was presented with a pair of long Spanish silk stockings by Sir Thomas Gresham. Hence it would seem that knit stockings originally came from Spain. It is stated that one William Rider. an apprentice on London Bridge, seeing, at the house of an Italian merchant, a pair of knit stockings, from Mantua, took the hint, and made a pair exactly like them, which he presented to the Earl of Pembroke, and that they were the first of that kind worn in England. There have been various opinions with respect to the original invention of the stocking-frame; but it is now generally conceded that it was invented during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1589, by William Lee, M.A., of St. John's College, Cambridge. In the London Magazine, it is related that Mr. Lee was expelled from the University for marrying, contrary to the statutes of the college. Being thus rejected, and ignorant of any other means of subsistence, he was reduced to the necessity of living upon what his wife could earn by knitting stockings, which gave a spur to his invention; and, by curiously observing the working of the needles in kuitting, he formed in his mind the model of the frame. Mr. Lee went to France, and, for want of patronage there and in England, died of a broken heart, at Paris. In the hall of Framework Kuitters' Company, incorporated by Charles the Second, in 1663, is a portrait of Lee, pointing to one of the iron frames, and discoursing with a woman, who is knitting with needles and her fingers. THE ORDER OF THE GARTER. When Salisbury's famed countess was dancing with glee, Allusions and hints, sneers and whispers, went round; The drinking of DRINKING HEALTHS. healths originated during the Danish occu pation of Britain. The Danes frequently stabbed Englishmen while in the act of drinking, and it finally became necessary for the English, in view of the constant repetition of this dastardly mode of assassination, to enter into a compact to be mutual pledges of security for each other's health and preservation. Hence the custom of pledging and drinking. healths. A FEATHER IN ONE'S CAP. In the Lansdowne MS., British Museum, is a Description of Hungary in 1599, in which the writer says of the inhabitants, "It hath been an antient custom among them that none should wear a fether but he who had killed a Turk, to whom onlie y' was lawful to shew the number of his slaine enemys by the number of fethers in his cappe." THE WORD BOOK. Before paper came into general use, our Teutonic forefathers wrote their letters, calendars, and accounts on wood. The Boc, or beech, being close-grained and plentiful in Northern Europe, was generally employed for the purpose; and hence the word book. NINE TAILORS MAKE A MAN. The following humorous account of the origin of this saying is from The British Apollo. "It happened ('tis no great matter in what year) that eight tailors, having finished considerable pieces of work at the house of a certain person of quality, (whose name authors have thought fit to conceal,) and received all the money due for the same, a virago servant-maid of the house, observing them to be but slender-built animals, and in their mathematical postures on their shop-board appearing but so many pieces of men, resolved to encounter and pillage them on the road. The better to compass her design, she procured a very terrible great black pudding, which, having waylaid them, she presented at the breast of the foremost. They, mistaking this prop of life for an instrument of death, at least a blunderbuss, readily yielded up their money; but she, not contented with that, severely disciplined them with a cudgel she carried in the other hand, all which they bore with a philosophical resignation. Thus, eight, not being able to deal with one woman, by consequence could not make a man; on which account a ninth is added. 'Tis the opinion of our curious virtuosos, that their want of courage ariseth from their immoderate eating of cucumbers, which too much refrigerates their blood. However, to their eternal honor be it spoken, they have often been known to encounter a sort of cannibals, to whose assaults they are often subject, not fictitious, but real man-eaters, and that with a lance but two inches long; nay, and although they go armed no further than their middle finger." An earlier authority than the preceding may be found in a note in Democritus in London, with the Mad Pranks and Comical Conceits of Motley and Robin Goodfellow, in which the following version of the origin of the saying is given. It is dated 1682: There is a proverb which has been of old, Nine Taylors go to make up a man, they said; But for their credit I'll unriddle it t'ye: A draper once fell into povertie, Nine Taylors joined their purses together then, To set him up, and make him a man again. VIZ. The contraction viz. affords a curious instance of the universality of arbitrary signs. There are few people now who do not readily comprehend the meaning of that useful particle,-a certain publican excepted, who, being furnished with a list of the requirements of a festival in which the word appeared, apologized for the omission of one of the items enumerated: he informed the company that he had inquired throughout the town for some viz., but he had not been able to procure it. He was, however, readily excused for his inability to do so. Viz. being a contraction of videlicet, the terminal sign 3 was never intended to represent the letter "z," but was simply a mark or sign of abbreviation. It is now always written and expressed as a "z" and will doubtless continue to be so. SIGNATURE OF THE CROSS. The mark which persons who are unable to write are required to make instead of their signatures, is in the form of a cross; and this practice, having formerly been followed by kings and nobles, is constantly referred to as an instance of the deplorable ignorance of ancient times. This signature is not, however, invariably a proof of such ignorance. Anciently the use of the mark was not confined to illiterate persons; for among the Saxons the mark of the cross, as an attestation of the good faith of the persons signing, was required to be attached to the signature of those who could write, as well as to stand in the place of the signature of those who could not write. In those times, if a man could write, or even read, his knowledge was considered proof presumptive that he was in holy orders. The clericus, or clerk, was synonymous with penman; and the laity, or people who were not clerks, did not feel any urgent necessity for the use of letters. The ancient use of the cross was therefore universal, alike by those who could and those who could not write: it was, indeed, the symbol of an oath, from its sacred associations, as well as the mark generally adopted. Hence the origin of the expression "God save the mark," as a form of ejaculation approaching the character of an oath. THE TURKISH CRESCENT. When Philip of Macedon approached by night with his troops to scale the walls of Byzantium, the moon shone out and discovered his design to the besieged, who repulsed him. The crescent was afterwards adopted as the favorite badge of the city. When the Turks took Byzantium, they found the cres cent in every public place, and, believing it to possess some magical power, adopted it themselves. The origin of the crescent as a religious emblem is anterior to the time of Philip of Macedon, dating, in fact, from the very beginning of history. POSTPAID ENVELOPES. M. Piron tells us that the idea of a postpaid envelope originated early in the reign of Louis XIV., with M. de Valfyer, who, in 1653, established (with royal approbation) a private. penny-post, placing boxes at the corners of the streets for the reception of letters wrapped up in envelopes, which were to be bought at offices established for that purpose. M. de Valfyer also had printed certain forms of billets, or notes, applicable to the ordinary business among the inhabitants of great towns, with blanks, which were to be filled up by the pen with such special matter as might complete the writer's object. One of these billets has been preserved to our times by a pleasant misapplication of it. Pélisson (Mdme. de Sévigné's friend, and the object of the bon mot that "he abused the privilege which men have of being ugly") was amused at this kind of skeleton correspondence; and under the affected name of Pisandre, (according to the pedantic fashion of the day,) he filled and addressed one of these forms to the celebrated Mademoiselle de Scuderie, in her pseudonyme of Sappho. This strange billet-doux has happened, from the celebrity of the parties, to be preserved, and it is still extant,-one of the oldest, it is presumed, of penny-post letters, and a curious example of a prepaying envelope, a new proof of the adage that "there is nothing new under the sun." up OLD HUNDRED. The history of this old psalm-tune, which almost every one has been accustomed to hear ever since he can remember, is the subject of a work recently written by an English clergyman Luther has generally been considered the author of |