, and tends
to lower the molehills of conceit that are raised in the world as
stumbling-blocks along every road of petty ambition. It would, however,
be but a sorry toil for the most cynical critic to illustrate these
vagaries otherwise than so many slips and trippings of the tongue and pen,
to which all men are liable in their unguarded moments--from Homer to
Anacreon Moore, or Demosthenes to Mr. Brougham. Our course is rather that
of a good-humoured _expose_, the worst effect of which will be to raise a
laugh at the expense of poor humanity, or a merited smile at our own
dulness and mistaken sense of the ridiculous.

First, of the ancient Poets, who make departed spirits know things past
and to come, yet ignorant of things present. Agamemnon foretels what
should happen to Ulysses, yet ignorantly inquires what is become of his
own son. The ghosts are afraid of swords in Homer, yet Sibylla tells
Aeneas in Virgil, that the then habit of spirits was beyond the force of
weapons. The spirits put off their malice with their bodies; and Caesar
and Pompey accord in Latin hell; yet Ajax in Homer, endures not a
conference with Ulysses.

In Painting alone we have a rich harvest. Burgoyne in his travels,
notices a painting in Spain, where Abraham is preparing to shoot Isaac
_with a pistol!_

There is a painting at Windsor, of Antonio Verrio, in which, he has
introduced himself, Sir Godfrey Kneller, and Bap. May, surveyor of the
works, in long periwigs, as spectators of Christ healing the sick.

In the Luxembourg is a picture of Reubens, in which are the queen-mother
in council, with two cardinals, and _Mercury!_

There may be, also, a sort of anachronism of the limbs, as in the case of
the painter of Toledo, who painted the story of the three wise men of the
east coming to worship, and bringing their presents to our Lord, upon his
birth, at Bethlehem, whence he presents them as three Arabian, or Indian
kings; two of them are white, and one of them black; but, unhappily, when
he drew the latter part of them kneeling, which, to be sure, was done
after their faces, their legs being necessarily a little intermixed, he
made three black feet for the negro king, and but three white feet for
the two white kings; and yet never discovered the mistake till the piece
was presented to the king, and hung up in the great church.

There was, also, in the Houghton Hall collection, Velvet Brughel's
Adoration of the Magi, in which were a multi