who sat near him, "what such a man would have said, if he had ever had the luck to see a lion." A neat bull for a learned female. Mrs. Piozzi, in giving an account of the paralytic stroke with which Dr. Johnson was struck, states, that finding his speech gone, he directly, in order to ascertain whether his mental powers remained unimpaired, composed a prayer in Latin, to deprecate God's mercy. A wonderful tree. Dr. Platt, who has published a history of Staffordshire, states, that in the year 1680, there was an apple tree within the moat at the parsonage house in that county, which spread about fifty-four yards in circumference, which, allowing four square feet for a man, would shelter five hundred footmen under its branches. Epigram. Too long squire Baboon led a bachelor's life, He wish'd and he pray'd for a handsome young wife, Some buxom young damsel with which to ensnare. Dexterity. The peasants in Catalonia drink without touching the mouth of the bottle with their lips. "And the height," says Townsend, "from which they let the liquor fall in one continued stream, without either missing their aim, or spilling a single drop, is surprising. For this purpose, the orifice of the bottle is small, and from their infancy they learn to swallow like the Thracians, with their mouths wide open." Vol. I, 92. National insult. The sacred colour of the Mahometans, particularly in Africa, is green. The Spaniards, to show their contempt for the mussulmen, clothe their vilest criminals and even their hangmen in a dress of this colour. A nautical school. It is a subject of sincere regret that so many useful institutions, calculated to promote human comfort, happiness, and safety, are confined to a few countries, and the rest of mankind as completely debarred of their advantages, as they are of the fanciful art of the alchymists. Sir John Dalrymple, shortly after the termination of the American revolution, proposed a grand plan for the formation of societies in different nations, who should correspond with each other, and communicate respectively their useful inventions. It is to be lamented that so benevolent a project totally failed. In these hasty lucubrations, the fruit of hours stolen from the painful labours of business, I shall occasionally lay before the public useful discoveries that exist in various parts of christendom, and that may be worthy of adoption in the United States. To begin. In Barcelona, there was in 1785, an academy for "the noble arts," open to every person, and in which all who attended were taught gratis, drawing, architecture, and sculpture. For this purpose they had seven spacious halls, furnished at the king's expense, with tables, benches, lights, paper, pencils, drawings, models, clay, and living subjects. Townsend counted one night "upwards of five hundred boys, many of whom were finishing designs, which showed either superior genius, or more than common application." But the part of this institution most deserving of imitation in a country so devotedly attached to commerce as is America, remains to be stated. One of the halls was fitted up as a nautical school, and was provided with every thing needful to teach the art of navigation. Since the first establishment of this useful seminary, more than five hundred pilots were educated in it, qualified to navigate a vessel to any quarter of the globe.* A correct style-and a judicious criticism. In the dedication to Harris's Hermes, which is but fourteen lines long, doctor Johnson said there were six grammatical errors. Newspaper scurrility. Cummyns, a most respectable quaker in London, declared to doctor Johnson, on his death-bed, that the pain he felt from an anonymous letter, in one of the common newspapers, fastened on his heart and threw him into a slow fever, of which he died. Mrs. Piozzi, who re • Townsend's Spain, vol. I, p. 118. lates this interesting anecdote, adds that "Hawkesworth, the pious, the virtuous, and the wise, fell, for want of fortitude, a lamented sa→ crifice to wanton malice and cruelty" of the same kind. A curious question. 66 Doctor Johnson, after having declared how few books there were of which a person could possibly arrive at the last page, asks, was there ever yet any thing written by mortal man, which was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?" To this question, to which the doctor undoubtedly expected an answer in the negative, we may confidently "Yes-there have been thousands." Without going into minute detail, I think it is safe to assert that few readers of taste have ever read the Iliad, Horace's writings, the Sentimental Journey, Vicar of Wakefield, Thomson's Seasons, the Economy of Human Life, &c. &c. without a sincere regret that they were so soon finished. say Idiocy. In the year 1785, in an hospital in Barcelona, containing 1460 paupers, there were no less than the astonishing number of three hundred idiots! A mountain of sait. Townsend, whom I have freely quoted already, gives an account of a most remarkable and interesting phenomenon. It is "a stupendous mountain in the vicinity of Montserrat, of three miles in circumference, near the village of Cardana, which is one mass of salt, and equal in height to those of the Pyrenees, on which it borders. In a climate like England," he adds, "such a mass had long since been dissolved: but in Spain they employ this rock salt, as in Derbyshire they do the fluor spar, to make snuff boxes and vases, with other ornaments and trinkets.