EPIGRAM ON THE SYNOD OF DORT. Dordrechti synodus, nodus; chorus integer, æger; Conventus, ventus; sessio stramen. Amen! Referring to the extravagant price demanded in London, in 1831, to see and hear the Orpheus of violinists, the Sunday Times asked,— What are they who pay three guineas To hear a tune of Paganini’s? §Echo.§—Pack o’ ninnies THE CRITIC’S EPIGRAMMATIC EXCUSE. I’d fain praise your poem, but tell me, how is it, When I cry out, “Exquisite,” Echo cries, “Quiz it!” ECHO ANSWERING. What must be done to conduct a newspaper right?—Write. What is necessary for a farmer to assist him?—System. What would give a blind man the greatest delight?—Light. What is the best counsel given by a justice of the peace?—Peace. Who commit the greatest abominations?—Nations. What cry is the greatest terrifier?—Fire. What are some women’s chief exercise?—Sighs. REMARKABLE ECHOES. An echo in Woodstock Park, Oxfordshire, repeats seventeen syllables by day, and twenty by night. One on the banks of the Lago del Lupo, above the fall of Terni, repeats fifteen. But the most remarkable echo known is one on the north side of Shipley Church, in Sussex, which distinctly repeats twenty-one syllables. In the Abbey church at St. Alban’s is a curious echo. The tick of a watch may be heard from one end of the church to the other. In Gloucester Cathedral, a gallery of an octagonal form conveys a whisper seventy-five feet across the nave. The following inscription is copied from this gallery:— Doubt not but God, who sits on high, Thy inmost secret prayers can hear; When a dead wall thus cunningly Conveys soft whispers to the ear. In the Cathedral of Girgenti, in Sicily, the slightest whisper is borne with perfect distinctness from the great western door to the cornice behind the high altar,—a distance of two hundred and fifty feet. By a most unlucky coincidence, the precise focus of divergence at the former station was chosen for the place of the confessional. Secrets never intended for the public ear thus became known, to the dismay of the confessors, and the scandal of the people, by the resort of the curious to the opposite point, (which seems to have been discovered accidentally,) till at length, one listener having had his curiosity somewhat over-gratified by hearing his wife’s avowal of her own infidelity, this tell-tale peculiarity became generally known, and the confessional was removed. In the whispering-gallery of St. Paul’s, London, the faintest sound is faithfully conveyed from one side to the other of the dome, but is not heard at any intermediate point.