1499. 1492, discovery of America; Arragon, or Argonauts, the first voyage of discovery mentioned in poetry and history.

1599. Oliver Cromwell born.

1699.

1799. Death of Washington.

1899. End of Spanish-American war.

Observe also the relationship of the dates 1066, 1096, 1099.

Before closing the subject of history, it will be as well for the student to practise finding out for himself facts connected with various dates according to the methods explained above, and I have therefore given a few dates at random for the student to fill up himself with facts connected with those dates.

1066.

1415.

1215.

1616.

1643.

1455.

1517.

1618.

1815.

1199.

1648.

1799.

1399.

1848.

1756.

1649.

1483.

1272.

1603.

1899.

1789.

1830.

1865.

1679.

1776.

SPECIFIC GRAVITIES OF THE PRINCIPAL

METALS.

Platinum.... 21.5: n..d..s, indestructible, platinum being very hard and infusible

and resisting the action of all single acids.

Gold........ 19.1: 191, d..c..t, ducat.

13.6: 136, t..m..p, temperature.

11.4 one more than silver.*

Mercury..

Lead..

Silver..

10.4

Copper......

8.62

Iron...... 7.48

Tin...

7.30

104, d....r, dollar.

862, h..p..n, halfpenny (pronounced haypenny).

748, f..r..j, ferruginous, forge. 730, f..m..1, family use, tin being mostly used for kitchen utensils.

7.01 volts, zinc being the chief factor in producing electricity.

* Silver generally being found in lead ore,

Arsenic...... 5.7 s..f, safe. We may use this, just

because arsenic is so unsafe.

The very contrast will im

press it on the mind.

If the reader notices that the specific gravities of metals vary between 5 and 21.5, the decimal point need present no difficulty.

LITERARY MEN.

By the intelligent application of these simple rules of comparison it will be seen how easily the dates of the births and deaths of the most famous literary men of England and America may be fixed in the mind.

First we will give a list of the most celebrated British authors, with the dates of their birth and death, and then we will point out how we may facilitate the commiting them to memory. The list follows:

First, it will be noticed that of the above list of famous authors, thirteen were born or died in the eighteenth century, which likewise produced Goethe 1749, and Schiller 1759, in Germany. You will also observe how often the birth or death of one author occurred exactly a century after the birth or death of another. Thus Shakespeare died in 1616, Gray was born in 1716; Milton died in 1674, Southey was born in 1774; Dryden died in 1700, Macaulay was born in 1800, and Cowper died in the same year; Pope was born in 1688, Byron in 1788; Burns was born in 1759, Macaulay died in 1859; Wordsworth was born in 1770, Dickens died in 1870; Fielding was born one hundred years before Longfellow and Whittier, who were born in 1807.

Then we have cases where an author is born in the very year of the death of another. Gray died in 1771, Scott was born in that year; Cowper died in 1800, Macaulay was born in 1800; Schiller and Burns were born in the same year, 1759; Goethe and Scott died in

the same year, 1832; Cervantes and Shakespeare also died in the same year, 1616. The date of Shakespeare's birth, 1564, we can find in the last syllable of his name, s..p..r. Although we ordinarily take only the first letters in a word, in a few striking cases we may make exceptions, as here. The name Cervantes gives us the date of his birth, viz., 1547, c..r..v. The date of

their death is easy because of the two sixteens. Dryden and Cowper can be very easily compared, as both their birth and death occurred just a century apart. Bacon and Shakespeare we will naturally take together, as there has been so much controversy as to who wrote the immortal plays, and, without looking further, let us remember that Bacon was born three years before Shakespeare and died ten years after him. Spenser was born in the same year as the accession of Mary I., the first English queen, which date we had when dealing with history.

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As his most famous work was the Faerie Queen," we will easily remember this. Chaucer, Dryden, and Cowper all died at the round century, and are therefore not easily forgotten. Both in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we find the births of authors in successive years thus 1770 gave birth to Wordsworth, 1771 to Scott, 1772 to Coleridge; in the nineteenth century, 1810 to Tennyson, 1811 to Thackeray, 1812 to Dickens. The first syllable of Tennyson's name will show that he was born in 1810. The two with the initial "T" come together, and then comes one with "D," the same letter as "T" in our figure-alphabet. The dates of the births of Milton, Pope, and Byron all end

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