precious metals. The tenacity with which these latter are still clung to in the interior of Europe is manifest in the hoards that are produced by apparently beggarly emigrants that arrive in our sea-ports. Year by year the absorption of the metals by hoarding is diminishing, while causes are in operation vastly to enhance the supply. The chief sources for the supply of silver are the mines of Mexico and Peru, and the quicksilver mines of Almaden, in Spain. The product of the latter is indispensable to the advantageous working of the former, and the greatest political difficulties overshadow both. The mines of Peru, in relation to which the most exaggerated notions have ever been entertained, have of late became unimportant. The chief mine, that of Potosi, formerly so productive, is now supposed to have run out. There are other valuable mines in operation, but the anarchy which prevails in that unhappy country prevents much from being realized. At the commencement of the present century, Humboldt estimated their product at $6,240,000 per annum; but at present, owing to the insecure state of affairs, it is not more than half that sum.

In Mexico, before the war of independence, there were 3000 mines, producing $21,000,000 in silver and $2,000,000 in gold annually. This has now dwindled down to some 11,000,000 of both metals, notwithstanding that the resources are as great as ever. The business of the mines is followed as an hereditary employment by migratory native tribes, a worthless, brutalized and dishonest race. These beings are employed by English companies, at the peril of their lives and property. M. Chevalier states, that the mines are guarded by artillery and grape-shot, and the Englishmen employed are regularly drilled in the use of the musket." He gives an account of a grand battle fought between the miners and banditti, in which the former were overpowered by numbers. Laboring in such insecurity, the miners are dependent upon the quicksilver mines of Almaden, in Spain, for a supply of that necessary article, and are exposed to the exactions of a government which can afford them no security in the production of the taxed commodity.

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The progress of political affairs now

is such, as to lead to the reasonable expectation, that a stable and strong government will succeed to the miserable military anarchy, which, for such a length of time, has oppressed that region. With the consummation of such an event, the product of the precious metals in Mexico may become almost incalculable. As an instance of the condition of things. one of the richest gold mines in the world is at Consalo, Mexico, and is the property of Signor Yriarte, who refuses to have it worked, alleging, it is stated, that he has now more than he can use, and his "money is safest under ground."

One of the greatest events in the supply of the precious metals, is the productions of the Russian mines. These, in 1830, produced 5 poods, worth $9,945. This annually increased, until in 1843 it reached 1,610 poods, which, at 36lbs. per pood, equals 57,960lbs., worth $320 per lb., or $18,547,200, and has since continued to swell in amount. In the month of June. £2,000,000, or $10,000,000 worth of Russian gold was received at London, and went to swell the deposites in the Bank of England, which are now $82,000,000. The resources of the Ural mountains are vast, and private enterprise has but lately applied itself to their development. We have seen that the U. States mines have raised their annual supply to $1,000,000 since 1830. In the last 15 years the mines of Russia, being new sources of supply, have yielded $65,000,000 of gold. In the next 15 years, should the affairs of Mexico be settled, the product from the three sources will not be less than $575.000,000 of gold; and the Mexican silver mines being restored to at least their former productions, will yield $25,000,000 per annum. An important element in the increased production of the precious metals is the increased supply of quicksilver. As we have mentioned, the chief supply has hitherto been derived from Almaden, a mine which was worked by the Romans, and has ever been a monopoly, farmed out by the Spanish government. The Messrs. Barings and Rothchilds, of London, have alternately held it. The product is estimated at 20,000 quintals per annum. This was bid for at the rate of $65 per quintal, and is resold at near $100 pr quintal. This monopoly greatly contracts the supply of the precious metals, inasmuch

THE subject we propose to contemplate in the present chapter, although somewhat trite, is yet, it is believed, so rife with interest, presenting the various fallacies and foibles of the literary profession, in such anomalous complexity of forms and circumstances, that we cannot be diverted from our task, from the fact of its having already been so often dilated upon. Without attempting a psychological analysis of literary life, we propose simply to group together a few of the more striking peculiarities which seem to be indigenous to great minds. If frailty and fame are indeed twin attributes, one might be tempted to conclude that nature designed such an allotment as an equipoise, to silence the envy of those from whom she has withheld her noblest endowments on the one part, and to serve as a counteracting check to the inordinate self-esteem, which their possession might otherwise superinduce in the other.

