Tickler.—­They seem to spare no pains to show that they consider the country as valuable merely for rent and game—­the duties of the magistracy are a bore—­county meetings are a bore—­a farce, I believe, was the word—­the assizes are a cursed bore—­fox-hunting itself is a bore, unless in Leicestershire, where the noble sportsmen, from all the winds of heaven cluster together, and think with ineffable contempt of the old-fashioned chase, in which the great man mingled with gentle and simple, and all comers—­sporting is a bore, unless in a regular battue, when a dozen lordlings murder pheasants by the thousand, without hearing the cock of one impatrician fowling-piece—­except indeed some dandy poet, or philosopher, or punster, has been admitted to make sport to the Philistines.  In short, every thing is a bore that brings the dons into personal collision of any kind with people that don’t belong to the world.

Odoherty.—­The world is getting pretty distinct from the nation, I admit, and I doubt if much love is lost between them.—­Blackwood’s Magazine.

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THE HOPKINSONIAN JOKE.

My friend Hertford, walking one day near his own shop in Piccadilly, happened to meet one Mr. Hopkinson, an eminent brewer, I believe—­and the conversation naturally enough turned upon some late dinner at the Albion, Aldersgate Street—­nobody appreciates a real city dinner better than Monsieur le Marquess—­and so on, till the old brewer mentioned, par hazard, that he had just received a noble specimen of wild pig from a friend in Frankfort, adding, that he had a very particular party, God knows how many aldermen, to dinner—­half the East India direction, I believe—­and that he was something puzzled touching the cookery.  “Pooh!” says Hertford, “send in your porker to my man, and he’ll do it for you a merveille.”  The brewer was a grateful man—­the pork came and went back again.  Well, a week after my lord met his friend, and, by the way, “Hopkinson,” says he, “how did the boar concern go off?”—­“O, beautifully,” says the brewer; “I can never sufficiently thank your lordship; nothing could do better.  We should never have got on at all without your lordship’s kind assistance.”—­“The thing gave satisfaction then, Hopkinson?”—­“O, great satisfaction, my lord marquess.—­To be sure we did think it rather queer at first—­in fact, not being up to them there things, we considered it as deucedly stringy—­to say the truth, we should never have thought of eating it cold.”—­“Cold!” says Hertford; “did you eat the ham cold?”—­“O dear, yes, my lord, to be sure we did—­we eat it just as your lordship’s gentleman sent it.”—­“Why, my dear Mr. Alderman,” says Hertford, “my cook only prepared it for the spit.”  Well, I shall never forget how the poor dear Duke of York laughed!—­Ibid.

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