Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 2, 2025
Every visitor who leaves me, without a small present, however trifling it may be, considers himself insulted by me, or that I don't like him. Still at a loss to know what to do, whether to proceed to Soudan, or return and finish my tour of the Mediterranean. Sometimes I fancy I'll toss up, and then, checking my folly, I'll try the sortes sanctorum; a feather would turn the scale.
A well-known variety of augury, conducted upon this principle, lay in the "Sortes Biblicae," where the Bible was the oracular book consulted, and far more extensively at a later period in the "Sortes Virgilianae," where the Aeneid was the oracle consulted. But I notice the latest case before the others, as it connected itself with a great epoch in the movement of my intellect.
Girdels of Buffe and all leathers, with gilt and ungilt Buckles, specially wast girdels. Wast girdels of velvet. Gloves of all sortes, knit and of leather. Gloves perfumed. Shooes of Spanish leather, of divers colours. Looking glasses for Women, great and fayre. Comes of Ivorie. Handkerchewes, with silk of divers colours, wrought. Marmelade. Raisins of the Sun. Comfets that shall not dissolve.
Moreouer seeing yet men may exercise themselues in many other maners and sortes of exercises, hee, as mee thinketh openly sheweth, yet he hath not modesty, nor temperance, nor his health it selfe in estimation, yet is, he estemeth & regardeth not. &c. which choseth daunsing for his exercise.
Accident co-operated; a promise to be fulfilled at Northampton, in a certain contingency, fell due at the instant; the doctor was detained, this detention gave time for further representations; new motives arose, old difficulties were removed, and finally the doctor saw, in all this succession of steps, the first of which, however, lay in the Sortes Biblicae, clear indications of a providential guidance.
All this I mention to take away any appearance of a vulgar attempt to create omens; but still, in the very act of confessing the simple truth, and thus weakening the marvellous character of the anecdote, I must notice it as a strange instance of the 'Sortes Miltonianae, that precisely at such a moment as this I should find thrown in my way, should feel tempted to take up, and should open, a volume containing such a passage as the following: and observe, moreover, that although the volume, once being taken up, would naturally open where it had been most frequently read, there were, however, many passages which had been read as frequently or more so.
Here our goldfiners made say of such Ore as they found vpon the Northerland, and found foure sortes thereof to holde golde in good quantitie. This home is to be seene and reserued as a Iewell by the Queenes Maiesties commandement, in her Wardrope of Robes.
Beside, my good 'familiar, or rather my sortes Proenestinoe, told me that I should find you here; and I wanted to see you before the company assembled: why have you so pertinaciously avoided me of late?"
The -sortes- were probably small wooden tablets arranged upon a string, which when thrown formed figures of various kinds; an arrangement which puts one in mind of the Runic characters. I. X. Hellenes and Latins I. VII. Servian Wall I. II. Indo-Germanic Culture I. IV. Tities and Luceres Agriculture, Trade, and Commerce
You quite roared with delight when you heard of a fool, who, mistrusting himself and his bride, tried his fortune after the fashion of the Sortes Virgilianæ, by dipping into Shakspeare on his wedding-day and finding "Not poppy nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East, Shall ever med'cine to thee that sweet sleep Which thou ow'dst yesterday."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking