stock ill arranged or incomplete, or of an inferior quality. Your
object is to make men laugh. It must be done. I have known a pathetic
passage, quoted timely and with a happy emphasis from a popular novel--say,
"Alice, or the Mysteries"--I have known it, I say, do more execution upon
the congregated amount of midriff, than the best joke of the evening.
(There is one passage in that "thrilling" performance, where Alice,
overjoyed that her lover is restored to her, is represented as frisking
about him like a dog around his long-absent proprietor, which, whenever I
have taken it in hand, has been rewarded with the most vociferous and
gleesome laughter.)

And this reminds me that I should say a word about laughers. I know not
whether it be prudent to come to terms with any man, however stentorian his
lungs, or flexible his facial organs, with a view to engage him as a
cachinnatory machine. A confederate may become a traitor--a rival he is
pretty certain of becoming. Besides, strive as you may, you can never
secure an altogether unexceptionable individual--one who will "go the whole
hyaena," and be at the same time the entire jackal. If he once start "lion"
on his own account, furnished with your original roar, with which you
yourself have supplied him, good-bye to your supremacy. "Farewell, my
trim-built wherry"--he is in the same boat only to capsise you.

"And the first lion thinks the last a bore,"

and rightly so thinks. No; the best and safest plan is to work out your own
ends, independent of aid which at best is foreign, and is likely to be
formidable.

I may perhaps resume this subject more at large at a future time. My space
at present is limited, but I feel I have hardly as yet entered upon the
subject.

* * * * *

LAM(B)ENTATIONS.

Ye banks and braes o' Buckingham,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair,
When I am on my latest legs,
And may not bask amang ye mair!
And you, sweet maids of honour,--come,
Come, darlings, let us jointly mourn,
For your old flame must now depart,
Depart, oh! never to return!

Oft have I roam'd o'er Buckingham,
From room to room, from height to height;
It was such pleasant exercise,
And gave me _such_ an appetite!
Yes! when the _dinner-hour_ arrived,
For me they never had to wait,
I was the first to take my chair,
And spread my ample napkin straight.

And if they did not quickly come,
After the dinner