And Petruchio alludes to the bursting of "a chestnut in a farmer's fire," an incident probably of common occurrence in the sunny south. In _Hamlet_, with which we are chiefly concerned, the king "gulps his draughts of _Rhenish_ down;" and the grave-digger talks of a flagon of _Rhenish_ having been poured by the jester upon his head, the wine with which Denmark would naturally be supplied. His majesty inquires: "Where are the _Switzers_? let them guard the door." And the student Horatio is judiciously placed at the university of Wittenburg. Constant mention is made in _The Merchant of Venice_ of the Rialto; and Portia, not unmindful of the remarkable position of the city, thus directs Balthazar: "Bring them, I pray thee, with imagin'd speed Unto the tranect, to the common ferry Which trades to Venice." What a fine Hebraism (Hazlitt remarks) is that of Shylock, where he declares, that he would not have given his ring "for a whole wilderness of monkeys!" And so, if the subjoined passage in _Othello_ relates to the ceremony of the Doge's union with the sea, may we not exclaim "What an admirable Venetianism!" "I would not my unhoused free condition Put into circumscription and confine For the sea's worth." The Moor has not travelled far to find the following simile: "Like to the Pontick sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontick and the Hellespont." Petruchio asserts in respect to Catherine: "---- Were she as rough As are the swelling Adriatic waves, I come to wive it wealthily in Padua." In the Roman plays the Tiber is repeatedly noticed. The Thames occurs in _Merry Wives of Windsor_, and others. And in the Egyptian scenes of _Antony and Cleopatra_, the Nile is several times introduced. "Master Brook [says Falstaff], I will be thrown into Etna, as I have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus." Antony exclaims: "Let Rome in Tiber melt!" while Cleopatra gives utterance to the same sentiment: "Melt Egypt into Nile! And kindly creatures Turn all to serpents!" In the last two passages it may be observed, that the hyperbolical treatment of the two rivers bears some analogy to that of the _eisell_; and it may also be pointed out, that although one of your correspondents has rashly maintained that the word cannot mean a river because the definite article is omitted before it, Thames, Tiber, and Nile here occur without. Upon the whole it must appear that there is some reason for adopting the motto: "Flow on, thou shining river." T.