My cottage ornee down at Kew,
    So picturesque and pretty,
  Cost me of thousands not a few,
    To fit it up for Kitty. 
  She said it charm’d her fancy quite,
    But (still I can’t help loving her)
  She bolted with the plate one night—­
    You needn’t tell the Governor.

  My creditors are growing queer,
    Nay, threaten to be furious;
  I’ll scan their paltry bills next year,
    At present I’m not curious. 
  Such fellows are a monstrous bore,
    So I and Harry Grosvenor
  To-morrow start for Gallia’s shore,
    And leave duns—­to the Governor.

    [1] The author is aware there exists a legitimate rhyme for
        Porringer, but believes a match for governor lies still in
        the terra incognita of allowable rhythm.

* * * * *

THE EXPLOSIVE BOX.

Sir Hussey Vivian was relating to Sir Robert Peel the failure of the Duke of Normandie’s experiment with a terrible self-explosive box, which he had buried in a mound at Woolwich, in the expectation that it would shortly blow up, but which still remains there, to the great terror of the neighbourhood, who are afraid to approach the spot where this destructive engine is interred.  Sir Robert, on hearing the circumstance, declared that Lord John Russell had served him the same trick, by burying the corn-law question under the Treasury bench.  No one knew at what moment it might explode, and blow them to ——.  “The question,” he added, “now is—­who will dig it out?”

* * * * *

EXCLUSIVE INTELLIGENCE.

(From OUR West-end and “The Observer’s” Correspondent.)

We have every reason to believe, unless a very respectable authority, on whom we are in the habit of relying, has grievously imposed upon us, that a very illustrious personage has consulted a certain exalted individual as to whether a certain other person, no less exalted than the latter, but not so illustrious as the former, shall be employed in a certain approaching event, which at present is involved in the greatest uncertainty.  Another individual, who is more dignified than the third personage above alluded to, but not nearly so illustrious as the first, and not half so exalted as the second, has nothing whatever to do with the matter above hinted at, and it is not at all probable that he will be ever in the smallest way mixed up with it.  For this purpose we have cautiously abstained from giving his name, and indeed only allude to him that there may be no misapprehension on this very delicate subject.

* * * * *

ANIMAL MAGNETISM.

The Times gives a horrible description of some mesmeric experiments by a M. Delafontaine, by which a boy was deprived of all sensation.  We suspect that some one has been operating upon the Poor Law Commissioners, for their total want of feeling is a mesmeric phenomenon.