Dr. Franklin has preserved an anecdote of the prohibited Bible in the time of our Catholic Mary.  His family had an English Bible; and to conceal it the more securely, they conceived the project of fastening it open with packthreads across the leaves, on the inside of the lid of a close-stool!  “When my great-grandfather wished to read to his family, he reversed the lid of the close-stool upon his knees, and passed the leaves from one side to the other, which were held down on each by the packthread.  One of the children was stationed at the door to give notice if he saw an officer of the Spiritual Court make his appearance; in that case the lid was restored to its place, with the Bible concealed under it as before.”

The reader may meditate on what the popes did, and what they probably would have done, had not Luther happily been in a humour to abuse the pope, and begin a REFORMATION.  It would be curious to sketch an account of the probable situation of Europe at the present moment, had the pontiffs preserved the omnipotent power of which they had gradually possessed themselves.

It appears, by an act dated in 1516, that the Bible was called Bibliotheca, that is per emphasim, the Library.  The word library was limited in its signification then to the biblical writings; no other books, compared with the holy writings, appear to have been worthy to rank with them, or constitute what we call a library.

We have had several remarkable attempts to recompose the Bible; Dr. Geddes’s version is aridly literal, and often ludicrous by its vulgarity; as when he translates the Passover as the Skipover, and introduces Constables among the ancient Israelites; but the following attempts are of a very different kind.  Sebastian Castillon—­who afterwards changed his name to Castalion, with his accustomed affectation referring to Castalia, the fountain of the Muses—­took a very extraordinary liberty with the sacred writings.  He fancied he could give the world a more classical version of the Bible, and for this purpose introduces phrases and entire sentences from profane writers into the text of holy writ.  His whole style is finically quaint, overloaded with prettinesses, and all the ornaments of false taste.  Of the noble simplicity of the Scripture he seems not to have had the remotest conception.

But an attempt by Pere Berruyer is more extraordinary; in his Histoire du Peuple de Dieu, he has recomposed the Bible as he would have written a fashionable novel.  He conceives that the great legislator of the Hebrews is too barren in his descriptions, too concise in the events he records, nor is he careful to enrich his history by pleasing reflections and interesting conversation pieces, and hurries on the catastrophes, by which means he omits much entertaining matter:  as for instance, in the loves of Joseph and the wife of Potiphar,