The "rule of the road" in the United States is "turn to the right," in England it is the reverse. The rule holds in this country in the case where two vehicles going in opposite diections meet. When one vehicle overtakes another the foremost gives way to the left and the other passes by on the "offside," and when a vehicle is crossing the direction of another it keeps to the left and crosses in its rear. These two rules are the same in this country and in England, and why the rule concerning meeting vehicles should have been changed it is impossible to say. We find this point of difference noted by all authorities, but no reason for it is ever suggested. Probably, as it is easier to turn to the right than to the left, it was adopted as the more preferable custom in some of the early colonies, and in due time became embodied in local law, and thus was handed down to later time.

The Molly Maguires was an Irish secret society which during the ten years preceding 1877 terrorized the coal regions of Pennsylvania. The name was imported from Ireland, where it had been adopted by a branch of the Ribbonmen, whose outrages by night were perpetrated in female disguise. The object of the organization in Pennsylvania appears to have been to secure for its members, as far as possible, the exclusive political power in the eastern part of the State. Murders were committed in the open day, though much more usually by night; and the terror of the society was on all the coal country until, in 1876-77, a number of the leaders were convicted and executed, mainly by the evidence of a detective named McParlan, who had acted for three years as secretary of the Shenandoah division.

Capacity of the largest public buildings in the world: Coliseum, Rome, 87,000; St. Peter's, Rome, 54,000; Theatre of Pompey, Rome, 40,000; Cathedral, Milan, 37,000; St. Paul's, Rome, 32,000; St. Paul's, London, 31,000; St. Petronia, Bologna, 26,000; Cathedral, Florence, 24,-300; Cathedral, Antwerp, 24,000; St. John Lateran, Rome, 23,000; St. Sophia's, Constantinople, 23,000; Notre Dame, Paris, 21,500; Theatre of Marcellus, Rome, 20,000; Cathedral, Pisa, 13,000; St. Stephen's, Vienna, 12,400; St. Dominic's, Bologna, 12,000; St. Peters, Bologna, 11,400; Cathedral, Vienna, 11,000; Gilmore's Garden, New York, 8,443; La Scala, Milan, 8,000; Auditorium, Chicago, 7,000; Mormon Temple, Salt Lake City, 8,000; St. Mark's, Venice, 7,500; Spurgeon's Tabernacle, London, 6,000; Bolshoi Theatre, St. Petersburg, 5,000; Tabernacle (Talmage's), Brooklyn, 5,000; Music Hall, Cincinnati, 4,824.

The acclimated word boulevard is simply the name given in France to a broad street or promenade planted with rows of trees. Originally it was applied to the bulwark portion of a rampart, then to the promenade laid out on a demolished fortification. The boulevards of Paris are the most famous. The line from the Madeleine to the Bastille became a walk in the days of Louis XIV., and then a street. But many so-called recent boulevards in Paris and elsewhere are simply new and handsome streets, planted with trees, and have no relation to old fortifications at all. Some parts of them present a very dazzling spectacle, and, as a whole, they afford a striking exhibition of the life and character of the French capital in all the different classes of society. The Boulevard de la Madeleine, des Capucines, and Montmartre are the most notable. The Thames Embankment is a boulevard in the usual sense of the term. In the United States the term is applied to all streets on which no traffic teams are permitted.

In feudal times villeins were a species of serfs who cultivated the portion of the manor reserved by the feudal lord for himself. They were bound to the soil; they could not leave the manor, and their service was compulsory; but they were allowed by the feudal lord to cultivate portions of land for their own use. These lands, which they held " at the will of the lord, according to the custom of the manor " - custom which was in such case entered in the roll of the court-baron - frequently passed from father to son, until a prescriptive right in them was acquired; and the villeins, whose sole title was an authenticated copy of these entries, came in time to be called tenants by copy of court-roll, and their tenures copyholds. Villeinage was never formally abolished in England, but it ceased to exist in the sixteenth century.

Hari-kari is a term applied to the curious Japanese system of official suicide, obsolete since 1868. The Japanese estimated the number of such suicides at 500 per annum. All military men, and persons holding civil offices under the government, were held bound, when they committed an offence, to disembowel themselves. This they performed in a solemn and dignified manner, in presence of officials and other witnesses, by one or two gashes with a short sharp sword or dagger 9)4 inches long. Personal honor having been saved by the self-inflicted wound, the execution was completed by a superior executioner, who gave the coup de grace by beheading the victim with one swinging blow from a long sword. Japanese gentlemen were trained to regard the hari-kari as an honorable expiation of crime or blotting out of disgrace.

The most dreadful earthquake on record is that which, November 1, 1775, destroyed the city of Lisbon, Portugal. The only warning the inhabitants received was a noise like subterranean thunder, which, without any considerable interval, was followed by a succession of shocks which laid in ruins almost every building in the city, with a most incredible slaughter of the inhabitants (60,000). The bed of the river Tagus was in many places raised to the surface, and vessels on the river suddenly found themselves aground. The waters of the river and the sea at first retreated and then immediately rolled violently in upon the land, forming a wave over forty feet in elevation. To complete the destruction a large quay, upon which great numbers of the people had assembled for security, suddenly sank to such an unfathomable depth that not one body ever afterwards appeared at the surface.