gave and received several hard blows, till, finding he was getting the worst of the fight, he retired to his lodgings. Although he says nothing about it, he seems to have been pursued home by some of the combatants; for greatly to his indignation, his 'conceited landlord and hot-headed landlady,' not only thought it necessary to get two watchmen to guard his chamberdoor through the night, but sent for his sister Isabella. While she was talking to him at his bedside, one Acott, perhaps as conceited a tailor as any between Hyde Park Corner and Limehouse,' came into the room and bound his hands with list. He was then taken to an asylum at Chelsea, but was again set free after a rigorous incarceration of seventeen days. Upon being released, he refused to forgive his sister for her part in the affair, unless she consented to undergo forty-eight hours' confinement in prison (giving her the choice of Newgate, Aylesbury, Reading, or Windsor), which would give her an opportunity for a little speculation and meditation, and convince her that she is fallible;' otherwise he would punish her for her impenetrability and obstinacy by commencing legal proceedings. The lady being deaf to the appeal, Cruden was as good as his word, and brought an action against her and three others, laying the damages at ten thousand pounds. It was tried in February 1754, and decided in favour of the defendants. This he attributed to the desertion of his counsel, or, as he expressed it, to ‘Alexander's generals not doing their duty;' and appealed to the public for a reversal of the judgment, in a pamphlet dedicated to the king. In this pamphlet he published certain prophecies, made, as he averred, by a trio of eminent clergymen, though he discreetly veiled the names of the seers. These predictions were to the effect that he was destined to become a second Joseph,' and the Corrector of the people's manners and customs, besides attaining the more worldly honours of knighthood, united to the mayoralty and representation of the metropolis. His first step was to write a pamphlet setting forth his claims to a title. In this curious production he says: The designs of Providence in relation to the Corrector are yet somewhat mysterious, but are thought to be of very great importance to his majesty and his people.' He declares that his especial motive for seeking the honour, is in order that the prophecy that he was to be the member for the city should be fulfilled; but if his brother-liverymen make no objections, the honour of knighthood may perhaps come afterwards.' To bring his book under the king's notice, he lay in wait for Lord Poulet, one of the bedchamber lords, who received him civilly, because, as Cruden quaintly confesses, being goutish in his feet, he could not run away from the Corrector as others were apt to do.' Lord Poulet, however, declined to present the pamphlet, on the plea that he could not understand it, a candid avowal at which the author naturally waxed wroth. Nothing daunted, the self-styled Corrector wrote a letter to his majesty, enclosed a copy of his book, and prevailed upon a page of the backstairs to convey it to its destination. Almost every member of the royal family and the episcopal bench were the puzzled recipients of the Plea. Having ascertained that the fees payable upon receiving his desired dignity amounted to L.95, 1s. 6d., our knight, in anticipation, always carried a hundred-pound note about with him in readiness. He became known and shunned by every one whose position at court was likely to enable them to further his purpose, until his experience justified him in inveighing in strong terms against the fashion of servants saying their masters were not at home when the contrary was in reality the case. At last he applied to Lord Holdernesse, who referred him to the Treasury, and the Treasury directed him to apply to the Lord Chancellor while parliament was sitting. Cruden, however, had no faith in anything but royalty itself, and danced attendance at levee after levee, in the hope that King George would speak to him on the subject. Still nothing came of it, and the election for London drew nigh; he resolved to stand the hazard of the die as an untitled candidate, and astonished the good citizens by issuing the following extraordinary election address: 'TO THE LIVERYMEN OF THE CITY OF LONDON-I have acquainted the sheriff of my humbly proposing to be a candidate for one of the representatives in parliament of the city of London, which may be looked upon as an extraordinary step. This is not denied; but I trust I am under the direction of a gracious Providence, and I desire to be entirely resigned to the will of God, the supreme Disposer of all things. If there is just ground to hope that God will be pleased