THE PRINT OF GENERAL WASHINGTON.

James Heath, A.R.A. the excellent engraver, having, with great labour, completed his fine whole-length portrait of Washington, from the picture by Gabriel Stuart, (a print which was to have been published by subscription,) found himself in the predicament of having only seventy guineas subscribed. On complaining of this inadequate compensation, a printseller offered him one hundred guineas for the plate. This was disdainfully refused by Heath. On the evening of the day that he sent the plate to the printer, the news of the death of Washington arrived from America. This event so altered the state of affairs that impressions could not be produced fast enough for sale; and the artist's house was literally besieged for them. An American speculator, who came over in the ship that brought the intelligence, took two thousand impressions, and paid Heath two thousand guineas for them. The fortunate engraver, in fact, cleared considerably above five thousand pounds by the happy decision of keeping the plate in his own possession. No one regretted his good luck, for it is a beautiful work of art; and is always reckoned by continental artists and intelligent amateurs as a standard and sterling specimen of the art of engraving in England.

ANONYMOUS LETTER.

Mr. Aaron Graham, who for some years filled the situation of chief magistrate at the public-office, Bow-Street, was once placed in a situation (totally unconnected with his magisterial functions,) wherein he had to interfere in the domestic disagreements of a gentleman and his wife, his friends. After weighing in his own mind all the circumstances of the case, Mr. Graham decided that the husband was greatly to blame; but, as this husband was of an impetuous temper, the worthy magistrate judged it prudent to point out to him the irregularities he had committed, by an anonymous letter, thinking that would entirely put an end to the affair. He accordingly penned an epistle of strong remonstrance to the husband, pointing out his folly and weakness in energetic terms, and advising an alteration of his conduct. This anonymous letter was copied by a confidential clerk in the office; but it happened most unfortunately to be on Aaron Graham's escrutoire with a number of warrants, summonses, &c. to which a police magistrate has habitually to affix his signature, and he, in a moment of abstraction, wrote "AARON GRAHAM" at the bottom of his intended anonymous admonition. The letter was duly despatched; and the worthy magistrate was called out by the infuriated husband.

MICHAEL KELLY'S PONY.

Kelly for several years rode a brown pony, which had been presented to him by the Prince of Wales. This animal was the only being in Kelly's confidence, as regarded certain visits to somewhat questionable female acquaintances, and with the friendship of many such Mr. Kelly was honoured. Poor Kelly was attacked seriously by gout, and could not be carried by his sagacious pony to Mrs. 's nor to Miss's; and, as there did not appear any

chance of immediate recovery, the pony was sent to friend Tattersall's. Here it was recommended as being remarkably quiet; any timid gentleman might ride it. It was accordingly purchased for the Rev. W. T. O, at that time in a bad state of health, and who had been ordered by his physicians to take equestrian exercise. The invalid clergyman was not a first-rate rider, and Michael Kelly's pony was of fixed and persevering habits, and of his own accord regularly trotted up with his reverend owner on his back to several doors, where it was anything but reputable to be seen. There he waited habitually for his master to dismount. The Archbishop of Canterbury having notice of the fact, it was found necessary to sell the pony.

TOM SHERIDAN.

At one of the election dinners at Stafford, (when his father was returned for that borough,) Tom Sheridan was in earnest conversation with the gentleman who sat at table next to him. The mayor of Stafford, Mr. Horton, an eminent shoe-manufacturer, (the staple commodity of the town,) presided, and, as a matter of course, gave as a toast, Prosperity to the manufacture of Stafford.' This was not heard or attended to by T. Sheridan, who continued his conversation; on which the chairman, in rather a dignified tone, exclaimed, 'Mr. Tom Sheridan, I have proposed the toast of "Prosperity to the manufacture of Stafford," which you have utterly disregarded.' Tom instantly turned, and imitating the pompous manner of the mayor, said, 'Sir, may the manufacture of Stafford be trampled on by the whole world!"

CLAUDE SEURAT, THE LIVING SKELETON.

When that extraordinary being denominated the 'Anatomie Vivant' was brought over from the Continent as an exhibition, Major W, the speculator in the affair, observed, that this skeleton was very fond of, and always gallant to, the English ladies. My friend Barnaby remarked, 'That it would be a bad thing for the country, as it might have an effect in thinning the population.'

