Mercury would pass over the sun's disc in about seven hours. He removes the difficulty to his own satisfaction by supposing a mistake in the year, and places the occurrence in 808; and for the two Latin words for eight days, he would read a very barbarous one even for monkish Latin, signifying eight times. It is now generally supposed, and with great probability, that the object observed was a spot large enough to be visible to the naked eye. Kepler himself, expecting, towards the end of 1606, or beginning of 1607, a transit of Mercury, was transported with joy at having, as he thought, seen the phenomenon by receiving an image of the sun upon a white surface in a darkened room, a method very generally adopted in those times, before dark glasses were employed; but there can be little doubt that he also was deceived by a spot, for Mercury, when passing before the sun, is much too insignificant an object to be seen without the aid of a telescope. Much discussion has arisen respecting who was the first to observe the spots with a telescope. There appears little doubt that the first recorded observation was made by Thomas Hariot, an eminent English mathematician. Amongst his papers, the following memorandum has been discovered: 1610 Syon, Decemb: 8, manè. The altitude of the sonne being seven or eight degrees, it being a frost and a mist, I saw the sonne in this manner [a drawing of the telescopic appearance of the sun with three spots on it is added]. I saw it twise or thrise, once with the right ey, and other time with the left. In the space of a minute time after the sonne was to cleare.' Not being acquainted with the use of dark glasses, he was obliged to observe the sun when near the horizon, and through a mist. This may account for his not having again remarked a similar appearance till the following December, when, in common with other astronomers, he became a diligent observer of the spots. The first published account of them with which we are acquainted is by John Fabricius, a German astronomer; it bears the date of June 1611. Impelled by the accounts of Galileo's discoveries, he directed his telescope to the sun. While observing it one day, he noticed what appeared to him a large blackish spot upon its surface. At first, he believed it to be a cloud; but after looking at it ten times with different telescopes, and taking the opinions of others, he recognised its more permanent character. These observations were made when the sun had risen but a few degrees above the horizon; for, being wholly unacquainted with the use of coloured glasses, he was accustomed to look at the sun through the morning mists; and he recommends first admitting a small portion of the sun's disc into the telescope, that the eye may be prepared gradually for the full blaze. But even with these precautions, we are not surprised when he tells us that these observations so affected his vision, that for two days he could see nothing clearly. He passed the following night in great anxiety lest the spot should not be visible in the morning. However, when the sun rose, it was still there; but his perplexity was greatly increased by finding that it had evidently moved its position. It then occurred to him to receive an image of the sun upon a white surface in a darkened room. By this means he was enabled to make more continuous observations, and without endangering his eyesight. He watched the paths of three spots across the sun, and recognised the return of the first, from which he conjectured that it had made a complete revolution. He remarked that the spots decreased in size and moved slower as they receded from the sun's centre, and vice versa as they approached it, from which he concluded that they were on the body of the sun, which was spherical and solid. Fabricius hints at its revolution as the true explanation of these move ments, but declines giving any decided opinion. The revolution of the sun about its own axis had been already advocated by Kepler in 1609, and therefore before the motion of the spots had been observed; and previously to him, the same opinion had been held by Jordano Bruno, a monk of the Dominican order, who, in 1600, was convicted of atheism and impiety by the inquisition of Venice, and burnt to death. Fabricius, however, seems to have been the first to arrive at the same conclusion from observations of the time of passage of a spot, from which alone any correct results respecting the period of revolution can be deduced. We may gather from Fabricius's work that he first saw the spots in the beginning of the year 1611, but there is no evidence that he saw them before Hariot; to whom, therefore, is due the credit of having first discovered them, though any one possessed of a telescope might have done the same. But the great contest for priority of discovery was between Galileo and Christopher Scheiner. The latter, a Jesuit, and professor of mathematics at Ingolstadt, first observed the spots in the month of March 1611, while engaged in comparing the apparent diameters of the sun and moon. Thinking lightly of the circumstance, he did not observe the sun again till the following October, when they were again