And just before we came away, While we were waiting for the carriage, I heard him, not quite plainly, say He promised, if he could get leave, He'd soon come back-I wonder can he? Lord Hill is very strict, I b'lieve; (What could he mean by Blacksmiths, Fanny?) He said he wish'd we ne'er had met, I answer'd-it was lovely weather! And then he bid me not forget The pleasant days we'd pass'd together! He's gone and other lips may weave A stronger spell than mine to bind him; But bid him if he love me, leave Those rhymes he made me love, behind him: Tell him I know those wayward strings Not always sound to mirthful measures; But sighs are sometimes pleasant things, And tears from those we love are treasures. Tell him to leave off drinking wine, Tell him to break himself of smoking, Tell him to go to bed at nine His hours are really provoking. Tell him 1 hope he won't get fat, Tell him to act with due reflection; Tell him to wear a broad-leafed hat, Or else he'll ruin his complexion. Tell him I am so ill to-day Perhaps to-morrow I'll be better; To write me a consoling letter: O, friendly to the best pursuits of man, Соерет. It is for a short part of life only that the world is a wonder and delight to us, and its events so many causes of admiration and joy. The mist of morning soon breaks into little wreaths, and is lost in the air; and the objects which it dressed in new beauties, are found to be things of our common notice. It passes off from the earth, and the fairy sea is swallowed up, and the green islands, scattered far and wide over it, are again turned into tall trees and mountain brushwood. In early life we are forever giving objects the hue that best pleases us, and shaping and enlarging them as suits our imagination. But the time comes when we must look upon the unsightly without changing it, and when the hardness of reality makes us feel that there are things not to be moulded to our fancies. Men and their actions were figured to our minds in extremes. Giants and dwarfs peopled the world and filled it with deeds of heroic virtue and desperate vice. All that we looked forward to kept our spirits alive, and our imagination found food for our desires. At one time, we were vainglorious at our victories over magnificent crimes; at another, bearing up firmly against oppression, with the honest and tried. We come at length into the world, and find men too busy about their own affairs, to make those of another their concern, and too careful of themselves, to go a tilting for another's rights. Even the bad have a mixture in their character which takes away its poetic effect, and we at last settle down in the dull conviction, that we are never to meet with entire and splendid virtue, or unmixed vice. With this sudden check upon our feelings, we may live in the world disappointed and estranged from it; or become like others, cold and wise, putting on timidity for caution, and selfishness for prudence; be guarded in speech, and slow in conduct, seeing the wrong, yet afraid of condemning it. Or, shaking ourselves loose from this hypocrisy of life, we may let go with it the virtues it mimics, and despising the solemn ostent and formalities of society, may break through its restraints, and set its decencies at defiance. Or, too wise to be vicious, and too knowing to be moved, we may look with complacent unconcern upon what we hold to be the errors of the world; forbearing to shake the faith of the religious, because it has its social uses, or to point out the fallacies of moral codes, because they serve to the same end. The virtuous tendencies of our youth might in this way run to vice, and our early feelings grow cold, were there not in us affections of a quieter nature, resting on objects simple and near at hand, receiving more happiness from one being than from a thousand, and kindling a light within us, making one spot a perpetual brightness, and secretly cheering us through life. These affections are our domestic attachments, which are refreshed every evening, and grow daily under a gentle and kindly warmth, making a companionship for what is lovely, at the same time leaving it all the distinctness and intenseness of our highest solitary joys. We may suffer all the hopes and expectations which shot up wild and disorderly in our young imaginations, to live about our homes; and leaving them their savor and bright hues, may sort each with its kind, and hedge them round with the close and binding youth of family attachments. It is true, that this reality has a narrower range, and an evener surface, than the ideal; yet there is a rest, and an assured and virtuous gladness in it, which make a harmonious union of our feelings and our fancies. Home gives a certain serenity to the mind, so that every thing is well marked, and sparkling in a clear atmosphere, and the lesser beauties are brought out to rejoice in the pure glow which floats over and beneath them from the earth and sky. In this state of mind afflictions come to us chastened; and if the wrongs of the world cross us in our door-path, we put them aside without anger. Vices are every where about us, not to lure us away, nor make us