rice almost;
A beaver band and feather for the head
Priced at the church's tythe, the poor man's bread.

[261] It is not unusual to find in inventories of this era, the
household effects rated at much less than the wearing apparel, of
the person whose property is thus valued.

[262] The Jesuit Drexelius, in one of his Religious Dialogues,
notices the fact; but I am referring to an Harleian manuscript,
which confirms the information of the Jesuit.

DISCOVERIES OF SECLUDED MEN.

Those who are unaccustomed to the labours of the closet are unacquainted
with the secret and silent triumphs obtained in the pursuits of studious
men. That aptitude, which in poetry is sometimes called _inspiration_,
in knowledge we may call _sagacity_; and it is probable that the
vehemence of the one does not excite more pleasure than the still
tranquillity of the other: they are both, according to the strict
signification of the Latin term from whence we have borrowed ours of
_invention_, a finding out, the result of a combination which no other
has formed but ourselves.

I will produce several remarkable instances of the felicity of this
aptitude of the learned in making discoveries which could only have been
effectuated by an uninterrupted intercourse with the objects of their
studies, making things remote and dispersed familiar and present.[263]

One of ancient date is better known to the reader than those I am
preparing for him. When the magistrates of Syracuse were showing to
Cicero the curiosities of the place, he desired to visit the tomb of
Archimedes; but, to his surprise, they acknowledged that they knew
nothing of any such tomb, and denied that it ever existed. The learned
Cicero, convinced by the authorities of ancient writers, by the verses
of the inscription which he remembered, and the circumstance of a sphere
with a cylinder being engraven on it, requested them to assist him in
the search. They conducted the illustrious but obstinate stranger to
their most ancient burying-ground: amidst the number of sepulchres, they
observed a small column overhung with brambles--Cicero, looking on while
they were clearing away the rubbish, suddenly exclaimed, "Here is the
thing we are looking for!" His eye had caught the geometrical figures on
the tomb, and the inscription soon confirmed his conjecture. Cicero long
after exulted in the triumph of this discovery. "Thus!" he says, "one of
the noblest