In the mean time, Junius is a standing dish. We propose it to some eminent coterie of opulent idlers, some conclave of old ladies in breeches, some bibliomaniac club, for instance, to offer a premium for the most correct list of the departed thousands of the Stevens and Malone race who have spent their purblind lives, literary owls, hunting in the sunshine after the shadow of Junius. The subject is sure to be renewed about every six months. And though every renewal leaves the matter more in the dark than ever, and though the fullest discovery would not now be worth sixpence, yet there will be laborious litterateurs, retired lawyers,and positive country gentlemen keen in the chase, until the general conflagration.

Another random shot has just been fired, to bring down the flying phantom; but, we shall readily admit, by the hand of a man not to be included in the foregoing classes, Sir David Brewster.

It is understood that this really clever person has acknowledged to somebody or other, in profound confidence, that he has a suspicion that he has found some letters in the collection of Macpherson's Ossian which seem to intimate a knowledge of the true Junius. Nothing certainly can be more remote from the usual vigour of assertion on the subject. And probably with Sir David, as unquestionably with mankind in general, the circumstance of their being found among the papers of the translator or author, or author-translator of Ossian, may justly increase the puzzle of the transaction. Macpherson's organ of invention was of considerable size, and why he should not have invented a Junius as well as a father of Oscar, must be a fair enquiry. But à priori, we could have laid our laurels as a wager, that we should be able to give the leading features of the discovery. That he would be a Scots man, for the honour of our venerated Land of Cakes. That he would be a practised political writer, well known, yet totally unsuspected. Eminent in the public eye, yet quite escaping all public opinion in the chief use of his pen. That he should be in a public office, of such a rank as to enable him to give the public all kinds of official secrets, and that he should have been cut short by fate exactly at the mo

ment when Junius ceased to write, leaving him the choice of hanging, drowning, being bribed into irrevocable silence, or being sent to India. This is the career of every substitute for the great libeller. The early portion exactly the same in all, the only variety existing in the close. Junius has died as many deaths as Homer's heroes, and like them still lives, for the wonder of posterity.

We find the whole progress followed to the letter in the new discovery. He was one Lachlan Macleane, and though unluckily the son of an Irish Presbyterian clergyman, yet still a Scotsman by blood and breeding, as all the Irish Presbyterians notoriously are, and actually descended from the Macleans of Coll. He went to London as a student of medicine. There became a political writer; from this he started into an under Secretary of State. Of course, thus obtaining a key to all the transactions of the Cabinet, which he was, of course, entitled to disclose, on the first occasion, to the newspapers. But in his fate he had a considerable advantage over his chief rivals. He was not merely muzzled by a place in India, but drowned on his passage. One disheartening notice is however appended-“ All his papers were lost at the same time."

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Now, with all due regret for our prejudice, we must confess that we have not the slightest faith in this solution of the puzzle. That a person of the name of Macleane may have been willing enough to pass for Junius is quite possible, when the question be came a harmless one, and the thunders of the law ceased to bellow after him through the boundless deep." There were hundreds of scribblers who gave the broadest hints that they were the "true Simon Pure," and this most pitiful affectation survived even down to the day of that most superlative coxcomb, Sir Philip Francis. That many imitated his style is equally true; and that from its laboured peculiarity, its rigid form, and its palpable sneer, all the externals of his style are matters of the easiest imitation, is a business of common experiment. But in no public writer of his own day, or any that has followed, have we the combination of energy and eloquence, the sarcastic ridicule, and the withering scorn of Junius. We justly reprobate the principle of his writings. We fair

ly question the honour of a man who so evidently made use of confidential knowledge to vilify his opponents. We condemn his use of personal impunity to insult men whose names were before the public. We still more strongly reprobate his personal assaults upon a king who never had a thought but for the good of his people-George III., an honour to the name of king. But no man of his time, or of ours, has been able to cover his baldness with the laurels of Junius. No man has been entitled to equip himself in the spolia opima of that daring champion. No man, living or dead, has been privileged to erect his trophy upon the grave of that matchless master of power and spleen.

