(Returns.)-I' the idle fashion of the olden time, ALBERTO. No, Monti; they'll be mine for memory's sake. (Turning to Francesco.)—Thy coat of quaintness and per petual jest, Covers, a heart that's honest to the core. wwwww [Exeunt. THE SOFA. No. IV. CHAS. HERON, JOHN GOODLOOK, and WILL EAGLEPLUME. Will.-When I am King of Corfu, I shall turn the crown lands into strawberry gardens, and levy the government taxes in measures of cream. John.-Without being able to get better of either than what have been here sent us, or relishing them more—if I may judge by the havoc you have made. C. H.-Strawberries lose half their relish if ate in an upright position. To be fully luxurious, one must be recumbent. Spare me a leetle more room: I ask half the breadth of the Sofa,-for you have advantage of me in length of it, you know. Will." O for a beaker full of the cold north-full of the true, the sparkling"-ginger beer. C. H.-The best of three who shall stand devil for it ?—I have lost. Command! Will.-The health of Miss Simpson-of the Albanese-Mrs. Springthorpe, and the other ladies who honour your fair with their fair presence! [Quaffs. C. H.-Why, you drink as if it were champaigne, and the day Stoury Tuesday, which must henceforth be as memorable in the chronicle of old wives of the west as " Mirk Monunday." The world seemed to turn into dust all at once on that day; and in riding up to Bothwell, for the first time I felt a truly personal sympathy with Bruce's sufferings while involved in the sand storms of Abyssinia. John. That is surely "all my eye," Charley. took you there? But what C. H.-To attend one of those delightful fetes, too rare in this country, though common on the Continent, where the whole rural population of a district devote one day to merriment in the open air, in honour of some beloved patron or master. John.-Then you were at the celebration of the birth-day anniversary of Lord Douglas? C. H.-I was,-and, trust me, Jack, when I want a subject for a pretty paper to our friend Saveall, I shall not easily find a better than by describing my adventures on that day, under the title of "La Jour du Famille; for on that occasion there was but one family in the parish—and it was a very happy one. Will.— Have you pledged my toast to the beautiful lady who pares her finger nails with the points of her toes? John.-Yes, and seen her too. Hers was one of the few exhibitions I visited.-The whole display of shows, at this fair, was poor, and below par. C. H.-It was. Indeed, the amusement outside the booths had fallen off as much as that within them this time. Little of character and nothing of fun was to be gleaned on this occasion. I have often taken delight in picking up both in the second week of July, but this year the whole was as dull as the article on Debating Societies, which I recollect served me for an opiate in a week of toothache after it appeared in "The Ant." Will. Or the enumeration of the guns fired in a late cruise to the Pacific. John. Or the Londonderry squib upon the cruise. Will.-Which was exceedingly clever, although obviously written by a Scotsman. C. H.-And unjust,-although published in the land of hospitality; but the hits were palpable. Will.-Did either of you investigate the dexterity of M. Chabert, "whose abilities is known to all the worald"? I dine with him to-day in the oven where he roasts himself with three joints of mutton. It is Sir Walter Scott, I can assure you, who is his opposite neighbour, and is here performing melo-dramas with " troop of 46." I had this from the Deacon Convener. John.-How has Napoleon sold? C. H.-Astonishingly. It is odious, however, to hear the hesitating praise of the public press, as if its conductors were afraid of the mighty author's colossal fame utterly overshadowing them. It forms a most singular volume the collected cancels of the bookthat is, the leaves for which the binder has directions to substitute more recently printed ones, the cost of doing which on so large an impression must be a hundred pounds or two. John. A volume ? C. H.-Ay, as big, too, as Tennant's new poem, which is as rich a piece of Scottish humour, by the bye, as one would wish to To read it is like dining on fat-brose and Fife haddies. Will.-Will it yield any gems for "The Casquet," which is so well filled and yet so tastefully selected ?—I fear not. see. John. No jewel-case is complete, man, without a Scottish pebble, and an Aberdeenshire cairngorum. C. H.-If the collector wants hill specimens, let him take the Ascent of the Ochils, which lately appeared in "The Scotsman.' It is almost as vivid as the Day at Pitkeathly of last season, and that is saying a great deal. Will.-I should recommend them to extract my Essay on Hemaralopia, or Nocturnal Blindness, after six jugs of twist, that is to appear in the new "Glasgow Medical Journal." John. Which will not be a work to laugh at, depend upon it. Our friend ought to have been editor. It requires a man who can say "No," to hold that office. Will.-Why, he is too busy with the allotment of that old lady's legacies, who died in the Drygate, and left so many thousand pounds. C. H.-Ay, one Hood will cover many a naked wretch when well divided. John.-Nay, man, it is not that office only which employs him. He has actually commenced his Series of Letters on the Rationale of Domestic Medicine, addressed to the maiden aunt of five large families. C. H.-And wanted a guinea from me for young Mr. Finlay's plan of disposing of those beautiful and costly engravings in his shop; where, by the bye, Martin's Paphian Bower and Belshazzer's Feast have excited wonder and admiration at the triumphs which the burin can achieve. John.