Before entertaining the reader with our citation of the eccentricities and trials of the author, it will not be inopportune to remind him of the curious mode in which the public requite his literary labors: the usual awards of a man of genius being a marble monument to his memory, while in life denying him sustenance; making "their luminous leaves," to adopt the phrase of a modern journalist, "to flourish like the yew tree, because planted over a grave." We shall not pause to inquire into the causes which have provoked such injustice towards a class so signally meriting a course of treatment diametrically the reverse of this, or why succeeding posterity have perpetuated the like crusade against the craft of authorship; it is enough for regret to find it so. Our forefathers, however, must have had their patience

[Young,

pretty severely taxed, by the prolixity of some of the early scribes. What should we think of twenty-one huge folios?-yet we find, in 1651, a writer of such interminable dimensions; while another, Peter D'Alva, even extended his learned lucubrations to no less than forty-eight, in an abortive at tempt to expound a mystery unfathomable, and which his labyrinth of words but rendered the more mysterious. While not to name Confucius, or the reputed 600 volumes by the French bishop, Du Bellay, we might remind the reader of the astounding intimation given by St. Jerome, to the effect that he had perused six thousand books written by Origen, who "daily wearied seven notaries, and as many boys, in writing after him!" It ought not to have amazed his friends, therefore, to have learned of the sickness of that multifarious writer, Sir John Hill, (the author of the "Vegetable System,") when he confessed it was in consequence of over working himself on seven productions at once! We read of Hans Sacks, a Nuremburg shoemaker, who lived about the close of the fifteenth century, and who seems to have apportioned his labors equally between boots and books, the praiseworthy arts of making poetry and pumps, sonnets and shoes, to the 77th year of his age; when he took an inventory of his poetical stock in trade, and found, according to his own calculation, that his works filled thirty folio volumes, all written with his own hand. They comprised 4200 songs; 208 comedies, tragedies and farces; 1700 fables, miscellaneous poems and tales, and 73 military and love songs-forming a grand total of six thousand and fortyeight pieces, small and great; out of which he culled as many as filled three huge folios, which were published in

the year 1558-61. How strangely the early scribes seem to have coveted the ambition of being voluminous writers, not remembering that Persius became immortal from the transmission of but two sheets of paper inscribed by his pen.

It would be easy to multiply instances of the kind in the several departments of authorship, especially in those once prolific themes, Alchemy, Astrology, and other wonderfully occult matters, and even in theology-the latter, we remember to have read somewhere, boasting of a certain early commentator, whose elaborate exposition of St. Matthew, even an abridged edition of which, in small type, occupied no less than a thousand folio pages. But we have cited enough; we shall therefore glance at some other eccentricities of the learned for the sake of variety, and the edification of the reader. Much might be quoted for one's amusement, touching the origin of works both in verse and prose: the bards almost uniformly have had their loves, as Mrs. Jameson's very pleasant work on that subject sufficiently attests; and we shall not attempt to add to what has been already so admirably exhibited of this feature of the literary character, saving simply the mention of a name she has omitted to notice― we refer to that 'of Colletet, who is reputed to have shared the honors of matrimonial alliance with three of his domestics in succession, to each of whom he paid the tribute of his muse in heroic verse. D'Israeli, it will be remembered, has collected from the dust of departed days, among other curious matters, many amusing particulars respecting the subjects authors have chosen to dilate upon; shall we glance at a few? In classic times we have Apuleius and Agrippa, succeeded by many moderns, who, to evince their irony and wit, selected that fabled emblem of wisdom-the ass.

In Butler's Remains, it is remarked, that "there is a kind of physiognomy in the titles of books, no less than in the faces of men, by which a skilful observer will as well know what to expect from the one as the other."

Generally speaking, this is correct. But the optician who should happen to purchase a book, entitled A New Invention, or a Paire of Cristall Specta

cles, by helpe whereof may be read so small a print, that what twenty sheets of paper will hardly containe shall be discovered in one (1644), would find, to his surprise, that it has nothing to do with his business, but relates to the civil war. So also might mistakes very readily occur with regard to Horne Tooke's celebrated Diversions of Purley, which a village book-club actually ordered at the time of its publication, under the impression that it was a book of amusing games.

In Chambers' Journal is a curious paper on the subject of book titles, from which we quote the following paragraph:

"Some titles are agreeably short, and others wonderfully long. A few years since, a work was issued with the laconic title of It; and for days previous to its publication, the walls of London were placarded with the words, "Order It," "Buy It," "Read It." The old naturalist Lovell published a book at Oxford, in 1661, entitled Panzoologicomineralogia, which is nearly as long a word as Rabelais' proposed title for a book, namely Antipericatametaparhengedamphicribrationes !!"

According to Stowe's Chronicle, the title of Domesday Book arose from the circumstance of the original having been carefully preserved in a sacred place at Westminster cloisters, called Domus Dei, or House of God.