to make the Corrector an instrument to reform the nation, and particularly to promote the reformation, the peace, and prosperity of this great city, and to bring its inhabitants to a more religious temper and conduct, no good man in such an extraordinary case will deny the Corrector his vote; and the Corrector's election may be a means to pave the way to his being a Joseph and a useful and prosperous man,' &c. &c. As might have been expected, the choice, even by show of hands, did not fall upon the Corrector; and as he declined to demand a poll, 'having conscientious objections to that mode of election,' his ambitious hope remained unrealised. Tired of law, and disgusted with politics, Cruden now betook himself to perfecting his beloved Concordance within doors, and occupying himself out of doors by erasing 'Wilkes' and 'No. 45' from the public walls with a piece of wet sponge, which he was in the habit of carrying with him, to remove any offensive inscriptions chalked for those who ran to read. After failing to reform the manners of the people at Oxford, and narrowly escaping personal chastisement in the attempt, the Corrector paid a visit to Aberdeen, and unmindful of the proverbial truth of the fate of a prophet in his own country, tried to convince his fellow-townsmen that he was born to regenerate the world. The result may be guessed. He soon grew tired of his birthplace, and returned to the metropolis. He took lodgings in Islington; and there, on the 1st of November 1770, this pious, harmless enthusiast was found dead in the attitude of prayer. PARTING WORDS. 'GOOD-BYE!' how oft we use the homely phrase, Perchance with heavy heart, and tearful-eyed, Or with a smile, by trembling lips belied, Which own the sorrow that the smile gainsays; Yet think we not how much the word conveys A whole religion by our tongue implied, A Faith in God, by the faint heart denied, Which in our sorrow, murmurs at His ways. 'Good-bye!' can any parting words express A firmer trust, a deeper tenderness? God with thee-all is well, our anxious fears Are but a mockery of the care we implore; Trusting His love, we sanctify our tears. God be with thee, Beloved, now and for evermore ! F. F. The Editor of Chambers's Journal has to request that all communications be addressed to 47 Paternoster Row, London, and that they further be accompanied by postage stamps, as the return of rejected Contributions cannot otherwise be guaranteed. All MSS. for publication should be written on one side of the page only. It would also be well if each correspondent gave his or her address as it should be posted. Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by all Booksellers. SIGHT-SEEING. A VERY country gentleman came up lately to visit a London friend of mine; my friend trotted him about the streets, got him safely over crossings, and, among other places, took him to the top of St Paul's. While they were looking down upon the town, the visitor, envying one who had a sight so cheap and grand within easy reach, said to my friend: 'I suppose you often come up here.' This, I take it, is what many of our impulsive country cousins feel when they visit town. What the purple moors and shade-mottled lanes are to us, sick of gas, stucco, and policemen, the shilling-sights are to them. They leave the fresh green of the beech, the lawn, and the nightingale, for Christy's Minstrels and the Exhibitions. Nature's Royal Academy and the May meetings of the summer birds have no chance against the moving spectacles of Regent Street and the prophesyings of Exeter Hall. Our friends arrive from the station brimful of excitement, with lists of things to be done and seen, compiled for the last six weeks out of the newspapers. They know the different titles of the Exhibitions, and where they may be found. For my part, I never can tell the difference between the Old and New Water-colour. They both seem very bright to me. Now a days, however, one's power of distinguishing among the pictures of the season is sorely tried by their dispersion. Beside the bona fide collections and galleries and he must be a sorry artist who cannot get any one of the rival juries to hang himsingle works are exhibited here and there half over London. There is, however, much to be said for this arrangement. What can be more perplexing to the sight-seer than three or four rooms full of pictures? Their number palls the appetite, and chokes the digestion. As for myself, though I like paintings as much as most men, my first impulse, on entering the Academy, is to shade my eyes; or, when I have looked well into two or three works, to shut them, and carry the impression out of doors carefully, lest some 'Portrait of a Gentleman' should dissipate it altogether. Depend upon it, this exhibition