the sermon he had preached that morning.
"Why, it was a short sermon," quoth Canning. "O yes," said the preacher,
"you know I avoid being tedious." "Ah, but," replied Canning, "you
_were_ tedious."

* * * * *

LUDICROUS ESTIMATE OF MR. CANNING.

The Rev. Sydney Smith compares Mr. Canning in office to a fly in amber:
"nobody cares about the fly: the only question is, how the devil did it
get there?" "Nor do I," continues Smith, "attack him for the love of
glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a
Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood a province. When he is jocular, he
is strong; when he is serious, he is like Samson in a wig. Call him a
legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the affairs of a great
nation, and it seems to me as absurd as if a butterfly were to teach
bees to make honey. That he was an extraordinary writer of small poetry,
and a diner-out of the highest lustre, I do most readily admit. After
George Selwyn, and perhaps Tickell, there has been no such man for the
last half-century."

* * * * *

THE AUTHORSHIP OF "WAVERLEY."

Mrs. Murray Keith, a venerable Scotch lady, from whom Sir Walter Scott
derived many of the traditionary stories and anecdotes wrought up in
his novels, taxed him one day with the authorship, which he, as usual,
stoutly denied. "What!" exclaimed the old lady, "d'ye think I dinna ken
my ain groats among other folk's kail?"

* * * * *

QUID PRO QUO.

Campbell relates:--"Turner, the painter, is a ready wit. Once at a
dinner where several artists, amateurs, and literary men were convened,
a poet, by way of being facetious, proposed as a toast the health of the
_painters_ and _glaziers_ of Great Britain. The toast was drunk; and
Turner, after returning thanks for it, proposed the health of the
British _paper-stainers_."

* * * * *

HOPE'S "ANASTASIUS."

Lord Byron, in a conversation with the Countess of Blessington, said
that he wept bitterly over many pages of _Anastasius_, and for two
reasons: first, that _he_ had not written it; and secondly, that _Hope_
had; for it was necessary to like a man excessively to pardon his
writing such a book; as, he said, excelling all recent productions, as
much in wit and talent as in true pathos. Lord Byron added, that he
would have given his two most approved poems to have be