visible. With praiseworthy caution, he, with several friends proved, by using eight telescopes, that these spots could not arise from any defect of vision, or flaws in the glasses. The progress that science was beginning to make at this time, met with a bigoted opposition from the many admirers of the Aristotelian philosophy, one article in whose creed was the 'incorruptibleness of the heavens.' The existence of spots on the sun seemed so directly opposed to this idea of 'incorruptibleness,' that Scheiner's provincial refused to sanction the publication of his discovery, which was therefore made known to the world through letters addressed to Marc Velser, a magistrate of Augsburg, and subscribed 'Apelles post tabulam.' Galileo asserts that he had shewn spots on the sun to many persons as early as April 1611, and had spoken of them several months previously. This, however, rests wholly upon his own verbal testimony; and it is certain he made no careful observations of them till after the publication of Scheiner's letters. Then, indeed, he proved that they must be on the sun's surface, an idea which Scheiner was perhaps at first afraid to entertain, who pronounced them to be planets revolving about the sun, at a very small distance from it. But later, when he had made an incredible number of observations, he abandoned this notion, and adopting that of Galileo, obtained results for the period of the sun's rotation and the inclination of the solar equator to the ecliptic, not differing much from the truth. Scheiner was the first to introduce the use of coloured glasses, which had been suggested by Apian as early as 1540, and perhaps actually employed still earlier by the Batavian sailors in taking altitudes of the sun. Moreover, he discovered the small bright points, known by the name of luculi, seen at all parts of the sun's disc, giving it a mottled appearance; while to Galileo is due the discovery of the bright flakes and streaks, called faculæ, which are visible at its eastern and western edges, and in parts surrounding the spots. He satisfied himself that they were on the sun, and had the same movement as the spots, and considered that this discovery would set at rest the question of rotation, as none would object to placing bright spots on the sun! It was to be expected that many conjectures would be made respecting the nature of these phenomena, and the causes which produced them. The opinion that they were bodies revolving about the sun, was entertained by many. Tarde could not believe it possible that the sun, the eye of the world, could have the ophthalmia, and named them Borbonia sidera (Stars of Bourbon); and Malapert, a poet and mathematician, Austriaca sidera (Stars of Austria). Galileo frequently likens them to clouds and smoke, and gives a detailed description of a method of producing similar appearances upon a red-hot plate of iron. According to Riccioli, author of a voluminous work on astronomy, Galileo, Kepler, and others believed them to be black substances, as soot or vapours bursting forth from the furnace of the sun; and portions being ignited as sparks, produced the appearance of the facula-thus turning Phoebus into Vulcan, as Riccioli remarks. Others held them to be opaque places in space, intercepting the sun's light-holes from which comets had started, and to which they would again return, and the like. Ridiculous as some of these ideas may appear, we are still unable to account for these phenomena by any theory against which many objections might not be urged, though superior telescopes have enabled us to form correcter notions of their general configuration. The telescopic appearance of a spot is that of a dark nucleus surrounded by a lighter border, but well defined, and not gradually shading off into the nucleus, and in form usually following the irregular shape of the latter. This border is commonly called the penumbra, and was first noticed by Scheiner. Dr Wilson of Glasgow, while observing the course and changes of the great spot of November 1769, noticed that when it was at the centre of the sun, the penumbra surrounded the black nucleus equally on all sides; but he remembered that when he first observed the spot, near the eastern margin, the portion of the penumbra nearest the centre was contracted, there being a marked difference between its breadth and that of the portion nearest the margin, the latter being the broadest. As the spot approached the western limb, he observed the same appearance, the other side of the penumbra now contracting, being the portion nearest the sun's centre; and when close to the margin it wholly disappeared, with a part of the black nucleus. These changes were easily explained by the rules of perspective, supposing the nucleus to be at a considerable depth below the sun's surface, and the penumbra to form the irregular sides of a deep hole, gradually shelving down to the nucleus. This is generally received as the true explanation of the appearance a spot represents, though the facts have been called in question; and it must be confessed that all spots do not exhibit these changes. It is interesting to remark, that the possibility of the spots