morose, but to remind us of our frailty, and keep down our pride. We are put into a right relation with the world: neither holding it in proud scorn, like the solitary man, nor being carried along by shifting and hurried feelings, and vague and careless notions of things, like the world's man. We do not take novelty for improvement, nor set up rogue for a rule of conduct; neither do we despair, as if all great virtues had departed with the years gone by, though we see new vices, frailties and follies taking growth in the very light which is spreading through the earth. Our safest way of coming into communion with mankind is through our own household. For there our sorrow and regret at the failings of the bad is in proportion to our love, while our familiar intercourse with the good has a secretly assimilating influence upon our characters. The domestic man has an independence of thought which puts him at ease in society, and a cheerfulness and benevolence of feeling which seems to ray out from him, and to diffuse a pleasurable sense over those near him like a soft, bright day. As domestic life strengthens a man's virtue, so does it help to a sound judgment, and a right balancing of things, and gives an integrity and propriety to the whole character. God, in his goodness, has ordained that virtue should make its own enjoyment, and that wherever a vice or frailty is rooted out, something should spring up to be a beauty and delight to the mind. But a man of character rightly cast has pleasures at home, which, though fitted to his highest nature, are common to him as his daily food. He moves about his house under a continued sense of them, and is happy almost without heeding it. Women have been called angels, in love tales and sonnets, till we have almost learned to think of angels as little better than women. Yet a man who knows a woman thoroughly, and loves her truly-and there are women who have been so known and loved-will find, after a few years, that his relish for the grosser pleasures is lessened, and that he has grown into a fondness for the intellectual and refined without an effort, and almost unawares. He has been led on to virtue through his pleasures; and the delights of the eye, and the gentle play of that passion which is the most inward in our nature, and which keeps much of its character amid the concerns of life, have held him in a kind of spiritualized existence: he shares his very being with one who, a creature of this world, and with something of the world's frailties, is In the ordinary affairs of life, a woman has a greater influence over those near her than a man. While our feelings are. for the most part, as retired as anchorites, hers are in constant play before us. We hear them in her varying voice; we see them in the beautiful and harmonious undulations of her movements, in the quick shifting hues of her face, in her eye, glad and bright, then fond and suffused. Her whole frame is alive and active with what is at her heart, and all the outward form speaks. She seems of a finer mould than we, and cast in a form of beauty, which, like all beauty, acts with a moral influence upon our hearts; and, as she moves about us, we feel a movement within, which rises and spreads gently over us, harmonizing us with her own.-And can any man listen to this? Can his eye rest upon this day after day, and he not be touched, and be made better? The dignity of a woman has its peculiar character: it awes more than that of a man. His is more physical, bearing itself up with an energy of courage which we may brave, or a strength which we may struggle against: he is his own avenger, and we may stand the brunt. A woman's has nothing of this force in it: it is of a higher quality, too delicate for mortal touch. There is a propriety, too, in a woman's mind a kind of instinctive judgement-which leads us along in a right way, and that so gentle, and by such a continuous run of little cir cumstances, that we are hardly conscious we are not going on in our own course. She helps to cure our weaknesses better than man, because she sees quicker-because we are more ready to show for those which are hid, and because advice comes from her without its air of superiority, and reproof without its harshness. Men who feel deeply show little of their deepest feelings to each other. But, beside the close unior and common interests and concerns between husband and wife, a woman seems to be a creature peculiarly ordained for a man to lay open his heart to, and share his joys with, and to be a comforter to his griefs. Her voice soothes us like music; she is our light in gloom and our sun in a cold world. In time of affliction she does not come to us like man, who lays by, for the hour, his proper nature to give us relief. She ministers to us with a hand so gentle, and speaks in a voice so calm and kind, and her very being is so much in all she does, that she seems at the moment as one born only for the healing of our sorrows, and for a rest to our cares. And the man to whom such a being is sent for comfort and support, must be sadly hard and depraved if he does not feel his inward disturbance sinking away, and