show their thickness; while in others, the over-lying strata have been worn away, and those underneath have been brought to the surface. Were it not so, our knowledge would be confined to one or two lying on the outside.

Some strata were deposited in fresh water, some in salt; some in deep seas, others in shallow; and it is one part of the business of geology to find out which are which.

Now if a pond were drained of its water, or otherwise dried up, we should find its bottom strewn with fresh water shells, fish, &c., just as we find marine shells, sea-weeds, &c., on the sands at low-tide. If these organic remains were covered up from the air by mud, &c., they would be preserved from decay; and in the course of perhaps some thousands of years, they would become fossil. All minerals were once called fossils, the word fossilis) from which the term is derived, meaning anything dug out of the earth; but it is now used only to express remains of animals and plants found buried in the earth, and mineralized, each particle of which they were composed being changed into, or replaced by, a particle of some other substance.

Now if we find remains of animals or plants buried in an ancient stratum, we conclude that the animal or plant lived when the stratum was being formed. If it be a marine animal, or a sea-weed, we know that the sea once covered the spot where it is found. Thus, in Norway, 600 feet above the level of the sea, there is a deposit of shells, from which we learn that this coast was once beneath the sea, and has been raised to its present height by some power or other, which is even now at work, for the rising still continues.

In trying to construe the past history of the world from the rocks and the remains they inclose, the grand rule adopted by geologists is, that the rocks of past ages were formed in the same way as those of the present day are being formed, by the same agents, and for the most part at the same slow rates.

It was the not recognizing this principle which kept back geologists of former times, and led them to exercise their imaginations in planning catastrophes, rather than their reason in observing what was passing around them. Changes may have been brought about more quickly in ancient times, yet still by the same agents as those now at work, and until we find phenomena which they would not be sufficient to produce, we have no reason to seek for any others.

(To be continued.)

A GOSSIP ABOUT BOOKS.

PART I.

"I will frankly confess," rejoined Lysander, "that I am an arrant bibliomaniacthat I love books dearly-that the very sight, touch, and mere perusal—”

"Hold, my friend!" again exclaimed Philemon, "you have renounced your profession; you talk of reading books: do bibliomaniacs ever read books?"Dibdin.

PERHAPS the readers of 'The Monthly Packet' will glance at the title of this article; and visions of 'irresponsible indolent reviewers,' those salutary bug-bears, will rise up before them. They will expect to hear the last new opinion from the Satire-day Review of Happy-go-lucky Land, concerning Enoch Arden,' Browning's 'Dramatis Personæ,' or whatever may be the most exciting contemporary publication. They are deceived-very much deceived. For once, we take unto ourselves one of the attributes of a bibliomaniac, as noticed above. We mean to look at books-not as things to be read, but to be regarded in any other possible light; as ornaments, relics, monuments, or old members of the society of other days, about whose previous history we may wonder and speculate. Let none, however, suppose that we presume, even for a moment, to arrogate to ourselves that splendid title; borne so honourably by a great man, Dr. Frognal Dibdin, familiarly known as Foggy Dibdin; and many another, whose names cause a warm glow in the hearts of even the meanest lover of books.

We propose to ourselves the pleasant task of paying some tribute to the memory of these men further on in our Gossip; but there is a certain amount of drudgery to be got through first.

A book, a volume, a leaf! What queer old-world fashions those familiar words would bring to the mind if we came to think of it! Each generation of books, like each generation of men, bears the mark of that which went before; and an epitome of the world's history may be gleaned from the mere outsides, and general 'get-up' of books. A book, a volume, a leaf. Literally, they mean-a bit of beech bark, a roll of lime fibre, or the broad dried leaf of a tree.

There remains little enough of romance in cream-laid superfine notepaper, when we hear of love-letters-veritable love-letters, billet-doux, indited by the hands of our Scandinavian forefathers, on pieces of bark : yet such are actually extant. A damsel wooed with beech spoils, might well be won with the axe.

A curious library of this rough nature was discovered some time ago among the Calmucks. The books were very long and narrow; their leaves of thick bark; and the writing white, upon a black ground. These bark books (the Romans called them 'liber,' the inner bark of the lime tree; and the Greeks biblos,' a term now only applied to the

Book) were rolled up for convenience of carrying, and in this form became 'volumina;' hence our word volume,' which has quite lost the original sense, now that we apply it to the flat oblong denizens of our book-shelves. These bark and leaf books are by no means the earliest kinds on record. There was a stone, a brazen, and a wooden age, before men's ideas became soft enough to be entrusted to such tender materials as bark, papyrus, vellum, and lastly paper.

When the Arcadian custom, of setting the laws to music, and singing them to the assembled people, was given up, as a too uncertain mode of proclaiming decrees of justice, the Greek M. P.s took to engraving their budgets on stone or metal. The laws of the Twelve Tables, among the Romans, were engraved on brass; and even to the times of the Emperors, public records, the code, (plebiscita) and landmarks of estates, were set forth on the same metal. Many a Roman soldier too, wrote his will on his buckler, or scabbard, just before going into battle; and a law was passed, making such testaments valid in a court of law; moreover, the discharges of the soldiers were always written on copper or leaden plates.

A book, consisting of eight leaden leaves, four inches long, and three wide-such as that bought by Montfaucon at Rome, in 1699-must have been decidedly ponderous; and it is quite a relief to turn to the contemplation of the wooden age, when little Roman boys carried wooden books to school-tablets, in fact, they were: the richest people had them of ivory; but they were ordinarily made of thin slips of wood, fastened together by means of parchment bands, glued to the back of the leaves.