LADY PAYNE'S MONKEY.

R. B. Sheridan was on terms of intimacy with Sir Ralph and Lady Payne. Her ladyship had a favourite monkey, which was seized with a peculiar melancholy incidental to its species. It had taken to eating its tail-a sure forerunner of death.

Mr. Sheridan came to dinner, and Lady Payne informed him that poor Jem was no more; that she intended to have him buried; and entreated the author of the School for Scandal' to write an epitaph on her monkey. Sheridan was not quite in the vein; but the lady pertinaciously placed paper and pen before him, whereupon the great dramatist and orator sulkily scratched

"Poor Jem!
Sorry for him!

I'd rather by half
It had been Sir Ralph!"

THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER.

An Irish peasant on a small ragged pony was floundering through a bog, when the animal, in its efforts to push on, got one of its hoofs into the stirrup, "Arrah," said the rider, "my boy, if you are going to get up, it is time for me to get down."

TWO SPECIMENS OF AN IRISH LAMENT.

The lament over the dead body of a relative or friend is of very ancient origin. Occasionally the language becomes impassioned, and even beautiful. The following lament was uttered by an old and attached nurse in a family, and addressed to the corpse of the master, whom she had in his infancy loved and nourished.

"Ah! ah! why did you die and leave us? I rocked your cradle, -I nursed your children,-I must follow in your funeral! Your children are about me! I see my child's children, but I see not my child! I remember your face in youth-its brightness was manly like the sun's-it made daylight around me! I remember your form in the dance, and strong was your arm when you wrestled with the young men. Oh! none was like my son to me! and all your days were pleasant until the destroyer came; then your young cheeks grew pale, and the light left your eyes, and I laughed no more! I baked your marriage-cake; warm was your heart, and warm the hand that pressed poor old Norah's! All, all now is cold and desolate !"

The following lament, though perhaps uttered with equal sincerity, is converted to the ludicrous by the language taking a less poetical turn:

"Why, ahi! why, Phelim, why did you lave all your good family, an' the other household furnithur behind you? Och! why did you lave that trivet with the bit of baked mutton an' praties on it? Why did you lave the three-legged sthool, on whom you sat so often to smoke your dudhee? An' there's the tortoise-shell cat an' kitten to match, behind to bewail yer loss! Why did you lave that penn'orth of brown shugar in the paper, an' your bed-curtins with the chickabiddy pattern furnithur? Och! ahi! who'll wear the topboots now, that your father gave ye when they got too small for him? Och! ullaloo! och!"

HOW TO DISTINGUISH A FRENCHMAN.

Observe when he enters a room, and takes his hat off. If he makes a comb of his fingers, and settles his hair (which is generally pretty long) with them, you may be tolerably certain of your conjecture. Observe him still further; and if, when at dinner, he picks and cleans his teeth with the table-forks, you may be perfectly sure you are right. Probatum est.

THE SNUFF-TAKING STATUE.

We have often heard of persons mistaking the shadow for the substance; in the present instance we have to describe the case inverted. An English officer in Venice walking one day from the Doge's palace, thought he observed one of the figures on the clock.

tower of St. Mark's stoop down and take up something! He looked again, and he positively saw the figure take a pinch of snuff! The officer confessed that he was apprehensive he was losing his senses, or that his vision was deranged; when an old woman, observing his consternation, soon explained the seeming miracle, by telling him that one of the figures that struck the hour being out of repair, her nephew Jacopo was engaged as a substitute till the machinery was put in order.

THE FATAL WINDOW.

BY TOBY ALLSPY.

WE crack-brained saunterers through life, whose brains are stuffed to overflowing with the odd shreds and patches of tradition, are apt to affix a value to circumstances of locality, trifles of no account in the eyes of sober-minded men, and wholly overlooked by the ordinary observer. Till within the last few months there existed in the Place Vendome, marring the uniformity of its presentments, a single window, whose narrow panes and old-fashioned framing afforded a remarkable contrast to the noble plate-glass so much better proportioned to the majestic architecture of the place which filled the windows of the neighbouring houses. Though the chamber to which it admitted light was situated on the first floor, or étage d'honneur, of one of the finest hotels of the square, it had evidently remained untouched from the period of its construction, when even the palaces of the first kingdom of Europe betrayed, in the inadequate quality and size of their window-panes, the imperfect progress of one of the most ancient and beautiful of the arts of invention.

