Desdemona saw the Moor's complexion in his mind; and a dark or dirty deed may assume a very fair aspect when we look at it through the purse. That man must be a sturdy moralist who does not prefer his cash to his conscience, and what casuist ever wanted an excuse for a profitable transgression?

"I may have sold justice," said Bacon, when accused of judicial corruption; "but I was never base enough to sell injustice."

For stopping a man's mouth, when he is in the habit of uttering disagreeable truths, there is no gag like gold. Complaint having been made to a certain bishop that a vicar in his diocese was always preaching against pluralities, in spite of repeated admonitions to the contrary.

"Tush!" exclaimed the right reverend dignitary. "I will silence him for ever in less than a week"-and so he did, by giving an additional benefice.

PARCHMENT AND ISINGLASS.

As the intelligent reader must already be perfectly well aware of the fact, we make that our reason (more dramatico) for informing him that parchment derives its name from Pergamus, a town of Mysia, where prepared sheepskins were first used for the transcription of books; Ptolemy, the King of Egypt, having forbidden the exportation of Papyrus, in order to prevent the formation of a library at Pergamus, which might rival that of Alexandria. The Pergameneans, however, with the assistance of their newly-discovered parchment, managed to collect two hundred thousand volumes, which Cleopatra, with the permission of Antony, transported to Egypt, and added to the Alexandrian library, where they remained until the whole were destroyed by the Saracens.

It is equally well known to the ingenious reader,-which is our sole reason for telling him that isinglass, or icthyocolla is, as its Latin name imports, a species of glue, prepared from a cartilaginous fish; but it may not be known to him, that as the genuine commodity is always dear, a spurious isinglass is manufactured from old Parchment, of which a startling confirmation is afforded by the following extract from the preface to the fourth volume of Miss Strickland's admirable work, "The Lives of the Queens of England."

"It is a national disgrace most deeply to be lamented, that so many of the muniments of our history, more especially those connected with the personal expenditure of royalty, should have perished among the ill-treated records of the exchequer. It has been reported, whether in jest or sober sadness we cannot say, that some tons of those precious parchments were converted into isinglass."-p. xiv.

"Think of that, Master Brooke!" Think of rolls, records, acts of parliament, marriage contracts, public and private treaties, all going literally to pot, and being melted down; all being literally dished and served up to a voracious public in the form of jellies and blancmange!

"To what bare uses may we not return?" This beats "imperious Cæsar dead and turned to clay"-by the whole difference between an argillaceous and a gelatinous residuum. An ancient legislator said that he had rather write his laws upon the hearts of men than on the skins of beasts; and he had good reason, for hearts, however soft,

cannot be "distilled to jelly by the effect of fear," nor boiled down to a pulp in a Papin's Digester. The Glendoveer, in the "Rejected Addresses," informs us that "parchment won't burn;" but what avails this security against fire by itself, when, by means of fire and water, it may be simmered and seethed down to a glutinous paste ?

"Is not this a lamentable thing?" asks Jack Cade-" that the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment; that parchment being scribbled o'er should undo a man?"

But is it not infinitely more lamentable that parchment itself should be undone that acts of parliament and title-deeds melted into a mould, should be gulped down at the second course of a dinner-party? Men, before now, have been obliged to eat their own words, but this is compelling them to eat their own acts and deeds. This is a new digest of the laws that may well compete with the Justinian Pandects, for it will reconcile public taste to the most tyrannical enactment, and make it go down without grumbling or eructation. If we cannot always stick to the law, the law in this glutinous state will stick to us. And whereas acts of parliament often bring men into hot water, may not the victims warrantably rejoice when they behold the oppressor seething in the pot, and suffering what he has inflicted? What a blessing would it prove to many of us if we could liquidate our private bills after the same fashion as these public ones! For my own part I have taken an additional fancy to jelly and blancmange since I have thus been enabled to trace their pedigree, especially when I reflect that they form an economical food for the same parliament that condemns us to eat dear bread, but is thus giving us its rolls for nothing. But with respect to grants, charters, and leases,

Smeared with gums of glutinous heat,

and presented to me for the purpose of deglutition, I plead guilty to certain compunctious visitings of nature. It is recorded of the Dragon of Wantley, that

Houses and churches,

To him were geese and turkies.

