which held eight hundred hogsheads. It was formerly kept full of the best Rhenish wine, and the Electors have given many entertainments on its platform; but this convivial monument of ancient hospitality is now, says Mr. Walker, but a melancholy, unsocial, solitary instance of the extinction of hospitality: it moulders in a damp vault, quite empty.

The celebrated tun at KÖnigstein is said to be the most capacious cask in the world,—holding 1,869,236 pints. The top is railed in, and it affords room for twenty people to regale themselves. There are also several kinds of welcome-cups, which are offered to strangers, who are invited by a Latin inscription to drink to the prosperity of the whole universe. This enormous tun was built in 1725, by Frederick Augustus, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, who, in the inscription just mentioned, is styled “the father of his country, the Titus of his age, and the delight of mankind.”

Dr. Johnson once mentioned that his friend Thrale had four casks so large that each of them held one thousand hogsheads. But Mr. Meux, of Liquorpond Street, Gray’s Inn Lane, could, according to Mr. Pennant, show twenty-four vessels containing in all thirty-five thousand barrels: one alone held four thousand five hundred barrels; and in the year 1790 this enterprising brewer built another, containing nearly twelve thousand barrels, valued at about £20,000. A dinner was given to two hundred people at the bottom of it, and two hundred more joined the company to drink success to this unrivalled vat.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ENGLISH POETS.

Chaucer describes men and things as they are; Shakspeare, as they would be under the circumstances supposed; Spenser, as we would wish them to be; Milton, as they ought to be; Byron, as they ought not to be; and Shelley, as they never can be.

Baillet mentions one hundred and sixty-three children endowed with extraordinary talents, among whom few arrived at an advanced age. The two sons of Quintilian so vaunted by their father did not reach their tenth year. Hermogenes, who at the age of fifteen taught rhetoric to Marcus Aurelius, who triumphed over the most celebrated rhetoricians of Greece, did not die at an early age, but at twenty-four lost his faculties and forgot all he had previously acquired. Pico di Mirandola died at thirty-two; Johannus Secundus at twenty-five, having at the age of fifteen composed admirable Greek and Latin verses and become profoundly versed in jurisprudence and letters. Pascal, whose genius developed itself when ten years old, did not attain the third of a century. In 1791, a child was born at Lubeck, named Henri Heinneken, whose precocity was miraculous. At ten months of age he spoke distinctly, at twelve learned the Pentateuch by rote, and at fourteen months was perfectly acquainted with the Old and New Testament. At two years he was as familiar with geography and ancient history as the most erudite authors of antiquity. In the ancient and modern languages he was a proficient. This wonderful child was unfortunately carried off in his fourth year.

THE BLACK HOLE AT CALCUTTA.

This celebrated place of confinement was only eighteen feet by eighteen, containing, therefore, three hundred and twenty-four square feet. When Fort William was taken, in 1756, by Surajah Dowla, Nabob of Bengal, one hundred and forty-six persons were shut up in the Black Hole. The room allowed to each person a space of twenty-six and a half inches by twelve inches, which was just sufficient to hold them without their pressing violently on each other. To this dungeon there was but one small grated window, and, the weather being very sultry, the air within could neither circulate nor be changed. In less than an hour, many of the prisoners were attacked with extreme difficulty of breathing; several were delirious; and the place was filled with incoherent ravings, in which the cry for water was predominant. This was handed them by the sentinels, but without the effect of allaying their thirst. In less than four hours, many were suffocated, or died in violent delirium. In five hours, the survivors, except those at the grate, were frantic and outrageous. At length most of them became insensible. Eleven hours after they were imprisoned, twenty-three only, of the one hundred and forty-six, came out alive, and those were in a highly-putrid fever, from which, however, by fresh air and proper attention, they gradually recovered.

STONE BAROMETER.

A Finland newspaper mentions a stone in the northern part of Finland, which serves the inhabitants instead of a barometer. This stone, which they call Ilmakiur, turns black, or blackish gray, when it is going to rain, but on the approach of fine weather it is covered with white spots. Probably it is a fossil mixed with clay, and containing rock-salt, nitre, or ammonia, which, according to the greater or less degree of dampness of the atmosphere, attracts it, or otherwise. In the latter case the salt appears, forming the white spots.

BITTERNESS OF STRYCHNIA.

Strychnia, the active principle of the Nux Vomica bean, which has become so famous in the annals of criminal poisoning, is so intensely bitter that it will impart a sensibly bitter taste to six hundred thousand times its weight of water.

SALT, AS A LUXURY.

Mungo Park describes salt as “the greatest of all luxuries in Central Africa.” Says he, “It would appear strange to a European to see a child suck a piece of rock-salt, as if it were sugar. This, however, I have frequently seen; although in the inland parts the poorer class of inhabitants are so very rarely indulged with this precious article, that to say a man eats salt with his victuals is the same as saying that he is a rich man. I have myself suffered great inconvenience from the scarcity of this article. The long-continued use of vegetable food creates so painful a longing for salt, that no words can sufficiently describe it.”

SINGULAR CHANGE OF TASTE.

