Alliteration occurs sometimes in the writings of the ancients, but not, it is supposed, designedly, as they regarded all echoing of sounds as a rhetorical blemish. Cicero, in the Offices," has this phrase,-" Sensim sine sensu ætas senescit;" and Virgil, in the "Eneid," has many marked alliterations.

There are several Latin poems of the Middle Ages in alliterative verse, the most famous of which, the Pugna Porcorum per Publium Porcium Poetam, or "Battle of the Pigs," in which every word begins with p, extends to several hundred lines, thus,—

"Propterea properans proconsul, poplite prono,

Precipitem plebem pro patrum pace poposcit,
Persta paulisper pubes preciosa ! precamur."

Among the literary devices which have "fretted their brief hour upon the stage, and now are no more," are double rhymes, in which Butler and Hood especially excelled. A still more ludicrous form of comic verse is where the rhyme is made by dividing the words, being formed by a similar sound in the middle syllables; as in Canning's lines:

or in Smith's

"Thou wast the daughter of my Tu

tor, Law Professor in the U.

niversity of Göttingen;

"At first I caught hold of the wing,

And kept away; but Mr. Thing

umbob, the prompter man,

Gave with his hand my chaise a shove,
And said, 'Go on, my pretty love,

Speak to 'em, little Nan.'”

Akin to the waste of labour in anagrams, chronograms, alliterations, assonances, etc., though not strictly to be classed under literary trifles, is the waste of labour upon microscopic penmanship. Years of toil have been devoted to copying in a minute print-hand books which could have

been bought for a trifle in ordinary typography. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, one Peter Bales wrote a copy of the Bible, with the usual number of pages, in a hand so fine that the whole could be put into a walnut-shell. In St. John's College, Oxford, there is shown a portrait of Charles I., done with a pen in such a way that the lines are formed by verses of the Psalms, all of which are included in the work. When Charles II. visited the College, he asked for it, with the promise to grant any favour in return; the request was granted, and the owners immediately asked to have the gift restored to them. In the British Museum there is a portrait of Queen Anne, on which appear a number of minute lines and scratches. These, when examined through a microscope, are found to be the entire contents of a small folio-book which belongs to the library. Some years ago a gentleman in London bought a pen-and-ink portrait of Alexander Pope, surrounded by a design in scroll-work. Upon examining it through a glass, to discover the artist's name, he was astonished to find that the fine lines in the surrounding scroll were a biography of the poet, so minutely transcribed as to be legible only by the aid of a magnifier.

Another literary trifle upon which a vast amount of time and ingenuity has been expended, is the riddle. Riddlemaking has been popular in all ages and countries, and not only the small wits, but the big-wigs, of Greece, Rome, France, Germany, and England, have amused themselves with it. Schiller, the German poet, was an adept in this art, and some of his riddles are marvels of ingenuity. Here is one by Fox, the great English orator :

"Formed long ago, yet made to-day,

And most employed when others sleep;
What few would wish to give away,

And none would wish to keep.”

The answer is-a bed.

Dr. Whewell, the late Master of Trinity College, is credited with the following, which was often on his lips. It would baffle a sphynx :

"U 0 a 0, but I 0 thee,

0 0 no 0, but 0 0 me;
Then let not my 0 a 0 go,

But give 0 0 I 0 thee so."

"You sigh for a cypher, but I sigh for thee,

O sigh for no cypher, but O sigh for me;
Then let not my sigh for a cypher go,

But give sigh for sigh, for I sigh for thee so.

Whew-well done! we hear a punning reader exclaim. The following is inferior to the sighing riddle, so often repeated to his friends by the author of the "History of Inductive Sciences," but it is not the device of a bungler :

"The

Prof. DeMorgan, author of the celebrated work on Theory of Probabilities," is the author of a cunning punning riddle: How do you know there is no danger of starving in the desert? Because of the sand which is there. And how do you know you will get sandwiches there? Because Ham went into the desert, and his descendants bred and mustered.

The following curious epitaph was found in a foreign cathedral:

These puzzling lines have been explained as follows: Ra, ra, ra, is thrice ra, i. e., ter-ra—terra; ram, ram, ram, is thrice ram, i. e., ter-ram—terram; i i is twice i i, i. e., i-bis-ibis. The first two lines are to be read: 0 super be, quid super est tuæ super biæ. The epitaph will then be:

"O superbe, quid superest tuæ superbiæ ?

Terra es et in terram ibis."

We know not who is the author of the following curious line:

"Sator arepo tenet opera rotas,"

1. This spells backward and forward the same. 2. The first letters of all the words spell the first word. 3. The second letters of all the words spell the second word. 4. The third letters of all the words spell the third word; and so on through the fourth and fifth.

We will close with a specimen of the puzzles in letters:

"CC
SI."

"The season is backward." (The C's on is backward.)

Truly the human mind is like an elephant's trunk-capable of grasping the mightiest objects, and adapting itself with equal facility to the meanest and most trifling. There is but one thing to which we can compare the labours of this whole tribe of triflers, it is to the toils of those unwearying imps who were set by the magician to the task of twisting ropes out of sea-sand.

WRITING FOR THE PRESS.

A

per

LMOST every person who is a known contributor ta the press receives, more or less often, letters like the following: "I am not earning enough to pay my expenses, and, to make two ends meet, I would like to write for the press. Can you give me some hints?" The number of sons who, when at their wits' ends, in despair of eking out a living in any other way, look to journalism as a last resource, is legion. The passionate appeals which are made personally or by letter to the managing-editor of a leading journal, beseeching him to buy articles, nine-tenths of which are utterly worthless, and ninety-nine hundredths of which could not be got into the paper, were they ever so interesting, make his place anything but a bed of roses. Even in the old-fashioned newspaper-establishments, where four or five steep, dark and dingy stair-cases must be climbed to reach the editorial den, some would-be contributor, male or female, may be seen panting up the steps almost hourly; but, in the modern offices, in which the steam elevator has placed all the floors on a level, the swarms of writers that beset the manager, coaxing, imploring, almost insisting, that their MSS. shall be used, render his situation absolutely appalling. To ninety-nine out of every hund red of these persons he must return an inexorable No. No would-be contributor, however, dreams that he is doomed to be one of