ployment for friends,
who do not mean to pick one another's pockets, nor make a property of
either's frankness. Instead of politics, therefore, I shall amuse you
to-day with a fairy tale.

I was desired to be at my Lady Suffolk's on New Year's morn, where I
found Lady Temple and others. On the toilet Miss Hotham spied a small
round box. She seized it with all the eagerness and curiosity of
eleven years. In it was wrapped up a heart-diamond ring, and a paper
in which, in a hand as small as Buckinger's, who used to write the
Lord's Prayer in the compass of a silver penny, were the following
lines:

Sent by a sylph, unheard, unseen,
A new-year's gift from Mab our queen:
But tell it not, for if you do,
You will be pinch'd all black and blue.
Consider well, what a disgrace,
To show abroad your mottled face:
Then seal your lips, put on the ring,
And sometimes think of Ob. the King.

You will easily guess that Lady Temple was the poetess, and that we
were delighted with the genteelness of the thought and execution. The
child, you may imagine, was less transported with the poetry than the
present. Her attention, however, was hurried backwards and forwards
from the ring to a new coat, that she had been trying on when sent for
down; impatient to revisit her coat, and to show the ring to her maid,
she whisked upstairs; when she came down again, she found a letter
sealed, and lying on the floor--new exclamations! Lady Suffolk bade
her open it: here it is:

Your tongue, too nimble for your sense,
Is guilty of a high offence;
Hath introduced unkind debate,
And topsy-turvy turn'd our state.
In gallantry I sent the ring,
The token of a love-sick king:
Under fair Mab's auspicious name
From me the trifling present came.
You blabb'd the news in Suffolk's ear;
The tattling zephyrs brought it here,
As Mab was indolently laid
Under a poppy's spreading shade.
The jealous queen started in rage;
She kick'd her crown, and beat her page:
'Bring me my magic wand ', she cries;
'Under that primrose, there it lies;
I'll change the silly, saucy chit,
Into a flea, a louse, a nit,
A worm, a grasshopper, a rat,
An owl, a monkey, hedgehog, bat.
But hold, why not by fairy art
Transform the wretch, into--?
Ixion once a cloud embraced,
By Jove and jealousy well placed;
What sport to see proud Oberon stare
And flirt it with a--!'
Then thrice she stamped the trembling gr