The Latin poetasters seem to have their merits called somewhat in question, by the title of John Peter's curious and very scarce work, A New Way to make Latin Verses, whereby any one of ordinary capacity that only knows the A, B, C, and can count nine, though he understands not one word of Latin, or what a verse means, may be plainely taught to make thousands of Hexameter and Pentameter Verses, which shall be true Latin, true Verse, and Good Sense, (1679.)

In 1559 appeared a book, entitled, The Key to Unknown Knowledge, or a Shop of Five Windows,

Which if you do open.
To cheapen and copen,
You will be unwilling,
For many a shilling,
To part with the profit
That you shall have of it.

The mottoes on title pages are often very curious. The following is from

a book called Gentlemen, look about you :

Read this over if you're wise,
If you're not, then read it twise;
If a fool, and in the gall
Of bitterness, read not at all.

Another, from that very delightful old book, Geffrey Whitney's Emblems, (1586):

Peruse with heede, then friendly judge, and blaming rash refraine;

So maist thou reade unto thy good, and shalte requile my paine.

One Joshua Barnes wrote a poem with the design of proving the authorship of the Iliad traceable to King Solomon, of Holy Writ; and another French critic, Daurat, who lived in the sixteenth century, pretended, according to Scaliger, to find all the Bible in Homer. Du Guere wrote an eulogium on wigs, though he never wore one. Erasmus amused himself, it will be recollected, by discussing the praise of folly, in his work entitled "Mori Encomium," which, for the sake of the pun, he dedicated to Sir Thomas More. Pierrius' treatise on beards-Homer's war between the frogs and mice, and Lucian's dissertation on a fly, present a curious triumvirate of classic taste; and Gray's ode on the death of a catPope's epic verses on a lock of hair, and Swift's meditation on a broomstick, may serve as their companions in modern times. And as we have already seen, ingenuity itself seems to have been overtasked in the fabrication of the titles of books in early times, as, indeed, it is again becoming in our own; authors of the olden time used to puff their own works, by affixing "taking titles" to them; such as A right merrie and wittie enterlude, verie pleasante to reade, &c. "A marvellous wittie treatise, &c. "A delectable, pithie and righte profitable worke," &c. Addison's " Spectator" proved so successful, that it provoked Johnson to adopt "The Idler," and "Rambler." A very amusing blunder was committed by a certain French critic, who, notwithstanding the conventional use of the term, rendered it Le Chevalier Errant, and who afterwards, on meeting with the Colossus of English literature, addressed him with the astounding and complimentary epithet of Mr. Vagabond!

A pamphlet, published in 1703, had the following strange title :-"The

Deformitie of Sin Cured, a sermon preached at St. Michael's, Crooked Lane, before the Prince of Orange, by the Rev. J. Crookshanks. Sold by Mathew Denton, at the Crooked Billet, near Cripplegate, and by all booksellers." The words of the text are, Every crooked path shall be made straight." The Prince, before whom it was delivered, was deformed in person.

"

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the

Many adopted allegorical titles. In theological works these were most frequent such as The Heart of Aaron," "The Bones of Joseph," "The Garden of Nuts," and a host of others, even less allowable, might be adduced: as, "A fan to drive away flies," a treaties on purgatory;-" The shop of the spiritual apothecary," "Matches lighted by divine fire," "The gun of penitence," &c. One of famous Puritan memory, Sir Humphrey Lind, published a book, which a Jesuit answered by another, entitled " A pair of spectacles for Sir Humphrey Lind;”doughty knight retorted by "A case for Sir Humphrey Lind's spectacles." Gascoigne's title page is no less quaint than copious: "A hundred sundrie flowres bounde vp in one small poesie: gathered partly by translation in the fyne and outlandish gardens of Euripides, Ovid, Petrarch, Ariosto, and others; and partly by invention out of our own fruitefull orchardes in England: yielding sundrie and divers swete savours of tragical, comical, and moral discourses, both pleasant and profitable to the well-smelling noses of learned readers." It is fortunate for these laborious scribes that they lived in times when they found readers courageous enough to venture beyond their titles.

We will leave them, and proceed to the foibles and frailties of the learned, which present a prolific theme for our contemplation; in some instances these are traceable to physical causes, superinduced by their peculiar habits and pursuits, and in others, not unfrequently to the neglect, which their seclusion and overwrought sensibilities provoked from their cotemporaries. All the devotees of the pen are more or less the victims of nervous debility, caused by their habits of excessive mental efforts. Thus to overtask the powers of the intellect, it is reasonable to expect, will as naturally tend to enervate them,