"It means that I am innocent-and that your worship is-jealous of the skull, or what is worse, the plaster counterfeit of the skull of your greatgrandmother, the immortal author of the Grand Cyrus. I was but admiring the beautiful indication of the amative organ, from which it plainly appears impossible that any other person could have written such prodigiously long developments of the tender passion." "But why did you kiss the filthy representation of mortality?" "You were mistaken," answered the lady-"as the room was rather dark, I placed my face close to it in order the better to see and admire its beautiful cerebral development." "Its what?" replied the lover impatiently. "Its phrenological indications." "And what in the name of heaven are these?" cried the lover, in some alarm for the intellects of his fair mistress. The lady then proceeded to explain to him the revolution in science which had taken place during his absence; and a reconciliation being the consequence, that night took him to the doctor's lecture that he might no longer be an age behind the rest of the world. The story got abroad-indeed the lady could not resist telling it herself to a friend, with strict injunctions of secrecy --and all Paris became still more devoted to the sublime science for having afforded such an excellent subject for a joke. fit, and whom folly and vanity combined, are perpetually stimulating to act in direct opposition to nature or destiny. He was contemptible in his person-yet he set up for a beau and Adonis-he was still more contemptible in mind-yet he never rested till he had bought the title of Mæcenas and a savan, of an industrious manufacturer of ultra doggerel rhymes, whom he had got into the National Institute. He was, moreover, born for a valet, or at best, a pastry cook-yet he aspired to the lofty chivalry and inflexible honor of a feudal baron; and he became a soldier, only, as it would seem, because he was the greatest coward in all Paris. It was well known that he gave five hundred francs to a noted bully to let him beat him at a public coffee house, and afterwards allowed his brother, a tall grenadier, a pension not to kill him for it. The Viscount had likewise been absent some months at a small town, in one of the northern departments, whither he had gone to suppress an insurrection, began by two or three fish-women, stimulated, as was shrewdly suspected, by an old gardener, who had, as was confidently asserted, been one of Napoleon's trumpeters. On his return, he for the first time heard of the sublime science and its progress among the beau-monde. The Viscount hated all innovations in science, or indeed any thing else. He aspired to be a second Joshua, and to make the sun of intellect at least stand still, if he could not make it go backwards, as he had good hopes of doing. Without waiting to hear any of the particulars of our exhibition, he hastened, armed and in uniform as he was, to the hotel where the doctor was at that moment just commencing a lecture. The other story relates to a young nobleman whose situation near the king, and orthodox ultraism, made him a very distinguished person in the beau-monde. But he was distinguished only in a certain way; that is, he was a sort of butt, on whose shoulders every ridiculous incident was regularly fathered, whether it owed its paternity to The valiant Viscount advanced with great intrehim or not. As Pasquin stands sponsor for all the pidity close to the table, and leaning gracefully on wise sayings of Rome, so M. the Viscount came in his sword, listened in silence to discover whether for all the foolish actions of Paris. He was, as it there was any thing that smacked of democracy or were, residuary legatee to all the posthumous follies heterodoxy. At the proper moment I put my hand of his ancestors, as well as the living absurdities of into our Golgotha, and leisurely drew forth the farhis noble contemporaries. He was one of those famed skull of Varus, who I have always considerpeople who fancy themselves most eminently quali-ed the most fortunate man of all antiquity, in havfied for that for which they are most peculiarly un- ing been surprised and slain in the now more me morable than ever forest of Teutoburgium. As we scientific gentlemen have a hawk's eye for a new comer, one of whom is worth a host of old faces at a lecture, I took care in bringing the cerebral development forth, to thrust it directly towards the face of the viscount with the teeth foremost. The viscount fell back, fainted, and lay insensible for some minutes. But the moment he revived, he started upon his legs in a frenzy of terror, and