his dinner. He would not destroy, he said, the aroma of his wine; and after wine had attained a certain age (age uncertain as that of spinsters) it should be drunk, he said, "if only to keep down the interest."

Their business, they said, was of the utmost importance, and they must communicate personally with him. They were directed to a field near the house, where they found our friend at the plow. Accosting him with proper ceremony, they told him the object of their mission was to announce his election as Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut. 'Oh, law!' said he, wiping the perspiration from his brow, 'is that all? Why, I have been Leftenant Governor in my own his Madeira wine and his relationship to John house these twenty years!"

Some one remarking that no newspaper had correctly printed a Latin quotation in one of his letters, and that it required a scholar even to correct proofs: "Doubtless," he replied"but the man of mechanical pursuits, of any engrossing pursuit, can not attend to classical studies can not, indeed, retain what in earlier youth he may have acquired. I find it so. Life is too short for study. One life is required for a complete mastery of ancient classics, of Grecian and Roman lore-another for the full understanding and ready use of English poetry, from Chaucer down to the present time; while another should be devoted to modern sciences. I grow more convinced and more ashamed of my ignorance daily; and I fear that in all my productions I recede more and more from the terse expression of my younger days-that I grow diffuse, and indulge in unnecessary repetition.

"Ward Nicholas B- ," he said, "was a man of fortune, of dignified manners, and of a hospitable character. He had two weaknesses

Quincy Adams. While that gentleman was President, Mr. B- was fortunate enough to entertain him at his country-seat, and invited the most presentable people of the vicinage to meet him-among whom was the parson, the Rev. Mr. ——, a man of no little er-u-di-tion (as Dominie Sampson would call it), and much simplicity of character. He invited, also, distinguished persons from Boston to meet, as his note expressed it, 'my cousin, John Quincy Adams, President of the United States.' In his cellar, while he had many a butt of most delicious wine, there was one particular kind of Madeira he prized above all the rest. 'It had been,' he had often told the parson, ‘all the way from Madeira to the Cape of Good Hope-from the Cape of Good Hope to Calcutta—from Calcutta to Canton, in the East Indies-—from Canton it had been brought back to Calcutta-from Calcutta, by the land-route, to Egypt-and from Egypt to the United States.' A bottle of this wine he was to produce on this occasion, and to make what we would call in New Hampshire a great spread.'

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"My style was not formed without great care and earnest study of the best authors. I have labored hard upon it, for I early felt the importance of expression to thought. I have rewritten sentence after sentence, and pondered long upon each alteration. For, depend upon it, it is with our thoughts as with our persons-ified. their intrinsic value is mostly undervalued, unless outwardly expressed in an attractive garb. Longinus tells us that the most sublime passage to be found in any language is this in the Bible: 'Let there be light, and there was light:' the greatest effort of power in the tersest and fewest words-the command and the record one exertion of thought. So should we all aim to express things in words."

"Nothing, I believe, is more injurious to health," said Mr. Webster, "than our habit of eating hearty suppers. Many think that if they drink at night they should eat in proportion. Never was sadder mistake. It is the food that we devour at these liberal banquets, not the drink we imbibe, that makes next morning dolorous. It is the canvas-back, the terrapin, and the oysters that murder sleep and put the stomach out of tune. Deep drinking over night is doubtless pernicious: it is doubly so when accompanied with hearty meals."

Mr. Webster himself scarcely ever tasted a mouthful after dinner, unless when abroad-and then only ceremoniously. Nor was he less abstemious in potations. It was seldom he drank any thing save a cup of tea after the wine of VOL. XIII-No. 74.-P

'Well, the guests came, and among others, 'his cousin, John Quincy Adams, the President of the United States.' The viands were good, the conversation entertaining, and the host gratAfter the meats were removed, and the bottles on the table had made their circuits a number of times, our host says, 'Gentlemen, I am about to offer you a glass of wine that I can particularly commend to your kind appreciation. It has been all the way from Madeira to the Cape of Good Hope, from the Cape of Good Hope to Calcutta, from Calcutta to Canton, in the East Indies, from Canton it has been brought back to Calcutta, from Calcutta by the landroute to Egypt, and from Egypt to the United States. I think you will like it.' The guests sipped and tasted, tasted and sipped, sipped and tasted again; and, as in duty bound, pronounced it superb. When the bottle had made its first revolution and reached the host, he was gratified to find that it had not suffered material diminution, no guest, of course, having taken a full glass. But what was his horror, at seeing, on its second course, our friend the Parson pouring the inestimable liquid into a tumbler, and drinking it with absolute nonchalance! In vain he essayed quietly to attract his attention-no hint or pantomimic action could reach the absorbed Parson, who had, indeed, got into a theological controversy with one of his neighbors, and, of course, was totally indifferent to every thing else. Again the bottle

I

"I know nothing of your controversy. did not hear a word of it. It is not that I was speaking of.'

moment to myself as well as of danger to the Union of these States, shoulder to shoulder. I can never forget or refuse to acknowledge their important and vital aid."

