he drew the latter part of them kneeling, which, to be sure, was done
after their faces, their legs being necessarily a little intermixed, he
made three black feet for the negro king, and but three white feet for
the two white kings; and yet never discovered the mistake till the piece
was presented to the king, and hung up in the great church.

There was, also, in the Houghton Hall collection, Velvet Brughel's
Adoration of the Magi, in which were a multitude of figures, all finished
with the greatest Dutch exactness; in fact, the ideas are rather a little
too Dutch, for the Ethiopian king is dressed in a surplice, with boots
and spurs, and brings, for a present, a gold model of a modern ship.

The monks of a certain monastery at Messina, exhibited, with great
triumph, a letter written by the Virgin Mary with her own hand. Unluckily
for them, this was not, as it easily might have been, written on the
ancient papyrus, but on paper made of rags. On some occasion, a visiter,
to whom this was shown, observed, with affected solemnity, that the
letter involved also a miracle, for the paper on which it was written was
not in existence till several hundred years after the mother of our Lord
had ascended into heaven.

In the church of St. Zacharia, at Venice, is the picture of a Virgin and
Child, whom an angel is entertaining with an air upon the violin. Jean
Belin was the artist, in 1500. So, also, in the college library of
Aberdeen, to a very neat Dutch missal, are appended elegant paintings on
the margin, of the angels appearing to the shepherds, with one of the men
playing on the bagpipes.

There is a picture in a church at Bruges that puts not only all
chronology, but all else, out of countenance. It is the marriage of Jesus