hundred years.-Monsieur Cramer, one of the professors in Geneva.

Our ecclesiastical polity in Holland is, in my opinion, preferable to yours in England, on several accounts. 1. In the people's having a share in choosing their own teachers for themselves. 2. In the clergy not being so subject to intrigues, and rivalship, and fawning for preferment, as they are with you. 3. In the greater level of their income, which renders them less subject either to pride or contempt. No clergyman, in the province of Holland, has under 40%. a year, and no one above 2401. 4. In the manner of receiving their income, in settled sums quarterly, from the magistrates, which lessens their concern about temporals, and prevents lawsuits and disputes with their parishioners. 5. In their being wholly unconcerned with the civil government, which keeps them out of party quarrels, and gives them more time to attend to their proper employment.-Mr. Soyer.

When there was a great fire in the Se

raglio at Constantinople, about fifty years. ago, a great deal of the goods, and among the rest several books, were flung into the street. The secretary of the French ambassador, then at the Porte, happened to be walking that way; and as he was getting as well as he could through the crowd, saw a man with a large folio, which he had opened, but could not tell what to make of it. The secretary saw it was a manuscript of Livy, and, on turning over the leaves a little further, found that it had the second Decade as well as the first, and probably might have all that was lost to us. He offered the man a handsome reward, if he would keep the book under his long robe, and follow him with it to his lodg ings. The man agreed to it, and followed him; but the crowd and confusion increasing, they were separated; and so the secretary lost the recovery of so great a treasure, as that would have been to the learned world. The same.

At a convent (I think it was of Benedictines) at Caen, in Normandy, they keep an

exact terrier of all the lands which formerly belonged to the monks of that order in England, in hopes it may be one day of good use to them.-Mr. Clark, who saw the writings in their possession.

Pray observe with what ease the passions are expressed in that face! Our statuaries now are forced to distort the features to show a passion; their strokes are all violent and forced. This will help you as much as any thing to see the superiority of the best ancient sculptors over the modern. We have no one, except Michael Angelo, that comes near them.-The Marquis Mafei, at Verona.

It is true the French abound in translations of the Greek and Latin authors, but we abound in them yet more than they. Indeed we began long before them; we in the fourteenth century, and they not till the beginning of the seventeenth.-The

same.

When I was young, I published a piece called Ninfa Fidele; was I to write any thing of that nature now, it should be

Ninfa Infida. That title would have been more just, at least I am sure I have found them so. The same.

When Henry the Fourth of France was reconciled to the church of Rome, it was expected that he should give some remarkable testimonial of his sincerity in returning to the true faith. He accordingly ordered a cross to be erected at Rome, near the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, with this inscription, In hoc signo vinces, on the principal part of it. This passed at first as very catholic, till it was observed that the part in which the inscription is put is shaped in the form of a cannon, and that he had really attributed only to his artillery what they had taken to be addressed to Heaven. -Ficoroni, (at Rome.)

You may know that Hercules to be Roman, by its being so much overwrought; the muscles look like lumps of flesh upon it. The Greek artists were more expressive, without taking so much pains to express.-The same, (at the Palazzo Lancilotti at Rome.)

The most promising of Carlo Marat's scholars was one Beretoni. He died when he was but two-and-thirty, and not without suspicion of foul play from his master, who could not bear to have one of his scholars excel himself. That he evidently did so may be seen, by comparing both their works in the Palazzo Altieri.-The same.

The resting Venus, at the Barberini Palace, is the finest of all the old paintings in Rome. Carlo Marat supplied part of the Cupids that attend her, but the Venus herself, they say, was not at all retouched.The same.

Dominiquin is in as high esteem now as almost any of the modern painters at Rome. When you see any works of his and Guido's together, how much superior does he appear! Guido is often more showy, but Dominiquin has more spirit, as well as more correctness.-The same. (Piu spirituoso, was his word.)

This Leda (at the Palazza Colonna) is said to be Corregio's, but there is not any