truly observed that Haydn himself need not have blushed to lay claim to this trio; if you will turn to No. VI. of the fifth set of the incomparable symphonies of this great composer, you will find that the subject of your airy dream is the identical trio to the minuet in Eb. It is fanciful, original, and delicious, but, I am obliged to add, my friend, that it is not an original conception of yours.""

"I can furnish you with another illustration in aid of your theory, (said Asmodeus.) Some years since, one of those fanciful projectors, who are almost as abundant and eccentric in your country as they were in Swift's Laputa, took out a patent for an air bed, or a bed filled with common air, instead of chaff or feathers. Now, any person conversant with the works of Ben Jonson would swear that the fellow had borrowed the hint from his play of the Alchymist, wherein Sir Epicure Mammon says,

'I'll have my bed blown up, not stuff'd,
Down is too hard.'

Here is, apparently, a pretty palpable plagiarism for you, although the mechanic, probably, knew no more of Ben Jonson than of the man in the moon."

"I see a person dressed like a gentleman, (said Ferdinand,) entering a low pot-house yonder, with a roll of parchment in his hand; what is he about?"

"That, (said Asmodeus,) is a red-hot No-Popery man, whose zeal for the Establishment is so fervent that he has promised a quart of ale to every man in the club-room, up stairs, who will sign the anti-Catholic petition he has in his hand. They are, most of them, carters and porters, who know as much of the merits of the question as about the longitude; but they have been told that if the Ministers succeed, the New Custom-house, when finished, will be turned into a Popish Cathedral, and no Protestant cart horses be permitted to ply on the quays. The club consists of a dozen, (con

tinued Asmodeus,) and this is the third petition on the same subject, to which they have affixed their marks this evening at the rate of a pot of ale per man. When their petition is presented, these men in buckram,' will, however, be eulogized by some parliamentary orator, as honest men of plain understanding, in the lower ranks of life, who are just as capable of judging of the value of the Protestant church, and of the effect of securities, as the most learned and respectable men in the country.

"Let us turn from this disgusting scene, (said Ferdinand;) it has not even novelty to recommend it, as the same dishonest and dishonourable manoeuvres, I am ashamed to say' prevail throughout the country at this moment." (To be continued.)

MUTUAL WANTS.

Addressed to Election Canvassers in the true spirit of an independent freeman who cares nothing for the merits of the parties, but wishes the friends of the candidates to expend their surplus cash in doing the “ needful."

Why bedaub thus our walls,
With your nonsensical scrawls,
Expending cash, paper, and time!
What you want is our votes,

What we want is your notes,

But we don't want your prose nor your rhyme.

one thing

JEU DE MOT, FOUNDED IN FACT.

Says Gripe to a Dun,

Who had often to run,

For a debt of a score, or about it,

"Do you think, blood-an'-ounds!
I'm within twenty pounds!"

"No, it seems, (says the Dun,) you're without it."

As never

PERFORMED AT COVENT GARDEN OR DRURY-LANE WITH UNBOUNDED APPLAUSE.

"And as for rhetoric, he could not ope

His mouth, but out there flew a trope."-Hudibras.

"Then he would talk-ye gods, how he would talk!"-Alexander the Great.

INTRODUCTION.

In reviving "The Peep at the Forum, or School for Orators," we deem it necessary to offer a few prefatory remarks upon the original design of the work, and the motives which have led to its republication. About twenty years ago, Mr. Ryley, the well-known author of the "Itinerant," and several other works, and of a number of excellent comic songs, established a debating society in Liverpool which was very numerously and respectably attended. He himself officiated as president, and in that capacity gave

general satisfaction by his urbanity of manners, his taste and discrimination in deciding upon any disputed points of order, and his talent and impartiality in summing up at the conclusion of the debate.

We have frequently been present at the Liverpool Forum, during very animated and interesting discussions; although, as in all such places, persons would not unfrequently take a share in the debates who were as destitute of information, as they were of every other requisite for public speaking; and if we were occasionally much edified by the speeches of several of the gentlemen who figured away at the Marble-street Room, we were still more frequently diverted by the efforts of those who, notwithstanding the coughings and hissings of their auditors, to which they were regularly subjected, were determined, in spite of nature and their stars," to become orators. We are half ashamed to confess, that effusions of this description were more to our taste at that time of day, than those of the superior class to which we have before adverted; and when we frequented the Forum, it was rather with the expectation of amusement from the flounderings and absurdities of the inferior tyros, and oratorical debutants, than from any hope of instruction from the speeches of those well-informed men.

Whatever ascetics may pretend to the contrary, laughing, according to our notion, is a most rational amusement. We read in Proverbs, (xvii. 22,) that "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit drieth the bones." One of our poets talks, indeed, of "The loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind;" but a philosopher, whose opinion has more weight with us, has, on the contrary, shrewdly remarked, that "man is the only animal that is gifted with the power of laughter;" and, as we are of opinion that Nature has not given us this faculty for no purpose, reason, as well as temperament, sanctions the practice, however vul

gar it may be deemed by those solemn fops, who mistake gravity for wisdom, and whom we would remind, en passant, that, as a celebrated writer observes, "Gravity is often a mystery of the body, assumed to conceal the defects of the mind; that the most solemn bird is the owl, and the most solemn beast the ass."

But to return from this digression. As it was our custom to note down all the whimsical passages which occurred during the debates at the Marble-street Forum, our collection of malapropos, grammatical slips, broken metaphors, and grotesque rhetorical tropes, became, in a short time, very copious. We were tempted to arrange this heterogeneous mass of absurdity into the form of a speech, which we put into the mouth of a Mr. Bother'em, an ideal character, or kind of scape-goat, intended as a personification of every species of oratorical and rhetorical absurdity which our notes supplied, or our invention suggested.

Having, by chance, shown this caricature to Mr. Terry, subquently one of the managers of the Adelphi Theatre, a gentleman of talent and excellent education, he was so much diverted with its absurdity, that he urged us to write an interlude, or farce, in which Mr. Bother'em should be the hero of the dramatis persone. The result of this suggestion was the "Peep at the Forum," which was published in London in 1809, and afterwards in America, as we ascertained from a friend now in Liverpool, who, to our surprise, presented us with a copy.

We shall here briefly state our reasons for reviving this dramatic cariacature, as we feel that some apology is requisite on the occasion. The whole original edition of the work was very soon disposed of, and it became a scarcity somewhat in request; a proof, by the bye, that scarce and valuable, as applied to books, are by no means synonymous