oak, hewn in the celebrated forest of the Hague, fabricated by an experienced Timmerman of Amsterdam, and curiously carved about the arms and feet, into exact imitations of gigantic eagles' claws. Instead of a sceptre, he swayed a long Turkish pipe, wrought with jasmin and amber, which had been presented to a stadtholder of Holland, at the conclusion of a treaty with one of the petty Barbary powers. In this stately

chair would he sit, and this magnificent pipe would he smoke, shaking his right knee with a constant motion, and fixing his eye for hours together upon a little print of Amsterdam, which hung in a black frame against the opposite wall of the council chamber. Nay, it has even been said, that when any deliberation of extraordinary length and intricacy was on the carpet, the renowned Wouter would absolutely shut his eyes for full two hours at a time, that he might not be disturbed by external objects; and at such times the internal commotion of his mind was evinced by certain regular gutteral sounds, which his admirers declared were merely the noise of conflict made by his contending doubts and opinions.

THE doctors disagreed. According to four firstrate opinions, I groaned at one and the same time under rheumatism proper, rheumatic gout, gout proper, and an affection in the spinous process. The serious signs of one were the favourable

symptoms of another, and the prescriptions of the first in direct oppugnancy to the principles of the last. To-day, I was to drink water at Buxton, to-morrow to drink water at Bath, on Wednesday I was to go to Italy, and on Thursday I had better stay at home.

The fact was, the doctors could not make out my case.

Reader, if by mischance thou art one of those unhappy persons whom the climate of our famous mother England,-in punishment of thy many sins in chattering French instead of thy kindly vernacular, in giving half a guinea to Italians instead of three shillings and sixpence to Britons, in cleaving to wine and eschewing beer,-hath touched with her insular cramp in shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, back, loins, knees, ancles, or toes, if such be the case, go not, I entreat thee for thy good, to any of the faculty, whether physician, surgeon, apothecary, or druggist, licensed or unlicensed; save thy good coin, gentle rheumatic, in thy purse for better merchandise and laissez aller les choses; torment not the creature with drenches and bandages, and peradventure it will ache thee some months the less for being entertained civilly; at all events thou wilt have economized so much money, escaped so much physic, and it will go harder with thee than with any body else, if thou get not well again every whit as soon.

True it is, though I speak it to my shame, that I did, in the impatience of my heart, betake myself to medicine for relief. It was promised to me abundantly. I am ready to communicate to any earnest inquirer twenty and five infallible

prescriptions, every one of which has effected so many cures, that it is somewhat surprising that the combined action of all of them together has not, a long time ago, driven rheumatism clean out of the United Kingdom. I never met with any of these redeemed ones, but, as Sancho says, he, who told me the story, said that it was so certain and true, that I might well, whenever I told it to another, affirm and swear that I had seen them all myself. There was, indeed, no resisting the kindness of my friends; I was all things to all men and to all women; I ate this to please my cousin Lucy, and drank that to oblige my cousin Margaret; I was steamed by one, showered by another, just escaped melting by a third, and was nearly boiled to the consistency of a pudding for the love of an oblong gentleman of Ireland, who had cured so many of his tenants on a bog in Tipperary by that process, that he offered to stake his salvation upon the success of the experiment. It failed, and, the article not being transferable, I forgave him the debt.

COLERIDGE.

ANGLO-GERMAN DICTIONARIES,

THE German dictionaries, compiled for the use of Englishmen studying that language, are all bad enough, I doubt not, even in this year 1823; but those of a century back are the most ludicrous books that ever mortal read: read, I say, for they are well worth reading, being often as good as a jest book. In some instances, I am convinced that the compilers (Germans living in Germany) had

a downright hoax put upon them by some facetious Briton whom they had consulted; what is given as the English equivalent being not seldom a pure coinage that never had any existence out of Germany. Other instances there are, in which the words, though not of foreign manufacture, are almost as useless to the English student as if they were; slang words, I mean, from the slang vocabulary, current about the latter end of the seventeenth century. These must have been laboriously culled from the works of Tom Brown, Sir Roger L'Estrange, Echard, Jeremy Collier, and others, from 1660 to 1700, who were the great masters of this vernacular English (as it might emphatically be called, with a reference to the primary* meaning of the word vernacular): and I verily believe, that if any part of this slang has become, or ever should become a dead language to the English critic, his best guide to the recovery of its true meaning will be the German dictionaries of Bailey, Arnold, &c. in their earliest editions. By one of these, the word Potztausend (a common German oath) is translated, to the best of my remembrance, thus :-" Udzooks, udswiggers, udswoggers, bublikins, boblikins, splitterkins, &c. and so on, with a large choice of other elegant varieties. Here, I take it, our friend the hoaxer had been at work: but the

* What I mean is this. Vernacular (from verna, a slave born in his master's house). The homely idiomatic language in opposition to any mixed jargon or lingua franca, spoken by an imported slave. 2. Hence, generally, the pure mother tongue, as opposed to the same tongue corrupted by false refinement. By vernacular English, therefore, in the primary sense, I mean such homely English as is banished from books and polite conversation to Billingsgate and Wapping.

drollest example I have met with of their slang is in the following story told to me by Mr. Coleridge. About the year 1794, a German, recently imported into Bristol, had happened to hear of Mrs. X. a wealthy widow. He thought it would be a good speculation to offer himself to the lady's notice, as well qualified to "succeed," to the late Mr. X.; and accordingly waited on the lady with that intention. Having no great familiarity with English, he provided himself with a copy of one of the dictionaries I have mentioned; and, on being announced to the lady, he determined to open his proposal with this introductory sentence-Madam, having heard that Mr. X. late your husband, is dead: but coming to the last word, " gestorben" (dead), he was at a loss for the English equivalent; so, hastily pulling out his dictionary (a huge 8vo.), he turned to the word "sterben" (to die), and there foundbut what he found will be best collected from the dialogue which followed, as reported by the lady:

German. Madam, hahfing heard that Mein Herr X. late your man, is-(these words he kept chiming over as if to himself, until he arrived at No. 1 of the interpretations of "sterben"-when he roared out, in high glee at his discovery)—is, dat is,-has, kicked de bucket.

Widow. (With astonishment.) "Kicked the bucket," Sir!-what

German. Ah! mein Gott!-Alway Ich make mistake: I vou'd have said—(beginning again with the same solemnity of tone)-since dat Mein Herr X. late your man, hav-hopped de twig