no notice of the aggressor at that time, but getting up from his chair calmly, he began to pick up the slices of bread and butter, and the fragments of his china, repeating very mildly

"Invenias etiam disjecti membra poeta."

170.

KING WILLIAM III. had a Frenchman who

took care of his Majesty's pointers, and whose business it was likewise to load and deliver his fowling-pieces to the King. It happened, however, one day that monsieur forgot to bring out any shot with him to the field. Not daring to confess his negligence to so passionate a man and so eager a sportsman as the King, he gave his Majesty the gun charged only with powder. The King firing without effect, the cunning Frenchman shrugged up his shoulders, turned up his eyes, folded his hands, and extolling the King's skill in shooting, vowed he had never seen sa majesté miss his aim before in his life.

IT

171.

T was at Manchester that I beheld for the first time the new-risen star of the harmonic world, Mara. Her fires are very dazzling, it must be confessed. She has, however, some harsh notes in the lower part of her voice when she throws it out fortissimo; and the excursive cadences she uses are too gay ornaments for the mourning robes of Handel's solemn songs.

Her Italian pathetic songs are enchanting; her bravura ones stupendous; but those violent efforts, though miraculously successful, were as unpleasing to my ear as they were visibly painful to the syren who hazarded them. Ah! it was not tones in such supernatural altitudes that made Ulysses struggle in his voluntary chains.

Certainly, however, Mara is a glorious singer. It is the false taste of the multitude which tempts her to aim at astonishing her audience, rather than affecting their passions.-Seward.

CIBB

172.

IBBER being asked by a nobleman of great eminence why he would not permit a young player to try his abilities in a favourite part, replied, "My Lord, it is not with us as with you. Your Lordship is sensible that there is no difficulty in filling places at court; you cannot be at a loss for persons to act their parts there. But I assure you it is quite otherwise in our theatrical world; if we should invest people with characters who are incapable of supporting them, we should be undone."

A

173.

PERSON present at the performance of a serious opera on an Italian stage, after having displayed great signs of satisfaction, cried out, "The composer deserves to be made chief musician to the Virgin, and to lead a choir of angels."

174.

WHEN

HEN the Corn Laws Abolition Act came to the House of Lords, Brougham said to Lyndhurst that he was bound to defend it. "No,"

answered he, "this is unnecessary, for the Duke of Wellington has secured a majority in its favour, although he thinks as badly of it as I should have done seven years ago. Thus he addressed a Protectionist peer who came to lament to him that he must on this occasion vote against the Government, having such a bad opinion of the bill-‘Bad opinion of the bill, my Lord! You can't have a worse opinion of it than I have; but it was recommended from the throne, it has passed the Commons by a large majority, and we must all vote for it. The Queen's Government must be supported!""

"OLIV

175.

LIVER CROMWELL, the Protector," says. Anthony Wood, "loved a good voice and instrumental music well." Mr James Quin, a student of C. C. Oxon., a good singer, was introduced to him. "He heard him sing with very great delight, liquored him with sack, and in conclusion said to him, 'Mr Quin, you have done very well; what shall I do for you?' To which Quin made answer, with great compliments (of which he had command), and with a great grace, 'that your Highness would be pleased to restore me to my student's place;' which the Protector did accordingly, and so he kept it to his dying day."

H

176.

THE "Theodosius and Constantia❞ of Dr Lang

horne owes its origin to the story of two lovers of this name, told by Addison in the Spectator, No. 164.

177.

A PAINTER and great connoisseur whom

Frederick the Great had disgusted by rejecting some pictures of his recommending, said, speaking of the King, "The man imagines, because he can play on the German flute, and has been praised by a parcel of poets and philosophers, and has gained ten or a dozen of battles, that therefore he understands painting; but fighting battles is one thing, and a true knowledge of painting is another, and that he will find to his cost."

178.

T is not generally known that Mr Addison borrowed several hints of Cato's soliloquy, at the beginning of the fifth act of the tragedy of "Cato" from May's Supplement to Lucan.

A

179.

FEW months before Hogarth was seized with the malady which deprived society of one of its most distinguished ornaments, he proposed to his matchless pencil the work he has entitled a "Tail-piece." The first idea of this is said to have been started in company, while the convivial glass was circulating at his own table. "My next

undertaking," said Hogarth, "shall be the end of all things." "If that is the case," replied one of his friends, "your business will be finished, for there will be an end of the painter." "There will

so," answered Hogarth, sighing heavily, "and therefore the sooner my work is done the better." Accordingly he began the next day, and continued his design with a diligence that seemed to indicate an apprehension (as the report goes) he should not live till he had completed it.

This, however, he did in the most ingenious manner, by grouping everything which could denote the end of all things :-a broken bottlean old broom worn to the stump-the butt end of an old firelock-a cracked bell-a bow unstrung -a crown tumbled in pieces-towers in ruins-the sign-post of a tavern called the World's End, tumbling-the moon in her wane-the map of the globe burning-a gibbet falling, the body gone, and the chains which held it dropping down— Phoebus and his horses dead in the clouds-a vessel wrecked-Time with his hour-glass and scythe broken, a tobacco-pipe in his mouth, the last whiff of smoke going out-a play-book opened, with exeunt omnes stamped in the corner-an empty purse and a statute of bankruptcy taken out against Nature. "So far good," cried Hogarth; "nothing remains but this," taking his pencil in a sort of prophetic fury, and dashing off the similitude of a painter's pallet broken. "Finis!" ex