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It is pleasant to remember that, although Irish credulity sometimes took shapes absurd and grotesque enough, it never was perverted into diabolical channels, or directed to the barbarities of witch-finding. About the beginning of the fifteenth century we meet with the first mention of the use of Usquebagh, or Aqua Vitae, in our Annals.

It is a great pity that there is such a lack of enterprise in the various European settlements on the East Coast of Africa. Were it otherwise a large trade in valuable woods and other products would assuredly spring up. Ebony and lignum vitae abound; Dr. Livingstone used hardly any other fuel when he navigated the Pioneer, and no wood was found to make such "good steam." Heleotragus Vardonii.

Eight miles down the river, and on the same side, is a small village called New Hamburg. The rocky promontory at the foot of which the town is built is covered with the finest arbor vitae forest probably in existence. Six miles below, on west bank, is the important city of Newburg, one of the termini of the New York and Erie Railroad.

The walls of the palaces on either hand are clothed with tall Monterey and Lawson cypresses and arbor vitae. Between these and the Draceonas of the avenue are planted specimens of Abies pinsapo, the Spanish fir. Banks of flowers and vines cover the ground around the bases of the trees.

"Horum simplicitatem sincerae doctrinae, disciplinae sanctitatem, vitae Deo Jicatae integritatem adorabat. Subtilitatem scholarum divina postmodum inquinasse dolebat.

"Iam iam non domus accipiet te Iaeta, neque uxor Optima, nee dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent: Non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque Praesidium: misero misere" aiunt, "omnia ademit Una dies infesta tibi tot praemia vitae...."

While they paid all due attention to other branches of science, they never neglected the pursuit of the philosopher's stone and the elixir vitae.

The religion of the Bedouins, as the Sire de Joinville reports, amongst other things, enjoined a belief that the soul of him amongst them who died for his prince, went into another body more happy, more beautiful, and more robust than the former; by which means they much more willingly ventured their lives: "In ferrum mens prona viris, animaeque capaces Mortis, et ignavum est rediturae parcere vitae."

Cordatus: "You say well, but I would fain hear one of these autumn-judgments define Quin sit comoedia? If he cannot, let him concern himself with Cicero's definition, till he have strength to propose to himself a better, who would have a comedy to be invitatio vitae, speculum consuetudinis, imago veritatis; a thing throughout pleasant and ridiculous and accommodated to the correction of manners."

One of them specially was marked to have had seven of those stays or buttresses, for the supporting of his greatness and height, which being measured with a line close by the bark and near to the ground, as it was indented or extant, was found to be above thirty-nine yards about. The wood of those trees is as heavy or heavier than Brazil or Lignum vitae; and is in colour white.