to poets of minor poetic genius. do not often require epithets to

These short verses fill up the canvass

as in lines of ten feet. The late Mr. W. Mason was a strong instance of this truth: his poetry is much injured by the great multitude of his useless epithets; and his substantives are too feeble to dispense with epithets which serve as interpreters of the principal words in his lines. R. Lloyd laughs at these laborious versifiers,

"Who exercise their toil and sweating,
"To bring the useful epithet in."

Lloyd, who confined himself to the eight feet measure, styles his muse a little poney which carried him round the foot of Parnassus; but alas! Mason was always trying to "ride the great horse."

Legislators.

These practical philosophers should be well acquainted with human nature both in the abstract and in the concrete; and to understand not only what men ought to be, but what they really are. Swift and the late Marquis Condorcet would mislead a legislator by their very opposite statements of man's character. Whilst Swift debases his species by every mode of satire and abuse, and places them on a level with quadrupeds, he is no

safe guide to a legislator. When Condorcet boasts of leading men to ideal improvements and impossible perfectibility, his theories, however splendid, can produce no lessons of edification to the acute and steady lawgiver.

Fortune, a moderate one,

Acts like a gentle gale of wind at sea, and promotes pleasantly and safely our progress in our voyage, and keeps us moving. A large fortune resembles a squall at sea, and drives us down our passions with too much violence, or detains us amidst the variety of enjoyments like a vessel in a dead calm and under a heavy swell. Here every joy is lost; and sickness and wearisomeness render our very existence an insupportable burthen.

"Will Fortune never come with both hands full,
"But write her fair words still in foulest letters?
"She either gives a stomach and no food;
"Such are the poor, in health or else a feast,
"And takes away the stomach; such the rich,
"That have abundance, and enjoy it not."

:

Deaf and not Dumb.

No man is so formidable a companion as the deaf man who is talkative. If he is stupid also, he misapprehends and endeavours to reason upon

his own mistakes, and becomes angry at positions which he never heard distinctly. If such a man be a wit, he may amuse for a time, but we soon exclaim against his loquacity in the language of Horace,

Semper ego auditor tantum!

M. Fontenelle was deaf when he was chosen into
the French Academy, and wrote on his entrance
into that Society some ludicrous verses
deafness, addressed to his new friends.

I am deaf, yet comfort I have some
When long harangues ensue;
Yet though I am deaf, I am not dumb,
So much the worse for you.

Parchment Writing.

on his

The evil so incident to these kinds of MSS. and which so many poor clients do daily complain of, is described very minutely and humorously by Hudibras, in the account of Sidrophel and his office clerk Whaccum.

A paltry wretch he had half starv'd,
That him in place of Zany serv'd;
Hight Whaccum, bred to dash and draw
Not wine, but more unwholesome law.
To make 'twixt words and lines huge gaps
Wide as Meridians in maps;

To squander paper, and spare ink,
To cheat men of their words some think.

Elegant Illustrations.

An excellent writer and critic, praising those celebrated poets of rural scenery, such as Denham, Dyer, &c. for mixing a moral sentiment now and then in their descriptions, says, "the unexpected insertion of such reflections impart to us the same pleasure that we feel, when, in wandering through a wilderness or a grove, we suddenly should behold, in the turning of a walk, the statue of some muse or virtue."-Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope:

Of all the many eulogiums on the character of our inimitable bard, that of Addison is, perhaps, the most beautiful. "Shakespeare was indeed born with all the seeds of poetry; and may be compared to the stone in Pyrrhus's ring, which, as Pliny tells us, had the figure of Apollo and the nine Muses in the veins of it, produced by the spontaneous hand of nature without any help from art."- Warton's edit. of Pope.

Hudibras.

In this very lively and learned poem, the law supplies the poet with many allusions, similies, and comparisons. The author, having been an attorney's clerk in his youthful days, was, no doubt, disgusted with a view of the practice of his

employer, and has given us a most faithful description of the danger of going to law.

Others believe no voice to an organ
So sweet as lawyer's in a bar gown;
Until with subtile cobweb cheats,

They're catch'd in knotted law, like nets.
In which, when once they are embrangled,
The more they stir, the more they're tangled;
And while their purses can dispute,

There's no end of the immortal suit.

Agriculture.

It would be very advantageous to the public, as. well as to individuals, if at the Universities or the Royal Institutions, or at the Society of Arts, a lectureship on Agriculture was established; and that it should be as practical as the nature of a lecture would admit. Such instruction would benefit the country landlord, especially the man of moderate possessions, as it would enable him to manage his own property; and would, at the same time, be of incalculable advantage to the country at large, by rescuing the land from the hands of the minor race of dishonest and ignorant tenants. No persons can injure a country more than poor and ignorant farmers, who often enter on their occupation, without any qualification to carry it on with credit or profit to themselves or their landlords, on whom they readily lay the fault of their want of success, generally charging them with