The following specimens are from the works of Dr. John

son:

Every monumental inscription should be in Latin; for that being a dead language, it will always live.

Nor yet perceived the vital spirit fled,

But still fought on, nor knew that he was dead.

Shakspeare has not only shown human nature as it is, but as it would be found in situations to which it cannot be exposed. Turn from the glittering bribe your scornful eye,

Nor sell for gold what gold can never buy.

These observations were made by favor of a contrary wind.

The next two are from Pope :

Eight callow infants filled the mossy nest,
Herself the ninth.

When first young Maro, in his noble mind,
A work t' outlast immortal Rome designed.

Shakspeare says,

I will strive with things impossible,

Yea, get the better of them.-Julius Cæsar, ii. 1.

A horrid silence first invades the ear.-Dryden.

Beneath a mountain's brow, the most remote

And inaccessible by shepherds trod.-HOME: Douglass.

In the Irish Bank-bill passed by Parliament in June, 1808, is a clause providing that the profits shall be equally divided and the residue go to the Governor.

Sir Richard Steele, being asked why his countrymen were so addicted to making bulls, said he believed there must be something in the air of Ireland, adding, "I dare say if an Englishman were born there he would do the same."

Mr. Cunningham, to whom we are indebted for the interesting notes to Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," pronounces his author the most distinguished of his cotemporaries.

Sir Walter Scott perpetrates a curious blunder in one of his novels, in making certain of his characters behold a sunset over the waters of a seaport on the eastern coast of Scotland.

The following occurs in Dr. Latham's English Language. Speaking of the genitive or possessive case, he says,

"In the plural number, however, it is rare; so rare, indeed, that whenever the plural ends in s (as it always does) there is no genitive."

Byron says,

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,

A palace and a prison on each hand.

(He meant a palace on one hand, and a prison on the other.)

"the

Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines a garret as a room on the highest floor in the house," and a cock-loft as room over the garret."

For the sake of comparison, we recur to the favorite pasture of the genuine thorough-bred animal :

:

An Irish member of Parliament, speaking of a certain minister's well-known love of money, observed, "Let not the honorable member express a contempt for money,-for if there is any one office that glitters in the eyes of the honorable member, it is that of purse-bearer: a pension to him is a compendium of all the cardinal virtues. All his statesmanship is comprehended in the art of taxing; and for good, better, and best, in the scale of human nature, he invariably reads pence, shillings, and pounds. I verily believe," continued the orator, rising to the height of his conception, "that if the honorable gentleman were an undertaker, it would be the delight of his heart to see all mankind seized with a common mortality, that he might have the benefit of the general burial, and provide scarfs and hat-bands for the survivors."

The manager of a provincial theatre, finding upon one occasion but three persons in attendance, made the following address:"Ladies and gentlemen-as there is nobody here, I'll dismiss you all. The performances of this night will not be performed; but they will be repeated to-morrow evening."

A Hibernian gentleman, when told by his nephew that he had just entered college with a view to the church, said, "I hope that I may live to hear you preach my funeral sermon."

An Irishman, quarrelling with an Englishman, told him if he didn't hold his tongue, he would break his impenetrable head, and let the brains out of his empty skull.

"My dear, come in and go to bed," said the wife of a jolly son of Erin, who had just returned from the fair in a decidedly how-come-you-so state: "you must be dreadful tired, sure, with your long walk of six miles." "Arrah! get away

with your nonsense," said Pat: "it wasn't the length of the way, at all, that fatigued me: 'twas the breadth of it."

His chil

A poor Irishman offered an old saucepan for sale. dren gathered around him and inquired why he parted with it. "Ah, me honeys," he answered, "I would not be afther parting with it but for a little money to buy something to put in it."

A young Irishman who had married when about nineteen years of age, complaining of the difficulties to which his early marriage subjected him, said he would never marry so young again if he lived to be as ould as Methuselah.

In an Irish provincial paper is the following notice:Whereas Patrick O'Connor lately left his lodgings, this is to give notice that if he does not return immediately and pay for the same, he will be advertised.

"Has your sister got a son or a daughter?" asked an Irishman of a friend. "Upon my life," was the reply, "I don't know yet whether I'm an uncle or aunt."

"I was going," said an Irishman, "over Westminster Bridge the other day, and I met Pat Hewins. 'Hewins,' says I, 'how are you? Pretty well,' says he, thank you, Donnelly.' 'Donnelly!' says I: that's not my name.' Faith, no more is So we looked at each other again, and

、

mine Hewins,' says he. sure it turned out to be nayther of us; and where's the bull of that, now?"

"India, my boy," said an Irish officer to a friend on his arrival at Calcutta, "is the finest climate under the sun; but a lot of young fellows come out here and they drink and they eat, and they drink and they die: and then they write home to their parents a pack of lies, and say it's the climate that has killed them."

In the perusal of a very solid book on the progress of the ecclesiastical differences of Ireland, written by a native of that country, after a good deal of tedious and vexatious matter, the reader's complacency is restored by an artless statement how an eminent person "abandoned the errors of the church of Rome, and adopted those of the church of England."

Here is an American Hibernicism, which is entitled to full recognition:-Among the things that Wells & Fargo's Express is not responsible for as carriers is one couched in the following language in their regulations: "Not for any loss or damage by fire, the acts of God, or of Indians, or any other public enemies of the government."

George Selwyn once declared in company that a lady could not write a letter without adding a postscript. A lady present replied, "The next letter that you receive from me, Mr. Selwyn, will prove that you are wrong." Accordingly he received one from her the next day, in which, after her signature was the following:

"P. S. Who is right, now, you or I?"

The two subjoined parliamentary utterances are worthy to have emanated from Sir Boyle Roche:

"Mr. Speaker, I boldly answer in the affirmative-No."

"Mr. Speaker, if I have any prejudice against the honorable member, it is in his favor."

A PAIR OF BULLS.

When my lord he came wooing to Miss Ann Thrope,

He was then a "Childe" from school;

He paid his addresses in a trope,

And called her his sweet bul-bul:

But she knew not, in the modern scale,
That a couple of bulls was a nightingale.

Blunders.

SLIPS OF THE PRESS.

LORD BROUGHAM was fond of relating an instance which was no joke to the victim of it. A bishop, at one of his country visitations, found occasion to complain of the deplorable state of a certain church, the roof of which was evidently anything but water-tight; after rating those concerned for their neglect, his lordship finished by declaring emphatically that he would not visit the damp old church again until it was put in decent order. His horror may be imagined when he discovered himself reported in the local journal as having declared: "I shall not visit this damned old church again." The bishop lost no time in calling the editor's attention to the mistake; whereupon that worthy set himself right with his readers by stating that he willingly gave publicity to his lordship's explanation, but he had every confidence in the accuracy of his reporter. The editor of an evening paper could hardly have had similar confidence in his subordinate when the latter caused his journal to record that a prisoner had been sentenced to "four months imprisonment in the House of Commons!" In this case, we fancy the reporter must have been in the same exhilarated condition as his American brother, who ended his account of a city banquet with the frank admission: "It is not distinctly remembered by anybody present who made the last speech!"

In a poem on the "Milton Gallery," by Amos Cottle, the poet, describing the pictures of Fuseli, says:

"The lubber fiend outstretched the chimney near,

Or sad Ulysses on the larboard Steer."

Ulysses steered to the larboard to shun Charybdis, but the compositor makes him get upon the back of the bullock, the left one in the drove! After all, however, he only interprets the text literally. "Steer," as a substantive, has no other meaning