"M. de Rayneval concealed this change of opinion from the English minister, and continued, notwithstanding, to insist as much as ever on the fulfilment of his word. It was then that the Cabinet of St. James's (not aware that Spain had no longer the equivalent of Martinique to offer them) first offered one of the Floridas, and then both of them. This proposition was immediately transmitted to Versailles. The Count Aranda, ambassador from Spain, and furnished with full powers, was called there to receive the communication of this dispatch. After a few moments of profound meditation, he declared officially, that he renounced, in the name of his Sovereign, his demand for Gibraltar, and accepted of the two Floridas. "I know to what I expose myself,' said he, upon signing, but I know your embarrassments and ours.'-He was disgraced."

THE ADVENTURES OF TELEMACHUS.

In the Lansdown library there was a very ancient Greek romance, printed at Florence, in 1645, called Athene Skeleate. This title, which cannot be translated literally, is interpreted by the learned editor, Pietro Proso, to mean Minerva Calzonito; which, however ludicrous it may appear, cannot be translated nearer into English than by the phrase Minerva in breeches.

This curious work was purchased by the first marquis of Lansdown, for a great sum, at the sale of the Pinelli library, and is supposed to be the only copy in existence; though there can be no doubt that Fenelon had seen the work, as the fable of his Telemachus is evidently founded upon it. It was embellished with several engravings, of which only one remained. It represents Mentor leaping after Telemachus, whom he has thrown into the sea from the rocks of the island of Calypso. This the learned commentator supposes to have been one of the western islands of Scotland; in which he is certainly warranted by the text, which states it to have been far to the west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and though to some this may seem to apply better to the Canary Islands, yet the further statement that our travellers there found the days three times as long as the nights, can only apply to the summer of a high northern latitude. This, too, accounts satisfactorily for the narrations handed down to us of the wanderings of Ulysses. It has always been justly considered absurd, to suppose that he could, for ten years, wander about the narrow seas, as in a labyrinth. But if we can imagine him to have been driven through the Straits into the wide

Atlantic; there, indeed, being at best but an indifferent seaman, and unacquainted with the compass, his wanderings might have been long enough.

It is probable, that the first land Ulysses made was one of the western islands of Scotland; whence, not daring again to lose the sight of land, he would have had a most tedious voyage back to the Mediterranean, What still further corroborates this opinion, is a fact unknown in the age of the editor of the Athene Skeleate. The island of Calypso is described as having several grottos, formed of natural pillars of stone, so regularly ranged as to resemble a work of art, unless," says the romance, they were fashioned by the hands of the giants." Now there is nothing at all resembling this description in any of the islands of the Mediterranean; nor, perhaps, in any part of the world, the Hebrides excepted.

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MR. BINDLEY, THE BIBLIOMANIAC.

THE late Mr. Bindley was one of the most assiduous bibliomaniacs of his time; and small as may be the service which he did to letters, the price which his collection brought at his death shews, that a man, in these days, may do worse for his heirs than spend his time in going the round of the old book-stalls. Many rare things, which he had picked up for a few shillings, were actually converted into more than their weight in silver and gold. "Herbert's" Dick and Robin, with songs, and other old tracts, 1641," which cost him only two. shillings, was bought by Mr. Heber for ten pounds. A volume, containing Patrick Hannay's "Nightingale, and other poems, with a portrait of the author, and a portrait of Anne of Denmark, by Crispin de Pass, 1622," which Mr. Bindley bought for six shillings, was sold to Mr. Evans for thirty-five pounds, fourteen shillings; and five of Robert Green's productions, which altogether cost him only seven shillings and ninepence, brought, from different purchasers, the enormous sum of forty-one pounds, fourteen shillings. An account of an "English Hermite, or Wonder of his Age, 1655," one Roger Crab, who could live on three farthings a week, consisting of only four leaves, with a portrait, sold for five pounds, ten shillings. A short history of another prodigy, Mr. Marriot, "The Cormorant, or Great Eater, of Gray's Inn," who always eat twelve pounds of meat daily, 1652, brought fourteen guineas. And Leuricke's "Most wonderful and pleasaunt History of Titus and Gisippus," 1562, though a poem of only ten pages, and, as a poem, contemptible, being however extremely rare, sold

for twenty-four pounds, thirteen shillings and sixpence. Could we be sure of this taste for mere rarities continuing, a man could do nothing more profitable, in the way of book-buying, than to purchase all the trash of his day. It would only have to be kept snug for a couple of centuries, and then, what nobody cared for once, might purchase a principality, or endow an hospital for brainless authors in all time to come.

BIBLE COMMENTATORS.

SOME Bible commentators are excessively abstruseothers, great triflers. Of the latter class, was St. Austin, who laboured hard to prove that the ten plagues of Egypt were punishments adapted to the breach of the ten commandments; forgetting that the law was given to the Jews, and that the plagues were inflicted on the Egyptians. But St. Austin committed a worse blunder than this; for the law was not given in the form of commandments, until nearly three months after the plagues were sent.

