nerally known that the writer of
_Munchausen's Travels_ borrowed this amusing incident from Heylin's
{263} _Mikrokosmos_. In the section treating of Muscovy, he says:--

"This excesse of cold in the ayre, gave occasion to _Castilian_,
in his _Aulicus_, wittily and not incongruously to faine that if
two men being smewhat distant, talke together in the winter,
their words will be so frozen that they cannot be heard: but if
the parties in the spring returne to the same place, their words
will melt in the same order that they were frozen and _spoken_,
and be plainly understood."

J.S.

Salisbury.

_Inscription from Roma Subterranea._--If you deem the translation of
this inscription, quoted in Lord Lindsay's fanciful but admirable
_Sketches of the History of Christian Art_, worth a place among your
Notes, it is very heartily at your service.

"Sisto viator
Tot ibi trophaea, quot ossa
Quot martyres, tot triumphi.
Antra quae subis, multa quae cernis marmora,
Vel dum silent,
Palam Romae gloriam loquuntur.
Audi quid Echo resonet
Subterraneae Romae!
Obscura licet Urbis Coemetria
Totius patens Orbis Theatrium!
Supplex Loci Sanetitatem venerare,
Et post hac sub luto aurum
Coelum sub coeno
Sub Roma Romam quaerito!"

_Roma Subterranea_, 1651, tom. i. p. 625.

(Inscription abridged.)

Stay, wayfarer--behold
In ev'ry mould'ring bone a trophy here.
In all these hosts of martyrs,
So many triumphs.
These vaults--these countless tombs,
E'en in their very silence
Proclaim aloud Rome's glory:
The echo'd fame
Of subterranean Rome
Rings on the ear.
The city's sepulchres, albeit hidden,
Present a spectacle
To the wide world patent.
In lowly rev'rence hail this hallow'd spot,
And henceforth learn
Gold beneath dross
Heav'n below earth,
Rome under Rome to find!

F.T.J.B.

Brookthorpe.

_Parallel Passages._--

"_There is an acre sown with royal seed_, the copy of the
greatest change from rich to naked, from cieled roofs to arched
coffins, from _living like gods to die like men_."--Jeremy
Taylor's _Holy Dying_, chap. i. sect. 1. p. 272. ed. Edin.

"_Here's an acre sown_ indeed
_With_ the richest _royalest seeds_,
That the earth did e'er suck in,
Since the first man dyed for sin:
Here the bones of birth have cried,
Though _gods they were, as men they died_."
F. BEAUMONT

M