Linen cloth was used very early by the Egyptians for writing upon: pieces are found rolled up with unlucky mummies of fabulous antiquity, which modern curiosity cannot allow to rest quietly in their swathings. But perhaps the very strangest material on record, as ever thought of for a book, is the intestines of a serpent, on which the poems of Homer were written in letters of gold. This roll was a hundred and twenty feet long. It belonged to Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt, and perished in the fire at the library of Constantinople, in the sixth century.

Parchment, vellum, and paper made from the rush papyrus, next came into use. There are three kinds of parchment mentioned by old authors: that of the natural colour; the 'bicolor membrana,' or that which was yellow on one side, and white on the other; and lastly the purple, or violet, on which men always wrote in letters of gold or silver.

The writing-cases of the ancients, by the way, must have been elaborate affairs. We learn from various sources, that they used to carry about with them a sponge, to clean the reed they wrote with, and to rub out such letters as were written by mistake; a knife, for mending the said reed, or calamus; pumice for a similar purpose, or for smoothing the parchment; compasses, for measuring the distance between the lines ; scissors, for cutting the parchment square and even; a puncher, for pointing out the beginning and ending of each line; a rule, to draw lines

with, and to divide the sheets into columns; a glass containing sand, (a substitute for blotting-paper,) and another glass of water, probably to mix with the ink. Such were the contents of an ancient writing-box. Poor scribe, we pity thee!

Very rich people wrote with a calamus of silver-the ancestor, probably, of our obnoxious metal pens. In 1433, however, goose-quills, the only true mediums between genius and paper, were certainly known in England, and probably received that honour and attention, which is undoubtedly their due. O gentle readers, away with those up-starts, those starvling, heartless pens of steel! It needs but little prophetic power to foresee the misery of the times which will inevitably come, if geese cease to be mixed up with public and private affairs.

Pardon this outburst: we were speaking of the pens used in the year of Grace 1433. A bundle came into England in that year, as a present from a monk in Venice, to some monastery here. Shew the bundle,' said the letter which accompanied the gift, 'to Brother Nicolas, that he may choose a quill.'

Having so far considered the materials used for books, we must proceed to gossip a little about manuscripts, and those who made and those who collected them. It is a matter of great wonder how it came to pass that the works of ancient authors were so well known, and had such a wide circulation so soon after they were first published, when we calculate the infinite trouble every copy must have cost. But it may be accounted for to a certain extent in the following manner. We know that the copyists, by profession, in Athens, were exceedingly numerous; and in Rome, the publishing trade was conducted on so large a scale, as almost to rival the establishments of modern days. The writers were all educated slaves, who took down the conversations, speeches, or letters, of their patron from his own mouth, in a kind of short-hand-a process invented, it is said, by Xenophon, and improved by Cicero's freed-man Tyro, from whom arose its name, 'notæ Tyronianæ.'

If the work was intended for publication, it was taken to a bookseller, who employed a very large number of persons to write it out at the same time from dictation. In this manner several hundred copies were issued at once, in a very inconsiderable space of time, and at a tolerably low price; but, alas! there was no chance of correcting the press, and the plan was liable to produce many faults. Most of the Roman authors complain bitterly of the carelessness of the transcribers employed by the booksellers. Strabo says, that no power on earth would induce them to compare what they wrote with the copy; and everyone knows what learned squabbles and pedantic feuds have been the result.

Another result of this imperfect mode of multiplying books, comes to us quaintly enough from those far-off times. Authors being accustomed to dictate with great rapidity to their amanuenses, when for any reason they were obliged to write with their own hands, it became a distasteful task; the hand refused to keep time to the rush of brilliant ideas, and an

illegible scrawl was the result. Even Cicero was guilty of this fault g and Quintus, his brother, remonstrated with him accordingly.

After the great rise of learning in the Augustan age, and the time which immediately followed, a reaction set in. The minds of men were narrowed by error; and the classics were pronounced sinful books, and hurtful to Christianity. So the great propagation of books dwindled, and they became scarce and scarcer. Then arose the monasteries, to do their great work of keeping alive and fostering the flame of true learning; which was to burn on steadily, sometimes in one part of the world, sometimes in another; but always leavening society, and enlarging and clearing the intellectual vision of nations, as well as individuals.

From those busy hives of monks, the sole courtiers of the Muses nine in the dark ages, went forth much pure honey, for the use of the world outside, besides much that was stored up for home consumption. No less than fifty religious houses in the south of Italy, are mentioned as supplying the libraries of Rome, Venice, Florence, and Milan, with manuscripts. The Benedictines were the great cultivators of literature in those daysall honour be to them for it! England too has furnished glorious links to the chain of lovers, collectors, and encouragers, of books; the most remarkable, perhaps, being Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, Chancellor and Treasurer of England.

This Gossip would be even more incomplete than it is the nature of such articles to be, if a place were not found in it for some notice of this man, who, by his honest love of learning, and its recognized channel, books, has not only won for his own name a meed of praise, but in his day, and for many a year after, did solid service to the good cause he had so near his heart.

He must have been a man with habits and perceptions far ahead of his times; as is sufficiently proved by that charming little treatise of his, in which he devotes a whole chapter to rules, of the wisest but quaintest nature, for the treatment of books; 'the handling due to them,' he calls it, in his loving reverence.

The quotation which we take the liberty of giving, affords, over and above its personal interest, a curious peep at the peculiar manners and habits of the fourteenth century.

'We not only set before ourselves a service to God in preparing volumes of new books; but we exercise the duties of a holy piety, if we first handle them so as not to injure them, then return them to their proper places, and commend them to undefiling custody, that they may rejoice in their purity while held in the hand, and repose in security when laid up in their repositories.

'Let there be a mature decorum in opening and closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with precipitous haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without being duly closed; for it is necessary that a book should be much more carefully preserved than a shoe.

'You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in his

VOL. 1.

11

PART 2.