there was a wholesale holocaust of these
poor wanderers, for two thousand of them,
suspected by the ignorant citizens of poisoning
wells and fountains, were burned in
the Brand Gasse, where the Prefecture now
stands. Rage and fear had seized the
people, and no Jew was henceforward
allowed to sleep within the walls. Every
evening, at the signal of a horn blown on
the minster tower, the detested people
were compelled to depart to their houses
in the suburbs. The new church
contains fragments of a Dance of Death, that
grim allegory carried at last to a climax
by Holbein.

The Academy, originally a Protestant
school, formed in 1532, and made a
university in 1621, was suppressed at the
Revolution. Here the good Oberlin and
Schöpflein and Schweighauser, and last,
but not least of all, Goethe, studied.
Goethe took his doctor's degree here in
1772. The Museum of Natural History is
rich in Alsacian fossils, especially those of
red marl and trias, and the fossil plants
found at Sultz-les-Bains and Mulhausen.
The botanical collection includes a section
of the trunk of a silver fir from the Hochwald,
near Bair; its diameter was eight
feet, its height one hundred and fifty.

The public library, near the new church,
contains one hundred thousand volumes
(be merciful to these treasures, too, O
amiable artillerymen!). Among the priceless
curiosities are the Landsberg Missal,
or Garden of Delights; it is full of early
Byzantine miniatures, circa 1180, and
belonged to Herrade, Abbess of Stohenberg.
Among the early printed books are Cicero,
by Faust, 1465, a Strasbourg Bible, by
Eggesteur, 1446, and a Mentchin Bible,
printed at the same place in the same year.
In the two halls are stored some Roman
antiquities found in Alsace, the old town
standard of Strasbourg, a statue of Rudolph
of Hapsburg, and some painted glass from
Molsteins. The hope that all these treasures
may escape the chances of war will not be
confined to students alone.

DAINTY BREAD.

WHO first invented muffins, and who
gave them that name? There is no
subject so trifling that men need despair of
getting something curious out of it in the
way of information, if they only seriously
set themselves to work. No sooner was
the above question submitted to Notes and
Queries, than many little boxes of
knowledge were opened to aid in a response.
If we find that muffin is not in the early
editions of Johnson's Dictionary, there is a
sort of negative evidence which may
induce us to search further. Technologically
speaking, an English muffin is made
of flour, yeast, salt, and water, without any
sugary or buttery addition; separate
portions of the dough made with these
ingredients are allowed to rise, or ferment, and
are baked on a heated iron plate, being
turned to allow each surface a fair share
of heat. A muffin is, therefore, a small loaf
of leavened bread, dainty or fancy bread,
although we do not call it such. Now, in
every corner of the civilised world cakes or
flat loaves of some such character are to be
met with; therefore, the first origin of the
thing itself is hopeless to search for.
Given, the meal, the water, and the hot iron
plate, and you make your cake in numberless
ways—by varying the kind of corn, by
using or omitting yeast, and by adding any
among a multitude of other ingredients.
One form of Scotch scon or scone, we are
told, is made of oat grains steeped in water
till they ferment, then boiled to a paste, and
then poured on a griddle to bake. In
Holland there is a kind of cake sold at booths
in fair-time, made of flour and water,
fermented for three hours, poured on heated
tongs grooved with deep furrows, clasped in
the tongs, and kept a short time until baked;
they come out shaped something like the
portcullis of an ancient castle, and are eaten
with sugar or honey. Our method of
cutting open muffins, toasting and buttering
them, is not everywhere orthodox; in
America they are eaten hot from the oven,
without toasting or buttering.

Mr. Urquhart, when travelling in
Morocco about twenty years ago, was
surprised to find something very like our
familiar muffin, and even the familiar
muffin-bell. "The day we landed at Kabat,"
said Mr. Urquhart, "we heard a little
tinkling bell through the street, just like
the four o'clock muffin-bell in London. One
of the party asked if it was tea-time among
the Moors; and the others laughed, thinking
it a good joke. There was no joke in
the case. These cockney cakes are just as
common there as within the sound of Bow
bells; they were served for breakfast in
Barbary when Queen Elizabeth's maids of
honour had for theirs beefsteaks and ale,
or herring and bread-and-cheese. They
are a little larger than those in London,
and exactly the picklets of the midland