This celebrated Latin verse, which has become proverbial, has a very obscure authority, probably not known to many of your readers. It is from Gualtier de Lille, as has been remarked by Galeottus Martius and Paquier in their researches. This Gualtier flourished in the thirteenth century. The verse is extracted from a poem in ten books, called the "Alexandriad," and it is the 301st of the 5th book; it relates to the fate of Darius, who, flying from Alexander, fell into the hands of Bessus. It runs thus:-- "-- Quo flectis inertem Rex periture, fugam? Nescis, heu perdite, nescis, Quem fugias; hostes incurris dum fugis hostem; _Incidis in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim_" As honest JOHN BUNYAN, to his only bit of Latin which he quotes, places a marginal note: "The Latin which I borrow,"--a very honest way; so I I beg to say that I never saw this "Alexandriad," and that the above is an excerpt from _Menagiana_, pub. 1715, edited by Bertrand de la Monnoie, wherein may also be found much curious reading and research. JAMES H. FRISWELL. * * * * * A NOTE OF ADMIRATION! Sir Walter Scott, in a letter to Miss Johanna Baillie, dated October 12, 1825, (Lockhart's _Life of Sir W. S._, vol. vi. p. 82.), says,-- "I well intended to have written from Ireland, but alas! as some stern old divine says, 'Hell is paved with good intentions.' There was such a whirl of laking, and boating, and wondering, and shouting, and laughing, and carousing--" [He alludes to his visiting among the Westmoreland and Cumberland lakes on his way home, especially] "so much to be seen, and so little time to see it; so much to be heard, and only two ears to listen to twenty voices, that upon the whole I grew desperate, and gave up all thoughts of doing what was right and proper on post-days, and so all my epistolary good intentions are gone to Macadamise, I suppose, 'the burning marle' of the infernal regions." How easily a showy absurdity is substituted for a serious truth, and taken for granted to be the right sense. Without having been there, I may venture to affirm that "Hell is _not_ paved with good intentions, such things being _all lost or dropt on the way_ by travellers who reach that bourne;" for, where "Hope never comes," "good intentions" cannot exist any more than they can be formed, since to fulfil them were impossible. The authentic and emphatical figure in the saying is, "The _road_ to hell is paved with good intentions;" and it was uttered by the "stern old divine," whoever he might be, as a warning _not_ to let "good intentions" miscarry for want of being realized at the time and upon the spot. The moral, moreover, is manifestly this, that people may be going to hell with "the best intentions in the world," substituting all the while _well-meaning_ for _well-doing_. J.M.G Hallamshire. * * * * *