being large holes, or cavernous gulfs,' as he calls them, had occurred to Galileo, though he abandoned the notion at once, as not borne out by the results of his observations. Much attention is now being given to the physical appearance of the sun, and the positions and number of groups of the spots are carefully noted. The great variety of the forms of spots, and the constant changes that are taking place, are most interesting to watch, and useful as furnishing facts by which we may test the different theories respecting them. The Rev. Mr Dawes has been able to confirm the idea, that the faculæ are ridges or heapings-up of the luminous matter. A large facula was observed to run nearly parallel to the sun's edge for some distance, and then to turn rather abruptly towards the edge, and pass over it; at this point it was seen to project slightly beyond the smooth outline of the limb, in the manner of a mountain-ridge. He has also noticed, that at or near the centre of the black nucleus, there is generally a still darker spot, which should properly be called the nucleus. In January 1852, he observed a remarkable instance of rotatory motion in a spot, the rotation taking place round the small black nucleus. A similar appearance was observed by Professor Secchi, of Rome, in May of last year. Two of the darker nuclei were distinctly seen close to each other, and about these the surrounding portion of the spot; and the penumbra seemed to rotate, the whole presenting the appearance of a whirlpool. Interesting as these facts are, it is from those who are making systematic observations we must expect results which may throw light upon their origin. M. Schwabe, of Dessau, has, since 1826, kept a careful register of the number of new groups that appear each year. By a comparison of his observations, he has found that the number is subject to a periodic recurrence, increasing and decreasing very regularly, coming to a maximum about every eleventh year. The last maximum was in 1848, when 330 groups were observed during the year. Professor Wolf, director of the Observatory of Berne, by a comparison of all the observations of the spots made from the epoch of their discovery down to the present time, has confirmed the period discovered by M. Schwabe: he has also remarked that this period corresponds with that of the diurnal variation of the magnetic needle in declination, and is now engaged in investigating the periodic recurrence of the Aurora Borealis, from which he hopes to deduce some remarkable results. He has also ascertained that the years during which the spots have been most numerous, have been also the driest and most fertile; thus confirming the opinion of Sir W. Herschel, who contended that the more the luminous matter surrounding the sun was disturbed, the greater would be the heat. As an additional confirmation, we may mention that a great number of spots have been observed this year. With these results before us, we may hope others will be induced to pursue the subject; and though the rugged surface of the moon will always be a favourite object, we trust enough has been said to shew that there is at least as interesting, and perhaps more fertile, a field for investigation in the varied changes of the solar spots. THE STORY OF CAMBUSCAN BOLD. DR JOHNSON once observed, with as much truth as wit, that the persons who most lament the loss of ancient writers often neglect to read those that remain. There is, in fact, a sort of pathos in dwelling upon what has passed for ever out of our reach. The thing we have, we prize not at its worth; The history of Chaucer's work supplies a striking Or call up him that left half-told That owned the virtuous ring and glass, From these verses, it is quite clear that Milton had read the Canterbury Tales with the eye of a true lover of fiction. What impression Cambuscan Bold might have made upon us, had we been allowed to see the end of him, it is impossible to say; but finding him cut suddenly short in his career, with his two sons, his daughter, and his horse, our curiosity is violently piqued, and we are provoked to throw ourselves out into the vast sea of medieval poetry in search of some one who may help us to the conclusion of the tale. Our readers, we daresay, remember the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, and what annoyance they experienced when, having had the commencement of the story placed more than seven times before them, the writer broke off at last without explaining what it was. To this hour, no one knows what took place in those seven castles; or why the king of Bohemia had just that number, and no more; or what became of him-whether he was married to some beautiful princess, or whether he died as few kings do, in single blessedness. It is quite true that an author of another stamp has undertaken to explain the mystery of the seven castles. But the presumption was as great as his who ventured to continue Christabel; and we do not care to get at the knowledge in this surreptitious way. Besides, we feel, while reading the continuation, that we are not conversing with the real magician, but with a sham; and instead of being pleased, we are