MISCELLANIES.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

What is a Lawyer?—A lawyer is a man with a pale face and sunken eyes; he passes much time in two small rooms in one of the inns of court; he is surrounded with sheets of foolscap folio paper, tied up with a red string; he has more books than one could read in a year, or comprehend in seven; he walks slowly, speaks hesitatingly, and receives fees from those who visit him, for giving "hypothetical answers" to "specious questions."

What is a Doctor?—A doctor, videlicit an M.D., is a sedate-looking personage; he listens calmly to the story of your ailments; if your eye and skin be yellow, he shrewdly remarks that you have the jaundice; he feels your pulse, writes two or three unintelligible lines of Latin, for which you pay him a guinea; he keeps a chariot, and one man-servant. The standard board behind, intended for a footman, is fearfully beset with spikes, to prevent little boys from riding at the doctor's expense. He ingeniously lets himself in and out of his vehicle, by means of a strap attached to the steps, so contrived, that when in, he can dexterously cause the steps to follow. His servant is a coachman abroad, and a footman, valet, and butler at home.

What is an Author?—He is a man who weaves words into sentences; he dissects the works of his predecessors and contemporaries, and ingeniously dovetails the pieces together again, so that their real owners can scarcely recognise them. He is furnished with a pair of scissors and a pot of paste. He frequents the Chapter Coffee-house by day, and the Cider-Cellar by night. He ruralises at Hampstead or Holloway, and perhaps once a year steams it to Margate. He talks largely, and forms the nucleus of a knot of acquaintances, who look up to him as an oracle. He is always going to set about some work of great importance; he writes a page, becomes out of humour with the subject, and begins another, which shares the same fate. His coat is something the worse for wear; his wife is the only person in the world who is blind to his transcendant abilities; and he has too much to do in cultivating his own genius, to descend to the minutias of his children's education.

SUPERSTITION.

In a little manual of piety, composed, in 1712, for the young ladies who were then pensioners at the monastery of St. Augustin, at Bruges, we have been surprised into frequent smiles by the scrupulous watchfulness with which the ghostly writer followed the lady-pensioners (though with pious fancy only) to the very sacred of sacreds! He was not contented with directing them concerning the prayers which he believed proper to be used when they assumed, or laid aside, their respective garments, but even directed them what to do before they attempted to close an eye on the softness of their pillows! Prayers are specified by this zealous pastor for the following curious occasions:—

In putting on your petticoat.

In putting on your night-gown.

In dressing your head.

In putting on your manteau.

In regard to the ceremony of laying aside these memorials of the weakness of Eve, our general mother, there is a prayer to be offered "whilst you undress yourself;" and the ladies are strictly enjoined, before they "get into bed, to take holy water." The writer concludes this part of his instructions by saying, "when you are in bed, write the name of Jesus on your forehead with your thumb!"

CROMWELL.

After the battle of Marston, Cromwell, returning from the pursuit of a party of the royalists, purposed to stop at Ripley; and, having an officer in his troop, a relation of Sir William Ingilby's, that gentleman was sent to announce his arrival. The officer was informed, by the porter at the gate, that Sir William was absent, but that he might send any message he pleased to his lady. Having sent in his name, and obtained an audience, he was answered by the lady, that no such person should be admitted there; adding, she had force sufficient to defend herself and that house against all rebels. The officer, on his part, represented the extreme folly of making any resistance, and that the safest way would be to admit the general peaceably. After much persuasion, the lady took the advice of her kinsman, and received Cromwell at the gate of the lodge, with a pair of pistols stuck in her apron-strings, and having told him she expected that neither he nor his soldiers would behave improperly, led the way to the hall, where, sitting each on a sofa, these two extraordinary personages, equally jealous of each other's intentions, passed the whole night. At his departure in the morning the lady observed, "It was well he had behaved in so peaceable a manner; for that, had it been otherwise, he would not have left that house with his life."

HOWARD.

Of this celebrated man no portrait was ever painted, for he would never sit to any artist. After his return from one of his journies to the continent, he was showing to a friend the various things he had brought with him, and among others a new dress made in Saxony: "it was a sort of great coat, yet graceful in its appearance, and ornamented with sober magnificence. His visiter exclaimed, 'This is the robe in which you should be painted by Romney; I will implore the favour on my knees if you will let me array you in this very picturesque habiliment, and convey you instantly in a coach to Cavendish-square.'—'O fie!' replied Howard, in the mildest tone of his gentle voice, 'O fie! I did not kneel to the emperor.'—'And I assure you,' said the petitioner in answer to the tender reproof, 'I would never kneel to you, if you were not above an emperor in my estimation!' The philanthropist was touched by the cordial eulogy, but continued firm in his resolution of not granting his portrait to all the repeated requests of important affections."—Hayley's Life of Romney.

EDWARD DRINKER.

Edward Drinker was born in a cottage in 1689, on the spot where the city of Philadelphia now stands, which was inhabited at the time of his birth, by Indians, a few Swedes, and Hollanders. He often talked of picking blackberries, and catching wild rabbits, where this populous city is now seated. He remembered William Penn arriving there the second time, and used to point out the spot where the cabin stood in which Mr. Penn and his friends were accommodated on their arrival.

The life of this aged citizen is marked with circumstances which never befel any other man; for he saw greater events than any man, at least, since the Patriarchs. He saw the same spot of earth, in the course of his own life, covered with woods and bushes, the receptacles of wild beasts and birds of prey, afterwards become the seat of a great city, not only the first in wealth and arts in America, but equalled by few in Europe; he saw great and regular streets, where he had often pursued hares and wild rabbits; he saw fine churches rise upon morasses, where he used to hear nothing but the croaking of frogs; great wharfs and warehouses, where he had so often seen the Indian savages draw their fish from the river; and that river afterwards full of great ships from all the world, which in his youth had nothing bigger than a canoe; and on the same spot, where he had so often gathered huckleberries, he saw their magnificent city hall erected, and that hall filled with legislators, astonishing the world with their wisdom and virtue. He also saw the first treaty ratified between the united powers of America, and the most powerful prince in Europe, with all the formality of parchment and seal; and on the same spot where he once saw William Penn ratify his first and last treaty with the Indians; and to conclude, he saw the beginning and end of the British empire in Pensylvania. He had been the subject of many crowned heads; but when he heard of the many oppressive and unconstitutional acts passed in Britain, he bought them all, and gave them to his great grandson to make kites of; and embracing the liberty and independence of his country in his withered arms, and triumphing in the last year of his life, in the salvation of his country. He died on the 17th of November, 1782, aged 103 years.

A SURE SIGN.

When the wind follows the sun and settles about north-west, north, or east, we have fine weather; when, on the contrary, the wind opposes the sun's course, and returns by west, south-west, south, and south-east, and settles in the east, foul weather prevails.