Unfortunately, Dabshelim, during this process of melting down his library, grew old, and saw no probability of living long enough to exhaust its quintessence to the last volume. "Illustrious Sultan," said his vizier, "though I have but a very imperfect knowledge of your royal library, yet I will undertake to deliver you a very brief and satisfactory abstract of it. You shall read it through in one minute, and yet you will find matter in it to reflect upon throughout the rest of your life." Having said this, Pilpay took a palm leaf, and wrote upon it with a golden style the four following paragraphs:
1. The greater part of the sciences comprise but one single word—_Perhaps_, and the whole history of mankind contains no more than three—they are _born_, _suffer_, _die_.
2. Love nothing but what is good, and do all that thou lovest to do; think nothing but what is true, and speak not all that thou thinkest.
3. O kings! tame your passions, govern yourselves, and it will be only child's play to govern the world.
4. O kings! O people! it can never be often enough repeated to you, what the half-witted venture to doubt, that there is no happiness without virtue, and no virtue without God.
One of the most remarkable palindromes is the following—
Its distinguishing peculiarity is that the first letter of each successive word writes to spell the first word; the second letter of each the second word, and so on throughout; and the same will be found as precisely true upon reversal. But the neatest and prettiest that has yet appeared comes from a highly cultivated lady who was attached to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Having been banished from the court on suspicion of too great familiarity with a nobleman in high favor, the lady adopted this device—_a moon covered by a cloud_—and the following palindrome for a motto—
The merit of this kind of composition was never in any example so heightened by appropriateness and delicacy of sentiment.
Such was the name given to a whimsical device of the later Romans, resuscitated during the _renaissance_ period, by which a date is given by selecting certain letters amongst those which form an inscription, and printing them larger than the others. The principle will be understood from the following chronogram made from the name of George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham—