“ Like an unsubstantial pageant faded,

Left not a rack behind."

In addition to this account, subsequently furnished me by the beautiful actress herself, be it further known, that the drama in question had provided these youthful performers with the first original characters with which they had been intrusted; and their success in them was, of course, a result of vast import.

The scene so much dwelt upon in this little history was of the most vital importance to the piece; the last trial of which, on the morning of its first performance, had not been satisfactory to the anxious trio; and when they quitted the theatre, on their return to their respective homes to dinner, it was proposed that the representative of the lover should forthwith accompany the young couple to their lodgings, and there go through this most complicated portion of their evening's task,-in fact, give the most critical scene another rehearsal.

To this experiment I was an unintelligent witness; and had not my lamentable state of weakness and misconception at the time occasioned me to become insensible at the close of this earnest trial of stage effect, had I but remained at my window a minute longer, I should have had the gratification of seeing the dead arise, the murdered youth leap up, unscathed, and heart-whole in more respects than one (he being in reality the brother of the beautiful

female whose lover he enacted), and after diligently brushing his clothes from the effects of his dying struggles upon the floor, and kissing the soft cheeks of his charming sister, take a graceful leave, with every indication of satisfaction, to be confirmed by the evening's result.

BACHELORS' WIVES.

"Let sinful bachelors their woes deplore,
Full well they merit all they feel—and more.”

WHO is there in this grumbling state of existence, that has not at some querulous moment pronounced servants to be the greatest plagues upon earth? and, amongst the minor miseries, the briars of this working-day world, is there one more to be dreaded than the necessity of filling the vacant space of a discharged help, by the admission of a new hindrance-a stranger to one's household and habits? The very first intimation of a fresh domestic unavoidably suggests to the active imagination the multifarious evils of Pandora's box-in a reversed position-Hope being always at the top instead of the bottom; and under that hope, what a mass of care is haply congregated!

A new servant may be likened in some respects to a new book, which, having for a certain period been in circulation, is transferred to our hands by the last possessor when done with; and what a volume of iniquity may we not have to wade through! What countless defects may there not be hidden under a neat and promising exterior! What latent mischief may there not lurk within its leaves! How many blots and incorrigible faults may lurk behind a fair title page. What false morality may tarnish every chapter of the work. How many original and acquired blemishes meet the eye!-dogs' ears and other deteriorations to disgust the fastidious taste during perusal! Or, should it haply come fresh and new into our hands, how many passages, even then, will there be found for correction and excision before we can safely trust it in one's family, or recommend it to the approval of others. Under the most favourable aspect, how brief may be the Table of Contents, how vast the List of Errata! And after all the attention and time bestowed upon the subject

"Le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle."

Some remedies are confessedly worse than the disease to which we would apply them, and, for my own part, I would "put up with" any thing exclusive of the honest, clean, and sober, which constitute the sine qua non of good housewifery, rather than encounter a New Broom, which, as a matter of course, will

sweep clean away every system of the old one, especially in the culinary department, even to the repudiation of the last chosen furniture of the kitchen shelves and scullery appurtenances, which places are never, by any chance, provided with any article that said new broom can conveniently or effectively handle.

The ills we know are proverbially light in comparison with those we know not of, and as I am of an indolent spirit, I would, if possible submit, as I have just said, to those of old, rather than encounter a strange face under my roof-an apparition which never fails to appal my sight with a new Gorgon; nevertheless, I am free to own that in this submission of mine "to present ills" rather than to "horrible imaginings" there are drawbacks, and, it must be confessed, heavy ones, too.

One day, a cockney tradesman combating in his own way some objections on my side to an article of manifold use, a multum in parvo, which he had recommended to my notice, and which, from its very complexity I doubted being eligible to every purpose it professed to answer, the honest man bid me remember that "there never was no good ill-conweeniency without its bad ill-conweeniency," a remark which struck me at the time to be as sound in its philosophy as in its orthography; and has served me on like occasions of argument, never failing to convince; I have found it applicable to many subjects-but to servants in particular,