that they would burn his notes;-which they accordingly did, with great assiduity; forgetting, that in burning his notes, they were destroying his debts, and that for every note which went into the flames, a correspondent value went into the banker's pocket. A gentleman in speaking of a nobleman's wife, of great rank and fortune, lamented very much that she had no children. A medical gentleman who was present observed, that to have no children was a great misfortune, but he thought he had remarked it was hereditary in some families. Take any instance of this branch of the ridiculous, and you will always find an apparent relation of ideas leading to a complete inconsistency. There are some bulls so extremely fallacious, that any man may imagine himself to have been betrayed into them; but these are rare: and, in general, it is a poor contemptible species of amusement; a delight in which evinces a very bad taste in wit.-Sydney Smith.

PREACHING AND PRACTICE.

Dr. Channing had a brother, a physician, and at one time they both lived in Boston. One day, a countryman in search of a divine, knocked at the doctor's door, when the following dialogue ensued:"Does Mr. Channing live here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Can I see him?"

"I am he."

"Who-you?"

"Yes, sir."

"You must have altered considerably since I heard you preach!"

"Oh, I see your mistake now. It's my brother who preaches. I practise."

แ

LOVE OF MONEY.

Mirabeau," said Rivarol, "is capable of any thing for money; even a good action."

MARK OF GENIUS.

Many persons think it a mark of genius to be eccentric, and to depart from the common road, or to do things in an uncommon way, like the lady in Pope's works, who drank her tea by stratagem; or like Hudibras, who could wisely tell—

"what hour o' the day

The clock does strike, by algebra."

INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF ENJOYMENT.

Mankind are always happier for having been happy; so that if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence, by the memory of it. A childhood passed with a due mixture of rational indulgence, under fond and wise parents, diffuses over the whole of life a feeling of calm pleasure; and, in extreme old age, is the very last remembrance which time can erase from the mind of man. No enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is confined to the present moment. A man is the happier for life,

from having made once an agreeable tour, or lived for any length of time with pleasant people, or enjoyed any considerable interval of innocent pleasure; which contributes to render old men so inattentive to the scenes before them, and carries them back to a world that is past, and to scenes never to be renewed again.-Sydney Smith.

HANDWRITING.

Hood gives some good advice upon this subject, which he submits to the particular attention of "poets and prosers, who aspire to write in miscellanies; and, above all, the palpitating untried, who meditate the offer of their maiden essays to established periodicals." He advises these writers, to "take care to cultivate a good, plain, bold, round text; to set up Tomkins as well as Pope or Dryden for a model, and to have an eye to their pot-hooks.

"Of all things, therefore, be legible; and to that end, practise in penmanship. If you have never learned, take six lessons of Mr. Carstairs. Be sure to buy the best paper, the best ink, the best pens, and then sit down and do the best you can; as the schoolboys do-put out your tongue, and take pains. So ye shall haply escape the rash rejection of a jaded editor; so, having got in your hand, it is possible that your head may follow; and so, last not least, ye may fortunately avert those awful mistakes of the press, which sometimes ruin a poet's sublimest effusion, by pantomimically transforming his 'roses' into

'noses;' his 'angels' into 'angles;' and all his 'happiness' into 'pappiness.'

PATRIOTISM.

"Patriots," said Sir Robert Walpole, "are easily raised; I have myself, made many a one. "Tis but to refuse an unreasonable demand, and up springs a patriot."

This is in the spirit of Tom Brown's saying: "A patriot is generally made by a pique at court."

PUNCH.

That Punch made his appearance in the puppetshow of the Deluge, most persons know; his exclamation of "Hazy weather, master Noah!" having been preserved by tradition.-The Doctor.

CLASS OF CONVERSATIONALISTS.

Swift describes a class of tiresome conversationalists, who should be driven from all pleasant society: these are "people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no consequence, nor at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen every day." He then proceeds, with some illiberality: "and this I have observed more frequently among the Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of time or place; which kind of discourse, if it were not

a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gesture, peculiar to that country, would be hardly tolerable."

PUNS.

I have mentioned puns. They are, I believe, what I have denominated them-the wit of words. They are exactly the same to words that wit is to ideas, and consist in the sudden discovery of relations in language. A pun, to be perfection in its kind, should contain two distinct meanings; the one, common and obvious; the other, more remote; and in the notice which the mind takes of the relation between these two sets of words, and in the surprise which that relation excites, the pleasure of a pun consists. Miss Hamilton, in her book on Education, mentions the instance of a boy so very neglectful, that he never could be brought to read the word patriarchs; but whenever he met with it, he pronounced it partridges. A friend of the writer, observed to her, that it could hardly be considered a mere piece of negligence, for it appeared to him, that the boy in calling them partridges, was making game of the patriarchs. Now, here are two distinct meanings contained in the same phrase: for to make game of the patriarchs is to laugh at them; or to make game of them, is, by a very extravagant and laughable sort of ignorance of words, to rank them among pheasants, partridges, and other such delicacies, which the law takes under its protection, and calls game; and