AMERICAN ICE.

Sydney Smith, in London, was shown a lump of American ice, upon which he remarked, "that he was glad to see any thing solvent come from America."

PLEASANT TIMES.

No arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.-Hobbes.

MECHANICAL DUTY.

Schiller used to say, that he found the great happiness of life, after all, to consist in the discharge of some mechanical duty.

CURRAN.

I caught the first glimpse of the little man through the vista of his garden. There he was-on a third time afterward, I saw him in a dress which you would imagine he had borrowed from his tipstaff— his hands on his sides; his under lip protruded; his face almost parallel with the horizon; and the important step and eternal attitude only varied by the pause during which his eye glanced from his guest to his watch, and from his watch reproachfully to his dining-room: it was an invariable peculiarity-one second after four o'clock, and he would not wait for

the viceroy. The moment he perceived me, he took me by the hand, said he would not have any one introduce me; and with a manner which I often thought was charmed, he at once banished every apprehension, and completely familiarized me at the priory. I had often seen Curran-often heard him -often read him; but no man ever knew any thing about him, who did not see him at his own table, with the few whom he selected. He was a little convivial deity; he soared in every region, and was at home in all-he touched every thing, and seemed as if he had created it; he mastered the human heart, with the same ease that he did his violin. You wept, and you laughed, and you wondered; and the wonderful creature who made you do all at will, never let it appear that he was more than your equal, and was quite willing, if you chose, to become your auditor. It is said of Swift that his rule was to allow a minute's pause after he had concluded, and then, if no person took up the conversation, to recommence himself. Curran had no conversational rule whatever: he spoke from impulse, and he had the art so to draw you into a participation, that, though you felt an inferiority it was quite a contented one. Indeed nothing could excel the urbanity of his demeanour. At the time I speak of he was turned sixty, yet he was as playful as a child. The extremes of youth and age were met in him: he had the experience of the one, and the simplicity of the other.-Philips's Recollections of Curran.

ACTION.

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.-Hazlitt.

EVERY MAN'S HOUSE HIS CASTLE."

The following is Lord Chatham's brilliant illustration of the celebrated maxim in English law, that every man's house is his castle: "The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter, the rain may enter-but the king of England cannot enter! all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement !"

ATTERBURY'S WIT.

Atterbury, the celebrated bishop of Rochester, the friend of the tory statesmen in the time of Queen Anne, happened to say in the House of Lords, while speaking on a certain bill then under discussion, that he had prophesied last winter this bill would be attempted in the present session, and he now was sorry to find he had proved a true prophet. Lord Coningsby, who spoke after the bishop, and always spoke in a passion, desired the house to remark that one of the right-reverend had set himself forth as a prophet; but, for his part, he did not know what

prophet to liken him to, unless to that furious prophet Balaam, who was reproved by his own ass. Atterbury, in reply, with great wit and calmness exposed this rude attack, concluding thus: "Since the noble lord has discovered in our manners such a similitude, I am well content to be compared to the prophet Balaam; but, my lords, I am at a loss how to make out the other part of the parallel: I am sure that I have been reproved by nobody but his lordship!"

CURIOUS REMARK ON VANITY.

Franklin says: "Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others who are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity, among the other comforts of life."

HAPPY EPITHET.

Lord Erskine, speaking of animals, and hesitating to call them brutes, hit upon a happy phrase—the mute creation.

BAD TRANSLATORS.

It was the remark of Madame La Fayette, that a bad translator was like an ignorant footman, whose blundering messages disgraced his master by the

awkwardness of the delivery, and frequently turned compliment into abuse, and politeness into rusticity.

BORES.

It is to be hoped that, with all the modern improvements, a mode will be discovered of getting rid of bores; for it is too bad that a poor wretch can be punished for stealing your pocket-handkerchief or gloves, and that no punishment can be inflicted on those who steal your time, and with it your temper and patience, as well as the bright thoughts that might have entered into your mind, (like the Irishman who lost the fortune before he had got it,) but were frightened away by the bore.-Byron.

SIR PHILIP FRANCIS.

A person having upon one occasion got Sir Philip Francis into a corner, and innocently mistaking his agitations and gestures for extreme interest in the narrative which he was administering to his patient, was somewhat confounded, when the latter, seizing him by the collar, exclaimed with an oath, that "Human nature could endure no more."

In all this, there was a consistency and uniformity that was extremely racy and amusing. He is not now present to cry out, "What does that mean, sir? what would you be at? No gibberish!" and therefore it may be observed that there was something exceedingly piquant in his character.