"Oh! bell of death! how oft, since life's light dawn'd Has that appalling summons struck our ear, "He climb'd the stair, and gazed upon the night, Far on the ocean play'd the northern light, And on the rocky cape was faintly streaming; No more upon the battlements was gleaming, But his dim lantern play'd and flecker'd faint On the pale tombs from which death-dews were steaming, And shone on painted glass and imaged saint, With hands held up to pray, and carvings wild and quaint. "He wept for glories gone. No more,' he said, 'Anthems of praise shall thunder through thy choir, No more the mighty organ'd notes be spread, Like rushing winds of heaven with sacred fire; The church, despoil'd of glorious attire, No more her bridegroom welcomes to her breast; Each man, in eagerness of new desire, Disdains his father's faith-sick and distrest, I would that God would please to take me to his rest.' "He knelt by Mary's image, and he hung His lantern o'er the pillar of her throne; He seem'd to pray, but silent was his tongue, Save to the gasping of a death-wrung groan : The lamp gleam'd faint-it was the last and lone Light that had burnt before the shrine of faith; Its dying lambency beam'd mild, and shone Throbbing as did the aged mourner's breath, Then sunk in darkness as the mourner sunk in death." Once more, and we have done. The following is one of the finest sonnets in the language. Every line is instinct with peculiar beauty. DEATH OF PETRONIUS ARBITER. "He died as he had lived; voluptuousness, Of fragrant shrubs, he softly sunk to rest; Of death, from which no one his head might raise : His spirit to the bowers beyond the Elysian shore." Mr Danby has nothing dazzling verbose he has thrown none of the gold dust of words into our eyes, but has contented himself with the classic dignity and unimposing truth of the ancient rhyme. May he go on as he has begun-boldly and gallantly-and we doubt not that the golden reward of fame will be his. sider it in a great measure as a fellow periodical, and therefore scarcely within our critical jurisdiction. Seeing, however, it has now advanced a considerable way into the bowels of its third volume, we may as well take a glance at the general style of its execution. We are happy to be able to say that this is every way creditable both to the Editor and Publishers. The preliminary essays of Playfair, Leslie, Stewart, and Mackintosh, need no testimony of ours in their favour. The more important articles in the dictionary department are always, to say the least of them, excellent specimens of judicious and nervous condensation; while not a few are entitled to high praise as pieces of original thinking. We do not wish to make any invidious distinctions, but we mention at random, as well worthy of diligent perusal, the excellent article on America, by Mr Maclaren; the articles, entitled Animal Kingdom, Animalcule, Arachnides, and Angling, by Mr James Wilson; and the article Apparitions, by Dr James Browne. We may also specify, although it has not yet been published, the article Army, by the last-named nervous and indefatigable writer. The minor articles interspersed among these worthy of the rest of the work-neat and accurate. treatises are, with a very few inconsiderable exceptions, the illustrative department, a most important improvement has been introduced-the increased size of the maps. The execution of all the plates is entitled to high praise. In short, the Encyclopædia has been fairly brought up to the standard of the age. In Returning to the subject of the essays we have specified above, our attention rests first upon that of Mr Maclaren-a treatise characterised by all the distinctness, elegance, and philosophical spirit of that amiable individual. We have been particularly struck by his felicitous developement of the principles which regulate the climate of America, and his very original application of his views on this subject to the explanation of the distribution of forests over the surface of the globe. On this topic we will allow Mr Maclaren to speak for himself: "The trade-winds blowing from the east occupy a zone 60 degrees in breadth, extending from 30° of south to 30° of north latitude. Beyond these limits are variable winds; but the prevailing direction in the open sea, where no accidental causes operate, is well known by navigators to be from the west. Now these winds are the agents which transport the equable temperature of the ocean, and the moisture exhaled from its surface, to the interior of the great continents, where it is precipitated in the shape of rain, dew, or snow. Mountains attract the moisture which floats in the atmosphere; they obstruct also the aerial currents, and, presenting great inequalities of temperature, favour precipitation. Rain, accordingly, in all countries falls most abundantly on the elevated land. Let us consider, then, what will be the effect of a mural ridge like the Andes in the situation which it occupies. In the region within the 30th parallel, the moisture swept up by the trade-wind from the Atlantic will be precipitated in part upon the mountains of Brazil, which are but low, and so distributed as to extend far into the interior. The portion which remains will be borne westward, and, losing a little as it proceeds, will be arrested by the Andes, and fall down in showers on their summits. The aerial current will now be deprived of all the humidity which it can part with, and arrive in a state of complete exsiccation at Peru, where no rain will consequently fall. That even a much lower ridge than the Andes may intercept the whole moisture of the atmosphere, is proved by a well-known phenomenon in India, where the Ghauts, a chain only 3000 or 4000 feet high, divide summer from Encyclopædia Britannica. Seventh Edition. Edited by Black. 