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of apples, so fond of them as to send the steward back for all that were left, at any price. 3. By allowing the sisters to break their father's injunction, to sell for seven a penny, and to demand for the remainder a penny a piece; by which means all had four-pence.

Thus the Gordian knot was cut; the lady had her apples; we are not told that the father objected to this sort of breach of his commands; the farmers and their wives were amused in 1729, and the years next following; and we, in 1846, have an opportunity of showing what sort of books were in circulation among our progenitors. What would any one have more?

We end our account of this book with a rule which may be as useful now as then. It is true that Latin is now gone out of fashion, but (see Moore's Almanac) English does as well, or better, if it be done fasting. To find whether a husband or wife shall die first, write the numbers in order opposite to the letters of the alphabet; add together all the numbers opposite to the letters in the Christian names of the man and woman, (in Latin, says our original,) and divide the sum by seven. Then if the remainder be even, the woman shall die first, if odd, the man shall die first.

IX.— Geometry and Gunpowder. If the reader have a tolerably good notion of Geometry, such as might be got in the first six and the eleventh books of Euclid, he could not, if he like the subject, find a more interesting occupation than reading the Proprietés Projectives des Figures of M. Poncelet, Captain of Engineers, published in 1822. This work was composed in a Russian prison, in the year 1813, without books, or any kind of facilities. Some one, Labaume we believe, has mentioned, that the French prisoners in Russia got no ink except what they made themselves, by diluting gunpowder with some The real use of this compound having been thus discovered, it is shameful that all the countries in Europe have been allowed to consume it in pursuits of less utility.

water.

XXIX. BLUE-BEARD.

To suit the glitter and pageantry of the stage, and to introduce the picturesqueness of Oriental costume, (which, by the way, is never Oriental or correct in English theatres,) our melodramatists have converted Blue-Beard into an Eastern story. In the old nursery tale it is nothing of the sort; and a recent inquirer and examiner (for more important purposes) into foreign libraries and dusty archives, thinks he has discovered a French origin for this renowned wife-killer.

"At Nantes, there is a considerable collection of records relative to the Duchy of Bretagne. One of them, though foreign to your purpose, I cannot help mentioning. It is the entire process of the Duke de Retz, of the old race, bettter known in our story-books as BlueBeard. He was tried and executed at Nantes, about 1450, for the murder of several wives." See Memoir upon the Materials for British History in Foreign Libraries and Archives, in " Proceedings of His Majesty's Commissioners on the Public Records of the Kingdom, 1833."

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XXX

TRAITS OF ITALIAN MANNERS.

THE natives of Southern Italy, even of the lowest class, make a familiar use of classical names, although they at times misapply them in a curious manner. Castiglioni relates the story of a peasant, whose ass had been stolen, and who, while complaining of his loss to the Podestà, and at the same time expatiating on the merits of the animal, concluded its praises by saying "that his ass, when decorated with its pack-saddle, looked quite like a Cicero." An inhabitant of the district of Transtevere, at Rome, attending in the crowd to witness some solemn service performed by the Pope in St. Peter's church, was repeatedly pushed back by one of the Swiss guards who kept the ground clear near the altar. The Trans

teverino, incensed at the rudeness of the Swiss, exclaimed: "Know, thou barbarian, that I am of Roman, nay, of Trojan blood." A Roman girl, seeing a handsome young man pass, observed that he was "a consul of beauty.' The names of Via Appia, Via Flaminia, of Hannibal and Scipio, of Cæsar and Augustus, of Marius and Cicero, are common in the mouths of the country people. We say "the names," for they know little indeed of their history. We once heard a Neapolitan, in the passage-boat which every day crossed the bay to Sorrento, lecturing his auditors on the delights of a country life, and quoting for the purpose the authority of Mago, a celebrated Carthaginian philosopher," as he called him.

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XXXI. ST. JEROME OF CORREGGIO.