a quietude stealing through his frame. The relations of parents and children are the holiest in our lives; and there are no pleasures, or cares, or thoughts, connected with this world, which reminds us so soon of another. The helpless infancy of ch idren sets our own death before us, when they will be left to a world to which we would not trust to ourselves; and the thought of the character they may take in after life, brings with it the question what awaits them in another. Though there is melancholy in this, its seriousness has a religious tendency. And the responsibility which a man has laid himself under, begets a resoluteness of character, a sense that this world was not made to idle in, and a feeling of dignity that he is acting for a great end. How heavily does one toil who labors for himself-and how is he cast down by the thought of what a worthless creature it is all for! We have heard of the sameness of domestic life. He must have a dull head and little heart who grows weary of it. A man who moralizes feelingly, and has a proneness to see a beauty and fitness in all God's works, may find daily food for his mind even in an infant. In its innocent sleep, when it seems like some blessed thing dropped from the clouds, with tints so delicate, and with its peaceful breathing, we can hardly think of it as of mortal mould, it looks so like a pure spirit made visible for our delight. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," says Wordsworth. And who of us, that is not too good to be conscious of his own vices, who has not felt rebuked and humbled under the clear and open countenance of a child ?-who that has not felt his impurities foul upon him in the presence of a sinless child? These feelings make the best lesson that can be taught a man: and tell him in a way, which all else he has read or heard never could, how paltry is all the show of intellect compared with a pure and good heart. He that will humble himself and go to a child for instruction, will come away a wiser man If children can make us wiser, they surely can make us better. There is no one more to be envied than a goodnatured man watching the workings of children's minds, or overlooking their play. Their eagerness, curious about every thing, making out by a quick imagination what they see but a part of their fanciful combinations and magic inventions, creating out of ordinary circumstaaces, and the common things which surround them, strange events and little ideal worlds, and these all working in mystery to form matured thought, is study enough for the most acute minds, and should teach us, also, not too officiously to regulate what we so little understand. The still musing and deep abstraction in which they sometimes sit, affect us as a playful mockery of older heads. These little philosophers have no foolish system, with all its pride and jargon, confusing their brains. Theirs is a natural movement of the soul, intense with new life, and busy after truth, working to some purpose, though without a noise. When children are lying about seemingly idle and dull, we, who have become case-hardened by time and satiety, forget that they are all sensation, that their outstretched bodies are drinking in from the common sun and air, that every sound is taken note of by the ear, that every floating shadow and passing form come and touch at the sleepy eye, and that the little circumstances and the material world about them make their best school, and will be the instructers and formers of their characters for life. And it is delightful to look on and see how busily the whole acts, with its countless parts fitted to each other, and moving in harmony. There are none of us who have stolen softly behind a child when laboring in a sunny corner, digging a lilliputian well, or fencing in a six-inch barn-yard, and listened to his soliloquies, and his dialogues with some imaginary being, without his heart being touched by it. Nor have we observed the flush which crossed his face when finding himself betrayed, without seeing in it the delicacy and propriety of the after man. A man may have many vices upon him, and have walked long in a bad course, yet if he has a love of children, and can take pleasure in their talk and play, there is something still left in him to act upon-something which can love simplicity and truth. I have seen. in whom some low vice had become a habit, make himself the plaything of a set of riotous children with as much delight in his countenance as if nothing but goodness had ever been expressed in it; and have felt as much of kindness and sympathy toward him, as I have of revolting toward another, who has gone through life with all due propriety, with a cold and supercilious bearing towards children, which makes them shrinking and still. I have known one like the latter, attempt, with uncouth condescension, to court an openhearted child, who would draw back with an instinc tive aversion; and I have felt as if there were a curse upon him. Better to be driven out from among men, than to be disliked of children. When my heart has been full of joy and good-will at the thought of the blessings of home, and at the remembrance that the little which is right within me was learned there—when I have reflected upon the nature of my enjoyments abroad, and cast them up, and found them so few, and have then turned home again, and have seen that its pleasures were my best lessons of virtue, and as countless as good, I have thought that I could talk of it for ever. It is not so. Though the feeling of home never wearies, because kind offices, and the thousand little ways in which home attachments are always uttering themselves, keep it fresh and full in its course; yet the feeling itself, and that which feeds it, have a simplicity and unity of character of which little is to be told, though they are always with us. It may be thought that something should be said of the influence of domestic associations on a child, and its filial attach ments. I would not overcast the serenity I now feel by calling up the days when I was a boy; when the spirits were unbroken, and the heart pure, when the past was unheeded, and the future bright; I would not do this to be pained with all that has gone amiss in my later days-to remember how poorly I have borne the ills of life, and how thankless has been my spirit for its good. It is needless to talk of the afflictions of domestic life. These which Providence sends, ceme for our good, and their best consolations are found in the abode into which they enter. Of the troubles which we make to ourselves, we have no right to complain. Ill-sorted marriages will hardly bring agree ment, and from those of convenience will hardly come love. But when the deep and tranquil enjoyment, the light and playful cheerfulness, the exaltation of feeling, and the clear calm of thought, which belong to those who know each other entirely, and have by nature something of the romance of love in them, are told, then will I speak of the troubles of home. THE MAGIC MIRROR, OR THE WAY TO WEALTH. One evening-'tis an Eastern story- Upon the Western splendor gazing. A bud beside him; was' a flame From earth the little lustre came. And hid the sparkler in his bosom. Next morn ere Sol's first ray had shot, The Pilgrim gazed upon his treasure; His face with youth and beauty shone! The Pilgrim strayed to Bagdad city; Then sat him by a Kiask door, And tuned his pipe, and sang his ditty; But not a soul would stop to listen. At last an ancient dame pass'd by; She saw, by chance, the mirror glisten, Stopped, gazed, and saw her wrinkles fly! A dozen like herself soon gazed, And each beheld a blooming beauty; The story through the city blazed, Their alms were but a Moslem's duty! The men and .naids by thousands gathered, Each visage won the rose's dye; The Pilgrim's nest was quickly feathered, The mirror's name was-FLATTERY! The first of January in Washington, is always a day of general gaiety. If you have nothing better to do, and can compromise with your political antipathies, you may attend the President's levee, where you will find an assemblage of all sorts of people, who not only seem to be amused themselves, but are the subjects of amusement to others. Henry St. Clair was sitting in his room, at Gadsby's, on a brilliant day, not many weeks since, reading the Globe of the morning, which he had casually taken up, when a sudden thought, which occurred to him, appeared to operate forcibly upon his equanimity. He looked hastily at his watch, threw down the Administration print, and washed his hands. He then pulled the bell-rope with violence, and ordered Aristides to call a coach. The command was fulfilled, and the next moment St. Clair was drifting along the Avenue. "Is Miss Lascelles within?" "Walk into the parlor, if you please, sir." She was sitting on an ottoman, and arranging her curls before a broad mirror, which extended to the floor. "I have the honor to wish Miss Lascelles a happy newyear." "And I have the generosity to wish Mr. St. Clair a thousand. You are late. I was just going without you. I believe that you are noted for your punctuality.' Never less so, than since I have been acquainted with Miss Lascelles. But the carriage is at the door. Fair lady, by your leave." dazzling sunshine of a clear winter-morning. They stopped in front of the mansion. The steps of the carriage were let down, and a minute afterward the lady's arm was within that of St. Clair; and, passing through the vestibule, they entered the oval-room, where the President and his high dignitaries were assembled. After the customary introductions and greetings, the two new visiters moved on toward the 'East-Room.' What a crowd they here found assembled. St. Clair, who sometimes made very bad second-hand puns, exclaimed with a sigh, on his first entrance, "Ohe jam satis!" but his fair companion was inexorable, and refused to turn back. They kept on, and threaded their way through the motley multitude. "It is astonishing what a contrast of faces one meets with on certain occasions," said Miss Lascelles. "Who is that individual in whiskers? "I do not know, but should n't be surprised if it were Mr. Beardsley." "And who is that stout gentleman, whose keen mobility of vision seems to take in the whole scene around us, in the circuit of a glance? "That is the author of the Hunchback-posterity will honor his memory. At present, you perceive, Mr. Van Buren is conversing with him." "And what frightful-looking Indian is that, standing by the pier-table?" "That is the famous Wyandot Chief, Wah-hi-ti-noh-mahhi-ki, or the Creeping-panther. He is a terrible fellow-the same who killed his six wives, because " "But I insist upon presenting you to my friend Wah-hi-tinoh-mah-he-ki. He is courteous and polite, notwithstanding his little foible of being particular with regard to the preparation of his scalps." "You are quite as bad as he is. I will not be introduced to the barbarian." "Harry St. Clair! Who the d-1 is Harry St. Clair ?” muttered a fierce-looking gentleman, of an elderly appearance, who, in evident perturbation, was pacing the floor of a private parlor. “He is a very tolerable sort of a man, Mr. Brown, whom I have consented to marry." "You con-sent-O! 't is impossible, my dear, that you should have been such a fool. St. Clair! It sounds like the assumed name of some swindler. Remember, young lady,. that you are yet under my guardianship. He has heard of your hundred thousand, and, like an adroit fortune-hunter, he has taken care to avoid giving an account of himself to me. I forbid your seeing him again." "That must be as it shall happen, Mr. Brown. What think you of an elopement, one of these moonshiny nights? Mr. Brown, such things have been." Mr. Brown clenched his fists, and doubled the rapidity of his strides. "You will drive me mad! Has the fellow any property?" "I cannot say, but believe that, he 'no revenue has save his good' spirits, to feed and clothe him." "Good spirits! Hollands and Tokay, you mean: he is then a retail-grocer. That my ward should ever be engaged to a man licensed to keep and retail spirits! What would your poor old father have said, Miss Emeline, had he lived to see his fair scion of a proud and ancient stock, ally herself to an adventurer, to-the Lord knows whom!" The Avenue was covered with snow. The horses floundered through it at a tolerable pace. Several times the carriage "You pay but a sorry compliment to my penetration, Mr. came near being overset. The lady talked fluently to conceal Brown. But here comes the gentleman, himself. Mr. St. At last, they caught a near glimpse of the white-Clair, Mr. Brown; Mr. Brown, Mr. St. Clair. You are silent, house, which now shone trebly-white, bathed as it was in the both. Well, I will leave you to yourselves, and then you may her terror. find your tongues. Addio! St. Clair, be civil to the old gentleman." "Now, sir, I am the guardian of that young lady. Permit me to inquire how much capital you are in need of, to extend your business in the grocery line? I will advance you any reasonable sum-but do not think of aspiring to the hand of my ward." "Old fellow, I brought no cow-skin with me, and if I had, my respect for your gray hairs would probably prevent my using it, as you deserve. Touching Miss Lascelles-I could not find it in my heart to destroy her peace, by resigning my pretensions to her favor." "Conceited pup-" "Sir!" "Know, young man, that if Miss Lascelles marries without my consent, her whole fortune goes to her younger sister." "How much is her fortune, sir?" "A good hundred thousand, in the six per cents." "Give it to her sister, and I will throw in as much more, as a new-year's present. Who are you looking at?" ""T is n't possible-that-you-are serious-in what you say!" "Mr. Brown, I am about negotiating with Mr. Polk-you know Polk-for the purchase of the Government stock in the United States Bank. Good speculation-eh? I shall want your advice, Brown-handsome commission-agency, and all that sort of thing! But you are dumb." "Mr. St. Clair, if I had a dozen wards-dam'me! but you should be welcome to them all." I don't encourage idle dreams I cannot dine on airy schemes, Just foaming from the cow; I sometimes go to sleep; When Mary draws her white gloves out, 'Too hot to kick one's heels about!" I'm busy with the State affairs, I ask the price of railroad shares. I save a fortune in perfumes- I may be yet what others are My heart and lute are broken here I'm not a lover now! Lady, the mist is on my sight, The chill is on my brow, My day is night, my bloom is blight, There was a time when I could feel By smiles, and sighs, and tears. The days are gone! no more! no more, And though I'm hardly twenty-four, Lady, the mist is on my sight, The chill is on my brow; My day is night, my bloom is blight, I never talk about the clouds, I laugh at girls and boys: I'm growing rather fond of crowds, I never wander forth alone Upon the mountain's brow; I weighed last winter sixteen stone- I never wish to raise a veil, I never tell a tender tale, I never tell a lie; I cannot kneel as once I did, I never do as I am bid I'm not a lover now! I make strange blunders every day Take smiles for wrinkles, black for grey, I fly from folly, though it flows, I don't object to length of nose- The Muse's steed is very fleet- I've learned to utter yours and you, APPROVED METHODS OF SETTING HOUSES ON FIRE. There are two or three modes of performing