began to lay about him with his good sword so valiantly that nobody dared to come near him. First he attacked the doctor and myself, whom he charged with the massacre of the eleven thousand virgins, and the introduction of infidel skulls into France, which was tantamount to preaching infidelity. The innocent cerebellum of poor Varus, next felt the effects of his terror-inspired valor. He hacked it until the cerebral development was entirely destroyed, and then proceeded in like manner to make an example of the contents of the bag, which he shivered without mercy, with his invincible sword. In short, before he fairly came to his senses, the worthy gentleman had demolished almost every thing in the room-put out the lights, and frightened every soul from the lecture. The solitude and darkness which succeeded, brought him gradually to his recollection, when finding himself thus left alone with the ruins of so many pagan skulls, he gave a great shriek, scampered out of the room, and did not stop until he had sheltered himself in the very centre of a corporal and his guard, belonging to his regiment, who all swore they would stand by him to the last drop of their blood. This adventure was fatal to my master, Dr. Gallgotha. In the first place, it deprived him of nearly the whole of his phrenological specimens, and without these he was like a workmen despoiled of his tools. Besides, the viscount had the very next morning demanded an audience of the king, in which he denounced the doctor, as tinctured very strongly with liberalism, and its invariable concomitants of sacrilege and impiety. Now I will venture to affirm, that the good doctor was not only perfectly ignorant of the very meaning of the word liberal, but that he was equally innocent of the other two charges. The truth is, all his organs of faith, morality, and politics, were swallowed up, or elbowed out of the cerebellum, by the prodigious expansion of the organ of ideality or invention. However this may be, the king was more afraid of the three abominations of liberalism, than of plague, pestilence, and famine. He consulted the Jesuits, who forthwith decided upon taking the poor doctor and all his works into custody. The valiant viscount, who always volunteered in all cases of liberalism and impiety, undertook the task, aided by a guard of soldiers armed in proof, for he did not know but the doctor might have another bag full of pericraniums. Advancing with great caution, they surrounded the house, while the captain of the guard, with three stout resolute fellows, entered for the purpose of reconnoitring the ground, and especially of ascertaining that there were no skulls to frighten the viscount. That gallant soldier, having settled the latter point to his satisfaction, charged bayonet, in the rear of his guards, and rushing up stairs in spite of Varus and his legions, detected the doctor in the very act of committing to memory a new lecture he had just composed for the purpose of demonstrating that there was a certain organ of the cerebellum, the enlarged development of which always entailed upon its possessor the absolute necessity of committing murder. The doctor and I were clapped up in prison, and his lecture carried to court to undergo a strict examination by the king's confessor and the Jesuits. It was some time before these expert mousers of radicalism and infidelity could make any thing of the doctor's lecture, or discover any offence to church or state. At length, they came to that part where, in summing up the subject, he laid down the doctrine of the actual necessity certain persons labored under of committing murder, and that the rule applied as well to kings as to their subjects. "He inculcates the doctrine of equality," cried one-" he denies the divine right of kings." "He is a republican," cried a second. "He is a traitor," cried a third. A little farther on, they found the following assertion:-"I deny that the three legions of Varus formed one body." "Behold!" said the confessor, "he denies the trinity-he maintains that three is not one-enough, let us burn the book and hang the doctor." Some of the more moderate counsellors, however, as I aftewards learned, petitioned for a mitigation of the sentence, which was finally commuted into perpetual banishment. We were sent for to hear our doom, and the viscount, who always liked a good-natured errand, was the bearer of the message. As we followed him into the palace, which we all entered uncovered, the doctor observed to me that the viscount had a most formidable development of the organ of self-esteem. The confessor lectured the doctor upon his vile