r articles of any kind. Yet it is
alleged, on high authority, that many of the French critical journals
are or were principally supported from such a source. For example, there
is a current anecdote to the effect that when the celebrated singer
Nourrit died, the editor of one of the musical reviews waited on his
successor, Duprez, and, with a profusion of compliments and apologies,
intimated to him that Nourrit had invariably allowed 2000 francs a year
to the review. Duprez, taken rather aback, expressed his readiness to
allow half that sum. "_Bien, monsieur_," said the editor, with a shrug,
"_mais, parole d'honneur, j'y perds mille francs._"

* * * * *

POPULARITY OF THE PICKWICK PAPERS.

Mr. Davy, who accompanied Colonel Cheney up the Euphrates, was for a
time in the service of Mehemet Ali Pacha. "Pickwick" happening to reach
Davy while he was at Damascus, he read a part of it to the Pacha, who
was so delighted with it, that Davy was, on one occasion, called up in
the middle of the night to finish the reading of the chapter in which
he and the Pacha had been interrupted. Mr. Davy read, in Egypt, upon
another occasion, some passages from these unrivalled "Papers" to a
blind Englishman, who was in such ecstasy with what he heard, that he
exclaimed he was almost thankful he could not see he was in a foreign
country; for that while he listened, he felt completely as though he
were again in England.--_Lady Chatterton._

* * * * *

SWIFT'S DISAPPOINTMENT.

"I remember when I was a little boy, (writes Swift in a letter to
Bolingbroke,) I felt a great fish at the end of my line, which I
drew up almost on the ground, but it dropt in, and the disappointment
vexes me to this day; and I believe it was the type of all my future
disappointments."

"This little incident," writes Percival, "perhaps gave the first wrong
bias to a mind predisposed to such impressions; and by operating with
so much strength and permanency, it might possibly lay the foundation
of the Dean's subsequent peevishness, passion, misanthropy, and final
insanity."

* * * * *

LEIGH HUNT AND THOMAS CARLYLE.

The following characteristic story of these two "intellectual
gladiators" is related in "A New Spirit of the Age."

Leigh Hunt and Carlyle were once present among a small party of equally
well known men. It chanced that the conversation rested with