the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Commandments, a couple of prayers, his own name and official position, with the date of the year, month, and queen's reign, in such small characters, that he was able to inclose the paper bearing them in the head of a ring. This odd piece of work Master Peter presented to Queen Elizabeth, together with an excellent spectacle, by him devised, for the easier reading thereof, wherewith the queen read all that was written. We wonder her plain-speaking Majesty did not tell Bale he was a fool for his rains; but, being in a gracious humour, she placed the ring upon her royal finger, in token of her acceptance of the gift, to the great glorification of the happy giver. A Mr Searle, who had but two useful fingers at his command, wrote the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, seven of the Commandments, the 100th, 133d, and 144th Psalms, with his name, address, and the date, within the circumference of a sixpence. Another adept at microscopic penmanship contrived to get the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the whole of the Commandments, and his name within the compass of a silver penny; and a Liverpudlian rival wrote Goldsmith's Travelker, containing four hundred and eighty-eight lines, in a square of three and a half inches; the entire book of Malachi in a sort of pyramid the size of an ordinary little finger; while a circle three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter gave him room enough for the Lord's Prayer. Pliny affirms the existence of a copy of the Iliad which could be kept in a nut-shell, which perhaps accounts for Professor Schreiber taking the trouble to procure a stereographic copy of a German translation of Homer's famous work, filling six hundred pages, but yet so diminutive that a nut-shell sufficed to hold it; an achievement surpassed by the Toledo printer's edition of Don Quixote, occupying only fifty-one cigarette papers.

The notion that extreme littleness must perforce make a thing admirable, has led to a deal of ingenuity being wasted that might have been turned to good account. It has been gravely recorded that an artist of the sixteenth century contrived to delineate a city on such a minute scale that a fly would cover the entire painting. We believe the story just as much as we believe in the Dutchwoman's landscape, the size of a grain of corn, in which those with eyes to see could plainly discern a mill, with its sails bent, and the miller toiling up the stairs with a sack, a horse drawing a cart, and several peasants trudging along the country road. So, too, we doubt if Pope Paul V. reckoned according to Cocker when he professed to count sixteen hundred perfectly turned ivory dishes in a peppercorn case, the work of the most excellent artisan of that or any age,' Oswaldus Northingerus; and suspect the glasses used by the pope were' multiplying rather than magnifying ones. Father Johannes Baptista Ferranius made twenty-five wooden cannon, all properly furnished, for his peppercorn, and then was obliged to manufacture thirty wooden cups ere he could pronounce the casket full. Tradescant's Ark, as the museum of Charles I.'s gardener was called, boasted the possession of a peppercorn containing Hadrianus Junius saw, at Mechlin, a cherry stone basket, in which were fourteen pair of dice, the spots upon them easily discernible by an ordinarily good eye; and in the Dresden Museum may, perhaps, yet be seen a

a set of chessmen.

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cherry-stone, carved with a hundred and eighty human faces, plainly distinguishable with the aid of a microscope.

In 1745, admirers of little wonders could see plenty such marvels in the Strand. At one shop was exhibited a common Barcelona nut-shell, holding a tea-table, tea-board, a dozen cups and saucers, with sugar-dish and slop-basin, a bottle, a funnel, fifteen drinking-glasses, five punch-bowls, ten rummers, a pestle and mortar, and two sets of ninepins-all of polished ivory, exquisitely fashioned, and to be easily seen without the help of optic-glasses.' The ingenious artist, we are told, was a poor, poetical, penurious mortal, who, being, by the cruel destiny of the planets, driven to the jaws of destruction, had hit upon this method of saving himself. His chance, we fear, was a poor one; for his little exhibition was altogether outdone by a watchmaker, named Boverick, dwelling near the New Exchange, hard by. For the charge of one shilling, he shewed his visitors half a cherrystone, from which he took a quadrille table, twelve chairs with skeleton backs, a looking-glass, two dozen plates, six dishes, twelve spoons, a dozen knives and forks, two salts, and a lady and gentleman sitting down at table and waited upon by a footman. Having exhausted the contents of his cherry-stone, the watchmaker produced a camel that could pass through the eye of a middle-sized needle, and a pair of steel scissors, warranted to cut a large horsehair, of such dimensions that six pair might be wrapped in the wing of a fly. Then came a chain of two hundred links, with a padlock and key, attached to a flea, the lot weighing onethird of a grain; a four-wheeled ivory chariot, which, with its driver and the flea serving for steed, weighed barely a grain; and a crane-necked carriage, with wheels turning properly upon their axles, carrying four passengers, two footmen, a coachman sitting on his box with a dog between his legs, driving six ivory horses, one of the leaders bearing a postillion, the whole affair so light that a single flea could set it moving. Boverick's exhibition would have astonished honest Mark Scaliot, the London blacksmith, of Elizabeth's time, who thought himself marvellously clever when he made a gold chain of forty-three links, with a lock and key, which, being fastened about a flea's neck, was drawn by it-lock, chain, key, and flea weighing exactly a grain and a half. Scaliot also made a hanging lock of iron, steel, and brass, with a pipe key, 'filed three-square, with a pot upon the shaft, and the bow. with two roses, all clean wrought, weighing altogether one grain.

