t to be stopt as a conflagration or a flood.--_Southey._

* * * * *

SOFT MUSIC.

The effect of soft music is to produce pleasure or pain, according to
the state of the hearer. Thus, while a musician has been known to be
_cured_ by a concert in his chamber, the celebrated sentimental air of
the "_Ranz des Vaches_" has also been known to have the opposite effect
of _killing_ a Swiss. Indeed, the extraordinary effect produced by it
upon Swiss troops has caused it to be forbidden, under _pain of death_,
to be played to them.

* * * * *

THE GATHERER.

A snapper up of unconsidered trifles.
SHAKSPEARE.

* * * * *

BEETLES

Are unsightly insects--yet how many of them have been spared by the
recollection of Shakspeare's beautiful lines--

--The poor beetle, that we tread upon.
In corporal suffering finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

* * * * *

SNAILS.

Snails, though in England they cannot be mentioned as an article of food
without exciting disgust, are esteemed in many places abroad a delicacy
even for the tables of the great. In Paris they are sold in the market;
they are much esteemed in Italy, and are of so much consequence in
Venice that they are attended and fattened with as much care as poultry
are in England.

* * * * *

THE BITER BIT.

Zeno, the philosopher, believed in an inevitable destiny, and
acknowledged but one God. His servant availed himself of this doctrine
one day while being beaten for a theft, by exclaiming, "Was I not
destined to rob?" "Yes," replied Zeno, "and to be corrected also."

* * * * *

PRIDE.

Theophile, the French poet, dedicated a book to James I. of England,
in the hope of being personally introduced to that monarch, but being
disappointed in this expectation he wrote the following lines on the
subject:--

"Si Jacques Roi de grand savoir
N'a pas trouve bon de me voir,
En voici la cause infallible;
C'est que ravi de mon ecrit
Il cout que j'etois tout esprit
Et par consequent invisible."

A.B.M

* * * * *

LONGEVITY.

The English have two instances on record of remarkable longevity, that
of Henry Jenkins, a Yorkshire fisherman, who died 1670, aged 169; an