*" He carried a little fragment with him all through Spain without the least sign of deliquescence-but when he arrived in England, he soon found it surrounded with a pool of water. It has been believed that the leprosy was totally extirpated out of Europe, and that there were no traces of it remaining but in the records to be found of its horrible ravages. Unfortunately this is far from true. In one province of Spain, the Asturias, there are no less than * Idem, I. 92. twenty hospitals for this frightful disorder. Some patients are covered over with a white dry scurf, and look like millers. In others the skin is almost black, very thick, full of wrinkles, unctuous, and covered with a loathsome crust. Others have one leg and thigh enormously swelled, and full of varices, pustules, and ulcers, sending forth a most abominable smell." * Unparalleled modesty. Paracelsus, the prince of quacks and impostors, carried the art of arrogant puffing to its ne plus ultra. It is hardly credible, but is nevertheless indubitably true, that he prefaced one of his principal works with the following pompous encomium on his own talents and skill: "Ye must give way to me, and not I to you. Ye must give way to me, Avicenna, Rhases, Galen, Maseu. Ye must give way to me, ye of Paris, of Montpelier, ye of Swabia, ye of Misnia, ye of Cologne, ye of Vienna, and whatever places lie on the Danube and the Rhine. Ye islands in the sea; thou Italian, thou Dalmatian, thou Athenian, thou Greek, thou Arabian, thou Israelite; ye must give way to me, and not I to you. The monarchy is mine." This barefaced puff direct exceeds even the utmost impudence of the most brazen-fronted puffer of modern times. The great Bacon advises, as the best method of renovating the exhausted powers of nature, to free the body every two or three years from all the old and corrupted juices, by spare diet and catharticsand afterwards to replenish the vessels with new juices, by means of refreshing and nourishing food-thus renewing and invigorating the system periodically. -- Extraordinary phenomenon. Fontana made a number of most curious and extraordinary experiments on animal life, which excite the astonishment of every person who reads his accounts of them. He dried wheel insects and hair worms in the scorching sun-and then parched them in an oven. Yet after six months he restored these dried animals to life by pouring over them lukewarm water. Longevity. Helen Gray, a woman who died a few years ago, in England, in the 105th year of her age, had new teeth a few years before her death. † * Idem II. 11. + Hufeland's art of prolonging life. Vol. I, 148, Bachelors, beware. Hufeland, from whom I have extracted the foregoing fact, states that there is not one instance on record of a bachelor having attained to a great age. This observation, he says, applies with as much force to unmarried females as to males in that insulated state. Wonderful Memory. In the Gentleman's Magazine for September 1752, there is a story published, of a most extraordinary memory, which almost sets credulity at defiance. The incident is likewise to be found in Baker's Playhouse Companion, and other works of respectability. William Lyon, a strolling player, it is there stated, laid a wager one evening when with some of his companions at a tavern, that he would next day at rehearsal, repeat a Daily Advertiser, from beginning to end. Next day his companion reminded him of his wager; on which, Lyon, pulling out the paper, desired him to look at it, and decide himself whether or not he won the wager. "Notwithstanding," says the writer, "the want of connexion between the paragraphs, the variety of advertisements, and the general chaos which enters into the composition of a newspaper, he repeated it from beginning to end, without hesitation or mistake. I know this," adds he, "to be true, and believe its parallel cannot be found in any age or nation." Newspapers. The number of newspapers printed in England, is prodigiously great. It is collected from the records of the stamp office, which must give rather below than above the real extent of the circulation. From this source it appears that |