other to hang him on the lamp-iron. They both agreed in this statement. The tall one who had been hanged, said, if he won the toss, he would have hanged the other. He said, he then felt the effects on his neck at the time he was hanging, and his eyes was so much swelled that he saw double. The Magistrates expressed their horror and disgust, and ordered the man who had been hanged to find bail for the violent and unjustifiable assault upon the officer, and the short one for hanging the other. Not having bail, they were committed to Bridewell for trial."

209. Joachim du Bellay.

An epitaph by this poet is the only thing which I found worth remembering in one of those cubic volumes which Gruter has crammed with trash.

Quas potius decuit nostro te inferre sepulchro
Petronilla, tibi spargimus has lacrimus.

Spargimus has lacrimas, mæsti monumenta parentis,
Et tibi pro thalamo sternimus hunc tumulum.
Sperabam genitor tædas preferre jugales

Et titulo patris jungere nomen avi:

Heu! gener est Orcus; quique o dulcissima, per te
Se sperabat avum desinit esse pater.

Bellay does not deserve the less credit for these lines for having compounded them from two epitaphs at Naples, both which he probably found in Guevara's Epistles, where they follow each other. The first was placed by an aged mother over the of her son. grave

Quæ mihi debebas supremæ munera vita
Infelix solvo nunc tibi nate prior.
Fortuna inconstans, lex et variabi is ævi,

Debueras cineri jam superesse meo.

The other is upon a lady who died in the week which had been appointed for her marriage.

Nate heu miserum, misero mihi nata parenti

Unicus ut fieres, unica nata dolor.

Nam tibi dum virum, tædus thalamumque parabam,

Funera et inferias, anxius ecce puro.

210. Eclipses.

It is well known in Valladolid, says a very learned and able catholic historian, that when any knight of the Castilla family is about to die, strokes are heard within a tomb which is in the choir of St. Clara's, as if to announce the decease of some of that illustrious lineage. "I never wondered at this," says the historian," remembering what Aristotle says, de nobilioribus majorem curam habet natura: for we see that to distinguish princes and kings fron the vulgar, and from ordinary people, God is accustomed to send signs which prognosticate their death, such as comets, earthquakes, eclipses, and the like."

The book in which God is thus represented as a respecter of persons, is li censed by the inquisition, as containing no false doctrine. A pretty world it would be if this doctrine were true! if such an incarnation of the evil principle as Nadir Shah or Buonaparte could not

yield up the ghost without the sun's being darkened, and the earth quaking, and the rocks being rent!

The philosophy of eclipses, as affecting Princes, is more fully explained by Miedes.

"Eclipses and defects of the sun and moon, which are seen from time to time in the heavens, do not announce the death of princes, but really cause it, and that by the great impression which they make upon inferior things; as may be understood of the sun, by perceiving how his strength and vigor influence the elements and their compounds, not only occasioning the production and generation thereof, but also their preservation and support. It may therefore well follow, that when the moon interposes and deprives them of the action and virtue of the sun's influence, and of the sustenance which they derive from it, they may sooner decay and die, that virtue failing them which gave them life; and

especially those compounds which from their tenderness and delicacy are most subject to the celestial influencies, such as the bodies of kings and princes. Eclipses, therefore, of the sun, occasioned by the interposition of the moon, and of the moon, occasioned by the interposition of the earth, are not so much the tokens of the deaths which are to follow, as they are the causes." He then proceeds to shew that comets are the tokens which are sent to these tender and delicate compounds, and concludes with a compliment to that tender and delicate compound Philip II. Of this sagacious distinction between eclipses and comets he is not a little proud.

.

This writer was a good historian, but a very strange philosopher. According to him, a storm at sea is the happiest thing that can happen to an expedition. When King Jayme of Aragon embarked for the conquest of Majorca the weather soon became tempestuous, and his