In 1771, the nobility, gentry, and curious of all classes were invited to the Great Room in Exeter 'Change to behold the result of twenty years' close application-a piece of mechanism, some four and a half feet square, representing a gentleman's country seat, with buildings, temples, alcoves, grottoes, summer-houses, ponds, and cascades, all complete, enlivened by above a hundred moving figures, employed in bricklaying, carpentering, plumbing, mason's work, joining, and turning. Deer ran about the park; ladies promenaded the garden ; round which a six-horse chariot, a pair-horsed phaeton, and a one-horsed chaise duly progressed; with attitudes and motions as natural, if we may take the exhibiter's word, that, although the figures were none of them more than two inches high, they appeared like life itself.

Automata have ever been in high favour with men ambitious only of exciting wonder, and preferring to use their powers of invention and their mechanical ability to amuse the few, rather than to benefit the many. The flying wooden pigeon of Archytas, the brazen birds and serpents of Boetius, the wooden sparrows of Turrvano, the iron fly of Regiomontanus, and his wondrous eagle-that wooden bird which we are expected to believe flew from Nuremberg to welcome Maximilian, and, after saluting him, turned round, and led the procession to the city's gates-were but notable examples of misapplied ingenuity. Of what use was Vaucanson's wonderful duck, although it could move its wings, quack, drink water, eat corn, and digest it too? Maillardet's humming-bird, that flew from its nest for a three minutes' warble, might be a thing of beauty, but would assuredly not prove a joy for ever to its owner; while, for his steel spider and his artificial lizard, caterpillar, and snake, only folk of very queer taste would afford them houseroom. The Swiss mechanician was not content with fabricating artificial birds, reptiles, and insects. As Vaucanson had his automaton flute-player and piper, Maillardet's masterpiece was a lady pianist, capable of playing for an hour at a time, while her bosom heaved, her eyes seemed to follow the movements of her fingers over the keys, the pressure of which produced the notes; and when she concluded her performance, she saluted her hearers by a graceful inclination of the head.

A hundred years ago, an odd-shaped vehicle, resembling a sedan upon wheels more than anything else, decorated with emblematical figures, was seen pretty regularly every Sunday in Hyde Park. The doors and windows of the conveyance opened from the inside, and, by pulling a string attached to a whip, the occupant administered a reminder to the horse whenever he required one, while a glance at a little dial before him told him how far he had travelled. Everybody knew Merlin's coach, the pride of its contriver and owner, of whom an admirer sang:

Come, patron of merit, bright goddess of Fame! Aloud to the world Merlin's talents proclaim; To the favourite of Genius you surely should raise A tribute of lasting and glorious praise! Merlin spent a lifetime in constructing mechanical oddities, more remarkable for their ingenuity than their utility. His house in Little Queen Anne Street, Marylebone, was crammed with specimens of his skill. There might be seen a Turk eating stones, a flying-fish wafting in air,' a frigate in full sail over a miniature sea, a butterfly sporting around artificial flowers, a reduced copy of the coach itself, as perfect in action as the great original,

and other curiosities of the sort too numerous to

mention; but we may note two figures representing females, about fifteen inches high, one in a walking, the other in a dancing attitude, which performed almost every motion of the human body-of the head, the breasts, the neck, the arms, the legs, and the fingers, even to the elevation of the eyelids, and the lifting of the hands to the face.. Merlin carried his hobby into his amusements. He made himself a wheel resembling that of Fortune, and, as that goddess, used to attend almost all the masquerades, rolling along in the car, moved by the motion of his feet, at the same time distributing his