1831. THE rapidity with which the parts of the Encyclopædia tread upon each other's heels, have accustomed us to con their windward side, while on the other the weather remains clear and dry; and the rains regularly change from the west side to the east, and vice versa, with the monsoons. In the region beyond the 30th parallel, this effect that trees will not grow on very high ground, though its position in reference to the sea and the prevailing winds should be favourable in other respects. In speaking of the region of forests, we neither restrict the term to those districts where the natural woods present an unbroken continuity, nor extend it to every place where a few trees grow in open plains. It is not easy to give a definition that will be always appropriate; but in using the expres sion, we wish it to be understood as applying it to ground where the natural woods cover more than one-fourth of the surface." As a specimen of Mr Wilson's contributions, we select from his very edifying treatise on Angling the graphic description of the gigantic trout of Loch Awe: will be reversed. The Andes will in this case serve as a screen to intercept the moisture brought by the prevailing west winds from the Pacific Ocean; rains will be copious on their summits, and in Chili on their western declivities, but none will fall on the plains to the eastward, except occasionally, when the winds blow from the Atlantic. The phenomena of the weather correspond in a remarkable manner with this hypothesis. On the shores of the Pacific, from Coquimbo, at the 30th parallel, to Amotape, at the 5th of south latitude, no rain falls; and the whole of this tract is a sandy desert, except the narrow strips of land skirting the streams that descend from the Andes, where the soil is rendered productive by irrigation. From the 30th parallel southward the scene changes. Rains are frequent; vegetation appears on the surface, and grows more vigorous as we advance south- "Very large trout have been killed in Ullswater in ward. At Conception,' says Captain Hall, 'the eye was Cumberland, and still larger in Loch Awe in Argylldelighted with the richest and most luxuriant foliage; at shire. The late Mr Morrison of Glasgow claimed the Valparaiso the hills were poorly clad with a stunted merit of discovering these fish in the last-named locality brushwood and a poor attempt at grass, the ground look-about 40 years ago; and the largest recorded to have been, ing starved and naked; at Coquimbo the brushwood was gone, with nothing in its place but a vile sort of prickly pear bush, and a thin sprinkling of grey wiry grass; at Guasca (latitude 2810) there was not a trace of vegetation, and the hills were covered with bare sand.' It follows from the principle we have laid down, that in this southern part of the continent the dry tract should be found on the east side of the mountains, and such is the fact. At Mendoza, in latitude 30o, rain scarcely ever falls, and the district along the east foot of the Andes is known to consist chiefly of parched sands, on which a few stunted shrubs grow, and in which many of the streams that descend from the mountains are absorbed before they reach the sea. The whole country, indeed, south of the Plata, suffers from drought; but on the eastern side this is remedied to some extent by winds from the east or south-east, which bring occasional rains to refresh the soil. From Amotape northward, on the other hand, the west coast is well watered and fruitful; and this is easily accounted for. The line of the coast here changes its direction, and trends to the north-east as far as the Isthmus of Panama, where the mountains sink to a few hundred feet in height, and leave a free passage to the trade-wind, which here often assumes a direction from the north-east, or even the north. The exhalations of the Atlantic are thus brought in abundance to the coast of Quito, which is in consequence well watered; while the neighbouring district of Peru suffers from perpetual aridity." "The views on the subject of climate we have been unfolding will enable us to throw some light on an interesting point-the distribution of forests. We are induced to think, that in all countries having a summer heat exceeding 70°, the presence or absence of natural woods, and their greater or less luxuriance, may be taken as a measure of the amount of humidity, and