sidering we had drunk six flasks of Rhenish, and about two mutchkins of Kirchenwasser. Father Fatsides informed me, that, as nearly as he could judge for a heretic like myself, it signified not much whether I went to mass or not, seeing my eternal perdition was signed and sealed at any rate, in respect of my impenitent and obdurate perseverance in my damnable heresy. Being discouraged by this response, I applied to a Dutch pastor of the reformed church, who told me, he thought I might lawfully go to mass, in respect that the prophet permitted Naaman, a mighty man of valour, and an honourable cavalier of Syria, to follow his master into the house of Rimmon, a false god, or idol, to whom he had vowed service, and to bow down when the king was leaning upon his hand. But neither was this answer satisfactory to me, both because there was an unco difference between an anointed King of Syria and our Spanish colonel, whom I could have blown away like the peeling of an ingan, and chiefly because I could not find the thing was required of me by any of the articles of war; neither was I proffered any consideration, either in perquisite or pay, for the wrong might thereby do to my conscience."

"So you again changed your service?" said Lord Menteith.

"In troth did I, my lord; and after trying for a short while two or three other powers, I even took on for a time with their High Mightinesses the States of Holland."

"And how did their service jump with your humour?” again demanded his companion.

Oh! my lord," said the soldier, in a sort of enthusiasm, "their behaviour on pay-day might be a pattern to all Europe -no borrowings, no lendings, no offsets, no arrears—all balanced and paid like a banker's book. The quarters, too,

are excellent, and the allowances unchallengeable; but then, sir, they are a preceese, scrupulous people, and will allow nothing for peccadilloes. So that if a boor complains of a broken head, or a beer-seller of a broken can, or a daft wench does but squeak loud enough to be heard above her breath, a soldier of honour shall be dragged, not before his own court-martial, who can best judge of and punish his demerits, but before a base mechanical burgomaster, who shall menace him with the rasp-house, the cord, and what not, as if he were one of their own mean, amphibious, twentybreeched boors. So not being able to dwell longer among those ungrateful plebeians, who, although unable to defend themselves by their proper strength, will nevertheless allow the noble foreign cavalier who engages with them nothing beyond his dry wages, which no honourable spirit will put in competition with a liberal licence and honourable countenance, I resolved to leave the service of the Mynheers. And hearing at this time, to my exceeding satisfaction, that there is something to be doing this summer in my way in this my dear native country, I am come hither, as they say, like a beggar to a bridal, in order to give my loving countrymen the advantage of that experience which I have acquired in foreign parts. So your lordship has an outline of my brief story, excepting my deportment in those passages of action in the field, in leaguers, storms, and onslaughts, whilk would be wearisome to narrate, and might, peradventure, better befit any other tongue than mine own."

-"A Legend of Montrose."

Charles Lamb

Sayings and Anecdotes

LAMB once said to a brother whist-player, whose hands were none of the cleanest, "If dirt was trumps, what a hand you'd have."

The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

One cannot bear to pay for articles he used to get for nothing. When Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils at some stall in Mesopotamia, I think it went hard with him, reflecting upon his own goodly orchard, where he had so many for nothing.

A widow friend of Lamb, having opened a preparatory school for children, at Camden Town, said to him, "I live so far from town I must have a sign, I think you call it, to show that I teach children." "Well," he replied, "you can have nothing better than The Murder of the Innocents."

A farmer, Charles Lamb's chance companion in a coach, kept boring him to death with questions as to the state of the crops. At length he put a poser, “ And pray, sir, how go turnips?" "Why, that, sir," stammered out Lamb, "will depend upon the boiled legs of mutton."

While Lamb was clerk at the India House he used his own pleasure in observing the hours of attendance. The

other officials grumbled, and one of the heads of the establishment undertook to lecture the erring Elia. "Mr. Lamb, you come very late every morning." "I do, sir," said Lamb, but I make up for it by going away very early every after

66

noon."

"Charles," said Coleridge, one day, to Lamb, "did you ever hear me preach?" "I never heard you do anything else," said Lamb.

On a cold and drizzling day a villainous-looking mendicant approached Lamb in the street with an appealing look and outstretched hand. "I have seen better days," said the beggar, in a whining tone. "So have I," said Lamb, shrugging his shoulders, and buttoning up his coat. This is a very bad day, indeed."

Lamb was reserved among strangers. A friend, about to introduce him to a circle of new faces, said, "Now will you promise, Lamb, not to be as sheepish as usual?" Charles replied, with a rustic air, "I wool."

A pun is a noble thing per se. It is a sole digest of reflection; it is entire; it fills the mind; it is as perfect as a sonnet-better. It limps ashamed in the train and retinue of humour; it knows it should have an establishment of its

own.

Some one was mentioning in Lamb's presence the coldheartedness of the Duke of Cumberland, in restraining the duchess in rushing up to the embrace of her son, whom she had not seen for a considerable time, and insisting on her

receiving him in state. "How horribly cold it was," said the narrator. "Yes," said Lamb, in his stuttering way, “but you know he is the Duke of Cu-cum-ber-land.”

Positively, the best thing a man can have to do is nothing, and, next to that, perhaps, good works.

A mixture of brandy and water spoils two good things.

A Comparison Between Whist and Quadrille

QUADRILLE, Mrs. Battle has often told me, was her first love; but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she said, was showy and specious, and likely to allure young persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of partners (a thing which the constancy of whist abhors); the dazzling supremacy and regal investiture of spadille-absurd, as she justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his crown and garter give him no proper power above his brother-nobility of the aces; the giddy vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing alone; above all, the overpowering attractions of a Sans Prendre Vol, to the triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel or approaching in the contingencies of whist-all these, she would say, make quadrille a game of captivation to the young and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider game: that was her word. It was a long meal-not, like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might coextend in duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships and to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the chance-started,