instance, Miss Cooper tells us that the person who first rendered her father's novel, "The Spy," into the French tongue, among other mistakes, made the following:-Readers of the Revolutionary romance will remember that the residence of the Wharton family was called "The Locusts." The translator referred to his dictionary, and found the rendering of the word to be Les Sauterelles, "The Grasshoppers." But when he found one of the dragoons represented as tying his horse to one of the locusts on the lawn, it would appear as if he might have been at fault. Nothing daunted, however, but taking it for granted that American grasshoppers must be of gigantic dimensions, he gravely informs his readers that the cavalryman secured his charger by fastening the bridle to one of the grasshoppers before the door, apparently standing there for that purpose.

Much laughter has deservedly been raised at French littérateurs who professed to be "doctus utriusque linguæ." Cibber's play of "Love's Last Shift" was translated by a Frenchman who spoke "Inglees" as "Le Dernière Chemise de l'Amour;" Congreve's "Mourning Bride," by another, as "L'Epouse du Matin;" and a French scholar recently included among his catalogue of works on natural history the essay on "Irish Bulls," by the Edgeworths. Jules Janin, the great critic, in his translation of "Macbeth," renders "Out, out, brief candle!" as "Sortez, chandelle." And another, who traduced Shakspeare, commits an equally amusing blunder in rendering Northumber land's famous speech in "Henry IV." Henry IV." In the passage

"Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone."

the words italicized are rendered, “ainsi douleur! va-t'en!"— "so grief, be off with you!" Voltaire did no better with his translations of several of Shakspeare's plays; in one of which the "myriad-minded” makes a character renounce all claim to a doubtful inheritance, with an avowed resolution to carve for

himself a fortune with his sword. Voltaire put it in French, which, retranslated, reads, "What care I for lands? With my sword I will make a fortune cutting meat."

The late centennial celebration of Shakspeare's birthday in England called forth numerous publications relating to the works and times of the immortal dramatist. Among them was a new translation of "Hamlet," by the Chevalier de Chatelain, who also translated Halleck's "Alnwick Castle," Burns," and "Marco Bozzaris." Our readers are, of course, familiar with

the following lines:

"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on't! Oh, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden

That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,
Possess it merely."

The chevalier, less successful with the English than with the modern American poet, thus renders them into French :

"Fi done! fi done! Ces jours qu'on nous montrons superbes
Sont un vilain jardin rempli de folles herbes,

Qui donnent de l'ivraie, et certes rien de plus
Si ce n'est les engins du cholera-morbus."

Some of the funniest mistranslations on record have been bequeathed by Victor Hugo. Most readers will remember his rendering of a peajacket as paletot a la purée de pois, and of the Frith of Forth as le cinquième de le quatrième.

The French translator of one of Sir Walter Scott's novels, knowing nothing of that familiar name for toasted cheese, "a Welsh rabbit," rendered it literally by un lapin du pays de Galles," or a rabbit of Wales, and then informed his readers in a foot-note that the lapins or rabbits of Wales have a very superior flavor, and are very tender, which cause them to be in great request in England and Scotland. A writer in the Sicilie, was more

Neapolitan paper, Il Giornale della due

ingenuous. He was translating from an English paper the account of a man who killed his wife by striking her with a

poker; and at the end of his story the honest journalist, with a modesty unusual in his craft, said, "Non sappiamo per certo se questo pokero Inglese sia uno strumento domestico o bensi chirurgico"-"We are not quite certain whether this English poker [pokero] be a domestic or surgical instrument."

In the course of the famous Tichborne trial, the claimant, when asked the meaning of laus Deo semper, said it meant "the laws of God forever, or permanently." An answer not less ludicrous was given by a French Sir Roger, who, on being asked to translate numero Deus impare gaudet, unhesitatingly replied, "Le numéro deux se réjouit d'être impair."

Some of the translations of the Italian operas in the librettos, which are sold to the audience, are ludicrous enough. Take, for instance, the lines in Roberto il diavolo,

Egli era, dicessi

Abitatore

Del tristo Imperio.