of the fertility of the soil. Short and heavy rains in a warm country will produce grass, which, having its roots near the surface, springs up in a few days, and withers when the moisture is exhausted; but transitory rains, however heavy, will not nourish trees, because after the surface is saturated with water, the rest runs off, and the moisture lodged in the soil neither sinks deep enough, nor is in sufficient quantity to furnish the giants of the forest with the necessary sustenance. It may be assumed that 20 inches of rain falling moderately, or at intervals, will leave a greater permanent supply in the soil than 40 inches falling, as it sometimes does in the torrid zone, in as many hours. It is only necessary to qualify this conclusion by stating, that something depends on the subsoil. If that is gravel, or a rock full of fissures, the water imbedded will soon drain off; if it is clay or a compact rock, the water will remain in the soil. It must be remembered, also, that both heat and moisture diminish as we ascend in the atmosphere, while evaporation increases; and hence killed there weighed 25 pounds. Mr Lascelles, a Liverpool gentleman, has also of late years been equally assiduous and successful in their capture; and it appears that any persevering sportsman is almost certain, with the proper tackle, to obtain specimens in Loch Awe, of this great fish, weighing from 10 to 20 pounds. The largest we have lately heard of weighed 19 pounds. It is said to be by far the most powerful of our fresh-water fishes, exceeding the salmon in actual strength, though not in activity. The most general size caught by trolling, ranges from 3 to 15 pounds: beyond that weight they are of uncommon occurrence. If hooked upon tackle of moderate strength, they afford excellent sport; but the general method of fishing for them is almost as well adapted for catching sharks as trout; the angler being apparently more anxious to have it in his power to state that he had caught a fish of such a size, than to enjoy the pleasure of the sport itself. However, to the credit of both parties, it may be stated, that the very strongest tackle is sometimes snapped in two by its first tremendous springs. The ordinary method of fishing for this king of trouts is with a powerful rod, from a boat rowing at the rate of from three to four miles an hour, the lure a common trout, from three to ten inches in length, baited upon six or eight salmon hooks, tied back to back upon strong gimp, assisted by two swivels, and the wheel-line strong whip-cord. Yet all this, in the first impetuous efforts of the fish to regain its liberty, is frequently carried away for ever into the crystal depths of Loch Awe! "When in their highest health and condition, and, indeed, during the whole of the time in which they are not employed in the operation of spawning, these fish will scarcely ever rise at a fly. At these periods, they appear to be almost entirely piscivorous; so, with the exception of night lines, baited also with trout, trolling is the only advisable mode of angling for them. young, however, rise very freely at ordinary lake-trout flies, and are generally caught in this way, from one to one and a half pound weight. They occur abundantly near the outlet of the lake. The "About the middle of August, and during the three following months, the parent fish retire, for the purpose of spawning, to the deep banks of the lake in the neighbourhood of the gorge, and into the gorge of the lake itself, where it empties its immense waters, forming the river Awe. They are said to remain engaged in this operation for two or three months, and at this time their instinctive tendencies are so far changed, that they will rise eagerly at large and gaudily dressed salmon-flies, and may be either angled for from the banks, or trolled with a cross line, where the outlet of the lake is narrow. They do not appear either to ascend the rivers which enter the loch, or to descend the Awe to any extent, though an occasional straggler has been taken some way down the river. Their spawning places are exclusively on the banks, or at the gorge of the loch, and they never attempt to seek the legislators, but charmed into tameness by the basilisk Byzantium is the growth of another age and climethe creation of a different race. There is barbaric splendour in the very name. It is the city of abject slaves, and gorgeous tyrants, and the abode alternately of the mingled superstitions of the heathen world, of the dry and hollow husks of old philosophy, of a corrupt but gaudy perversion of Christianity, of the fierce Moslem faith. Regard it in what period of its history we will, it is the same mixture of imposing because powerful passion, and moral worthlessness. It is like its own balmy and lustrous climate, where the plague ever lurks insidiously—like the rank vegetation which, on its Asiatic shore, rankles over a soil black and festering with the overcrowded relics of humanity-like the slumbrous panting atmosphere, in which the ingredients of the "When in perfect season, and full-grown, it