The

But a

One of the old amusements of those wits who travel by stage-coaches about Christmas has been to change the directions, on the packets of town and country presents, which then load the coaches. Thus the citizen who expects a turkey and chine from his retired partner in Norfolk, is surprised by a salmon, while the partner, specnlating on a barrel of oysters, is sur prised by a shoulder of mutton. trick is established, and the astonishment is a matter of course. rather more complicated calamity of this order lately threw a whole French province into consternation. A laudholder, about to give his daughter in marriage, and determined to signalize the event by unusual hospitality, had invited a large party to dine on a wild boar from the Ardennes. The boar was duly sent, but accompanied by a roebuck. This was more than he had required; but, taking it for granted that his friend in the forest meant it for him, he had it cut up, and sent in pieces all round the province to his friends.

However, within a few days he received a note from the mayor of a neighbouring town, claiming the roebuck, which had been ordered for him, also for a marriage dinner. Here was a dilemma enough to have exasperated any Frenchman in existence out of his senses. After various consultations, his only resource was to beg of those to whom the dismembered buck had been sent, to return their respective portions, that he might return them to the mayor. But here a new difficulty arose. His friends had been as hos

pitable as himself. Venison from the Ardennes is not among every-day things, and the arrival of every fragment of the buck had been the sigual for invitations to share it for fifty miles round. The circle of consultation extended with the difficulty. The question was, whether it were better to disappoint the mayor, or disappoint some hundreds of gay men and maidens who had already made up their minds to dine on venison, and dance and drink punch à la romaine after it till daylight. But the mayor grew importunate, his dinner would be nothing without the buck. In the mean while, time, the element always most important and most disregarded in negotiations, passed away. The mayor at length obtained his ultimatum, and the property was ordered to be surrendered. Unfortunately the feasts had been held, the quadrilles danced, and every particle of the buck had been eaten up the day before.

It is so long since the human mind seems to have been asleep in Italy, that even its start in the shape of fanaticism or frenzy may be hailed as an approach to waking. Even the struggle of a nightmare shows that there is something of life within.

On the day of the King s fete n January, when the royal family attend the opera, and all the pomp of Neapolitan royalty is displayed at the San Carlos, just as the ballet had begun, and all eyes were gazing on the Terpsichores of the scene, a young man started on his feet in the centre of the pit, and exclaimed, in a voice of thunder, "To arms-to arms! the country is in danger! I am the voice of God!" The confusion was naturally extreme. The abominable attempts on the life of Louis-Philippe naturally make the feeling on such subjects sensitive at this moment. When the first consternation had partially subsided, the orator was seized by the gens d'armes, and carried to prison. It is since said that he was mad, whether physically or politically, is not told. But it is also said that the Neapolitans are murmuring about all kinds of grievances which they never felt until the French newspapers told them that they existed, and are growling for revolutions which would inevitably send one-half of them to their graves and the other half beg

While England swells with faction, France with faction, Germany with faction, Spain with faction, there is an enemy in the wind that may yet summon the restless mind of Europe to sterner lessons. The plague is declared to be extending its terrible

circle round the Mediterranean. In Constantinople all seems horror-there it has raged with unabated fury for six months, and the city is depopulating, hour by hour, from the double effect of death and fear. 17,000 of

the Greek inhabitants have fled

the Armenian patriarch has lately delivered 15,000 passports in the course of a few days, and the general popu lation has been thus diminished by upwards of 100,000 since last September. From this centre of death it has spread westward on both shores. It is said to have reached Salonica on the north and Tunis on the south. How long it may be kept out of Europe in general is a question of extreme anxiety. Our perpetual intercourse with the Mediterranean ports, our criminal disregard of precaution, the still more criminal avidity of our commerce for gain, in all quarters, and at all risks, render England more liable than any other country to this most dreadful of all scourges. Nothing but the hand of Providence could have hitherto preserved Europe; yet undoubtedly we have a right to call upon authority to protect us from the hideous hazards of mercantile avarice. One of the papers mentions, a few days since, that we are at this moment driving a trade with Constantinople in rags for paper-making, and that no less than thirty bales of those rags have been lately consigned in one cargo. There can be scarcely a doubt that those rags came from the beds and bodies of infection. The chief communication of the plague in all ages has been by fragments of clothing. Can we regard ourselves as safe from this deepest of all desolators ill such transactions are enquired into nd exposed?