infidelity, his liberalism, and disaffection to church and state, all which came as naturally together as so many chemical affinities. The doctor demanded the proof, and was referred to the passages I have just repeated. It was in vain that he referred in turn to the other members of the sentences thus garbled, to prove that he was neither alluding to religion nor politics in his lecture. "No matter," said a cunning Jesuit, who could convert a wink of the eye into treason, and a nod of the head into blasphemy-"no matter-a proposition may be both treasonable and heterodoxical in itself, although it has no immediate application to either politics or religion. The assertion that three does not make one, is complete in itself, and requires no reference either to what precedes, or what follows. In two months you must be out of France." And thus were we banished from the paradise of lecturers, only because Doctor Gallgotha had wickedly and impiously asserted that the physical organs of kings were the same with those of cobblers, and that three legions, separately encamped, did not make one body. FINN'S BENEFIT.-The celebrated comedian, Finn, issued the following morceau the day previous to one of his benefits, at Tremont Theatre, in the city of Boston: "Like a grate full of coals, I burn A great, full house to see; And, if I prove not grateful too, FIRST of May, clear the way! Pots and kettles, broken victuals, Now we start, mind the cart! On we go, soft and slow, Jointed stools, domestic tools, Gridiron black, spit and jack, Now we've got, to the spot, Lord! what's there? Broken ware; Sideboard scratch'd, cups unmatch'd, Hurry, scurry-grave or gay, . captain was a brave and good man, sir; and nobly did he fight for us, with General Stark, at Bennington.' 'Did he leave any children?' said Mr. Webster. O, yes; there was Ezekiel, and, I think, Daniel.' And what has become of them,' asked Mr. Webster. Why, Ezekiel-and he was a pow erful man, sir-I have heard him plead in court often; yes, sir, he was a powerful man, and fell dead while pleading at Concord.' 'Well,' said Mr. Webster, and what became of Daniel?' 'Daniel, Daniel,' repeated the old man, thoughtfully; 'why Daniel, I believe, is a lawyer about Boston some EZEKIEL AND DANIEL.-The following anecdote of Mr. Webster is told by a correspondent of the Cleveland Herald, as an illustration of the uncertainty of worldly fame, and the folly of making it the controlling object of life:-"A few years since, but before the great Northern Railroad passed through his farm, he was on his way to the old homestead. He took the stage at Concord, New Hampshire, and had for a companion a very old man. After some conversation, he ascertained that the old man was from the neighboring town of Salisbury, and asked him if he ever knew Captain Webster. Surely I did,' said the old man; and the|where.'" A SHARP WITTED SHAVER.-A grand melo-dra- | patient-the manager wrathful, demanding in a matic spectacle was being rehearsed in the Park Theatre a few years since, in which a magnificent car, drawn by horses, was to make its appearance on the stage through a trap-door. Mr. Manager S. supervised in person the rehearsal. The period arrived when the horses should appear dragging the gilded car-the stage was detained-the actors im loud voice of the man whose business it was to see all right below, in the regions of mystery and enchantment, why he delayed the car. "Somebody has cut the traces, sir." "Cut the traces?" asked the manager. "Why, nobody's had access there to-day but yourself." They wasn't cut with axes, sir; they vas cut with a knife!" THE OLD CLOCK. BY JAMES NACK. Two Yankee wags, one summer day, Stopped at a tavern on their way; Supped, frolicked, late retired to rest, And woke to breakfast on the best. The breakfast over, Tom and Will, But hold! what wonder meets my sight? Tom! the surprise is quite a shock! "What wonder? where?"-"The clock! the clock!" Tom and the landlord in amaze Stared at the clock with stupid gaze, "You mean the clock that's ticking there? I see no wonder, I declare; Though may be, if the truth were told, 'Tis rather ugly-somewhat old; Yet time it keeps to half a minute, But, if you please, what wonder's in it?" "Tom, don't you recollect," said Will, Tom scratched his head, and tried to think. "You remember It happened, Tom, in last December, In sport I bet a Jersey Blue That it was more than he could do, 1826. To make his finger go and come "Well, if I would, the deuce is in it!" "Don't make us wait; "Hold!" said the Yankee, "plank the ready! His mother happened in, to see "Here she goes-and there she goes!" |