to the arms and legs by which it was made
to dance, came into fashion in France; ladies
and gentlemen, and even the magistrates and
officers at a ball, or while conversing, would
produce their pantin and work the strings. A
French song called Portraits à la Mode has the
following verse, in which this custom is
mentioned:

    To follow with uniformity,
    Dame Nature and simplicity,
    Ne'er practising frivolity,
       This was the ancient code.
    Paris, its promenades and halls,
    Is filled with calotins and dolls,
    Danced on strings at public balls,
       And portraits à la Mode.

In the reign of William the Third a mania for
old porcelain and china cups, took possession of
several persons. Some families had services that
had been handed down to them by their
ancestors; these were religiously kept, and only
produced on special or grand occasions; then
woe to any unlucky visitor who by any misfortune
should happen to break one of these
precious relics! We can imagine the shame and
horror of the unlucky man, and the anger of
the owners.

Horace Walpole had a fine collection of china
cups and porcelain at Strawberry Hill. This was
one of the finest collections in England; and
although there were collections at Chiswick and
other places, none could compare with
Strawberry Hill, as we find by a song by William
Pulteny, Earl of Bath:

     Some cry up Gunnersbury,
     For Lion some declare,
     And some say that with Chiswick House
     No villa can compare;
     But ask the beaux of Middlesex,
     Who know the country well,
     If Strawberry Hill, if Strawberry Hill,
     Don't bear away the bell?
     Tho' Surrey boasts its Oatlands,
     And Clermont kept so gim,
     And some prefer sweet Southcote.
     'Tis but a dainty whim.
     For ask the gallant Bristow,
     Who does in taste excel,
     If Strawberry Hill, if Strawberry Hill,
     Don't bear away the bell?

A china dealer named Turner brought Horace
Walpole two small china cups that had been
cracked by the shock of an earthquake. He
asked twenty guineas for them; for although
the cups were only worth ten guineas, he asked
twenty, as they were the only cups in Europe
that had been cracked by the shock of an earthquake.
Small china cups are very pretty things
to collect, but a hideous custom was introduced
from Holland by Mary, wife of William the
Third, namely, of putting in the gardens large
china images.  At Hampton Court Palace, Mary
placed in the garden a quantity of huge and
hideous china images of mandarins, pagodas,
and vases, ornamented with pictures of trees
and bridges.

We can see, by a careful observation of some
of Hogarth's pictures, how men have tortured
their brains to invent enormous machines and
ways to effect the simplest objects. For
example, a large complicated mechanical machine
for drawing the corks of bottles was invented
by some man, who for this simple matter
employed an amount of thought and labour that
might have achieved great results.

Even literature, the last stronghold of wisdom
and good sense, and whose duty it usually is to
lash with the sharp whip of satire all manias or
absurd customs,—literature at one time had
its day of laborious trifling. Anagrams, bouts
rimés, or rhyming ends, and chronograms, were
then the fashion. The anagram is the changing
of one word into another by an inversion of the
letters. The Spectator mentions a witty author
who in a controversy styled his adversary, who
was deformed and distorted, the anagram of a
man.

The bouts rimés, or rhyming ends, were
invented by Dulot, a French poet, who used to
prepare the rhymes of his poems, and fill them
up at his leisure. This soon became the fashion
in France, and some of the higher French poets
did not despise this kind of labour. Some
writers composed poems in the shape of hearts,
scissors, eggs, and wings; and a Frenchman,
named Paunard, a true votary of Bacchus, we
may be sure, wrote his drinking-songs in the
shape of bottles, glasses, and goblets.

Tryphiodorus, in his Odyssey, had no A in
his first book, and no B in the second, and
so on in the other books, with the letters of
the alphabet one after the other. Lopez de
Vega wrote five novels in prose; the first without
an A, the second without a B, the third
without a C, and so on. This custom existed
among the Persian poets. One of them read to
the poet Jami, some verses of his own composition,
which Jami was not so struck with as the
author expected; the author said, however, it
was, without doubt, a very curious poem, for the
letter Aliff had been omitted from all the words;
Jami replied, " You can do a better thing yet.
Take away all the letters from every word you
have written." A monk named Hugbald wrote
a work entitled the Ecloga de Calvis. The
peculiarity of this work is, that all the words begin
with a C. Lord North, in the time of James I.,
wrote a set of sonnets, each beginning with a
successive letter of the alphabet.

Jacob Vernet published a book, entitled
Letters on the Custom of employing You
instead of Thou. The Cento was a kind of poem
much in fashion. This word, which originally
meant a cloak made up of different patches and
pieces of cloth, is used in poetry to express a
poem composed of verses taken from various
writers, and arranged so as to form a new work
with a new meaning. The most curious Cento
ever made, was A Life of Jesus Christ, written
by the Empress Eudoxia, in verses taken from
Homer.

Among other literary trifles are to be noticed
reciprocal verses: that is, verses which give the
same words, read either backwards or forwards.