is a very handsome fish, though the head is always too large and long to be in accordance with our ideas of perfect symmetry in a trout. The body is deep and thickly formed, and all the members seem conducive to the exercise of great strength. The colours are deep purplish brown on the upper part, changing into reddish gray, and thence into fine orange-yellow on the breast and belly. The whole body, when the fish newly caught, appears as if glazed over with a thin tint of rich lake-colour, which fades away as the fish dies, and so rapidly, that the progressive changes of colour are easily perceived by an attentive eye. The gill-covers are marked with large dark spots; and the whole body is covered with markings of different sizes, and varying in amount in different individuals. In some these markings are few, scattered, and of a large size; in others they are thickly set, and of smaller dimensions. Each spot is surrounded by a paler ring, which sometimes assumes a reddish hue; and the spots become more distant from each other as they descend beneath the lateral line. The lower parts of these fish are spotless. All the fins are broad, muscular, and extremely powerful; and it is from the number of their. bony rays that the specific characters which distinguish this species from the common trout (Salmo fario) are the most easily and accurately evolved." Yet how lovely is she with all her faults!-like some fallen fair one, "sparkling at once in beauty and destruction." What clustering associations throng upon our minds as we trace with our eyes the faithful delineation which our good friend Leigh has just forwarded to us. Away over the glassy sea of Marmora, faintly seen through the distance, towers Olympus, of old the seat of gods. On the right opens up the Hellespont, (to the mind's eye,) on whose banks are Mount Ida, the spot where Troy once stood, and the living memories of Hero and Leander. Next comes the stately city itself, recalling the first emperor whom the red-cross led on to victory the feuds of the circus-the desecrated temple of Sophia-the Waringian hosts, the men of ice, hired to guard an enervated monarch and a disjointed state. "Hark to the Ollah shout!" the fanatics of the East are trampling over the crumbled walls, and the last of the long line of Grecian sovereigns is buried beneath the ruins of his city and the bodies of his slaughtered subjects. A long and dreary interval succeeds of unintellectual despotism, and now the ocean of popular feeling is again heaving within these dark walls, with those undulating, unbroken, hollow murmuring billows which forebode the death-day of empires. And amid all these changes, the sun has shone as serenely as if there were no such thing as human suffering —the ποντίων κυμάτων, ανήριθμον γέλασμα, remains unchanged as the set smile of a coquette. The light caique bright dresses sparkle in the alternate "glimmer and is still pulled gaily against the headlong current, and gloom" of the forest recesses. It is well that there is al We have allowed these extracts to run to a length which precludes the possibility of doing the same justice to Dr Browne; but we know that the further progress of the work will afford us ample opportunity of delight-ways some redeeming drop of sweet in man's cup of biting our readers with selections from his writings, and those of other able contributors. This is a publication of which Edinburgh may well be proud. A Panorama of Constantinople and its Environs, from Scutari. Drawn from Sketches by J. Pitman, Esq., and Engraved by Mr Clark. London. Samuel Leigh. 1831. How different the feelings suggested by the contemplation of the city of Constantine, from those which are awakened by gazing on the eternal Rome! The latter is colossal and solid even in ruin, as the boundless ambition and iron souls of her founders. It bears the impress of the genius of a people which was not only free, but resolved that no other nation should be so. The remains of the city's fortifications, aqueducts, temples, even of its sewers, are the works of a people great, not in virtue of its moral or imaginative character, but of the magnitude and intensity of its practical talent. All that is ornamental, all that is allied to art and poetry in its remains, is the tribute of conquered nations of more etherial natures, soaring far above the sphere of these tacticians and heavy pressure of domestic calamity has its gay trappings terness. Beauty garlands us even in death. The dull, and banners, as well as the soul-stirring war. All these recollections, and the scenes which are to them what the body is to the soul, have been conjured up by Mr Leigh's magical panorama, which hangs before us now stretching its long length from one end of our study to the other. And in the same portfolio into which we can again contract its snaky convolutions, lies deposited a snug little quarto, serving all the purposes of those ele gant and intelligent Cicerones, who, within the walls consecrated to the exhibition of the work's more bulky namesakes, bawl their sickening comments in