keep the Wandering Jew before your eyes-for did you incautiously swallow a double dose, you would live to eternity.

There is much that is dangerous in London, which should be cautiously guarded against,-and human destruction is not confined, by any means, to patent medicines. The category would be tedious to set out in full. Be wide awake to the driving of a butcher's boy, who has emperilled dinner by stopping to look for half an hour at Punch and Judy in the adjacent street-or to that of a doctor without practice. Eschew gentlemen "from Ireland," who make assurance doubly sure, by a pledge of honour at every sentence. To propose to a lady on the first evening that you sport a toe with her at Baron Nathan's weekly bal dansante, is rather hazardous nor would I recommend you to accept a bill for a gentleman, previously unknown, whose acquaintance you were so fortunate as to make in the transit of "Waterman, No. 7," between London Bridge and the pier at Gravesend. A Californian security, by every account, is unexceptionable. I hate trouble-and hence I prefer a cheque on Coutts', it is so handy and presentable. At an Urban-plate-house you can have your steak for sevenpence-halfpenny, with one penny to the fair administratrix. At the Blue Posts, in Cork Street, it costs a little more—but when the metallics will permit, I always stand the difference. I have a silly prejudice in favour of light-complexioned table-linen-and-it is, I trust, a pardonable weakness-when I confess that I incline to a fourpronged implement in silver, rather than the bi-furcated article generally in city use, attendant on a knife with wiped blade and horn handle.

Should you be of that order termed "private gentleman," which, generally meaneth, a person not required to resort either to trade or profession for a maintenance,-time may hang heavy on your hands. Could you manage to get into a Chancery suit, you are certain of occupation during life or if you have a fancy for figures, examine the Walbrook vestry-books, balance the accounts, and you can agreeably occupy leisure time, and even wet Sundays, for the next seven years.

In selecting your city hostelrie, go always to a singing establishment. Are you ill? the landlord and his staff never go to bed-and if you seek your dormitory in good health, you are lulled "to pleasure and soft repose" by a serenade-no charge additional.

If a poetical shop-bill be insinuated into your hand, repair instanter to the establishment pointed out. You may rest assured that the proprietor is a man above the common caste-a poetic citizen you may safely deal with the Muses, and no mercenary considerations engrossing his attention.

Dulce est dissipere-and a rat-affair in Smithfield is extremely interesting. Back the varmin always against the dog. Reports touching the hocussing of the little animals have crept into circulation. The charge is grossly libellous-for gentlemen in the rat-line are "full of honour as a corps of cavalry."

• Doctor Ollapod.

Are you in want of wine? repair to a city auction. If the gentleman honoured with instructions for its disposal, declares that it is vintage 1738, and, consequently, one hundred and eleven years in bottle, bid fearlessly. If he further add that it was a self-importation, not only bottled, but even corked, by the great-grandfather of the late and lamented proprietor, you may safely advance five shillings a dozen additional upon this guarantee. Implicit reliance may ever be reposed in the word of an auctioneer, for he would scorn to drop hammer upon desk, were the rigid facts of his statement not strict truth even to the letter-and to be verified, if necessary, upon affidavit before the Lord Mayor.

In horse-flesh the same hints may be generally attended to. Some men are unhappily of that infelicitous disposition, that they distrust everything and everybody. Be guarded against such sinister-minded examples of the body politic. Well, we suppose you want a horse— and you attend punctually at the auction hour, which is politely described as 12 for 1-an autioneering impertinence that nobody but that consummate impersonation of effrontery would venture to perpeYou will generally find the yard crowded with idle people, who would induce you to fancy they had designs upon a horse, although they could not afford milk to a house-cat. They examine, however, the animal produced with anxious attention-and while the gentleman in the pulpit, armed with his mallet, details the virtues of the quadruped, they maliciously take general exceptions. One gentleman perceives that the nag steps a little short-another detects a feather on his eye-a third will tender an affidavit that he is a regular roarer-while a fourth cunningly detects an incipient spavin. All these men are mere grumblers-and pass them unheeded. Up comes a plain and unpretending personage. He is none of the flash scamps that overrun cider-cellars and infest bazaars. He is merely a man from the country, and plainly dressed-blue coat, gilt buttons, a coloured vest, voluminous neck-protector, tights, and continuations. He is, moreover, florid in complexion, wears a broad-brimmed hat, and carries a double-thonged whip. He makes a rustic salutationbegs pardon for the liberty he is about to take-but having known the horse at hammer since he was foaled, and having also perceived that you had an eye turned in that direction, he begs to say, that what could have induced the proprietor to part with him, the horse, altogether passeth his understanding. On the strength of such disinterested assurances you come out stoutly with ten pounds over whatever might have been a preliminary limitation. You secure the quadruped-give the man with the florid countenance a glass of brandy-cold, to feed his nasal salamander-and like every man who has the conscious feeling that he has not played deaf adder when Wisdom was crying in the street, you part from your fat friend, and proceed on your way rejoicing.

