Surely these are very happy stanzas, simple and not flat, tender and not sentimental. I see no reason why they should not be as acceptable fifty years hence as they are to-day, but certainly fifty years is a long time!

SWISS MOUNTAINS.

'I well recollect the walk on the winding road from Sallenche, sloping up the hills towards St.-Gervais, one cloudless Sunday afternoon. The road circles softly between bits of rocky bank and mounded pasture, little cottages and chapels gleaming out from among the trees at every turn. Behind me, some leagues in length, rose the jagged range of the mountains of the Réposoir; on the other side of the valley, the mass of the Aiguille de Varens, heaving its seven thousand feet of cliff into the air at a single effort, its gentle gift of waterfall, the Nant d'Arpenaz, like a pillar of cloud at its feet; Mont Blanc and all its aiguilles, one silver flame, in front of me : marvellous blocks of mossy granite, and dark glades of pine around me.' John Ruskin.

A LUCKY NUMBER.

H- tells me that his cook has lately won a good sum of money in a lottery, with the number twenty

three. Hasked her how it was she had happened to tumble on such a lucky number, and she replied, 'Oh, sir, I had a dream, I dreamt of number seven, and I dreamt it three times, and as three times seven is twenty-three, I chose that number, sir.' This proves that an ignorance of the multiplication-table is not always a calamity.

I was relating this anecdote to a distinguished friend, who holds rather a responsible position, and is usually anything but slow in apprehending a joke. When I had concluded, I observed a wistful expression on his countenance, as if he were ready, nay anxious, to be amused, but could not for the life of him quite manage it. Then suddenly his face brightened, and he said, but with a tinge of dejection in his manner, 'Ah, yes, I see-yes-I suppose three times seven is not twenty-three.'

EDUCATION OF THE MIND.

'There are few men whose minds are not more or less in that state of sham knowledge against which Socrates made war. There is no man whose notions have not been first got together by spontaneous, unexamined, unconscious, uncertified association, resting upon forgotten particulars, blending together disparates or inconsistencies, and leaving in his mind.

old and familiar phrases, and oracular propositions, of which he has never rendered to himself account. There is no man who, if he be destined for vigorous and profitable scientific effort, has not found it a necessary branch of self-education to break up, disentangle, analyse, and reconstruct these ancient mental compounds, and who has not been driven to do it by his own lame and solitary efforts, since the giant of the Colloquial Elenchus no longer stands in the market-place to lend him help and stimulus.'

George Grote.

DOOMSDAY BOOK.

I have heard that while the Houses of Parliament were burning, the then Dean of Westminster (Ireland) stood on the leads of the Chapter-house with Sir Francis Palgrave, and they saw the fire rapidly approaching them. Sir F. Palgrave suggested that they should run and secure Doomsday Book, &c. &c., and place them somewhere in safety, but Dean Ireland assured him it would not be possible to do so without an crder from the First Lord of the Treasury.

AMERICAN RESTAURANTS.

In American places of refreshment, where time is precious, and everybody is in a desperate hurry, the

people bolt their food at a furious rate, and if you stop for only one instant, the waiter comes up close to you, and says quickly, and curtly, in your ear, 'Are you through?' (Have you finished?) At one of these places a hungry man broke his tooth with a large iron nail that had been served in the dish, and showed it to the waiter with an injured air. 'Wall,' said the man, looking equally injured, 'What did you expect? You didn't expect, did you, to find a silk umbrella in a ten cent hash!'

THE GREENLANDERS HEAVEN.

The poor Greenlanders fear that the Christian Heaven will not be altogether satisfactory to them, because the missionaries, very unwisely, and certainly very unwarrantably, tell them that there are no seals in Heaven.

A HAPPY RETORT.

I am told that a certain friend of mine, as an undergraduate at Cambridge, was of an extreme nimbleness, an agility which he could not well control. One day that grave and reverend personage, the Master of his college, happening to meet him, remonstrated with him thus: "Mr. Dash, I am sorry to say I never look out of my window but I see you jumping

equal to the

over those railings.' Mr. Dash was emergency, for he respectfully replied, 'And it is a curious fact, sir, that I never leap over those railings without seeing you looking out of that window.'

Mr. Dash now confines his nimbleness to metrical exercises. He is still a wag, and, what is more, he is champion of our Lyrical Light Weights.

THE TIGHT BOOTS.

‘My boots are tight: the hour is late ;
My faltering footsteps deviate :

And through the stillness of the night
A wail is heard-"My boots are tight!"

'O weary hour! O wretched woe!
It's only half-past three, or so.
We've not had much; I feel all right,
Except my boots; they're very tight.

'Old friend! I love you more and more,
Though we have met but once before.
Since then I've had a deal of sorrow ;-
You'll come and dine with me to-morrow?

'What's this? A tear? I do not think

You gave us half enough to drink.
The moon up there looks precious queer,
She's winking. Ha! Another tear!