their usual manner; and, flushed with the insolence of victory, which they never had generosity to enjoy in the pure spirit of valour, some of their officers were parading in a coffee-room at Basle, kicking their iron heels, canistering their swords, and swaggering with offensive noises through the coffee-houses. At length one of them was heard to say, "This country is not fit for the Swiss they are hireling soldiers, and fight for money, while we fight for glory." An old Swiss general mildly raised his head from his newspaper, and calmly replied, "Much of what you say, Sir, is true-we both fight for what we want.”

Passing his first summer at Cheltenham, generally inattentive as he was to his dress, he was in a sort of disguise, and little notice being taken of him, and probably not much known, he had resort to a story to draw himself into notice. With the straight forward, credulous character of the English he was perfectly well acquainted, with which he often eked out a tale. The conversation of the table turning altogether on the stupid, savage, and disgusting amusement of cock-fighting, he was determined to put an end to it, by the incredible story of the Sligo cats. He prefaced it by saying, that in his country there prevailed a barbarous custom of fighting these animals in the same way as mastiffs are fought in England, or bulls in Spain. That

being once in Sligo, a fishing town in the northwest of Ireland, he was invited to see this grand spectacle. That the people of rank and condition in that part of the country had these cats regularly bred and trained for the purpose; and crowded into town, and took lodgings for the week, whenever these games were to be celebrated. The Corinthian chariot-races were never more highly the scenes of gaiety and mirth in Greece, than these were at Sligo. At one of them three matches were fought on the first day with the most furious courage, with all that intrepidity of valour and skill, all that brutal rage, that feudal clans could furnish; and before the third of them was finished (on which bets ran very high), dinner was announced in the inn where the battle was fought. The company agreed, though reluctantly, to return, and

"Let wretches die, that jurors may go dine,"

and to lock up the room, leaving the key in trust to Mr. Curran, who protested to God, he never was so shocked, that his head hung heavy on his shoulders, and his heart was sunk within him, on entering with the company into the room, and finding that the cats had actually eaten each other up, save some little bits of tails which were scattered round the room. The Irish part of the company saw the drift, ridicule, and impossibility of the narrative, and laughed immoderately,

while the English part yawned and laughed, seeing others laugh, and sought relief in each other's countenances. One of them not wishing to leave the whole joke to the Irish, and stung by a nettle he had not perceived, turned round to his friends and exclaimed: "Well, Jack, did not I always tell you, mother never liked cats?" They felt it as a late lord chancellor of great learning, understood some strokes of the Cervantic gravity, and inimitable and unimitated points and turns of Mr. Plunkett*.

Though the frequency of these anecdotes may tend to reduce the dignity of history, and may justly diminish the value of any collection, yet the boldest Goth, not even Alaric himself, would scarcely dare to destroy one vestige of them. By making breaks in the main narrative, one comes relieved from the fatigue of looking on one straight road, on one continuous and interminable line, such as India presents to the traveller.

In England, the ruinous system of obtaining money on fictitious bills, is known by the expression of raising the wind, in Ireland, by flying a kite. This latter, (not understood by the noble lord who presided,) Mr. Plunkett had occasion frequently to use, in animadverting upon its injurious effects: being asked by the judge what he meant by flying a kite, Mr. Plunkett answered, Your lordship knows, that in England the wind raises the kite, but in Ireland, my lord, the kite raises the wind.” It is doubtful if this were then, or even after understood. ̧·

Five hundred miles, even to Agra, is too much; nor will the stately palm, nor all the spicy odours, nor all the paintings of an oriental scenery impart that delight which the cheerful undulations of hill and vale, alternately intermixed, afford to the eye eagerly seeking for novelty and variety. In one case it sees infinity before it, and pants to be relieved and refreshed from the weariness and disgust produced by continuity. What the acute Hume, and the spoiler of our language the overornamented Gibbon, have done, so may the humble recorder of these memoirs be permitted to attempt to break up his matter so as to give a resting place on each stage.

Socrates said, if any man, however private, had courage to give a true diary of his own history, and of the events which had taken place in all matters connected with him; such would furnish not only an agreeable, but a moral and instructive work. How he may succeed who would delineate the mind of another, whether he possesses equal or superior advantages, I stop not to enquire. Locke felt the difficulty the mind had to place itself at a distance from itself, so as justly to estimate its own operations, and it is hard to conceive it to be so circumstanced as to have nothing to conceal. The Grecian philosopher well knew the difficulty of his scheme, which was never capable of being carried into perfect practical effect

from the resistance it always met in man's amour propre. The confessions of Rousseau did not much advance the suggestions of the Greek sage; în every effort of this nature, it never occurred that the whole truth was told, even by the most candid. When another philosopher was thrown on an island supposed to be inhabited only by savages, and found mathematical figures traced on the sand, he announced to his companions, that this place was peopled by an enlightened race of men: they were at first surprised, but shortly discovered his opinion to be well founded. So when the slightest traits of the human mind are delineated, reason speedily discovers in the most minute shadings, the value of the picture. Even in the small circumstance of tying the bundle of sticks together, and placing the smaller inside, contrivance and intelligence are to be deduced; and were the common newspapers of dif ferent countries to be handed down to posterity, unaccompanied by any other vestige, some future Miller from these apparently light documents would deduce the actual state of society, and give to the world an accurate account of its ranks. Thus here are supplied the materials of history, which may produce another and more instructive volume.

Between the spoken and written productions of Mr. Curran, there always appeared a great