Timid equestrians are generally suspicious; but in your transit from the repository to your own domicile à cheval, let no trifling occurrence shake your confidence in the daisy-cutter you have so happily become possessor of. Does he shy? Something, no doubt, has alarmed him; and have you not been startled frequently yourself? Does he trip? That is an every-day accident to which horses and men are liable alike; and recollect, that as he has four legs and you only two, he has a right to

make two stumbles for your one. Does he fall? The fault rests entirely with yourself: what have you a bridle for but to keep him on his pins? Is he a whistler? How frequently have you whistled, and yet you are neither consumptive nor asthmatic? Shows he a mucous discharge at the nostril ? Have you not been afflicted with cold in the head, and been obliged to have frequent recurrence to your pockethandkerchief? Does he bolt into a gateway or stable-lane? Have you never, on perceiving a gentleman of the tribe of Levi with a prominent proboscis and a restless eye in the advance, cut round a corner or vanished in a by-lane? Does he refuse his oats? After a night at the Cider Cellar have you not declined breakfast? Does he run away with you? That is an undoubted proof of high courage that will not brook restriction. Does he demolish a donkey-cart of crockery in the performance of this last exploit? All you have to do is to stick close to the saddle, if you can, and long before the dealer in delf can recover his astonished senses, you will be in another parish and safe from pursuit? Do you ride over a biped? What business had he to cross the street? and if he has two or three bones dislocated, pray what are hospitals for but to re-unite them?

From equine and other casualties how many men have dated afterfortune and deduced their immortality? But for his canter on the callender's horse to Edmonton, would John Gilpin's memory have survived that of any haberdasher of his day? With a snaffle in his hand, and a sufficiency of pigskin to repose his person on, who could take all that was in a three-year-old out of him more skilfully than Sam Chiffney? and are his happiest turf efforts now remembered? No; they are swamped in the stream of time: while Mazeppa, a gentleman who ran the longes trace on record without saddle, bridle, or a pull from the start to the close, is poetized by Byron, and may be seen at Astley's large as life. I knew an Irish gentleman who secured 20,000l. by rescuing a lady, through the agency of his umbrella, from close imprisonment in Newman's gateway, where she had been driven for shelter by a shower; and another who, after three infelicitous seasons and an exhausted purse, was miraculously brought into prominent notice, by being carried at racing speed and a vicious mare into a confectioner's,-a feat that went the round of the papers, and was miraculously achieved without fracturing a jelly-glass.

I am Hibernian in birth, parentage, education, and affections-and to my well-beloved countrymen, in the plenitude of past experience, I would extend very valuable advice. I never knew a large investment in the Three per Cents. secured by rolling down the hill in Greenwich Park, nor, on wooden piers, are ladies of fortune generally predominant. The safest course for a gentleman about to marry, is to solicit, in limine, a letter of introduction to the lady's stock-broker-not that he can have a doubt touching the amount of assets stated, but it is still pleasant to ascertain whether they are in Consols or Long Annuities. Caution should be observed in conducting Hymeneal transactions. The happiness of a Cork gentleman, I knew well, was blighted by a West-end auctioneer, who seduced him into matrimony with his daughter, and went into the Gazette the second week of the honeymoon, paying a composition to his creditors of two-pence-threefarthings in the pound. In the case of your being bold enough to grapple with a widow, a direct reference to Doctors Commons will be the only security you can have against the machinations and devices of

