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"THE CORSICAN BROTHERS."

The story of the popular drama of this name-rendered strikingly efficient by the vivid impersonations of Mr. Charles Kean-is stated to be founded upon the following incident :

Louis Blanc and his brother had a close resemblance in manner, person, and features; and what is still more remarkable, they were connected by that mysterious feeling, that, however seperated the brothers might be, no accident could happen to the one without the other having a sympathetic feeling of it. Thus it chanced one day, while the brother of Louis was enjoying himself among a party of friends, he was observed suddenly to change colour; he complained of a sensation, as if he had received a blow upon the head, and he avowed his firm conviction that something must have befallen his brother then in Paris. The company treated this as a mere imaginary notion; but some, more curious than the rest, noted the day and hour to see how far this warning was justified by the actual event. And the result was that the precise moment there indicated, Louis, while walking in the streets of Paris, had been knocked down by a blow upon the head, dealt by some one who approached him unperceived from behind. He fell senseless to the ground, and the ruffian escaped, nor could all the efforts of the police afford the slightest clue for his detection. He was suspected to have been a Bonapartist, and to have been influenced by political hatred of the uncompromising republican.

THE GAMBLER'S DEATH.

"Lord Mountford bets Sir John Bland twenty guineas," so runs an entry in the betting-book at White's Club, "that Beau Nash outlives Cibber." Lord Mountford and Sir John Bland both blew their brains out in 1755; Cibber died two years after, and Nash survived till 1761. This Lord Mountford arrived at reducing even natural affections to the doctrine of chances. When asked, soon after his daughter's marriage, if she was with child, he replied, "Upon my word, I don't know; I have no bet upon it." Walpole says of him, “He himself, with all his judgment in bets, I think, would have betted any man in England against himself for self-murder." He had lost money; feared to be reduced to distress; asked

immediately for the government of Virginia, or the Foxhounds; and determined to throw the die, of life or death, on the answer he received from Court. The answer was unfavourable. He consulted several people,-indirectly at first, afterwards pretty directly, on the easiest mode of finishing life; invited a dinner-party for the day after ; supped at White's, and played at whist till one o'clock of the New Year's morning. Lord Robert Bertie drank to him "a happy new year;" he clapped his hand strangely to his eyes. In the morning he sent for a lawyer and three witnesses; executed his will; made them read it twice over, paragraph by paragraph; asked the lawyer if it would stand good though a man were to shoot himself. Being assured it would, he said, "Pray stay, while I step into the next room," -went into the next room-and shot himself.

LIVELY DIAGNOSIS,

Dr. Fordyce, who was much addicted to the bottle, was one evening called away from a drinking-bout, to see a lady of title, who was supposed to have been taken suddenly ill. Arrived at the apartment of his patient, the Doctor seated himself by her side, and having listened to the recital of a train of symptoms, which appeared rather anomalous, he next proceeded to examine the state of her pulse. He tried to reckon the number of its beats; the more he endeavoured to do this, the more his brain whirled, and the less was his self-control. Conscious of the cause of his difficulty and in a moment of irritation, he inadvertently blurted out "Drunk, by Jove." The lady heard the remark, but remained silent and the Doctor having prescribed a mild remedy, one which he invariably took on such occasions, he shortly afterwards departed. Early next morning, he was roused by a somewhat imperative message from his patient of the previous evening, to attend her immediately; and he at once concluded that the object of this summons was either to inveigh against him for the state in which he had visited her on the former occasion, or perhaps for having administered too potent a medicine. Ill at ease, from these reflections, he entered the lady's room, fully prepared for a severe reprimand. The patient, however, began by thanking him for his immediate attention, and then proceeded to say how much she had been

struck by his discernment on the previous evening; confessed that she was occasionally addicted to the error which he had detected; and concluded by saying that her object in sending for him so early was to obtain a promise that he would hold inviolably secret the condition in which he found her. "You may depend upon me, madam," replied Dr. Fordyce, with a countenance which had not altered since the commencement of the patient's story; "I shall be silent as the grave."

A MARRIAGE BY MISTAKE.

One of the noted fortune-hunters of the last century was Haugroullier, a French Jew, who, in January, 1796, having dined with a party at Richardson's Hotel, Covent Garden, drew a cheque for 217. upon Messrs. Hammersley, for which Mr. Richardson gave him the balance. With this money Haugroullier started with his friend, Gilrary Piggott, to Bath, in pursuit of Miss Trist, the only child of a tailor, in Surreystreet, Strand, supposed heiress to 40,000l. On reaching Bath, he carried off the supposed, and married her at Gretna Green on his return he found out she was not the object of his pursuit, but Miss E. Ashford Trist, of Totnes, a lady of good fortune, though not equal to that of Miss Trist, of Surreystreet, who thus had a lucky escape; for Haugroullier proved a bad husband, sold all his wife's property, broke her heart, and became as poor as ever. In 1811, he was stated to have been implicated in the poisoning of several horses at Newmarket.

