[Illustration: Male and Female Glow-worms. Male winged, Female
wingless.]
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_State of Europe in the Dark Ages._--In less than a century after the
barbarous nations settled in their new conquests, almost all the effects
of knowledge and civility, which the Romans had spread through Europe,
disappeared. Not only the arts of elegance, which minister to luxury,
and are supported by it, but many of the useful arts, without which life
can scarcely be considered as comfortable, were neglected or lost.
Literature, science, and taste, were words little in use during the ages
which we are contemplating; or, if they occur at any time, eminence in
them is ascribed to persons and productions so contemptible, that it
appears their true import was little understood. Persons of the highest
rank, and in the most eminent stations, could not read or write. Many of
the clergy did not understand the breviary which they were obliged daily
to recite; some of them could scarcely read it. The memory of past
transactions was, in a great degree, lost, or preserved in annals filled
with trifling events or legendary tales.--_Dr. Robertson’s Introduction
to the History of Charles V._
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_Remarkable Detection of Fraud._--A few years ago an important suit, in
one of the legal courts of Tuscany, depended on ascertaining whether a
certain word had been erased by some chemical process from a deed then
before the court. The party who insisted that an erasure had been made,
availed themselves of the knowledge of M. Gazzeri, who, concluding that
those who committed the fraud would be satisfied by the disappearance of
the colouring matter of the ink, suspected (either from some colourless
matter remaining in the letters, or perhaps from the agency of the
solvent having weakened the fabric of the paper itself beneath the
supposed letters) that the effect of the slow application of heat would
be to render some difference of texture or of applied substance evident,
by some variety in the shade of colour which heat in such circumstances
might be expected to produce. Permission having been given to try the
experiment, on the application of heat _the important word re-appeared_,
to the great satisfaction of the court.--_Babbage, on the Decline of
Science._
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_London Mile-stones._--The various roads from London are now measured
from ten or eleven different places, two, three, and even four miles
distance from each other. The catalogue is curious. Hyde Park Corner and
Whitechapel Church; the Surrey side of London Bridge and Westminster
Bridge; Shoreditch Church; Tyburn Turnpike; Holborn Bars (long since
removed); the place where St. Giles’s Pound formerly stood; the place
where Hicks’s Hall once stood; the Standard, in Cornhill, of which no
other tradition remains, its exact site being unknown; and the
Stones’-end, in the Borough, which moves with the extension of the
pavement. Thus the actual distance of any place cannot be known without
minute inquiry and local knowledge of London. “The easy remedy,” says
Mr. Rickman, from whose admirable ‘Statement of Progress in the
Population Inquiry for 1831,’ this is taken, “consists in adopting the
mileage of the Post-office, when it shall have been re-measured from the
new site of that office, the frontage of which grand centre of
communication could not be more appropriately adorned than by an obelisk
which would become a LONDON STONE, in imitation of that which stood in
the Forum of ancient Rome. The vicinity of St. Paul’s, the most
conspicuous object in London, recommends the new Post-office especially
for this purpose; and turnpike-road trustees would not refuse to
accommodate to it their mile-stones, under the direction of the
road-surveyor of the Post-office.”
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Nelson, when young, was piqued at not being noticed in a certain
paragraph of the newspapers, which detailed an action wherein he had
assisted. “But, never mind,” said he, “I will one day have a Gazette of
my own.”
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