good authority, that Goethe, foreseeing his increasing popularity even long after his death, stipulated with M. Cotta to pay his _heirs_ a certain sum for every new edition of either his complete or single works. One of the recipients of these yet _current accounts_ is Baron Wolfgang von Goethe, Attache of the Prussian Legation at Rome. A FOREIGN SURGEON. Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury Square. * * * * * Minor Notes. _Parallel Passages._-- "The Father of the gods his glory shrouds, Involved in tempests and a night of clouds."--Dryden's _Virgil_. "Mars, hovering o'er his Troy, his terror shrouds In gloomy tempests and a night of clouds."--Pope's _Homer's Iliad_, book xx. lines 69, 70. UNEDA. _Unpublished Epitaphs._--I copied the following two epitaphs from monuments in the churchyard of Llangerrig, Montgomeryshire, last autumn. They perhaps deserve printing from the slight resemblance they bear to that in Melrose Churchyard, quoted in Vol. vii., pp. 676, 677.: "O earth, O earth! observe this well-- That earth to earth shall come to dwell: Then earth in earth shall close remain Till earth from earth shall rise again." "From earth my body first arose; But here to earth again it goes. I never desire to have it more, To plague me as it did before." P. H. FISHER. _The Colour of Ink in Writings._--My attention was called to this subject some years ago by an attempt made in a judicial proceeding to prove that part of a paper produced was written at a different time than the rest, because part differed from the rest in the shade of the ink. The following conclusions have been the result of my observations upon the subject: 1. That if the ink of part of a writing is of a different shade, though of the same colour, from that of the other parts, we cannot infer from that circumstance alone that the writing was done at different times. Ink taken from the top of an inkstand will be lighter than that from the bottom, where the dregs are; the deeper the pen is dipped into the ink, the darker the writing will be. 2. Writing performed with a pen that has been used before, will be darker than that with a new pen; for the dry residuum of the old ink that is encrusted on the used pen will mix with the new ink, and make it darker. And for the same reason-- 3. Writing with a pen previously used will be darker at first than it is after the old deposit, having been mixed up with the new ink, is used up. M. E. Philadelphia. _Literary Parallels._--Has it ever been noticed that the well-known epitaph, sometimes assigned to Robin of Doncaster, sometimes to Edward Courtenay, third Earl of Devon, and I believe to others besides: "What I gave, that I have," &c., has been anticipated by, if not imitated from, Martial, book v. epigr. 42., of which the last two lines are: "Extra fortunam est, quicquid donatur amicis; Quas dederis, solas semper habebis opes."