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would not look upon Barnum as a congenial, though | succeeded in throwing over it. Of the two theories

a superior spirit; or at all events who do not feel a pride, albeit a secret one, in his exploits.

"The rise of this illustrious person, like that of some of his fellows, would seem to be veiled in obscurity. Whether he rose to fame on a fabulous griffin, or reached the wished-for goal on the back of an eight-legged horse, must remain matter of conjecture. His more recent exploits are well known. They are, Firstly.-The discovery of an extraordinary fish (if I remember aright). Secondly.-The production of a Quaker giant. Thirdly.-Of a giantess to match, who married the giant. Fourthly.-Of an old black woman, either a nurse or an attendant of some sort on General Washington, who related anecdotes of the patriot in infancy. Fifthly.-Of Tom Thumb. Sixthly. Of Jenny Lind. Seventhly, Eighthly, and Ninthly.—Of a giantess and giant boy; some Chinese gentlemen and ladies of high rank; and a negro who has discovered a process of turning his skin from black to white by means of a herb, which process he is now undergoing. Independently of which, I have heard that Mr. Barnum has a third share of some ghosts, who are now showing off their mysterious rappings' to enthusiastic audiences."

Dinner in England and America is amusingly contrasted as follows:

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Amongst the upper-middling, and mercantile and professional classes of English, dinner is the great event of the day; the hospitable port to which our morning and afternoon toils and labours are insensibly wafting us; the peaceful vale into which we descend after having borne the brunt of the mid-day sun. With it commences a new era. Papa returns from Westminster-hall or the city, Julia and Angelina from their drive with mamma in the Park, Cadwallader from his club. It is a mystery and a solemn rite, to the due celebration of which a total change of toilet, and the assumption of evening costume, are necessary. We devote the rest of the day, in a certain sense, to recreation, and banish business from our minds till the ensuing morning. So that the English merchant's, or lawyer's, day admits of these two principal divisions, to wit, the anteprandial and the post-prandial hours.

"Dinner in the bosom of an American family can only be compared to a religious rite or ceremony in this respect, that every one is anxious to get through it as soon as possible. Occurring in the middle of the day, it is so far from being the optata meta of our daily exertions, the bar and hindrance to the transaction of all further business, that it may be looked upon merely as the connecting link between the writing of two commercial letters, the drawing up of two conveyances, the overhauling of two bales of goods. Papa rushes in from his office or his chambers, Homer and Otis from somewhere else; they all sit down in statu quo. In an hour the affair is over, and every one at his business again. It is fearful to see so great a meal made so light of, and divested of the halo of poetry, which more civilized nations have

with regard to this, the prince of repasts, I own myself a humble adherent of the Cis-Atlantic or British."

Perhaps the reader would like to peep into a court of Law in New York:

"Notwithstanding that I was a little sick of Blackstone and Fearne, I attended the Court of Common Pleas, whilst in New York, thinking that it would furnish me with as favourable a specimen of the superior law-courts of the country, as I could hope to find. It was a square, white-washed apartment, not | much larger than a bar-room at oue of the hotels. Under a red canopy, on a bench slightly elevated above the rest, sate the Judge, a respectable and intelligent-looking man. An insurance case was going on. A barrister was addressing the jury, with much earnestness and gesticulation, and, it must be owned, with that sharp nasal twang which is so universally prevalent in this country. Around him sate the members of the bar, some in brown holland blouses, some with huge imperials on their chins, some balancing themselves in their chairs against the railings which divided them from the spectators, and hanging their legs over the backs of other chairs, nearly all intent on getting rid of their saliva, and imprinting the wet seal of the Republic on every object in their vicinity. In this national pastime, (which is too well known to need further comment) the Judge displayed a laudable proficiency. Two gentlemen (apparently reporters) scated at a table to the left of the bench, the jury, and half-a-dozen idle spectators like myself, completed the assemblage. The jury were arranged in two rows, and before each row were placed two spittoons, so that no gentleman had to expectorate a greater distance than past three of his fellow jurymen —a wise precaution, providing against the incapacity of a bad shot.

"A glance at such a scene was sufficient to show that there was a total absence of dignity about it. A stranger would, indeed, have sought in vain for the stateliness of a Denman, or the melodious tones of a Thesiger, in an assembly where all appeared to be pretty much on a level (as, perhaps, in a Republic they should be), and you might have mistaken the crier of the court for the Judge, and the Judge for the crier. But to argue from this circumstance that a fair trial cannot be had in the United States, that the Judges are not sound lawyers, and the barristers great advocates, would be a most lame and impotent conclusion.""

