with Sir Theobald Grenville, Knt. lord of the land, an especial furtherer of, and a great benefactor to, that design, began the foundation of the bridge where it now stands." The bishop who assisted in promoting the design, appears to have been Grandison.

NEWSPAPERS, WHEN FIRST PUBLISHED.

Newspapers were first published in England August 22d, 1642. Journal des Savans, a French paper, was first published in 1665, though one was printed in England under the title of the Public Intelligencer, by Sir Roger L'Estrange, 1603, which he dropped on the publication of the first London Gazette. Newspapers and pamphlets were prohibited by royal proclamation, 1680. Though at the Revolution prohibitions of this kind were done away, and the press set at liberty; yet newspapers were afterwards made objects of taxation, and for this purpose were first stamped in 1713, and the number of them has been gradually increasing ever since.

MANY THINGS FALL OUT BETWEEN THE
CUP AND THE LIP.

This saying was supposed to take its origin

from one of Penelope's wooers being shot as he was going to drink. But it arose, as Ainsworth has it, thus:"A king of Thrace had planted a vineyard, when one of his slaves, whom he had much oppressed in that very work, prophesied that he, the king, should never taste the wine produced in it. The king disregarded his prophecy, and when at an entertainment he held the cup full of his own wine, he sent for this slave, and asked him, insultingly, what he thought of his prophecy now? The slave only answered, • Multa inter pocula ac labra cadunt.' Scarce had he spoke, when news was brought that 'an huge boar was laying his vineyard waste. The king rose in a fury, attacked the boar, and was killed without ever tasting the wine."

THE BALTIC.

The Baltic is an inland or mediterranean sea; so called from an ancient High Dutch word, Belt, signifying a streight or narrow: so that the Baltic sea is no more than the Belt sea, or narrow sea.

RIDING (a country division), WHY SO CALLED.

The word Riding is only a corruption of the old Saxon word trithing, which, in that law, is said to be a third part of the province. But to

explain this matter more clearly, it must be noted, that in the division of England by the Saxons, for the better government of it, there were these parts, viz. trithings, hundreds, or warpentakes, and trithings or ridings, which thus differ. Trithings consisted of ten families, subjected to the care of the decario, or trithing-man, who was to be answerable for the behaviour of the masters of those families, as they were for their children and servants. Ten of those trithings made a hundred or warpentake, which last was so called, because the governor of it, when put into his place, held up a weapon, viz. a spear, and the elders of the trithings admitted him by tacking, or touching, their spears with his, as a token of their subjection to him. Ridings or trithings were a third part of a county, be it greater or less; and appeals were made to them in causes not determinable in the warpentakes. A riding, in the county of York, fully answers the definition of a third part, and is accordingly divided and known by the north, east, and west ridings.