ance with an amicable and accomplished female. In those happy times, how often have we sat in a bright circle of the fair and young, and talked, and laughed, in the gaiety of our careless hearts, without fear or apprehension! But now we are afraid, in the presence of ladies, to give utterance to any thing beyond a remark upon the weather. It is long since we have drilled ourselves to attribute smiles and whispers, and even squeezes of the hand, to their true source. We see an album lurking in every dimple of a young maiden's cheek, and a large folio commonplace book, reposing its Alexandrine length, in every curve of a dowager's double chin. S.-Tuts, man! What ails ye at allbums? N.-No age is free from the infection. We go to a house in the country, where there are three unmarried daughters, two aunts, and a grandmother. Complain not of a lack of employment on a rainy morning, in such a domicile and establishment as this. You may depend upon it, that the first patter of rain upon the window is the signal for all the vellum and morocco bound scrap-books to make a simultaneous rush upon the table. Forth comes the grandmother, and pushes an old dingy-coloured volume into your hands, and pointing out a spare leaf, between a recipe for curing corns, and a mixture for the hooping cough, she begs you to fill it upwith any thing you please. S.-Weel, weel, man-why canna you obleege the auld body? N. What right has an old woman, with silver spectacles on her long thin nose, to enlist any man among the awkward squad which compose her muster roll? Who can derive inspiration from the bony hand, which is coaxingly laid on your shoulder, and trembles, not from agitation or love, but merely from the last attack of the rheumatism? S. But young leddies hae their allbums, too, as weel's auld anes. by N.-And even the young ladies, James, presume too much upon their power. Is there no way of getting into their books, but by writing in their albums? Are we to pay for smiles at the rate of so many lines a dimple? If the fair creatures are anxious to show they can read, let them discover the tenor of their conversation, and not by large folios of quotations from books which every body knows; or if they are anxious to show that they can write, we can tell them they are very wrong in having any such wish. I will put it to any man-are not the pleasantest women of his acquaintance, those to whose hand-writing he is the greatest stranger? Did they not think their adored enslaver, who at one time was considered, when they were musing on her charms, beneath some giant tree, within the forest shade, "too fair to worship, too divine to love" did they not think her a little less divine, without being a bit more loveable, when they pored over, in her autograph, a long and foolish extract from some dunderhead's poems, with the points all wrong placed, and many of the words mis-spelt? S. Neither points nor spellin''s o' the smallest consequence in a copy o' verses. N.-Think of the famous lovers of antiquity, James. Do you think Thisbe kept a scrap-book, or that Pyramus slipped "Lines on Thisbe's Cat" through the celebrated holein-the-wall? No such thing. If he had, there would have been as little poetry in his love as in his verses. No man could have had the insolence, not even a Cockney poetaster, to kill himself for love, after having scribbled namby-pambies in a pale-blue giltedged album. S. idea. - Faith that's rather a lauchable 66 N. In every point of view, scrap-books are the death of love. Many a very sensible man can whisper soft nonsense in a lady's ear," when all the circumstances of the scene are congenial. We ourselves have frequently descended to make ourselves merely the most agreeable men in the world, till we unfortunately discovered that the blockheads who could not comprehend us when we were serious, were still farther from understanding the ineffable beauty of our nonsense; so that in both cases we were the sufferers. They took our elegant badinage for our sober and settled opinions, and laughed in the most accommodating manner when we delivered our real and most matured sentiments. S.-Ye've run aff the coorse, Sir. N.-Let no man despise the opinion of blockheads. In every society they form the majority, and are generally the most powerful and influential. Laugh not at their laborious disquisitions on the weather, and their wonderful discoveries of things which every one knows. If you offend a fool, you turn the whole muddy port of his composition into rancid vinegar, and not all the efforts you can make will abate its sourness. S.-What the deevil are you drivin' after noo? You're just like a horse, Sir, that aye gangs fastest when ye turn him aff the main road. N.-Nobody can write with any thing like ease in a scrap-book. It is much more widely published, so far as you are concerned, than if it issued from Albemarlestreet, or Blackwood. Every person who sees your contributions, knows something or other about yourself. Whereas you might publish twenty volumes, and not one of your immediate neighbours, except perhaps a literary trunk-maker, know any thing of the matter. S. That's a fack. N. If you write a flaming panegyric on any of those fair tormentors, you are set down as violently in love; and if you happen to be very warm in your praises, you will most probably be prosecuted for a "breach of pro nise of marriage," or shot dead, or lamed for life, by a brother as tall and fierce as O'Doherty. S.-I wad see him damn'd first, afore I wad fecht him in sic a quarrel. N.