From the Saturday Evening Post. LACONICS _ No. IV. A lie is a breach of promise; for whoever seriously addresses his discourse to another, tacitly promises to speak the truth, because he knows that the truth is expected. He who tells a lie is not sensible how great a task he undertakes, for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one. Live with the sad serenely, with the cheerful agreeably, with the old gravely, with the young pleasantlyan author once added also, "with the wicked badly, with the wanton lasciviously," but I say avoid the society of the wanton and the wicked if you can. Complaisance renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable. Search carefully if one patiently finishes what he boldly began. Decided ends are the sure signs of a decided char acter. Associate with people rather above than below your rank, and rather older than younger than yourself. Complaisance obliges whilst it reprehends, without this the best advice seems but a reproach, praise disagreeable, and conversation troublesome. Every one may excel in something. No revenge is more heroic than that which tormente envy by doing good. To err is human; to forgive, divine. By other's faults wise men correct their own. Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments. A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday. Fly him who from mere curiosity asks three ques tions running about a thing that cannot concern him. The generous never recounts minutely the actions he has done, nor the prudent those he will do. The wrath that on conviction subsides into mildness is the wrath of a generous mind. Common sense is the foundation of man's happiness n his commerce with others. A sincere man is consistent with himself, he is never embarrased, he has courage enough for truth but to lie he is afraid. He is far above the meanness of dissimulation; the words of his mouth are the thoughts of his heart. Yet with patience and caution he openeth his lips; he studieth what is right and speaketh with discretion. Study to be silent respecting yourself, your birth, A man of sense is a man acquainted with business your fortune, your acquirements. If you are eminent and letters. A man who is awkward from bashfulness is a clown-as one who is throwing off a number of impertinent airs and graces at every turn, is a coxcomb and an upstart. It is a man's business to consider men's several characters and circumstances of life, with the different bias and way of thinking they give to the mind, that he may so conduct himself in his behaviour and manner ot speaking, as will render him most respectable and gain him the good esteem of those he addresses. Trouble not the company with your own private concerns, as you do not love to be troubled with those of others. Yours are as little to them as theirs are to you. Inattention is ill manners, it shows contempt, and contempt is never forgiven. Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light, takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice, and makes even folly and impertinence supportable. Irresolution in the schemes of life which offer themselves to our choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest and most universal causes of all our disquiet and unhappiness. Acasto has natural good sense, good nature and discretion. So that every man enjoys himself in his company. It is incredible how an orderly division of the day gives apparent rapidity to the wings of time, whilst a stated devotion of the hour to its employment really lengthens life. Praise undeserved is satire in disguise. Be simple in your manners and noble in all your proceedings. for anything let others find it out and speak your praise. The utmost you can say of yourself will have but little effect, for no judgment of character will be passed by people of sense trom what you may pretend. Modesty makes large amends for the pain it gives, the persons who labour under it, by the prejudice it affords every worthy person in their favor. In your politics think no further than how to preserve the peace of your life in any government under which you may life. Raphael in return to Adams's inquiries into the course of the stars and the revolutions of heaven, counsels him to withdraw his mind from idle speculations, and instead of watching motions which he has no power to regulate, to employ his faculties upon nearer more interesting objects; the survey his own life, the subjection of his passions, the knowledge of duties which must daily be performed and the detection of dangers which must daily be incurred. A man must live by the world and make the best of it, such as it is. He who discovers his secrets to another, sells hina his liberty and becomes his slave. Assume a virtue if you have it not. Let every man mind his own business and leave the government of the country to the governor thereof. Who seldom speaks, and with one calm well timed word, strikes dumb the loquacious, is a genious among those who steady nature. Discourse not in a whisper or half voice to your next neighbour, it is ill breeding, and in some degree a fraud, conversation