I awoke with a deadly dullness, and found that my sleep had been productive of instruction.  Thenceforth I regarded, in a very different point of view, the pompous titles which before had dazzled me, and, by the aid of a little reflection, I soon became thoroughly sensible of their vanity.

K.N.

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RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.

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ORIGIN OF ISABELLA COLOUR.

The Archduke Albert married the infanta Isabella, daughter of Philip II. king of Spain, with whom he had the Low Countries in dowry.  In the year 1602, he laid siege to Ostend, then in possession of the heretics; and his pious princess, who attended him on the expedition, made a vow, that, till the city was taken, she would not change her clothes.  Contrary to expectation, it was three years before the place was reduced; in which time her highness’ linen had acquired a hue, which, from the superstition of the princess and the times, was much admired, and adopted by the court fashionables under the name of “Isabella colour.”  It is a yellow or soiled buff, better imagined than described.

HALBERT H.

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FAMINE IN ENGLAND.

A severe dearth began in May, 1315, and proceeded to the utmost extremity, until after the harvest of 1316.  In July, 1316, the quarter of wheat rose to 30_s_., (equal to 22_l_. 10_s_.;) and in August reached to the enormous price of 40_s_. or 30_l_. the quarter.  A loaf of coarse bread, which was scarcely able to support a man for a single day, sold for 4_d_., equal in value to 5_s_. now.  Wheat rose in Scotland at one time to the enormous sum of 100_s_. the quarter, equal to 75_l_. of the present currency.  This dearth continued, but with mitigated severity, until after the harvest of 1317; but great abundance returned in 1318.  This famine occasioned a prodigious mortality among the people, owing to the want of proper food, and employment of unwholesome substitutes.  The rains set in so early in 1315, and continued so violently, that most of the seed of that year perished in the ground; the meadows were so inundated, that the hay crop of that year was utterly destroyed.

H.B.A.

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OLD ADVERTISEMENTS.

Puffing is by no means a modern art, although so extravagantly practised in the present day.  Of its success two hundred years since, E.S.N. of Rochester, has sent us the following specimens:—­

At the end of an old medical book which I have in my possession, are the following, among other advertisements:—­“The new Plannet no Plannet, or the Earth no Wandring Star.  Here, out of the principles of divinity, philosophy, &c. the earth’s immobility is asserted, and Copernicus, his opinion, as erroneous, &c. fully refuted, by Alexander Ross, in quarto.”