-In summer, when the woods are green, .how delightful to wander forth, James, with some young blue-eyed maiden, far into the forest to see the sun glinting on the moist ened leaves, while the cushat is murmuring its song of happiness, which seems like the indistinct hum of a heart too filled with bliss to express it in intelligible words! S.-Ay-noo that you're aff on that topic, I may ca' for my nichtcap. Auld men never tire o' taukin' o' love. N.-Who in such a situation as this has not felt, while his affections spread wide over the whole human kind, that there arose a tendeter and warmer friendship for the pure and lovely being who was gazing so placidly on the clear blue heavens; or clung closer to his side as the roaring of the distant linn, the sough of the wavering branches, the cawing of rooks, the singing of the birds, and the mighty hum which pervades a vast and almost breathing forest, impressed a feeling of awe upon her innocent heart! S.-Very innicent-nae doubt. They're a' innicent wi' their tales, and yours. 66 N.-In a scene like this, if one speaks at all, it is not in the same style or manner as in a gay and lighted hall." There is a humbling and yet an awakening thrill rushes upon the heart, which might well be mistaken for religion, save that its influence is so transitory S.-Say rather idolatry-eemage worship. N.-And who, in such a situation, as he gazed with softened and chastened kindness on the pale cheek of his beautiful companion, as he watched her eye wander with a wild and yet admiring expression from the mighty oak that cast its unwieldy arms over the yawning gulf, where far down you knew by the noise a river was struggling in its narrow bed, as the lion roars and dashes his mighty strength against his cage-who would not take her by the waist, small and delicate as the waist may be, and chuck her half way over the brae, if she turned to you, and said-"How pretty!-You must write something on this in my scrap-book." S.-Haw-haw-haw-haw-that's really wept over Medora and Gertrude, between the intervals of painting fans and thumping a grand piano. But the surest way to please them all, is to contribute to none. If you write no method of pickling onions for Joan, you write no sonnet to Anna Matilda. S.-Change the subject, Sir-I hae often observed that the better a man speaks on ony topic, the sooner you weary o''t. Do you ken that I rather affeck the company o' blockheads? N.-O the delights of dulness! real, open, downright, acknowledged stupidity; where the idiot sits down on the quietest edge of the sofa, and has his great gray lightless eyes as entirely fixed on vacancy, as if the vision tended backwards into his own skull; where no remark is expected from him on any subject, however simple, and where, if he happens by accident to say something that has a glimmering of sense, it is treasured up as a wonder, while all your own witticisms are considered common-place. S.-That's no the thing in't I likebut N. In a party composed entirely of gentlemen - how placid his countenance, while all the others are disputing! How calmly his eye rests on his smoking trencher, while others are engaged in literary, legal, or philosophical discussions! What does he care whether the Catholics obtain their claims, and hang the Archbishop of Canterbury with the string of his own apron ! What does he care about Tests and Corporations, Free Trades, Navarinos, and Don Miguels! S.-Wunna ye let a body speak? N. Then how different from this calm placidity of emptiness is the noisy, restless sort of inanity, which distinguishes another class of fools! In them the eye is perpetually wandering; they smirk, giggle, and look as wise when a sensible man is speaking, as if they tried to persuade people they understood him. But all in vain. Look at that little man with the brown coat; see how he smiles with the same idiotical simper, whatever is the subject of conversation; hear how he interrupts, questions, doubts, and finally, squeaks so loud in his reply, that he wakens all the children in the nursery up stairs, whose squalling rouses the lap-dog, whose yelping, when you kick it, produces frowns from your amiable hostess; and, all through that empty-pated blockhead, you walk home with your head throbbing as if it would burst, and, moreover, with the reputation among all your friends of a hard-hearted monster, who kicked poor Brush, and almost broke its ribs S.-Wull ye no alloo a body to edge in a single sentence, Sir? N-But they are more intolerable even than that. They will interrupt you in the most interesting tête-a-téte-will bounce into a room just when you are popping the ques tion, and astonish the faltering damsel, who is blushing at your side, by compliments on the beauty of her complexion, all the time you are anxious to put the insignificant coxcombs up the chimney. S.-Mr. North, I say, wull ye no alloca body to pit in a single sentence? N.-Puppies of this kind can sometimes sing, and woe betide their hearers! They can dance, play tricks with cards, and sometimes even sew. They are sent messages, they are despised by the men, they are laughed at by the women, and every body at last agrees, that a noisy fool is not half so agreeable as a quiet one. S.-I wush you was a wee mair quiet yoursell you're ceasin' to be yeloquent, and becomin' loquawcious. N. We have no hesitation in saying, that a fool who knows himself to be one, and holds his tongue, is one of the most delightful and enviable men in the world. S.