this experiment. The operator may place the candle by the bed-side, on a chair or a table, and suffer the curtain, which must not be carefully looped up, to fall down on it; or she may take the candle into the bed itself, and fall asleep; or lean over it in her night cap, and do the same thing; or forget to snuff it, and allow the mushroom to tumble into her pocket-handkerchief, or to become a thief. Ingenious experimenters will discover other modes of operating; and it is a very good way to hold the candle in the hand when getting into bed, and to whisk it past the curtains. It is a sort of corollary from this mode, that without going to bed, my lady's maid, or the house-maid, should similarly make up the bed, or make it down, which is the proper phrase, with the candle in one hand, and she may then whisk it along the bed-curtains or the dimitty windowcurtains, or sit down on the bed with it in one hand; all of which modes we have known highly successful. Should the experiment be much desired, especial care must be taken that no candle has a glass shade; and if it should succeed, the windows and doors must immediately be opened, and the party must scream and run down stairs; for we have known the experiment utterly fail, by the application, in time, of the water-jug, or by squeezing the diseased part in a towel, or by pulling down the curtains, or shutting the door close, and leaving the room quietly. Thus much respecting beds and curtains, and thus much as to young ladies, when they set up to operate on houses. On themselves, they possess other modes of experimenting, by means of muslin, whether in the form of gowns, caps, or handkerchiefs. Such, for example, as sitting or standing near 3 wood fire, particularly if it be oak and has the bark on; or fir, which answers nearly as well; or standing by any fire when it burns well, and there is an open door or window, and no guard; or reading a romance with the knees inside the fender, or meditating over one, with the chin on the hand and the candle under the cap. And in all these cases, should the lady prove as inflammable as the romance and the candle are inflammatory, she should scream and run out of the room, by which means, it is probable, she will serve as a torch for the curtains, or the chair-covers, or the sofas, or the bed, if there happens to be one present, and by which means also she will ensure perfect success as to her own person. Approved Method Of Setting Houses On Fire-The Bride and the Burial. But the fair sex, not being ladies, young or old, possess other resources, in the shape of nursery-maids, laundry-maids, kitchen-maids, maids of all work, or maids of no work, such as are the housekeeper, who keeps a deputy, and my lady's maid. It is necessary that the nursery-maid should have a fire, or how should she boil the infant's pap, or make a 'comfortable drop of tea' for herself? And she must keep it alive all night that she may dry the clothes. Or rather, because that is too much trouble, she makes a roaring fire before she goes` to bed, the clothes begin to singe, the children and the nurse try which shall snore the loudest, the clothes flame, the horse takes fire, so does the wainscot, and then the ceiling; and then the neighbors are alarmed, and cry out, fire!' and a successful experiment is the result. But we can instruct the nursery-maid, the laundry-maid, and the kitchen-maid, all the maids, how to effect their purposes in another way, not less efficacious, and as little suspected. When a kettle is to be lifted off the fire, it is apt to be hot in the handle, and to burn the fingers; a towel is a very convenient intermedium. The towel being dry and hot, is seized on by the point of a flame, or a spark, and it is then proper to throw it over a chair-back, or into a corner, or into any other incombustible place. The spark spreads into a circle, as it does in a tinder-box, or wanders about like the parson and the clerk, when a child has burnt to tinder some stale last year's news;' and in due time the engines arrive, and nobody has set the house on fire. We vouch for the success of this experiment, because it once succeeded perfectly well with us on a bit of wainscot. All these methods, however, bear a certain air of vulgarity; for which reason we shall point out at least one elegant mode of effecting this desirable object. Being founded on optical principles, it cannot fail to be acceptable to the ladies who learned their ologies, who know the length of Captain Kater's pendulum, think Captain Basil Hall a greater man than Cook, Frobisher, and Raleigh, united. This expedient is perfectly Galilean, and consists in choosing a globular decanter, which is to be filled with water (ladies, the water need not be distilled), and then placing it on some sunshiny day (supposing that such a thing ever happens in England), in the sunshine, on a table, in a window, covered (the table) with a fair toilette table-cloth. The focus (that is the word) concentrating the sun-beams, and-in short, sets the house on fire. It is even so indeed; for we have known it happen twice. As to other scientific and chymical means of producing the