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DOGS-MANNERS.

THE VANILLE OF SOCIETY.

Aн, you flavour everything; you are the vanille of society.

SEWING FOR MEN.

I WISH I could sew. I believe one reason why women are so much more cheerful, generally, than men, is because they can work, and vary more their employments. Lady - used to teach her sons carpet-work. All men ought to learn to sew.

DOGS.

No, I don't like dogs; I always expect them to go mad. A lady asked me once for a motto for her dog Spot. I proposed, "Out, damned Spot !" but she did not think it sentimental enough. You remember the story of the French marquise, who, when her pet lap-dog bit a piece out of her footman's leg, exclaimed, “Ah, poor little beast! I hope it won't make him sick." I called one day on Mrs. —, and her lap-dog flew at my leg and bit it. After pitying her dog, like the French marquise, she did all she could to comfort me, by assuring me the dog was a Dissenter, and hated the Church, and was brought up in a Tory family. But whether the bite came from madness or Dissent, I knew myself too well to neglect it; and went on the instant to a surgeon and had it cut out, making a mem. on the way to enter that house no more.

MANNERS.

MANNERS are often too much neglected: they are most important to men, no less than to women. I believe the English are the most disagreeable people under the sun; not so much because Mr. John Bull disdains to talk, as that the respected individual has nothing to say, and because he totally neglects manners. Look at a French carter; he takes off his hat to his neighbour carter, and inquires after "La santé de madame,” with a bow that would not have disgraced Sir Charles Grandison; and I have often seen a French soubrette with a far better manner than an English duchess. Life is too short to get over a bad manner; besides, manners are the shadows of virtue.

UP-TAKERS

CLEARERS.

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FURNITURE OF A COUNTRY-HOUSE.

I THINK no house is well fitted up in the country without people of all ages. There should be an old man or woman to pet; a parrot, a child, a monkey; something, as the French say, to love and to despise. I have just bought a parrot, to keep my servants in good-humour.

TOWN AND COUNTRY.

THE charm of London is that you are never glad or sorry for ten minutes together: in the country you are the one and the other for weeks.

TEA AND COFFEE.

AT the tea-table: "Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea. I can drink any quantity when I have not tasted wine; otherwise I am haunted by blue-devils by day, and dragons by night. If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee. Sir James Mackintosh used to say, he believed the difference between one man and another was produced by the quantity of coffee he drank.

CLASSES OF SOCIETY.

I HAVE divided mankind into classses. There is the Noodlevery numerous, but well known. The Affliction-woman a valuable member of society, generally an ancient spinster, or distant relation of the family, in small circumstances: the moment she hears of any accident or distress in the family, she sets off, packs up her little bag, and is immediately established there, to comfort, flatter, fetch, and carry. The Up-takers-a class of people who only see through their fingers' ends, and go through a room taking up and touching everything, however visible and however tender. The Clearers-who begin at the dish before them, and go on picking or tasting till it is cleared, however large the company, small the supply, and rare the contents. The Sheep-walkers

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SHAM SYDNEY SMITHS.

those who never deviate from the beaten track, who think as their fathers have thought since the flood, who start from a new idea as they would from guilt. The Lemon-squeezers of society — people who act on you as a wet blanket, who see a cloud in the sunshine, the nails of the coffin in the ribands of the bride, predictors of evil, extinguishers of hope; who, where there are two sides, see only the worst-people whose very look curdles the milk, and sets your teeth on edge. The Let-well-aloners-cousins-german to the Noodle, yet a variety; people who have begun to think and to act, but are timid, and afraid to try their wings, and tremble at the sound of their own footsteps as they advance, and think it safer to stand still. Then the Washerwomen-very numerous, who exclaim, "Well! as sure as ever I put on my best bonnet, it is certain to rain," etc. There are many more, but I forget them.

Oh, yes! there is another class, as you say; people who are always treading on your gouty foot, or talking in your deaf ear, or asking you to give them something with your lame hand, stirring up your weak point, rubbing your sore, etc.

MRS. SIDDONS.

