Olney, Bucks.
_Album._--What was the origin, and where do we find the earliest notice of
the kind of friendly {236} memorial book so well known among us as an
_album_? Was it not first used by the learned men of Germany as a
repository for the complimentary tributes of their foreign visitors? Is
there any mention of it in any English author earlier than Izaak Walton,
who tells us that Sir Henry Wotton, when ambassador at Venice, wrote in the
_album_ of Christopher Flecamore a Latin sentence to the effect that "an
ambassador is an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his
country?" Where is the earliest _specimen_ of an English _album_, according
to the modern form and use of the scrapbook so called?