of single works is a sensible plan. One is glad, nevertheless, on reading the Times, to learn that some are occasionally safe out of sight in the provinces. It is pleasant to reflect on the sensation produced in those remote regions, when we stumble on the curt but dignified PRICE 14d. announcement, ""Eastward Ho!" is at Penzance.' If you can get over the sense of interruption, you will find the crowds at such a place as the Royal Academy not without their interest. I amuse myself with philosophising on the way in which people mar the supposed object of their visit by exchanging salutations, looking out for friends, or watching for a vacant spot on the sparse seats, where they may rest their aching backs, and sink down in a sea of crinoline. It is curious to listen to the comments of sight-seers at an exhibition. Many, if not most, are struck by some peculiarity in the picture which the artist, if a true one, would perhaps have never expressed, if he could have helped it, and would retract on reflection. Many of the remarks made upon Holman Hunt's 'Light of the World,' when it was first exhibited, were painful, and yet suggestive. I waited once for a considerable time by it, and watched its effect. Some looked till you could see their eyes fill, and then passed on in befitting silence. Others, mostly in black satin vests, criticised aloud. Hollo! this is a priest, isn't it?' The picture had not missed him altogether. What is he doing?' asked another. Some said: 'How pretty!' One detected Puseyism, and walked by with a sniff. Far different was the critique of a genuine dustman I once heard in the National Gallery, before the Martyrdom of St Sebastian. Look here, Bill!' he whispered to his mate with genuine respect this is noble, ain't it?' and then the two gazed long and steadfastly without another word. They had souls above Madame Tussaud. The cook in Punch who came into her young mistress's studio, and praised the performance on her easel with 'Lawk-a-daisy, Miss Mary, if that beant like wax-work a'most,' gave a true touch of vulgar taste. But why should we despise a taste because it is vulgar? Would you not gratify an ass with thistles, even if he sniffed his dislike of nightingale sauce? Who among the crowds that pour along the British Museum on Whitmonday take in the meaning and the value of the sights they see? Would you remove even the mummies, though they do not solemnise the gaping excursionist? He does not think of them as dead. He does not associate the long-enduring calm faces of the Egyptian statues around him with the thought and power of a people who held dissolution in suspense. He does not reflect that the Saurian monster, whose part skeleton he sees, might have gamboled in the mud of the London basin with unprophetic disregard of Pall Mall: to him, it speaks no other message than the case of butterflies caught on Hampstead Heath. It is a bone to him, and nothing more. Bless you! he came there to see the Museum, and will probably recollect nothing more clearly than the umbrella-stand, the great size of the door-mats, and the 'silver' cup at the free drinkingfountain' outside the entrance. I am sure, though, that those secular philanthropists, who advocate the opening of the British Museum on the day of rest, cannot have tested the proposal in their own persons. There is something in the atmosphere of the place which, in a very short time, develops unexpected possibilities of lumbago, depression, general debility, and all the evils which Du Barry offers to cure with his delicious Revalenta Arabica. For hard, exhaustive, subduing work, commend me to the British Museum. I wonder that some of our ingenious legislators have not suggested its use in the matter of criminal reform. Send a few gangs of our surplus stock of felons for a month or two to the British Museum, request them to move on slowly about twelve hours a day, and I am sure that those who survive will never expose themselves to such a punishment again. Those who seek instruction there go with an object, and heed the things in the galleries, through which they pass to reach it, no more than they do the houses in Great Russell Street on their way to the Museum. But your sight-seer turns his bewildered eyes on everything, and thinks it quite a reproach when a companion calls him back to a room with 'You have not seen this.' He sees it in five minutes. People don't like to have the trouble of discovering its merit themselves; it must be obviously interesting and exceptional; a house on fire, a balloon, even a cab-horse down in the street, is noticed as he never was before, and yet there is something to repay study, even in a cab-horse, unfallen. A dog with a kettle tied to his tail realises his day' at last; so, too, more honourably, if