In an Elegy written by Rev. John Cotton on the death of John Alden, a magistrate of the old Plymouth Colony, who died in 1687, the following phonetic anagram occurs :—

John Alden-End al on hi.

The Calvinistic opponents of Arminius made of his name a not very creditable Latin anagram :

Jacobus Arminius,

Vani orbis amicus;

(The friend of a false world.)

while his friends, taking advantage of the Dutch mode of writing it, Harminius, hurled back the conclusive argument,

Habui curam Sionis.

(I have had charge of Zion.)

Perhaps the most extraordinary anagram to be met with, is that on the Latin of Pilate's question to the Saviour, “What is truth?"-St. John, xviii. 38.

Quid est veritas?

Est vir qui adest.

(It is the man who is before you.)

Live, vile, and evil, have the self-same letters;
He lives but vile, whom evil holds in fetters.

If you transpose what ladies wear-VEIL,
"Twill plainly show what bad folks are―VILE.
Again if you transpose the same,

You'll see an ancient Hebrew name-LEVI.

Change it again, and it will show

What all on earth desire to do-LIVE.

Transpose the letters yet once more,

What bad men do you'll then explore-EVIL.

PERSIST.

A lady, being asked by a gentleman to join in the bonds of matrimony with him, wrote the word "STRIPES," stating at the time that the letters making up the word stripes could be changed so as to make an answer to his question. The result proved satisfactory.

When I cry that I sin is transposed, it is clear,
My resource Christianity soon will appear.

The two which follow are peculiarly appropriate :

55

EMIT

This word, Time, is the only word in the English language which can be thus arranged, and the different transpositions thereof are all at the same time Latin words. These words, in English as well as in Latin, may be read either upward or downward. Their signification as Latin words is as follows:Time-fear thou; Item-likewise; Meti-to be measured;

Emit-he buys.

Some striking German and Latin anagrams have been made of Luther's name, of which the following are specimens. Doctor Martinus Lutherus transposed, gives O Rom, Luther ist der schwan. In D. Martinus Lutherus may be found ut turris das lumen (like a tower you give light). In Martinus Lutherus we have vir multa struens (the man who builds up much), and ter matris vulnus (he gave three wounds to the mother church). Martin Luther will make lehrt in Armuth (he teaches in poverty).

Jablonski welcomed the visit of Stanislaus, King of Poland, with his noble relatives of the house of Lescinski, to the annual examination of the students under his care, at the gymnasium of Lissa, with a number of anagrams, all composed of the letters in the words Domus Lescinia. The recitations closed with a heroic dance, in which each youth carried a shield inscribed with a legend of the letters. After a new evolution, the boys exhibited the words Ades incolumis; next, Omnis es lucida; next, Omne sis lucida; fifthly, Mane sidus loci; sixthly, Sis columna Dei; and at the conclusion, I scande

solium.

A TELEGRAM ANAGRAMMATISED.

Though but a late germ, with a wondrous elation,
Yet like a great elm it o'ershadows each station.
Et malgré the office is still a large fee mart,

So joyous the crowd was, you'd thought it a glee mart;
But they raged at no news from the nation's belligerent,
And I said let'm rage, since the air is refrigerant.

I then met large numbers, whose drink was not sherbet,
Who scarce could look up when their eyes the gas-glare met;
So when I had learned from commercial adviser

That mere galt for sand was the great fertilizer,

I bade Mr. Eaglet, although 'twas ideal,

Get some from the clay-pit, and so get'm real;
Then, just as my footstep was leaving the portal,
I met an elm targe on a great Highland mortal,

With the maid he had woo'd by the loch's flowery margelet,
And row'd in his boat, which for rhyme's sake call bargelet,
And blithe to the breeze would have set the sail daily,
But it blew at that rate which the sailors term gale, aye;

I stumbled against the fair bride he had married,
When a merle gat at large from a cage that she carried;
She gave a loud screech! and I could not well blame her,
But lame as I was, I'd no wish to get lamer;

So I made my escape-ne'er an antelope fleeter,

Lest my verse, like the poet, should limp through lag metre.

Anagrams are sometimes found in old epitaphial inscriptions. For example, at St. Andrews:

Maitland has the following curious specimen :

How much there is in a word—monastery, says I: why, that makes nasty Rome; and when I looked at it again, it was evidently more nasty a very vile place or mean sty. Ay, monster, says I, you are found out. What monster? said the Pope. What monster? said I. Why, your own image there, stone Mary. That, he replied, is my one star, my Stella Maris, my treasure, my guide! No, said I, you should rather say, my treason. Yet no arms, said he. No, quoth I, quiet may suit best, as long as you have no mastery, I mean money arts. No, said he again, those are Tory means; and Dan, my senator, will baffle them. I don't know that, said I, but I think one might make no mean story out of this one word-monastery.

CHRONOGRAMS.

ADDISON, in his remarks on the different species of false wit, (Spect. No. 60,) thus notices the chronogram.

"This kind

of wit appears very often on modern medals, especially those of Germany, when they represent in the inscription the year in

which they were coined. Thus we see on a medal of Gustavus Adolphus the following words :

medal was

CHRISTVS DUX ERGO TRIVMPHVS.

If you take the pains to pick the figures out of the several words, and range them in their proper order, you will find they amount to MDCXVVVII, or 1627, the year in which the stamped; for as some of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest and overtop their fellows, they are to be considered in a double capacity, both as letters and as figures. Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole dictionary for one of these ingenious devices. A man would think they were searching after an apt classical term; but instead of that they are looking out a word that has an L, an M, or a D, in it. When therefore we meet with any of these in

scriptions, we are not so much to look in them for the thought as for the year of the Lord."

Apropos of this humorous allusion to the Germanesque character of the chronogram, it is worthy of notice that European tourists find far more numerous examples of it in the inscriptions on the churches on the banks of the Rhine than in any other part of the continent.

On the title-page of "Hugo Grotius his Sophompancas," the date, 1652, is not given in the usual form, but is included in the name of the author, thus:

FRANCIS GOLDSMITH.

Howell, in his German Diet, after narrating the death of Charles, son of Philip II. of Spain, says :

If you desire to know the year, this chronogram will tell you:

FILIVS ANTE DIEM PATRIOS INQVIRIT IN ANNOS.
MDLVVIIIIIIII, or 1568.

The following commemorates the death of Queen Elizabeth :-
My Day Is Closed In Immortality.

(1603.)

A German book was issued in 1706, containing fac-similes and descriptions of more than two hundred medals coined in honor of Martin Luther. An inscription on one of them expresses the date of his death, 1546, as follows:

ECCe nVnc MorItVs IVstVs In paCe ChrIstI exItV tVto et beato.

The most extraordinary attempt of this kind that has yet been made, bears the following title :

Chronographica Gratulatio in Felicissimum adventum Serenissimi Cardinalis Ferdinandi, Hispaniarum Infantis, a Collegio Soc. Jesu.

A dedication to St. Michael and an address to Ferdinand are followed by one hundred hexameters, every one of which is a chronogram, and each gives the same result, 1634. The first and last verses are subjoined as a specimen.

AngeLe CæLIVogI MIChaëL LUX UnICa Cæt Us.
VersICULIS InCLUsa, fLUent In sæCULa CentUM.