see some of our common English flowers so extremely reduced as to look as if they were intended for fairy garlands. They were not otherwise changed, except that the leaves and stalks were covered with a thick down.

Mr. Austin. That down serves as a defence against the cold. The winter garb which the stunted Samoiede provides for himself from the chase, the diminutive flower of his plains receives from the bountiful hand of Nature!

Amy. Are the Kimos fair, like the northern nations, or is their complexion like the other inhabitants of the torrid zone?

Mrs. Austin. Their complexions are nearly white, though they have the features of their African neighbours. The only peculiarity that would bespeak them a distinct race, and not bleached and diminished negroes, is the great length of their arms; their hands touch their knees without stooping, and from this circum-¬ stance they have sometimes been mistaken for apes.

Edward. What a great affront! It would be droll to see them in a passion at a person who made such a mistake.

Mrs. Austin. Perhaps it would not be so

them as your

enrage

school

easy nor so safe to boy notions of fun would lead you to think. They are very mild, but very brave, defending their cattle from the inhabitants of the plains with darts and arrows.

Mr. Austin. They seem to be as warlike as the dwarf of Charles the First's reign, who was a captain in the army, and killed a man in a duel.

Edward. The brave little fellow! I hope he was a cavalier.

Mrs. Austin. Oh, that of course; for a dwarf in those times was a favourite personage in the households of kings and nobles. James the First had a dwarf, a giant, and fool (or jester), in his establishment; and the royal pedant's greatest amusement was to set them a squabbling. To see little Jeffreys ride round the lists, with the air of a hero of chivalry, offering to defend his honour against his unwieldy adversary, was a constant scene of mirth to his semi-barbarous courtiers.

Gerald. A sort of living Tom Thumb! How could any body help laughing?

Mrs. Austin. To see human nature degraded always disgusts me. I cannot but wonder at the taste that takes people to see exhibitions of giants and dwarfs, and "fat girls," and living skeletons.

Mr. Austin. For ladies to attend exhibitions of human monsters I think the last degree of bad taste and vulgarity. I wish, however, you had seen the little German dwarf, Nannette Stocken, who played so well on the pianoforte: she was graceful and elegant, and beautifully formed; her arm, her foot, and her hand, might have served for the model of a miniature Venus; her manners were graceful; her dress the prettiest imaginable; and her mind seemed as highly finished as her exterior, at least so I thought when I saw her; but thirty years will make a great change in our tastes. Count Borwlaski, too, the Pole, who was so long in this country, was a gentleman, "aye, every inch a gentleman."

Mrs. Austin. I have heard my mother speak of him she spent some time with him in a country house in Ireland. He played cards well, and related anecdotes of the different courts he had been at in a very spirited manner. He was a well-informed and accomplished man, very well made, with remarkably fine eyes, and a sweet countenance. I have heard that he afterwards married a very tall woman, who used to set him on an old-fashioned high chimney-piece whenever

he displeased her. He was about as tall as little Willy-three feet four.

Mr. Austin. Borwlaski was very different from Baby, the favourite dwarf of Stanislaus, King of Poland: he was very beautiful till about sixteen, when he grew deformed and imbecile. He was presented in a plate to be baptized, and was nursed in a shoe stuffed with wool; and at three years old his own shoes were only an inch and a half long. Like Gulliver, he was very nearly lost in a field of standing corn; and a thicket of underwood, into which he one day strayed, was to him what one of the trackless American forests would be to a man of robust body and mind. Baby is the last dwarf we hear of as a part of the establishment of any European court, and he died about the beginning of the late king's reign.

Mrs. Austin. How long it is before such barbarous usages entirely wear out! Half a century before the death of Baby, Peter the Great of Russia assembled all the dwarfs in his dominions by proclamation, to attend the marriage of a pigmy man and woman, which was to be celebrated in the presence of his whole court and the foreign ambassadors. Some were unwilling to obey, and, as the punishment of their

reluctance, they were obliged to wait on the others at the wedding feast. Every thing provided for the little company was in miniature,— plates, tables, glasses, and seats, to suit their size. They contended for place and precedence like other men and women, till the czar ordered that the least should take the lead, and then nobody would move! But at last all was settled, and after the feast the bridegroom (measuring three feet two) opened the ball with a minuet. The poor dwarfs, who knew they had been assembled only to make sport for their superiors in station, if not in sense, were at first rather sulky ; but so much was done to please them, that at last they grew as gay as the spectators, and became very sprightly and entertaining.

Florence. I should always endeavour to make the best of an awkward situation, and try to make those laugh with me who would otherwise laugh at me. In this instance, however, the czar showed that his taste was very low.

Gerald. Another forfeit! you have not transgressed this long time. I was in hope I had cured you of spoiling conversation,-disenchanting the most delightful subject by a stupid pun. When one's ideas are taken to pieces this way,