-Whist! whist! I've entirely lost the thread o' your discourse; and do you ken you've given me a desperate headache. STANZAS. "THEY tell us of an Indian shore, Where gold is wash'd by every wave; Where neither winds nor breakers roar, To mar the peace which plenty gave. But breathes there in that land of gold One spirit of the rarer mould? "They tell us of an Indian vale, And grass is green continually. "They tell us of an Indian sun, Which overpowers the shrinking sense; And bursting through the vapour dun,' Dispels the winter's influence. I care not for that Indian sun, "Oh give to me one little spot, It beams before my fancy now; Where all forgetting-all forgot, I'd smooth the wrinkles from my brow I'd smile at Nature's fiercest moodWith one to cheer my solitude." MONKISH IGNORANCE. THE transfiguration by Raffaelle, in the Vatican at Rome, is pronounced to be the grandest picture in the world. Domenichino's communion, Saint Jerome, in the same place, is allowed to be the second. This latter illustrious work of art owes its preservation to an accidental circumstance. At the time Domenichino lived, the faction between his school, and that of Guido, run`so high that the students actually stabbed and poisoned each other; and the popular prejudice being in favour of the style of Guido, the communion of Saint Jerome was torn down from its place (the church of San Girolamo della Carito), and flung into a lumber room. Sometime afterwards the superior of the convent, wishing to substitute a new altar-piece, commissioned Niccola Poussin to execute it, and sent him Domenichino's rejected picture as old canvas to paint upon. No sooner had the generous Poussin cast his eyes upon it, than he was struck with its excellence. He immediately pointed out its beauties to the stupid monks, and restored it to its becoming place. ANECDOTE OF DR. COLE. WHEN Dr. Cole, who was a leading man, and zealous Roman Catholic, in the time of Mary, was made the bearer of a commission from that sovereign (aptly termed the bloody), for the purpose of having enacted the same fatal tragedy among her protestant subjects in Ireland, as had already been done at home in Smithfield, he made, during the progress of the business, some little stay at Chester. Here he was waited upon by the mayor of that city; in the course of the conversation which passed between them, the doctor was so full of his commission, that he could not forbear, as we say, "to let the cat out of the bag." "I have that with me," said he, producing a little box from his portmanteau, "which will lash the heretics of Ireland." His hostess, a Mrs. Edmonds, had the good luck to overhear this; and being more than half a heretic herself, and having a brother of that profession in Dublin, she became much troubled; and taking her opportunity whilst the doctor was gone down to compliment his worship, the mayor, to the door, she stepped into the dean's apartment, took out the commission, and put a pack of cards into the box in its room. The doctor having completed his civilities, returns to his chamber, and puts up his box without the least suspicion of what had happened. Soon after this he set sail for Dublin, where he arrived, December 7, 1558. Being introduced to Lord Fitzwalter (then lord-lieutenant), and the privycouncil, he began with a speech in form, to set forth the nature of his business, and then delivered in his box with due ceremony. "What have we here?" says his lordship, at the opening, "this is nothing but a pack of cards." It is not easy to conceive the doctor's feelings at the ridiculous figure he now made. He could only say that a commission he cer tainly had, but who had played him the trick he could not tell. "Why, then, Mr. Dean," says his lordship, “you have nothing to do but to return to London again, and get your commission renewed, whilst we, in the mean time, shuffle your cards." This sarcastic advice the doctor, no doubt with infinite chagrin, was obliged to take, though at so disagreeable a season of the year; but whilst all this was about, meeting with contrary winds, and other vexatious delays, behold, the queen died, and so the business came all to nothing. It is said, moreover, that Queen Elizabeth was so well pleased with this story, that she allowed Mrs. Edmonds 40l. a year during her life for this seasonable and important piece of dexterity. GENERAL MEDOWS. DURING the campaigns in India, General Medows received instructions on the 6th of February, to order his column, on coming to a certain hedge, to turn to the left. By so doing, it would have closely co-operated with the centre column of the army, and have rendered it the most essential service. But, unfortunately, whether owing to the unhappy wording of his instructions, or the confusion arising from its being a night attack, his column on entering the hedge turned to the right; by so doing, their operations on that night were absolutely of no use whatever in the general plan of the attack. The feelings of the gallant General Medows were so unhappily excited by this mistake, that he was quite overcome, although Lord Cornwallis, in the kindest way, consoled him by an assurance that such errors were not uncommon in extensive night operations; yet it had such a powerful effect on the worthy general's mind, that on returning to his tent he shot himself with a pistol, but fortunately the ball took such a direction that his life was preserved to render future service to his kingdom and country. General Medows was renowned for his wit; being on a reconnoitring party in the Mysore country, a twenty-four pound shot struck the ground at some distance from the general, and was passing in such a direction as would have exposed him to danger had he continued his road. Quick as lightning he stopped his horse, and pulling off his hat very gracefully, as the shot rolled on, good humouredly said "I beg you to proceed, Sir; I never dispute precedence with any gentleman of your family." THE SURUMPI. IN Peru, the effects of the rays