thinks, with great probability, that the ancients understood printing, from the specimens to be found in every museum of Roman antiquities; in some of which we see two or three lines of names in letters raised from the surface, and retrograde for the purpose of marking pigs and poultry;

Aut pecori signum, aut numeros impressit acervis."

Virg. Geo. I. v. 263.

That the art of printing, when discovered by the Romans, should fall into disuse, might have arisen from an idea with them, as with the Turks, that it would ruin the transcribers.

The invention of glass seems to have shared a similar fate. According to Pliny and Petronius, Tiberius thought the ductility of glass, or whatever the discovery was, of so much consequence to the real or imaginary value of gold and silver, that he considered the suppression both of it and its author, as absolutely necessary to the salvation of the precious metals.

At p. 465, C. we learn how highly gold and silver cups were prized. They had also earthen cups, and indeed cups of every sort, size, and quality, if we except those peculiar to the Hall of Odin, and the warriors of the East.

"Our drink is the blood of our enemies, and our cups the bowls of their wooden skulls." Weston's translation of certain Verses of Ali, son of Abi Taleb. Nothing could warrant the use of such a cup, but the beverage.

Nov. 4.

BAD TASTE.

THERE HERE are two fashions in the practice of the fair sex of the present day, which meet with my disapprobation. The cropping of their hair, and the exposure of their bosom. Evs, even in

Paradise, did neither

half her swelling breast Naked met his under the flowing gold

Of her loose tresses hid."

P. L. b. iv.

MILTON describes our first mother with long hair, and the father of mankind with it short curling in his neck. By this Ricciardetto and Bradamante, brother and sister, are in ARIOSTO, alone distinguished

questo crin raccorcio, e sparto, Ch'io porto come gli altri uomini fanno ; Ed il suo lungo, &c.

Orl. Fur. cant. 25. st. 23.

It is perhaps too much to believe that MILTON Copied from the Italian poet,* a distinction so pointed out by custom and the graces of beauty. It can never be violated without injury.-To crop a woman's hair is indeed to leave her "shorn of her beums.” Now, though I am a very great bosom-friend, I am by no means friendly to its public exhibition. "The chariest maid is prodigal enough, if she unmask those beauties to the moon." Shakspeare.

Quanto si mostra men, tanto è più bella.

Il Goffredo di Tasso, l. 16.

Fair nymph, would'st thou with muslin hide that charm, 'Twould more thine own, 'twould more our bosoms warm! My LORD BACON says, "that learned men forgotten in states, and not living in the eyes of men, are like the images of Cassius and Brutus, in the funeral of Junia; of which not being represented, as many others were, TACITUS saith, Eo ipso præfulgebant, quòd non visebantur;" which words I will thus translate, with a relation to the subject in hand-These beauties advance by retreating, and are the more seen because they are concealed.

* In his own person, it is true, he erred against the rule as it applies to the male; for, having fine hair, he wore it long, and so merited the compliment paid by St. Gregory at Rome, to some beautiful youths from this country-" Angli!" said he, nay, rather Angeli." Now, though few men would, by these means, excite the same admiration, women, with better hopes, ought never to neglect the trial.

MAGNA CHARTA.

"Nor could our Legislature do their country a more seasonable office than to look into the distresses of an unhappy people, who groan perhaps in as much misery under entangled, as they could do under broken, laws; nor could there be a reward high enough assigned for a great genius, if such may be found, who has capacity sufficient to glance through the false colours that are put upon us, and propose to the English world a method of making justice flow in an uninterrupted stream."

SIR RICHARD STEELE.

NULLI VENDEMUS, NULLI NEGABIMUS, AUT DIFFEREMUS RECTUM

VEL JUSTITIAM.

We will not sell-we will not deny or delay justice to any one. Such are the emphatic words of the 29th chaper of Magna Charta, the foundation of English liberty-and certainly this country does not literally and directly, labour under any of these grievances. It is admitted that the stream of justice flows free and unsullied by the breath of calumny.-A Judge would consider himself as much dishonoured by the suspicion of being actuated by any undue influence, as an officer would by being kicked at the head of his regiment-in truth, there is such a regular course of gradual appeal from the lowest magistrate to the highest, and the proceedings of every court are so public, that any bias towards corruption or partiality must be followed by detection and disgrace.-Still the increase of stamps, enormous fees, and ill habits in practice, have done the work of corruption, and introduced all its mischiefs-so that in effect justice is sold,* delayed, and denied.