THE fine St. Jerome, by Correggio, in the gallery of the ducal palace of Parma, was bespoken by a lady with the Homeric name of Briseide, the widow of a gentleman of Parma, called Costa. She paid the artist forty-seven sequins (about twenty-three pounds sterling), besides his board for six months he worked at it; "to which she generously added two cart-loads of wood for fuel, for the poor painter to warm himself during the winter, a few bushels of wheat, and a fat pig." This painting, so liberally paid for in 1524, became in course of time the property of the Convent of St. Anthony, and in the last century the King of Portugal offered the abbot forty thousand sequins for it; but the Infante Duke of Parma would not allow it to go out of his state, and, to avoid temptations, he had it placed in the cathedral. It was afterwards transferred to the Academy of Painting. When the French invaded Italy in 1796, the St. Jerome was one of the paintings designated to Bonaparte, by the Republican amateurs, as an acceptable prize for the Museum at Paris. The Duke of Parma offered one million of livres (about forty thousand pounds sterling) instead of

it; but the Commissaries of the Directory, Monge and Berthollet, who presided, as the honest Courier expresses it, at "the illustrious pillage" of that time, were inexorable; and the fiat of a mathematician and a chemist sent the St. Jerome on his travels to the banks of the Seine. In 1815, the Allies, having entered Paris for the second time, thought it a fit opportunity to give future conquerors a lesson on the rights of nations to their public property, and the St. Jerome was taken down from the walls of the Louvre, packed up, and returned to Parma, where it is now to be seen.

XXXII. ORIGIN OF HACKNEY COACH

STANDS, 1634.

"I CANNOT omit to mention any new thing that comes up amongst us, tho' never so trivial: Here is one Captain Baily; he hath been a sea captain, but now lives upon the land, about this city, where he tries experiments. He hath erected according to his ability some four hackneycoaches, put his men in a livery, and appointed them to stand at the May-Pole in the Strand, giving them instruction at what rates to carry men into several parts of the town, where all day they may be had. Other hackneymen seeing this way, they flocked to the same place, and perform their journeys at the same rate; so that sometimes there is twenty of them together, which disperse up and down, that they and others are to be had every where as watermen are to be had by the waterside. Everybody is much pleased with it, for, whereas before, coaches could not be had but at great rates, now a man may have one much cheaper."—Strafford's Letters and Despatches, vol. i. p. 227.

The letter from which the above extract is made, is dated April 1st, 1634.

XXXIII. HATS OFF!

OR REVERENCE TO ROYAL STATUES.

The Lord Viscount Wimbledon to the Mayor of Portsmouth, &c.

"Mr. Mayor, and the rest of your Brethren,

"WHEREAS at my last being at Portsmouth I did recommend the beautifying of your streets by setting in the signs of your inns to the houses, as they are in all civil towns, so now I must recommend it to you most earnestly in regard of his Majesty's figure or statue, that it hath pleased his Majesty to honour your town with more than any other: so that these signs of your inns do not only obscure his Majesty's figure, but outface it, as you yourselves may well perceive. Therefore I desire you all, that you will see that such an inconveniency be not suffered; but that you will cause, against the next spring, that it be redressed, for that any disgrace offered his Majesty's figure is as much as to himself. To which end, I will and command all the officers and soldiers not to pass by it without putting off their hats. I hope I shall need to use no other authority to make you do it; for that it concerneth your obedience to have it done, especially now you are told of it by myself. Therefore I will say no more, but wish health to you all, and so Your assured loving friend,

rest,

Oct. 22, 1635.

WIMBLEDON.".

This Lord Viscount Wimbledon was a general in Charles's army, and a very bad one. He would have made a better master of the ceremonies. In what capacity he sent the above rating to the Worshipful the Mayor and the Aldermen of Portsmouth we are not aware; but he probably had the military command of that town. officers and courtiers of Charles the First were not very nice in keeping within the jurisdiction of their offices.

*Strafford's Letters and Despatches, vol. i. p. 491.

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