I wonder whether Bell or Bess,
    It is he most admires,
  Even Mistress Match’em cannot guess—­
    It really patience tires. 
  He hung, last night, o’er Bella’s chair,
    And things seem’d at a close—­
  To-day ’twas Bess was all his care,
    But yet he don’t propose.

  He’s gone to concert, play, and ball,
    So often with them now,
  That it must seem to one and all
    As binding as a vow. 
  He certainly does mean to take
    One of the girls, and close
  The life he leads—­the flirting rake—­
    But yet he don’t propose.

  I often wonder what he thinks
    We ask him here to do—­
  Coolly he Cockburn’s claret drinks,
    And wins from me at Loo. 
  For twenty months he’s dangled on,
    The foremost of their beaux,
  While half-a-dozen else have gone,—­
    And still he don’t propose.

  No matter—­’tis a comfort, though,
    To know he will take one,
  And even tho’ Bess and Bella go,
    He still may fix on Fan. 
  I’ll have him in the family,
    That’s sure—­But, why, you look—­
  “Oh, madam, Mr. Thomson’s just
    Got married to his cook——­”

Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine.

* * * * *

THE WAVERLEY NOVELS.

Perhaps no writer has ever enjoyed in his lifetime so extensive a popularity as the Author of Waverley.  His reputation may be truly said to be not only British, but European—­and even this is too limited a term.  He has had the advantage of writing in a language used in different hemispheres by highly civilized communities, and widely diffused over the surface of the globe; and he has written at a period when communication was facilitated by peace; while to the wonder of his own countrymen, he has to an unexampled degree established an ascendency over the tastes of foreign nations.  His works have been sought by foreigners with an avidity equalling, nay, almost exceeding, that with which they have been received among us.  The conflicting literary tastes of France and Germany, which twenty years ago seemed diametrically opposed, and hopelessly irreconcilable, have at length united in admiration of him.  In France he has effected a revolution in taste, and given victory to the “Romantic School.”  He has had not only readers, but imitators.  Among Frenchmen, the author of “Cinq Mars” may be cited as a tolerably successful one.  Italy, in which what we call “Novels” were previously unknown, has been roused from its torpor, and has found a worthy imitator of British talent in the author of the “Promessi Sposi.”  Of the Waverley Novels, six editions have been published in Paris.  Many of them have been translated into French, German, Italian, and other languages.  To be read both on the banks of the Ganges and the Ohio; and to be found, as is mentioned by Dr. Walsh, where perhaps