The sense by which we appreciate the sweetness of bodies is liable to singular modifications. Thus, the leaves of the Gymnema sylvestre,—a plant of Northern India,—when chewed, take away the power of tasting sugar for twenty-four hours, without otherwise injuring the general sense of taste.

BLUNDERS OF PAINTERS.

Tintoret, an Italian painter, in a picture of the Children of Israel gathering manna, has taken the precaution to arm them with the modern invention of guns. Cigoli painted the aged Simeon at the circumcision of the infant Saviour; and as aged men in these days wear spectacles, the artist has shown his sagacity by placing them on Simeon’s nose. In a picture by Verrio of Christ healing the sick, the lookers-on are represented as standing with periwigs on their heads. To match, or rather to exceed, this ludicrous representation, Durer has painted the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden by an angel in a dress fashionably trimmed with flounces. The same painter, in his scene of Peter denying Christ, represents a Roman soldier very comfortably smoking a pipe of tobacco. A Dutch painter, in a picture of the Wise Men worshipping the Holy Child, has drawn one of them in a large white surplice, and in boots and spurs, and he is in the act of presenting to the child a model of a Dutch man-of-war. In a Dutch picture of Abraham offering up his son, instead of the patriarch’s “stretching forth his hand and taking the knife,” as the Scriptures inform us, he is represented as using a more effectual and modern instrument: he is holding to Isaac’s head a blunderbuss. Berlin represents in a picture the Virgin and Child listening to a violin; and in another picture he has drawn King David playing the harp at the marriage of Christ with St. Catherine. A French artist has drawn, with true French taste, the Lord’s Supper, with the table ornamented with tumblers filled with cigar-lighters; and, as if to crown the list of these absurd and ludicrous anachronisms, the garden of Eden has been drawn with Adam and Eve in all their primeval simplicity and virtue, while near them, in full costume, is seen a hunter with a gun, shooting ducks.

MINUTE MECHANISM.

There is a cherry-stone at the Salem (Mass.) Museum, which contains one dozen silver spoons. The stone itself is of the ordinary size; but the spoons are so small that their shape and finish can only be well distinguished by the microscope. Here is the result of immense labor for no decidedly useful purpose; and there are thousands of other objects in the world fashioned by ingenuity, the value of which, in a utilitarian sense, may be said to be quite as indifferent. Dr. Oliver gives an account of a cherry-stone on which were carved one hundred and twenty-four heads, so distinctly that the naked eye could distinguish those belonging to popes and kings by their mitres and crowns. It was bought in Prussia for fifteen thousand dollars, and thence conveyed to England, where it was considered an object of so much value that its possession was disputed, and it became the object of a suit in chancery. One of the Nuremberg toy-makers enclosed in a cherry-stone, which was exhibited at the French Crystal Palace, a plan of Sevastopol, a railway-station, and the “Messiah” of Klopstock. In more remote times, an account is given of an ivory chariot, constructed by Mermecides, which was so small that a fly could cover it with his wing; also a ship of the same material, which could be hidden under the wing of a bee! Pliny, too, tells us that Homer’s Iliad, with its fifteen thousand verses, was written in so small a space as to be contained in a nutshell; while Elian mentions an artist who wrote a distich in letters of gold, which he enclosed in the rind of a kernel of corn. But the Harleian MS. mentions a greater curiosity than any of the above, it being nothing more nor less than the Bible, written by one Peter Bales, a chancery clerk, in so small a book that it could be enclosed within the shell of an English walnut. Disraeli gives an account of many other exploits similar to the one of Bales. There is a drawing of the head of Charles II. in the library of St. John’s College, Oxford, wholly composed of minute written characters, which at a small distance resemble the lines of an engraving. The head and the ruff are said to contain the book of Psalms, in Greek, and the Lord’s Prayer. In the British Museum is a portrait of Queen Anne, not much larger than the hand. On this drawing are a number of lines and scratches, which, it is asserted, comprise the entire contents of a thin folio. The modern art of Photography is capable of effecting wonders in this way. We have before us the Declaration of Independence, containing seven thousand eight hundred letters, on a space not larger than the head of a pin, which, when viewed through a microscope, may be read distinctly.

THE RATIO OF THE DIAMETER TO THE CIRCUMFERENCE.

The proportion of the diameter of a circle to its circumference has never yet been exactly ascertained. Nor can a square or any other right-lined figure be found that shall be equal to a given circle. This is the celebrated problem called the squaring of the circle, which has exercised the abilities of the greatest mathematicians for ages and been the occasion of so many disputes. Several persons of considerable eminence have, at different times, pretended that they had discovered the exact quadrature; but their errors have readily been detected; and it is now generally looked upon as a thing impossible to be done.

But though the relation between the diameter and circumference cannot be accurately expressed in known numbers, it may yet be approximated to any assigned degree of exactness. And in this manner was the problem solved, about two thousand years ago, by the great Archimedes, who discovered the proportion to be nearly as seven to twenty-two. The process by which he effected this may be seen in his book De Dimensione Circuli. The same proportion was also discovered by Philo Gadarensis and Apollonius Pergeus at a still earlier period, as we are informed by Eutocius.

