Julius Cæsar Scaliger, born in 1484, probably at Padua, was one of the most celebrated of the many great writers of the sixteenth century. He was a man of real talent, but of unbounded vanity and unscrupulous ambition. Originally baptized “Jules,” he added “Cæsar” to his name, and, to enhance his own merits by the éclat of high birth, made for himself a false genealogy, and asserted that he was the hero of adventures in which he had taken no part. In order to force himself into notice he attacked Erasmus, and in two harangues, which the latter disdained to answer, used towards him the grossest invectives. Scaliger next directed his insolent hostility against Girolamo Cardano. Jealous of the fame of the great Pavian physician and mathematician, he, in a critique containing more insults than arguments, ferociously assailed Cardano’s treatise, “_De Subtilitate_”; and so exaggerated was the estimate he formed of the effect of his diatribes on the objects of his malice, that when Erasmus died, and a false rumour of the decease of Cardano was spread abroad, he believed, or affected to believe, that the death of both had been caused by his conduct towards them, and in the course of a fulsome eulogy expressed his regret for having deprived the world of letters of two such valuable lives. Scaliger died in 1558, aged seventy-five years. E (p. 21). JANS JANSZOON STRAUSS, OTHERWISE JEAN DE STRUYS. Jean de Struys, in 1647, shipped at Amsterdam as sailmaker’s mate on board a vessel bound to Genoa. On arriving there the ship was bought by the Republic, equipped as a privateer, and sent to the East Indies. She was, however, captured by the Dutch, and Struys took service on board a ship belonging to the Dutch East India Company, and after visiting Siam, Japan, Formosa, &c., he returned to Holland in 1681. Having stayed at home with his father for four years, he went to sea again, but finding at Venice an armed flotilla on the point of departure to fight the Turks, he joined it, was several times taken prisoner, and as often escaped or was rescued. In 1657 he returned to Holland, was married, and led a quiet life for ten years, but hearing that the Tzar was fitting out at Amsterdam some vessels to go to Persia by the Caspian Sea, “nothing,” to use his own words, “could hold him back.” He therefore started in a vessel bound to the Baltic, landed at Riga, and found his way overland, through Moscow and by the Oka and Volga to Astrachan. In June, 1670, the fleet in which he served set sail for the Caspian. His vessel went ashore on the coast of Daghestan, and he was made prisoner and taken to the Kan or Tchamkal of Bayance, by whom he was sold as a slave to a Persian. After passing through the possession of several masters he was bought by a Georgian, an ambassador to the King of Poland, who allowed him to purchase his freedom. On the 30th of October, 1671, he joined a caravan travelling to Ispahan, made his way to the