Mead, the produce of the Bee, was the favourite drink, the nectar of the ancient Britons; and their attachment to this extraordinary little insect ascended to a very remote period. According to their belief, the high origin of the Bee is from Paradise, and it was on account of man’s transgression they left it, and then God gave them a blessing. The priests therefore maintained that no Mass ought to be celebrated, except by the light of wax.
These extraordinary little insects make the tops and bottoms of their cells of three planes meeting in a point, and the inclinations or angles at which they meet, are precisely those found out by the mathematicians to be the best possible for saving wax and work. Who could dream the Bee was conversant with the highest branch of the mathematics, the fruit of Newton’s most wonderful labour, of the source of which he was himself ignorant; one of his most celebrated followers having found it out in a later age? This little insect works with a truth and correctness which are perfect, and according to the principles at which man has arrived only after ages of slow improvement in the most difficult branch of the most difficult science. But the mighty and all-wise Creator who made the insect and the philosopher, bestowing reason on the latter, and giving skill to the former to work without it, to Him all truths are known from all eternity with an intuition that mocks even the conceptions of the sagest of human kind.
Bayonets.
The word bayonet is derived from the circumstance of this weapon being first manufactured at Bayonne.
Hope.
Farewell! but not for ever, Hope replies,
Trace but his steps, and meet him in the skies;
There nothing shall renew our parting pain,