What is the oldest of all classical compositions? The Riddle. The Sphinx had her fame before the goose had ever furnished man with her quill. The sage Ulysses founded his reputation on his having the best head for a conundrum of any man at the siege of Troy. The priestess of rebuses. Apollo at Delphi made her fortune by

The priests, from the Egyptian Hierophant down to the Salii, who danced sans-culottes in the Roman streets, to the astonishment of that grave nation of barbarians, were all professors of the art of riddlemaking. Louis XIV. would never

have been Louis le Grand but for his charade on his father, Cardinal Mazarin; and what are the Luxor obelisk and the life of Louis-Philippe but the two most remarkable riddles of the

day? What is the Government of Lord

Melbourne but a riddle? Sir William

Ingleby's conscience, but a riddle? or the ways and means of three-fourths of the "remarkable men" about town, but a riddle? We give the newest and the prettiest of the train.

"On fluttering wings I early rose,

In no exalted flight,
The lily in the shade that blows

Not purer or more white."

"At eve or morn 'twas pleasant sport Adown the stream to glide,

I helped my mother to support,

And never left her side.

"A reckless truant seal'd my doom,
Resolved his prize to win,
Dragg'd me remorseless from my home,
And stripp'd me to the skin.

"He cropp'd my hair so loose that play'd, And then his ends to seek,

He slit my tongue, because he said
He thus could make me speak."

"'Twas done-my name and nature changed

For love of hateful gold,
With many victims bound and ranged
To slavery I was sold."

"I'm slave to any man, or all,

Yet do not toil for pelf, And though I'm ready at their call, I cannot work myself."

"Still I in every language write

To every foreign land, But yet, though I'm no City-Knight, Not one I understand."

A Jew was lately brought to one of the public offices, charged by the policeman with making a disturbance in the street, beating a boy, &c. The following dialogue ensued with the functionary on the bench:

Magistrate. Now, sir, you have heard the charge-what have you to say for yourself?

Jew. I say that a part is true, but a part is false, and the whole is garbled. The whole affair is merely a matter of simple debt. A simple debt, mark you, of fourpence. The facts are these-Yesterday evening I went into a coffeeroom, which I have been some time in the habit of frequenting, and having had some refreshment, I discovered that I was unfortunately without the means of discharging the bill. I, however, offered to deposit ample security, but the money was insisted on. I offered to procure it, if a person were sent with me to my brother's. The boy was sent in consequence, but my brother was unfortunately from home. I called on a friend or two, but was equally unlucky, while the boy kept following me about like a French poodle. At this I felt particularly annoyed, as any gentleman might be, particularly when the people were coming home from church! Į have been "had up" in the City, and it is the opinion of the Lord Mayor and others that these matters are simple debts.

The policeman here attempted to say something, but the Jew authoritatively put him down, observing “that one speaker at a time was quite enough."

Magistrate. But this is not your first feat of the kind. There have been several complaints of your not paying for what you have had at coffeehouses.

Jew. The fact is simply this, that, being a single man, I generally live at coffeehouses and taverns, and it occasionally happens that I cannot discharge my bill, but I always leave security for it. I am fond of a good cup of coffee for you must know I have had a disappointment_in_marriage, and whenever this subject occurs to my mind I am not quite the thing, and a good cup of tea or coffee, with a nice piece of toast, I invariably find to be the best cure for me.

This cure for a broken heart amused the bystanders prodigiously, but