is sitting, the report of their proceedings are of such length, that there is no room for anything else.

"The Scotch," says Mr. Forsyth, in his Beauties of Scotland,'" have carried the practice of cultivating mosses to a great extent. He means reclaiming them. "The Irish," says the author of Thoughts on the State of Ireland,'" are now happily in the way of cementing all their old differences." He means throwing aside their present ones.

The English are always talking of their rights, and some strange ones they have among the number. "I have no right to pay more than my share. I have no right to be insulted, abused, kicked, knocked down, murdered." Such are common modes of cockney talking.

A great many burglaries having been committed, in the neighbourhood of a country town, the newspaper of the district recommended the inhabitants "to keep their doors shut after dark." Had the editor consulted Blackstone, he would have found that a still better mode of prevention would have been to keep them open; as, in that case, burglary is impossible.

Among the "Notices to Correspondents," in a journal not remarkable for its regard to propriety, there appeared the following: "DECENCY came too late to have a place in our paper this week." Another paper made an apology to its readers for postponing "births and deaths until next week."

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A third, in its Commentary on passing Events," remarked, "the assizes terminated last week; the trials were not of an important nature. Our readers will see that twenty prisoners were capitally convicted."

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The daily papers are in the constant habit of announcing the arrival of Flanders mails;" but it is curious that they never favour us with France or Germany ones.

The gentlemen of the hammer have had, immemorially, the privilege of breaking Prisclan's head with it; and very droll are the flourishes they sometimes make. It is now, a house within itself; and now, an unfinished one, with other conveniences, which is A-GOING! A "Sale of a Nobleman" is a common thing with them; and, what is worse, scarcely a session of Parliament passes that they have not a CABINET SECRETARY to sell. If you want a good working table for your wife, they will tell there is none like the MAHOGANY LADY'S. Ask them what sort of a library is for sale, and they will answer you gravely, it is a library of books; or what classics are among them, and they will tell you, they are of all classes. In their vile jargon, all household furniture, which is the worse for wear, is genuine; a collection of curiosities, is a singular melange of items; anything costly is perfectly unique; gaudiness, is taste; and gilding, virtù.

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COLE'S MANUSCRIPTS.

AMONGST the numerous and valuable collections of manuscripts deposited in the British Museum, there are volumes which were bequeathed to that institution by the Rev. W. Cole, Rector of Milton, Cambridgeshire. As Mr. Cole was a gentleman of violent opinions, which he expressed very freely, and was strongly attached to the Roman Catholic religion, though a minister of the established church, he deemed it advisable to order that the manuscripts should not be opened to the public until thirty years after his decease, which period expired in 1803.

These manuscripts are principally on antiquarian subjects; they present, however, a singular variety, and we often find on the same page, a record of some old abbey, mixed with a recipe to make soup, a memorandum of the number of a lottery ticket, an entry of the day on which a new servant entered on her place, or received her wages, or other such trifling subjects. These are now and then interspersed with some sarcasms on Protestants, or on the opponents of ministers. A singular instance of this occurs in the thirty-third volume of his collection, page 335, where, in a Register de Vicaria de Spalding, we find the following memorandum in Mr. Cole's own writing:

"This day I paid my maid-servant her wages, and would not let her lodge in my house, as she refused to stay with me till Michaelmas, tho' very inconvenient to me, as I don't know where to provide myself of one in her room: but Wilkes and Liberty' have brought things to that pass, that ere long we shall get no one to serve us.-The said July 23, 1772, sent to the maid, as it might be difficult for her to get a lodging in the village; tho' she deserved it not."

HOGARTH'S NO-DEDICATION.

HOGARTH wrote a History of the Arts, which he intended to publish as a supplement to the "Analysis of Beauty," and even went so far as to write the dedication for it, which was as follows:

"The No-Dedication; not dedicated to any prince in Christendom, for fear it might be thought an idle piece of arrogance; not dedicated to any man of quality, for fear it

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might be thought too assuming; not dedicated to any learned body of men, as either of the Universities or the Royal Society, for fear it might be thought an uncommon piece of vanity; nor dedicated to any one particular friend, for fear of offending another; therefore, dedicated to nobody: but if for once we may suppose nobody to be everybody, as everybody is often said to be nobody, then is this work dedicated to everybody,

"By their most humble and devoted
"WILLIAM HOGARTH."

RETENTION OF GIBRALTAR.

Ir is a positive, though not a very well known fact, that much as the British government now values Gibraltar, it was once, and that at no very distant period (only in 1783) formally promised to be restored, and that we afterwards ceded the two Floridas as a substitute. M. de Sevelinge, in his introduction to the History of the American War, gives the following singular account of this transaction, which he affirms he received from M. Gerard de Rayneval, who negociated the peace of

1793.

"The King of Spain, Charles III. demanded peremptorily the restitution of Gibraltar. In order to obtain it, he offered to France to cede to her the Spanish half of the island of St. Domingo, on condition that she would charge herself with furnishing England with an equivalent for Gibraltar. After many long and sharp discussions, M. de Rayneval, who had proceeded to London, brought the British minister to admit the restitution of Gibraltar as the basis of the arrangement, and the only question now related to the determination of a proper equivalent.