disgusted accordingly. No one has had the temerity to attempt the completion of Cambuscan Bold, which is fortunate, as of Chaucer it may truly be said: Within that circle none durst move but he. Yet we know that our poet was a great borrower, that he looked abroad over the whole world of literature, and laid hands on whatever suited his purpose. Sometimes he took three or four plots of stories, and melted them down remorselessly into one; sometimes he took the fragment of a plot, and constructed with it a splendid fabric of verse, to endure till doomsday. It would be curious to discover what was the nature of his proceeding in the present case. Did he find the whole story ready made to his hands; or did he find part of it in one author, and part in another? A curious manuscript has recently been found in the library of the Arsenal at Paris. It consists of nineteen thousand verses; and the French translator of Chaucer, the Chevalier de Chatelain, intends, we believe, to lay it before the public in a modern dress. In obedience, however, to the taste of the day, he will abridge it very much, by leaving out interminable descriptions of tournaments, with other excrescences, and adhering strictly to the story. The author of this voluminous work lived at the court of Mary of Brabant, where, through his superior skill in poetry or flattery, he obtained the appellation of King of the Minstrels. From this terrible production Chaucer is supposed to have derived-in part, at least the materials of The Squire's Tale; but in order to decide how much, we must consider the nature of what has come down to us of the tale itself. In his magnificent prologue, where all the pilgrim story-tellers are painted to the life, Chaucer gives us a charming description of the narrator of Canbuscan Bold. At the invitation of mine host of the Tabard, he comes forward with a modesty inherited from his knightly father, and commences a very wild and exciting romance, which is evidently of eastern origin, the plan, the incidents, the colouring being all Asiatic in their character. The Arab writers of fiction are fond of selecting, for the scene of their tales, the country beyond the great mountain of Kaff, which we denominate Tatary. name, to an Oriental, immediately suggests the idea The very of magic, strange adventures, and supernatural beings. The squire plunges at once into the midst of things: At Sassa in the land of Tartary, There lived a king who werreied Russie. This king holds a great feast on the anniversary of his birthday, which, happening to be in the spring, is celebrated also by the music of birds, telling of their own loves and affections. The poet suggests to us a marvellous idea of the vastness of the regal hall. The king sits at the head of the table under a dais; his courtiers and all the nobles of his kingdom-who, we may well suppose, were not a few-are ranged in order about the board, when suddenly, without announcement of any kind, in rides a strange knight, mounted on a horse of brass. Even in Tatary, such an apparition was considered wonderful. But all the astonishment of the guests was not excited by his horse alone: by his side he wore a naked sword, glittering like adamant; on his thumb, a marvellous ring; and in his hand, a mirror, all of glass,' which, together with the ring, was designed as a present for Canace, the daughter of the great khan. When the king and his nobles had sat for some time silent, through amazement, the strange knight from Araby and Inde addressed to Cambuscan an eloquent speech, which, according to the manner of great orators, he accompanied by suitable expressions of countenance. From what he said, we may infer that his master was one of the Abasside caliphs, whose court was celebrated for learning, and where many men resided, whom their contemporaries believed to be profoundly versed in magical arts. He said he brought the horse, the sword, the ring, and the glass as birthday presents from the sultan of Arabistan and the Indies, to Cambuscan, the great king of Tatary. The steed, he said, would bear the rider, in the space of twenty-four hours, to the most distant part of the world, dashing through sunshine and showers with the velocity of an eagle. The ring would confer on the person who wore it the power to understand the language of birds, and to converse with them in all their dialects. On this subject, the Arabs and Persians entertain very strange ideas. According to them, birds know much more than we do, so that the way to possess all philosophy is to learn the secret of conversing with them. reasons for this belief are highly poetical. Birds, they say, can soar above the clouds, visit the summits of the loftiest mountains, traverse the ocean, explore the cradle of the dawn, and travel with Night, in her blackest attire, over the surface of the earth. They rest on the pinnacles of the highest towers, and thence survey the streets of great cities, watching, while most men sleep, the operations of guilt and crime. They visit the cell of the sage, and by observing his countenance, follow the current of his thoughts, and anticipate the lessons of his wisdom. They sit down with the mother