244 OUT OF DOORS. 



DE MONSTRIS. 



HAVE any of my readers made themselves acquainted 

 with the ' Nurenberg Chronicle ' ? If not, they should 

 do so. The book is very pretty reading, though its 

 beauties are hard to see. It is a big book an elephant 

 of a book a book that would have delighted the very 

 soul of Dominie Sampson. It is printed in black 

 letter, the language is Latin, and its subject is a 

 chronicle of the world's history, from the time of the 

 creation to the date of the book. It is one of the 

 quaintest, raciest, and most delightful of books not 

 very easy to read, but perhaps owing some of its charm 

 to that very fact. 



It is a nut with a very hard and tough shell, but a 

 marvellously sweet and mellow kernel. The shell is 

 the language, or rather the mode in which that 

 language is placed before the reader. The Latinity of 

 the book is anything but Ciceronian, but it is couched 

 in bold, vigorous terms, interspersed occasionally with 

 strange words, which, on investigation, prove to be 

 German words Latinised, the writer being unable to 

 find any pure Latin equivalents. Punctuation seems 



