[Footnote 10: Dr. Faraday found that, by first exhausting the lungs by several deep exhalations, so as to expel the carbonic acid, and then taking a deep inspiration of fresh air, he was able to hold his breath for two minutes and a half.] ILLUMINATED, OR VELLUM-PAINTING. AS it is the duty of a faithful journalist not only to "hit the follies of the day," but to study the tastes of the times, we have now ventured to make a few remarks on an art which has of late been revived, and which is now not only much practised as an accomplishment, but widely diffused as a means of general ornamentation. A slight sketch of its history will perhaps form a not unacceptable introduction to our subject. It would appear that the metallic portions, and the general idea of illuminated painting, have been familiar to Oriental nations for ages; numberless traces of it, as applied to decorative purposes, having been discovered among those memorials now existing of the early Persian, Arabian, and Moorish races. The Egyptians, too, appear to have possessed the art of adding burnished gold or silver to their paintings; but whether they ever thus ornamented manuscripts is not known to us--in all probability they did not. Neither do the more ancient inhabitants of Italy appear to have applied it to manuscripts, for none of those discovered amid the ruins of the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii are illuminated. Many writers have surmised that manuscripts were not thus decorated until they began to assume something of the folio form; certainly, we are not aware of any traces of illuminating having been found in those rolled manuscripts which have descended to us. "The Dioscorides" in the Library of Vienna, and the celebrated copy of "Virgil" in the Vatican at Rome--both of which are supposed to date back so far as the fourth century--are believed to be the oldest examples of illuminated MSS. extant; and these can scarcely claim to be termed illuminated, for they only differ from ordinary manuscripts in having colored capitals. It is not until the seventh century that we find this art practised in any part of Great Britain; and then, in its earliest form, it simply consisted in staining the vellum purple or rose color, or inscribing the characters in gold. In the British Museum is a splendid MS., termed the "Golden Gospels," supposed to date from about the eighth century; its text is entirely of gold. There are some beautiful decorations in this valuable and curious relic of the patience, industry, and artistic powers of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. There is another illuminated manuscript copy of the Gospels in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth Palace, supposed to be nine hundred years old, and to have been painted by Moelbrigid Mac Durnan, Abbot of Derry, for Athelstan, who presented it to the city of Canterbury.