by the cradle of her child, and enjoy the songs with which she hushes it to sleep. They perch in the lover's bower, and are rapt almost into forgetfulness by the music of his vows and sighs. In short, whatever is, they know. Their On this account, a learned Frenchman devoted twenty years of his life to the study of the language of birds, and after all, was supposed to have made but slight proficiency in this wonderful branch of learning. But the Asiatics have easier methods of accomplishing their designs. Put on a ring, or rub the surface of some precious stone, and you at once comprehend every twitter in the forest. The magic mirror presented to Canace possessed the most terrible properties-properties which would make its owner in these days shunned as the plague; for, like poverty, it could reveal whether friends and lovers were false or true. Massinger had evidently been digging in the mine of Cambuscan Bold, where he found the basis of his play called The Picture. What use Chaucer himself would have made of his mirror is more than we can divine, since the story is left half-told. It seems clear, however, that he meant to accomplish strange things with it. But as far as the tale goes, he has made no use of its powers. It is only the virtues of her ring that Canace immediately puts to the proof. Next morning, before the nightingale is silent, the princess, who has had her sleep shortened by excitement, springs eagerly from her couch, rouses half-adozen of her women, and issues forth into the park. All nature, she finds, has put on a new aspect; the birds are singing, and every note they utter carries an intelligible meaning to her. Laying aside the pleasurable, Chaucer, whose great forte is pathos, conducts us to a scene of bitter wailing and lamentation. On a tree which has been stripped of its leaves and bark, and is consequently blanched and withering in the wind, sits a female falcon, which is tearing her breast with her own beak, until the blood falls over the tree in showers, giving between whiles a tongue to her sorrows, in language which she thinks none can understand. To her surprise, Canace approaches and addresses her in her own dialect. We have no space here for the revelations that follow-but the falcon thus sympathised with, pours forth all her grief. It is the old story: the female's faith, and the male's perfidy. of his relation which belonged to Algarsife; we say, belonged, because we make no doubt that Chaucer had finished the story, and that part of the manuscript has been lost. In the French poet, the owner of the horse is king of Hungary, and a great magician. Like our third Richard, as generally described by historians, he is hunch-backed and malignant; in spite of which, on the mere strength of his enchanted horse, he demands in marriage the most beautiful of three princesses who occupy the place of Canace. The scene at the outset is laid in Spain. Cleomades, who represents Algarsife, resolving to try the powers of the horse, mounts his back, and forthwith shoots up beyond the clouds, where, for a while, he feels rather uncomfortable. Beneath him, he beholds the green plains, the black forests, the meandering rivers, cities, towns, palaces, with the broad blue expanse of the sea. When he becomes tired of his aërial excursion, he touches the magic spring, and immediately his Pegasus plunges down through air, and alights on the summit of a lofty tower. Desiring him to wait there patiently for his return, Cleomades, whose journey has given him a sharp appetite, descends the turret, and presently finds himself in a breakfast-parlour, with all sorts of dainties laid out. He falls to, of course, and thus fortified, proceeds to explore the remainder of the building. In one chamber he finds three ladies asleep; but though he admires their beauty, he has the discretion not to awaken them, and passes on. In the next apartment he finds another sleeping lady, whom he conjectures to be a princess, and stands gazing on her beauty till she wakes. After expressing her natural surprise, the So far of the princess. Cambuscan himself, and his princess-who, in the eastern fashion, is in full attire wondrous horse of brass, are rendered equally interest-consents to walk with him in the palace-garden. ing to the reader. To shew his knowledge of old times, the poet introduces a crowd gathering in the court about the equine marvel. Some of them go back as far as Troy, and speculate on the probability of the magical invention before them containing the nucleus of an army which might emerge from its bowels, and massacre the good people of Sassa in their sleep. These bewildering fancies are put to flight by the coming forth of the khan, the courtiers, and the Arabian cavalier, who explains the mechanism of the enchanted horse, and gives the prince directions for its management in all emergencies. Until touched by the Arab, the steed had stood fixed as a rock of granite to the ground, but then it immediately began to dance and caper, to the astonishment of all who beheld it, and the infinite delight of the Tatar king, who ordered it to be conveyed to the 'master tower' of his palace, and there locked up