claimed Hogarth; "the deed is done-all is over." It is a very remarkable and well-known fact that he never again took the pallet in hand. It is a circumstance less known, perhaps, that he died about a year after he had finished this extraordinary tail-piece. IT 180. T is curious, remarks Southey, to observe how the English Catholics of the seventeenth century wrote English like men who habitually spoke French. Corps is sometimes used for the living body, and when they attempt to versify, their rhymes are only rhymes according to a French pronunciation: "This path most fair I walking winde By shadow of my pilgrimage, Wherein at every step I find An heavenly draught and image Tending to eternity. "The tree that bringeth nothing else And doth great wrong to Nature." But the finest specimen of French-English verse is certainly the inscription which M. Girardin placed at Ermenonville to the memory of Shenstone. "This plain stone, To William Shenstone. In his writings he displayed A mind natural. At Leasowes he laid Arcadian Greens rural." Shenstone used to thank God that his name was not liable to a pun. He little thought that it was liable to such a rhyme as this. AT 181. T the meeting of Parliament, January 13, 1774, when the address was moved in the House of Commons, Mr Prescott, the banker, complained of the late regulation of the gold coin, by which, he said, there was not a banker in England that had not lost £500. Lord North laughed, and made the House laugh, at him, by saying he was glad the loss had fallen on those who were the best able to bear it.- Walpole. FR 182. REDERICK the Great amused himself daily by mixing with the people, and often going into coffee-houses incog. at Paris, where soon after his arrival he met with a person with whom he played at chess. The Emperor lost his game, and wished to play another; but the gentleman desired to be excused, saying, he must go to the opera to see the Emperor. "What do you expect to see in the Emperor," says he; there is nothing worth seeing in him, I can assure you; he is just like any other man." "No matter," says the gentleman, "I have long had an irresistible 66 curiosity to see him; he is a very great man, and I will not be disappointed." "And is that really your only motive," said the Emperor, "for going to the Opera ?" "It really is," replied the gentleman. "Well then, if that is the case," says the Emperor, "we may as well play another game now, for you see him before you.” IN 183. N April 1782, Grattan moved a resolution in the Irish Parliament, the main purport of which was the repeal of the statute of George I., by which England claimed a right to legislate for Ireland. He was at the time in a most feeble state of health, his frame seemed bent down by debility, and every one supposed he must have sunk under the exertion. But as he proceeded he warmed with the subject, appeared to shake off not merely illness, but mortality, and, amid the tumultuous enthusiasm of the House, he carried his resolution, "That no power on earth could make laws to bind Ireland except her own King, Lords, and Commons." The motion was afterwards proposed and carried in the English Parliament. The delight and gratitude of the people were unbounded; addresses poured in on him from every village in Ireland, and statues were voted to his memory. The Parliament also voted him a grant of £50,000, as some testimony of the estimation in which he was held. This grant of public money subsequently gave rise to a bitter dispute between Grattan and Flood in the House, which is commemorated in the following epigrammatic dialogue :"QUESTION. Say, what has given to Flood a mortal wound? ANSWER.-Grattan's obtaining fifty thousand pound. QUESTION.-Can Flood forgive an injury so sore? ANSWER.-Yes, if they give him fifty thousand more." 184. AT T the beginning of the Revolution of 1688, several persons of rank who had been serviceable in bringing about this happy event, but who at the same time had no great abilities, applied for some of the most considerable employments in the Government. The Earl of Halifax was consulted on the propriety of admitting these claims. "I remember," said his Lordship, "to have read in history that Rome was saved by geese-but I do not recollect that those geese were made consuls." 185. ON the day after the Derby, 1848, Disraeli met ΟΝ Lord George Bentinck in the library of the House of Commons. He was standing before the book-shelves with a volume in his hand, and his countenance was greatly disturbed. His resolutions in favour of the Colonial interest, after all his labours, had been negatived by the Committee on the 22d, and on the 24th his horse Surplice, whom he had parted with among the rest of his stud, solely that he might pursue without distraction his labours on behalf of the great interests of the country, had won that paramount and Olympian stake to gain which had been the object of his life. He had nothing to console him, and nothing to sustain him, except his pride. Even that deserted him before a heart which he knew at least could yield him sympathy. He gave a sort of superb groan : "All my life I have been trying for this, and for what have I sacrificed it ?" he murmured. It was in vain to offer solace. "You do not know what the Derby is," he moaned out. "Yes, I do; it is the blue ribbon of the turf." "It is the blue ribbon of the turf," he slowly repeated to himself, and sitting down at the table, he buried himself in a folio of statistics. 186. ADDISON was twenty-one years of age before he published anything in his own language. The first performance in English which he submitted to the public was a copy of verses addressed to Dryden. 187. COOKE is a very forcible but a very rough actor. No man better looks the villain, or has better dumb show by gesture and transition of countenance, or better expresses, by voice as well as by action, the stormy sallies of the bad passions, or the dark cunning or mean blandishment of a despicable character. I witnessed his first-stated abilities in his representation of Richard the Third at Birmingham a few years back; but when he |