own country, that it is forbidden to be played in the Swiss regiments, in the French service, on pain of death. There is also a Scotch tune, which has the same effect on some of our North Britons. In one of our battles in Calabria, a bagpiper of the 78th Highland regiment, when the light infantry charged the French, posted himself on their right, and remained in his sólitary situation during the whole of the battle, encouraging the men with a famous Highland chargingtune; and actually upon the retreat and complete rout of the French changed it to another, equally celebrated in Scotland upon the retreat of and victory over an enemy. His next-hand neighbour guarded him so well that he escaped unhurt. This was the spirit of the "Last Minstrel," who infused courage among his countrymen, by possessing it in so animated a degree and in so venerable a character.

MINUTE WRITING.

THE Iliad of Homer in a nutshell, which Pliny says that Cicero once saw, it is pretended might have been a fact, however to some it may appear impossible. Ælian notices an artist who wrote a distich in letters of gold, which he enclosed in the rind of a grain of corn.

Antiquity and modern times record many such penmen, whose glory consisted in writing in so small a hand that the writing could not be legible to the naked eye. One wrote a verse of Homer on a grain of millet, and another, more indefatigably trifling, transcribed the whole Iliad in so confined a space, that it could be enclosed in a nutshell. Menage mentions, he saw whole sentences which were not perceptible to the eye without the microscope; and pictures and portraits which appeared at first to be lines and scratches thrown down at random; one of them formed the face of the Dauphiness with the most pleasing delicacy and correct resemblance. He read an Italian poem, in praise of this princess, containing some thousands of verses, written by an officer in a space of a foot and a half. This species of curious idleness has not been lost in our own country; where this minute writing has equalled any on record. Peter Bales, a celebrated calligrapher in the reign of Elizabeth, astonished the eyes of beholders by showing them what they could not see; for in the Harleian Mss. 530, we have a narrative of " a rare piece of work brought to pass by Peter Bales, an Englishman, and a clerk of the chancery;' it seems by the description to have been the whole Bible" in an English walnut no bigger than a hen's egg. The nut holdeth the book: there are as many leaves in his little book as

the great Bible, and he hath written as much in one of his little leaves as a great leaf of the Bible." We are told that this wonderfully unreadable copy of the Bible was "seen by many thousands." There is a drawing of the head of Charles I. in the library of St. John's College at Oxford, wholly composed of minute written characters, which at a small distance, resemble the lines of an engraving. The lines of the head, and the ruff, are said to contain the book of Psalms, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. In the British Museum we find a drawing representing the portrait of Queen Anne, not much above the size of the hand. On this drawing appear a number of lines and scratches, which the librarian assures the marvelling spectator, includes the entire contents of a thin folio, which on this occasion is carried in the hand.

On this subject it may be worth noticing, that the learned Huet asserts that he, like the rest of the world, for a long time considered as a fiction the story of that industrious writer who is said to have enclosed the Iliad in a nutshell. But having examined the matter more closely, he thought it possible. One day in company at the Dauphin's, this learned man trifled half an hour in proving it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches in length and eight in width, pliant and firm, can be folded up and enclosed in the shell of a large walnut. It can hold in its breadth one line, which can contain

30 verses, and in its length 250 lines. With a crow-quill the writing can be perfect. A page of this piece of vellum will then contain 7500 verses, and the reverse as much; the whole 15000 verses of the Iliad. And this he proved in their presence, by using a piece of paper, and with a common pen. The thing is possible to be effected; and if on any occasion paper should be most excessively rare, it may be useful to know, that a volume of matter may be contained in a single leaf.

NUMERICAL FIGURES.

THE learned, after many contests, have at length agreed that the numerical figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, usually called Arabic, are of Indian origin. The Arabians do not pretend to have been the inventors of them, but borrowed them from the Indian nations. The numeral characters of the Bramins, the Persians, and the Arabians, and other eastern nations, are similar. They appear afterwards to have been introduced into several European nations, by their respective travellers, who returned from the East. They were aditted into calendars and chronicles, but they were not introduced into charters, says Mr. Astle, before the sixteenth century. The Spaniards, no doubt, derived their use from the

Moors who invaded them. In 1240, the Alphonsean astronomical tables were made by the order of Alphonsus X. by a Jew, and an Arabian; they used these numerals, from whence the Spaniards contend that they were first introduced by them.

They were not generally used in Germany until the beginning of the fourteenth century; but in general the forms of the cyphers were not permanently fixed there till after the year 1581. The Russians were strangers to them, before Peter the Great had finished his travels in the beginning of the present century.

The origin of these useful characters with the Indians and Arabians, is attributed to their great skill in the arts of astronomy and of arithmetic, which required more convenient characters than alphabetic letters, for the expressing of numbers.

Before the introduction into Europe of these Arabic numerals, they used alphabetical characters, or Roman numerals. The learned authors of the Nouveau Traité Diplomatique, the most valuable work on every thing concerning the arts and progress of writing, have given some curious notices on the origin of the Roman numerals. They say, that originally men counted by their fingers; thus to mark the first four numbers they used an I, which naturally represents them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little