Pigs don't read the "Morning Fost," Red-herrings don't pay powder-tax. etc. etc. Interesting Varieties. HACKNEY-COACHMEN.--The hackney-coachmen of this metropolis are a numerous body There are 1,300 of them, coach and chariot, entered at Somerset House, besides the cabriolet men. All night, when other people can be sound asleep, their rest is broken, being up, driving about with the resurrection men, carrying dead bodies. Sunday comes, and the churchwarden goes round to fine the barbers for exercising their trade upon the Sabbath-he thinks it no sin to exer cise a hackney-coachman on the Sabs bath, but has a chariot or cabriolet regularly to go round and do the duty. Whenever it rains so hard that a dog would not put his nose in to the street, they talk to a hackneycoachman as if he had a patent never to get wet its great odds-especially if it is a lady-if she don't say, 66 : 'Lord, coachman, how nasty and damp your coach is!" Then, in summer, when a man is roasting alive on the box, they lie along the inside with the blinds down, and call out, as natural as possible, "Come, coachman! can't you get on a little faster?" Then, sir, they talk of the "march of intellect," and time for edification" -its incredible the degree to which these poor men are hehindhand in it, Three-fourths of them are so ignorant of arithmetic, that if they drive an eighteen-penny fare, they make it come to three and sixpence. If a parcel, or a pocket-book, be left in one of their coaches, a hundred to one they can't read the direction, and so the owner never hears of it again. I have good reason to be certain, sir, strang as it may seem to you, that very often they don't know the difference between other people's property and their own. And, I am sure, that they don't know how to behave with common civility, is the complaint of all London. GREEK SCHOLARS.-Lord Belgrave having clenched a speech in the House of Commons with a long Greek quotation, Sheridan, in reply, admitted the force of the quotation so far as it went, "But," said he, "had the Noble Lord proceeded a little farther, and completed the passage, he would have seen that it applied the other way." Sheridan then spouted something, ore rotundo, which had all the ais, ois, ous, kon, and koss, that gave the world assurance of a Greek qoutation; upon which Lord Belgrave very promptly and handsomely complimented the Hon. Member on his readiness of recollection, and frankly admitted, that the continuation of the passage had the tendency ascribed to it by Mr. Sheridan, and that he had overlooked it at the moment when he gave his quotation. On the breaking up of the house, Fox, who piqued himself on having some Greek, went up to Sheridan and asked him, "Sheridan, how came you to be so ready with that passage? it certainly is as you say, but I was not aware of it before you quoted it." It is scarcely necessary to observe, that there was 'no Greek at all in Sheridan's im'promptu. -- space of twenty years. At the lowest computation, the musk has been subdivided into 320 quadrillions of particles, each of them capable of affecting the olfactory organs. The diffusion of odorous effluvia may also be conceived from the fact, that a lump of assafoetida, exposed to the open air, lost only a grain in seven weeks. Again, since dogs hunt by the scent alone, the effluvia emitted from the several species of animals, and from different individuals of the same race, must be essentially distinct, and being discerned over large spaces, must be subdivided beyond our conception, or powers of numbers. The human skin is perforated by a thousand holes in the space of a square inch. If, therefore, we estimate the surface of the body of a middle-sized man to be sixteen square feet, it must contain not fewer than 2,304,000 pores. These pores are the mouths of so many excretory vessels, which perform the important function in the animal economy of insensible perspiration. If a candle be lighted, it will then be visible above two miles round; and consequently were it placed two miles above the surface of the earth, it would fill with luminous particles a sphere whose diamer is four miles, and before it had lost any sensible part of its weight.* A quantity of vitriol being dissolved and mixed with 9,000 times as much water, will tinge the whole; cousequently it will be divided into as many parts as there are visible portions of matter in that water. MINUTE WONDERS.-Human hair varies in thickness, from the 250th to the 600th part of an inch. The fibre of the coarsest wool is about the 500th PICCADILLY.-The name of this part of an inch in diameter, and that of the finest only the 1,500th part. The silk line, as spun by the worm, is about the 5,300th part of an inch thick; but a spider's line is perhaps *six times finer, or only the 30,000th part of an inch in diameter, insomuch that a single pound of this attenuated, yet perfect substance, would be sufficient to encompass our globe. A single grain of musk has been known to perfume a room for the * It is not, however, to be hence presumed that the space is filled with luminous rays, for rays of light travel 200,000 miles in a second, and 20 per second produce continuous vision. Hence, if we divide the circumference, 12 miles, or 7,200,000 tenths of an inch, there will at one time be but 1,440 rays emanating from the candle, so as to produce distinct vision two miles distant in every tenth of an inch. street is generally believed to have had its origin in an article of dress unce fashionable, called a piccadel or piccadille, a kind of stiff collar, made in the form of a band. Blount says, the street was built by one Higgins, a tailor who got most of his estates by piccadilles, which in the last age, were much. in fashion. It is, however, believed, that Higgins only built a few houses, to which he gave the name that the street now retains. When We whirl round the room till the room whirls round us! Nor seeing, nor hearing, The lights disappearing Abandon'd to all the soft charms of the waltz, Sir! Oh! had you a wife, Let her waitz all her life, But be sure you watz with her yourself -mind, that's all, Sir !! SOLUTIONS page 152. the King was expected at Cambridge, To Articles in No. 11 of the Sphinx, in 1613, the Vice-Chancellor made an order against wearing pikadels or piccadillos, as they were then called. 66 CAMBRIDGE IN 1760.