of ordinary size.

Unfortunately, Dabshelim, during this process of melting down his library, grew old, and saw no probability of living long enough to exhaust its quintessence to the last volume. "Illustrious Sultan," said his vizier, "though I have but a very imperfect knowledge of your royal library, yet I will undertake to deliver you a very brief and satisfactory abstract of it. You shall read it through in one minute, and yet you will find matter in it to reflect upon throughout the rest of your life." Having said this, Pilpay took a palm leaf, and wrote upon it with a golden style the four following paragraphs:

1. The greater part of the sciences comprise but one single word—Perhaps, and the whole history of mankind contains no more than three—they are born, suffer, die.

2. Love nothing but what is good, and do all that thou lovest to do; think nothing but what is true, and speak not all that thou thinkest.

3. O kings! tame your passions, govern yourselves, and it will be only child's play to govern the world.

4. O kings! O people! it can never be often enough repeated to you, what the half-witted venture to doubt, that there is no happiness without virtue, and no virtue without God.

Palindromes.

One of the most remarkable palindromes is the following—

Its distinguishing peculiarity is that the first letter of each successive word writes to spell the first word; the second letter of each the second word, and so on throughout; and the same will be found as precisely true upon reversal. But the neatest and prettiest that has yet appeared comes from a highly cultivated lady who was attached to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Having been banished from the court on suspicion of too great familiarity with a nobleman in high favor, the lady adopted this device—a moon covered by a cloud—and the following palindrome for a motto—

The merit of this kind of composition was never in any example so heightened by appropriateness and delicacy of sentiment.

Chronogram.

Such was the name given to a whimsical device of the later Romans, resuscitated during the renaissance period, by which a date is given by selecting certain letters amongst those which form an inscription, and printing them larger than the others. The principle will be understood from the following chronogram made from the name of George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham—

The date MDCXVVVIII (1628), is that of the year in which the Duke was murdered by Felton, at Portsmouth.

Instance of Remarkable Perseverance.

The Rev. Wm. Davy, a Devonshire curate, in the year 1795, begun a most desperate undertaking, viz: that of himself printing twenty-six volumes of sermons, which he actually did, working off page by page, for fourteen copies, and continued the almost hopeless task for twelve years, in the midst of poverty. Such wonderful perseverance almost amounts to a ruling passion.

Alliterative Whims.

Mrs. Crawford says she wrote one line in her song, "Kathleen Mavourneen," for the express purpose of confounding the cockney warblers, who sing it thus—

Moore has laid the same trap in the Woodpecker—

And the elephant confounds them the other way—

Alliterations carried to Absurd Excess.

In the early part of the seventeenth century the fashion of hunting after alliterations was carried to an absurd excess. Even from the pulpit the chosen people were addressed as "the chickens of the church, the sparrows of the spirit, and the sweet swallows of salvation." "Ane New-Year Gift," or address, presented to Mary Queen of Scots by the poet Alexander Scot, concludes with a stanza running thus—

Vacillating Newspapers.

The newspapers of Paris, under censorship of the press, in 1815, announced in the following manner Bonaparte's departure from the Isle of Elba, his march across France and his entrance into the French Capital:—

"9th March.—The Cannibal has escaped from his den. 10th.—The Corsican Ogre has just landed at Cape Juan. 11th.—The Tiger has arrived at Gap. 12th.—The Monster has passed the night at Grenoble. 13th.—The Tyrant has crossed Lyons. 14th.—The Usurper is directing his course toward Dijon, but the brave and loyal Burgundians have risen in a body and they surround him on all sides. 18th.—Bonaparte is sixty leagues from the Capital; he has had skill enough to escape from the hands of his pursuers. 19th.—Bonaparte advances rapidly, but he will never enter Paris. 20th.—To-morrow Napoleon will be under our ramparts. 21st.—The Emperor is at Fontainebleau. 22d.—His Imperial and Royal Majesty last evening made his entrance into his Palace of the Tuileries, amidst the joyous acclamations of an adoring and faithful people."

Dr. Johnson's Blunders.

Considering that Doctor Johnson was himself a severe verbal critic, it might be expected that his own writings would be correct. But he wrote: "Every monumental inscription should be in Latin; for that being a dead language it will always live." Another Johnsonian lapsus is palpable in the lines—

It would puzzle the reader to understand how a warrior could continue fighting after he was dead.

Blunders of Painters.

Tintoret, an Italian painter, in a picture of the Children of Israel gathering manna, represents them armed with guns. In Cigoli's painting of the circumcision of the infant Saviour, the aged Simeon has a pair of spectacles on his nose. In a picture by Verrio of Christ healing the sick, the by-standers have periwigs on their heads. A Dutch painter, in a picture of the Wise Men worshipping the Holy Child, has drawn one of them in a white surplice, and in boots and spurs, and he is in the act of presenting to the children a model of a Dutch man-of-war. In a Dutch picture of Abraham offering up his son, instead of the patriarch "stretching forth and taking the knife," he is represented as holding a blunderbuss to Isaac's head. Berlin represents in a picture the Virgin and Child listening to a violin. A French artist, in a painting of the Lord's Supper, has the table ornamented with tumblers filled with cigar lighters. Another French painting