he can stand on his head or smoke a pipe: he is then 'a sight;' whereas his cousin, who assists the drover, and fulfils his mission with sagacity and trust, is overlooked. He is valuable to his master, no doubt, but would be doubly so if he had eight legs, for then, though useless, he could be shewn. How many sights owe their fame to some such equivocal distinction! One man finds a sight in whatever he sets his eyes on; he lives in a marvellous, ever-changing, neverending exhibition, though he hardly ever goes to see' anything at all. Another, who 'goes to see' everything, and is a professed sight-hunter, is ill instructed, empty, and weak. The one lives on wholesome food, the other spoils his digestion by a perpetual diet of sauce. Indeed, the charm of a sight, as a sight, is its stimulating effect on the curiosity nerves; until at last a man loses the power of application and research, and can perceive only that which is piquant or unnatural. A sight,' moreover, must be definite and limited. No mere visitor can see London: it takes a sojourn and much patient study to comprehend that; so much has to be accumulated in the mind. So many regiments have to be marched into the field of view, that the mere preparation for the sight occupies years, is in itself an education. There is nothing very strikAfter all, what a world of thought gathers rounding in London; it disappoints the visitor at first, then any one object, if you let memory and fancy play stupifies him. He is puzzled, choked, when the real about it for a while! That Roman bust, for instance wonders of the place begin to present themselves in only recall its history. The stone, wrenched from the crowded confusion to his mind. Regent Street and marble cliff, may be, at Carrara, then set in some the exhibitions are no more London, than a Lifeguardsold Italian studio or yard; the little vanities of the man is the British army. To review our army, we original whose likeness we have-his spoken and silent need a map of the world. I saw two extreme samples critiques on the disposition of the robe and hair; brought together the other day. The train I chanced the opinions of his friends or the public when it was to travel by carried many volunteers together for a sent home, or set up in the square; the cost of it-field-day. There were four bands in the train, disthe bill and receipt for the cash. Perhaps it was persed in different carriages, where they made themexecuted on commission, and paid for with collected selves thirsty by playing in fragments. Part of the money. Where is the subscription list, with its rival-th regiment, just landed from Asia, was also in the generosity? Who gave a penny, who gave a pound? What did Titius set his name down for, what Seius? How long did it stand where it was set? Was it in a hall? Did it see the blue-eyed Goths, or longarmed, low-browed Huns burst in? Did it hear the sack of the city-the shrieks of the household? Was it cast down, and splashed with blood? How came it to be chipped and battered? How long did it lie on the rubbish-heap where the lizard sat and sunned itself unmoved? Or was it buried in the cool moist ground, dug up at last by lazy Roman excavators, to look on a changed forum, and find a price once more? The catalogue will tell you who sent it here; at what auction it was knocked down again-going! going! gone. Ay, that is the burden of the story it has witnessed ever since it fell a shapeless, senseless block from the quarry, and was hoisted into the mason's cart by navvies who swore in Latin. But, after all, that Roman bust! your sight-seer would look with twice the interest on a prize-pig's face. Sights! The eye, we are well told, sees what it brings with it the power of seeing. The undertaker appreciates the mummies. But what is a sight? Do we not understand by it something which attracts attention, either per se or per advertisement? It must continue, however, to attract. If deceptive, it must continue to deceive, like the talking-fish. The public have no objection to be taken in, provided you do it well. A sight must interest, attract, or perplex; at least have the credit of interesting, attracting, or perplexing others. same train, medalled, mahogany-coloured, with brown beards burned yellow. They shewed another phase of our military strength than the trim saucy volunteers, plump and plumed; not but what-being one myself— I am sure that these last would fight. But to return. London is as vast as the British army; you cannot see it in three weeks. There are accounts of it by daylight, gaslight, moonlight, much to see at either time; but another phase is possibly still more strange-London by early morning light, say at three o'clock in summer. It is quite light, and empty. A gorilla might