admired disorder, fat incumbents falling down in a fit, neat clerical-looking gigs standing at vicarage doors, and these all incongruously commingled with white veils, lawn sleeves, roast beef, pulpit cushions, bright eyes, and small black sarsnet shoes.  Suddenly the chapel bell dissolves the fleeting fabric of the vision; and, behold! the white veil is a poet’s imagination, the church spire is still at a miserable distance, the vicarage is a Utopian nonentity, and the fat incumbent, in a state of the ruddiest health, is the only reality of the dream.

_—­Blackwood’s Magazine._

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WOMAN

Nothing sets so wide a mark “between the vulgar and the noble seed” as the respect and reverential love of womanhood.  A man who is always sneering at woman is generally a coarse profligate, or a coarse bigot, no matter which.

* * * * *

ANGLING.

We have often thought that angling alone offers to man the degree of half-business, half-idleness, which the fair sex find in their needle-work or knitting, which, employing the hands, leaves the mind at liberty, and occupying the attention so far as is necessary to remove the painful sense of a vacuity, yet yields room for contemplation, whether upon things heavenly or earthly, cheerful or melancholy.
                                  —­Quarterly Rev.

* * * * *

THE GATHERER.

“A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.” 
SHAKSPEARE.

* * * * *

LAUGHTER.

“Laugh and grow fat,” is an old adage; and Sterne tells us, that every time a man laughs, he adds something to his life.  An eccentric philosopher, of the last century, used to say, that he liked not only to laugh himself, but to see laughter, and hear laughter.  “Laughter, Sir, laughter is good for health; it is a provocative to the appetite, and a friend to digestion.  Dr. Sydenham, Sir, said the arrival of a merry-andrew in a town was more beneficial to the health of the inhabitants than twenty asses loaded with medicine.”  Mr. Pott used to say that he never saw the “Tailor riding to Brentford,” without feeling better for a week afterwards.

* * * * *

LEGAL PEARL-DIVERS.

Every barrister can “shake his head,” and too often, like Sheridan’s Lord Burleigh, it is the only proof he vouchsafes of his wisdom.  Curran used to call these fellows “legal pearl-divers.”—­“You may observe them,” he would say, “their heads barely under water—­their eyes shut, and an index floating behind them, displaying the precise degree of their purity and their depth.”

* * * * *

GRAMMATICAL LEARNING.

An author left a comedy with Foote for perusal; and on the next visit asked for his judgment on it, with rather an ignorant degree of assurance.  “If you looked a little more to the grammar of it, I think,” said Foote, “it would be better.”—­“To the grammar of it, Sir!  What! would you send me to school again?”—­“And pray, Sir,” replied Foote, very gravely, “would that do you any harm?”