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who boasted that he had written Homer's Iliad in characters so minute, that the whole could be enclosed in a walnut shell. This appearing incredible to many of the company, I contended not only that it might be done, but that I could do it. As they expressed their astonishment at this assertion, that I might not be suspected of idle boasting, I immediately put it to the proof. I therefore took the fourth part of a common leaf of paper, and on its narrower side wrote a single line in so small a character that it contained twenty verses of the Iliad of such lines each page of the paper could easily admit 120, therefore the page would contain 2400 Homeric verses: and as the leaf so divided would give eight pages it would afford room for above 19,000 verses, whereas the whole number in the Iliad does not exceed 17,000. Thus by my single line I demonstrated my proposition."

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHARING CROSS AND CHEAPSIDE CROSS.

The following interesting "Autobiographies" of the Old London Crosses, are extracted from Henry Peacham's Dialogue between the Crosse in Cheap and Charing Cross, confronting each other, as fearing their fall in these uncertaine times, four leaves, 4to. 1641.

66

Charing Cross.--I am made all of white marble (which is not perceived of euery one) and so cemented with mortar made of the purest lime, Callis sand, whites of eggs and the strongest wort, that I defie all hatchets and hammers whatsoever. In King Henry the Eighth's daies I was begged, and should have been degraded for that I had :-Then in Edward the Sixe, when Somerset-house was building, I was in danger; after that, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, one of her footmen had like to have run away with me; but the greatest danger of all I was in, when I quak'd for fear, was in the time of King James, for I was eight times begged:-part of me was bespoken to make a kitchen chimney for a chiefe constable in Shoreditch; an inn-keeper in Holborn had bargained for as much of me as would make two troughes, one to stand under a pumpe to water his guests' horses, and the other to give his swine their meate in; the rest of my poore carcase should have been carried I know not whither to the repaire of a decayed stone bridge (as I was told) on the top of Harrow-hill. Our royall forefather and founder, King Edward the First you know, built our sister crosses, Lincolne, Granthame, Woburne, Northampton, Stonie-Stratford, Dunstable, Saint Albanes, and ourselves here in London, in the 21st yeare of his raigne, in the yeare 1289."

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Cheapside Cross.-After this most valiant and excellent king had built me in forme, answerable in beauty and proportion to the rest, I fell to decay, at which time one John Hatherly, maior of London, having first obtained a licence of King Henry the Sixt, anno 1441, I was repaired in a beautiful manner. John Fisher, a mercer, after that gave 600 markes to my new erecting or building, which was finished anno 1484, and after in the second yeare of Henry the Eighth, I was gilded over against the coming in of Charles the Fift Emperor, and newly then gilded against the coronation of King Edward the Sixt, and gilded againe anno 1554, against the coronation of King Philip. Lord, how often have

I been presented by juries of the quest for incombrance of the street, and hindring of cartes and carriages, yet I have kept my standing; Ï shall never forget how upon the 21st of June, anno 1581, my lower statues were in the night with ropes pulled and rent down, as in the resurrection of Christ--the image of the Virgin Mary, Edward the Confessor, and the rest. Then arose many divisions and new sects formerly unheard of, as Martin Marprelate, alias Penrie, Browne, and sundry others, as the chronicle will inform you. My crosse should have been taken quite away, and a Piramis errected in the place, but Queen Elizabeth (that queen of blessed memory) commanded some of her privie councell, in her Majesties name, to write unto Sir Nicholas Mosely, then Maior, to have me againe repaired with a crosse; yet for all this I stood bare for a yeare or two after: Her Highness being very angry, sent expresse word she would not endure their contempt, but expressly commanded forthwith the crosse should be set up, and sent a strict command to Sir William Rider, Lord Maior, and bade him to respect my antiquity; for that is the ancient ensigne of Christianity, &c. This letter was dated December 24, anno 1600. Last of all I was marvellously beautified and adorned against the comming in of King James, and fenced about with sharp pointed barres of iron, against the rude and villainous hands of such as upon condition as they might have the pulling me down, would be bound to rifle all Cheapside."

It is scarcely necessary to say that both crosses have long since disappeared, and their sites become uncertain, although the name of Charing Cross still distinguishes an important London district.

SOMETHING LIKE A FEAST.

Leland mentions a feast given by the Archbishop of York, at his installation, in the reign of Edward IV. The following is a specimen :300 quarters of wheat, 300 tuns of ale, 100 tuns of wine, 1,000 sheep, 101 oxen, 304 calves, 304 swine, 2,000 geese, 1,000 capons, 2,000 pigs, 400 swans, 104 peacocks, 1,500 hot venison pasties, 4,000 cold, 5,000 custards hot and cold. Such entertainments are a picture of manners.