Which some smart interpreter rendered―

"For they say he was

A citizen of the black emporium."

Misquotations.

IN Mr Collins' account of Homer's Iliad, in Blackwood's Ancient Classics for English Readers, occurs the following:

"The spirit horsemen who rallied the Roman line in the great fight with the Latins at Lake Regillus, the shining stars who lighted the sailors on the stormy Adriatic, and gave their names to the ship in which St. Paul was cast away."

If the reader will take the trouble to refer to the Acts of the Apostles, xxviii, 11, he will find, that the ship of Alexandria, "whose sign was Castor and Pollux," was not the vessel in which St. Paul was shipwrecked near Malta, but the ship in

which he safely voyaged from the island of "the barbarous people" to Puteoli for Rome.

The misquotations of Sir Walter Scott have frequently attracted attention. One of the most unpardonable occurs in

The Heart of Mid-Lothian, chapter xlvii.:

"The least of these considerations always inclined Butler to measures of conciliation, in so far as he could accede to them, without compromising principle; and thus our simple and unpretending heroine had the merit of those peacemakers, to whom it is pronounced as a benediction, that they shall inherit the earth."

On turning to the gospel of Matthew, v. 9, we find that the benediction pronounced upon the peacemakers was that "they shall be called the children of God." It is the meek who are to "inherit the earth," (ver. 5).

Another of Scott's blunders occurs in Ivanhoe. The date of this story "refers to a period towards the end of the reign of Richard I." (chap. i.) Richard died in 1199. Nevertheless, Sir Walter makes the disguised Wamba style himself "a poor brother of the Order of St. Francis," although the Order was not founded until 1210, and, of course, the saintship of the founder had a still later date.

Again in Waverley (chap. xii.) he puts into the mouth of Baron Bradwardine the words "nor would I utterly accede to the objurgation of the younger Plinius in the fourteenth book of his Historia Naturalis." The great Roman naturalist whose thirty-seven books on Natural History were written eighteen centuries ago, was the Elder Pliny.

Alison, in his History of Europe, speaks of the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, the Viceroy of Poland, as the son of the emperor Paul I. and the celebrated empress Catherine. This Catherine was the mother of Paul, and wife of Peter III., Paul's father. Constantine's mother, i.e. Paul's wife, was a princess of Würtemberg.

Another of Archibald's singular errors is his translation of droit du timbre (stamp duty) into "timber duties." This is about as sensible as his quoting with approbation from De Tocqueville the false and foolish assertion that the American people are "regardless of historical records or monuments," and that future historians will be obliged "to write the history of the present generation from the archives of other lands." Such ignorance of American scholarship and research and of the vigorous vitality of American Historical Societies, is unpardonable.

Disraeli thus refers to a curious blunder in Nagler's Kunstler-Lexicon, concerning the artist Cruikshank:

Some years ago the relative merits of George Cruikshank and his brother were contrasted in an English Review, and George was spoken of as "the real Simon Pure"-the first who had illustrated "Scenes of Life in London." Unaware of the real significance of a quotation which has become proverbial among us, the German editor begins his memoir of Cruikshank by gravely informing us that he is an English artist "whose real name is Simron Pure!" Turning to the artists un der letter P. we accordingly read, "Pure (Simon), the real name of the celebrated caricaturist, George Cruikshank.”

This will remind some of our readers of the index which refers to Mr Justice Best. A searcher after something or other, running his eye down the index through letter B, arrived at the reference "Best-Mr. Justice-his great mind." Desiring to be better acquainted with the particulars of this assertion, he turned to the page referred to, and there found, to his entire satisfaction, "Mr. Justice Best said he had a great mind to commit the witness for prevarication."

In the fourth canto of Don Juan, stanza CX., Byron says: Oh, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,

As some one somewhere sings about the sky.

Byron was mistaken in thinking his quotation referred to the sky. The line is in Southey's Madoc, canto V., and describes fish. A note intimates that dolphins are meant.