st number of young
people--enough babies indeed, every day, to make a great noise in the
world sometime, if every one should turn out to be a Demosthenes or
Cicero, an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon. But though every dame may
think her own the prettiest child alive, it seems to us not altogether
agreeable to good taste for her to anticipate the judgment of the future
in naming it after that celebrity that he or she is destined to rival or
eclipse. In seriousness, the habit which prevails so generally of
bestowing illustrious names in baptism, is ridiculous and disgraceful,
and is continually productive of misfortunes to the victims, if they
happen to be possessed of parts to elevate them from a vulgar condition.
In the south they manage these things better; the Caesars, Hannibals,
Napoleons, Le Grands, Rexes, &c., are all to be found in the negro
yards; but almost every public occasion in the north, affords an
instance by which a "man of the people," hearing his name called in an
assembly, or seeing it printed in a journal, is compelled to feel shame
for the weakness of his parents, by which he is burthened with a name
that belittles the greatest actions of which he is capable.

* * * * *

In illustration of the passport system, a good story is told of the
recent arrest of a Turk on the frontier of the Herzegowina. For some
time past, the Turkish Government has allowed its authorities to wring
something out of the people by means of passports and the devices
thereunto belonging, but it chances that a great many persons in power
can neither read nor write, and therefore a shrewd fellow may palm any
species of official-looking paper he thinks proper as his regular pass
on the officials; thus it was that a Turk who had travelled some time in
peace with a document of imposing appearance, which he had picked up in
the streets at Constantinople, at last found one who could read it, and
it was discovered to be one of Jean Maria Farina's Eau de Cologne
labels!

* * * * *

A Mayor of the department of the Haute-Saone, France, has had the
following decision placarded on the church door:--

"Whereas, at all times, there have been disorders, and always
will be; and whereas, at all times, there have been laws to
repress them, and always will be; and whereas magistrates are
appointed to have them properly executed, I ask, ought we, or
oug