Thou young domestic dove!

(He'll have that jug off with another shove !) Dear nursling of the hymeneal nest! (Are those torn clothes his best?) Little epitome of man!

(He'll climb upon the table, that's his plan !) Touched with the beauteous tints of dawning life, (He's got a knife!)

Thou enviable being!

No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing,
Play on, play on,
My elfin John!

Toss the light ball-bestride the stick,
(I knew so many cakes would make him sick!)
With fancies buoyant as the thistle-down,
Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk
With many a lamblike frisk,

(He's got the scissors, snipping at your gown,)
Thou pretty opening rose !

(Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose!) Balmy, and breathing music like the south, (He really brings my heart into my mouth!) Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star, (I wish that window had an iron bar!) Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove, (I'll tell you what, my love,

I cannot write, unless he's sent above!)-T. Hood.

DISPUTATION.

What Tully says of war may be applied to disputing; it should be always so managed, as to remember that the only true end of it is peace; but generally true disputants are like true sportsmen, their whole delight is in the pursuit; and a disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare.-Pope.

SOCIETY COMPARED TO A BOWL OF

PUNCH.

Authors are always allowed to compare small things to great ones, especially if they ask leave first; but to compare great things to mean trivial ones is unsufferable, unless it be in burlesque ; otherwise, I would compare the body politic (I confess the simile is very low) to a bowl of punch. Avarice should be the souring, and prodigality the sweetening of it. The water I would call the ignorance, folly, and credulity of the floating insipid multitude; whilst wisdom, honour, fortitude, and the rest of the sublime qualities of men, which, separated by art from the dregs of nature, the fire of glory has exalted and refined into a spiritual essence, should be an equivalent to brandy. I don't doubt but a Westphalian, Laplander, or any other dull stranger that is unacquainted with the wholesome composition, if he was to taste the several ingredients apart, would think it impossible they should make any tolerable liquor. The lemons would be too sour, the sugar too luscious, the brandy, he will say, is too strong ever to be drunk in any quantity, and the water he will call a tasteless liquor, only fit for cows and horses; yet experience teaches us that the ingredients I named, judiciously mixed, will make an excellent liquor, liked of and admired by men of exquisite palates.—Mandeville.

Bishop Warburton says he saw the following epitaph in Northumberland :

Here lies, to parents, friends, and country dear,
A youth, who scarce had seen his seventeenth year;
But in that time so much good sense had shewn,
That death mistook seventeen for seventy-one.

THE PHOENIX.

In the East, they suppose the phoenix to have fifty orifices in his bill, which are continued to his tail; and that after living one thousand years, he builds himself a funeral pile, sings a melodious air of different harmonies through his fifty organ-pipes, flaps his wings, with a velocity that sets fire to the wood, and consumes himself.-Richardson.

PARTY ZEAL.

There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent; for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead. However, such instruments are necessary to politicians; and perhaps it may be with states as with clocks, which must have some dead weight hanging at them, to help and regulate the motion of the finer and more useful parts.Pope.

AVARICE.

The character of covetousness is what a man generally acquires more through some niggardliness or ill grace in little and inconsiderable things, than in expenses of any consequence. A very few pounds a-year would ease that man of the scandal of avarice.-Pope.

Vanes on the tops of steeples were antiently in the form of a cock, (called, from hence, weathercocks,) and put up, in papal times, to remind the clergy of watchfulness.-Du Cange,

BEATING OF WIVES.

Laurentius Surius, a religious chartreuse of Cologne, in Germany, writes, in his book of Memorable Matters, as well ecclesiastical as secular, how it happened, in his time, that a German travelled into those parts (Muscovy), and married with a woman of that country; and his wife made a great complaint to him, that he did not love her, neither bore her any kind of affection; because he did not at any time beat her! The German, hearing this, made answer, that he loved her entirely, and persuaded himself that blows could be no true signs of love. Afterwards, he used to beat her so extremely, and so often, that he found, by good proof, his wife did love him much better than she did before. But his beating was such, and so immeasurable, that at length the hangman broke both his legs and neck.-Sansovino and Mexio.

THE PILGRIMS AND THE PEAS.

A brace of sinners, for no good,

Were ordered to the Virgin Mary's shrine, Who at Loretto dwelt in wax, stone, wood,

And in a curled white wig looked wondrous fine.

Fifty long miles had these sad rogues to travel, With something in their shoes much worse than gravel:

In short, their toes so gentle to amuse,

The priest had ordered peas into their shoes.

A nostrum famous in old popish times
For purifying souls that stunk with crimes,
A sort of apostolic salt,

That popish parsons for its powers exalt,
For keeping souls of sinners sweet,
Just as our kitchen salt keeps meat.

The knaves set off on the same day,
Peas in their shoes, to go and pray;
But very different was their speed, I wot:
One of the sinners galloped on,

Light as a bullet from a gun;

The other limped as if he had been shot.

One saw the Virgin, soon peccavi cried;
Had his soul whitewashed all so clever,
When home again he nimbly hied,

Made fit with saints above to live for ever.

In coming back, however, let me say,
He met his brother rogue about half way,
Hobbling with outstretched hams and bending
knees,

Cursing the souls and bodies of the peas;

His eyes in tears, his cheeks and brow in sweat, Deep sympathising with his groaning feet.

"How now!" the light-toed whitewashed pilgrim broke,

"You lazy lubber!"

"Confound it!" cried the t'other, " 'tis no joke ; My feet, once hard as any rock,

Are now as soft as blubber.

Excuse me, Virgin Mary, that I swear :
As for Loretto, I shall not get there;
No! to the devil my sinful soul must go,
For hang me if I ha'n't lost every toe!