a person in the pit, who told him, "To-morrow was Sunday." " I know it, Sir," replied the droll; and then gravely went on-" Tomorrow will be preached at the Parish Church of St. Andrew, Holborn, a Charity Sermon, for the benefit of a number of poor boys and girls; and on Monday will be presented, in this place, a comedy, &c. for the benefit, &c."

TRUE GENTILITY.

A young English nobleman was formerly sent into honourable exile as Governor of Jamaica; soon after his arrival at his government, being desirous of viewing the face of the country, he was waited on by the principal people throughout the different plantations, the negroes lining the ways through which he was to pass. All the way he went the poor slaves were bowing to the ground, which his lordship genteely returned. The human brutes who attended him were greatly chagrined at this; and one of them told him, "It was degrading himself to shew any regard to such mean creatures." "Sir," answered his lordship, briskly, "Would you wish me to have less manners than a negro?"

tors; but my claim to nobility is of a very different nature, and much superior to any of yours. My honours are a generous reward bestowed on me by my royal master, for services he thought deserved them; and I have the pleasure to find my countrymen approve the gift. Those honours I hope to transmit unsullied to my posterity, for them to boast of hereafter, as you do now of yours."

A NITTY REPLY.

When Marc Antony gave orders for doubling the taxes in Asia, an intimate of his told him, " You should first order the land to yield a double harvest.".

A JUST RETORT.

St. Thomas Aquinas happening to enter the apartment of Pope Innocent IV. when he had a large sum of money before him, " See here," said the Pope, with a smile, "the time is over, when the Church used to say, 'I have neither silver nor gold.'" "True, holy father!" replied the Saint; "Neither can she any longer say to the diseased and lame, "Arise! take up thy bed and walk."

JUSTICE KNOWS NO SUPERIOR.

In the reign of Queen Anne, several freemen of the borough of Aylesbury had been refused the liberty of voting at an election for a Member of Parliament, though they had proved their qualifications: the law in this case imposes a fine of 1001. for every offence. on this principle; they applied to Lord Chief Justice Holt, who ordered the returning officer to be arrested. The House of Commons, alarmed at this step, made an order of their house, declaring it penal for either judge, or council, or attorney to assist at the trial: however, the Lord Chief Justice, and several lawyers, were hardy enongh to oppose this order, and brought on the trial in the Court of King's Bench. The House, highly irritated at this contempt of their order, sent a serjeant at arms to bring the judge before them; but that resolute defender of the laws bade him, with a voice of authority, begone: on this they sent a second message by their speaker, attended by several of the members who espoused the measure. After the speaker had delivered his message, the judge replied to him in the following remarkable words :-" Go back to your chair, Mr. Speaker, within these five minutes, or depend on it I will commit you to Newgate:-You speak of your authority! but I tell you I sit here as an interpreter of the laws, and a distributor of justice, and, were the whole House of Commons in your belly, I will not stir a foot." The speaker was prudent enough to retire, and the House as prudently let the affair drop.

EGYPTIAN TEMPLES.

The knowledge of the mechanical powers, the Egyptians possessed in an extraordinary degree, they applied it to the extraction and conveyance of the immense masses which composed their monuments. The chapels of Sais and Butos are composed of single stones, cut from the rock of the Elephantine; and those enormous masses, of which the weight of each is several millions of pounds, were transported to the distance of

six hundred miles. Operations of

such vast magnitude, however unimportant their objects, shew at least the greatness of the physical and moral powers of the Egyptians at this early period of the world, and of what greater things they might have been capable, had their minds been employed in more useful directions,

THE ROODEE AT CHESTER. The Roodee is remarkable for being the place of interment of an image of the Virgin Mary, with a very large cross, in the year 946. The place of residence of this pious lady was in a Christian Temple at Hawarden, in Flintshire, where in those days of superstition, they used to offer up their orisons to the idol. To her they applied for relief under every affliction, till at last it happened, while they were on their knees invoking her, the carpenter not having securely fastened her, she very unpolitely fell on the head of the governor of the castle's wife, Lady Trowst, the effect of which was immediately fatal. For this offence the goddess was indicted and tried by a special jury, who, after a wise and solemn trial, found her guilty of wilful murder, and she received sentence of death. One juror proposed hanging, another drowning, till from motives of fear, being a goddess, they agreed not to take her life, but banish her, leaving her on the sands of the river, from whence, the waters not paying much respect to her sacred person, she was carried away by the tide and drowned.