being, as one has well observed, a joint and common property. Accommodate yourself to the circumstances in which you are placed. Let your whole conduct be not only inreproachable Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few I put unsuspected. LETTERS FROM THE SOUTH. which seemed to be as doubtful as that of Homer, BY THOMAS CAMPBELL. LETTER I. Algiers, 19th Sept. 1834. My dear Friend, One day that I was in the King's library at Paris, exploring books on ancient geography, I cast my eyes on a point of the map that corresponds with the site of the city. Its recent eventful history rushed full on my thoughts, and seemed to rebake them for dwelling on the dead more than the living. The question of how widely and how soon this conquest of Algiers may throw open the gates of African civilization, is it not infinitely more interest. ing than any musty old debate among classic typographers? To confine our studies to mere antiquities is like reading by candle-light with our shutters closed, after the sun has risen. So 1 closed the vol. ume I was perusing, and wished myself with all my Algiers. ers. Ah, but the distance-the mare tevam et importuosum" of Africa-the heat that must be endured---and the pestilence that may be encountered...do not these considerations make the soul at " thing impossible? No, not impossible. I said to my self, on second thoughts; the distance is not so great, and the risk of contagion has been braved by thou sands with impunity; 1 will see this curious place. I went to my friend, M. Galignani, and told him my intention; he introduced me to Mons. Lawrence, who was soon to return to the colony as the Procureur de Roi. M. Lawrence, with the greatest friendliness, sent me about a dozen books relating to the colony, and offered, if I would accompany him in the post to Toulon, to procure me a passage from thence to Algiers in the Government steam-packet. Unfor. tunately for me, I had too much baggage to be accommodated in the mail, so I had to set out in the diligence, trusting to meet with M. Lawrence at Marseilles. As I travelled night and day, I had but a hasty view of the country, and when I reached Marseilles, I found that the Procureur de Rui had got before ane, and (as 1 concluded) was embarked at Toulon. A merchant vessel was to sail for Algiers the next morning; I took a berth on board of her, being anxious to get across before the season of the equinoctial gales; I have since learnt that these gales are not so punctual to their visits to the Mediter. ranean during the autumn as to other seas. Meanwhile, an advice which M. Lawrence had given me dwelt in my mind, namely, by all means to take a servant with me from Europe, as the Algerine lodg. ing houses leave you very much to serve yourself. The only day therefore which I spent in the most interesting city of Southern France was devoted, not to seeing its curiosities, but to searching for the most valuable of all curiosities-a faithful domestic. A young man with an honest-looking countenance, who reminded me of your inestimable servant George, brought me a certificate of his character for a twelve. month past; but tarther back the recommemder could not speak for him, and there was a mystery over his anterior biography which makes me fear he was only an outside resemblance of George. I engaged him, nevertheless. He said he was a British subject, and a native of Gibraltar; but when I took him to a British Consul, his answers were not so satisfactory as to procure a passport. He then recollected that he had been born at Cadiz; the Spanish Consul, how ever, doubted the accuracy of his memory. After wards he discovered that he was a native of Naples, but with no better success. In fine, we went hither and yonder in search of some testimony as to his birth, * The ancient Roman city leosium. only with this difference, that the cities where he alleged he had been born seemed to vie with each other rather in disowning, than claiming, the honour of his nativity; and nobody would give him a passport. So I was obliged to embark alone-a knighterrant without a squire. I saded from Marseilles the 11th inst. and we cros sed the Mediteranean in six days. That they were not in all respec's the pleasantest days of my life you will easily imagine, when I tell you that twelve of us adult passengers, besides an obsteperous child of four years old, were potted alive in a cabin nine feet square. There was no refuge during the day-time on deck, for it seemed to be kept from being set on fire by the sun only by incessant buckets of water. It is true that we could sally from our den in the evening, and in the night-time we had some repose, but it was constantly interrupted at day-break by the impious brat I have mentioned, beating a toy-drum, and bawling lustily when it was taken from him. At last the very mother who had borne him lost all parience; she threw his plaything into the sea, and threatened to send the little drummer himselt after it. Several of us humanely, but in vain, implored her to fulfil her threat. We were fortuna e, however, as to our ship's crew, who, from the captain down to