"Members and Government" in England and America :

"By becoming Members of Parliament, we rise from our insignificance into public life; we become public men; we gain a locus standi, as well as a scat; it is our object to sit in the one, and to stand in the other, as long as we can. Our names soar up to the top of subscription lists, with the two magical letters tied to the end of them, like a tail. Good dinners are ours-not paid for by ourselves, but

given us by people in Baker Street and Finsbury | Square, and we like good dinners, Our appendage acts like Grimstone's eye-snuff upon the vision of some of our friends, who used always to be rubbing those organs with a pocket-handkerchief as we passed. They no longer rub them now; they see us. I should electrify my little chop-house in the Strand, where I now sit down to the joint without making any manner of sensation, if I were one day to stalk in as the Member for Guttleborough. Did you see that gentleman sitting at No. 7, sir?' the waiter would ask, as soon as I had left. "That is none other than Mr. Such-a-one, the Member of Parliament.' And he would begin telling lies about me. These are the considerations which draw the sportsman from his hounds, the Scot from his manufactory, and the Irish prince (if he had his rights) from his mud castle, and pop them all down a heterogeneous mass within the walls of St. Stephens.

"In America, the case is entirely different. There, the rich merchant, or the barrister in good practice, or the man of wealth and influence, in such cities as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, would, by accepting a seat in the legislature, be making as great a sacrifice for the good of his courtry as I should, by refusing one, for mine. To appreciate this, only consider the consequences which, in that great Republic, accrue to the victim who suffers himself to be dragged down from private into public life. He leaves his comfortable house in New York, or his villa on the Hudson, the elegant society by which he has been surrounded, and (dearer than all) the privacy which he has hitherto enjoyed. What does he get in exchange? He is compelled to reside in a miserable, unhealthy, unfinished town, for nine months in the year, without any objects of interest around him, without recreations of any kind, without any society to speak of. He is forced to drop his 'aristocratic' airs, and to stand up and drink a cocktail | with any drunken constituent who pursues him to the bar of his hotel. He is forced to sit next to, and to converse familiarly with, persons whom he has hitherto only read of in newspapers and novels, as we read of the 'Tipperary boys'-savages from Iowa and Wisconsin, whom the unsettled populations of those districts have sent up to represent them-stumporators, who have not won their places by underhand dealing, by bribery and corruption, but have rushed in upon their opponents, and gouged them, like men. When he goes back, he finds that his house is no longer his own. Nothing is his own. He himself no longer belongs to himself-he belongs to the people. All day long, he is employed in shaking hands with Generals and Judges, and other dirty persons. As for any credit attaching to the position of a member of the Lower House, I should think it must act rather as a bar to your introduction to decent society. You are a delegate, not a representative—a flunkey, not a man. A constituency of so many thousands meet and proclaim, by a majority of so many hundreds or thousands, that such and such are their opinions.

Now, then, who'll carry our opinions up to Washington? Come, the place is vacant. Who offers himself for the plush and shoulder-knot?' or, 'Who'll be our errand-boy?' 'Please, gentlemen, I will,' cry half-a-dozen. Homer Smith, or Artaxerxes Brown, or Nahum Robinson, as the case may be, is the chosen one. Now, sir, you go up and deliver this parcel, and mind what you are about, do you hear?" You have twenty-thousand masters. You are servant-ofall-work to a vast constituency, with every individual member ringing his bell for you at one and the same time. Respectable men will not, for the most part, accept this kind of position. They prefer looking on.

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'It is worth observing, too-when a man gets upon political topics, there is no stopping him-it is worth observing the different impression produced in your mind, in England and America, by one and the same word, the word Government.' I am not about to indulge in a comparison between the Republican and the Monarchical forms of Government; such a discussion would ill suit these trifling pages, and, indeed, would be rather stale anywhere. What I mean to say is this. When you hear of Goverment doing so and so-Government is about to erect a Lunatic Asylum in Downing Street-Government is on the point of increasing our steam navy-Government will scarcely permit this and that-Bob has got a situation under Government, and so on, what do you understand? You losc, don't you, all idea of any particular person, such as Russell, or Wood, or Palmerston? They are merged in the notion of a collective body, solemn and mysterious, holding its deliberations somewhere-at Windsor, or in Downing Street, or in Chesham Place-perhaps, nowhere at all, but arriving at a determination, by communicating with each other through the medium of the penny post. Does the Queen say anything? What does H.R.H. do? Does he sometimes favour us with a law on real property or Irish affairs, on the sly, just as, openly, he has conferred upon us the boon of a national exhibition? When we, of the middling classes, have one of the ministers pointed out to us, rolling down Whitehall in his carriage, or rattling up Rotten Row on his cob, we look upon him with an undefined awe, as a being quite separated and apart from ourselves. What is he thinking about now? Pray, Heavens! he may not be about to tax me! A veil of mystery enshrouds that man. I shall, perhaps, never see him again-I shall only feel him. If I wished to see him, how many ushers, clerks, rods, wands, passages, and waiting-rooms, should I have to undergo, before looking upon his august face!

