Chronograms And Chronophons.

which at one time occupied a good deal of puzzle-making ingenuity , and may perchance again do so , if an imitative freak should seize upon us . When men made no steam-engines , and did not spin cotton

at the rate of a thousand miles or so per hour ; when they neither travelled by railway over the land ; nor by screw and paddle over the sea ; when there Avere no penny posts , electric telegraphs , penny

papers , or gas lights ; Avhen men did not give three thousand guineas for a picture about " Roast Pig , " or three hundred for an old fiddle , then it was that verbal crochets were in fashion to an extent that

Ave can hardly understand HOAV . In France , especially , during the dissipated reigns of Louis XIV . and Louis XV ., the " gilded youth" of the gay capital , and aristocrats old enough to have knoAvn

better , whiled aAvay their hours in such fashion to an . almost incredible degree , incited partly thereto by the epigrammatic qualities of the French language . The chronogram , or "description by

means of numbers , " is rather antiquarian and ecclesiastical than gay in its orio-in . Perhaps it may be more correctly defined as " date-writing "—the incorporating a date as part of a written Avord or sentence .

It depends on the main characteristics of the Roman numerals . We are all told at school that our usual numerals , such as 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , are of Arabic ori gin ; but that the Romans employed some of the capital

letters of their al phabet as numbers . There are seven in familiar use , namely I , V , X , L , C , D , M , standing respectively for 1 , 5 , 10 , 50 , 100 , 500 , 1000 ; but there are others , found in old documents , Avhich are

now seldom used , especially a capital C turned upside down , ( Q , ) and a sort of a figure 8 laid on its side , ( os . ) One extraordinary combination , to denote a million , stands thus : CCCCI OO i and another ,

only a little less complex , for a hundred thousand—CCCI . In order to denote four , the Romans occasionall y used I four times repeated—IIII ; but a briefer form was IV , Avhich stands for " one less than five : " in like manner XL . and CD ivere

devised instead of XXXX and CCCC , for forty and four hundred . Fourteen years hence , iu 1888 , the A . D ., when expressed in Roman numerals of the usual kind , will be more lengthy than it has ever before been , or than it will again be for a long time to

Chronograms And Chronophons.

come , namely , MDCCCLXXXVIIIthirteen symbols instead of the convenient four Avhich suffice Avhen Arabic numerals are used . In some languages a sentence will express

a date or number , Avhether the writer intends it or not . Thus , learned men tell us that , in Persian , the letters forming the Avords " Hooshung Shah is no more" also denote the number 837 ; and a chronogram

was at once thus constructed , seeing that Shah Hooshung died in the 837 th year of the Hegira . In like manner , many of the controversies and speculations concerning the mysterious 66 and 666 of the Book of Revelation have arisen out of the HebreAv

alp habetical characters being alike letters and numerals . The Romans are believed to have begun the style of chronogram Avhich has more or less been in favour ever since . It was an

amusement , a { -lay upon words something like our rebus . We all remember such effusions as XL , Avhich will serve either for 40 or for " excel" in a puzzle ; and MIX , which will do alike for 1009 and for " mix "

—and doubtless Ave deemed ourselves very clever in composing them . Chronograms are rather numerous in and about churches and other religious structures , comprising pious sentences , often passages from the Bible . Tourists have

detected many of them in the Rhenish provinces , in some instances placed in odd corners aud nooks not very visible , and often partly obliterated by time and weather . Some are incised or cut in the stone-Avork , others painted or gilt on wood . Instances have been met Avith on a beam

in a chapel on the south side of the choir of College Cathedral ; on the base of a crucifix outside the minster at Bonn , and another Avithin the minster ; in Poppelsdorf church , near the same city ; on the

baptistry at Aix-la-Chapelle ; on the front of the west gallery at St . Michael ' s Church , in the same city ; round the arch of the Avest door of St . Castor's , Coblenz ; on the base of a crucifix , and over the principal door of a church , at Konigswinter ; and

in many other p laces . There is one on the floor of the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli at Rome , comprising a date relating to the English Jacobite princes in 1721 ; and on a fountain near the church of San Paola , at Parma , is one to the honour of one of the vice-regents of that State , Our