The Blackfriar's Road now passes over the site of Paris Garden where, in the sixteenth century, bear and bull-baiting rejoiced the citizens, the gala days being usually Sundays. Our cut is copied from the rare woodcut map in the time of Henry VIII., in the library at Guildhall, and exhibits in the foreground the kennels for the dogs, and the tanks in which they were washed. A graphic description of the place has been left by Paul Hentzner, a German, who visited it in 1598. He says it was "built in the form of a theatre, for the baiting of bulls and bears: they are fastened behind, and then worried by great English bull-dogs; but not without great risk to the dogs, from the horns of the one and the teeth of the other; and it sometimes happens they are killed upon the spot: fresh ones are immediately supplied in the place of those that are wounded or tired. To this entertainment there often follows that of whipping a blinded bear, which is performed by five or six men, standing circularly with whips, which they exercise upon him without any mercy, as he cannot escape from them because of his chain. He defends himself with all his force and skill, throwing down all who come within his reach, and are not active enough to get out of it, and tearing the whips out of their hands, and breaking them. At these spectacles, and everywhere else, the English are constantly smoking tobacco. Fruits, such as apples, pears, and nuts, according to the season, are carried about to be sold, as well as ale and wine."
CANVASS OF AN INSURANCE AGENT.
The Manchester agent of an Insurance Company, gives the following curious results of a personal canvass at 1,349 houses, in seventy streets in the district of Hulme and Charlton, chiefly rentals from £12 to £24 per annum. The inquiry showed that there were 29 insured; 8 persons too old; 11 who never heard of life assurances, and who were anxious to have it explained to them; 471 who had heard of it, but did not understand it; 419 who were disinclined to assure; 19 favourable, if their surplus incomes were not otherwise invested; 89 persons who had it under consideration, with a view to assure, as soon as their arrangements were completed, and who appointed times for the agent to call again; 21 refused the circulars, or to allow an explanation; 175 doors not answered; 102 houses empty; 3 had sufficient property not to require it; 1 favourable, but afraid of litigation; 1 preferred the saving's bank; 1 used abusive language; 2 would trust their families to provide for themselves; and 1 had been rejected by an office, although he never was unwell, and was consequently afraid to try again, although very anxious.
TERRA-COTTA WRITINGS.
The Assyrians, unlike any other nation of antiquity, employed pottery for the same objects, and to the same extent as papyrus was used in Egypt. Thus bulletins recording the king's victories, and even the annals of his reign, were published on terra-cotta cylinders, shaped like a rolling-pin, and usually hollow, and on hollow hexagonal prisms. These are of a remarkably fine material, sometimes unpolished or unglazed, and at others covered with a vitreous siliceous glaze, or white coating. On the cylinders the inscriptions are engraved lengthwise; on the prisms they are in compartments on each face. Each wedge is about one-eighth of an inch long, and the complicity with which the characters (a cuneiform writing-hand) are arranged is wonderful, and renders them extremely difficult for a tyro to read. Those hitherto published or known, contain the annals of the reign of Sennacherib, and the précis of the reign of another king.
There are the Shergat cylinder, containing the History of Tiglath Pileser; a cylinder of Sargon; Sennacherib's cylinders; Esarhaddon's cylinder.
Sales of land and other title-deeds were also incised on pieces of this polished terra-cotta, and, in order to prevent any enlargement of the document, a cylinder was run round the edges, leaving its impression in relief; or if the names of witnesses were affixed, each impressed his oval seal on the wet terra-cotta, which was then carefully baked in the kiln. The celebrated cylinders of carnelian, chalcedony, and other substances, were in fact the official or private seals by which the integrity of these documents was attested. These title-deeds are portable documents of four or five inches square, convex on each side, and occasionally also at the edges. Their colour varies, being a bright polished brown, a pale yellow, and a very dark tint, almost black. The paste of which they are made is remarkably fine and compact. The manner in which the characters were impressed on the terra-cotta barrels and cylinders is not known; those on the bricks used for building were apparently stamped from a mould, but those on the deeds and books were separately incised, perhaps with a prismatic stick, or rod, or, as others have conjectured, with the edge of a square rod of metal. In some instances, where this substance was used for taking accounts, it seems just possible that the moist clay, rolled up like paste, may have been unrolled and incised with rods. The characters are often so beautifully and delicately made, that it must have required a finely constructed tool to produce them.
Some small fragments of a fine reddish-grey terra-cotta which have been found among the ruins, appear to contain calculations or inventories, whilst others are perhaps syllabaries or vocabularies, to guide the Assyrian readers of these difficult inscriptions. A large chamber, or library, of these archives, comprising histories, deeds, almanacks, and spelling-books, was found in the palace of Sennacherib at Kouyunjik. It is supposed that altogether about 20,000 of these clay tablets or ancient books of the Assyrians, containing the literature of the country, have been discovered. Some of the finer specimens are covered with a pale straw-covered engobe, over which has been thrown a glaze. Some horoscopes have been already found on stone, and careful examination has now detected the records of some astronomer royal of Babylon or Nineveh inscribed on a brick. Thus, while the paper and parchment learning of the Byzantine and Alexandrian schools has almost disappeared after a few centuries, the granite pages of Egypt, and the clay leaves of Assyria, have escaped the ravages of time and the fury of barbarism.
In Egypt some receipts and letters have been discovered written on fragments of tile, and on the fine porcelain of the Chinese are often found extracts of biographical works, snatches of poetry, and even whole poems; but the idea of issuing journals, title-deeds, inventories, histories, prayers, and poems, not from the press, but from the kiln, is startling in the nineteenth century.
WONDERFUL FORMATION OF THE EYE IN INSECTS.