the throne, literally weighed.  Thevenot gives an account of this curious affair in his time.  The balance wherein this seems to have been performed, is described as being rich.  The chains of suspension were of gold, and the two scales, studded with precious stones, also of gold, as well as the beam, &c.  The king, richly attired and shining with jewels, goes into one of the scales of the balance, and sits on his heels.  Into the other are put little bales, said to be full of gold, silver, and jewels, or of other costly materials.  These little bales are described to be often changed.

We have marked many more extracts than we can insert, and find that we must content ourselves, and we hope the author, with again directing attention to his very interesting production.

    [5] II. xi. v. 28.

    [6] Also the oak, ilex, chestnut, &c. though less abundant and
        more rare than on the leaves of the manna-ash.  The ordinary
        manna collected in Sicily, comes from districts in the Val
        Demone and the Val di Mazzara, at some distance from the
        localities where this aerial manna fell.

* * * * *

NOTES OF A READER.

PICTURE OF VENICE.

(From Contarini Fleming, a Psychological Autobiography.)

An hour before sunset, I arrived at Fusina, and beheld, four or five miles out at sea, the towers and cupolas of Venice suffused with a rich golden light, and rising out of the bright blue waters.  Not an exclamation escaped me.  I felt like a man, who has achieved a great object.  I was full of calm exultation, but the strange incident of the morning made me serious and pensive.

As our gondolas glided over the great Lagune, the excitement of the spectacle reanimated me.  The buildings, that I had so fondly studied in books and pictures, rose up before me.  I knew them all; I required no Cicerone.  One by one, I caught the hooded Cupolas of St. Mark, the tall Campanile red in the sun, the Moresco Palace of the Doges, the deadly Bridge of Sighs, and the dark structure to which it leads.  Here my gondola quitted the Lagune, and, turning up a small canal, and passing under a bridge which connected the quays, stopped at the steps of a palace.

I ascended a staircase of marble, I passed through a gallery crowded with statues, I was ushered into spacious apartments, the floors of which were marble, and the hangings satin.  The ceilings were painted by Tintoretto and his scholars, and were full of Turkish trophies and triumphs over the Ottomite.  The furniture was of the same rich material as the hangings, and the gilding, although of two hundred years’ duration, as bright and burnished, as the costly equipment of a modern palace.  From my balcony of blinds, I looked upon the great Lagune.  It was one of those glorious sunsets which render Venice, in spite of her degradation, still famous.  The sky and sea vied in the brilliant multiplicity of their blended tints.  The tall shadows of her Palladian churches flung themselves over the glowing and transparent wave out of which they sprang.  The quays were crowded with joyous groups, and the black gondolas flitted, like sea serpents, over the red and rippling waters.