a class of gentlewomen, reputed to be doubly dangerous. Ladies, liberally supplied with marriageable daughters, such as you encounter at every watering-place, must also be suspiciously regarded. I would not commit matrimony on the strength of an Australian uncle with no family and the monetary reputation of half a plum, were the Australian even backed by a second cousin in the Spice Islands, a warm man in mace, nutmegs, and various peppers. The audacious pretences of people now-a-days passeth human understanding. Not long since I received a pressing invitation to winter with a young gentleman at his hunting-box in Leicestershire-lent him, on the strength of a season's run, five pounds seventeen and sixpence in odd moneys-and within a fortnight learned that his rural retreat was not discoverable, but his town residence, for the next three months, was the Millbank Penitentiary. A Methodist preacher picked my pocket in an Omnibus-and I was obliged, no later than last spring, to bind an Irish gentleman in a recognizance to keep the peace, because I declined joining him in a cognovit to his tailor, and becoming security besides for four shillings and sixpence weekly to the parochial authorities, being the penal consequence on his part of broken vows.

My own career is finished-I am dead to idle Hymeneal overturesand no lady through the "Sunday Times," shall seduce me into the expenditure of a letter-stamp. Any matrimonial transaction must be conducted on business principles-and, whether virgin or bereaved, none need make an application unless her title-deeds accompany the tender of her hand, the former to be laid professionally before my solicitor. An ad valorem consideration, according to age specified, will be expected from elderly young ladies-and also an authenticated record of their baptism. No gentlewoman under twenty-one will be treated with- and all statements respecting general amiability and affectionate disposition, will, upon detection, be committed to the fire. Harp accomplishments to me are merely waste of paper-as, in my estimation, the manipulation of catgut is of no consequence when compared with the construction of a harrico-while even a remote acquaintance with Latin and Greek, will be fatal to the applicant. Finally, should proposals be entertained, a personal inspection of the candidate will be a sine qua non.

N.B.-Railroad securities and good expectations are totally repudiated. Religion not objected to, except Jumper and Southcotian. A tender of character without cash will be but the idle expenditure of a postage stamp. No Irish need apply and an affidavit from the applicant will be indispensable, declaring that she never danced "the Polka."

A GLANCE AT HOLLAND AND THE DUTCH.

BY THE AUTHOR OF

"WAYSIDE PICTURES THROUGH FRANCE AND Belgium."

HOLLAND is, in one aspect, the most interesting country in Europe. Its interest consists in the complete absence of every feature of natural beauty, and of every natural resource that confers interest upon other countries. It derives its attraction exclusively from its unlikeness to all other inhabited places on the face of the globe, and from the extraordinary proofs it affords of the power of man to subdue the elements to his use by the exercise of patient industry and sagacious forethought.

There is no country which so remarkably illustrates the practicability of vanquishing natural difficulties by the simple application of intelligence and perseverance. And here again Holland presents an extraordinary contrast to other countries. The difficulties which the Dutch have vanquished are of a kind that rarely exist elsewhere, and never except in so limited a degree as to be easily overcome. Nor is this all. In Holland, the conquest of these difficulties not only constitutes the entire foundation of the kingdom, and the prevention of their recurrence the perpetual business of the State; but they have been conquered, and are kept down, without any of those helps and expedients which exist elsewhere, and by the aid of which the subjugation of such obstacles is rendered less a work of ingenuity than toil. In all other countries where drainage is necessary, or where embankments are to be formed, quarries, mines, and forests abound to furnish the requisite instruments and materials for the hands of labour: in Holland, no such resources exist. There is not a single quarry, mine, or forest in the whole country.

It is in this point of view that Holland appears almost incomprehensible. Without stones to build houses, walls, or ramparts, or to make roads; without iron to fabricate the necessary implements; without any of the minerals which enter into the ordinary operations of industry, the Dutch have produced results greater both in extent and in the marvellous disproportion between the means and the end, than all the countries of the civilized world. They have literally effected by the naked labour of their hands, that upon which the most skilful appliances of art have elsewhere been concentrated frequently in vain. The mere conception is gigantic; the performance prodigious; the issue incredible. It must be seen to be understood. No description can convey the slightest notion of the way in which Holland has been gathered, particle by particle, out of the waste of waters, of the strange aspect of the country, and the incessant vigilance and wondrous precautions by which it is preserved. Holland is, in the fullest sense, an alluvion of the sea. It consists of mud and sand rescued from the ocean, and banked up on all sides. Produced by the most dexterous and indefatigable exertions, it can be maintained only by artificial means. If the efforts