This was doubtless a miserable degradation, a sort of reductio ad absurdum, to fall off from the dignity of mansions and cathedrals to the insignificance of poultry and the maw of a dragon; but what was it after all compared to the downfall of religious edifices, manor houses, and parks, quintessenced into spoon-meat for the gullet of a dandy, or a damsel at a soirée dansante? What sufficiently opprobrious title shall we give to the deed of thus devouring title-deeds? Who would think of bolting down lands, tenements, and hereditaments at one fell gulp, unless he were an earthquake? and even earthquakes nowadays, though invited to ope their ponderous jaws by special prophesy, leave the task of taking in a whole city to Dr. Dee and his brother prognosticators.

But the most melancholy consideration connected with the manufacture of this spurious isinglass, is the possibility that the medi-oval pastrycooks of Italy, purchasing from the monasteries and libraries whole cartloads of parchment scribbled over with the obsolete controversial divinity of the early monks, and therefore justly condemned as useless rubbish, may thus have jellified some of those precious palimp

sests, or twice prepared skins, which, having originally been used by the classical writers of antiquity, had been rubbed with pumice-stone, and scrawled over a second time with the wranglings and ravings of polemical antagonists.

Ex pede Herculem.

from these twice-written skins, Only imagine the remaining Livy, the perished tragedies stage, to have been filtered

By what Professor Mai has recovered we may judge of what has been lost. orations of Cicero, the missing books of and comedies of the Greek and Roman through a jelly-bag, and unceremoniously swallowed by the revellers of some bygone carnival! We now know what has become of them all. In a singular appendix to the song of the Nibelungen, called "The Lament," the poet expresses his wish to be able to give an account of his hero's ultimate fate, but, says he,

"Some say he was killed in battle, which others deny. I have never been able to ascertain whether he suddenly disappeared, or was taken up into the air: whether he was buried alive, or was taken up into heaven; or fell out of his skin, or shut himself up in caves among the rocks, or fell into an abyss, or finally, if he was swallowed up by the devil."*

Now we are not left in any such uncertainty as to the fate of each classical writer whose works have perished; one of these alternatives will satisfactorily account for him; he has fallen out of his skinvidelicet, his parchment; has been converted into jelly or blanc mange; and has been eventually swallowed up, though not perhaps by the devil.

SKULLS HEROICAL AND AUCTORIAL.

MR. D'ISRAELI in his "Amenities of Literature," under the head of "Anglo-Saxon Poetry," records the following mis-translation of a metaphorical image in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog.

"The warlike barbarians were long reproached, that even their religion furnished an implacable hatred of their enemies; for in their future state and Paridisaical Valhalla their deceased heroes rejoiced to drink out of the skulls of their enemies. A passage in the death-song of Lodbrog literally translated is, Soon shall we drink out of the curved trees of the head,'-which Percy translates, Soon in the splendid hall of Odin we shall drink beer out of the skulls of our enemies."

The original blunder, it seems, rests with Olaus Wormius, the great Danish antiquary, who, not understanding the exaggerated stile of the ancient Scalds, translated the original words into-ex concavis crateribus craniorum, thus turning the trees of the head into a skull, and a skull into a hollow cup. The Scald, however, merely alluded, in his bold figurative language, to the branching horns growing as trees from the heads of animals, or the curved horns which formed their drinking-cups. This grave blunder has been long and currently received and every one recollects Peter Pindar's joke, that the booksellers, like the heroes of Valhalla, drank their wine out of the skulls of authors. It is hard upon us poor scribblers to give up any joke at

* Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 212.

the expense of the publishers, and if we are compelled to abandon the heroes in the hall of Odin, let us never forget Campbell's bon-mot, who, when he was challenged to mention a single great and good action, which would entitle Napoleon to be called a hero, quietly replied, in allusion to the execution of Palm, the bibliopolist, "He once shot a bookseller!"

WHO ARE THE TRUTH LOVERS?

