[Footnote 6:  The great exhibition of fireworks at Rome, at the castle of St. Angelo, during the festivities of the Holy Week, preserve the character of the displays of fireworks adopted on great occasions in the seventeenth century.  An enormous explosion of squibs, crackers, and rockets was the tour de force in such celebrations.  The volume describing the entry of Louis XIII. to Lyons in 1624, contains an engraving of the fireworks constructed on barges in the river on that occasion; a blazing crowned sun, surrounded by a wheel of stars, squibs, star-rockets, and water-serpents flying about it, composed the feu d’artifice.  In the volume descriptive of the rejoicings in the same city on the ratification of peace between France and Spain in 1660, are several engravings in which fireworks are shown, but they exhibit no novelties, being restricted to rockets and pots of fire bursting into coloured stars.  Henry Van Etten’s “Mathematical Recreations,” 1633, notes the principal “artificial fireworks” then in use, and gives engravings of several, and instructions to make them.  Rockets, fire-balls, stars, golden-rain, serpents, and Catharine wheels are the principal noted.  “Fierie dragons combatant” running on lines, and filled with fireworks, were the greatest stretch of invention at this time; and our author says they may be made “to meete one another, having lights placed in the concavity of their bodies, which will give great grace to the action.”]

[Footnote 7:  Specimens of most of these modes of writing may be seen at the British Museum.  No. 3478, in the Sloanian library, is a Nabob’s letter, on a piece of bark, about two yards long, and richly ornamented with gold.  No. 3207 is a book of Mexican hieroglyphics, painted on bark.  In the same collection are various species, many from the Malabar coast and the East.  The latter writings are chiefly on leaves.  There are several copies of Bibles written on palm leaves.  The ancients, doubtless, wrote on any leaves they found adapted for the purpose.  Hence, the leaf of a book, alluding to that of a tree, seems to be derived.  At the British Museum we have also Babylonian tiles, or broken pots, which the people used, and made their contracts of business on; a custom mentioned in the Scriptures.]

[Footnote 8:  This speech was made by Claudius (who was born at Lyons), when censor, A.D. 48, and was of the highest importance to the men of Lyons, inasmuch as it led to the grant of the privileges of Roman citizenship to them.  This important inscription was discovered in 1528, on the heights of St. Sebastian above the town.]

[Footnote 9:  The paintings discovered at Pompeii give representations of these books and implements.]

[Footnote 10:  The use of the table-book was continued to the reign of James I. or later.  Shakspeare frequently alludes to them—­

    “And therefore will he wipe his tables clean,
    And keep no tell-tale to his memory.”