"Now, at Washington, the smallness of the town, and the absence of ranks and grades, and the tiny space in which business has to be transacted, brings home the idea of Government to the bosom of every one as a familiar and well-known object. We can almost see the ordinary springs by which the political machine is put in motion. We may sit next to the Secretary of War at dinner, every day at our hotel;

we walk about arm-in-arm with the Secretary of | American, on the express ground, that it is not something else; we hob-a-nob with a third great frequented by those vulgar Western people.' I have man; we take our evening cigar with a fourth. We meet them at dinner in little back-kitchens, and see basins of broth sent out to them. They are but men. There is no more mystery hanging over their deliberations, than there is over those of the vestry in a country town. We are as familiar with the every-day life of the Prime Minister, as we are with that of the Mayor. If I want to talk on business with the highest personage in the country, I knock at the door, ask if Mr. Fillmore is at home, and, if he is, put down my pipe and walk in.”

The following observations appear to be singularly judicious and impartial, and worthy of acceptance on both sides the Atlantic:

"In adverting, however, to the absence of refinement, so clearly discernible in American men, it would be unpardonable to omit one consideration, which has not been sufficiently taken into account by English travellers. The Government of the United States is a popular Government, their institutions are popular institutions, the spirit which presides over the manners and customs of private life, is a spirit springing directly from the masses, and which looks to the welfare of the masses as its sole and legitimate end and object. If, then, there be wanting that highly refined and polished class of gentlemen, which is to be found in England, on the other hand, you would search in vain for anything corresponding to the semi-barbarian class of peasants, that some of our counties exhibit. Men are more upon a level; if there be very few who cultivate the graces of external deportment, on the other hand, (to their lasting glory be it said,) there are very few that cannot read and write. And while the English traveller is fully justified in enjoying a good-humoured laugh at their neglect of the forms and decencies of life, an American traveller would be equally entitled to dwell upon our shortcomings, which if not so ludicrous in their nature, are, perhaps, after all, more disastrous in their effects. The only difference would be in the result. Whilst the British Lion would snore contentedly (or, still better, rouse himself to effect some improvement,) under the influence of their remarks, the feathers of the American Eagle are ruffled by the slightest breath of censure. Such a touchy people surely never existed. When they have accomplished something of which they can reasonably be proud, this absurd thin-skinnedness will be no longer discernible.

"Talking of the touchiness displayed by our Transatlantic cousins, I may be permitted to advert, once more, with regret, to the circumstance that the works of Hall, Trollope, Dickens, and other travellers, are looked upon by them as studied and malicious libels upon their national character. I once heard an American, at Washington, make the following remark, 'I was in Cincinnati for six months, and I do not think, that throughout the whole of that time, I met with three gentlemen.' The New York Hotel, in New York, has been recommended to me by another

heard, over and over again, at Philadelphia, and elsewhere, that the Western States are inhabited by a fine population, but if you were to go there with the expectation of finding many men with gentlemanly manners, you would be disappointed. You would meet with some curious specimens, down there Sir.' Americans themselves have repeatedly begged me to wait and go West. You would be so much amused at the fellows you would meet with on the steamers, down there,' they have said. And yet, when Mr. Dickens, after passing through the Eastern cities, (the state of society in which, he, for the most part, eulogises,) comes to exhibit a good-natured portrait, or even caricature, of some of these peculiar personages of Ohio and Missouri, a hundred reviews and newspapers bristle up to fling the lie in his teeth. This is very absurd. Besides which, the Bostonian, or Baltimorean, who, in speaking of the Down Wester, tells you, very reasonbly, that the same refinement cannot be expected in a new and unsettled country, as is to be found in cities of longer standing, (Boston and Baltimore for example,) should remember that the very same remark, though in a modified form, is applicable to the manners of his own city and state, when compared with those of Europe."

As full of light reading, but not without sterling sense, as well as playful humour, of pointed but not malicious satire, proof enough has been given that no one will be likely to yawn over this book, or lay it down until he has done with its contents.

Turning from prose to poetry, what say our readers to the following picture of a baby culled from a recent volume of poems by W. C. Bennett. Nothing more difficult, as painters know, than to catch on canvass the evanescent graces of childhood-to fix its rapidly fleeting and alternating images; nor does it require less the hand of a master to translate them into verse. From two or three, all equally beautiful, we take the following:

"6 BABY MAY.

