Anderson, in his "History of Commerce," says that, till the year 1690, there was scarcely any paper made in England but the coarse brown sort. Paper was previously imported from France, Genoa, and Holland. However, the improvement of this article in England, in consequence of the French war, produced a saving to the country of £100,000 annually, which had been paid to France for paper alone.
LOTTERIES.
If the antiquity of a practice could justify its existence, lotteries might claim peculiar reverence. The Romans, we are told, used to enliven their Saturnalia with them, by distributing tickets, all of which gained some prize. Augustus instituted lotteries, that consisted, however, of things of little value. Nero also established lotteries, for the people, in which 1,000 tickets were daily distributed, and several of those who were favoured by fortune got rich by them. The first lottery of which we find any record in our annals, was in the year 1659, which, according to Stow, consisted of 40,000 lots, at 10s. each. The prizes were plated; and the profits were to be applied to the purpose of repairing the havens of the kingdom. This lottery was drawn at the west door of St. Paul's cathedral; and began on the 11th July, 1569, and continued incessantly, day and night, till the 6th May following. The tickets were three years in being disposed of. In the year 1612, King James granted a lottery to promote the plantation of English colonies in Virginia, which was also drawn at St. Paul's.
TEMPLE AT SIMONBONG.
The above is a correct representation of the great Lepcha temple at Simonbong, in Sikkim, a district of India near Thibet. We take the following account of it from the Journal of Dr. Hooker, who visited it in 1848:—"Simonbong is one of the smallest and poorest goompas, or temples, in Sikkim, being built of wood only. It consists of one large room, raised on a stone foundation, with small sliding shutter windows, and roofed with shingles of wood; opposite the door a wooden altar was placed, rudely chequered with black, white, and red; to the right and left were shelves, with a few Tibetan books, wrapped in silk; a model of Symbonath temple in Nepal, a praying-cylinder, and some implements for common purposes, bags of juniper, English wine-bottles and glasses, with tufts of Abies Webbina, rhododendron flowers, and peacock's feathers, besides various trifles, clay ornaments and offerings, and little Hindoo idols. On the altar were ranged seven little brass cups, full of water; a large conch-shell, carved with the sacred lotus; a brass jug from Lhassa, of beautiful design, and a human thigh-bone, hollow, and perforated through both condyles.
"Facing the altar was a bench and a chair, and on one side a huge tambourine, with two curved iron drumsticks. The bench was covered with bells, handsomely carved with idols, and censers with juniper-ashes; and on it lay the dorge, or double-headed thunderbolt. Of all these articles, the human thigh-bone is by much the most curious; it is very often that of a Lama, and is valuable in proportion to its length. As, however, the Sikkim Lamas are burned, these relics are generally procured from Tibet, where the corpses are cut in pieces and thrown to the kites, or thrown into the water."
IMPLEMENTS USED IN BUDDHIST TEMPLES.