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During the discussion of this point, however, a political remorse struck the British Premier, Lord Shelburne. In a familiar conversation with M. de Rayneval, he gave him to understand, by a very expressive gesture, that were he to consent to the ceding of Gibraltar to Spain, he would expose himself to the risk of losing his head on the scaffold.

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By a singular coincidence, M. de Vergennes (the French minister) was tormented with fears much of the same kind. He had promised Martinique as one of the indemnities, without thinking how much the national pride would be wounded at seeing an ancient possession of France delivered over to its enemy for the sake of pleasing the Spanish Government.

"M. de Rayneval concealed this change of opinion from the English minister, and continued, notwithstanding, to insist as much as ever on the fulfilment of his word. It was then that the Cabinet of St. James's (not aware that Spain had no longer the equivalent of Martinique to offer them) first offered one of the Floridas, and then both of them. This proposition was immediately transmitted to Versailles. The Count Aranda, ambassador from Spain, and furnished with full powers, was called there to receive the communication of this dispatch. After a few moments of profound meditation, he declared officially, that he renounced, in the name of his Sovereign, his demand for Gibraltar, and accepted of the two Floridas. I know to what I expose myself,' said he, upon signing, but I know your embarrassments and ours.'-He was disgraced."

THE ADVENTURES OF TELEMACHUS.

IN the Lansdown library there was a very ancient Greek romance, printed at Florence, in 1645, called Athene Skeleate. This title, which cannot be translated literally, is interpreted by the learned editor, Pietro Proso, to mean Minerva Calzonito; which, however ludicrous it may appear, cannot be translated nearer into English than by the phrase Minerva in breeches.

This curious work was purchased by the first marquis of Lansdown, for a great sum, at the sale of the Pinelli library, and is supposed to be the only copy in existence; though there can be no doubt that Fenelon had seen the work, as the fable of his Telemachus is evidently founded upon it. It was embellished with several engravings, of which only one remained. It represents Mentor leaping after Telemachus,

whom he has thrown into the sea from the rocks of the island of Calypso. This the learned commentator supposes to have been one of the western islands of Scotland; in which he is certainly warranted by the text, which states it to have been far to the west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and though to some this may seem to apply better to the Canary Islands, yet the further statement that our travellers there found the days three times as long as the nights, can only apply to the summer of a high northern latitude. This, too, accounts satisfactorily for the narrations handed down to us of the wanderings of Ulysses. It has always been justly considered absurd, to suppose that he could, for ten years, wander about the narrow seas, as in a labyrinth. But if we can imagine him to have been driven through the Straits into the wide

Atlantic; there, indeed, being at best but an indifferent seaman, and unacquainted with the compass, his wanderings might have been long enough.

It is probable, that the first land Ulysses made was one of the western islands of Scotland; whence, not daring again to lose the sight of land, he would have had a most tedious voyage back to the Mediterranean, What still further corroborates this opinion, is a fact unknown in the age of the editor of the Athene Skeleate. The island of Calypso is described as having several grottos, formed of natural pillars of stone, so regularly ranged as to resemble a work of art, unless," says the romance, they were fashioned by the hands of the giants." Now there is nothing at all resembling this description in any of the islands of the Mediterranean; nor, perhaps, in any part of the world, the Hebrides excepted.

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MR. BINDLEY, THE BIBLIOMANIAC.

THE late Mr. Bindley was one of the most assiduous bibliomaniacs of his time; and small as may be the service which he did to letters, the price which his collection brought at his death shews, that a man, in these days, may do worse for his heirs than spend his time in going the round of the old book-stalls. Many rare things, which he had picked up for a few shillings, were actually converted into more than their weight in silver and gold. Herbert's " Dick and Robin, with songs, and other old tracts, 1641," which cost him only two shillings, was bought by Mr. Heber for ten pounds. A volume, containing Patrick Hannay's "Nightingale, and other poems, with a portrait of the author, and a portrait of Anne of Denmark, by Crispin de Pass, 1622," which Mr. Bindley bought for six shillings, was sold to Mr. Evans for thirty-five pounds, fourteen shillings; and five of Robert Green's productions, which altogether cost him only seven shillings and ninepence, brought, from different purchasers, the enormous sum of forty-one pounds, fourteen shillings. An account of an "English Hermite, or Wonder of his Age, 1655," one Roger Crab, who could live on three farthings a week, consisting of only four leaves, with a portrait, sold for five pounds, ten shillings. A short history of another prodigy, Mr. Marriot, "The Cormorant, or Great Eater, of Gray's Inn," who always eat twelve pounds of meat daily, 1652, brought fourteen guineas. And Leuricke's "Most wonderful and pleasaunt History of Titus and Gisippus," 1562, though a poem of only ten pages, and, as a poem, contemptible, being however extremely rare, sold