_Encyclopaedias_ (Vol. viii., p. 385.).--Surely there must be many persons who sympathise with ENCYCLOPAEDICUS in wishing to have a work _not_ encumbered and swollen by the heavy and bulky articles to which he refers: perhaps there may be as many as would make it worth the while of some publisher to furnish one. Of course copyright, and all sorts of rights, must be respected but that being done, there would be little else to do than to cut out and wheel away the heavy articles from a copy of any encyclopaedia, and put the rest into the hands of a printer. The residuum (which is what we want) would probably be to a considerable extent the same. When necessary additions had been made, the work would still be of moderate size and price. N. B. _Pepys's Grammar_ (Vol. viii., p. 466.).--I am unable to answer MR. KEIGHTLEY'S Query, not having the slightest knowledge of short-hand; but I always understood that the original spelling of every word in the _Diary_ was carefully preserved by the gentleman who decyphered it. No estimate, however, of Pepys's powers of writing can be formed from the hasty entries recorded in his short-hand journal, and, as I conceive, they derive additional interest from the quaint terms in which they are expressed. BRAYBROOKE. _"Antiquitas Saeculi Juventus Mundi"_ (Vols. ii. and iii. _passim_).--The following instances of this thought occur in two writers of the seventeenth century: "Those times which we term vulgarly they Old World, were indeed the youth or adolescence of it ... if you go to the age of the world in general, and to the true length and longevity of things, we are properly the older cosmopolites. In this respect the cadet may be termed more ancient than his elder brother, because the world was older when he entered into it. Nov. 2, 1647."--Howell's _Letters_, 11th edit.: London, 1754, p.426. Butler, in his _character_ of "An Antiquary," observes: "He values things wrongfully upon their antiquity, forgetting that the most modern are really the most ancient of all things in the world; like those that reckon their pounds before their shillings and pence, of which they are made up."--Thyer's edit., vol.ii. p. 97. JARLTZBERG. _Napoleon's Spelling_ (Vol. viii., p. 386).--The fact inquired after by HENRY H. BREEN is proved by the following extract from the _Memoires_ of Bourrienne, Napoleon's private secretary for many years: "Je previens une fois pour toutes que dans les copies que je donnerai des ecrits de Bonaparte, je retablirai l'orthographe, qui est en general _si extraordinairement estropiee_ qu'il serait ridicule de les copier exactement."--_Mem._ i. 73. C. _Black as a mourning Colour_ (Vol. viii., p. 411.).--Mourning habits are said first to appear in England in the time of Edward III. Chaucer and Froissart are the first who mention them. The former, in _Troylus and Creseyde_, says: "Creseyde was in widowe's habit _black_." Again: