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from the fangs was more remarkable than he himself was aware of. A circumstance, which was likely to impress him more deeply, occurred in the eighteenth year of his age, when, being a soldier in the Parliament's army, he was drawn out to go to the siege of Leicester, in 1645. One of the same company wished to go in his stead; Bunyan consented to exchange with him, and this volunteer substitute, standing sentinel one day at the siege, was shot through the head with a musket-ball. "This risk," Sir Walter Scott observes, 66 was one somewhat resembling the escape of Sir Roger de Coverley, in an action at Worcester, who was saved from the slaughter of that action by having been absent from the field."

"THERE'S A LANGUAGE THAT'S MUTE."

A gentleman, one Sunday morning, was attracted to watch a young country girl on the high-road from the village to the church, by observing that she looked hither and thither, this way and that, upon the road, as if she had lost her thimble. The bells were settling for prayers, and there was no one visible on the road except the girl and the gentleman, who recognised in her the errand-maid of a neighbouring farmer. "What are you looking for, my girl?" asked the gentleman, as the damsel continued to pore along the dusty road. She answered, gravely: Sir, I'm looking to see if my master be gone to church." Now her master had a wooden leg.

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OLD SQUIBS.

Richard Bentley and Charles Boyle (Earl of Orrery) had a warm dispute relative to the genuineness of the Greek Epistles of Phalaris, an edition of which was published by the latter. Bentley was victorious, though he was kept in hot water by the critics and wits of the age. Dr. Garth assailed

him thus

"So diamonds owe a lustre to their foil,
And to a Bentley 'tis we owe a Boyle."

Conyers Middleton was a sad thorn in Bentley's side, from the latter having called the former, when a young student in the University, fiddling Conyers, because he played on the violin. A punning caricature represented Bentley about to be

thrust into the brazen bull of Phalaris, and exclaiming, "I had rather be roasted than Boyled."

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Alexander Newell, Dean of St. Paul's, and Master of Westminster School in the reign of Queen Mary, was an excellent angler. But (says Fuller) while Newell was catching of fishes Bishop Bonner was catching of Newell, and would certainly have sent him to the shambles, had not a good London merchant conveyed him away upon the seas. Newell was fishing upon the banks of the Thames when he received the first intimation of his danger, which was so pressing that he dared not go back to his own house to make any preparation for his flight. Like an honest angler, he had taken with him provision for the day; and when, in the first year of England's deliverance, he returned to his country and his old haunts, he remembered that on the day of his flight he had left a bottle of beer in a safe place on the bank: there he looked for it, and "found it no bottle, but a gun-such the sound at the opening thereof; and this (says Fuller) is believed (casualty is mother of more invention than industry) the origin of Bottled Ale in England."

WHO'S HE?

An old woman, in a village in the West of England, was told one day that the King of Prussia was dead, such a report having arrived when the Great Frederick was in the noon-day of his glory. Old Mary lifted up her great sloe eyes at the news, and fixing them, in the fulness of vacancy, upon her informant, replied, "Is a! is a!-The Lord ha' mercy!Well! well! The King of Prussia! And who's he?" The "who's he?" of this old woman might serve as a text for a notable sermon upon ambition. "Who's he?" may now be asked of men greater as soldiers in their day than Frederick or Wellington; greater in discovery than Sir Isaac or Sir Humphry. Who built the Pyramids? Who ate the first oyster?

LAND AND SEA FIGHTS.

An Irish officer in the army happening to be a passenger in an armed vessel, during a late war, frequently wished

that they might fall in with an enemy's ship, "because," he said, "he had been in many land battles, and there was nothing in the world which he desired more than to see what sort of a thing a sea-fight was." He had his wish; and when, after a smart action, in which he bore his part bravely, an enemy of superior force had been beaten off, he declared, with the customary emphasis of an Irish adjuration, that "a seafight was a mighty sarious sort of a thing."

IMMENSE TRIFLING.

Dr. Shaw, the naturalist, was one day showing to a friend two volumes, written by a Dutchman, upon the wings of a butterfly in the British Museum. "The dissertation is rather voluminous, sir, perhaps you will think," said the doctor, gravely, "but it is immensely important."

Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, amused himself with asking, from whom his mind descended? where it existed before he was born? and who he should have been if he had not been Richard Watson? "The bishop was a philosopher," says Dr. Jarrold, "and ought not to have asked such idle questions."

PROFIT AND LOSS.

Montaigne has a pleasant story of a little boy who, when his mother had lost a lawsuit, which he had always heard her speak of as a perpetual cause of trouble, ran up to her in great glee to tell her of the loss as a matter for congratulation and joy; the poor child thinking it was like losing a cough, or any other bodily ailment.

LITERAL RESPECT.

Cicero said of a man who had ploughed up the ground in which his father was buried, "Hoc est verè colere monumentum patris "--this is really cultivating one's father's memory.

LOVE AT CHURCH.

"God forgive me," said a conscience-stricken lover, "for every Sunday while she was worshipping her Maker, I used to worship her."

CHANGES OF LIFE.

It is well for us that, in early life we never think of the

VOL. I.

21

vicissitudes which lie before us; or look to them only with pleasurable anticipations as they approach.

"Youth

Knows nought of changes: age hath traced them oft,
Expects and can intercept them."

The thought of them when it comes across us in middle life,
brings with it only a transient sadness, like the shadow of a
passing cloud.
We turn our eyes from them while they are
in prospect; but when they are in retrospect, many a linger-
ing look is cast behind.

COURTING APPROBATION.

Reciprocal flattery often passes for mutual merit; though much base coin, when detected, ought to be nailed to the counter to prevent it any further passing current. Swift observes, "This is a sensible author-he thinks as I do." 'My wife's nephew," says the doctor, "is a sensible lad; he reads my writing, likes my stories, admires my singing, and thinks as I do in politics; a youth of parts and of considerable promise."

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FATHERS AND SONS.

How often has it been seen that sons not otherwise deficient in duty towards their parents, have, in the most momentous concerns of life, taken the course most opposite to that in which they were trained to go; going wrong where the father would have directed them aright, or taking the right path in spite of all inducements and endeavours for leading them wrong!

The son of Charles Wesley, born and bred in Methodism, and bound to it by all the strongest ties of pride and prejudice, became a papist. This, indeed, was but passing from one erroneous persuasion to another, and a more inviting one. But Isaac Casaubon also had the grief of seeing a son seduced into the Romish superstition; and on the part of that great and excellent man, there had been no want of discretion in training him, nor of sound learning and sound wisdom.

Archbishop Leighton, an honour to his church, his country, and his kind, was the child of one of those fire-brands who kindled the Great Rebellion; and Franklin had a son who, notwithstanding the example of his father (and such a father!) continued steadfast in his duty as a soldier, and a subject.

THE SERAPH'S QUILLS.

"Oh, for a quill plucked from the seraph's wing," sings Young. So the poet exclaimed; and his exclamation may be quoted as one example more of the vanity of human wishes; for, in order to get a seraph's quill, it will be necessary, according to Mrs. Glass's excellent idea, in her directions for roasting a hare, to begin by catching a seraph.

Selfishness.-There are persons who have so far outgrown their catechism, as to believe that their only duty is to themselves.

Canning's Wit.-Canning flashed such a light around the Constitution, that it was difficult to see the ruins of the fabric through it.

COTTLE, COLERIDGE, AND SOUTHEY.

Cottle, in his Life of Coleridge, has given a sincere proof of affection for Coleridge and Southey. Sara Coleridge tells us that the family Bible in which her mother inscribed her birth was the gift of Cottle. Southey, in a heroic letter written in advanced years, thus nobly recorded his love and gratitude for Cottle :

"Do you suppose, Cottle, that I have forgotten those true and most essential acts of friendship which you showed me when I stood most in need of them? Your house was my house when I had no other. The very money with which I bought my wedding-ring and paid my marriage fees was supplied by you. It was with your sisters that I left my Edith during my six months' absence; and for the six months after my return, it was from you that I received, week by week, the little on which we lived, till I was enabled to live by other means. It is not the settling of our cash account that can cancel obligations like these. Sure I am that there never was a more generous or kinder heart than yours; and you will believe me when I add that there does not live that man upon earth whom I remember with more gratitude and more affection. My heart throbs and my eyes burn with these recollections. Good-night, my dear old friend and benefactor.--ROBERT SOUTHEY."

And in like manner did Cottle behave to Coleridge.

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