"It was from the Democratic party, Sir, you received your chief sympathy and support during that crisis. They rallied round you when old friends hung back or deserted."

"That is true, my friend; for four months after my speech of the 7th of March, scarcely a man in the North of the Whig party, possessing position or influence, ever said, 'God bless you!' Norris, of New Hampshire, a life-time political opponent, alone dared speak for me. I was hunted every where."

pear to be many of them; to which the attendant demon indignantly replied, "Fool! these are all that ever reigned!" If the brute creation were liable to a post-mortem account, no lion, it may safely be said, would escape condign punishment.

LION-SLAYERS AND MAN-EATERS. THE THE King of Beasts, it seems, is, after all, not so very unlike his average human breth"What then, my dear Sir? Was I guilty of ren. Quevedo having asked, when in hell, to some solecism in manners, for you know I am see the place appropriated to kings, was shown country-bred? Did I violate some etiquette?' a small compartment tenanted by a few wretch"D-n etiquette! I beg your pardon, rev-ed spirits. He observed that there did not aperend and dear Sir; but I was not thinking of your manners. But I produced a bottle of wine for my cousin, John Quincy Adams, President of the United States, which had been all the way from Madeira to the Cape of Good Hope, from the Cape of Good Hope to Calcutta, from Calcutta to Canton, in the East Indies, from Canton back to Calcutta by the land-route to Egypt, and from Egypt to the United States. It was the best wine I had in my cellar-the best in the country-and more than a half century old. My cousin, John Quincy Adams, President of the United States, pronounced it superb! and you'

"Go on, my excellent friend.'

"Why you, reverend and dear Sir, when it reached you the second time, poured it out like water IN YOUR TUMBLER!'

"Law!' said the parson, 'is this all? I did not notice the wine particularly; but not seeing any cider on the table, poured this out instead; for my argument had made me very thirsty.'"

Lions are sometimes brave, certainly; but this is nearly all that can be said in their favor. They are thievish, cruel, and treacherous. Between the lion and the cat the difference is in degree only: if puss had strength, she would be brave; if the lion could be throttled by a terrier, he would be an arrant coward. To place the so-called monarch of the desert on a level with such noble animals as the dog, or the horse, or the elephant, or the ox, is as bad as balancing a pickpocket against a bishop.

Where the people who have written cheap natural histories got their notions about the lion, it were hard to say. They draw his picture in fine style: he is brave, magnanimous, noble: he scorns to attack an unprepared enemy, meets the foe face to face, after a roar by way of chal"Rusk, of Texas," said Mr. Webster, about lenge; he will not eat meat killed by any butchthe time he made his great speech on the Com-er but himself; he will not attack man, for promise, “I consider the strongest man in the United States Senate, on the Democratic side. He is no spouter, but he acts; and upon what he says you can rely. He will stand without being tied, and you can attend to your matters, and find him when you return on the same spot where you left him. He has all Achilles's hatred of double dealing:

"He who can think one thing and another tell My soul detests him as the gates of hell.' "His indifference to fame makes him careless, or he would assume the position in the Senate and in the country to which his commanding abilities entitle him.

"It is impossible," continued Mr. Webster, "for me to feel the least acerbity toward such men as Rusk, Cass, Foote, and Dickinson. We have stood by each other in a time of greatest

whom, as his nearest relation, he has a sneaking regard; he will remember a service and requite it, as witness the story of Androcles; he rules like a king in the forest or the desert, holding communion with none of his subjects, and maintaining his throne by force and terror. This is what the clever people say who wrote those delightful books about wild beasts which were the charm of our lives in our days of pinafores and Latin grammars.

It was a sad day for our faith in this pleasant theory when the kilted brute-slayer, Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, wrote that admirable romance of his about his hunting adventures in South Africa. For Mr. Cumming, albeit uncommonly hard to believe when he grasps living hippopotami by the stern muscles and tows them out of water, or ties a boa constrictor round his