the mousse, or cabin-boy, were all assidously attentive to us. The Mediterranean trading-vessels have generally a bad character for feeding their passengers with tough salt fish, and laying to at meal-times, to make the rocking of the ship an antidote to their guests partaking freely even of that sorry fare. But here, we had excellent food and wine, though the passage-price was very moderate. One day we had even a fête and plenty of champaigne; it was when a brother skipper came on board and dined with us. He was a strange mad-cap, who, not contented with being master of a ship, imagined himself also master of the "Belles Lettres" and philosophy. Nay, he was a poet to boot, and, to my misfortune, learning that I was a literateur, he cruelly inflicted several dozens of his own verses on my naked ears. It was a voyage altogether with many sufferings, but with some consolations. The cool of the evening gave us breath and appetite to sup upon deck, and, in order to promote cheerfulness, it was made a law that we should all sing after supper in turn, whether we could sing or not. never recognised more of the natural gaiety of the French character, and I fell in with it the more easily, inasmuch as that, bating the discomforts I have described, and in the absence of stomachic affliction, I was, as far as the mind is concerned, very tolerably happy. The prospect of seeing a new quarter of the globe, and of descrying even afar off Mount Atlas, with his head in the clouds and his feet in the sands of the desert this propect every now and then made my thoughts, I could almost say, delicious; and 1 blessed my fate that I had not in youth exhausted the enjoyment of travelling. We passed between the islands of Majorca and Minorca, but at too great a distance to observe distinctly the features of either of their shores. Early in the morning of the day before yesterday, I awoke to the joyous sound of land having been discovered from the mast-head, and to the sight of landbirds wheeling around our sails. I should think that as far as thirty miles off we saw the whole portion of the Algerine territory, which stretches on the east along Cape Matifon, and on the west along the peninsula of Sidi Ferruch, where the French first landed in their invasion of the regency. At that distance, and even when you come nearer, by a great many miles, the view of Algiers from the sea is not beautiful. It is true that the tops of the lesser Atlas form a fine background in the south, but the prospect as sumes not its full picturesqueness till you come almost within a mile of the shore. Farther off, the city itself looks like a triangular quarry of lime or chalk, on the steep side of a hill, whilst the country.houses that dot the adjacent heights seem like little parcels of the same maternal lying on fields that are to be manured. On nearer approach, however, the imagined quarry turns out to be a urprising city, and the specks on the adjoining hills to be square and castle like houses, embosomed in groves and gardens. No town that I have ever seen possesses, in proportion to its size, so many contiguous villas as Algiers; and their brilliance and high position give a magnificent appearance to this suburban portion of the coast. Meanwhile the city itself, when you come in fu'l view of it, has an aspect, if not strictly beautiful, at least impressive from its novelty and uniqueness. Independently, indeed, of its appearance, its very name makes the first sight of Algiers create no ordinary sensations, when one thinks of all the Christian hearts that have throbbed with anguish on approaching this very spot. Blest be our stars, that we have lived to see the chains of slavery broken here, and even about to be unrivetted on the other side of the Atlantic! But, without these associations, the view of Algiers is interesting from its strangeness to an European eye. It is walled all round in the old style of fortification, its whole mural circuit being, I should think, about a mile and a half. It forms a triangle on the steep side of a hill, the basis of which is close to the sea, whilst its apex is crowned by the Cassaba, or citadel. That strong place was the palace of the last Dey. His predecessors had dwelt at the foot of the town; but so many of them had died a violent death, that Hussein Pasha thought a higher position would enable him to take better care of his loving subjects and faithful Janissaries; so he removed quietly one night, with all his treasures, to the Cassaba. Farther off, on a still higher hill, stands the Emperor's Fort-so called from having been built by Charles V.