that the sun always shines on Wednesday, because his birthday was on Wednesday, and he keeps it in this manner every week. "The Saints have been supposed to affect the weather so much upon their own holidays that a French bishop is said to have formed an insane project for the benefit of a particular branch of agriculture, by reforming a small part of the calendar. This prelate was the Bishop of Auxerre, Francis d'Inteville, first of that name. He had observed that for many years the vineyards had suffered severely on certain saints' days of frost, hail, cold rains, or blighting winds, and he had come to the conclusion that though the said saints had their festivals during the time when the sun is passing through Taurus, they were, nevertheless, opposed to the use of wine. "Now, this bishop loved good wine, and he conceived that if these foul-weather saints, who seemed in this respect as if they had enrolled themselves in a temperance society, were to have their days changed-and he calculated between Christmas day and St. Typhaine's-they might hail, freeze, and bluster to their hearts' content; and if their old festivals were assigned to new patrons, who were supposed to have no dislike for vineyards, all would go on well. These changes, however, in the saints' administration were not effected; and it appears, in fact, by Rabelais' manner, that the bishop never got from the optative to the potential mood. "The Japanese, who are a wise people, have fixed upon the five most unfortunate days in the year for their five great festivals; and this they have done purposely and prudently, in order by their universal mirth to divert and propitiate their cawis, or deities; and also by their custom on these days of wishing happiness to each other, to avert the mishaps that might otherwise befall them. They, too, are careful never to begin a journey on an inauspicious time; and, therefore, in all their road and house books there is a printed table showing what days of the month are unfortunate for their purposes. They amount to four-and-twenty in the year. The wise and experienced astrologer, Abino Seimei, who invented the table, was a personage endowed with divine wisdom, and the precious gift of prognosticating things to come. It is to be presumed that he derived this from his parentage, which was very remarkable on the mother's side. Take, gentle reader, for thy contentment, what Lightfoot would have called no mean story. "Prince Abino Jassima was in the temple of Inari-who, being the god and protector of foxes, ought to have a temple in the bishoprick of Durham and Leicestershire, and whereever foxes are preserved. Foxes' lungs, it seems, were then as much esteemed as a medicine by the Japanese as foxglove may be by European physicians, and a party of courtiers were foxhunting at this time, in order to make use of the lungs in a prescription. They were in full cry after a young fox, when the poor creature ran into the temple, and, instead of looking for protection to the god Inari, took shelter in the Prince Jassima's bosom. The prince on this occasion behaved very well, and the foxhunters very ill, as it may be feared most foxhunters would do in similar circumstances. They insisted upon his turning the fox out; he protested that he would commit no such crime, for a crime it would have been in such a case. They attempted to take the creature by force, and Prince Jassima behaved so bravely that he beat them all, and set the fox at liberty. He had a servant with him, but whether this servant assisted him has not been recorded, neither is it stated that the fox god, Inari, took any part in the defence of his own creature and his princely votary, though from what followed it may be presumed that he was far from being an unconcerned spectator. "[We pass over the historical consequences which make 'the hunting of that day' more important in Japanese history than that of Chevy Chase in our own. We pass them over because they are not exactly pertinent to this place.] Suffice it to say that King Jassima, as he must now be called, revenged his father's murder upon these very hunters, and succeeded to his throne; and that after his victory the fox appeared, no longer in vulpine form, but in the shape of a lady of incomparable beauty, whom he took to wife, and by whom he became the happy father of our astrologer, Abino Seimei. Gratitude had moved this alopegyne gynalopex, fox-lady, or lady-fox, to love; she told her love, indeed, but she never told her gratitude; nor did King Jassima know, nor could he possibly suspect, that his lovely wife had been that fox whose life he had with so much generosity and courage preserved― that very fox, I say, another and the same,' never did he imagine, nor never could he have imagined this, till an extraordinary change took place in his beautiful and beloved wife. Her ears, her nose, her claws, and her tail began to grow, and by degrees this wonderful creature became a fox again! My 20 VOL. I. own opinion is that she must have been a daughter of the great fox-god Inari himself. "Abino Seimei, her son, proved to be, as might have been expected, a cunning personage in the old and good meaning of that word. But as he inherited this cunning from his mysterious mother, he derived also an equal share of his benevolence from his kind-hearted father, King Jassima; therefore, after having calculated, for the good of mankind, the table of unfortunate days, he, for their further good, composed an Uta, or couplet of mystical words, by pronouncing which the poor traveller who is necessitated to begin a journey upon one of these days may avert all those evils which, if he were not preserved by such a spell, must inévitably befall him. He did this for the benefit of persons in humble life who were compelled at any