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librarian, and the French their livre, for book, from this source. Antiently, instead of folding this bark, as we fold our paper, they rolled it round a stick according as they wrote on it. Thus rolled, they were called each a volumen.

sciences, or black art, as it was called, was supposed to have arrived at great perfection, and which in that credulous age was in great vogue with persons of all religions, they found no difficulty to maintain themselves, by pre

This has passed into our language, tending to tell fortunes and future and we say a volume or volumes, events." although our books are composed of pages cut and bound together. Varro says, that palm leaves were at first used to write on, from whence the word began and continued to signify the leaf of a book, as well as of a tree or plant.

Humour.

A sporting schoolmaster, a few days since, bought a dog of the pointer breed; but the animal, on trial, not possessing the necessary Origin of the Gypsies.-The qualifications, was returned by late Dr. Smollett, in speaking of the purchaser, accompanied by a Egypt, says, "It was from hence note, quaintly stating, that the that the vagrant race, called Gyp-"dog knew nothing of punctua sies, came, and dispersed them-tion !"

selves into every kingdom of Eu- A gentleman calling on a friend rope and Asia. They were origi- in the city, who was attended by a nally called Zenzunees, from their physician, from the west end of captain Zenzaneus, who, when the town, asked the doctor if he Sultan Selim made a conquest of did not find it inconvenient to Egypt, about the year 1517, re- come to his friend from such a fused to submit to the Turkish yoke, and retired into the deserts, where they lived by rapine and plunder, and frequently came down into the plains of Egypt, committing great outrages in the towns on the Nile under the dominion of the Turks. But being at length subdued and banished Egypt, they agreed to disperse in small parties, into every country of the known world; and being natives of E-after him, that he was gone out gypt, a country where the occult upon a long walk.

distance. "Not at all, Sir," re-
plied the son of Esculapius, "for
having another patient in the ad-
joining street, I can kill two
birds with one stone.".
"Can
you so," rejoined the sick man;
then you are too good a shot for
me," and dismissed him.

A swindler lately sent to the tread-mill, desired his friend to tell all those who called to inquire

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And at first quite in peace let them It's so handy your Volume the second

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Take three or four dungeons, and three What a plague's a summer breakfast,

or four chains,

Eat whate'er you will!

Then of music ethereal three or four Cold butter'd bread's a nasty thing,

strains:

Hot toast is nastier still!

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Well, then an evening walk's the And truth and these can fail thee not.

thing

Not if you're hot before;

For he who sweats when he stands

still

Will, when he walks, sweat more.
So now the suppers come,-and come
To make bad worse, I wot;\
For supper, while it heats the cool,
Will never cool the hot.

Then let our parting grieve thee not,→
But quell that sigh,—
And from thine eye

I'll kiss away the gathering tear,
And think!-in one short fleeting year
I shall return to leave thee not!
But ah! should truth pervade thee not!
I could not brook
Thine alter'd look:

And bed, which cheers the cold man's But like a bud by unkind sky

heart,

Helps not the hot a pin;

For he who's hot when out of bed,

Heats ten times more when in.

Nipp'd timeless, I should drop and die
In silence-but upbraid thee not!

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"A SUBSCRIBER," and "AλQa.” in our next.

We thank our Correspondent "G."

Should slandering tongue of rival for his Communication, but it is too

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Select Biography.

"No part of History is more instructive and delightful than the Lives of great and worthy Men."

BURNETT.

ROBERT BURNS, THE POET,

66

(Continued from page 152.)

I had formed of modern manners, of literature, and criticism, I got from the Spectator. These, with Pope's Works, some Plays of Shakspeare, Tull and Dickson on Agriculture, the Pantheon, Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, Stackhouse's History My father struggled on till he of the Bible, Justice's British reached the freedom in his lease, Gardener's Dictionary, Bayle's when he entered on a large farm, Lectures, Allan Ramsay's Works, about ten miles farther in the Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of country. The nature of the bar- Original Sin, a Select Collection gain he made was such as to of English Songs, and Hervey's throw a little ready money into Meditations, had formed the whole his hands at the commencement of my reading. The collection of of his lease, otherwise the affair songs was my vade mecum. I would have been impracticable. pored over them, driving my cart, For four years we had lived com- or walking to labour, song by fortably here, but a difference song, verse by verse; carefully commencing between him and his noticing the true tender, or sublandlord as to terms, after three lime, from affectation and fustian. years tossing and whirling in the I am convinced I owe to this pracvortex of litigation, my father was tice much of my critic-craft, such just saved from the horrors of a as it is. jail, by a consumption, which af- In my seventeeth year, to ter two years' promises, kindly give my manners a brush, I went

stepped in, and carried him away, to "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest!"

to a country dancing school. My father had an unaccountable antipathy against these meetings, and my going was, what to this moment I repent, in opposition to his wishes. My father, as I said before, was subject to strong passions: from that instance of disobedience in me, he took a sort of dislike to me, which I believe was one cause of the dissipation which marked my succeeding years.

"It is during the time that we lived on this farm, that my little story is most eventful, I was, at the beginning of this period, perhaps, the most ungainly and awkward boy in the parish; no solitaire was less acquainted with the ways of the world. What I knew of ancient story was gathered from say dissipation, comparatively Salmon's and Guthrie's Geogra- with the strictness, and sobriety, phical Grammars; and the ideas and regularity of a Presbyterian

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goddess or other; and, as in every other warfare in this world, my fortune was various; sometimes I was received with favour, and

country life; for though the will heart was completely tinder, and e-wisp meteors of thoughtless was eternally lighted up by some whim were almost the sole lights of my path, yet early ingrained piety and virtue, kept me for several years afterwards within the limits of innocence. The great sometimes I was mortified with a misfortune of my life was the repulse. At the plough, scythe, want of aim. I had felt early or reap-hook, I feared no compesome stirrings of ambition, but titor, and thus I set absolute want they were the blind gropings of at defiance; and as I never cared Homer's Cyclops round the walls farther for my labours than when of his cave. I saw my father's I was in the actual exercise, I situation entailed on me perpetual spent the evenings in the way aflabour. The only two openings ter my own heart. A country lad by which I could enter the temple seldom carries on a love-adventure of fortune, was the gate of nig-without an assistant confident. I gardly economy, or the path of possessed a curiosity, zeal, and inlittle chicaning bargain-making. trepid dexterity, that recommendThe first is so contracted an aper-ed me as a proper second on these ture, I never could squeeze my- occasions, and I dare say, I felt as self into it-the last I always much pleasure in being in the sehated there was contamination cret of half the lovers of the pain the very entrance!-Thus, a- rish of Tarbolton, as ever did bandoned of aim or view in life, statesmen in knowing the inwith a strong appetite for sociabi-trigues of half the courts of Eulity, as well from native hilarity, rope. The very goose-feather in as from a pride of observation and my hand seems to known instincremark; a constitutional melan-tively the well-worn path of my choly of hypochondriasm that imagination, the favourite theme made me fly solitude; add to these of my song; and is with difficulty incentives to social life, my repu- restrained from giving you a cóutation for bookish knowledge, a ple of paragraphs on the love adcertain wild logical talent, and a ventures of my compeers, the strength of thought, something humble inmates of the farm-house like the rudiments of good sense, and cottage-but the grave sons and it will not seem surprising of science, ambition, or avarice, that I was generally a welcome baptize these things by the name guest where I visited. But far of Follies. To the sons and daughbeyond all other impulses of my ters of labour and poverty they heart, was un penchant a l'adora- are matters of the most serious ble moitié du genre humain. My nature; to them the ardent hope,

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