A correspondent of the Gardener’s Magazine observes that “next to the existing school societies, there is nothing I am more anxious to see, or would more gladly contribute to, than a Society for promoting the Rational Amusements of the Lower Classes, the first aim of which should be to instruct itinerant teachers of music, singing, and dancing, in improved modes of imparting their arts, and thus fairly set the plan agoing, when it would soon work its own way, and might then be extended to higher objects.  The taste for flowers among the Paisley weavers, for gooseberry-growing at Manchester, and for music among the west of Yorkshire clothiers, originally sprang up from imitation of one or two amateurs of each pursuit; and there only needs a similar first impulse, which a society with a few thousands a year might give, to spread a general taste for music, singing, and dancing, and ultimately for other branches of the fine arts, as drawing and painting, as well as for natural history, and the cultivation of flowers and fruits, &c.

“The lower classes in England, thus improved in morals and manners by a better education and more humanising amusements, might be safely left to choose their time of contracting marriage, and would then no more make beasts of themselves by drinking fermented liquors, than do the lower classes in the city from which I write, (Brussels) where probably more beer (and that by no means weak) is drank than in any town of similar size in England, every street being crowded with cabarets (public-houses,) and these in the evening almost always filled.  But how filled?  Not with rioters and noisy drunkards, but with parties at separate tables, often consisting of a man, his wife and children, all sipping their pot of beer poured into very small glasses to prolong the pleasure, and the gratification of drinking seeming less than that of the cheerful chit-chat, which is the main object of the whole assemblage.  Deep-rooted national bad habits can be eradicated only by the spread of knowledge, which will ultimately teach our lower classes, as it has already done the bulk of the higher, that moderation is the condition of real enjoyments, and must be the motto even of the sensualist who aims at long-continued indulgence.”

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THE GATHERER.

  “A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.”

SHAKSPEARE.

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TOAST.

The Parting toast at one of the old gaming-houses in Marybone was “May as many of us as remain unhanged next spring, meet here again.”

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EPIGRAM

Translated from the French of Mr. Patris, who composed it a few days before his death.  By J.C.