A coffin has been discovered among the ruins of Elgin cathedral, supposed to be that of the royal victim of Macbeth.

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AN IMPERIAL ENCORE.

When Cimarosa’s opera of Matrimonio Segreto was performed before the Emperor Joseph, he invited all the singers to a banquet, and then in a fit of enthusiasm, sent them all back to the theatre to play and sing the whole opera over again!—­Foreign Review.

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Dinner is a corruption of decimer, from decimheure, or the French repast de dix-heure.  Supper from souper, from the custom of providing soup for that occasion.

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LARKS.

We have heard much of Dunstable larks but the enthusiasm with which gourmets speak of these tit-bits of luxury, is far exceeded by the Germans, who travel to Leipsic from a distance of many hundred miles, merely to eat a dinner of larks, and then return contented and peaceful to their families.  So great is the slaughter of this bird at the Leipsic fair, that half a million are annually devoured, principally by the booksellers frequenting the city.  What is the favourite bird at the coffee-house dinners of our friends in Paternoster Row?

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PAINTING CATS.

Gottfried Mind, a celebrated Swiss painter, was called the Cat-Raphael, from the excellence with which he painted that animal.  This peculiar talent was discovered and awakened by chance.  At the time when Freudenberger was painting that since-published picture of the peasant cleaving wood before his cottage, with his wife sitting by, and feeding her child with pap out of a pot, round which a cat is prowling, Mind cast a broad stare on the sketch of this last figure, and said in his rugged, laconic way, “That is no cat!” Freudenberger asked, with a smile, whether Mind thought he could do it better.  Mind offered to try; went into a corner, and drew the cat, which Freudenberger liked so much that he made his new pupil finish it out, and the master copied the scholar’s work—­for it is Mind’s cat that is engraven in Freudenberger’s plate.  Imitations of Mind’s cats are already common in the windows of printsellers.

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PLAY-WRITING.

When the manager of a theatre engaged Sacchini to write an opera, he was obliged to shut him up in a room with his mistress and his favourite cats, without them at his side he could do nothing.  The fifth act of Pizarro was actually finished by Sheridan on the first evening of its performance, when the illustrious playwright was shut up in a room with a plate of sandwiches and two bottles of claret, to finish his drama.