The proportion of Vieta and Metius is that of one hundred and thirteen to three hundred and fifty-five, which is a little more exact than the former. It was derived from the pretended quadrature of a M. Van Eick, which first gave rise to the discovery.

But the first who ascertained this ratio to any great degree of exactness was Van Ceulen, a Dutchman, in his book De Circulo et Adscriptis. He found that if the diameter of a circle was 1, the circumference would be 3·141592653589793238462643383279502884 nearly; which is exactly true to thirty-six places of decimals, and was effected by the continual bisection of an arc of a circle, a method so extremely troublesome and laborious that it must have cost him incredible pains. It is said to have been thought so curious a performance that the numbers were cut on his tombstone in St. Peter’s churchyard, at Leyden.

But since the invention of fluxions, and the summation of infinite series, several methods have been discovered for doing the same thing with much more ease and expedition. Euler and other eminent mathematicians have by these means given a quadrature of the circle which is true to more than one hundred places of decimals,—a proportion so extremely near the truth that, unless the ratio could be completely obtained, we need not wish for a greater degree of accuracy.

MATHEMATICAL PRODIGIES.

Prominent among the precocious mathematicians of the present day is a colored boy in Kentucky, named William Marcy, whose feats in mental arithmetic are truly wonderful. His powers of computation appear to be fully equal to those of Bidder, Buxton, Grandimange, Colburn, or Safford. He can multiply or divide millions by thousands in a few minutes from the time the figures are given to him, and always with the utmost exactness. Recently, in the presence of a party of gentlemen, he added a column of figures, eight in a line, and one hundred and eighty lines, making the sum total of several millions, within six minutes. The feat was so astounding, and apparently incredible, that several of the party took off their coats, and, dividing the sum, went to work, and in two hours after they commenced produced identically the same answers. The boy is not quite seventeen years of age; he cannot read nor write, and in every other branch of an English education is entirely deficient. It is worthy of remark that mathematics is the only department of science in which such feats of imbecile minds can be achieved. The supposition would not, a priori, be admissible; but frequent facts prove it. A negro, a real idiot, was not long since reported in Alabama, who could beat this Kentuckian in figures, but could scarcely do any thing else worthy of a human intellect. Precocious mathematicians, not imbecile, have usually turned out poorly; few of them, like Pascal, have shown any general capacity. These facts suggest inferences unfortunate for mathematical genius, if not for mathematical studies. They have sublime relations, in their “mixed” form, with our knowledge of the universe; but their relations to genius—to human sentiments and sensibilities—to the moral and ideal in humanity,—are, to say the least, quite equivocal. The calculating power alone would seem to be the least of human qualities, and to have the smallest amount of reason in it; since a machine like Babbage’s can be made to do the work of three or four calculators, and better than any of them.

EXTRAORDINARY MEMORY.

Lipsius made this offer to a German prince:—Sit here with a poniard, and if in repeating Tacitus from beginning to end I miss a single word, stab me. I will freely bare my breast for you to strike.

Muretus tells us of a young Corsican, a law-student at Padua, who could, without hesitation, repeat thirty-six thousand Latin, Greek, or barbarous words, significant or insignificant, upon once hearing them. Muretus himself tested his wonderful memory, and avers all alleged respecting it to be strictly true.

Mr. Carruthers, in the course of a lecture on Scottish history mentioned an instance of Sir Walter Scott’s wonderful memory: “I have heard Campbell relate how strongly Scott was impressed with his (Campbell’s) poem of Lochiel’s Warning. ‘I read it to him in manuscript,’ he said; ‘he then asked to read it over himself, which he did slowly and distinctly, after which he handed to me the manuscript, saying, ‘Take care of your copyright, for I have got your poem by heart,’ and with only these two readings he repeated the poem with scarcely a mistake.’ Certainly an extraordinary instance of memory, for the piece contains eighty-eight lines. The subject, however, was one which could not fail powerfully to arrest Scott’s attention, and versification and diction are such as are easily caught up and remembered.”

SILENT COMPLIMENT.

While an eloquent clergyman was addressing a religious society, he intimated, more than once, that he was admonished to conclude by the lateness of the hour. His discourse, however, was so attractive that some ladies in the gallery covered the clock with their shawls.

SELF-IMMOLATION.

Comyn, Bishop of Durham, having quarrelled with his clergy, they mixed poison with the wine of the Eucharist, and gave it to him. He perceived the poison, but yet, with misguided devotion, he drank it and died.

THE NEED OF PROVIDENCE.

Cecil says in his Remains:—We require the same hand to protect us in apparent safety as in the most imminent and palpable danger. One of the most wicked men in my neighborhood was riding near a precipice and fell over: his horse was killed, but he escaped without injury. Instead of thanking God for his deliverance, he refused to acknowledge the hand of God in it, but attributed his escape to chance. The same man was afterwards riding on a very smooth road: his horse suddenly fell and threw his rider over his head, and killed him on the spot, while the horse escaped unhurt.