-which commands the whole town. The terraced and square houses which rise, seemingly, condensed, close behind one another, are, like the forts and city walls, all washed with lime, and dazzling as snow. These objects, together with the pier and light. house, the batteries, lined, tier over tier, with hundreds of enormous cannon on the sea-side rock, give an imposing aspect to the city that seems to justify itsold appellation of "Algiers the warlike." At the same time the mosques and minarets, surmounted by the crescent, remind you that you are now among the Moslems; while a palm-tree which is visible, though remotely, seemed to me like a graceful characteristic feather on the brow of an African landscape. I had soon, however, a less agreeable indication than the palm-tree of having got to a southern latitude. There was no keeping below when one came close to so interesting a scene; and, as they advanced, the deck became burning hot. The officers of health, as they are called, detained us for two hours in the harbour, gasping and execrating them, before they would visit the ship and permit us to land. I had been recently so sick as to bring up blood. I now grew feverish, faint, and almost blind. I felt bereft of manity calls me to remember him as a most civil and serviceable friend, and I need not say that I associated romance with his name. He took charge of my effects, and saw them sately through the Customhouse. What passed in that hour of landing in Africa-when I tell on my knees on the shore, like Scipio, but from exhaustion and not enthusiasm-is but indistinctly marked in my memory; but I recollect being glad that there were no ladies in the boat, for we passed many young Arabs, obviously grown to manhood, some of whom were fishing in barges, and others swimming abont, as naked as they were born. I recollect, also, that the native porters seized on our baggage with as much impudence as if they had been at Calais, and that my languid spirits were much refreshed by the sound of some hearty whacks of his cane which my friend, the perruquier, bestowed on those infidels. Without the aid of his arm I could not have got to the nearest inn. On reaching the hotel, its solid walls seemed to me to rock like the ship which I had quitted. I threw myself on a bed; my predominant sensation was thirst, but the roof, the floor, and the sides of my apartment were all sheer masonry, and there was neither bell nor other means of summoning a waiter. My faithful Biron, however, soon returned to my relief. He procured for me lodgings and a servant. I slept soundly that night, except when I was shortly, but not unpleasantly awakened, by the chaunt of the Mouzeens on the minarets, proclaiming the hour of prayer. I now write to you from lodgings which I have taken in the house of M. Descousse, a respectable merchant in Algiers, who was formerly a captain in Napoleon's cavalry, and is at present colonel of the national foot-guards of Algiers. The national footguards, I understand, amount to between five and six hundred; there is a national horse-guard also, but it reckons only one company. M. Descousse's house formerly belonged to the Aga of the Janissaries; it may be surpassed by one or two mansions of Algiers in gilded alcoves, scultptured fountains, and other ornaments, but, upon the whole, it is a fair sample of the best Algerine habitations. From the street you enter into the lowest, or ground floor, which is dimly lighted by a window over the door. The main apartment here is employed by my landlord as a porter's hall; but, in bygone times, the Aga, surrounded by his servants, used to sit in it smoking his pipe and receiving visitors. On one side of this gloomy hall there are vaulted apartments which were formerly used as stables; but since the Christian conquest of Algiers, they have been converted into wine-cellars. From the ground, you ascend by two flights of white marble stairs in full daylight, and to a court of some thirty feet square, paved with marble. This court, with a gallery passing in front of each side of its quadrangle, tier over tier, to the height of three stories, remind you of our old English inns; only it is more elegant, and the white marble pillars, contrasted with the green and yellow glazed tiles that line the staircases, as well as the arches and floor of each gallery, produce a rich effect. From these galleries, large and handsome folding doors of wood, curiously carved, open into the rooms. The internal aspect of the house, as you look up to it from the court, is upon the every faculty except my fancy, and this was ill-natured-whole imposing, and on the terrace of the upper ly busy in persuading me, falsely, that I was about to die. When the boat arrived that was about to take us ashore, 1 could not so much as rise to see my luggage put into it. It was then that a fellow-passenger befriended me in my utmost need. This was a smart, intelligent, little man of the name of Biron, whom I had supposed, from his appearance, to be some officer pretty high in the civil service; but he told me that he was returning to his perruquier's shop in Algiers, However, if he was not in the civil service, his hu most story there is a commanding and magnificent view of the city, the sea, and its ships, and the distant mountains. To save the eyes frorn being painfully dazzled, it is however necessary to consult this prospect either by moonlight or by mitigated day-light. Here I meet with my fellow lodgers in the cool of the evening, among whom is Dr. Revière, physician to the civil hospital, an intelligent, far-travelled, and accomplished man. He distinguished hirnself much in Egypt