fact. Shylock, and a clown in 'Twelfth Night' making very quaint allusions. I shall only add one more tale from Mr. S. Trench's late stories of 'Realities of Irish Life.' A neighbour, who had saved two hundred pounds in gold, kept it in the thatch of his roof. One day he appeared before Mr. Trench bearing his gold, and requesting him to be his depositee, expressing the comfort it would afford him. Mr. Trench declined the unprofitable duty, and pointed out to him the bank, which would accept his deposit and give him interest. The eye of Patrick flashed with intelligence and foresight as he warned Mr. Trench from the delusion of banks, which every year wasted the original sum by paying the stipend, and when you wished to reclaim the original, lo, it had disappeared. No, no, he would have no dividend, forsooth, to eat away his capital; which he bore back again (about five pounds' weight) and replaced it in his thatch. It was neither lost nor wasted there; it became the inheritance of his only daughter, a woman of extreme energy, who had from childhood loved—more, methinks, as a mother loves a helpless child—a good-hearted, unvicious piece of indolence and sloth. She followed him to New York and married him,

    nolens volens

   ; and Providence assigned to him an energetic woman, to make his castle of indolence a bed of roses to the satisfaction of them both,—supplying for each the energy and the repose, both constitutional, both unvicious, which the other lacked.

   Highwaymen beset the highways, as burglars invaded the residences; and Macaulay chuckles over the fact that his

    bête noire

   —the noble Marlborough—was eased of 5000

    l.

   in gold in one of his trips between London and St. Alban's.

   From the regions of ministers and misers we may descend to the equally disputed realms of the muses. Horace terms it "the peevish and inhuman muse," which those who drink of Aganippe's fountain woo; whilst others are apt to equal their Castalian spring and Parnassus with the height of the empyreal, regarding with pity the toilers on the land and deep. But herein, as in aught else, it is the mind, and not the outward circumstances, which makes the happiness suited to its strength and position; for it must be confessed it is from the weak in bodily frame, the lame, and the blind, 

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