was his skull when _he was a boy_."

MDLXXVI.--"I TAKES 'EM AS THEY COME."

A CANTAB, one day observing a _ragamuffin-looking_ boy scratching his
head at the door of Alderman Purchase, in Cambridge, where he was
begging, and thinking to pass a joke upon him, said, "So, Jack, you are
picking them out, are you?"--"_Nah, sar_," retorted the urchin; "I
_takes_ 'em as they come!"

MDLXXVU.--A CLIMAX.

THE late Earl Dudley wound up an eloquent tribute to the virtues of a
deceased Baron of the Exchequer with this pithy peroration: "He was a
good man, an excellent man. He had the best _melted butter_ I ever
tasted in my life."

MDLXXVIII.--BLANK CARTRIDGE.

EPIGRAM on the occasion of the duel between Tom Moore, the poet, and
Francis Jeffrey:--

When Anacreon would fight, as the poets have said,
A reverse he displayed in his vapor,
For while all his poems were loaded with lead,
His pistols were loaded with paper.
For excuses, Anacreon old custom may thank,
Such a _salvo_ he should not abuse;
For the cartridge, by rule, is always made blank,
Which is fired away at _Reviews_.

MDLXXIX.--SERMONS IN STONES.

THE Duke of Wellington having had his windows broken by the mob,
continued to have boards before the windows of his house in Piccadilly.
"Strange that the Duke will not renounce his political errors," said
A'Beckett, "seeing that _no pains have been spared_ to convince him of
them."

MDLXXX.--EARLY HABITS.

THERE was in Wilkes's time a worthy person, who had risen from the
condition of a bricklayer to be an alderman of London. Among other of
his early habits, the civic dignitary retained that of eating everything
with his fingers. One day a choice bit of turbot having repeatedly
escaped from his grasp, Wilkes, who witnessed the dilemma, whispered,
"My lord, you had better take your _trowel_ to it."

MDLXXXI.--LAW AND THE SCOTTISH THANE.

DURING the representation of "Macbeth," an eminent special pleader
graced the boxes of Drury Lane Theatre, to see it performed. When the
hero questions the _Witches_, as to what they are doing: they answer, "a
deed without a name." Our counsellor, whose attention was at that moment
directed more to Coke upon Littleton than to Shakespeare, catching,
however, the words in the play, repeated, "A _deed_ without a _name_!
why, 't is _void_."

MDLXXXII.--NOT TO BE BELIEVE