rander, and less like what she meets with in general;
and because she thinks it more in earnest also, especially in the
love-scenes. Her favourite play is "Alexander the Great, or the Rival
Queens." Another great delight is in going a shopping. She loves to
look at the pictures in the windows, and the fine things labelled with
those corpulent numerals of "only 7_s._"--"only 6_s._ 6_d._" She has
also, unless born and bred in London, been to see my Lord Mayor, the
fine people coming out of Court, and the "beasties" in the Tower; and
at all events she has been to Astley's and the Circus, from which she
comes away, equally smitten with the rider, and sore with laughing at
the clown. But it is difficult to say what pleasure she enjoys most.
One of the completest of all is the fair, where she walks through an
endless round of noise, and toys, and gallant apprentices, and
wonders. Here she is invited in by courteous and well-dressed people,
as if she were a mistress. Here also is the conjuror's booth, where
the operator himself, a most stately and genteel person all in white,
calls her Ma'am; and says to John by her side, in spite of his laced
hat, "Be good enough, sir, to hand the card to the lady."

Ah! may her "cousin" turn out as true as he says he is; or may she get
home soon enough and smiling enough to be as happy again next time.

_Leigh Hunt._

CHARACTERISTICS

The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the
Physician's Aphorism; and applicable in a far wider sense than he
gives it. We may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual,
political, poetical, than in merely corporeal therapeutics; that
wherever, or in what shape soever, powers of the sort which can be
named _vital_ are at work, herein lies the test of their working right
or working wrong.

In the Body, for example, as all doctors are agreed, the first
condition of complete health is, that each organ perform its function
unconsciously, unheeded; let but any organ announce its separate
existence, were it even boastfully, and for pleasure, not for pain,
then already has one of those unfortunate "false centres of
sensibility" established itself, already is derangement there. The
perfection of bodily wellbeing is, that the collective bodily
activities seem one; and be manifested, moreover, not in themselves,
but in the action they accomplish. If a Dr. Kitchiner boast that his
system is in high order, Dietetic Philosophy m