favours, particularly to ladies. He was not less fond of representing the character of Cupid at these places of public amusement, and he, at the same time, imitated Vulcan in forging his own darts, for which he had a fire and a forge; and them he likewise very successfully aimed against the fair sex.' A man must surely have a bee in his bonnet to devote the leisure of ten years to turning old winecorks and wasps' nests into the melancholy similitude of a famous cathedral; fit to be paired with the Exmouth artisan's model of Solomon's Temple, with eleven towers, a hundred and eighty-eight pillars, three hundred and eighty-five pinnacles, and nearly a thousand windows, constructed with shells and minerals. A Frenchman occupied all his spare hours for four years over a large mosaic landscape, composed of four thousand different species of insects. The proprietors of the London Tavern, the Crown and Anchor, and the Freemasons' Tavern, were wont, once upon a time, to save all their fish-bones for an ingenious trifler, who, for thirty years, occupied herself in transforming them into likenesses of floral and feathered favourites, spending the best part of her life making

With bones, scales, and eyes, from the prawn to the porpoise;

Fruit, flies, birds, and flowers-oh, strange metamorphose!

lacked, and perhaps will never lack, admirers. Worthless as they may be, such things never

ODDS AND ENDS:

FROM DR ROBERT CHAMBERS'S SCRAP-BOOK.

MENTAL EXCITEMENT.--Active physical exertionsuch as rapid walking, riding on horseback, working at any rough occupation in which the hands are busily employed, even the simple matter of cutting up the leaves of a book-produces a certain healthful mental excitement, that may be made useful for literary composition. About the worst of all things for the mind is idleness. There can be no doubt that the reason why many shoemakers have risen to distinction is the constant beating of leather; blacksmiths, too, by their incessant hammering of iron, are similarly benefited. Burns would probably never have attained eminence as a poet, had he not diligently worked at the plough or laboured in the harvest-field. In conversing with his surviving sister, Mrs Begg (1848), she reports strongly about his composing much while ploughing, also when binding sheaves behind the in the harvest field. She and others reap

reapers

ing would hear him muttering his poetry while at work-heard well enough that it was rhyme. The exercise was obviously favourable to the working of his mind. [A publisher in London, now deceased, always took to folding the sheets of a book, when he wanted to strike out some new idea in his profession. He said it stirred him up.]

THE EMPRESS EUGENIE. Of this lady's Scotch progenitors the following account is seen in the Dumfries Courier (1853), and I have no doubt it is correct.

'Nearly a century ago, a highly respectable

ଦ:

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gentleman, William Kirkpatrick, first-cousin to the late Sir James Kirkpatrick, Baronet, of Closeburn, was proprietor of the estate of Conheath, in the parish of Caerlaverock, where he resided. The estate had originally been one of the numerous possessions of the Closeburn family, of which he was a cadet, but had passed out of their hands, and was re-purchased by Mr Kirkpatrick's grandfather. He had a very large family. One of his sons, also a William Kirkpatrick, settled as a merchant in Malaga, and remained there till his death, a period of upwards of twenty-five years, during a considerable portion of which time he held the office of American consul there. He married the eldest daughter of Baron Grievguie, by whom he had one son and three daughters. The son died early. The daughters all married, the youngest to a cousin of her own, and is since dead. The other two married Spanish noblemen. One still resides with her family at Malaga; the other is the Countess de Montijo, and mother of Napoleon's empress, lately Countess Téba. Thus the great-grand-daughter of the proprietor of a small estate in Dumfriesshire became the Empress of the French.

The origin of the once powerful family of Closeburn, of which, as we have shewn, the Empress is a lineal descendant, is lost in antiquity. They possessed many extensive estates in this country at a very early period, and were proprietors of Closeburn from the twelfth century till the year 1783, when it was sold to Mr Menteath. In the parish of Closeburn there was formerly a chapel dedicated to St Patrick, and its site gave name to the farm of Kirkpatrick. From this place the Kirkpatricks assumed their surname in the thirteenth century. The circumstance of Kirkpatrick assisting Robert Bruce to slay Cumyn in the Greyfriars Church, Dumfries, on the 10th February 1305, is well known, and it is from this that the family took the crest and motto which they still bear.

