As the Bible, in many parts, consists merely of historical transactions, and as too many exhibit a detail of offensive ones, it has often occurred to the fathers of families, as well as to the popes, to prohibit its general reading. Archbishop Tillotson formed a design of purifying the historical parts. Those who have given us a _Family Shakspeare_, in the same spirit may present us with a _Family Bible_. In these attempts to recompose the Bible, the broad vulgar colloquial diction, which has been used by our theological writers, is less tolerable than the quaintness of Castalion and the floridity of Père Berruyer. The style now noticed long disgraced the writings of our divines; and we see it sometimes still employed by some of a certain stamp. Matthew Henry, whose commentaries are well known, writes in this manner on Judges ix.:--"We are here told by what acts Abimelech _got into the saddle_.--None would have _dreamed_ of making such a _fellow_ as he king.--See how he has _wheedled_ them into the choice. He hired into his service the _scum_ and _scoundrels_ of the country. Jotham was really a _fine gentleman_.--The Sechemites that set Abimelech up, were the first to _kick him off_. The Sechemites said all the ill they could of him in their _table-talk_; they _drank healths_ to his _confusion_.--Well, Gaal's interest in Sechem is soon at an end. _Exit Gaal_!" Lancelot Addison, by the vulgar coarseness of his style, forms an admirable contrast with the amenity and grace of his son's Spectators. He tells us, in his voyage to Barbary, that "A rabbin once told him, among other _heinous stuff_, that he did not expect the felicity of the next world on the account of any merits but his own; whoever kept the law would arrive at the bliss, by _coming upon his own legs_." It must be confessed that the rabbin, considering he could not conscientiously have the same creed as Addison, did not deliver any very "heinous stuff," in believing that other people's merits have nothing to do with our own; and that "we should stand on our own legs!" But this was not "proper words in proper places." ORIGIN OF THE MATERIALS OF WRITING. It is curious to observe the various substitutes for paper before its discovery. Ere the invention of recording events by writing, trees were planted, rude altars were erected, or heaps of stone, to serve as memorials of past events. Hercules probably could not write when he fixed his famous pillars. The most ancient mode of writing was on _bricks_, _tiles_, and _oyster-shells_, and on _tables of stone_; afterwards on _plates_ of various materials, on _ivory_, on _barks_ of trees, on _leaves_ of trees.[7]