“A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.” 
SHAKSPEARE.

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THE RANZ DES VACHES.

The Kurieholen, or Ranz des Vaches, the celebrated national air of the Swiss, does not consist in articulated sounds, nor is it accompanied by words; but is a simple melody formed by a kind of guttural intonation very closely resembling the tones of a flute.  Two of these voices at a short distance produce the most pleasing effect, the echoes of the surrounding rocks reverberating the music till it seems like enchantment; but sometimes the illusion is dissipated by the appearance of the singers, in the persons of two old women, returning from their labour in a neighbouring valley.

INA.

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NAPOLEON.

During a tour through France shortly before Bonaparte’s accession to the throne he received the addresses of the Priests and Prefects, who vied with each other in the grossness and impiety of their adulation.  The Prefect of the Pas de Calais seems to have borne away the palm from all his brethren.  On Napoleon’s entrance into his department, he addressed him in the following manner:—­“Tranquil with respect to our fate, we know that to ensure the happiness and glory of France, to render to all people the freedom of commerce and the seas, to humble the audacious destroyers of the repose of the universe, and to fix, at length, peace upon the earth, God created Bonaparte, and rested from his labour!”

INA.

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APOSTLES.

In the diplomatic language of Charles I.’s time, were marginal notes, generally in the king’s hand, written on the margin of state papers.  The word, in somewhat a similar sense, had its origin in the canon law.  There are many instances of apostles by Charles I. in Archbishop Laud’s Diary

JAMES SILVESTER.

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When Voltaire was at Berlin, he wrote this epigram on his patron and host the king of Prussia:—­

  “King, author, philosopher, hero, musician,
  Freemason, economist, bard, politician,
  How had Europe rejoiced if a Christian he’d been,
  If a man, how he then had enraptured his queen.”

For this effort of wit, Voltaire was paid with thirty lashes on his bare back, administered by the king’s sergeant-at-arms, and was compelled to sign the following curious receipt for the same:—­

“Received from the righthand of Conrad Backoffner, thirty lashes on my bare back, being in full for an epigram on Frederick the Third, King of Prussia.”

I say received by me, VOLTAIRE.

Vive le Roi!

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The church at Gondhurst, in Kent, is a fine old building, and remarkable for several reasons; one of which is, that thirty-nine different parishes may be distinctly seen from it, and in clear weather the sea, off Hastings, a distance of twenty-seven miles and a half.