THE LAST OF THE ALCHEMISTS.

Some sixty years since, in 1805, there died in his chambers, in Barnard's Inn, Holborn, Peter Woulfe, the eminent chemist, a Fellow of the Royal Society. According to Mr. Brande, Woulfe was 66 the last true believer in alchemy." He was a tall, thin man; and his last moments were remarkable. In a long journey by coach, he took cold, inflammation of the lungs followed, but he strenuously resisted all medical advice. By his desire his laundress shut up his chambers, and left him: she, nevertheless, returned at midnight, when Woulfe was still alive; next morning, however, she found him dead; his countenance was calm and serene, and apparently he had not moved from the position in which she had last seen him. These particulars of Woulfe's end were received by the writer

from the treasurer of Barnard's Inn, who was one of the executors of the alchemist's last will and testament.

Little is known of Woulfe's life. Sir Humphry Davy tells us that he used to affix written prayers and inscriptions of recommendations of his processes to Providence. His chambers were so filled with furnaces and apparatus, that it was difficult to reach his fireside. Dr. Babington told Mr. Brande that he once put down his hat, and could never find it again; such was the confusion of boxes, packages, and parcels, that lay about the room. His breakfast-hour was four in the morning; a few of his friends were occasionally invited, and gained entrance by a secret signal, knocking a certain number of times at the inner-door of the chamber. He had long vainly searched for the Elixir, and attributed his repeated failure to the want of due preparation by pious and charitable acts. Whenever he wished to break an acquaintance or felt himself offended, he resented the supposed injuries by sending a present to the offender, and never seeing him. afterwards; these presents sometimes consisted of an expensive chemical product or preparation. He had a heroic remedy for illness, which was a journey to Edinburgh and back by the mail-coach; and a cold taken on one of these expeditions terminated in inflammation of the lungs, of which he died.

DEADLY-LIVELY.

It is strange out of what grave materials our humourists sometimes make merry. In 1863 was taken down the dirty old Inn of Chancery, named Lyon's Inn, Strand. In chambers, up a staircase which had a narrow and mysterious winding, lived William Weare, the gambler, who was murdered by Thurtell, at Gills-hill, in Hertfordshire, upon which Theodore Hook is said to have written a ballad, containing this descriptive verse:

They cut his throat from ear to ear,

His brains they battered in ;

His name was Mr. William Weare,
He dwelt in Lyon's-inn.

CHURCH MILITANT.

In the American army, during the war of Independence was a chaplain named Cauldwell whose wife was murdered during the sack of a village by the British, when Knyphausen was marauding the Jerseys. At the fight of Springfield,

Cauldwell dealt retribution upon his foes. None showed more ardour in the fight than he did. The image of his murdered wife was before his eyes. Finding the men in want of wadding, he galloped to the Presbyterian church, and brought thence a quantity of Watts's psalm and hymn books, which he distributed for the purpose among the soldiers, "Now," cried he, "put Watts into them, boys."-Irving's Life of George Washington.

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PLAIN SPEAKING.

A plain-spoken old Scottish lady, Mrs. Wauchope of Niddry, being very ill, sent for Aunt Soph, and said to her, Soph, I believe I am dying, will you always be kind to my children when I am gone?" Na, na; tak' y'r spoilt deevils wi' ye," was the reply, "for I'll hae naething ado wi' them."

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BENEFIT OF FLOGGING.

Coleridge, in a marginal note upon Baxter's Life, observes : "Schoolmasters are commonly punsters. My old master, the Rev. James Bowyer, the Hercules Furens of the phlogistic sect, but an incomparable teacher, used to translate, Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu—first reciting the Latin words, and observing that they were the fundamental article of the peripatetic school-" You must flog a boy, before you can make him understand:" or, "You must lay it in at the tail before you can get it into the head."

It has also been said that flogging must improve boys, since it makes them smart.

QUID PRO QUO.

Zimmerman, the Court physician, went from Hanover to attend Frederic the Great in his last illness. One day the king said to him, "You have, I presume, sir, helped many a man into another world." This was rather a bitter pill for the doctor; but the dose he gave in return was a judicious mixture of truth and flattery: "Not so many as your majesty, nor with so much honour to myself."

SCORN OF PETTY LARCENY.

Vidocq relates, in his Autobiography, on the same bench with Vidal was the Jew Deschamps, one of the principal party concerned in robbing the Royal Wardrobe, to the details

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