he replied to the angry question, “What reason could you possibly have, Mr. President, for playing that card?” “None upon earth, I assure you.”  On the morning when news was received in college of the death of one of the fellows, a good companion, a bon vivant, Horne met with another fellow, an especial friend of the defunct, and began to condole with him:  “We have lost poor L——.”  “Ah!  Mr. President, I may well say I could have better spared a better man.”  “Meaning me, I suppose?” said Horne, with an air that, by its pleasantry, put to flight the other’s grief.  I was talking with Henry James Pye, late poet-laureate, when he happened to mention the name of Mr. P., a gentleman of Berkshire, and M.P.  I think, for Reading; “That is the man,” said I, “who damned the king’s wig in the very presence of his majesty; with great credit, however, to his own loyalty, and very much to the amusement of the king.”  “I do not well see how that could be.”  “You shall hear a story which our president (Pye had been a gentleman commoner of Magdalen College) told at his own table.  The king was out a hunting; P——­ was in, and of, the field; the king’s horse fell; the king was thrown from the saddle, and his hat and wig were thrown to a little distance from him:  he got on his feet again immediately, and began to look about for the hat and wig, which he did not readily see, being, as we all know, short-sighted.  P——­, very much alarmed by the accident, rides up in great haste and arrives at the moment when the king is peering about and saying to the attendants, ‘Where’s my wig? where’s my wig?’ P——­ cries out, ’D—­n your wig! is your majesty safe?’”

* * * * *

CURIOUS CONCEITS.

While the late Edmund Burke was making preparation for the indictment before the House of Lords, of Warren Hastings, Governor-general of India, he was told that a person who had long resided in the East Indies, but who was then an inmate of Bedlam, could supply him with much useful information.  Burke went accordingly to Bedlam, was taken to the cell of the maniac, and received from him, in a long, rational, and well-conducted conversation, the results of much and various knowledge and experience in Indian affairs, and much instruction for the process then intended.  On leaving the cell, Burke told the keeper who attended him, that the poor man whom he had just visited, was most iniquitously practised upon; for that he was as much in his senses as man could be.  The keeper assured him that there was sufficient warranty and very good cause for his confinement.  Burke, with what a man in office once called “Irish impetuosity,” known to be one of Burke’s characteristics, insisted that it was an infamous affair, threatened to make the matter public, or even bring it before parliament.  The keeper then said, “Sir, I should be sorry for you to leave this house under