of Ireland,” says he, “160,000 are wretched cabins, without chimney, window, or door shut, even worse than those of the savages of America.”  Their food at the same period, consisted “of cakes, whereof a penny serves for each a week; potatoes from August till May; mussels, cockles, and oysters, near the sea; eggs and butter made very rancid by keeping in bogs; as for flesh they seldom eat it; they can content themselves with potatoes.”

* * * * *

SELF KNOWLEDGE.

We often hear people call themselves fools.  Now a man ought to know whether he is a fool or not, and he would not say it if he did not believe it; and there is also a degree of wisdom in the discovery that one has been a fool, for thereby it is intimated that the season of folly is over.  Whosoever therefore actually says that he was a fool formerly, virtually says that he is not a fool now.—­Penelope.

* * * * *

THE MAIDEN’S CHOICE.

  Genteel in personage,
  Conduct and equipage,
  Noble by heritage,
    Generous and free;
  Brave, not romantic,
  Learn’d, not pedantic,
  Frolic, not frantic,
    This must he be.

  Honour maintaining,
  Meanness disdaining. 
  Still entertaining,
    Engaging and new: 
  Neat, but not finical,
  Sage, but not cynical,
  Never tyrannical,
    But ever true.

Old MS.

* * * * *

CUNNING.

In England, no class possesses so much of that peculiar ability which is required for constructing ingenious schemes, and for obviating remote difficulties, as the thieves and the thief-takers.  Women have more of this dexterity than men.  Lawyers have more of it than statesmen; statesmen have more of it than philosophers.

* * * * *

STORY-TELLING.

A friend of mine has one, and only one, good story, respecting a gun, which he contrives to introduce upon all occasions, by the following simple, but ingenious device.  Whether the company in which he is placed be numerous or select, addicted to strong potations, or to long and surprising narratives; whatever may happen to be the complexion of their character or conversation, let but a convenient pause ensue, and my friend immediately hears, or pretends to hear, the report of a gun.  Every body listens, and recalls his late impressions, upon which “the story of a gun” is naturally, and as if by a casual association, introduced thus—­“By the by, speaking of guns, that puts me in mind of a story about a gun;” and so the gun is fixed in regular style, and the company condemned to smell powder for twenty minutes to come!  To the telling of this gun story, it is not, you see, at all necessary that there should be an actual explosion and report; it is sufficient that there might have been something of the kind.