for it would have been the greatest curiosity there. Yepes t. 5. ff. 248. Cressy's Church tick's Present State of the British 26. Touching for the evil. The following public notice was issued by Charles II. May 18, 1664. His sacred Majesty having declared it to be his royal will and purpose to continue the healing of his people for the Evil during the month of May, and then give over till Michaelmas next, I am commanded to give notice thereof, that the people may not come up to the town in the interim and lose their labour. Newes, 1664 It is said, that the Kings of England exercised this miraculous prerogative as Kings of France, to whom it was granted at St. Marculf's intercession; a miracle which, it is observed, is not common in Hagiology. If this be the case, we have waived it by dropping the title, and the gift vests in Buonaparte since his anointment. Our Kings have, however, the uncontested power of blessing rings, which they used to give away, and which were of special virtue against the falling sickness. When was this custom disused? It is spoken of by Polydore Virgil as a thing well known in his time. 27. The Oak of Mamre. In one remarkable instance the Jews, the Christians, and the pagan Arabs united in religious feelings. This was in their reverence for the Oak of Mamre, where the angels appeared to Abraham: for Abraham's sake the Jews held the place holy; the Arabs for the angels'; the Christians, because, in their ignorance of their own scriptures, they affimed, that the Son of God had accompanied those angels to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. An annual fair was held there, and every man sacrified after the manner of his country; nor was the meeting ever disgraced by any act of intemperance or indecency. Nothing had been done to injure the venerable antiquity of the place. There was nothing but the well which Abraham had dug, and the buildings which he had inhabited, beside the oak. These remains were destroyed by order of Constantine, in abhorrence of the impious toleration exhibited there! A church was built upon the spot, and Mamre, so interesting to the poet, the philosopher, and the pious man, became a mere den of superstition. Sozomen, l. 2. c. 3. 28. Invention for the blind. In the library of the Liverpool Athenæum is a book in French, printed for the use of the blind: the letters, which are very large, are raised cameo like, so as to be distinguished, it is supposed, by a-practised touch. This is a very useless invention; whatever blind man could afford to purchase books printed in this manner, could afford to keep a person to read to him. I have no where met with a more useful hint for the learned blind, than in the following passage from Thevenot's Travels. "At Ispahan 1 saw one of those princes at his house whose eyes had been plucked out; he is a very learned man, especially in the mathematics, of which he has books always read to him: and as to astronomy and astrology, he has the calculations read unto him, and writes them very quickly with the point of his finger, having wax, which he prepares himself, like small twine less than ordinary packthread, and this wax he lays upon a large board or plank of wood, such as scholars make use of in some places that they may not spoil paper when they learn to design or write: and with this wax which he so applies he forms very true letters, and makes great calculations; then with his finger's end he casts up all that he has set down, performing multiplication, division, and all astronomical calculations, very exactly." Words and Symbols. 29. A ridiculous instance of enforcing words by symbols, after the Oriental manner, occurs in Arabian history. When the people of Medina revolted against Yezid the first, they assembled in the mosque. One of them rose up, took off his turban, and flinging it on the ground, exclaimed, "I depose Yezid from the caliphate in the same manner as I cast away my turban." In an instant all who were near enough to understand him followed his example, and immediately a multitude of turbans were thrown down, and every one was repeating the same formula. In another corner of the mosque, a Moslem took off his slippers, and threw them away, and cried, "I depose Yezid |