time to go wherever their lords and masters might send them. I know not whether Lord Byron would have ventured to set out on a Friday after reciting these words, if he had been made acquainted with their value; but here they are, expressed in our own characters, to gratify the 'curious in charms'— "Sada Mejesi Tabicatz Fidori Iosi Asijwa, MISUSE OF WORDS. Slips of the tongue are sometimes found very inconvenient. by those persons who, owing to some unlucky want of correspondence between their wits and their utterance, say one thing when they mean to say another, or bawl out something which the slightest degree of forethought would have kept unsaid. But more serious mischief arises from that misuse of words which occurs in all inaccurate writers. Many are the men who, merely for want of understanding what they say, have blundered into heresies and erroneous assertions of every kind, which they have afterwards passionately and pertinaciously defended, till they have established themselves in the profession, if not in the belief, of some pernicious doctrine or opinion, to their own great injury, and that of their deluded followers, and of the commonwealth. PRIDE OF ANCESTRY. A mature spinster of an illustrious house having desired her attendant to read the Scriptures to her, the latter stumbled on a passage in Genesis, in which the word "giants" was rather defaced, and read, "There were Grants on the earth in those days." Ah !" exclaimed the lady, with rapture, “there is a convincing proof that my family yields to none in antiquity!" 66 In the castles and palaces of the ancient nobility of France, the tapestry frequently presents memorials of their pride of ancestry. On the tapestry of on apartment in the palace of the Duc de C is a representation of the Deluge, in which a man is seen running after Noah, and calling out, "My good friend, save the archives of the C-- family." THE UTILITY OF POCKETS. "Of all the inventions of the tailor (who is of all artists the most inventive), I hold the pocket to be one of the most indispensable. Birds have their craw; ruminating beasts their first, or ante-stomach; the monkey has his cheek; the opossum her pouch; and so necessary is some convenience of this kind for the human animal, that the savage who cares not for clothing makes for himself a pocket if he can. The Hindoo carries his snuff-box in his turban; some of the inhabitants of Congo make a secret fob in their woolly toupet, of which, as Labat says, the worst use they make is to carry poison in it. The Matolas, a long-haired race, who border upon the Caffres, form their locks into a sort of hollow cylinder, in which they bear along their little implements; certes a more sensible bag than such as is worn at court. The New Zealander is less ingenious: he makes a large opening in his ear, and carries his knife in it. The Ogres, those mighty heroes of the romances of bygone days, who were, of course, described as worse than savages, and whose ignorance and brutality was in proportion to their bulk, were said, upon the authority of tradition, when they had picked up a stray traveller or two more than they required for supper, to lodge them in a hollow tooth as a place of security till breakfast time; whence it may be inferred that they are not liable to tooth-ache, and that they made no use of toothpicks. "Ogres, savages, beasts, and birds then, all require some thing to serve the purpose of a pocket. Thus much for the necessity of the thing. Touching its antiquity, much might be said; for it would not be difficult to show, with that little assistance from the auxiliaries must, and have, and been, that pockets are coeval with clothing. Moreover, nature herself shows us the utility, the importance, nay, the indispensability, of pockets. "There is but one organ which is common to all animals whatsoever; some are without eyes, many without noses; some have no heads, others no tails; some neither the one nor the other; some there are who have no brains, others very pappy ones; some no hearts, others very bad ones; but all have a stomach, and what is a stomach, but a live inside pocket? "Dr. Towers used to have his coat pockets made of capacity to hold a quarto volume-a wise custom, but requiring stout cloth, good buckram, and strong thread, well waxed. I do not so greatly commend the humour of Dr. Ingenhousz, whose coat was lined with pockets of all sizes, wherein, in his latter years, when science had become to him as a plaything, he carried about various materials for chemical experiments: among the rest, so many compositions for fulminating powders in glass tubes, separated only by a cork in the middle of the tube, that, if any person had unhappily given him a blow with a stick, he might have blown up himself and the doctor too. "For myself, four coat pockets, of the ordinary dimensions, content me; in these, a sufficiency of conveniencies may be carried, and that sufficiency methodically arranged. For mark me, gentle or ungentle reader, there is nothing like method in pockets as well as in composition, and what orderly and methodical man would have his pocket handkerchief and his pocket-book, and the key of his chambers (if he be a bachelor living in chambers), and his knife, and his loose pence and half-pence, and the letters which, peradventure, he might just have received, or, peradventure, may intend to drop in the post-office, two-penny or general, as he passes by, and his snuff, if he be accustomed to regale his olfactory conduits; or his tobacco box, if he be dirty enough to need one; or his box of lozenges, if he should be troubled with a tickling cough; and the sugar-plums and the gingerbread nuts which he may be carrying home to his own children, or to any other small men and women upon whose hearts he may have a |