LEONARDO DA VINCI.

In the Ambrosian Library at Milan, is the famous book of Mechanics; the drawing by Leon. da Vinci, are pasted upon large impe

rial paper; there are 399 leaves, and 1750 drawings, all undoubted

originals, with remarks and expla

nations written with his left hand backward, but which one reads

easily with a glass they have for

that purpose.

HINTS TO THE LADIES.

"TOP NOT COME DOWN."-Tradition informs us that once on a time, the ladies decorated their superior extremities with what was called a Top knot. And these top knots rapidly increased in size and height, until they towered far too much aloft longer to be endured. The parson of one parish, in particular, when the fashion seemed likely ere long to o'ertop the steeple of the humble church, was sorely grieved at the extravagance of the gentle portion of his flock; and finding all the private admonitions which his parochial visits enabled him to bestow, of no avail, he would fain have rebuked his congregation from the pulpit, had it not been for the difficulty of finding an appropriate text. Luckily, however, during one of his ruminating and desultory moments of consulting his Testament, his eyes rested upon the words quoted at the head of this paragraph, as contained in the 24th chapter of Matthew, where in a certain predicted event, the admonition is given-"Let him which is on the house top not come down," &c. This was exactly the thing, as by an ingenious selection of words, an express scriptural command might be made against the abomination

particularlarly did he anathematise the "top-knots," respecting which the command was explicit and peremptory, that they must

come down." And down they all came before the next Sabbath. Now whether this story is to be found in the veracious pages of the renowned Mr. Joseph Miller or not we neither know nor care.

Certainly Joe never told it as well as we have done; and most heartily do we wish that we had some equally ingenious and faithful pastors to rebuke the folly and extravagance of these degenerate days. Bishop Latimer was the man for this business, although he was not over gallant, as, for instance, when he says-" Ye women, it is a part of your penance to be subject unto your husbands; ye are underlings, and must be obedient. But this is not a trifle, and a small matter. And yet it is a sad matter; a godly matter; a ghostly matter, and matter of damnation and salvation." "Paul," continues the good Bishop, "saith that a woman ought to have a power on her head." But this power that some of them have, is disguised gear and strange

nounce.

Accordingly, on the next Sabbath, the ladies were astounded, and all but struck dumb, to hear the sermon commenced as follows:"That solemn and important portion of the scriptures which has been selected for our instruction this morning, will be found recorded in the 24th chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 17th verse :-"Top not come down." From these words the good man expatiated with unwonted eloquence, feeling, and energy, for the space of two hours, against the vanities and follies, the fripperies and fopperies of dress and most

hoods, and I cannot tell you what to call it. (It would puzzle the good Bishop more now-a-days.) And when they make them ready, and come to the covering of their head, they will call and say, give me my French hood, and give my bonnet, or my cap, and so forth." "When she would have her cap, I would she would have this meditation: 'I am now putting on my power on my head.' If they had this thought in their minds, they would not make so much pranking up of themselves as they do nowa-days. But now here is a vengeance-devil: we must have one power from Turkey of velvet, and

gay it must be far fetched, dear bought; and when it cometh, it is a false sign. I would rather have a true English sign, than a false sign from Turkey." -There should not any such thussocks, nor tufts be seen as there be, nor such laying out of the hair, nor braiding to have it open.” "But there be now many Adams, that will not displease their wives, (alas! how many!) but will in this behalf let them have all their own minds, and do as them listeth. And some others again there be now-a-days, that will defend it, and say it may be suffered well enough, because it be not expressed in scripture, nor spoken of by man. Though we have not express mention in scripture against such laying out of the hair in thussocks, yet we have in scripture express mention, de tortis crinibus, of writhen hair, that is for the nonce forced to curl. But for these thussockes, that are laid out now-a-days, there is mention made in the scripture, because they were not yet come to be so far out of order." But Latimer is no more. "That sun is setO rise some other such!" Not however, that we suppose there will any other such man spring up in these degenerate days, to chastise these fair sinners for their extravagances; and therefore, as the evil is sore in the land, and as patience with us, upon this subject, has long ceased to be a virtue, we believe we must e'en give the sweet creatures a short lecture ourselves. Not that we are about to go as far as Latimer would have done, or to declare war upon the cantellos, and bishops, and other unsithly articles which grace certain windows in Broadway exposing to the uninitated the manner in which many a sylph-like form is finished, which happened unfortuntately to be sent into the world "scarce half

