The Emperor to laugh began:
"What foolish stuff!

Axe, salt, and Alcoran !"

"The axe, that I

fell the fruit tree; then

may

The salt, to sow, that where

It grew, no thing may ever grow again;
And last the Koran, so that I may swear
A solemn oath, that I will never,
(Though I should live forever,)
Nor chick nor child of mine,
While sun and moon do shine,
Shall darken any more
The palace-door!"

THE FINE GENTLEMAN-A PORTRAIT.-SOAME JENYNS.

1. JUST broke from school, pert, impudent, and raw, Expert in Latin, more expert in taw,

His honor posts o'er Italy and France,

Measures St. Peter's dome, and learns to dance;
Thence, having quick through various countries flown,
Gleaned all their follies, and exposed his own.

2. He back returns, a thing so strange all o'er,
As never ages past produced before;
A monster of such complicated worth,
As no one single clime could ere bring forth;
Half atheist, papist, gamester, bubble, rook,
Half fiddler, coachman, dancer, groom, and cook.
Next, because business is now all the vogue,
And who'd position get, must play the rogue,
In parliament he purchases a seat,

To make th' accomplished gentleman complete.

3. There, safe in self-sufficient impudence, Without experience, honesty, or sense,

Unknowing in her interest, trade, or laws,
He vainly undertakes his country's cause:
Forth from his lips, prepared at all to rail,
Torrents of nonsense, burst like bottled ale;

*Though shallow, muddy; brisk, though mighty dull; Fierce, without strength; o'erflowing, though not full.

4. Now, quite a Frenchman in his garb and air,
With graceful bows and condescension rare
The liberties of Britain he supports,

And storms at placemen, ministers, and courts;
Now in cropped greasy hair, and leather breeches,
He loudly bellows out his patriot speeches;
Kings, lords, and commons ventures to abuse,
Yet dares to show those ears he ought to lose.

5. From hence to White's our virtuous Cato flies,
There sits with countenance erect and wise,
And talks of games of whist, and pig-tail pies;
Plays all the night, nor doubts each law to break
Himself unknowingly has helped to make;
Trembling and anxious, stakes his utmost groat,
Peeps o'er his cards, and looks as if he thought;
Next morn disowns the losses of the night,
Because the fool would fain be thought a bite.

6. Devoted thus to politics and cards,
All worthy acts he wholly disregards;
So far is ev'ry virtue from his heart,
That not a gen'rous vice can claim a part;
Nay, lest one human passion e'er should move
His soul to friendship, tenderness, or love,

* Parody on these lines of Sir John Denham:

Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull,
Strong without rage, without overflowing full.

To Figg and Broughton* he commits his breast,
To steel it to the fashionable test.

7. Thus, poor in wealth, he labors to no end,

Wretched alone, in crowds without a friend;
Insensible to all that's good or kind,

Deaf to all merit, to all beauty blind;
For love too busy, and for wit too grave,
A hardened, sober, proud, luxuriant knave;
By little actions striving to be great,
And proud to be, and to be thought, a cheat.

BLESSED ALMANACS.-BEN. F. TAYLOR.

1. WHILE I am writing these words, a pair of "bright particular" eyes, just on a level with the table, are following my pen in its eccentric movements over the page. Don't you and I wish our eyes were just on a level with the tables again! And speaking of eyes, where can you find a brighter pair of interrogation-points, than the eyes of a child? Seeing everything, and turning everything into a query that they see?

2. Subject yourself for a half hour to one of these youthful inquisitors, and you are more of a philosopher than I take you to be, if he doesn't pose you, in less than half the time.

3. But small as he is, his ambition, like a vine in a garden, has run all over the month of December, and leaved and flowered at a tropical rate, somewhere near the 25th. "How many days is it to Christmas?" "How many Saturdays is it?" There is no school on Saturdays, and the little rascal keeps his calendar by play-days! Well, let him, for few enough of them he'll find by and by, unless he lives on into the Millennium. "And will Santa Claus come?-and how

* One a celebrated prize-fighter, the other a no less famous boxer.

can he come down the chimney and the stove-pipe?—and does he come Christmas or New Year's?" There's that vine of his, a week longer than it was a minute ago.

4. "Oh! have him come Christmas! Have him come Christmas!" and eyes, and feet, and heart, for that matter, all dance together. Have him come Christmas! There spoke the child of a larger growth. There peeped out the man, through the disguise of boyhood, thus early drawing on the future, like a gay heir in expectancy, to make up the deficits of the present an extravagance that has made many a man and woman bankrupt for the amount of a thousand hopes sterling, and "the undivided half" of a life full of happiness.

5. Men have a weary train of days-days of care and toil, if not of tears; but children have, in their calendar, but four or five days in a whole year-Christmas, New Year's, and Birthday, Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving-but they, like great lamps, light up all the year, and keep the little fellows perennial candidates for hope.

6. How much happiness is purchased for how little in the holidays! And it is easily calculated that if eighteen pence will just render a boy just turned of six, supremely happy, two-and-sixpence will make a lad of nine a prince.

Who wouldn't invest in such property!

7. But those eyes; there they are yet, looking over the table's edge, and I cannot help dreading the time when they will look down upon it, and one can see shadows in them, and the coming of a real tear in them-for children seldom weep -and a heavy light in them, and dimness and death in them.

8. True, there are shadows there now, but they are like those

"by a cloud in a summer-day made,

Looking down on a field of blossoming clover."

A cloud! Life itself is a morning cloud, and whether with shadows or glory, glides swiftly and silently by.

MEMORABILIA.*

TALENT WASTED.

An infidel, who had been attempting to prove that men have no souls, asked a lady, with an air of triumph, what she thought of his philosophy. "It appears to me," she replied, "that you have been employing a good deal of talent to prove yourself a beast.”

A PERSIAN FABLE.

A little particle of rain,

That from a passing cloud descended,
Was heard thus idly to complain—

"My brief existence now is ended!

Outcast alike of earth and sky,
Useless to live, unknown to die!"

It chanced to fall into the sea,

And there an open shell received it;

And after years how rich was he

Who from its prison-house relieved it!

The drop of rain had formed a gem
To deck a monarch's diadem.

IMPORTANT DISTINCTION

KNOWLEDGE and WISDOM, far from being one,
Have oftentimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own;
Knowledge, & rude unprofitable mass,

The mere materials with which wisdom builds,
Till smooth'd, and squared, and fitted into place,
Does but encumber what it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much,
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.-CowPER.

*See note, page 58.