by his skilful treatment of the plague. His lady is a fair daughter of Pennsylvania. In the Turkish time, men were not privileged to walk on these roof-terraces; the women enjoyed them alone, and used to visit each other by climbing ladders up and down to the contiguous houses. Hitherto I have seen no Moorish ladies upon them; but the Jewesses ogle their admires on the house-tops with a sort of feline familiarity. Notwithstanding all this showy architecture, the apartments of the Moorish houses are gloomy and comfortless. They have a few loop-holes in the outer wall towards the street, but receive their air and light principally through windows that look inwardly upon the court. These windows, which are latticed either with black or white iron, and without glass, except where Europeans have put it in, give the mansion a look of what it was really meant to be, when constructed a family prison, where it was as easy to watch the inmates as in any of our most approved penitentiaries. Niches in the walls, which have generally doors, serve for presses and cupboards. One side of each quadrangular story, in an Algerine house, contains only one long and narrow room, but a show of three apartments is made out by a wall, built half. way up to the right and left of the central room, which laces to the door. At the risk of broken bones, you ascend by a ladder to the top of these walls, and there you find a new floor of glazed tiles in either side-room, with a curtain hung from the roof so as to form two quasi apartments. Until the French ar rived, a chimney was unknown to the Algerines, except in their kitchens, or, peradventure, in the house of a toreign consul; and it is still difficult to find lodg. ings with such a comfort. Yet the climate, they tell me, is very chilly in the rainy months; and a Frenchman who has been in Norway declares to me that be had suffered less from the cold there than here. The sole objects of Moorish house-building seem to have been to exclude the heat and confine the women. LETTER 11. Algiers Sept. 29th, 1834. I have hitherto perambulated only a part of this city, but I understand it contains 153 strects, 14 blind alleys, and five places that can be called courts or squares; of the last of these, however, only the grand square near the sea is of any extent. Thanks to the demolitions made by the French, it is spacious and commodious. As to the rest of Algiers, it is, with the exception of one or two streets, a labyrinth of the narrowest, gloomiest, and most crooked lanes that were ever inhabited by human beings. In many of them two persons can scarcely walk abreast; and if you encounter an ass laden with wood, it behoves you to pull up cleverly to one side, if you wish to keep your lower venter from being torn up by a protruding faggot. The narrowness of the streets is, no doubt, some protection from the heat, and from the rain also, where the houses join their projecting upper stories into an arcade; but the stagnation of air which it occasions, together with the steanung offal and decayed vegetables that meet you at every corner, make me wonder that Algiers is ever free from putrid fevers. There are, however, large covered sewers, which rid the city of much of i's filth, and might carry it all off, it the streets were properly swept. The city is also well supplied with water. There are four aqueducts which bring it from the neighbouring heights, and which feed sixty-four public fountains, besides seventy-eight in private houses. The sewers are said to have been constructed by the Romans in a city that pre-occupied the place of Algiers. For their acqueducts, the Algerines were indebted, in 1611, to one of the Moors who had been driven out of Spain, and who, having discovered a spring near the Emperor's Fort, about three-quarters of a mile from the city, laid his project for supplying the city with water before the Dey. It was approved of and executed, and the projector was well rewarded. Every fountain has a ladle chained to it for the common use, with some arabesque and sculpture on thestones, and an inscription which, I take it for granted, as a verse of the Koran-probably reconimending Adam's wine as a beverage, in preference to stronger liquors. The Mussulmans are fond of quoting texts from their holy book. On an executioner's sword I have seen inscribed, in golden letters, "God is merciful." 1 account for my continuing to be interested in this ugly place, only by the novelty of objects which it presents. The diversity of the people and of their costume is not only amusing to the eye, but it stirs up a curiosity in the mind respecting the history of so many races, and the causes of their concourse. The "Grand Place," Place," as I have told you, affords the only tolerable promenade. Here, at the market-time of a morning, you see not only the various people, but the animal and vegetable productions of nature displayed in rich picturesqueness. It has been a perfect treat to me, for several days, to lounge here before breakfast. How I long for the pencil of a Flemish painter to delineate to you the human figures of all complexions and dresses! the turbaned Moor-the Jew, with his sly face, and his spouse Rebecca, with her yard-long head-dress behind her. I could not pass even the Jew boys that blacken shoes, without being struck by the nimbleness of their tongues, and the comic play of their countenances. They all speak French, and seem the happiest creatures on earth; excepting, perhaps, the half-naked negroes, who are always chattering and laughing loudest, in proportion to the scantiness of duds upon their backs. 