our grated ears. This little book contains a correct enumeration of all the most striking localities, with illustrative quotations, from the glowing descriptions of Walsh, Anastasius, and Macfarlane. Altogether, we do not know of a more interesting or appropriate ornament for the boudoir of beauty than the Panorama of Constantinople. Manual of Juvenile Devotion; or Prayers and Hymns for A MERITORIOUS little book. MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE. THE BYSTANDER. A CHAPTER ON DRINKING. THERE can be little doubt that there is less hard drinkng in civilized society now-a-days, than there used to be when I was young. Probably this may be one cause why emperance societies are so popular. The gallows is not general favourite with thieves; and institutions for the nforcement of sobriety would, we suspect, be looked ipon with an unfriendly eye among a nation of decided opers. Some phrenologists have suggested an organ of alinentiveness. If their farther research shall establish the xistence of separate organs for the propensities of eating and drinking, (and I see no reason why there should not, ince it has been found necessary to supply us with one rgan to perceive differences, and another to perceive ikenesses,) I will take an even bet that the exponent, or ndicative bump, is much larger in the men of the eightenth than in those of the nineteenth century. Gentle nen have positively discovered that it is possible to find me's way to the drawingroom sober. were both of them well to live. Away they went at a rattling trot, up hill, down dale, and across a ford at the mouth of the Urr, which can only be passed at low water. At last the horse stopped at the hall-door, and John be gan to bawl most lustily upon the handmaidens to come and assist their mistress to dismount. But the stream of light which issued from the opening door, diffusing itself far down the avenue, and flashing upwards upon the leaves of the embowering trees, fell upon the form of no mistress. Loud was the outcry, and instantly the assembled household was out with lanterns and torches to seek for " the lost one," as a sentimental poet might have termed her. A column of light rose high in the air as the phalanx moved along, and their shouts rose higher, and penetrated farther into the night. Carefully did they scan. either side of the road, but no mistress was to be seen. The cold blast hurried by them, bearing on its wings intermittent bursts of rain. The wallowing sough of the rising tide was heard in the pauses of the blast. Dreadful forebodings began to arise in their minds. They were near the ford, and the tide rises upon that coast with a fearful rapidity. Their terror, however, was soon dispelled, for, on reaching the bed of the river, they found the good lady stretched upon her back, the small waves of the swelling water rippling into the corners of her mouth as she turned her face from one side to the other, exclaiming, in a voice of pettish displeasure" Nae mair, nae mair! Neither het nor cauld." There is something gigantic in the drinking legends of he last century. The story of "The Whistle" is known A state of society, in which such incidents were of no is far as the name of Burns reaches. But that drinking- unfrequent occurrence, could not well be remarkable for yout was a mere trifle, although the genius of the poet its polish. There was, indeed, a coarse tone diffused las conferred an undue importance upon it. A well-au- throughout it. The reader must not, however, fancy henticated story still lingers in the memories of the in- that our fathers were without their redeeming qualities: abitants of the Glen-kens, of a party of jolly friends who There is something in the mere consciousness of elevated kept together carousing for three days and three nights. rank, that communicates dignity and urbanity to a man's At the end of that period one of the party rose, and, not- deportment. Whoever feels himself in a situation which withstanding the most pressing solicitations of the land-raises him above the crowd into the gaze of the world, lord, bestowed his parting benediction upon the rest, mounted his horse, and rode off. The drink, however, had in some measure dulled his perceptive faculties; for falling from his horse while crossing a brook, he enquired at his servant, with the utmost composure, as soon as he again emerged," John, what was that?" It is scarcely fair to tell tales against the fair sex; but since I have begun to celebrate the prowess of our ances. tors, the amazons among them must not go unsung. Mrs -"the gay gudewife o' Gallowa'," was a lady of good family, but rather masculine propensities. Being left at no very advanced period of life in the happy state of widowhood, she managed her property without the aid of any male assistant, attending the fairs and markets as regularly as any gentleman in the county. One marketday, a couple of young wags, thinking to play a trick upon the widow, invited her to take a glass of wine. The lady birled her bawbee as well as the best of them, and, after aiding, glass for