tainly somewhat curtailed my library: my books are not numerous, but they are select, and I hope they have been perused with proper dispositions. I have prepared myself for this high profession rather by the study of a few good works, than by the composition of a great many bad ones. I am not ashamed of my poverty; but I should be ashamed of my wealth, could I have stooped to acquire it, by servility and corruption. If I rise not to rank, I shall at least be honest; and should I ever cease to be so, many an example shows me that an ill-gained reputation, by making me the more conspicuous, would only make me the more universally and the more notoriously contemptible!"

FEMALE EDUCATION.

The pursuit of knowledge is the most innocent and interesting occupation which can be given to the female sex; nor can there be a better method of checking a spirit of dissipation than by diffusing a taste for literature. The true way to attack vice, is by setting up something else against it. Give to women, in early youth, something to acquire, of sufficient interest and importance to command the application of their mature faculties, and to excite their perseverance in future life; teach them that happiness is to be derived from the acquisition of knowledge, as well as the gratification of vanity; and you will raise up a much more formidable barrier against dissipation than a host of invectives and exhortations can supply. Sydney Smith.

EDUCATION AT BOTANY BAY.

Sydney Smith, in enforcing the necessity of educating the children of the convicts at Botany Bay, humorously remarks, "Nothing but the earliest attention to the habits of children, can restrain the erratic finger from the contiguous scrip, or prevent the hereditary tendency to larcenous abstraction."

PITT AND WALPOLE.

In a debate, in which Mr. Pitt and some of his young friends had violently attacked old Horace Walpole, the latter complained of the self-sufficiency of the young men of the day, on which Mr. Pitt got up with great warmth, beginning with these words: "With the greatest reverence for the gray hairs of the honourable gentleman-" upon which Walpole pulled off his wig, and showed his head covered with gray hairs, which occasioned a general laughter, in which Pitt joined, and the dispute subsided.

CULTIVATION OF THE MENTAL POWERS.

The age of a cultivated mind is often more complacent, and even more luxurious than the youth. It is the reward of the due use of the endowments bestowed by nature: while they, who in youth have made no provision for age, are left like an unsheltered tree, stripped of its leaves and branches, shaking and withering before the cold blasts of winter. In truth, nothing is so happy to itself and so attractive to others, as a genuine and ripened imagination, that

knows its own powers, and throws forth its treasures with frankness and fearlessness. The more it produces, the more capable it becomes of production; the creative faculty grows by indulgence; and the more it combines, the more means and varieties of combinations it discovers.-Sir Egerton Brydges.

GOOD RULE.

One of the wisest rules that can be observed in study, is to eschew those subjects which afford no footing to the mind.-St. John.

ACCESSION TO THE THRONE.

A traveller, benighted in a wild and mountainous country, at length beheld the welcome light of a neighbouring habitation. He urged his horse towards it, when, instead of a house, he approached a kind of illuminated chapel, from whence issued the most alarming sounds he had ever heard. Though greatly surprised and terrified, he ventured to look through a window of the building, when he was amazed to see a large assembly of cats, who, arranged in solemn order, were lamenting over the corpse of one of their own species, which lay in state, and was surrounded with the various emblems of sovereignty. Alarmed and terrified at this extraordinary spectacle, he hastened from the place with greater eagerness than he approached it, and arriving some time after at the house of a gentleman, who never turned the wanderer from his gate, the impressions of what he had

seen were so visible on his countenance, that his friendly host inquired into the cause of his anxiety. He accordingly told him his story, and having finished it, a large family cat, who had lain during the narrative before the fire, immediately started up, and very articulately exclaimed, "Then I am King of the Cats!" and having thus announced his new dignity, the animal darted up the chimney, and was seen no more.-Lord Lyttleton's Letters.

SHERIDAN'S WIT.

Sheridan's wit was eminently brilliant, and almost always successful; it was like all his speaking, exceedingly well prepared, but it was skillfully introduced and happily applied; and it was well mingled also with humour, occasionally descending to farce. How little it was the inspiration of the moment, all men were aware who knew his habits; and in the secret note-books of this famous wit, we are enabled to trace the jokes in embryo, with which he had so often made the walls of St. Stephen's shake, in a merriment excited by the happy appearance of a sudden unpremeditated effusion.

Take an instance in an extract from Sheridan's common-place book: "He employs his fancy in his narrative, and keeps his recollections for his wit." The same idea is expanded into, "When he makes his jokes you applaud the accuracy of his memory, and 'tis only when he states his facts that you admire the flights of his imagination." But the thought was

too good to be thus wasted on the desert air of a common-place book. So it came forth at the expense of Kelly, who, having been a composer of music, became a wine merchant. "You will," said the ready wit, "import your music, and compose your wine." Nor was this service exacted from an old 'idea thought sufficient: so in the House of Commons, an easy, and apparently off-hand parenthesis was thus filled with it, at the cost of Mr. Dundas: "(who generally resorts to his memory for his jokes, and to his imagination for his facts.)"-Brougham.

OATS IN SCOTLAND.

Lord Elibank made a happy retort on Dr. Johnson's definition of oats: "a grain, which in England is generally given to the horses, but in Scotland supports the people." "Yes," said he, "and where else will you see such horses and such men ?”

DR. JOHNSON'S CLUB-ROOM.

The club-room is before us, and the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke, and the tall thin form of Langton; the courtly sneer of Beauclerc, and the beaming smile of Garrick; Gibbon rapping his snuffbox, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure, which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we