Many persons have a singular mode of disposing of objects for which they have too great a regard to destroy, or even order them after their death to be destroyed, and as a sort of half-measure, desire that they may be buried with them. Not long since a lady died, who being fondly attached to a brother she had lost, had his portrait, in a ponderous gilt frame (which she always carried about with her when she travelled), placed in her coffin at her death. Actuated by a similar sentiment, Mrs. Anna Margaret Birkbeck, of Inverness Terrace (who died July 2, 1877, and whose will and two codicils, dated January, 1868, were proved on 29th of July, 1877), directs that the letters of her late daughters, of her late son, and of her late husband, both before and after her marriage, be buried with her. WILL OF L. CORTUSIO, JURISCONSULTUS OF PADUA We are indebted to several sources for the following testamentary document: mention is made of it by the celebrated Paolo de Castro; by Scardeon, who gives it more in detail in his “Vies des Jurisconsultes de Padoue,” book ii., chap. viii.; in P. Garasse’s “Doctrine Curieuse,” page 912; and in Dreux de Radier’s “Recréations Historiques,” tome i., page 232. By his last will and testament, the testator in question, Messer Lodovico Cortusio, forbids any of his friends and relatives to weep at his funeral. He among them who shall be found so weeping shall be disinherited; while, on the other hand, he who shall laugh most heartily shall be his principal heir and universal legatee. It would have been superfluous to address to such a man Young’s apostrophe-- “Lorenzo, hast thou ever weighed a sigh, Or studied the philosophy of tears?” It is quite evident he appreciated their value.