1 omit the Europeans, for they rather spoil the picture. Peculiarly striking is the looks of the Kabyles, the aboriginal highlanders of Barbary, who have, all of them, a fierce air, and, many of them, legs and arms that would not disgrace grace the grenadier company of the 42d. Taller, and generally slenderer, are the Arabs descended from those who conquered the country in the seventh century. They are distinguishable by vivid black eyes, shaped like an almond laid sidewise; and though many of them look wretched and squalid, you see some among them whose better drapery and forms, and fine Old Testament heads, give them a truly patriarchal appearance. I thought myself looking on a living image of antiquity, as I stood this morning beside a majestic old Arab, whilst he made the camels he had led into the market kneel before him to be unloaded of their enormous cargoes of herbs and fruits. I felt "my very een enriched" at the sight of the vegetable treasures around me, glow. ing with all the colours of the rainbow-splendid heaps of purple grapes in one pannier, and oranges, peaches, lemons, pomegranates in another. Here were spread out in piles the huge and golden-hued melons and pompions, and there the white garlic, "and the scarlet and green pepper-pods," together with the brown melogines, an excellent por-vegetable, in size, shape, and colour resembling a polished cocoanut. Altogether the vegetable profusion here beats even that of Convent Garden: the only exception to its glory is, that their carrots, turnips, and potatoes are smaller and dearer, in proportion to general prices, than with us. I was particularly astonished at the cheapness of Barbary-figs-ten for a sou-in Scotch, a bawbee. It is a fruit entirely distinct from the true fig, and, though sweet, is insipidly flavoured; but still it is nutritious, especially if the stomach requires a slight astringent. I ceased to be surprised at its cheapness, when I tound that it grows wild on the road. side, and may be had for the trouble of gathering. It is not an universal production over Barbary, but, where it grows, the poorer Arabs live on it almost entirely during the weeks when it is in season. It is about the size of an ordinary lemon, and grows on cactusbush. This plant, the cactus, does not assume the shape of a tree till its leaves, which are about ten inches long, and an inch thick, twist themselves together into a trunk. It affords the singular phenomenon of leaf springing out of leaf. The leaves are thickly covered with prickles, which, when, they get into the flesh, are with much difficulty coaxed out of it. It is much used for hedges about Algiers; but, if you should ever come to this country, my dear friend, I exhort you never to let your linen to be spread out on the cactus. An affecting story is told of a Dutch family who had a country-house near this city. In the house there were five plump, interesting daughters, who, in an evil hour gave, their garments to be washed to an ignorant European laundress. She hung them out to dry on these prickly bushes, and such evils were entailed on the lovely wearers of them, that they could neither sit nor recline with comfort, for a week or two afterwards. There is also a fish-market here; but its smell not being so inviting as that of the vegetables, I took an informant's word for it, that the fishes are the same with those caught on the opposite coast of the Mediterranean. Among the indigenous quadrupeds, the stately camels, of course, are first to command your attention. Their tall slender foals, with their curly fleeces, look as gentle as lambs; but in the grown animal's physiognomy there is a terocity which is not always absent from his real character. The camel is not that meek animal which report generally leads us to suppose him. I went up to pat one of them, but he showed his teeth with so menacing a cry, that I made a precipitate retreat from him. He is particularly fierce in the rutting season, and is then sometimes dangerous even to his native owner. It is true that the Arab contrives almost always to manage and attach him, though he loads him heavily, and treats him often to hard fare, even now and then to a blow; but, on the whole, the Arab deals kindly with him, and gives him good provender, when he can afford it. The animal, in fact, grows up like a child under the tent of his master, partakes of his plenty as well as his penury-enjoys his song, and understands his biddings. His docility springs from habit and affection-nay, we may almost say from moral feeling; tor he rebels when his temper is not sagaciously managed. When the French came to Algiers, and