with a care commensurate to its value. Here the second part of Chaucer's story breaks off, and, as is his custom, he throws out some hints of what we are to expect in the remainder of the narrative. First, Cambuscan is to win many cities; second, Algarsife is to obtain for his bride the Lady Theodora, of whom, unfortunately, we know nothing more; third, the falcon is to have her lover restored to her; and, fourth, some adventurous knight, whose name, by the carelessness of transcribers, has been confounded with that of Camballo, is to win the hand of the Lady Canace, by overcoming in battle her brethren twain. From this point forward, we must look beyond Chaucer for the achievements of the horse of brass; and in the manuscript of the library of the Arsenal, the whole cycle of incidents, so far as he is concerned, is complete. But the King of the Minstrels, as he is called, had not the fervid imagination of Chaucer. His story, however, is interesting, his situations are many of them striking, and his characters contrast with each other in a picturesque manner. From this original, our great poet may have borrowed that part They are immediately discovered, and Cleomades is condemned to death. Through the witchery of his eloquence, he prevails upon the king to have his horse brought down from the tower, and to be permitted, in company with the lady, to mount him. The horse is, in this case, of wood, and the courtiers look upon it with ridicule as a toy. While they are indulging in jokes and laughter, Cleomades touches the spring; the horse, in a moment, recovers his vitality, neighs, spurns the ground, and ascends swifter than an arrow into the air, leaving king, queen, courtiers, and maids of honour in overwhelming wonder. But Cleomades hardly deserves his success-the reason being that if he had, the tale must have closed at once; and therefore, on arriving at his father's palace, he alights in the garden, and with a strange sort of politeness leaves there the steed and the beautiful princess, while he goes to carry the news of his good-fortune to his father and mother. By circumstances over which, as the newspapers say, he had no control, he is detained at the palace longer than he expected. Meantime, the princess being thus left alone among the trees with a horse of which she did not understand the management, becomes naturally very impatient. At length a messenger from Cleomades appears, a little ill-favoured hunchback, who informs her that Cleomades has been seized with sudden illness, and that he entreats her to come to him immediately in company with his faithful messenger. Suspecting nothing, the lady mounts behind the hunchback, who of course is the magician, the king of Hungary, the sworn enemy of her lover. Instead of going to the palace, therefore, they take to the clouds; and on the way the cavalier makes love to the lady, informing her, after the manner of the Arabian Nights, that he has an enchanted palace and gardens in Africa, where she must spend the remainder of her days with him. Being clever as well as beautiful, the princess affects to feel great pleasure at this idea, but says she is hungry, and would like to descend to terra firma for a minute or two, just to get something to eat. The magician, in raptures, consents, and they alight in Italy. Once on the ground, the princess feels her confidence return; and the magician, whose ride in the burning sun has made him hot and thirsty, rushes to a brook to drink. The cold water proves more than a match for his magic; and no sooner has he quenched his thirst, than he drops down, rolls upon the ground, and expires. The lady now falls into the hands of the Prince of Salerno, who determines upon making her his wife, to prevent which she feigns to be furiously mad, and succeeds so well in her ravings that the ceremony is put off from day to day. As might have been expected, Cleomades does not remain idle all this while; on the contrary, he leaves his father's palace, rides about the world at random, becomes entangled in many adventures; but at length, by that destiny which regulates everything in the world of romance, he comes to Salerno. Here, if we recollect rightly, in a barber's shop, he hears all about the princess, and determines at once upon the course he is to pursue. He disguises himself as a physician, puts on a false beard, and proceeds to the palace to offer his services to the prince. By great good-fortune, he possessed one of the lady's gloves which had dropped from her hand when, in her father's garden, she mounted the horse with the magician. This token he carries with him in his bosom. On explaining his errand, he is admitted at once to see the patient, who acts the maniac with surpassing skill. Unobserved of the bystanders, he shews her the glove, upon which she examines his features and recognises him. The discovery, however, only renders her madness more complete; she laughs at him and his remedies, says she is not mad, and accuses all about her of insanity. Cleomades assures the Prince of Salerno that, having studied this particular disease all his life, he is certain he can perform a cure, and that, too, in a very short time. But what does she mean,' he said, 'by raving about a wooden horse?' The prince answered that it was a toy that had been found with her in a field. 