Brightman, an expositor on the Revelations, among other subjects, selects for a comment the twentieth verse of the fourteenth chapter:-" And the wine-press was trodden without the city; and blood came out of the wine-press even unto the horses' bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs." He then comments upon it as follows:-" Sixteen hundred furlongs; that is, through the whole realm of England. Sixteen hundred furlongs make two hundred English miles. Now the length of this realm, from the farthest part of the south to the longest reach of the north, is more than this by a hundred miles; but yet if we take away the vastness of the northern parts, where the country is more desert and unmanured, near the borders, we shall see a marvellous consent in this also."

The philosopher Whiston, who was no flatterer, applied a prophecy of St. John, in the Revelations, to Prince Eugene; who politely thanked, and even rewarded the expositor; but protested that he could not bring himself to believe, that St. John had him in view when he wrote the Apocalypse.

Some of the best commentators are not free from trifling: thus Dr. Gill, in his Expository, seriously tells us that the word abba, read backwards or forwards being the same, may teach us that God is the father of his people in adversity as well as in prosperity.

Vander Meulen, in his Dissertationes Philologica, gives a singular elucidation of the following text from Genesis:

"And the Lord took one of his (Adam's) ribs, and made a woman." The commentator then inquires-" First, was the rib taken from the right or the left side of Adam? Secondly, was Adam, after the loss of that rib, a maimed or imperfect man?" Questions, which he discusses very gravely, and then proceeds to ask-"Why was Eve formed of a rib, and not of the dust of the ground?" His answer to this question is curious, if not convincing. "Had Eve been created of the dust of the ground," he says, "she would have been a stranger to Adam. Had she been created out of his foot, he might have despised or trampled upon her, as being much his inferior. Had she been produced out of his head, she would, perhaps, have taken too much upon herself, and pretended to domineer. It was, therefore, more proper that she should be taken from the middle of Adam's body, on which account he could not but have a due esteem for her."

ARIOSTO.

IT is related of Ariosto, that his father being one day extremely angry with him, reprimanded him in terms of the strongest resentment and invective; and that Ariosto not only listened with patience, but with the most profound attention; not offering a single word in his vindication; seeming, on the contrary, to wish the stern lecture had continued longer. A friend of his, who was present, asked Ariosto how he could so patiently hear himself abused? The poet replied, that he had been for some days hard at work on a comedy; and, on that very morning, was much perplexed how to write a scene of an angry father reprimanding his son. At the moment his father began, it struck him as an admirable opportunity of examining his manner with attention, that he might be enabled to draw the picture as close to nature as possible. Being thus absorbed in thought, he had only noticed the voice, the face, and the action, of his father, without paying the least attention to the truth or falsehood of the charge.

ORIGIN OF TEXTS.

THE custom of taking a text as the basis of a sermon or lecture is said to have originated with Ezra, who, we are told, accompanied by several Levites in a public congregation of men and women, ascended a pulpit, opened the book of the law,

and, after addressing a prayer to the Deity, to which the people said Amen, "read in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading."*

Previous to the time of Ezra, the Patriarchs delivered, in public assemblies, either prophecies or moral instructions for the edification of the people; and it was not until the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, during which time they had almost lost the language in which the Pentateuch was written, that it became necessary to explain, as well as to read, the Scriptures to them; a practice adopted by Ezra, and since universally followed. In later times, as we are told in the Acts of the Apostles, chap. xiv. v. 21. the book of Moses was thus read in the synagogue every sabbath day. To this laudable custom our Saviour conformed; and, in the synagogue at Nazareth, read a passage from the prophet Isaiah; then closing the book, returned it to the priest, and preached from the text. This custom, which now prevails all over the Christian world, was interrupted, in the dark ages, when the Ethics of Aristotle were read in many churches, on Sunday, instead of the Holy Scriptures.

LITERARY CURIOSITY.

THE following Latin verse, which is composed with much ingenuity, affords two very opposite meanings, by merely transposing the order of the words:

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Prospicimus modo, quod durabunt tempore longo
Fœdera, nec patriæ pax cito diffugiet."

"Diffugiet cito pax patriæ, nec fœdera longo
Tempore durabunt, quod modo prospicimus.'

SINGULAR SERMON.

THAT a ridiculous sermon should be preached can excite no surprise; for preaching is assumed by all ranks and persons of different qualifications, learned and unlearned; but that a Bachelor of Divinity should preach before the University, and afterwards publish such a sermon as one that we have seen in print, is remarkable. The title is "The Virgin Mary. Preached in St. Mary's College, Oxford, on Lady-day, 1641. By the learned Thomas Master, B. D."

Nehemiah, cap. viii. 8.