forced to take the form of all kinds of animals. The labourers charged with this transformation, forged with their instruments certain parts; others, a new form; and made some totally disappear; that these souls might be rendered proper for another kind of life and other habits. Among these he perceived the Soul of Nero which had already suffered long torments, and which stuck to the body by nails red from the fire. The workmen seized on him to make a viper of, under which form he was now to live, after having devoured the breast that had carried him.-But in this Plutarch only copies the reveries of Plato.

SPANISH ETIQUETTE.

THE Etiquette or rules to be observed in the royal palaces is necessary, writes Baron Bielfield, for keeping order at court. In Spain it was carried to such lengths as to make martyrs of their Kings. Here is an instance, at which, in spite of the fatal consequences it produced, one cannot refrain from smiling.

Philip the Third gravely seated by the fire side, where the fire-maker of the court had kindled so great a quantity of wood, that the Monarch was nearly suffocated with heat, his grandeur would not suffer him to rise from the chair; and the domestics could not presume to enter the apartment because it was against the Etiquette. At length

the Marquis de Potat appeared, and the King ordered him to damp the fires: but he excused himself; alleging that he was forbidden by the Etiquette to perform such a function, for which the Duke D'Usseda ought to be called upon, as it was his business. The Duke was gone out'; the fire burnt fiercer; and the King endured it, rather than derogate from his dignity. But his blood was heated to such a degree, that an erysipelas of the head appeared the next day, which succeeded by a violent fever, carried him off in 1621, and in the twenty-fourth year of his age.

The palace was once on fire; a soldier who knew the King's sister was in her apartment, and must inevitably have been consumed in a few moments by the flames, at the risk of his life rushed in, and brought her highness safe out in his arms: but the Spanish Etiquette was here woefully broken into! The loyal soldier was brought to trial, and as it was impossible to deny that he had entered her apartment, the judges condemned him to die! The Spanish Princess however condescended, in consideration of the circumstance, to pardon the soldier, and very benevolently saved his life!

When Isabella, mother of Philip II, was ready to be delivered of him, she commanded that all the lights should be extinguished; that if the violence of her pain should occasion her face to change colour, no one night perceive it. And

when the midwife said, "Madam cry out, that will give you ease," she answered in good Spanish, "How dare you give me such advice? I would ather die than cry out."

After this, we may exclaim with our English Satirist

Spain gives us pride—which Spain to all the earth
May largely give, nor fear herself a dearth!"

CHURCHILL.

Philip the Third was indeed a weak prince, who suffered himself to be governed by his ministers. A patriot wished to open his eyes, but he could not pierce through the crowds of his flatterers ; besides, that the voice of patriotism heard in a corrupted court would have become a crime never to have been pardoned. He found, however, an ingenious manner of conveying to him his censure. He caused to be laid on his table one day, a letter sealed, which bore this address-" To the King of Spain, Philip the Third, at present in the service of the Duke of Lerma."

In a similar manner, Don Carlos, son to Philip the Second, made a book with empty pages, to contain the voyages of his father, which bore this title="The Great and Admirable Voyages of the King Mr. Philip." All these voyages consisted of going to the Escurial from Madrid, and returning to Madrid from the Escurial. Jests of this kind, at length, cost him his life.

THE GOTHS AND HUNS.

THE terrific honours which these ferocious nations paid to their deceased monarchs are recorded in history, by the interment of Attila, King of the Huns; and Alaric King of the Goths.

Attila died in 453, and was buried in the midst of a vast champaign in a coffin which was inclosed `in one of gold, another of silver, and the third of iron. With the body were interred all the spoils of the enemy, harnesses embroidered with gold and studded with jewels; rich silks, and whatever they had taken most precious in the palaces of the kings they had pillaged: and that the place of his interment might for ever remain concealed, the Huns deprived of life all who assisted at his burial!

The Goths had done nearly the same for Alaric in 410, at Cosenca, a town in Calabria. They turned aside the river Vasento; and having formed a grave in the midst of its bed where its course was most rapid, they interred this king with prodigious accumulations of riches. After having caused the river to re-assume its usual course they murdered, without exception, all those who had been concerned in digging this singular grave,

VIČAR OF bray.

THE reader has frequently heard this reverend son of the church mentioned: probably his name

may have outlived the recollection of his pious manœuvres: he was in his principles a Sixtus the Fifth.

The Vicar of Bray, in Berkshire, was a Papist under the reign of Henry the Eighth, and a Protestant under Edward the Sixth; he was a Papist again under Mary, and once more became a Protestant in the reign of Elizabeth. When this scandal to the gown was reproached for his versatility of religious creeds, and taxed for being a turncoat and an unconstant changeling, as Fuller expresses it, he replied, "Not so neither! for if I changed my religion, I am sure I kept true to my principle; which is, to live and die the Vicar of Bray !"

This vivacious and reverend hero has given birth to a proverb peculiar to his county. "The vicar

Fuller tells

of Bray will be Vicar of Bray still." us in his facetious chronicle of his worthies, that this vicar had seen some martyrs burnt two miles off at Windsor, and found this fire too hot for his tender temper. He was one of those who, though they cannot turn the wind, will turn their mills, and set them so, that wheresoever it bloweth their grist shall certainly be grinded.

DOUGLAS.

Ir may be recorded as a species of Puritanic savageness and Gothic barbarism, that no later