help himself at the free drinking-fountain at the Oxford Street Circus unnoticed. Cats and rare policemen represent traffic. Rooks caw over Regent Street, as they fly towards Kensington Gardens. More than two million pair of boots are standing somewhere soiled with yesterday's mud, varied in shape, size, and age, but all void. Some twenty million toes are more or less pointing towards the zenith. But London is now a city of dreams. London asleep is a sight well worth seeing. It is curious, though, to traverse much of it, as may be done, even when it is awake, in comparative solitude. Some time ago, I walked from London Bridge to Hungerford Bridge at about seven o'clock in the evening without meeting above a score persons, except when crossing the arteries leading to the bridges. There is a series of streets on the other side of the water close to the river's edge, between huge warehouses; these streets are crowded with wagons, and noisy with rough labour during work-hours, but silent as midnight after six o'clock. As I passed along between the locked storehouses, I could hardly believe it was still day, and that the stream of life was then flowing strong along the Strand. About opposite St Clement Danes (I am speaking of my side, the Surrey side of the river, between the great brick blocks of buildings), a little boy had set a trap for sparrows in the middle of the roadway, and was watching it round a corner. A man might have hung himself unhindered from one of the many gibbet-like cranes which, with their great iron arms, pick up bales all day long, and swing them into doorways high in air. those conscientiously representative courts. What a hodge-podge of history they must have cooked in many a brain. It is perplexing even to an educated man to pass through Spain, Nineveh, and Pompeii while you are munching the same bun. What wonder that the observant member of the Mechanics' Institute confounds them altogether, and pictures to himself Sennacherib, in the Alhambra Palace, sitting on a door-mat inscribed cave canem. One of the sights of London is the sunset. I am serious. It shews there as it could shew in no town with a smaller canopy of smoke and blacks. The natural western tints combine with them wonderfully Then there are the Docks-another world; and at times. I have seen the wildest brown and red Wapping with its fierce debauchery, far more glar-effects in the sky looking up Oxford Street towards ing than that of the casinos in the West. Sailors, the Marble Arch, when the wind is in the east, and burned nut brown by tropical suns, just landed, and sweeps the carbon of a thousand fires towards the squandering with eager haste, and cosmopolitan dis- setting sun. regard of public opinion in Wapping, the accumulated health and passions of a tedious voyage. But, my dear country cousins, it is of no use, I tell you, talking about London; you can't see it. Be content and wearied with panoramas and museums. I don't refer to the regular season visitors, who have a house or address in town. They affect society; they don't trouble themselves about sights; they don't enjoy them; they don't ride on the camel at the Zoological Gardens, or feed the monkeys. I mean the people who walk much, and take lodgings for a month; who eat ices at Farrance's; who dine once with a friend at a club; whose wives and daughters buy the annual bonnet. But about those monkeys; why does not some enterprising Barnum exhibit a gorilla?-alive, I mean. There are convertible Irish labourers on strike who would do well-long-armed, bandy-legged, gray-eyed, with awful mouths, and unlimited capabilities of howling. You would only have to soak one in strong gum-water, and then roll him in plenty of loose hair. The result, if not a gorilla, would at least be 'a sight.' It is a difficult thing to decide how far the benefits of instruction can or should be combined with the pleasures of sight-seeing. The Adelaide Gallery and the first Polytechnic were experiments in this direction; both, I suppose, may be said to have failed. Perhaps there is more benefit to be derived from unmixed bona fide pleasure than some of our anxious pastors and masters would allow. Lessons are all very well, but I pity the poor boys who are condemned to hear explanations of the things they are taken to enjoy upon a holiday. I see them now in the old dreary chemical Polytechnic, wearily hanging back, and trying to gather some unintelligible amusement for themselves towards the tail of the procession; weary little lads, utterly unenvious of the good boy who, with gloves on, trots beside his master, and exhibits an unnaturally scientific interest in the theory of thunder and lightning connected with the electrical machine. I confess that Tutor, George, and Harry in the