make way for a coalheaver? As for their
drays--as _consecutive_ a species of vehicles as a body can be stopped
by--every one knows they make way for themselves.

I one Sunday met a party of my favourites in St. Paul's cathedral.
They seemed to view with becoming respect and even awe that splendid
place; and they listened to and observed, with apparent profound
attention, the cathedral service. Yet I must confess my favourable
opinion of their grave looks was rather staggered by overhearing
afterwards one of them say to his neighbour, casting a look all round
the while, "My eyes, Tom, what lots o' _coals_ this here place would
hold." Perhaps the observation was meant in honour.

_Monthly Magazine_.

* * * * *

TRAVELLING FARE.

If you shut yourself up for some fifty hours or so in a mail-coach,
that keeps wheeling along at the rate of ten miles an hour, and
changes horses in half a minute, certainly, for obvious reasons, the
less you eat and drink the better; and perhaps a few hundred daily
drops of laudanum, or equivalent grains of opium, would be advisable,
so that the transit from London to Edinburgh might be performed in a
phantasma. But a free agent ought to live well on his travels--some
degrees better, without doubt, than when at home. People seldom live
very well at home. There is always something requiring to be eaten up,
that it may not be lost, which destroys the soothing and satisfactory
symmetry of an unexceptionable dinner. We have detected the same duck
through many unprincipled disguises, playing a different part in the
farce of domestic economy, with a versatility hardly to have been
expected in one of the most generally despised of the web-footed
tribe. When travelling at one's own sweet will, one feeds at a
different inn every meal; and, except when the coincidence of
circumstances is against you, there is an agreeable variety both
in the natural and artificial disposition of the dishes.

_Blackwood's Magazine_.

* * * * *

ENGLISH FRUITS.

(_Continued from page 231_.)

_The Currant_--The native place of this useful fruit is not exactly
ascertained; nearly allied to the gooseberry, it receives the same
treatment, shows the same changes, and may be further improved by
the same means; a cross between the white Dutch and red, might be a
valuable mule. It is probable the black also may be induced to sport
from that steady c