of the sun reflected from the snow upon the eyes, produces a disease, which the Peruvians call surumpi. It occasions blindness, accompanied by excruciating pains. A pimple forms in the eyeball, and causes an itching, pricking pain, as though needles were continually piercing it. The temporary loss of sight is occasioned by the impossibility of opening the eye-lids for a single moment, the smallest ray of light being absolutely insupportable. The only relief is a poultice of snow, but as that melts away the tortures return. With the exception of twenty men and the guides, who knew how to guard against the calamity, the whole division were struck blind three leagues distant from the nearest human habitation. The guides galloped on to a village in advance, and brought out a hundred Indians to assist in leading the men. Many of the sufferers, maddened by pain, had strayed away from the column, and perished before the return of the guides, who, together with the Indians, took charge of long files of the poor sightless soldiers, clinging to each other with agonized and desperate grasp. During their dreary march by a rugged mountain path, several fell down precipices, and were never heard of more. The surumpi usually continues two days. Out of three thousand men, General Cordova lost above a hundred. The regiment most affected was the volligeros (formerly Numancia), which had marched by land from Caracas, a distance of upwards of two thousand leagues.-Memoirs of General Miller. THE WELSH MINSTREL. A HARPER sat by a tranquil stream, For aged and feeble was he grown, And his memory held not long; As he rested by that river alone, And recalled his boyhood's song. I thought I could trace, when sad the strain, This song revealed how a foreign maid, It then went on, and the tone became For the Knight was wedded to martial fame, The maiden drooped, like a lonely dove, Songs of the Minstrels, by J. Barnett. CHANGING THE SKIN. WHEN the young ladies, in the WestIndies, fancy themselves too much tanned by the scorching rays of the sun, they gently scrape off the thin outside of the stone belonging to the cashiew-tree (a genus of the polygamia monacia class), and then rub their faces all over with it. Their faces immediately swell and grow black; and the skin, being poisoned by the caustic oil of the nut, will, in the space of five or six days, come entirely off in large flakes, so that they cannot appear in public in less than a fortnight; by which time the new skin looks as fair as that of a new-born child. OH BRING ME BACK TO MY NATIVE HOME. A BALLAD. BY RICHARD RYAN. OH bring me back to my native home Oh I long to look on that clear sky Place me again in my fav'rite bark, DUELLING IN GERMANY. harmless, or inflicting now and then a wound in the face, have proved fatal in very few instances; the vital parts of the body being carefully protected against all danger. The fectation of the delicate sense of honour, cause of these duels lies in a premature afwhich revolts at the least offence. Any improper remark is accordingly considered a provocation, and is followed by a challenge. The government punishes all offences of this sort according to the force of the law; but its measures are too weak in proportion to the greatness of the evil. The rigour with which the severest laws are enforced in the military in the army very rare. department, has made duels between officers An equal severity has never been applied to the universities. Great surprise has been expressed by foreigners, that this spirit of chivalry expires with the academical years. For at the entrance upon practical life, the young men devote themselves entirely to their vocation; and a duel in civil life is as great a rarity in Germany as in New England.-North American Review. INSTINCT OF LIONS. THE Author of the "Economy of Nature," gives a wonderful proof of the instinct of lions. In those arid tracks, where rivers and fountains are denied, the lion lives in a perpetual fever. There the pelican makes her nest; and in order to cool her young ones, and accustom them to an element they are afterwards to be conversant in, brings from afar, in her great gular pouch, sufficient water to fill the nest. The lion, and other wild beasts, approach and quench their thirst; yet never injure the unfledged birds, as if conscious that their destruction would immediately put an end to those grateful supplies. THE practice of duelling, the origin of which loses itself in the middle ages, is common to all the German universities. The laws enacted for the suppression of this evil, vary under the different governments, but are generally ineffectual. Reprehensible as the practice is, it is there attended with less mischief than might be supposed. These contests present a praiseworthy combination of discretion and valour. They are fought with a peculiar kind of swords, in the use of which the young men generally display great dexterity, because they practise this art as a branch of gymnastics, in the schools of skilful masters, authorized by the government. The duels are, accordingly, for the most part, SAGACITY OF DOGS. A SHORT time back, a gentleman residing in the upper part of Caernarvonshire, received an invitation from a gentleman residing in Middlewich, to spend a month with him. The gentleman accepted the invitation, and took with him a favourite greyhound. The next day after their arrival, a mastiff, belonging to the inviter, attacked the greyhound, and gave him a good drubbing. The greyhound immediately took to his heels and fled home to Caernarvonshire, a distance of about ninety miles, and the family there were much surprised to see the dog return without his |