A MASTER taught rhetoric to his pupil on condition that he should pay him after the first cause that he gained. The pupil intended never to pay him. He commenced an action against his master, saying, "I will never pay you any thing; for, if I lose my cause, I was not to pay you until I had gained it; and if I gain it, my demand in it is, that I may not pay you." The master retorted the argument, saying, "If you lose, you must pay; if you gain, you must also pay; for our bargain is, that you shall pay me after the first cause that you have gained." All this turns upon an ambiguity, and may be removed by putting the necessary terms in the argument, thus :-A sum is not due until the day appointed for its payment; the day appointed is that when a cause shall have been gained; no cause has yet been gained; therefore the day appointed has not yet arrived; therefore the pupil does not owe any thing. But not yet does not mean never. So that the pupil instituted a ridiculous action. The master too had no right to demand any thing, since the day appointed had not arrived. He must wait until the pupil had pleaded some other cause.

MUSIC.

noisy and vociferous style of music which then pleased.

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE. By Sir Thomas More; translated from the Latin.

MAY you meet with a wife who is not always stupidly silent, nor always prattling nonsense May she be learned, if pos sible, or at least capable of being made so! A woman thus accomplished will be always drawing sentences and maxims of virtue out of the best authors of antiquity. She will be herself in all changes of fortune; neither blown up by prosperity, nor broken with adversity. You

will find in her an even, cheerful, good. humoured friend, and an agreeable companion for life. She will infuse knowledge into your children with their milk, and from their infancy train them up to wisdom. Whatever company you are engaged in, you will long to be at home; and retire with delight from the society of men into the bosom of one who is so dear, so knowing, and so amiable. If she touches her lute, or sings to it any of her own compositions, her voice will soothe you in your solitude, and sound more sweetly in your ear than that of the nightingale. You will waste with pleasure whole days and nights in her conversation, and be for ever finding out new beauties in her discourse. She will keep your mind in perpetual serenity, restrain its mirth from being dissolute, and prevent its melancholy from being painful.

HOWARD.

I HAD the honour once in my life, of seeing the celebrated Howard, and am perhaps one of the last who saw him upon English ground. It was at Falmouth in 1790, or the year preceding. He was a spare man, of a very mild aspect, yet exhibiting nothing which impressed the observer with any deficiency of firmness or resolution in his character. He had been attending the worship of a congregation of dissenters, in which he was never again to join on British ground; for in his religious sentiments he was of that class, though his philanthropy knew no distinction of creed-Christian, Jew, or Mahometan; his charity being (as Henry IV. observed his child was)

for all the world." He walked with a light step, accompanied by my father; all eyes were fixed upon him; and I have often thought since how much more merited was that silent homage of respect, and how much more approved in the eyes of a benevolent Deity, than the vells

of the multitude and the shouts of dazzled sycophants at the heels of the butchers of mankind, with their retinues of bayonets and their trophies of crime and desolation. I think it was on the day following that Howard set sail never to return.

New Monthly Magazine.

DR. FRANKLIN.

HOWARD brings to my recollection another celebrated philanthropist and friend of universal man, whose name will coexist with his own, Dr. Franklin. I once met with an individual who had known the philosopher, and had lately visited the Doctor's daughter in America, Mrs. Back. This lady had a numerous family, and resided in the house of her father, an interesting residence when the mind that occupied it is considered. The building was in Market-street, Philadelphia, and though close to a public market, cut off from all noise and bustle. It was lofty and commodious, well, but not superfluously furnished." The library was very large; and in it hung, among others, a picture of the late Bishop of St. Asaph and his family. There were the pictures, writing-desk, and books of the great deceased, just as he left them. Mrs. B. spoke with strong filial feeling of the Doctor's tedious illness, his self-possession under the most excruciating agonies, and the serenity amidst all, that constantly dwelt upon his features, sometimes changing into a smile. Two days before his death he observed to her-" My dear, I do not recollect that in the course of thy whole life I was even for a single moment angry with thee." The entire tenor of his conduct during his last illness was the same. Every thing was right; all that was done for him was done as it should be; nothing ruffled the composure of his mind; and thus he expired. From many circumstances it may be concluded, that Franklin was inclined to deism in his religious opinions; but he never obtruded them on any. It is just to observe, however, that he remarked on the doctrine of the Universalists, according to his daughter (and his family were among the favourers of that sect,) that in his opinion no system in the Christian world was so well calculated to promote the interests of society as the doctrine which showed "a God reconciling a lapsed world to himself."—Ibid.

observe of Chatham, that it was impos sible for the members of the side opposed to him in the House of Commons to look him in the face when he was warmed in debate: he seemed to bid them all a haughty defiance. "For my own part," said Trelawney, "I never dared cast my eyes towards his, for if I did, they nailed me to the floor." I had this from Wolcot, who went out to the West Indies with Trelawney as his physician.—Ibid.

BELZONI.

