ALMANACS.

In the last century, when a countryman had walked to the nearest town, thirty miles distant, for the express purpose of seeing an almanac, the first that had been heard of in those parts, his inquiring neighbours crowded round the man on his return. "Well, well," said he, "I know not! it maffles and talks. But all I could make out is, that Collop Monday falls on a Tuesday next year.”—The Doctor.

MATERIALISM.

Sydney Smith was once dining with a French gentleman, who was indulging, not, perhaps, in the best possible taste, both before and during dinner, in a variety of freethinking speculations, and ended by avowing himself a materialist. "Very good soup this," said Mr. Smith. "Oui, Monsieur, c'est excellente." "Pray, sir, do you believe in a cook?"

SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS.

With some persons the awes and terrors of youth last for ever and ever. I know, for instance, an old gentleman of sixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast, with a very agitated countenance, "I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr. Raine." Fancy had carried him back five and fifty years in the course of that evening. Dr. Raine and his rod were just as awful to him in his heart, then, as they had been at thirteen.-Thackeray.

FOUR INGREDIENTS IN CONVERSATION.

The first ingredient in conversation is truth; the next, good sense; the third, humour; and the fourth, wit.-Sir William Temple.

ENGLISH-GERMAN.

An English lady resident at Coblentz, one day wishing to order of her German servant (who did not understand English) a boiled fowl for dinner, Grettel was summoned, and that experiment began. It was one of the lady's fancies, that the less her words resembled her native tongue, the more they must be like German. So her first attempt was to tell the maid that she wanted a cheeking, or keeking. The maid opened her eyes and mouth, and shook her head. "It's to cook," said the mistress, "to cook, to put in an iron thing, in a pit-pat-pot." "Ish understand risht," said the maid, in her Coblentz patois. "It's a thing to eat," said her mistress, "for dinnerfor deener-with sauce, soace- -sowose. What on earth am I to do?" exclaimed the lady in despair, but still making another attempt. "It's a little creature-a bird-a bard-a beard-a hen--a hone-a fowl-a fool; it's all covered with feathers-fathers-feeders!" "Ha, ha," cried the delighted German, at last getting hold of a catchword, "Ja, ja! fedders— ja wohl!" and away went Grettel, and in half an hour returned triumphantly, with a bundle of stationers' quills.-Hood.

SYDNEY SMITH ON CANNING.

When Mr. Canning is jocular he is strong; when he is serious he is like Samson in a wig; any ordinary person is a match for him; a song, an ironical letter, a burlesque ode, a smart speech of twenty minutes, full of gross misrepresentations and clever turns, excellent language, a spirited manner, lucky quotation, success in provoking dull men, some half information picked up in Pall Mall in the morning; these are our friend's natural weapons; all these things he can do; here I allow him to be truly great; nay, I will be just, and go still farther, if he would confine himself to these things, and consider the faceta and the playful to be the basis of his character, he would, for that species of man, be universally regarded as a person of a very good understanding; call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the affairs of a great nation, and it seems to me as absurd as if a butterfly were to teach bees to make honey. That he is an extraordinary writer of small poetry, and a diner-out of the highest lustre, I do most readily admit. After George Selwyn, and perhaps Tickell, there has been no such man for this half century. The foreign secretary is a gentleman, a respectable as well as a highly agreeable man in private life; but you may as well feed me with decayed potatoes, as console me for the miseries of Ireland, by the resources of his sense and his discretion. It is only the public situation which this gentleman holds, which

entitles me or induces me to say so much about him. He is a fly in amber; nobody cares about the fly: the only question is, How the devil did it get there? Nor do I attack him from the love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood a province.

PAYING FOR THINGS.

One cannot bear to pay for articles he used to get for nothing. When Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils at some stall in Mesopotamia, I think it went hard with him, reflecting upon his old goodly orchard, where he had so many for nothing.-Lamb.

GAIN OF A LOSS.

Montaigne has a pleasant story of a little boy, who, when his mother had lost a law-suit which he had always heard her speak of as a perpetual cause of trouble, ran up to her in great glee, to tell her of the loss, as a matter for congratulation and joy; the poor child thinking it was like losing a cough, or any other bodily ailment.-The Doctor.

ODD PARALLEL.

It was a clumsy and cruel contrivance of the Romans, to use hedge-hogs for clothes-brushes, and prepare them for it by starving them to death; our method of sweeping chimneys is not more ingenious, and little less inhuman.-Southey.

AN INTERRUPTION.

It is not easy to put me out of countenance, or interrupt the feeling of the time, by mere external noise or circumstance; yet once I was thoroughly done up. I was reciting at a particular house, the Remorse, and was in the midst of Athadra's description of the death of her husband, when a scrubby boy with a shining face set in dirt, burst open the door, and cried out: "Please, ma'am, master says, will you ha', or will you not ha', the pin round?"-Coleridge.

SECRET HISTORY OF BOOKS.

If the secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down along-side of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader.-Thackeray.

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION.

Sydney Smith, in Peter Plymley's Letters, after showing the folly of oppressing the Irish Catholics, says, "I admit there is a vast luxury in selecting a particular set of Christians, and in worrying them as a boy worries a puppy-dog; it is an amusement in which all the young English are brought up from their earliest days. Cruelty and injustice must, of course, exist; but why connect them with danger? Why," he asks, "torture a bull-dog, when you can get a frog or a rabbit?"