avigation, being a translation of 'Le Grand Routier' of Pierre
Garcie.

The Society for Nautical Research was founded in 1910, and it issues a
monthly journal known as 'The Mariner's Mirror,' wherein are treated
those subjects which pertain to the history of ships, sails, and rigging;
in fact, everything that has to do with the evolution of the ship. The
original 'Mariner's Mirrour' was a translation (by Anthony Ashley in
1588) of Wagenaar's 'Speculum Nauticum,' first published in 1583.
Needless to say, it is a scarce work, as are all these Elizabethan
volumes upon seafaring. In volume IV. of the 'Cambridge History of
English Literature' you will find two chapters on the literature of the
sea from the pens of those great authorities Commander C. N. Robinson and
Mr. John Leyland. If this be your subject, they will amply repay perusal.
There is an excellent list of early works, pages 453 to 462.

[Sidenote: Numismatics.]

43. Numismatics is one of those subjects which generally engage the
attentions of students rather than book-collectors, for the volumes upon
coins and medals are necessarily text-books for the collector of these
things. Such works are, of course, for the most part illustrated; and
some of the older ones are of considerable interest on account of their
engravings.

It is not only to the collector and 'curious antiquary,' however, that
some of these works are valuable, for in them occasionally the historian
is able to unearth matter scarcely obtainable elsewhere. Menestrier's
'Histoire du Roy Louis le Grand par les Medailles, Emblemes, Deuises,
Jettons, Inscriptions, Armoiries, et autres Monumens Publics' (folio,
Paris, 1693) is one of many such works. It not only contains engravings
of every medal struck to commemorate the birth, life, marriage, actions,
victories, processions, and entertainments of the Roi-Soleil (among them
one commemorating the Siege of Londonderry in 1689), but it has a very
fine folding plate of the Place des Victoires as it was in 1686. This
engraving not only shows the famous monument erected to the glory of
Louis XIV., and destroyed at the Revolution, but gives the details of the
panels and a very full description of it. Thus we may have to hand all
the inscriptions, mottoes, and dates which were graven upon that historic
monument.

[Sidenote: Occult.]

44. Civilisation mates but ill with Romance, and for the passing of
Superstition (the child of Imagination and Romance) no