Bacon; wearied with recent labor,he ejaculated in the coach, 'Oh Bacon, Bacon, you will be the death of me!' 'Why then' said a Lady in the coach,' would it not be well for you to eat less of it!'

Dr Lee thinks Mr Montagu's Letter the most interesting thing in the Life of Mackintosh. Oct. 28, 1836.

LXXV. How TO DRESS A SAINT:

Copy of the Introductory Part of a Reply to a Letter from the Rev. P.... H...., of Chelsea, addressed to E. H. B.

DEAR SIR,

JACKSON'S Coffee-house,

Bow-ST, Dec. 15, 1836.

My acknowledgments are due for your Letter, which with my Reply will be placed among my Archives, ornament my Memoirs, and delight an unborn age.

2. Your principles of CHRISTIANITY I commiserate; your conversion I pray for; your morals will be seriously improved, if you commune less with a heart, which deceives you, and more with the world, which will unmask you, if you drop the character of a censor in matters, where your conduct is not without its imprudences, regrets, and remorses, if you are more of a true Israelite, and less of an over-righteous and smalltithe Pharisee, if you emulate the good Samaritan rather than the unjust Judge.

3 I am grieved, dear Sir, that in retrograding from Classical learning, you have graduated in Christian fanaticism, and have yet to learn that Christian charity is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the Christian religion.

+ Mr B's aspirations have in this instance been only half fulfilled. The REPLY has been preserved, as he predicted, to "ornament the Memoirs," but the letter which called it forth has perished, or, at least, it is not among these papers.

4. While you usurp the authority of a Christian Minister in a case, where you have no spiritual jurisdiction, you exhibit dogmatism enough to satisfy the conscience of a Horsley, and sermonology enough to fill with credit a Simeonite pulpit.

5. The accompanying Paper, which develops my principles of religion, will, I hope, serve as a Homily appropriate for the occasion, and guide you into Christian grace and truth. I remain, dear Sir very truly yours,

E. H. Barker.

The Retort Courteous: Or THE REV. P.... H..., and E. H. B..... Esq.

LXXVI. A smart retort.

LORD ERSKINE declared in a large party, in which he and Sheridan were present, that 'a wife was only a tin canister tied to one's tail,' on which Sheridan presented Lady Erskine with the following lines:

'LORD ERSKINE at women presuming to rail,

Calls a wife a 'tin canister tied to one's tail;'

And the fair LADY ANNE, while the subject he carries on,
Seems hurt at his LORDSHIP's degrading comparison :
But wherefore degrading? considered aright,

A canister's polished, and useful, and bright,

And should dirt its original purity hide,

That's the fault of the puppy, to whom it is tied.'

Scotsman.

The Courier, Dec. 21, 1836.

LXXVII. Anecdote of sheep-washing.

April 4, 1836. Mr Giles told to me the following story. His father went on horse-back to see a flock of sheep washed in the neighbouring river. As he sat on his horse, watching the proceedings, a gaily dressed young gentleman passed by, also on horse-back; and was greatly amused by the mode in which the shepherd precipitated the animals successively into the water.

The mode was this: Laying hold of the sheep's horns with his left hand, he seized its tail with the right; and the animal, endeavouring to escape, rushed forwards, and guided by the shepherd, plunged franticly into the river. The young gallant asked the shepherd's permission to wash one of the sheep for him, and dismounting from his horse, boldly seized upon the ram, which he proceeded to escort down the slope of the river's bank, as he had seen done before by the shepherd. The ram made furious exertions to free itself, and when it came to the edge of the water, made a furious plunge, but the young man, unluckily, could not quit his hold: his glove was entangled in the volutes of the ram's horn, and he was carried, together with the animal, into the middle of the stream, to the great amusement of the spectators.

LXXVIII: SOMERSETSHIRE DIALECT.

The Somersetshire dialect is very broad: a friend once told to me the following: A gentleman riding on horseback, on his way to Yatton in that county, met a clodhopper, and asked of him the way to that place. The countryman, being rather deaf, only caught the words indistinctly, and thought he was asked, by way of joke, something about eating (which in Somersetshire is pronounced yetting); he therefore replied, with some asperity and in the loud tones peculiar to deaf people, Put un in thee mouth and boite (bite) un.

LXXIX. BISHOP KEN.

If Bishop Ken had ever kenn'd,
Such lines on him had e'er been penn'd,
This "nook of earth forlorn," I wot,
Had never been his "burial spot.”

LXXX. CLOTHES IN HEAVEN.

A little boy asked if they were to be clothed in heaven? his Mamma said, 'No, you will be naked.' 'Why, Mamma,' said the young reasoner, 'how very funny it will be to see the black servant, and the red-faced, big-bellied Mrs Martin, (the cook,) walking naked in heaven, arm in arm ?'

LXXXI, GOING TO HEAVEN.

Two children of Mr Basil Montagu were talking in bed, and the following conversation was overheard. A. 'If you are a good boy, you will go to heaven there,' (pointing to a part of the heaven which was then overcast with a dark cloud.) B. 'Well, I am sure, then, I shall not be good any more, if I am to go to such a dark place. But how am I to go?' A. 'Oh, you will have wings given to you.' B. But how is Mr Bill to go?' (who lived in an opposite house, and weighed twentyfour stone.) A. 'Why, he will go up by Jacob's ladder !'

LXXXII. PATRINGTON SPIRE.

E. H. BARKER, when he was a little boy, was looking out of a window at his native village of Hollym, from which window the very pointed spire of Patrington-Church was visible, and observed, 'What a nice toothpick the spire would make!'

LXXXIII. The Starry Heavens.

A little boy, looking at the starry heavens, said, 'If those

bright brass nails, Papa, were to come out, with what a thump God Almighty would come down!' Dr Parr thought that the boy must possess a vigorous imagination to be capable of such an idea. Anaximenes held that the stars, fiery substances, are fixed in the heavens as nails in a crystalline plane, (see Barker's edition of Lempriere.)

LXXXIV. The Mayor and Corporation.

A little girl, called Albinia, the niece of Mrs A. J. Valpy, when she was seven years old, saw at the door a mare waiting for its owner, a very large man who had called on Mr Valpy; she said playfully that the Corporation ought not to keep the Mayor waiting!

LXXXV. Curran and the wig.

An Irish barrister entered the court with his wig very much awry; unapprised of the circumstance, he was jeered at by all whom he met ; at length he addressed CURRAN by asking him 'if he saw anything ridiculous in his wig?' 'Nothing,' he replied, but the head.'

LXXXVI. Good for trade.

The well-known Sandy Wood, surgeon, in Edinburgh, was walking through the streets of that city during the time of an illumination, when he observed a young rascal, not above twelve years of age, breaking every window he could reach, with as much industry as if he had been doing the most com