-Gray, wri ting to Dr. Clarke, thus speaks of Cambridge and one of its accomplished members: Cambridge is a delight of a place, now there is nobody in it. I do believe you would like it. if you knew what it is without inhabitants. It is they, I assure you, that get it an ill name, and spoil all. Our friend Dr. (one of its nuisances) is not expected here again in a hurry. He is gone to his grave with five fine mackerel (large and full of roe) in his belly. He eat them all at one dinner but his fate was a turbot on Trinity Sunday, of which he left little for the company besides bones. He had not been hearty all the week; but after this sixth fish he never held up his bead more, and, a violent looseness carried him off. They say he made a very good end." ON TICK. (To go on trust.The term is supposed to be a diminutive of Ticket. Decker, in his Gull's Hornbook speaking of the gallants who go by water to the playhouse, *Bays":-" No matter upon landing whether you have money or no; you may swim in twenty of their boats over the river upon Ticket." WALZING. We waltz and behold her, Her head on our shoulder, Cheeks meeting, eyes greeting, hearts beating, and thus I twist her and twirl her, ENIGMAS. 1. Gin.-2. Nothing. QUERY. To Correspondents. We are much obliged to J. S. H. K. for his specimens of Old English Poetry, but the original article which accompanied them we must for various reasons decline inserting. Mr. Burden's Hit at the Lawyers shall appear.-The view of Kit's Coity House will be given as soon as the description comes to hand. Many poetical articles, which have been long postponed, are intended for immediate, insertion.-Truth observes, "Passing this morning (May 17) through London Wall, I remarked that the front of the curious old house, of which, I believe, the only view extant is that in your third volume, p. 17, has recently been smartened up, but I am hapPy to add, not otherwise altered or mo dernized.". KIT'S COITY HOUSE, KENT. CROMLECHS, or huge, broad, flat stones, raised upon other stones set on end for that purpose, are found in various parts of Great Britain; more especially in Cornwall and the Isle of Anglesey, though the most celebrated is undoubtedly that of Stonehenge in Wiltshire. Their origin is involved in much obscurity, and whether they were Druidical temples or monuments erected to the memory of those slain in battle, is a point which does not appear likely to be very speedily agreed upon. One of the most perfect cromlechs remaining in England is Kit's Coity' House, standing on the brow of a hill, near Aylesford in Kent, which a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, for Feb. 1824, says derived, its name from the circumstance of an old shepherd called Christopher having made it his habitation for a number of years, whence it became designated by the vulgar as Kit's Cote or Cottage; and adds that the idea entertained by some writers of its being so called, as the burial-place of Cattigern, is quite erroneous. This opinion, however, was controverted by a second writer, in a subsequent number of the Magazine, who suggested another derivation of the name; but, without wearying our reader by particularis ing all the disquisitions upon this subject (which, like most others of the kind, are always tedious and seldom conclusive), we shall offer a few words upon the probable origin and present state of this remarkable relic. The most general opinion respecting the nature of this cromlech appears to be that, after the great battle which took place near the spot, between the Britions and Saxons, in the year 455, the fabric was erected by the former, partly to commemorate their victory, and partly to honour the remains of such of their chiefs as fell in the conflict. Others, however, claim for it a much higher antiquity, and insist that it was a Druidical temple, dedicated to a British female divinity, called Kit, Kyd, or Ked. It is composed of four vast stones, of the sort called Kentish Rag, two of which are fixed in the ground, partly upright; a third stands between them, closing the western front; and the fourth, which is the largest, is laid transverse ly over the others. Probably the eastern front, now open, was once likewise closed, because another large stone, of the same form and size as those now standing, lies about 70 yards to the N. W. The dimensions of the stones are as follow:--That on the South h side is eight feet high, by seven feet six inches broad, and two feet thick, weighing about eight tons. That on the North is eight feet by eight, and two feet thick, weighing eight tons ten cwt. The stone at the E. end is extremely irregular, five feet six inches high by five broad, thickness 14 inches, weight about two tons five cwt. The transverse or topmost stone is likewise rather irregular; length 11 feet by eight broad and two thick; weight ten tons seven cwt. The cromlech stands in a field a quarter of a mile westward out of the bigh-road from Rochester to Maid stone. None of the stones have any marks of the chissel upon them, and hence some have supposed them to be those large natural pebbles with which that part of the country abounds, particularly as there is no quarry within several miles of the spot where they stand. QUACKS AND QUACKERY. BY VOLTAIRE. PHYSICIANS live in great cities; there are few of them in the country. The reason of this is obvious. In great cities there are rich patients; and among these, debauchery, the pleasures of the table, and the gratification of the passions, give rise to a variety of diseases. Dumoulin, not the lawyer, but the physician, who was a no less famous practitioner, observed at his death, "That he left behind him two great physicians, regimen, and river water." In 1728, one Villars told his friends in confidence, that his uncle, who had lived almost an hundred years, and who died only by accident, had left him a certain preparation, which had the virtue to prolong a man's life to an hundred and fifty years, if he lived with sobriety. When he happened to observe the procession of a funeral, he shrugged up his shoulders in pity: "If the deceased," said he, "had taken my medicine, he would not be where he is." His friends, among whom he distributed it generously, observing the condition required, found its utility, and extolled it. He was thence encouraged to sell it at a crown the bottle; and the sale was prodigious. It was no more than the water of the Seine, mixed with a little nitre. Those who made use of it, and were attentive at the same time to regimen, or who were happy in good constitutions, soon recovered their usual health. To others, he observed: It is your own fault if you be not perfectly cured; you have been intemperate and incontinent; renounce 'tliese vices, and, believe me, 66 |