got possession of camels, they thought that their obeisance might be enforced, like that of mules and asses, by simple beating; but the camels soon showed their conquerors that they were not to be so treated, and that both their kick and their bite were rather formidable. The horse here may be believed to have degenerated from the old Numidian breed; for he is lanky, and seldom elegantly shaped, and he never shows the blended fire and muscle of a prime English horse. Yet I am told that his hardihood and fleetness are often astonishing, and that his speed in sweeping down declivities would tax the horsemanship of an English jockey. It is surprising how safe and serviceable these animals are, though never mutilated. They will certainly give a snap at times, both in joke and earnest, but they are seldom vicious; and I am just come from seeing a "cheval entier," a beautiful creature, who will put his paw into your hand for the bribe of a sugar plum. The mules are large and powerful. Of the asses there are two kinds-one, of the true old biblical size, that might take Saul upon his back; the other, very diminitive, and most wretchedly treated. In the streets you are never a moment without hearing the cry of "Harri, harri," from a human brute of a driver, who is urging the speed of some of these unfortunate little donkeys, and making them feel his command by goading them with an iron spike on that part of their hips where a wound has already been made and left open. I have seen no sale of live cattle in the square, unless you give the name of cattle to a poodle-dog, a raton, a monkey, or a caged wild-cat, which is now and then offered for sale. I was particularly struck yesterday with the beauty of one the last of these animals. She lay so sleeky and gracefully on herbed of straw, that if she had been tried for killing birds and rabbits, I could not have condemned her. Near her was a long-nosed animal, which the French call a raton, about seventeen inches without the tail, though I believe he has nothing of the rat about him but his name, for his eyes are gentle, and he suffers himself to be caressed. I am told, however, that he is treacherous, and a devil among the poultry. Still more was I fascinated by a white, sagacious poodle, who whined in my face, and beseeched me to buy him, in a dog-lingo more persuasive than Cice. ronian Latin. He told me all about it, and how cruelly hard it was to be standing the live-long day, tied by a string to the hand of his salesman. I bought him, and took him home; was ever dog in this world so happy? I thought he would have gone mad with joy. The French maid-servant exclaimed, as he ramped up and down, "Il est fou-il est fou." Unhappily for herself, the poor cat of the house encountered him. He seized her by the nape of the neck, but without hurting her, except that her pride was offended, and galloped round the gallery with her, as she uttered hissing and guggling sounds from her throat, and sprawled with ludicrously unavailing efforts to scratch him. At last he dropped her, and, coming to an open window, showed his contempt of Mohammedan delusion, by howling in exact accordance with the voice of an old Mouzeen, who was proclaiming the hour of prayers from an opposite mosque. But the most popular candidate for purchase at Algiers is a small tail-less monkey, about a foot and a half in height. These gentlemen, though the most diminitive of the simious tribes in Barbary, are more formidable when they congregate and get shelter among the woods about Collo and Bougia, than the wildest beasts of the forest. They devastate in a single night whole orchards and corn fields. They are cunning and regular in their tactics, having leaders, sentinels, and spies. They have a regular discipline, and a system of warfare: at least I have been told so. No traveller is accountable for all that he relates upon hearsay; it is enough if he quotes his authorities, and I can assure you that a highly respectable French drummer gave me his word of honour as to the fact, that the monkies of Bougia are well officered, and that their commander-in-chief has a regular staff. Query, might he not mean a switch? Yet, formidable as they are in their strategics, the natives contrive to make many of them prisoners. The Kabyle peasant attaches a gourd, well fixed, to a tree; he puts some rice into it, and strews some grains at the aperture to show that there may be more within, making a hole just large enough to admit the paw of the monkey. Unfortunate pug puts in his open paw and grasps his booty, but is unable to draw it back, because it is clenched, and he is not wise enough to think of unclenching it. Hence he re. mains, as the law phrases it, with "his person at. tached," and is found next morning, looking, you may suppose, very foolish and penitent. The olden custom was to put him instantly to death, but, as he will now fetch twenty-francs at Algiers, he is sentenced only to transportation, so that the monkeys are at least one part of the population who have been benefitted by the arrival of the French. The streets of Algiers, as I have told you, are very |