"CHEEKS as soft as July peaches:
Lips whose dewy scarlet teaches
Poppies paleness; round large eyes
Ever great with new surprise;
Minutes filled with shadeless gladness;
Minutes just as brimm'd with sadness;
Happy smiles and wailing cries;
Crows and laughs with tearful eyes;
Lights and shadows, swifter born
Than on windswept Autumn corn;
Ever some new tiny notion,
Making every limb all motion;
Catching up of legs and arms;
Throwings back and small alarms:
Clutching fingers; straightening jerks;
Twining feet whose each toe works;
Kickings up and straining risings;
Mother's ever new surprisings;
Hands all wants and looks all wonder
At all things the heavens under;

Tiny scorns of smiled reprovings
That have more of love than lovings;
Mischiefs done with such a winning
Archness that we prize such sinning;
Breakings dire of plates and glasses;
Graspings small at all that passes;
Pullings off of all that's able

To be caught from tray or table;
Silences-small meditations

Deep as thoughts of cares for nations;
Breaking into wisest speeches
In a tongue that nothing teaches;
All the thoughts of whose possessing
Must be wooed to light by guessing;
Slumbers-such sweet angel-seemings
That we'd ever have such dreamings;
Till from sleep we see thee breaking,
And we'd always have thee waking;
Wealth for which we know no measure;
Pleasure high above all pleasure;
Gladness brimming over gladness;
Joy in care; delight in sadness;
Loveliness beyond completeness;
Sweetness distancing all sweetness;
Beauty all that beauty may be ;-
That's May Bennett; that's my baby."

THE VINTAGE.

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When the day is fixed, (and in this country they do not brook delay,) then follows the protocolling, or whatever else they call it; and the testimonials on both sides, required by the government, afford a beautiful specimen of ceremonious legislation. We copy from the printed form lying before us what these certificates are expected to show, and what must of necessity be established ere a marriage licence can be obtained. The king, as a careful father of his people, does not like to have unhealthy children. The first thing, therefore, is to prove that you have been vaccinated. Then comes the "week-day school ticket," in testimony of a regular attendance there; also a "Sunday-school ticket." A "certificate of attendance upon a religious teacher," and another of "confirmation" is also required. Then a conduct certificate,"

a "service book," a "wanderbuch," (this refers to the compulsory travels of their Handwerks'-burschen.) An "apprentice ticket" must also be exhibited, and a statement made and substantiated as to property," which, if not considered to be satisfactory, according to circumstances, destroys the whole thing.

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STOTHARD was certainly the prince of book illustrators, and his graceful and classic pencil never,"permission from the parents, on both sides," must perhaps, realized anything more beautiful than the be likewise produced. A "residence permission group before us, conceived in the very spirit of ticket," a certificate as to the due performance of Raffaelle, yet with an originality peculiar to the militia duties," an "examination ticket," and also one painter. Stothard is not to be cited so much for the as to "business, trade, or occupation accuracy of his drawing, as for the feeling which runs Those in a higher class of life, besides (with a few through all his works. Others may surpass him in natural exceptions) the above, have yet other things the correct rendering of mere form; but where, now to do, proofs to make, and cautions to give ere the that he is gone, shall we look for that living grace knot of matrimony can be tied. As one instance, it and beauty that gives a charm to even the humblest may I mentioned that every Bavarian officer, without effort of his pencil? distinction, must deposit in the hands of Government such a capital (by way of guarantee) as, at 4 per cent., shall produce annually, at the least, 400 florins! Without this, or the king's dispensation, which is seldom, or now never, obtained, the permission to marry is withheld. The capital, once deposited, is intangible, being intended as some provision for the wife and family after his death.-Pictures of Nuremberg.

SCRAPS.

DIFFICULTIES OF MARRIAGE IN GERMANY.

AMONGST the better classes in this country, such things as elopements are seldom or never heard of. No such thing as getting married here without the consent of parents! Certain prescribed forms must be gone through, or the marriage is null and void. The proposal being formally made and accepted, then comes the verlobung, or betrothal. This takes place, for the most part, privately; shortly after which, the father of the bride (as she is then called) gives a dinner or supper to the families and the most intimate friends on both sides, when the fact is declared, aud leave given to publish it to the world, who, however, has generally been fortunate enough to anticipate the information. The cards of betrothal are then circulated amongst their friends and acquaintance, and, as it may interest some of my fair readers to see how

ON telling Socrates that such a one was nothing improved by his travels,-" I very well believe it," said he, "for he took himself along with him.”

The smallest and slightest impediments are the most piercing; and as little letters most tire the eyes, so do little affairs most disturb us.

There is no so good man, that so squares all his thoughts and actions to the laws, that he is not faulty enough to deserve hanging ten times in his life.

Aristo used to say that neither a bath nor a lecture did signify anything, unless they scoured and made men clean.

The want of goods is easily repaired; the poverty of the soul is irreparable.-Montaigne.

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