agency of opinion-" of opinion, which permitted not a knight to enjoy tranquillity in the bosom of his family, while his peers were waging war beyond the seas;-of opinion, which compels the gamester to pay a debt of honour with the money for want of which his industrious tradesman is starving;-of opinion, which does not permit a man to refuse a challenge, though the law has designated it a crime;-of opinion, before the influence of which even tyrants tremble."

It is, however, very questionable, whether this powerful influence could ever be called into action in any instance; for in the questions which were propounded for the consideration of the judges, the names of the parties do not appear to have been introduced, and, therefore, it was impossible to direct the anathemas of the court against any particular individual. The Troubadours, who pleaded the cause, generally appeared only in the character of advocates. In the history of André, the Chaplain, whose work is written in Latin, the parties to the cause are merely designated by a quidam, or quædam. We shall give one of the cases, with the decision of the lady-judges, for the edifica

tion of our fair readers, especially those who are casuistically and coquettishly inclined.

CASE. A knight, betrothed to a lady, had been absent a considerable time beyond the seas. She waited, in vain, for his return; and his friends, at last, began to despair of it. The lady, impatient of the delay, found a new lover. The secretary of the absent knight, indignant at the infidelity of the lady, opposed this new passion. The lady's defence was this ::- "Since a widow, after two years of mourning,* may receive a new lover; much more may she whose betrothed husband, in his absence, has sent her no token of remembrance or fidelity, though he lacked not the means of transmitting it."

This question occasioned long debates, and it was argued in the court of the Countess of

*This was one of the laws of the Court of Love, "That two years' widowhood, in case of death, shall be observed by the survivor." The lady, who was the defendant in this cause, would not have found so easy an excuse in our law, which requires that seven years should pass after the absence of any one beyond sea before the presumption of death can arise.

Champagne. The judgment was delivered as follows:

"A lady is not justified in renouncing her lover under the pretence of his long absence, unless she has certain proof that his fidelity has been violated, and his duty forgotten. There is, however, no legal cause of absence but necessity, or the most honourable call. Nothing should give a woman's heart more delight than to hear, in lands far distant from the scene of his achievements, the renown of her lover's name, and the reverence in which he is held by the warlike and the noble. The circumstance of his having refrained from despatching a messenger, or a token of his love, may be explained on prudential reasons, since he may have been unwilling to trust the secret of his heart to every stranger's keeping; for though he had confided his despatches to a messenger, who might not have been able to comprehend them, yet, by the wickedness of that messenger, or by his death on the journey, the secret of his love might be revealed."

The ingenuity displayed by the pleaders on both sides, is considerable, and the decisions of

the judges, which are generally pretty diffuse, are usually luminous and conclusive. Unfortunately for the fame of la gaie science, there were no reporters at that day to transmit to us the authentic records of the courts of love; and we must, therefore, be satisfied with the relics which have been casually preserved of these singular proceedings. We may remark, however, that the authority of the decisions which remain, is still unimpeached by any superior jurisdiction.

PALINDROMES.

AMONG the fopperies, the Nuga difficiles, which, in the dark ages, supplied the place of learning and taste, there were none more remarkable, none on which more labour was wasted to less useful purpose, than the Palindromes, or Canorine, or recurrent verses, as they were called, from their reading the same, letter by letter, backwards and forwards. The difficulty, however, of this species of composition was an effectual barrier to the generality of its study, and the number of its examples. Indeed, whoever attempts to compose a Palindrome line, will

be surprised that there should be so many on record.

Latin, being the language in which the composition of these lines is most easy, (from its containing both so many words which spell the same backwards and forwards, and so many which bear one sense when read forwards and another backwards,) is that in which they are generally recognized to abound most copiously. It is also the language in which they first appeared, having been invented by Sotades, a Roman poet, who lived about 250 years before Christ.

Many examples might be adduced, both in the Greek and Latin languages; but the most extraordinary effort in the composition of Palindromes, is a poem, written in ancient Greek, by a modern Greek, named Ambrosius, printed in Vienna, in 1802, and dedicated to the Emperor Alexander. It contains 455 lines, every one of which is a literal Palindrome. The arrangement of the words is, of course, frequently forced, the allusions far-fetched, and the sense difficult to discover; but they are by no means what are called nonsense verses; for, by close