-Have you seen Mr. Warde and Miss Jarman? C. H.-Of course. Have not you? He is a perfect gentleman, and comes amongst us with the introductions and manners of one-and his compagnon du voyage is equally lady-like and clever. I do like this plan of superior male and female performers accepting of joint engagements, for it insures a strong cast of all the pieces. The whole of the "Stranger" was well got up-and Warde's Rob Roy surpassed even Kemble's. It was wilder, if less noble-more Celtic, if not so chivalrous. They very properly play in the "Honey Moon" I see, when so many marriages are taking place. Will. I would willingly quaff another bumper to the health of John.-Whom? Will. Why, let me see C. H.-Let us drink it to the man who is about to carry you off from this long sederunt in one of his twenty coaches;-would it were stronger. Drink Mr. Lyon, and go. Any one of his eighty horses, which jointly travel eight thousand miles a-week, cannot be better employed than in whirling you off from us, you enticing rogue; for I find I have sat half-an-hour longer with you than I purposed spending. My friend, young Mr. Baxter, will wonder if we have been plotting treason in his back parlour. [Exeunt omnes. www MORE MISERIES. THE Rev. Mr. Beresford, fifteen years ago, astonished mankind by a catalogue and classification of the miseries to which they were subject. Up till the time of this Linnæus of wretchedness, the world had no idea of the extent of its sufferings :-It had not entered into the mind of man to conceive the number and variety of his pains and complication of his annoyances; and until Timothy Testy had held up his glass to show the age and body of the time, their form and pressure, was Human Life in any of its septrillion varieties, aware of the full extent or gross amount of its miseries. Perhaps we ought rather to say of the nature and variety-for, alas! of the full extent it is only Campbell's Last Man, in the time of Byron's Darkness, who will be able to say that he may write finis to their mighty catalogue. How any, so very obvious as those described, or hinted at, in the following addendum to Testy's enumeration, escaped the acuteness of his suffering perceptions, or were not nosed by his admirable scent after the wretched, is just one of those accountable things that you may speculate for ever upon, and yet never be able to explain, unless, like us, you— Groan 1st. In endeavouring to discern one of the five spots at present on the sun's disc, which, The Herald tells us, are each three times bigger than the earth, plant the thinnest outer edge of your thinnest dress shoe, which a few days of polishing on a burning pavement has worn to the tenuity of a Medallion wafer, on one of the Macadam chrystal-shaped knobs, which gem the carriage walk round our green.-P. S. The foot, of course, to be in the shoe, and nothing but superannuated silk hose between you and the penetration of the whinstone. Groan 2d. Having a rusty iron hoop trundled against your nankeen trowsers, by an urchin too young to admonish, much less to thrash. Groan 3d. Continuing an important conversation with a perfect stranger, instead of your friend, who has accidentally stopped to look at a print-shop window. Groan 4th. The unpleasant sensation you feel on driving your nose against a blind man's forehead, having exclaimed, “Damme, can't you see?" and receiving his answer in the negative. Groan 5th. Searching your pocket some time for an article which you cannot find, but in its stead find a tremendous hole. Groan 6th. Skating in summer on the pavement, instead of ice, on a piece of orange-peel, instead of skates. OUR CONTRIBUTORS. We have no reply to make to Correspondents at this time-using that term in its periodical sense-for, by the blessing of heaven, and our own resources and pertinacity, we have none left. They are, L. M'L. of Coll and all, wearied out, and have fairly laid down the pen. Even the patience of a man who writes 157 folio pages gratuitously, from time to time, without a line being accepted, has limits-and the consumpt of outside foolscap a given extent. Both have been arrived at, and our readers are little likely to suffer from the infliction of writers who resemble the "Veiled Prophet, at least in one respect-that their faces are hid from both priests and public, editor and readers. But we are daily assailed to know who compose our club, which is already known by a variety of titles-the Junta, the Concentric, the Circle, the Square, the Coterie, the Congenials, &c. and while we, of course, omit many names, whose owners shrink from public applause, and other honoured ones, who have become already known, either by the peculiar merit of their articles, or their signatures being attached to them, we yield so far to entreaty as to state, that the following gentlemen have had the superintendence of the departments of "The Ant" opposite to their names. Dr.Scottish Character, and Broad Humour. Dr. Y. and a Committee of the Dilletanti Society.-The Fine Arts. Professor W-Wit, and Love-Poetry. Mr. Yorick.-The Corn Laws, Mr. H.-Proverbs, and other "Wise Saws and Modern Instances." Mr. C., Philosophical Instrument Maker.-Love-Romances, and The Dr. R. and Mr. S.-Botany and the Poetry of Natural History. Besides which, the names of Thomas Moore, Mrs. Hemans, John Lockhart, and other illustrious writers, might be added, but that we wish our papers to be judged of by their own merits, saving, indeed, where the local neighbourhood of the writers, as in the above list, entitles their produc tions to a double share of attention. Printed by James Curll, 55, Bell-Street, and sold by all Booksellers, PRICE THREEPENCE. |