'Is it still preserved?' inquired Cleomades; because I think the sight of it would do her good.' The prince, by way of reply, ordered it to be brought forth. 'Now, dear old doctor,' exclaimed the princess, 'do get on that horse, and take me behind you, and I shall be well immediately.' Cleomades looked inquiringly at the prince. 'Humour her,' exclaimed the latter; it is the best way to effect a cure.' 'Well,' replied the physician, 'I obey your high ness.' So saying, he mounted the wooden horse; and the lady, with wonderful agility, vaulted up behind him, amidst peals of laughter from the courtiers. She grasped the physician, and with a wild laugh exclaimed: 'Dear doctor, let us take a ride.' Looking at one another, the ladies and gentlemen whispered, that they might not wound the prince's ear: She is madder than ever!' The prince himself began to despair, when suddenly the charger began to prance, and Cleomades, tearing off his beard, made a short speech, touched the magic spring, and away flew the horse to the palace of the prince's father in Spain. Here ends the manuscript. The reader, we think, will agree with us that Chaucer most likely derived from this source a part of the Squire's Tale, but not the whole. All that relates to Canace and the falcon remains still unaccounted for; but in the prodigious mass of manuscripts existing in various libraries in France, M. de Chatelain fully expects to find the original of the falcon also. It seems to be agreed on all hands that Chaucer would seldom be at the pains to invent; but when he found a plot ready to his hand, he invested it with so marvellous a wealth of poetry, that the original author would scarcely have recognised it. In the present case, we think the public will receive with much pleasure the charming story of the King of the Minstrels, in M. de Chatelain's abridgment, which is full of grace, vivacity, and interest. What we have said of the sequel to Cambuscan Bold will, we trust, awaken some curiosity. We have ourselves read the manuscript with singular pleasure, and only regretted that it was not three times as long. We feel assured that the readers of Chaucer will all be of the same opinion. PALACE. A MERCHANT'S ONE among the many wonders of the times we live in is the marvellous rapidity with which immense edifices are constructed, seeming almost to realise the legends of old fairy-books concerning palaces and temples that sprang up spontaneously from the ground. Contrast in this respect the building of our old castles and cathedrals, laboriously extended over several generations-a turret having been built by this bishop, and the east window having been contributed by that-Sir Hugh having constructed the impregnable keep, and his grandson, the first baron, having completed the warder's tower-with that of our Crystal Palaces and Art Treasures Exhibitions, or the more durable fabric of our new Houses of Parliament. One of those forty and six years' which were required for the building of the Temple, would have sufficed modern architects to rear that noble pile. Whatever the mystic secret of the old free-masons might have been, it certainly did not include the rapidity of progress we have learned in these modern times, when free-masonry is only speculative, and when its members apply the square, the rule, and the compasses only to their lives and morals. Two years ago, in the heart of the great city of Manchester, a body of workmen began to clear away a space for a new commercial building, of which the extent, and architectural beauty, and business facilities were to be unrivalled. More than fifty old houses were knocked down, several of them of a moral character that any great city could well dispense with; many fever dens and favourite musing spots of pestilence were rooted out, and the foundation of a great palace of industry was dug on the site. A forest of scaffolding speedily followed, bristling round the oblong enclosure, long fir-poles, crossed, and upright, and horizontal, lashed together with no end of cords. One could hardly see the building through the intervening array of boarding at the bottom, and boards and beams above, yet it progressed rapidly tier by tier-and the scaffolding with it-till in a few months the outside shell of a magnificent building was completed; and the planks and poles being taken away, the grandeur of its proportions and the beauty of its design could be duly perceived and appreciated. A detached mass of building stood boldly forth, 300 feet in length, 90 feet in width, and 100 feet in height, decorated with every device that architectural taste and skill could suggest, and forming the most extensive and commodious mercantile edifice in this great mercantile city. The outside show was now chiefly over; but for a year after, there were troops of workmen busy at their labour inside, doing both the useful and the ornamental in a large way. And just now, the interior arrangements having been finished, and the artificers having taken their departure, and goods by |