* Debts from one to fifty pounds, according to present practice, are not worth contending for, where defendants are sufficiently rich to dispute them. In a case, not many years old, where the only question was whether defendant should pay thirty-six shillings or two guineas, defendant paid the thirty-six shillings into court; and plaintiff insisting on the other six shillings, the cause was tried, the defendant prevailed, and plaintiff paid seventy-two pounds for defendant's costs, and one hun. dred and thirty-six pounds for his own, in all two hundred and ten pounds.

The variance and contradictions of later statutes, backed by modern practice, have rendered this imputation 'too just. We read of laws that were publicly exhibited on a column above the reach of the eye-sight; but ours, which are put into every man's hand, and which profess to be intelligible to all, are as much above the level of common comprehension-frequently above that of the best lawyers to reconcile. The Profession may be inimical to more simplicity, but justice certainly is not; " ideoque illam implicare non oportet," as Seneca says of Truth.* "Each law," observes the late Empress of Russia,† "ought to be written in so clear a style as to be perfectly intelligible to every one." The knowledge of the Law is so far from being a mysterious craft, that we find it has been frequently made a part of infant education, and is so at this day in the northern parts of America. There would perhaps be no impropriety in a minister reading some portion of it to his congregation every Sunday. The reading of the laws is of high authority, and the usage is not unknown in this country. Magna Charta was formerly appointed to be read four times a year in full county assembly, and twice a year in full congregation of the people in their several parish-churches.

The enormous bulk of our statutes, and the daily increase of penal laws, affect not only offenders, but the whole communityit is not in the power of man to live in Great Britain, without incurring the penalty of some law either civil or ecclesiastical, were all the laws now unrepealed to be put in execution. The sums misapplied in printing the voluminous lumber of former parliaments would have been well bestowed in rewarding men of ability, employed in collecting and revising the ancient laws and statutes, in purging them of their temporary provisions, correcting their obsolete forms, accommodating their spirit and rigour to the cir cumstances of the present times, regulating their order, and reducing them to system and consistency.

* Veritatis simplex oratio est. Epist. 50, lib. vi. + Instructions for a Digest of the Laws of Russia.

#

ON HOAXING.

"Troubled, bambouzled, and bit." GAY.

WITHIN these twenty or thirty years, that species of deceit, which has been practised from time immemorial, on the first day of April, and which SWIFT mentions under the name of a bite, has obtained the appellation of a hoar. They are very much mistaken, who imagine there is either wit, humour, or even fun, in making another believe a dry assertion, which, by the common courtesy of the world, every man is bound to believe, but which the assertor alone knows to be false: if the believer is a fool, which he by no means is quoad hoc, the assertor is a liar. The good sense of the present age is pretty well convinced of this; and the "custom" of making April-fools is now-a-days "more honoured in the breach than in the observance." To the practice of Aprilfool making, however, has succeeded a more enlarged system of deceit, in the performance of which, where the deceived suffer no real injury, and where their miseries are only such as Mr. BERESFORD for the most part describes, there is always some fun, and room for a portion of wit and humour; and this has lately been practised to such an extent, that it has heen thought worthy of a distinctive appellation, and is now called a hoax, very much at the service of any idle man, whose talents and reputation have no higher ambition-who wishes for notoriety, and thinks with the Nabob," to be known, you must be malicious." The word we believe to have been first authorized by one of the comedies of Mr. REYNOLDS.

The hoax, or compound fool-making, is no less treasonable against good manners, and destructive of all confidence between man and man, than the simple April-fool making; but the former may be palliated by its innocence, and rendered palatable by its drollery. We should laugh very heartily at the hoar of that wag, who had been sent to dine with a niggard, that never gave an entertainment in his life, the whole circle of his acquaintance, male and female, each armed with a special invitation, and each coming from too great a distance to be sent back with an empty stomach-Mem. no inn in the neighbourhood, but a well-provided butcher's shop close by. That was a pardonable hoax too, which was played upon some dozen schoolmasters, a