object, the fragile glass flies into fragments, the source of future colds and curtain lectures without number.  The immediate author of so much mischief, it is true, is the diminutive vampire which is now making its escape with cold-blooded indifference through a very considerable fracture in one of the panes; but surely the person who saved from destruction, and may thus be considered to have given existence to the cause of all this loss of temper and of property, cannot conscientiously affirm that his withers are unwrung!  Mercy and forbearance are very great virtues when exercised with proper discretion; but man owes a paramount duty to society, with which none of the weaknesses, however amiable, of his nature should be allowed to interfere.  It is no mercy to pardon and let loose upon the community one who, having already been convicted of manifold delinquencies, only waits a convenient season for adding to the catalogue of his crimes; and what is larceny, or felony, or even treason, compared with the perpetration of the outrages above attempted to be described?—­We pause for a reply.

Summer is a most delectable—­a most glorious season.  We, who are fond of basking as a lizard, and whose inward spirit dances and exults like a very mote in the sun-beam, always hail its approach with rapture; but our anticipations of bright and serene days—­of blue, cloudless, and transparent skies—­of shadows the deeper from intensity of surrounding light—­of yellow corn-fields, listless rambles, and lassitude rejoicing in green and sunny banks—­are allayed by this one consideration, that

  Waked by the summer ray, the reptile young
  Come winged abroad.  From every chink
  And secret corner, where they slept away
  The wintry storms; by myriads forth at once,
  Swarming they pour.

Go where you will, it is not possible to escape these “winged reptiles.”  They abound exceedingly in all sunny spots; nor in the shady lane do they not haunt every bush, and lie perdu under every leaf, thence sallying forth on the luckless wight who presumes to molest their “solitary reign;” they hang with deliberate importunity over the path of the sauntering pedestrian, and fly with the flying horseman, like the black cares (that is to say, blue devils) described by the Roman lyrist.  Within doors they infest, harpy-like, the dinner-table—­

  Diripiuntque dapes, contactuque omnia foedant
  Immundo—­

and hover in impending clouds over the sugar basin at tea; in the pantry it is buz; in the dairy it is buz; in the kitchen it is buz; one loud, long-continued, and monotonous buz!  Having little other occupation than that of propagating their species, the natural consequence, as we may learn from Mr. Malthus, is that their numbers increase in a frightfully progressive ratio from year to year; and it has at length become absolutely necessary that some decisive measures should be adopted to counteract the growing evil.