IN Hartley's "Theory of the Human Mind," abridged by Doctor Priestley, there occurs the following passage:

"Persons who give themselves much to mirth, wit, and humour, must thereby greatly disqualify their understandings for the search after truth; inasmuch as by the perpetual hunting after apparent and partial agreements and disagreements, that are very different or quite opposite, a man must by degrees pervert all his notions of things themselves, and become unable to see them as they really are, and as they appear to considerate sober-minded inquirers. He must lose all his associations of the visible ideas of things, their names, symbols, &c., and get in their stead accidental, indirect, aud unnatural conjunctions of circumstances, that are really foreign to each other, or oppositions of those that are united; and after some time habit and custom will fix these upon him."-(p. 274.)

This strange and untenable assertion may be met by the question of the best laughing philosopher among the ancients," Ridendo, quid vetat dicere verum ?" You may well assert that a man cannot speak truth with false teeth in his head, as maintain that he cannot afterwards see an object faithfully if he have once gazed upon a ludicrous or distorted representation of it. Surely there is no natural alliance between merriment and mendacity. We may laugh and grow fat without growing false at the same time. Because my risible propensities have been once excited by a caricature, or unfaithful likeness of my friend, are all my notions to become so perverted that I shall not recognise my old acquaintance when I meet him in the streets? Because I laughed at him when he was acting a false part, am I not to know him again in his true character?

No, no; "the persons who give themselves much to merry discourse are apt to blurt out whatever comes uppermost, and that is, generally -the truth." "In vino veritas," says the adage, and what are mirth, wit, and humour, but the wine of life, and consequently the parents of truth; whereas gravity is the invariable cloak of conventional fraud and imposture. If you want to find the parties who have become really indifferent to truth, "by accidental, indirect, and unnatural circumstances," you must seek them among "potent, grave, and reverend signors,"-among those whose opinion is the slave of their profession-who believe according to any body's and every body's convictions but their own-or among the forensic and recognised dealers in falsehood, who for a fee will consciously (but, Heaven knows, not consientiously) maintain that right is wrong, that black is white, and vice versa. These, with many others of the " considerate, soberminded" class, are quite aware that a blind, uninquiring acquiescence is much more pleasant and profitable than a sharpsighted inquisitiveness; and having heard from their infancy that truth lies at the bottom of a well, they are very prudently determined-to leave well alone!

HORSE AND FOOT.

BY THE EDITOR.

Fain would I climbe
But that I fear to fall.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

Ir requires some degree of moral courage to make such a confession, for a horselaugh will assuredly take place at my expence, but I never could sit on any thing with four legs, except a chair, a table, or a sofa. Possibly my birthplace was adverse, not being raised in Yorkshire, with its three Ridings-perhaps my education was in fault, for of course I was put to my feet like other children, but I do not remember being ever properly taken off them in the riding-school. It is not unlikely that my passion for sailing has been inimical to the accomplishment; there is a roll about a vessel so different from the pitch of a horse, that a person accompanied to a fore and aft see-saw, or side lurch, is utterly disconcerted by a regular up-and-down motion-at any rate, seamen are notorious for riding at anchor better than at any thing else. Finally, the Turk's principle Predestination may be accountable for my inaptitude. One man is evidently born under what Milton calls a "a mounted sign," whilst another comes into the world under the influence of Aries, predoomed to perform on no saddle, but one of mutton. Thus we see one gentleman who can hardly keep his seat upon a pony, or a donkey; when another shall turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, or back a Bucephalus; to say nothing of those professional equestrians, who tumble on a horse instead of off. It has always seemed to me, therefore, that our Astleys and Ducrows, whether they realized fortunes or not, deserved to do so, besides obtaining more honorary rewards. It would not, perhaps, have been out of character, if they had been made Knights of, or Cavaliers; especially considering that many Mayors, Aldermen, and Sheriffs have been so dubbed, whose pretensions never stood on more than two legs, and sometimes scarcely on one.

The truth is, I have always regarded horsemen with something of the veneration with which the savages beheld, for the first time, the Spanish chivalry-namely, as superior beings. With all respect then to our gallant Infantry, I have always looked on our Cavalry as a grade above them-indeed, the feat of Widdrington, who "fought upon his stumps," and so far, on his own legs, has always appeared to me comparatively easy: whereas for a charge of cavalry,

Charge, Chester, charge,
Off, Stanley, off,

has always seemed to me the most natural reading.

The chase of course excites my admiration and wonder, and like Lord Chesterfield I unfeignedly marvel-but for a different reasonthat any gentleman ever goes to it a second time. A chapter of Nim