7. “A piece of broken porcelain.” This is an undoubted relic of Roman manufacture, and appears to have formed part of a plate.  The blue “willow pattern” painted on it shows the antiquity of that popular design.

There are several other extremely rare and curious antiquities to be seen in this collection, which we have not space to notice at present, but shall take an early opportunity of returning to the valuable discoveries made by the indefatigable Mr. Bunks.

* * * * *

A NEW CONJURING COMPANY.

A report of so extraordinary a nature has just reached us, that we hasten to be the first, as usual, to lay the outlines of it before our readers, with the same early authenticity that has characterised all our other communications.  Mr. Yates is at present in Paris, arranging matters with Louis Philippe and his family, to appear at the Adelphi during the ensuing season!!

It would appear that the mania for great people wishing to strut and fret their four hours and a quarter upon the stage is on the increase—­at least according to our friends the constituent members of the daily press.  Despite the newspaper-death of the manager of the Surrey, by which his enemies wished to “spargere voces in vulgum ambiguas” to his prejudice (which means, in plain English, to tell lies of him behind his back), we have seen the report contradicted, that Mrs. Norton was about to appear there in a new equestrian spectacle, with double platforms, triple studs of Tartar hordes, and the other amphitheatrical enticers.  We ourselves can declare, that there is no foundation in the announcement, no more than in the on dit that the Countess of Blessington was engaged as a counter-attraction, for a limited number of nights, at the Victoria; or her lovely niece—­a power in herself—­had been prevailed upon to make her debut at the Lyceum, in a new piece of a peculiar and unprecedented plot, which was prevented from coming off by some disagreement as to terms between the principal parties concerned.  For true theatrical intelligence, our columns alone are to be relied upon; bright as a column of sparkling water, overpowering as a column of English cavalry, overlooking all London at once, as the column of the Monument, but not so heavy as the column of the Duke of York.

Mais revenons a nos moutons:  which implies (we are again compelled to translate, and this time it is for the benefit of those who have not been to Boulogne), “we spoke of Louis Philippe and his family.”  This sagacious monarch, foreseeing that the French were in want of some new excitement, and grieving to find that the pompe funebre of Napoleon, and the inauguration of his statue upon the monument of the victories that never took place, had not made the intense impression upon the minds of his vivacious subjects that he had intended it