“Then your man of business:  your public servant, toiling, and striving and figetting about matters of state, sacrificing health, and the snug comforts of a private gentleman, for the sake of popularity! His complaint is popular indeed.  Then your physician, courting extensive practice, and ambitious of the honour of never having time to eat a comfortable meal, and proud of being called out of bed the moment he is composing himself to sleep! He must be raving.  Then your barrister, fagging over dull books, and wearing a three-tailed wig, and talking for hours, that his client, right or wrong, may be successful!  All these people appear to me to be awfully excited:  the popular complaint is strong upon them, and I would put them all into the straightest waistcoats I could procure.”

Patriotic Follies.

“It is delightful to hear English men and women talk of their dear country.  There is nothing like Old England, say they; yet paramount as their love of country appears to be, their love of French frippery is a stronger passion!  They will lament the times, the stagnation of trade, the scarcity of money, the ruin of manufacturers, but they will wear Parisian productions.  It is a comfort, however, to know that they are often deceived, and benefit their suffering countrymen without knowing it—­as lace, silks, and gloves have frequently been exported from this country, and sold to English women on the coast of France as genuine French articles.  How little does Mrs. Alderman Popkins dream, when she returns to her residence in Bloomsbury, that her Parisian pelisse is of Spitalfields manufacture, and that her French lace veil came originally from Honiton.”

* * * * *

THE GATHERER.

  A snapper up of unconsidered trifles.

SHAKSPEARE.

* * * * *

BULL AND NO BULL.

“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 mine Hewins,’ says he.  So we looked at each other again, and sure it turned out to be neither of us—­and where’s the bull of that now?”

* * * * *

BAD HABIT.

Sir Frederick Flood had a droll habit of which he could never effectually break himself (at least in Ireland.) Whenever a person at his back whispered or suggested any thing to him whilst he was speaking in public, without a moment’s reflection, he always repeated the suggestion literatim.  Sir Frederick was once making a long speech in the Irish Parliament, lauding the transcendent merits of the Wexford magistracy, on a motion for extending