Roger Kirkpatrick, in 1355, was powerful enough to expel the English from the castles of Dalswinton and Caerlaverock. He got a grant of the latter, and resided in the castle till he was murdered by Sir James Lindsay, in the year 1357. The circumstances of this murder are remarkable, and form the subject of a fine ballad by the late Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. Lindsay and Kirkpatrick were suitors for the hand of the same ady; the latter was preferred, and Lindsay was a wedding-guest at the castle of Caerlaverock. In the dead of night, Lindsay stole up to the bridal chamber, and stabbed his successful rival to the heart, and escaped on horseback. When the deed was discovered the men-at-arms went off in pursuit. A storm had arisen, and Lindsay, confused, had ridden round, in place of away from the castle: he was taken, and executed at the castle gate. The barony was afterwards restored to the Maxwells.'

[Had the writer of the foregoing account lived till 1874, he would undoubtedly have lamented the reverse of fortune of the now widowed Empress Eugénie, and spoken with satisfaction of her discretion and her friendliness towards England in the days of her prosperity.]

A STRANGE STORY.-We sometimes hear of strange articles being found in the stomach of a cod, but never till now (1850) in the stomach of a

horse. In a copy of Galignani, I find the following. The contractor for slaughtering horses at Montfaucon purchased, a short time ago, a lot of old worn-out animals, including several which had belonged to the army. In cutting up one of the aged military horses, a man named Matelot was astonished to find a small silver box, in which were a cross of the Legion of Honour, and a paper, in a perfect state of preservation, containing the following lines-As I cannot survive the defeat of my Emperor, and as I have neither wife, nor child, nor cousins, I am about to get myself killed in a last charge against the English, and as I will not let them have my cross, I will make my faithful horse, Château Margot, swallow it. He will give it up when he can.-PIERRE DARDENNE, Sergeant in the 2d squadron of Red Lancers.' Matelot took the things to the commissary of police of the district, and that functionary allowed him to keep the silver box. As for the cross, it was sent to the Grande Chancellerie of the Legion of Honour. From documents published by the professors of the Ecole d'Alfort, it appears that certain horses have lived to the age of forty-five; that which Charles XII. rode at the battle of Pultowa attained that age. The white charger of Napoleon lived twenty-nine years. Château Margot is supposed to have been about forty. He had been made to swallow the box at the battle of Waterloo, in which his master wilfully perished. The box had accordingly been in his stomach five-and-thirty years.

THE FOOD OF A LIFETIME.-M. Soyer, cook of the Reform Club, is a person of considerable genius, a good deal above ordinary artists in his peculiar line. In one of his books, the Modern Housewife, he enters into a calculation as to how much food an epicure of seventy years of age has consumed. This imaginary epicure, who is supposed to be a wealthy personage, is placed by him on Primrose Hill at ten years old, and told to look around him at the vast assemblage of animals and other objects he will in the course of a lifetime send down his throat-the sight of which is, of course, described as appalling. Among other things, he is to devour 30 oxen, 200 sheep, 100 calves, 200 lambs, 50 pigs, 1200 fowls, 300 turkeys, 263 pigeons, 120 turbot, 140 salmon, 30,000 oysters, 5475 pounds-weight of vegetables, 243 pounds of butter, 24,000 eggs, and 4 tons of bread, besides fruits, sweetmeats, &c. and 49 hogsheads of wine, 584 gallons of spirits, and about 3000 gallons of tea and coffee. This is a mere outline of what we are told is destined to be consumed. To shew there is no exaggeration, Soyer assures us that he has from experience made up a scale of food for the day for a period of sixty years, and 'it amounts to 33 tons-weight of meat, farinaceous food, and vegetables, &c.' One is not prepared to dispute the calculations of so clever an expert. All we can say is, that the picture he presents is very suggestive. That he has not exaggerated in at least one particular, I am prepared to verify. A gentleman of my acquaintance has for the last fifty years eaten every morning two eggs to breakfast-making 730 per annum, or a total for the whole period 36,500 eggs. This goes considerably beyond Soyer!

A HINT FROM THOMAS CARLYLE.-In March 1851, Mr Carlyle, being invited to attend a soirée of the Mechanics' Institution of Annan (a town