[Respecting the antiquity of wafers, Beckmann, in his _History of
Inventions_, vol. i. p. 146. (Bohn's edition), has the following
notice: "M. Spiess has made an observation which may lead to farther
researches, that the oldest seal with a red wafer he has ever yet
found, is on a letter written by D. Krapf at Spires, in the year 1624,
to the government of Bayreuth. M. Spiess has found also that some years
after, Forstenhaeusser, the Brandenburg factor at Nuremberg, sent such
wafers to a bailiff at Osternohe. It appears, however, that wafers were
not used during the whole of the seventeenth century in the chancery of
Brandenburg, but only by private persons, and by these even seldom,
because, as Speiss says, people were fonder of Spanish wax. The first
wafers with which the chancery of Bayreuth began to make seals were,
according to an expense account of the year 1705, sent from Nuremberg.
The use of wax, however, was still continued, and among the Plassenburg
archives there is a rescript of 1722, sealed with proper wax. The use
of wax must have been continued longer in the Duchy of Weimar; for in
the _Electa Juris Publici_ there is an order of the year 1716, by which
the introduction of wafers in law matters is forbidden, and the use of
wax commanded. This order, however, was abolished by Duke Ernest
Augustus in 1742, and wafers again introduced."]
* * * * *
_Asgill on Translation to Heaven._--The Irish House of Commons, in 1703,
expelled a Mr. Asgill from his seat for his book asserting the possibility
of translation to the other world without death. What is the title of his
book? and where may I find a copy?