time I strained every nerve to call out, but it was absolutely impossible; at length, however, their quarrel seemed to have been adjusted; the chairman shut the door, still grumbling, and I was again, thank God, alone—­could once more breathe freely—­and by degrees became warmer.  My conductors took their way through the gate back again, and I became more easy in the reflection that, in consonance with old habits of good order, they would probably replace the chair in its original situation; but, to my astonishment and terror, I now first became aware that the size of my conductors was rapidly enlarging.  Instantly their statures became more exalted, their forms more aerial, and their strides more gigantic; and I could see distinctly into the first floor of the houses of the street through which we were passing.  In the square where stands the monument of our late lamented monarch, their forms became really terrific, and as the foremost strode past, he swept the statue from its pedestal with his coat, with as much apparent ease as if it had been a wax doll.  In the next street, I could, without difficulty, look into the third floor of the houses we were passing, and on reaching the market place, I found myself elevated to the altitude of the church-clock; my bearers having become as attenuated as the conductor.  Here all consciousness left me, and what farther became of me, I know not.  On recovering myself, I lay in the chair which stood in its old place.  It was already near mid-day; I therefore crept softly out of my fearful tenement, and luckily escaped unobserved.  My friends to whom I related my adventure, said, that I had dreamed—­that I had been visited by the nightmare—­but to me it has always appeared singular, that for the whole of the next day, my coat had a smell as earthy as if it had lain in a grave; and that the storm should this very night have thrown down the statue of the king from its pedestal.

J.H.F.

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY.

Waterproof Composition.

Mr. Henry Hunt, the patentee of the “Waterproof Composition,” informs us that for the above invention we are indebted to the scientific researches of Baron Charles Wetterstedz, the brother of one of the ministers of state at the Court of Sweden, by whom it was employed to prevent the infection of the plague, by means of absorption through the pores of the soles of boots and shoes; but he accidentally discovered that it rendered them waterproof, during a thaw in Sweden, when his boots, being prepared with this composition, resisted the snow-water, and remained perfectly dry, whilst the boots of other persons were saturated, and resembled tripe.

Mr. Scott, an experienced engineer, has experimented upon leather prepared with Mr. Hunt’s Composition, and found it “impervious to moisture at all degrees of pressure that leather will bear.”  The best tannage becomes saturated at from ten to fourteen pounds upon the inch, whilst that prepared with the Composition, was not penetrated at 180 lbs. upon the inch.  With such testimony, we need not add our recommendation of “the Waterproof Composition” as likely to prove of great benefit, especially to our sporting and country friends.