glass, in the discussion of sundry bottles of wine, strutted up the streets with her arms akimbo, as if nothing had happened, leaving one of the gentlemen unable to rise from his chair, and the other with just as much self-command left as enabled him to sidle along the wall, and hold by the lintel of the door, as he gazed after her in stupid amazement. Once, however, she was engaged in a more perilous adventure. She had been visiting some of her gossips, and about nightfall her servant John was dispatched, mounted on a stout black horse, with a pillion behind him, to bring home his mistress. The lady was snugly seated beside a rousing fire, sipping tea, considerably diluted with brandy, and naturally in no hurry to encounter a raw and gusty autumnal evening. John and his steed were accordingly allowed to wait for some time at the door a weary interval, which the considerate denizens of the kitchen endeavoured to enliven, by administering to him divers cups of potent ale. To make a long tale short, by the time the lady mounted, she and John involuntarily assumes a prouder bearing and a firmer step. Whoever knows that the person addressing him is conscious of inferiority, seeks to gratify his own self-love, if nothing more, by reassuring timidity by a graceful condescension. If we add to the influence of these circumstances the good practical education in general enjoyed by the Scottish gentry, we can easily conceive that there was much high and gentlemanly feeling to be found amid the better classes in Scotland. When I retrace the adventures of my youth, numerous scenes of the most ludicrous nature recur to me, to which the greater license in drinking gave rise. But in my present mood of mind, two or three spectral reminis cences completely overpower them. I could fancy amid the stillness of the night that the table at which I last sat with M was visibly before me. It was during the races at. A small party stuck to the bottle, after the greater part of the gentlemen who dined with us had adjourned to the ball-room. One by one they dropped off, and it was far in the morning when I found myself alone with M and S. We were beginning to feel a degree of stupor creeping over us. The unsnuffed candles spread a dim light through the apartment. My two companions offered a strange contrast. S was a dull, obtuse, good-natured fellow -one whose system converted his drink into a wholesome nutriment, and throve upon it. M was already far gone in a consumption, but habitual dissipation, a naturally high spirit, excited yet more by the unnatural levity of that terrible disease, still goaded him to keep up with the companions of his wild career. He had been married about a year before to a lovely woman, who had already presented him with a boy. S, who, like most men of his calibre, was fond of moralizing over his cups, was reading our friend a lecture on his extravagance. Mtried to parry the dull flood of commonplaces which rubbed over his irritable temper like sand-paper. last he sprung from his seat, rang the bell, ordered the At waiter to bring up a dozen of champagne, and returning to the table, exclaimed with a wild laugh, while a hectic flush swept across his pale cheek, and his dark eye blazed, "I tell you what, S-, my heir will have a d-d long minority to nurse his estate in." In less than two weeks he was dead. The fate of another of our set was yet more horrible. He was born heir to one of the largest estates possessed by a commoner in Scotland. His education was carefully attended to, and his natural talents enabled him to derive the full advantage from it. He was capable of warm and constant friendship. No man's opinion was listened to with greater deference in matters of county business. At the time I am speaking of, the whole island was bristling with volunteers. I have heard it remarked by men of large military experience, who had occasion to see him manoeuvring a troop of yeomanry which he commanded, that they had never seen or conversed with one better qualified for a cavalry officer. The indulgence with which he had been treated as heir to a large estate, had fostered into strength a naturally violent temper. When under the influence of liquor, he gave way to the most fearful paroxysms of rage. Several exposures which he made of himself in this manner, operating upon an extremely sensitive mind, drove him, in a bullying spirit of defiance, under which he strove to cloak his remorse, to associate almost exclusively with the most dissipated of his young contemporaries. cluded, by his own voluntary act, from the society of modest women, he selected a paramour from the lowest ranks. This reared an additional barrier between him Ex from whom Ptolemy of Egypt purchased them all, with many more collected from Rome and Athens, to stock his library at Alexandria, the most celebrated in the world. STRABO, who is an excellent authority, says that Aristotle was the first great book-collector, and that he taught the Kings of Egypt the systematic arrangement of books in an extensive library. From the labour of transcription, and