EGYPTIAN TOYS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

The truth of the old proverb, that "there is nothing new under the sun," will be recognised on an examination of the interesting group which forms the subject of our engraving. Here are dolls of different shapes, some of them for good children, and some, perhaps, for bad; foot-balls, covered with leather, &c., the stitches in parts still firmly adhering; models of fishes and fruit; and round pellets, which the "small boys" of the present day would call "marbles." These toys have been played with by little Egyptians who have been dead and buried three or four thousand years.

Many of the toys that hold places in the English and other markets, are, so far as fashion is concerned, of considerable antiquity, having been made, without any alteration in pattern, by certain families for several generations. In the mountainous districts of the Savoy and Switzerland, large numbers, both of children and grown persons, are

constantly employed in the manufacture of Noah's-arks, milkmaids, &c. Some of the animals carved in wood, and sold here for small prices, show considerable skill in the imitation of the forms of nature, and could only be produced at their present cost, owing to the cheapness of living in those districts, and to the systematic division of labour. Near the birth-place of Prince Albert is a very large manufactory of

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military toys, such as drums, trumpets, helmets, &c.; and in parts of Holland

The children take pleasure in making

What the children of England take pleasure in breaking."

THE PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT.

The Pyramids of Egypt, especially the two largest of the Pyramids of

Jizeh, are the most stupendous masses of building, in stone, that human labour has ever been known to accomplish. The Egyptian Pyramids, of which, large and small, and in different states of preservation, the number is very considerable, are all situated on the west side of the Nile, and they extend, in an irregular line, and in groups, at some distance from each other, from the neighbourhood of Jizeh, in 30° N. lat. as

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All the

far south as 29° N. lat., a length of between 60 and 70 miles. Pyramids have square bases, and their sides face the cardinal points. The Pyramids of Jizeh are nearly opposite to Cairo. They stand on a plateau or terrace of limestone, which is a projection from the Libyan mountain-chain. The surface of the terrace is barren and irregular, and is covered with sand and small fragments of rock; its height, measured

from the base of the Great Pyramids, is 164 feet above the Nile in its low state, taken at an average of the years 1798 to 1801. The northeast angle of the Great Pyramid is 1700 yards from the canal which runs between the terrace and the Nile, and about five miles from the Nile itself. Herodotus was informed by the priests of Memphis that the Great Pyramid was built by Cheops, King of Egypt, about 900 B. C., or about 450 years before Herodotus visited Egypt. He says that 100,000 men were employed twenty years in building it, and that the body of Cheops was placed in a room beneath the bottom of the Pyramid, surrounded by a vault to which the waters of the Nile were conveyed through a subterranean tunnel. A chamber under the centre of the Pyramid has indeed been discovered, but it does not appear to be the tomb of Cheops. It is about 56 feet above the low-water level of the Nile. The second Pyramid was built, Herodotus says, by Cephren, or Cephrenes, the brother and successor of Cheops; and the third by Mycerinus, the son of Cheops.

TEST OF COURAGE IN A CHILD.

In the education of their children, the Anglo-Saxons only sought to render them dauntless and apt for the two most important occupations of their future lives-war and the chase. It was a usual trial of a child's courage, to place him on the sloping roof of a building, and if, without screaming or terror he held fast, he was styled a stout herce, or brave boy.-Howel.

EXECUTION OF RAVILLIAC, WHO ASSASSINATED

OF FRANCE.

HENRY THE FOURTH

:

The scene is thus described in a volume published in 1728:"This Francis Ravilliac was born in Angoulesme, by profession a lawyer, who, after the committing of that horrid fact, being seized and put upon the rack, May 27; the 25th he had sentence of death passed on him, and was executed accordingly in the manner following. He was brought out of prison in his shirt, with a torch of two pound weight lighted in one hand, and the knife wherewith he murdered the king chained to the other; he was then set upright in a dung-cart, wherein he was carried to the greve or place of execution, where a strong scaffold was built; at his coming upon the scaffold he crossed himself, a sign that he dyed a Papist; then he was bound to an engine of wood made like St. Andrew's cross; which done, his hand with the knife chained to it was put into a furnace, then flaming with fire and brimstone, wherein it was in a most terrible manner consumed, at which he cast forth horrible cries yet would he not confess any thing; after which the executioner having made pincers red hot in the same furnace, they did pinch the brawn of his arms and thighs, the calves of his legs, with other fleshy parts of his body, then they poured into the wounds scalding oil, rosin, pitch, and brimstone melted together; but to make the last act of his tragedy equal in torments to the rest, they caused four strong horses to be brought to tear his body in pieces, where being ready to suffer his last torment, he was again questioned, but would not reveal any thing, and so died without calling upon God, or speaking one word concerning Heaven: his flesh and joints were so

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