Every other drawing-room of the Place Vendôme was adorned with capacious carreaux, so transparent as to deceive the eye into doubts of any intervening medium between the cozy warmth within, and the chilly atmosphere without. Yet in that one window, (the fatal window, as it was designated by all the old people of the neighbourhood,) there remained the small, green, veiny squares, through which the financier, Law, used to gaze upon the gathering of the multitude below; who first thronged thither to purchase his worthless paper; and finally, with the hope of tearing to pieces the archimpostor by whom that scheme of financial knavery was devised for the ruin of thousands.

It was not, however, during John Law's occupancy of the hotel in question that the event took place which was the cause of affixing to the window in question so startling a designation. The sale of the adventurer's goods and chattels, consequent upon the breaking of the bubble, placed the noble mansion, stigmatized by his temporary occupancy, in the hands of one of the most opulent of that unpopular tribe, the Fermiers Généraux of the kingdom. Monsieur de Raynolle, (whose financial exertions were, not to speak it profanely, strictly within the letter of the law,) was a man to regard with horror the dealings of his predecessors as irregularities, innovations, in

breaks into the routine of financial credit. He considered the post he had purchased as the means of honestly turning his capital to ac

It had pleased heaven to make him rich; it pleased himself to make himself richer. Like the greater number of his confraternity, he did not slumber upon his opulence, but enjoyed an all but regal share of the luxuries and transports of life; purchasing at the highest cost not only the chef d'œuvres of art or science, but the society of the most eminent among the wits, poets, philosophers, statesmen, and beauties of his time. For such things are purchasable; not, as the bargain-drivers say, from hand to hand, but by splendid banquets, brilliant entertainments, and all the garlands and frippery suspended by the hand of luxury over the wooden framework of life!

The Duc de Choiseul, and the Comte de Lauraquais, the profligate Richelieu, and the brilliant Soubise, were the frequent guests of Monsieur Raynolle, both in his Place Vendôme hotel, and at his splendid château de Draveil. Nay, even St. Lambert and Marmontel, the Abbe Voismon and Baron Grimm, crowded eagerly to his petits soupers. Nothing could be more recherché than the fare; nothing more fashionable than the society assembled. It was impossible to outrage moral feeling, or laugh at the notion of a Providence, with a better grace than did the guests of Monsieur Raynolle, the Fermier Général! One might have fancied that this buyer-up of the good and beautiful things of this world, had also contracted with the great disposer of events for impunity from judgment to come.

And yet the reckless libertine had a wife, young, beautiful, brilliant, shrewd,-in name, if not in nature, an Englishwoman.

In the course of his mercantile dealings some ten years before, Raynolle had become acquainted with a man, named Darley, the poor, but honest cashier of a house of business, having intimate connection with the English market, and Raynolle, on discovering that the daughter, (for whom, in addition to a couple of grown-up sons, the indigent clerk was indebted to his marriage with a portionless French woman, of indifferent reputation,) was young and beautiful beyond even the renowned beauties whom he was bold enough to consider his own, made no doubt of attaching her name to the catalogue of his household property. Neither Hester Darley nor her mother seemed, indeed, to oppose much obstacle to the supposition. His costly gifts were so well received, his tedious visits were so obsequiously welcomed during the absence of the poor cashier on his daily duties, that Raynolle was almost pardonable in believing that the time was not far distant when his further visits would become superfluous. In this insolent surmise he was strengthened by the discovery that Hester's elder brother, John Darley, had formed a clandestine mar riage, almost as imprudent as his father's, and that extreme misery might be expected to silence his opposition to the disgrace of his

sister.

Of the younger brother, Gerard, the Fermier Général knew no thing, for he was with the army in Flanders-a soldier of fortune; nor was it till on the very eve of the day which Raynolle had marked for the enlèvement of Hester Darley, that the sudden arrival of the impetuous young man, (to whom some considerate neighbour had despatched tidings of what was passing in his father's house,) threw the projects of the Fermier Général into confusion.

'I am neither a brawler nor a bully,' said Gerard Darley, on