Devoutly do I hope that the kettle, though a great vocalist, will never thus appropriate the old Sea Songs of England. In the words of an old Greenwich pensioner-"Steam in and biling does very well for Urn Bay, and the likes;" but the craft does not look regular and shipshape to the eye of a tar who has sailed with Duncan, Howe, and Jarvis and who would rather even go without port than have it through a funnel.

"Some are born with a wooden spoon in their mouths, and some with a golden ladle."-GOLDSMITH.

Some are born with tin rings in their noses, and some with silver ones."-SILVERSMITH.

Again with father to reside,

Black shoes, clean knives, run far and wide?

My Stepmother.

Who marred my stealthy urchin joys,

And when I played cried "What a noise !"

Girls always hector over boys

My Sister.

Who stroked my head, and said “Good lad,”

And gave me sixpence,

But at the stall the coin

"all he had;"

was bad?

My Godfather.

A VALENTINE.

THE WEATHER. To P. MURPHY, Esq., M.N.S.

These, properly speaking, being esteemed the three arms of Meteoric action.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

"Do you hear the rumour? They say the women are in insurrection, and mean to make a."-THE WOMAN'S PRIZE.

"Enter Rumour painted full of tongues.".-K. HENRY IV.

"In a word, the Tartars came on."-ROBINSON CRUSOE,

In my M. S. days, and like many bookish bachelors of the same standing, I was a member of a private literary society, with a name whereof I only remember that it began in Greek and ended in English. This re-union was framed on the usual plan of such institutions; except that the gallantry of the founders had ruled that half the members might be of the female sex, and accordingly amongst our "intellectual legs," we numbered a fair proportion of the hose that are metaphorically blue. We assembled weekly at the house of some Fellow that had a house, where an original essay was first read by the author, and then submitted to discussion, much as a school-boy first spins his top and then lays it down to be pegged at by the rest of the com. pany. The subjects, like Sir Roger de Coverley's picture, generally

H

left a great deal to be said on both sides, nor were there wanting choppers, not to say hackers of logic, to avail themselves of the circumstance; and as we possessed, amongst others, a brace of Irish barristers, a Quaker, a dissenter to every thing, an author who spoke volumes, a geologist who could find sermons in stones, and one old man eloquent, surnamed for his discursiveness the rambler, we had usually what Bubb Doddington has called "a multiplicity of talk."

It is worthy of record, however, and especially as running counter to the received opinion of the loquacity of the sex, that no female member was ever known to deliver or attempt to deliver a sentence on the subject in debate. Now and then, perchance, a short clearing cough would flatter us that we were going to benefit by feminine taste and delicacy of sentiment; but the expectation invariably fell to the ground, and we might as well have expected an opinion to transpire from the wax work of Mrs. Salmon or Madame Tussaud. I have since learned, it is true, from one of the maturest of the she fellows, that she did once actually contemplate a few words to the matter in hand, but that at the very first stitch she lost her needle, by which she meant her tongue, and then in seeking for her needle she lost the thread of her ideas, and so gave up the task, she said, as not being "woman's work."

It would seem, therefore, that a set discourse in company is altogether incompatible with the innate diffidence and shrinking timidity of the sex. Milton, indeed, makes this silent modesty a peculiar characteristic of perfect womanhood, as evinced in the demeanour of "accomplished Eve." To mark it the more strongly, he liberally endows our general mother with fluency of speech in her colloquies with Adam, so as even to "forget all time" in conversing with him; whereas in the presence of a third party,-the Angel Visitor for instance, whom she less bids than makes welcome to her dessert,—she seldom opens her lips. Nor is this an overstrained picture: the same matronly, or spinsterly reserve, having survived the Fall, and the confusion of Babel, and the more womanly of her daughters, however good at what the Scotch call “ a two-handed crack," in a corner or behind a curtain will still evince a paradisaical hesitation, amounting to an impediment, in addressing the most limited audience. In fact up to a comparatively recent period, the Miltonic theory was practically acknowledged and acted upon, at the theatre, the female characters of the Drama being always represented by proxies of men or boys.

Even in the present age, the début of an actress, having so many "lengths" to deliver in public, is reckoned one of the severest ordeals that womanly modesty can undergo. The celebrated Mrs. Siddons described it as a fiery trial,"-a "terrible moment,"-and any playgoer who has witnessed the first appearance of a young lady on any stage will easily give credit for its agonies. The late Mrs. described to me very vividly her sufferings on a like awful occasion :"the voice that would not come, and the tremor that would not go→→

once