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got to eat and drink. This attachment to law used occasionally to throw him into such reveries, that having one day gone into church and taken the holy water to sprinkle it on his forehead, instead of the usual formula, " In the name," &c., he gravely went on, " Saving and excepting all right of opposition, and appeal competent to the party." These words he pronounced with a grave and audible voice, to the consternation of all the bystanders.

CLXXI. THE ELEVEN THOUSAND MARTYRS.

There has been, according to the common opinion, a St Ursula, who was a martyr, though the time of her existence is not known. As for the eleven thousand virgins, however, I must be excused if I doubt the whole story. The error, according to the conjecture of the learned Father Simond, arose in this way. The inventors of the story having found in some old manuscripts of martyrology, S. S. Ursula et Undecimilla V. M. i. e. Sanctæ Ursula et Undecimilla, Virgines Martyræ; and taking the Undecimilla V. M. for a contraction of Undecim Millia Virginum Martyrum, have reared up this wonderful romance out of their own mistake. I cannot understand how the doctors of the Sorbonne, among whom there are so many men of ability, should have allowed this host of contraband saints to keep their place in the church, while they had so many of undoubted merit to choose their list from.

CLXXII. THE DYING BANKER.

M. P called on me one day, at the time when daily regulations were taking place in Paris, with regard to the change of the coinage. He told me he had just been visiting M. de L., a rich

banker, who was on the point of death. The dying man, after telling him he was perfectly reconciled to the will of God, and recommending himself to his prayers, turned to him as he was leaving his bed-side, and said to him, "Well-any news of specie to-day ?"

CLXXIII. COACHES.

Luxury has never been so universal as at present. The poor attempt to rival the rich; or the rich to disguise obscurity of birth by the splendour of their establishment and the richness of their dress. People were wiser in my younger days.* There was then no difficulty in walking the streets, for coaches were rare enough. It is astonishing to see how these vehicles have multiplied. The three first coaches which had been seen in Paris, were those of Catherine de Medicis, of Diana, Duchess of Angouleme, and of De Thou, first President of the Parliament. The last had recourse to it only from necessity, on account of the gout, which incommoded him so much that he could no longer sit upon his mule. All the grandees of the army, and of the long robe, immediately followed his example; and now they have grown so common, that the streets seem paved with them.

CLXXIV. THE RELIGIOUS USURER.

M. F had made a large fortune by lending money at exorbitant interest. He was occasionally haunted, however, by religious scruples, and at the approach of Easter, was accustomed to pay a visit to all those who had borrowed money of him, to know whether they gave him the interest he exacted, freely and voluntarily. This visit he used

M. Valois was born in 1607,

to pay annually to all who dealt with him, during the holy week; and as they became quite accustomed to the call, they used to bawl out to him from a distance, "We give it to you, sir—we give it to you." Having thus appeased his conscience, he performed his religious ceremonies with great complacency and comfort.

CLXXV. M. DE LAUNOI.

M. de Launoi, a celebrated Doctor of Theology, had erased from his calendar St Catherine, the Virgin Martyr; he maintained that her life was a mere fable, and when other people celebrated the feast of this saint, he used to sing an annual requiem.

MISCELLANEOUS ANA.

CLXXVI. ARABIA.

Perroniana.*-In that part of Tartary which is a dependency of Persia, there is a flourishing university, in which literature is taught by the Arabs. Giovanni Battista Remondi, who was the first person by whom Arabian books were printed in Europe, and who had studied in that university, asserted that it contained a vast variety of Arabian books, translated from Greek authors, which we no longer possess. It is to the Arabians we are indebted for the preservation of one of the books of Archimedes, and of several authors who have written on Mathematics,-Apollonius, Pergæus, and lastly, Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen.

CLXXVII. BIBLES.

There are two Bibles, one the Bible of the return, arranged by Esdras,-and that of the dispersion, which the Jews, scattered over the face of the earth, carried with them. The Books of the Maccabees could not be contained in the first, because the Maccabees did not appear till afterwards; but they are found in the other, which has been translated into Greek, and was used by the Apos

*Cardinal de Perron, born in 1556, died at Paris in 1618. The Perroniana is by no means an interesting collection.

tles. Among the Latins, St Jerome was the first who rejected the Maccabees, in his Prologue Galeatus. But this opinion he afterwards retracted, in his Commentary upon Isaiah, and admitted them to be canonical.

CLXXVIII. HOW TO TURN THE BRAIN.

Nothing is so likely to turn the brain as intense application directed to one of six things: the quadrature of the circle; the multiplication of the cube; the perpetual motion; the philosopher's stone; judicial astrology; and magic. In youth, we may exercise our imagination upon them, in order to convince ourselves of their impossibility; but it argues a want of judgment to occupy ourselves with such inquiries at a more advanced age. "Nevertheless," says Fontenelle, "the search has its advantages, for we find many things on the way that we never looked for."

CLXXIX. ESDRAS.

It is Esdras who writes the passage at the close of the Books of Moses, which speaks of his death, and which, of course, could not be written by him. Esdras was the person, who, on the return of the tribes from the Babylonish captivity, collected the scriptures together, correcting them, according to the testimony of some ancient authors, in eighteen places where they had been altered. Many of the Books of the Old Testament are lost, and, some say, more have perished than are now in existence.

CLXXX. PETRARCH.

The verses of Petrarch, which are commonly supposed to be levelled against Rome, are directed only against Avignon. They were written under the irritation felt by all the Italians on seeing the Popedom transferred to that city; and he calls the

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