XL. CIPHERS.

The Arabian numerals, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, which we at present employ, began to be used in Europe for the first time in 1270, in the Alphonsine Tables, drawn up by order of Alphonso, son of Ferdinand, King of Castile, who employed for the purpose, Isaac Hassan, a Jew, clerk of the Synagogue of Toledo, and Aben Ragel, an Arabian. The Arabs borrowed them from the Indians, in the year 900.* The other western nations soon imported them from the Spaniards. The first Greek writer by whom they are used, is Planudes, in a work which he dedicated to Michael Paleologus, in 1370. Thus the Greeks borrowed not from the Arabs, but from the Latins. The first occasion on which they were used in Paris was in 1256, in the SPHERE of Jean de Serbois, (Sacro-bosco.)

XLI. THE FOUR P's.

Four P's were placed over the gate of the first President of Bourdeaux, whose name was Pierre Pontac; meaning Pierre Pontac, Premier President. A litigant who had one day waited two or three hours in his antechamber, was surprised by the entrance of the President, while attentively contemplating these four P's. "Well, my friend," said the President, "what do you suppose these letters mean?" "By my faith," replied the litigant, "they can mean nothing but Pauvre Plaideur, prenez patience." "+

The original article in the Menagiana is full of errors, particularly in the dates. The opinion expressed by Me nage as to the original derivation of these ciphers from India, is also very successfully combated by Huet and Vossius. Vide the subsequent article in the Huetianą.

+ Poor pleader, practise patience.

XLII. AGESILAUS.

I was once required to write to the President in favour of one of my friends, who was involved in a troublesome affair. After puzzling myself for a long time how to make the application, I could remember nothing better than the letter of Agesilaus on a similar occasion. "If Cinias is not guilty, set him at liberty for your own sake; if he is, for mine: but be it as it may, set him at liberty."

XLIII. LITERARY ENTERTAINMENTS.

I knew a person who occasionally gave enter tainments to authors. His fancy was to place them at table, each according to the size and thickness of the volumes they had published, commencing with the folio authors, and proceeding through the quarto and octavo, down to the duodecimo, each according to his rank.

XLIV. SCARRON.

M. Scarron was one day attacked so violently by hiccup, that his friends were apprehensive for his life. When the violence of the attack was a little abated, "If I survive," said he, turning to his friends, "if I survive, I shall write a tremendous satire against the hiccup." His friends certainly expected some very different resolution.

A little before his death, seeing his relatives and servants in tears; 66 My children," said he, “you will never weep so heartily as I have made you laugh."

XLV. PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHY.

The worst parts in the Peripatetic Philosophy are not the work of Aristotle, but of his disciples, and particularly his modern disciples. The logic of the University of Paris, and others, where Aristotle is taught, is the art of talking unintelligibly on subjects we know nothing about.

XLVI. M. D'USEZ.

COMPLAISANCE.

M. d'Usez was gentleman of honour to the Queen. This Princess one day asked him what o'clock it was. He replied, "Madam, any hour your Majesty pleases."

XLVII. THE JESUIT.

A Jesuit who had been particularly recommended to the captain of a vessel, was sailing from France to America. The captain, who saw that a storm was approaching, said to him, “Father, you are not accustomed to the rolling of a vessel, you had better get down as fast as possible into the hold. As long as you hear the sailors swearing and blaspheming, you may be assured that there are good hopes: but if you should hear them embracing and reconciling themselves to each other, you may make up your accounts with heaven." As the storm increased, the Jesuit, from time to time, dispatched his companion to the hatchway to see how matters went upon deck."Alas! Father," said he, returning, "all is lost, the sailors are swearing like demoniacs; their very blasphemies are enough to sink the vessel.""Oh! heaven be praised," said the Jesuit, “then all's right."

XLVIII. PROOF POSITIVE.

M. de having been wounded in the head at the siege of Rochelle, by a musket ball, the surgeons, as they applied the first dressing, told him the wound was very dangerous, and that they saw the brain distinctly. "Ah!" said he, "gentlemen, do take out a little of it, wrap it in

A similar story is related of Frederick of Prussia, and it is also introduced by the author of La Fausse Clelie into that work, in another and more ludicrous form.

a cloth, and send it to the Cardinal de Richelieu, for he has told me a hundred times that I never had any."

XLIX. CLASSICAL APPLICATION.

A person meeting another riding, with his wife behind him, applied to him Horace's line— "Post equitem sedet atra cura.”*

L. MALHERBE.

Malherbe, at the age of seventy, wishing to revenge the death of his son, who had fallen in a duel with M. D sent a challenge to that gentleman. The friends of Malherbe hearing of it, did all they could to prevent him from fighting, to which he replied, "What have I to fear? The loss could not be so great for me as you suppose. I only hazard a shilling against a pound."

LI. RABELAIS.

Rabelais is not always the inventor of the tales he interweaves with his principal fable. He often borrows them from other quarters, but he embellishes and renders them his own by his manner of narrating them. That of Dodin, and the Cordelier, B. iii. ch. 23, is of this number. The original is to be found in the Latin poems of Nicholas Barthelemi. The following is the exact genealogy of the Ring of Hans Carvel.+ The invention is due to Poggio, the Florentine, who died in 1459. It is the 133d of his Facetiæ, entitled the Vision of Philelphus, for which Rabelais has merely substituted the name of Hans Carvel. It is then to be met with in the eleventh of the Cent Nouvelles, a work which Poggio certainly had not seen, for they were not collected till after the year

• Gloomy care sits behind the rider.
+Imitated in the well-known tale of Prior.

1461, under the reign of Louis XI., in whose presence they are said to have been related while he was residing as Dauphin at Gueneppe, a castle of the Duke of Burgundy, in Brabant. Ariosto is the third who has introduced the tale, at the end of his fifth Satire, and has given it an air of novelty, by the graces which he has added to it. It is also the eleventh of an anonymous collection of novels, published at Lyons in 1555, an imitation and, in fact, a mere modernization of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. Celio Malespini has also introduced the story at page 288 of part second of his Ducento Novelle, printed in 4to, at Venice, in 1609, nearly one-half of which are borrowed, word for word, from the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. La Fontaine, in 1665, turned into elegant verse the prose of Rabelais, believing him really to have been the author of the tale. It has been also very elegantly versified in Latin Anacreontics, by La Monnoye himself.

LII. ORACLES.

A person who had some dangerous enemies, whom he believed capable of attempting anything, consulted the Oracle to know whether he should leave the country. The answer he obtained was, "Domine, stes securus;" a reply which led him to believe he might safely remain at home. Some days afterwards his enemies set fire to his house, and it was with difficulty that he escaped with his life. Then recollecting the answer of the Oracle, he perceived, when too late, that the word was not Domine, but Domi ne stes securus.

LIII. HENRY IV.

Henry IV. wishing to lower the pride of a Spanish ambassador, told him that if he had a mind to ride, he would go to hear mass at Milan, break