There is too

I NEVER go to tragedies, my heart is too soft. much real misery in life. But what a face she had! The gods do not bestow such a face as Mrs. Siddons's on the stage more than once in a century. I knew her very well, and she had the good taste to laugh heartily at my jokes; she was an exellent person, but she was not remarkable out of her profession, and never got out of tragedy even in common life. She used to stab the potatoes; and said, "Boy, give me a knife!" as she would have said, "Give me the dagger!"

SHAM SYDNEY SMITHS.

I HAVE heard that one of the American ministers in this country was so oppressed by the numbers of his countrymen applying for introductions, that he was obliged at last to set up sham Sydney Smiths and false Macaulays. But they can't have been good counterfeits; for a most respectable American, on his return home, was heard describing Sydney Smith as a thin, grave, dull old fellow;

"and as to Macaulay," said he, "I never met a more silent man in my life."*

CANVAS-BACK DUCKS.

I FULLY intended going to America; but my parishioners held a meeting, and came to a resolution that they could not trust me with the canvas-back ducks; and I felt they were right, so gave up the project.

FRIENDSHIP.

TRUE, it is most painful not to meet the kindness and affection you feel you have deserved, and have a right to expect from others; but it is a mistake to complain of it, for it is of no use: you can not extort friendship with a cocked pistol.

* In the summer of 1844, in the list of passengers, on the arrival of the Great Western at New York, was advertised Sydney Smith. It created some paragraphing in the papers, and quite a flutter among the genuine Sydney's church friends. In a letter to the Countess Grey, Smith alludes to the affair: "There arrived, the other day, at New York, a Sydney Smith. A meeting was called, and it was proposed to tar-and-feather him; but the amendment was carried, that he should be invited to a public dinner. He turned out to be a journeyman cooper! My informant encloses for me an invitation from the Bishop of the Diocese to come and see him, and a proposition that we should travel together to the Falls of Niagara."

The author of the article in the Edinburgh Review, on Smith (July, 1855), caps the "sham Sydney Smiths and false Macaulays" with the following :— Sophie Arnault actually played off a similar trick on a party of Parisian fine ladies and gentlemen who had expressed a wish to meet Rousseau. She dressed up a theatrical tailor who bore some likeness to the author of 'Emile,' and placed him next to herself at dinner, with instructions not to open his mouth except to eat and drink. Unluckily he opened it too often for the admission of champagne, and began talking in a style befitting the coulisses; but this only added to the delusion, and the next day the noble faubourg rang with the praises of the easy sparkling pleasantry of the philosopher. According to another well-authenticated anecdote, there was a crazy fellow at Edinburgh, who called himself Doctor, fancied that he had once been on the point of obtaining the chair of Moral Philosophy, and professed the most extravagant admiration for a celebrated poet. Some wag suggested that he should pay a visit to his idol. He did so, and stayed two days, indulging his monomania, but simultaneously gratifying his host's prodigious appetite for adulation; and the poet uniformly spoke of him as one of the most intelligent and well-informed Scotchmen he had ever known. When this story was told to Sydney Smith, he offered the narrator five shillings for the exclusive right to it for a week. The bargain was struck, and the money paid down."

DON'T you know, as the French say, there are three sexesmen, women, and clergymen.

SOCINIAN.

SOME One naming —as not very orthodox, "Accuse a man of being a Socinian, and it is all over with him; for the country gentlemen all think it has something to do with poaching."

DOME OF ST. PAUL'S.

66

WE were all assembled to look at a turtle that had been sent to the house of a friend, when a child of the party stooped down and began eagerly stroking the shell of the turtle. 'Why are you doing that, B-?" said my father. "Oh, to please the turtle." "Why, child, you might as well stroke the dome of St. Paul's, to please the Dean and Chapter."

PRAISE.

SOME one observing the wonderful improvement in

since

his success; "Ah!" he said, "praise is the best diet for us, after all."

SAMARITANS.

YES! you find people ready enough to do the Samaritan, without the oil and twopence.

HAPPINESS.

THE haunts of Happiness are varied, and rather unaccountable; but I have more often seen her among little children, home firesides, and country-houses, than anywhere else; at least I think so.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

DANIEL WEBSTER struck me much like a steam-engine in trowsers.