Buried Proverbs. (Simpkin and Marshall.)—This is a little volume by
help of which idle time may be not unpleasantly whiled away by those who have a taste for the kind of pastime which it affords. "A Buried City "is, as our readers are probably aware, a sentence in which the name of some town is enclosed, so to speak, it being necessary that the letters compoaing it should come all together and in their proper order, but it being allowed to make them belong to as many words as may be found possible. "We walk up a rise to the house," to give an instance manufactured on the moment, contains the "buried city" of Paris. The Buried Proverbs are constructed on something of the Same principle. A short piece of verse is written in which the words of the proverb are included, only separated from each other as may ho found convenient. The first of the series has the key to it given, and the reader may take it as a specimen :— "The glorious Sun long since bas left the west: It chimes the solemn, witching hour of night,
'Tilt resting-lime; lo from each sacred nest The nightingales a vesper hymn
Is every tree, 'midst shadows dim, Chant to the Great Director of the night."
If the letters italicised are put together, they will be found to be a proverb. The volume, we may add, has been published for a charitable purpose.—Similar amusement may be found in Corn and Chaff; or, Double Acrostics". (Pickering.)—A critic has naturally "no time for conundrums," but we may say that the verse seems very good.—Yet another resource may be found in The Rhythmical Index to the English Language, by J. Langmuir (Tegg.)—Writing verses is a perfectly legitimate and even laudable recreation, as long as one does not publish, and this "rhyming dictionary" will be a help, —be, in fact, an English " Gradus ad Parnassnm."
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