same results, such as by a phosphorus bottle, or by a bottle of oxymuriatic matches, they are too vulgar to be introduced into so profound a treatise as this.Nor need we inform school-boys how they may manage, for the same purposes, by gunpowder and squibs, since we profess to deal only in the obscurer and more profound expedients for exciting what the lawyers call arson. The cook, the kitchen-maid, the scullery-maid, the whole genus dealing in fires and the great art of nutrition, possess such obvious means of their own, of making fire-works of any dimensions, suited to the scales of their respective houses, that we consider it beneath our dignity to descend into their regions. With respect to the stable, the quintessence of the pyrotechnic art, in this case, is for the coachman and grooms, and stable-boys, one, each, or all, to get drunk, and the drunker the better. That being done, it is proper to lie down on the hay with the candle burning, or to go up into the hay-loft similarly, or to amuse themselves with setting fire to spiders, or smoking, or with drinking still more, if they have not drunk enough already. Drunk or sober, it is not amiss to have a nocturnal assignation with some gentle fair one at midnight, to clap the candle under a stable bucket, as a substitute for a dark lantern, and forget it; or else to tumble it into the hay in the confusion of the moment; or, finally, to prevent discovery, whether of this, of purloined oats, stolen hay, or a stolen horse, fairly set the whole on fire. That it is generally judged good policy to fire a stable occasionally, is indicated by that exquisite invention, a stable lantern, partaking of all the obvious qualities of a safety-lamp, and unquestionably the hint whence it was derived. If indeed it is nothing to the purpose of safety, if a spark may fly out, or a straw get in, conducting to other straws, it is very much to the purpose which we have here all along kept in view. Our advice to bricklayers, carpenters, and plumbers, admits of being brief, for we cannot teach them much: they are adepts already. Bond timber is, however, the fundamental secret; because brick and lime, being naturally incombustible, inas 163 much as they have both been burned already, no other method of destroying the walls with the interior, the shell with the oyster, could have been devised. Luckless was the day, and dark the hour, that substituted stamped and taxed paper, amianthine paper paste and lime, for fat, red, fiery Norway fir; but he was no small philosopher in fire, who taught us to build houses on drumsticks, that, like mouse-traps, they might tumble at the pulling of a trigger. But even bond timber will not burn, unless it receives the contact of the element destined to communicate life and motion to the dormant and sluggish mass; and how should the whole mine of beams and timbers, and rafters and floors, be taught to aspire to heaven, unless the train were laid which may in due time rescue them from their bondage, and make them exult in liberty, hailing their emancipation in crackling and sparkling bonfires? The train is laid into the chimney; and where better could it be laid? This, at least, is the most efficacious: but it occasionally succeeds, if laid below the hearth-stone; where, gradually drying, more gradually charring, perhaps favored by some delicate crevice to admit air, or a spark, it is at length found that the house smells strangely of burning wood, then smells of smoke, then smells of fire, and at length becomes sensible to the rest of the seven senses, and to the insurance-office.-As to the plumbers, they understand so well the art of burning down a church or a cathedral, that we need not lose our labor in attempting to instruct them. It is often convenient to burn down divers manufactories of various kinds, but the modes are endless, and would exhaust our patience. Yet we particularly recommed to varnish-makers, and the rest of this fraternity, always to work at an open fire, because if they used any furnace of any kind, this desirable event could never happen. Carpenters, chymists, distillers, bakers, and the rest, must be allowed to follow the established rules in this art, for we doubt if we could teach them any thing new. Powder-millers, we believe, may yet learn from us; though they have hitherto appeared to understand their trade tolerably well, as Hounslow can testify. It is highly necessary to grind their combustible dust with stones, because these are noted for striking fire, even though they be limestones, and never to use iron or copper, because then a mill could not pos sibly blow up. For the same reason, it is expedient that the powder should be granulated in the midst of its own dust, that, amid the said dust, cranks should be revolving and gudgeons grinding in their sockets, and that care should be taken not to oil them too much, lest they should not become hot enough to fire, first the dust, then the powder, lastly the house; terminating all with a dispersion of heads, legs, and arms, into the air. When last I saw this church, it was the morn of a wedding, I cannot but look back to the morn of the wedding, |