Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1893-03-06
SOME FINE WORK.

The Dainty Productions OF Micro
scopic Artists-A Coach-and-Four
Covered by the Wings of a Bee.
I'LL O. in the New York Evenirg Pestl
Gas the great extreme, Of dimensions is sub
lime, so the last extreme OF Nttleness ts IN some
measure sublime likewise. burke.
Though one would at first imagine that
researches in minute and even microscopic
workmanship would yisld but scanty re-
ward for the exertioD, the investigator lis
actually amazed at the great number OF ar
tificers In these wonders.
The subject readily divides itself into
two classes, penmanship and mechanical
construction. History has handed down
to us many examples of that e1trsordins-
ry form of csligraphic mania of which the
chief symptom is desire to compress the
greatest number of words within the
smallest possible space. Pliny the younger
declares lin Opera vii, 81 that Cicero once
saw the Iiad' written SO small that 1t
could be enclosed In wslnut-shell. This
affrmation was regarded as impossible un-
til the seventeen century, when Huet,
Bishop of Avranches, France, an excellent
compl;shed. He demonstrated, entirely TO
the satisfaction of the doubtere, that a
piece cf flexible velium, twenty-seven CEN
timetres In length and twenty one in
breadth, could be packed into the shell of
q large walnut For the entire 'Iliad' to
be written upon this sheet, the poem must
be contained In two hundred and fifty lines
Of thirty verses each! One aide would
then contain seventy-fve hundred verses,
and the reverse as many, making fifteen
thousand in all, sufficient number.
The gospel of st. John and the Acts of
the Apostles were written within the cir
conference of a fsr,hing In the sixth cen
tury by an I.alisu monk.
DIR. Heyliu, in his Life of King Charles,
records that during the reign of Queen
Elizsbsth "there was one who wrote the
Ten Commandments, the Greed, the Pster
Noster, the queens name, and the year of
our Lord within the compass of penny;
ard gave her msjesty Q pair of spectac,es
of such al artificial making that by the
help thereof she did plainly and distinctly
discern every letter" A somewhat simi-
lar feat was that ''rare piece of work
brought to pass by Peter Rsles, sn Eng
lishman, who alec exhibited before her
majesty the entire Bible written in book
containing ss many lexve- as q full-sizsd
eoitRob, bet httiiS INV = Naiuut,
In St Johns college, Oxford, "a pre-
served portrait Of Charles l., in which
ths epgraver's lines, as they seem to be,
are really microscopic writing, the face
alone containing all all the book of Psalms,
with the creeds and several forms of pray
er.
The lsaI red Porscn ia known to have
indulged in thia species of curious idle
mesa" occasionally, and perhaps the Greek
verses from the 'tMedea" of Euripidee,
with Johnson's translation of the same for
Burney's History of Music were execu-
ted by him. Though consisting of two
hundred and twenty words, they are CON-
prised In q circle half an irch In diameter,
with q small space in the center left blank.
About forty years ago specimen Of mi
croscopio penmAnship was exhibited In
this country which, perhaps, has never
been excellsd. It consisted of the follow
ing inscription, written upon glass, within
q circle the six hundred and twenty fifth
part of an inch In diameter: Lowell
and sentsr, Wstchmskers, 81 Exchange