l natures seek to attain, suffer as they can, to immortality; but
they can attain to it by this generation only; for thus they ever leave
a new behind them to supply the place of the old." Compare Sec. 31.
"Generation immortalises the mortal, so for as it can be
immortalised."--Plato _Leg_. iv. (p. 721. G.), vi. Sec. 17. (p. 773. E.);
Ocell. Lucan. iv. Sec. 2.

* * * * *

Butler, _Serm. I. on Human Nature_ (p. 12. Oxford, 1844):

"Which [external goods], according to a very ancient observation, the
most abandoned would choose to obtain by innocent means, if they there
as easy, and as effectual to their end."

Dr. Whewell has not, I think, in his edition, pointed out the passage
alluded to, Cic. _de Fin._ III., c. 11. Sec. 36.:

"Quis est enim, aut quis unquam fuit aut avaritia tam ardenti, aut tam
effrenatis cupiditatibus, ut eamdem illam rem, quam adipisci scelere
quovis velit, non multis partibus malit ad sese, etiam omni impunitate
proposita, sine facinore, quam illo modo pervenire?"

J. E. B. MAYOR.

Marlborough College.

* * * * *

SHAKSPEARE AND THE OLD ENGLISH ACTORS IN GERMANY.

My studies on the first appearance of Shakspeare on the German stage, by
means of the so-called "English Comedians" who from the end of the
sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century visited Germany and the
Netherlands, led me to the following passage of a Dutch author:

"In the Voyages of Vincent le Blanc through England, I met with a
description of the representation of a most absurd tragedy, which I
recognised to be the _Titus Andronicus_ of Shakspeare."

I have examined the _Voyages of Vincent le Blanc_ without having been able
to discover the passage alluded to; and as the Dutch author says that some
time had elapsed between his first reading those _Voyages_ and the
composition of his treatise, and as he seems to quote only from memory, I
am led to believe his having confounded Vincent le Blanc with some other
traveller of the same period.

Undoubtedly one of your numerous readers can furnish me with the title of
the work in which such a description occurs, or with the name of some other
foreign traveller who may have visited England at the period alluded to,
and in whose works I may find the description mentioned above.

ALBERT COHN.

Berlin, Nov. 19. 1850.

* * *