no

made up." It is only with the outward integuments that we have now to do and if the ladies are willing to tolerate these unseemly exposures of an extensive branch of the arts, surely the coarser sex can have no great objection. But there are other matters of which we have a right to complain. Take, for example, the enormous dimensions of the hats worn for the last eighteen months, and the ridiculous manner in which they are adjusted, to say nothing of the "topknots," bows, and flowering shrubs and plants upon the top of them. Well, indeed, might old Latimer, if he were alive, and a Virginian, say, and they put a "power" of trumpery upon their heads.

Formerly, the object of broad brims was to overshadow the fair complexions beneath. But not so during the present march of mind. The wide rim before is brought vertically up, like the back side of an old-fashioned three-cornered cocked hat-so that the fair possessors not only encounter the broad blaze of the sun-but the broad gaze of all the sons of Adam who pass them in the streets. They have no longer an opportunity of stealing those sweet timid glances -" furtive glances," Mr. Cooper would call them-from beneath their modest cottage hats and neat little "bannets of straw." All is open, bold, masculine. Look at them again at church-at public meetings and fashionable exhibitions. Who can see over these wildernesses of bonnets ? Who can see through them? And who can hear for their very rustling? It is a sober fact that the late great religious and charitable anniversaries were not near so well attended as formerly, because of the preposterous dresses of the ladies. We ourselves, for many months, excepting on rainy days, have been enabled only to catch occasional glances of the preacher's face, through the bows, or among the blossoms of the intervening hats. The sleeves en gigot-how unutterably preposterous, and vexatiously ridiculous are these detestable abominations. Oh! that Solomon's seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines had once gone to court in them! It would have required a palace half as large as all Palestine; and the monarch would have given us another chapter upon "vanity and vexation of spirit." Look into our churches. Sleeves en gigot, two feet in circumference, enclosing little beautiful, slender, ivory arms, of four or five inches! We know not wherewith to liken them. Their shoulders and arms appear as huge and unnatural as though they were afflicted with elephantiasis, and they hang to the body like the copper conductors from the cap to the worm of a still, gradually tapering down, though not becoming "beautifully less." What with their hats, and sleeves, and hoops, and buckram, and foundation muslins, three ladies now make a pew full. We have no objection to a lady's encasing herself in a frock pattern of seven and forty yards, provided their husbands or fathers can pay for them, and provided also, that they will roll themselves up like so many silkworms. But to have seen seven-and-forty yards befrilled and beruffed, and expanded almost to explosion, is asking a little too much. Here ends our first lecture, and we hope it will be taken as it is meant. Should any fair brow darken upon us with a frown, however, or any bright eye emit a spark of indignation, we can only tell them the story of the boy, his mother and the gun. When the boy was first summoned to the trainband, his mother fitted

him out with all a courageous mother's pride, and charged him to demean himself like a man. When on parade, however, although he loaded his piece at the order, his heart failed him at the word "fire." But every order to " prime and load" was obeyed through the day. On returning to his mother, she questioned him so closely as to his prowess, that the truth came out. Like the Spartan mother, her charge on presenting the shield would have been "with it or on it." Indignant, therefore, at the recreant conduct of her chickenhearted son, she seized the musket of which he was so unworthy, and fired it off herself. As may be supposed, the musket being overloaded, it kicked her over as flat as a flounder. As she attempted to rise, her hopeful son exclaimed"Lie still, lie still, mother: there are twelve more to come yet!"New York Commercial Advertiser.

DATE TREES OF EGYPT.

The whole country near Alexandria is a desert, interspersed here and there with a few plantations of palm-trees. The dates hung from these trees in such large and tempting clusters, although not quite ripe, that we climed to the tops of some of them, and carried away with us large branches, with their fruit. In this manner dates are sometimes sent, with the branches, as presents to Constantinople. A ripe Egyptian date, although a delicious fruit, is never refreshing to the palate It suits the Turks, who are fond of sweatmeats of all kinds: and its flavour is not unlike that of the conserved green citron which is brought from Madeira. The largest plantation occurred about half-way between Alexandria and Aboukir,. the trees here were very lofty, and, from the singular formation of their bark, we found is as easy to ascend