THIS modest and indefatigable man, it is well known, died in poverty. He had laboured more for fame than for profit, and others reaped the reputation that should be his. There is an empiricism, it seems, in antiquity hunting and virtû, as well as in medicine. No just mention of Belzoni occurs in the British Museum, in enumerating the articles that enrich it through his labours. The Patrician may supply a little money, but then the toil or glory must not be divided. Ingenuity, risk and labour, are nothing to your guineas. Rich men are beginning to find they can buy a name, and the goddess of fame (never till now charged with corruption) is, it appears, " to be had." But what sort of notoriety is acquired by such means! Those monuments would not have visited England but for Belzoni. Posterity will do him justice; his toil, his sagacity, his skill and perseverance, obtained them. Mæcenas never dreamed of buying the authorship of the writings of Horace; he was content to go down to time as the poet's patron. Poor Belzoni complained to me of the neglect with which he had been treated, and the superciliousness of men who should have been content with the honest fame of aiding his exertions.

"I have enemies whenever I attempt any thing," said he; "I fear I shall be utterly ruined, now I am going to try for myself." His prophecy was a true one, and he died the victim of its fulfilment, else he would have proceeded into Africa by a different route. I knew him many years, and a less presuming, kinder, milder creature, uniting moreover true courage and indefatigable perseverance, I never met with. Coming up Bond-street with him one day during the trial of the late Queen, several persons whispered, "There is Bergami :" his gigantic frame and wearing mustachios probably giving the idea of his being the famous chamberlain. "Let us turn into the Square," said Belzoni, meaning into that of Hanover; 66 we shall meet fewe people. I am well nigh tired of Eng land."-Ibid.

In closing our account of King John's Hunting Seat with a legend of the Chase, we beg to say we borrow the closing observations to the article above alluded to: "It is said or sung, that once upon a day,' King John, being equipped for hunting, issued forth with all the pageantry and state of his day. There were dames mounted upon high-bred steeds, that were champing and foaming on the bit, and whose prancing shook the ground; and knights, whose plumes were dancing in the wind, while carried by fiery chargers swift as the deer they followed; the yeomen were all dressed in green, with girdles round their waists; and to add to the brilliancy of the scene, the morning was as clear from clouds as the good-humoured faces of the party.

"King John appeared overjoyed, and during the time all heads were uncovered as he rode along, his majesty overheard a gallant youth address a lady in nearly these words :

'We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top, And mark the musical confusion Of hounds and echo in conjunction.'

"At that period, horses being the only carriages, the happy couple left Tollard Royal on horseback. As they took leave of his majesty, the moon was sinking below the horizon. The king had observed before they left,

'This night, methinks, is but the daylight sickIt looks a little paler; 'tis a day Such as the day is when the sun is hid;'

but they rode on, too happy to remember that the moon would soon leave them.

"They were lost for several days, until the king, while hunting with his courtiers, found their remains. It appeared that when the moon descended, the faithful pair must have mistaken their road, and had fallen into a hideous pit, where both were killed, as was likewise the knight's horse, close beside them. The lady's horse, a dapple grey, was running wild as the mountain deer; he soon was caught, and became the king's, who rode him as a charger."

years: these are not altogether improvements. One great evil is, that we have no opportunity for conversation. That must be a powerful tongue that can make itself heard amidst the thunder of ten

miles an hour; and the lungs are to be envied which do not lose their elasticity by such incessant and intemperate whirlings.

I cannot help looking back, with some regret, to the good old times, when five or six miles in the hour was the utmost speed of these indispensible vehicles. There was something so sober and sedate in the out-fit and the out-set. All the faces in the inn-yard were so grave and so full of importance. There was then some little seriousness in taking leave. How scrupulous and polite were the inside passengers, in making mutual accommodations of legs and arms, and band-boxes, and sandwich-baskets, and toys, and umbrellas. It was a rare thing to find no one of the passengers who had not travelled that road before. It was so pleasant to be able to give the history of the first ten or twelve miles out of town; and if one of the passengers had been that way many times in his life, and not only knew that road, but could entertain us with anecdotes of other coaches on the western or northern roads, he was looked upon quite as a man of learning. Then there was some little difference between the inside and the outside passengers; the gentle folks within were not confounded with the people on the outside. Distinction was better kept up then; but now, the "age of chivalry is past."

I remember, as though it were but last week, all the ceremony and circumlocution of the stage-coach chat. A man was thought excessively forward and talkative if he had got into politics before he had well cleared, the outskirts of London. The first half hour was generally occupied with the light skirmishings of talk-there were little reconnoitrings of your oppoposite neighbour's countenance-a variety of round-about questions and answers to ascertain how far we were to be compa nions. To an agreeable looking personage, with what vivacity the question was put, Are you going all the way to ?" Or, on the other hand, if the coach had its full complement of six, and one of the six occupied rather more room than fell to his or her share, or there happened to be, what Dean Swift calls,

66

"An aged matron of excessive bulk,

To mend the matter, too, of meaner folk," the same question was put in a more careful way-the voice was turned, to avoid all suspicion of wishing a speedy riddance.