with a cross; both cross and garment having been previously consecrated.

ANECDOTE-MEANING OF THE WORD.

This word was originally given by the Greeks to every thing, of whatever nature, that was made known to the people for the first time. In its literary acceptation, it signifies historical details of such events as have taken place in the courts of sovereigns, and which it was never intended should be published.

At present, the word is commonly applied to any detached account of celebrated sayings, or remarkable actions, which are either in general histories, or are made to supply the place of a regular narrative.

GILT SPUR STREET-WHY SO CALLED.

Gilt Spur Street was formerly called Knightrider Street, and both that by Doctors' Commons, and this for the same reason; the knights with their gilt spurs, riding that way from the Tower Royal, to entertain the king and his nobles with justs and tournaments in Smithfield. They r from the Tower Royal, through Great and Knight-rider streets, up Creed Lane, to Lun and thence up Gilt Spur Street, to S

The golden or gilt spurs were the distinctive mark of a knight, those of a squire being always of silver. The original spurs were mere goads fastened to the heel of the shoe, as appears from a seal of Alain Fergant, Duke of Britany, in 1084, and many other instances. Rowels were afterwards invented, and the size of these was gradually increased to such a degree, that in the reign of Charles the Seventh, they were nearly as broad as a man's hand: the necks of the spurs were about six inches long. At the creation of a knight, the king or prince who conferred the order generally buckled on the spurs with his own hands; and, as this was the first ceremony of investment, so the hacking of the spurs was the first act of degradation.

ORIGIN OF THE GAME OF CHESS.

About the commencement of the fifth century · of the Christian era, the sovereignty of a large kingdom, near the mouth of the Ganges, devolved upon a very young monarch; experience had not yet taught him that he should consider his subjects as his children, and that their love was the only solid prop of the state; it was in vain that those important truths were held up to his view by the sage Brahmins, and his Rajahs; elated with power and

grandeur, be swayed the land with unnatural severity.

Sissa, the son of Dahur, the most venerable of the Brahmins, on whom the splendour of philosophy and wisdom shone from his infancy to his seventieth year, saw that there were virtues in the monarch, which required only the culture of reason to bring them into life; and, afflicted at the miseries of his country, he undertook to display to the monarch the cause of them.

Sissa, aware of the disrepute into which the precepts of morality and virtue had fallen, from the evil examples held up by those who taught them, was led to devise a mode of instruction, whereby his lessons should appear the result of the prince's own reasoning, rather than the instructions of another. With this view he invented the game "Shaik," or "The King;" in this game, he contrived to make the king the most important of all the pieces, but yet the easiest to attack, and the most difficult to defend, and only to be defended by the next in rank or consequence in the game, in gradation.

The game was first spread abroad among some of the leading men; and, from the great fame of Sissa, became soon in vogue; the prince heard

of it, and directed that the inventor should be his instructor. The sage Brahmin had now attained his desire, and, in the course of his instructions, took seasonable occasion to point out the dependence of the king on the pawns, and other seasonable truths: the prince, born with genius, and capable of virtuous sentiments, in despite of the maxims of courtiers, applied to himself the morality which the game so strongly exhibited, and, reforming his conduct, his people soon became happy.

The prince, eager to recompense the Brahmin for the great good derived from his ingenuity, required him to demand what he thought competent. The Brahmin asked only a gift of corn, the amount of which should be regulated by the number of houses (or squares), on the chessboard, putting one grain on the first house, two on the second, four on the third, and so on, in double progression to the sixty-fourth house. This apparent moderation of the demand astonished the king, and he unhesitatingly granted it; but when his treasurer had calculated the amount of the donation, they found that the king's revenues were not competent to discharge it; for the corn of 16,384 towns, each containing 1084 granaries

be of 173,762 measures each, and each measure to consist of 32,768 grains, could alone answer the cdemand.

The Brahmin then took the opportunity of pointing out to the monarch, how necessary it 5, was, especially for kings, to be guarded against f the arts of those who surround them, how much they owed to their subjects, and how cautious they should be of inconsiderately bestowing their goods wastefully.

DERIVATION OF THE WORD DANGEROUS.

In the pontificate of Thigh, the thirty-seventh Bishop of Mans, a lady named Dangerose, so fair, that she was commonly styled "La Belle Fille," or "La Bella Nymphe," resided at the Castle of Chemire le Gandin, in Maine (which to this day retains the name of "Le Chateau de Belle Fille"): she was courted by Damase, Lord of Asnieres ; but he being too near a-kin to obtain her in marriage, the lady's delicacy yielded to her attach ment, and they lived together in an illicit alliance. The pious Bishop of Mans, after in vain attemp ing to dissolve the union, launched the bolts of communication, in the most awful manner the seducer. But Damase, who sec