ten characters, which, at a small distance,
resemble the lines of an engraving. The lines of the head, and the ruff,
are said to contain the book of Psalms, the Creed, and the Lord's
Prayer. In the British Museum we find a drawing representing the
portrait of Queen Anne, not much above the size of the hand. On this
drawing appears a number of lines and scratches, which the librarian
assures the marvelling spectator includes the entire contents of a thin
_folio_, which on this occasion is carried in the hand.

The learned Huet asserts that, like the rest of the world, he considered
as a fiction the story of that indefatigable trifler who is said to have
enclosed the Iliad in a nutshell. Examining the matter more closely, he
thought it possible. One day this learned man trifled half an hour in
demonstrating it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches in length and
eight in width, pliant and firm, can be folded up, and enclosed in the
shell of a large walnut. It can hold in its breadth one line, which can
contain 30 verses, and in its length 250 lines. With a crow-quill the
writing can be perfect. A page of this piece of vellum will then contain
7500 verses, and the reverse as much; the whole 15,000 verses of the
Iliad. And this he proved by using a piece of paper, and with a common
pen. The thing is possible to be effected; and if on any occasion paper
should be most excessively rare, it may be useful to know that a volume
of matter may be contained in a single leaf.

NUMERICAL FIGURES.

The learned, after many contests, have at length agreed that the
numerical figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, usually called _Arabic_,
are of _Indian_ origin. The Arabians do not pretend to have been the
inventors of them, but borrowed them from the Indian nations. The
numeral characters of the Bramins, the Persians, the Arabians, and other
eastern nations, are similar. They appear afterwards to have been
introduced into several European nations by their respective travellers,
who returned from the East. They were admitted into calendars and
chronicles, but they were not introduced into charters, says Mr. Astle,
before the sixteenth century. The Spaniards, no doubt, derived their use
from the Moors who invaded them. In 1210, the Alphonsean astronomical
tables were made by the order of Alphonsus X. by a Jew, and an Arabian;
they used these numerals, from whence the Spaniards contend that they
were first introduced by them.

They we