Amongst other eccentricities, of which our good cousins on the other side of the Atlantic are occasionally guilty, is their fondness for an expressive domestic nomenclature, more so, indeed, than the Saxon idiom is accustomed to permit. We need not refer to the instance of the two fond parents who were unable to arrange an amicable dispute concerning the name of their first-born, one insisting on Paul, while the other advocated Peter, until a judicious friend proposed to harmonise the wishes of both by suggesting that the child should be called Saltpetre. But we may relate an occurrence which is said to have taken place in a distinguished Yankee family, who, contrary to the old prohibition against counting your chickens before they are hatched, after seeing their family tree well laden with youthful olive branches, and their quiver, as they ignorantly imagined, perfectly full, began to hollo before they were quite out of the wood; for after a sufficient interval had elapsed to warrant their most earnest hopes that they

had seen the last of the numerous arrivals, their domestic joys were one fine morning surprisingly enhanced by an unexpected notice to hoist again the flag with the inscription, "Welcome, little Stranger!" In fond reliance upon the well-known principle,

"Finis coronat opus,"

him they appropriately termed Finis, fondly supposing that this assuredly must be the last; but as in due course of time Madame la Mère happened to give birth to another daughter, and likewise to two sons more,* they

*Had that distinguished Pyrrhonist, Bishop Colenso, been aware of this interesting occurrence, he might possibly have been less confident in his doubt respecting the prolificness of the Mothers of Israel, as Moses teaches during the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt. Happening to be related to a gentleman, the thirty-third child of a family of thirty-six by one mother, who had twins eleven times, and died a comparatively young woman at the age of forty-nine; remembering the case of James Kyrloff, the Muscovite peasant, who was presented at the court of the Empress, widow of Ivan Vasilivitch II., as the father of seventy-two children by two wives, the first of whom had twins ten times, trins seven times, and quadrins four times, her share amounting to fiftyseven, and also of Maria Ruiz, of Lucena, in Spain, who in the month of June, 1799, had sixteen boys at a birth, seven of

felt constrained to manifest the sobered joy of their hearts in a manner sufficiently intelligible to the world at large, by christening their little ones with the expressive names of Addenda, Appendix, and Supplement, with which we may appropriately close our chapter on man in general, and Brother Jonathan in particular, under the character of an Orator.

whom were alive and kicking in the following August ;-we are in a better position to speak on this delicate subject than our Episcopal sceptic. Moreover, as Aristotle affirms, Hist. Anim. vii. 4, that "the Egyptian women often gave birth to three or four at a time, and occasionally to five ;" and as Pliny Nat. Hist. vii. 3, observes that it is rather "a phenomenon for more than three or four at a birth (which is an undoubted fact) except in Egypt," where it was too common to be noticed; we suggest that, as these two great authorities are not scripture writers, the Bishop upon his own principles ought not to disbelieve them. A glance at a recent number of the "Barbadoes Globe" tells us, in confirmation of the fruitfulness of the daughters of Eve, that three women in the parish of Christ Church, Barbadoes, were delivered of nine children, each having had three at a birth, and that they are all doing well!"

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CHAPTER VI.

Homo Barbatus.

"LET by-gones be by-gones," was the profound reflection of an ancient sage. There is no rule, however, without an exception, as the grave Bishop of Vexitur is reported to have remarked, when one of those helpless beings, known as "the inferior clergy," once endeavoured to justify an infraction of ecclesiastical law on the miserable plea that Mr. had been guilty of a similar offence. "You, sir, are the rule, he is the exception," was the mode in

which the great prelate rebuked his erring brother.

We propose to follow so eminent an example, though profoundly conscious of the truth of Virgil's remark,

"Sequitur patrem non passibus æquis,"

by endeavouring to show the impolicy of sacrificing one very important characteristic of manhood, and by urging some reasons for cherishing the growth of that ornament wherewith Nature has favoured the male species of the animal kingdom; and as we are now living when a tendency to the renaissance style is so prominently brought before us in and the arts sciences of the civilized world, we gladly hail this as an omen of general and ultimate success.

Need we add that we refer to that venerable relic of antiquity, so ancient that its existence. must have been certainly coeval with our first parent Adam, to that most useful and becoming facial appendage known amongst all nations as THE BEARD!!!