1812 .] Extracts from the Portfolio of a Man of Letters, 5()7 
tliat Jesus Christ was bofn in France and 
crucified in England. 
LODCriSiGS TO LET. 
In Ireland this annunciation is often 
tnade by the words “ Good dry lodgings^' 
by which word dry is not meant lodgings 
not wet or damp, but without board, A 
dry hall is also used to imply a ball with¬ 
out supper.— Sir R. C. Houre. 
PASSERAUr. 
Among the few foreigners who have 
acquired some celebrity as waiters in the 
Englisli language, may be remarked the 
Italian nobleman, Alberto Iladicati, 
count of Passerani, who died in 1737. 
He had been prime minister to Vittor 
Amadeo, Duke of Savoy, and had at¬ 
tempted to wrest from the Pope, in his 
master’s favour, a right of veto on the 
appointment of all catholic bishops re¬ 
sident in the Piedmontese dominions. 
The Pope, sooner than concede this 
veto, threatened the great excommuni¬ 
cation. Viltor Amadeo hesitated awhile 
about turning Protestant. The multitude 
at Turin sided with the clergy; and he 
in consequence determined to submit to 
the church, and to sacrifice utterly his 
counsellor and advocate, Passerani, who 
was threatened by the inquisition, but 
suffered to escape into England. 
Here he became acquainted with 
Tyndal and Collins, who showed him at¬ 
tentions. Under their patronage he pub¬ 
lished, in 1732, a Purullel between Mu- 
humed and Soscm (the anagram of Moses); 
and in 1733, a Philosophical Dissertation 
on Death, which vindicates the right of 
suicide. In metaphysical opinion he 
leans to pantheism. His Englisli style 
was said to have been corrected by 
Morgan, 
Threats of prosecution drove him from 
London into Holland, where he, in 1736, 
printed at Rotterdam the Memoirs of'his 
Life, and died at Amsterdam, in 1737^ 
after a manner but too worthy of his 
known and bold opinions. 
Had Passerani been more hospitably 
sheltered in this country, and encou¬ 
raged to publish here a vindication of his 
political life, he would probably have 
founded in our literature a sect of men, 
friendly, on Catholic principles; so con- 
ferrrng upon the civil power a veto over 
episcopal appointments. We now waut 
the very opinions wdiicli our own perse” 
cution suppressed. 
NUMERALS. 
It is common to believe that our nu¬ 
merals are of Arabic origin, and were 
introduced into Europe about the thir¬ 
teenth century; but Villoison has, in his 
Anecduta Graca, analysed a dissertation, 
De Nu7neralium Notarwn Minmcularum 
Origine, whence it appears, that in the 
Geometry of Boethius, in the fifth cen¬ 
tury, numeral notes are employed very 
like ours. At that time numerals were 
ascribed to^Pythagoras, and were thought 
to have been used at Rome under Mar¬ 
cus Aurelius, and especially by the Alge¬ 
braist Diophantus, of Alexandria. 
The numerals are probably of Alex¬ 
andrian origin, as they are plainly cor . 
ruptions of the letters of the Greek al¬ 
phabet. The iota was used for one, on 
account of the simplicity of its form. 
1 he figure 2 much resembles beta; the 
3 gamma; the 4 delta ; and the5 epsilon. 
For the 6 a contraction standing for sf 
was employed. The 7 imitates a zeta; 
the 8 an eta; and the 9 a theta. Why 
the omicron should have furnished the 
privative character, the nought, is not so 
easily guessed. 
The adoption of decimal arithmetic, 
or of stopping at tens in placing the nu¬ 
merals, is to be referred to our having tea 
fingers, which predisposes the human 
race to reckon by tens. If nmperals 
were engraved from old manuscripts, their 
resemblance with the Greek letters would 
be more obvious, 
warburton’s opinion of newton. 
Among the Warburtoiiiana occurs tiiis 
remark: 
“A word in your ear—What Sir Isaac 
wrote of the j®gyptian Antiquities is the 
most wretched thing that ever was writ by 
any body.” 
THE ARTIST CANO. 
A counsellor of Grenada hesitated 
about paying one hundred pistoles, de¬ 
manded by Cano for a bespoken image 
of Saint Anthony,—You have not been 
more than twenty-five days about it, 
which you charge at four pistoles a-day; 
sard the counsellor.-—Wretch ! (replied 
the enracred artist) I have been five-aiid- 
twenty years in learning to make this 
statue in twenty five days: but it shall 
never belong to a mean owner; and, to 
saying, he broke the statue to pieces on 
the pavement. 
ORIGINAL 
