GRATITUDE.

Curran says, “when a boy, I was one morning playing at marbles in the village ball alley, with a light heart and lighter pocket.  The gibe and the jest went gaily round, when suddenly there appeared amongst us a stranger, of a very remarkable and very cheerful aspect; his intrusion was not the least restraint upon our merry little assemblage, on the contrary, he seemed pleased, and even delighted; he was a benevolent creature, and the days of infancy (after all the happiest we shall ever see), perhaps rose upon his memory.  God bless him!  I see his fine form, at the distance of half a century, just as he stood before me in the little ball-alley in the days of my childhood.  His name was Dr. Boyse.  He took a particular fancy to me.  I was winning, and was full of waggery, thinking every thing that was eccentric, and by no means a miser of my eccentricities; every one was welcome to a share of them, and I had plenty to spare after having freighted the company.  Some sweetmeats easily bribed me home with him.  I learned from poor Boyse my alphabet and my grammar, and the rudiments of the classics.  He taught me all he could, and then sent me to the school at Middleton.  In short, he made a man of me.  I recollect it was about five and thirty years afterwards, when I had risen to some eminence at the bar, and when I had a seat in parliament, on my return one day from court, I found an old gentleman seated alone in my drawing-room, his feet familiarly placed, on each side of the Italian marble chimney-piece, and his whole air bespeaking the consciousness of one quite at home.  He turned round—­it was my friend of the ball-alley.  I rushed instinctively into his arms, and burst into tears.  Words cannot describe the scene which followed:—­“You are right, sir; you are right.  The chimney-piece is your’s—­the pictures are your’s—­the house is your’s.  You gave me all I have—­my friend—­my father—­my benefactor!” He dined with me; and in the evening I caught the tear glistening in his fine blue eye, when he saw poor little Jack, the creature of his bounty, rising in the House of Commons, to reply to a Right Honourable.  Poor Boyse! he is now gone; and no suitor had a larger deposit of practical benevolence in the Court above.  This is his wine—­let us drink to his memory.”

GHOSTS.

Bishop Fowler, of Gloucester, and Justice Powell, had frequent altercations on the subject of ghosts.  The bishop was a zealous defender of the reality of them; the justice was somewhat sceptical.  The bishop one day met his friend, and the justice told him that since their last conference on the subject, he had had ocular demonstration, which had convinced him of the existence of ghosts.  “I rejoice at your conversion,” replied the bishop; “give me the circumstance which produced it, with all the particulars:—­ ocular demonstration, you