paucity of transcribers, copies of books were in those times very rare and dear; hence they were frequently lent out by booksellers to be read, for a considerable price; and a newly-published and popular book was sometimes read publicly for a fee, by one who had procured a copy, to such as, though unwilling or unable to purchase the work, were desirous of knowing its contents; by this mode of oral publication, the philosophers Protagoras and Prodicus acquired great sums of money. Voluminous as are some of our modern authors, the writers of antiquity exceeded them in profusion of composition. The greatest book-makers were Epicurus, who, it is said by his biographers, surpassed all men in endless polygraphy; Chrysippus, who in this respect imitated him, and wrote above 705 volumes; Apollodo. rus, who wrote above 400 volumes; Demetrius Phalereus, who excelled all of his generation in the multitude of his books, no less written than collected, the number of his verses and his learning; Aristotle, who wrote about 400 volumes, containing above 445,270 lines, and who obtained no less than 800 talents (L.150,000) from Alexander, for his History of Animals; Clitomachus, of whom very little more is recorded saving that he wrote more than 400 volumes; Nicolaus, who wrote 14! volumes, and was called rous, or many-booked;but the most gigantic book-compiler was Didymus, the scholiast on Homer, who wrote no less a number than 3500, or, according to Seneca, 4000 volumes, and whe was designated by the appropriate title of Codéns, or the book-forgetter, from his forgetting the number of his books. and the respectable portion of society. He indulged with his dissolute companions in deeper orgies, and more wanton outrages of the decorums of society. If any thing excited, his rage, it was so fearful that only one favourite groom dared approach him. It is even whispered among the trembling peasantry, that on one occasion, he and three of his associates shut themselves up in a vault of the ruined tower adjoining to his mansion, and amused themselves with kindling and heaping up a The Saturnalia were not merely a Roman, but a Baby huge fire, in order, as they blasphemously expressed them-lonian, Persian, Thessalian, Cretan, Troezenian, festival. selves, to try which of them would best endure his future punishment. The laird's excesses brought along with them an appropriate punishment in the form of a stomach complaint, under the accesses of which he was only not a fit tenant for a madhouse. At last, deserted by all but a few whom he despised in his heart, tormented with the consciousness of misapplied energies, and threatened with a return of that complaint, under which he had suffered such excruciating agony, and which he feared might one day unsettle his reason, he resolved to put an end to his Jife. This resolution he carried into execution with a degree of deliberation and forethought that proved his madness-since to madness a mawkish humanity will now-a-days attribute every commission of the crime of suicide to have been of the heart, not of the head. Τα σποράδην, OR, A LOUNGER. SCATTERED NOTICES OF ANTIQUITY, INCIDENTS, APOPHTHEGMS, By William Tennant, Author of " Anster Fair." In various places it was variously celebrated; but what distinguished this solemnity everywhere from all others, was the peculiar characteristic of masters officiating for a time as menials, and menials as masters, and the cou sequent hilarity and joyous ease of mind arising from this temporary reign of liberty and equality. It continued at Rome till Latin ceased to be the spoken language, and seems to have been put an end to by the barbarian conquerors from the North, with whose feudal notions of eternal aristocratical predominancy it was without doubt irreconcilable. The custom, like many others practised by the Hesperian tribes, was transmitted from the East, that great and primeval birthplace of all languages and usages. It was celebrated at Babylon for five days, and was called, from the bacchanalian indulgencies that prevailed, SAKEAE. * The servants had the lordship over their masters, and one of them, clothed in a white spleadid garment, resembling that of Nebuchadnezzar himself, had the whole house under his sole government. By the Thessalians, the most ancient Grecian tribe, who were the original Pelasgi, (that is, descendants of Peleg, "is whose days the earth was divided,") this festivity was kept from the earliest ages with the greatest magnificence, and was entitled Peloria-the origin of which name is con nected with a very remarkable incident in the physical history of their country. According to the tradition, one of the Pelasgi was in the act of sacrificing victims to the gods, when a stranger, whose name was Pelorus, came Undoubtedly this word is the Chaldaic and Hebrew SHAKER, to give drink to, or moisten with liquor; as is also the nam Laxas, given by Xenophon to Cyrus' cupbearer; which latter word, therefore, is not a proper noun or patrial adjective, signifying a Scythian, but merely the Chaldaic appellative, denoting cupbearer. |