Parents' Assistant, never interested me much when a child. They must have been a tedious trio, and I am glad I never took any walks with them. It is hard to find a lesson lurking in a butterfly you have caught after a hearty scramble, and to suffer a description of the various artificial grasses, when your only wish in life is to tumble on a haycock. Let me laugh till I cry without being reminded that tears are the sign of grief as well. I know that, Mr Tutor; indeed I am inclined to think that the tears of childhood are bitterer than those of any age, as the juice of the gooseberry is sharpest when it is green. Give me a fairy tale without a moral. That is the charm of Grimm's stories; they are stories, and nothing more. Who would like to hear a lecture on digestion after a good dinner? Talking of instructive sights, I wonder what the majority of visitors to the Crystal Palace get out of But then people can see the sun almost anywhere; not so the fireworks of Cremorne, which are much prettier, you must allow, and cost only a shilling. There are histories and legends attaching to both. Phaeton fell, and made some noise in the world; not so a late fire-king of Cremorne. He failed too, and some time ago was a dying pauper in St James's Workhouse, Poland Street. It is quite true; I gave Mrs Phaeton half-a-crown myself, and a recommendation to the House of Charity, Rose Street, Soho. But we sat down to talk of sights, and I have told you of nothing new to be seen, nor indeed of the best way to find and see what is established and old, though you may not have set eyes on it yourself. Have you no guides, however? Is there not Timbs's Curiosities of London, a notable book, fat, and stuffed with the wonders of the town? Can you not find in these where to go to, and what to see? Are there no printed spectacles to look at, and look with? Have you visited the Museum of the College of Surgeons? any doctor can give you an order. Have you witnessed an operation in one of our hospitals? Have you heard Gladstone speak in the House? Have you witnessed an execution? Have you watched the sun rise in June? No! Then you are lazy, blind, indifferent, and don't deserve the pains I have taken with you. Not but what I daresay you would find something to criticise in either of the several sights I have suggested. Even Mr Gladstone has a trick of slapping his hand on the table at the end of a telling sentence, so loudly as often to blot out the last word. I never saw a man hanged, though I once came in unexpectedly for a military execution in a foreign town. It was before breakfast. I met a number of people hurrying along, and, pushing myself into the middle of the stream, was carried at last to the top of a wall, where, Humpty-Dumpty like, I sat and saw all the king's horses and all the king's men' gathered together in three sides of a square below me. What was it all about? Presently a little soldier, with a white cloth over his eyes, and a priest whispering at his elbow, walked out and formed the fourth side of the square. They both knelt down; then the priest rose, and covering his face with his hands, moved aside a few yards. A file of soldiers marched quickly up to the man, still kneeling in his gray greatcoat and white cloth. They were so close that the barrels of their muskets converged towards him like the ribs of a fan. It was all over in a second. He was put into a military wagon, and they strewed sand over the place where he fell; but the dogs still sniffed about it after the crowd had dispersed. Hospitals are sights. One of the pleasantest I ever visited was the Orthopedic. In others, many patients are sick unto death; you see not only pain, but anxiety and despair. But the sufferers in the Orthopedic are generally well enough in health, and as the operation they need is performed directly after they enter the institution, the worst is past with the majority. They are almost all getting better; moreover, they are furnished with a test of recovery impossible in ordinary sickness. When we have been ill, we often forget how bad we were; and measuring the passing faintness of to-day with the progress of yesterday, fancy we linger longer than we should. On the whole, the tide of disease may be ebbing; but now and then a wave runs up beyond the last, as if it were turning again. We have followed, watching, close at the edge of the retreating malady, and forget the distance we have traversed since the sickness was at its full height; but the patients of the Orthopaedic can make no such mistake. 'How are you getting on?' I asked of a girl who was hobbling across the room with bandaged, crooked feet. She said she had been in for months, and was much benefited, and, indeed, was improving every day. Well, you are hopeful,' I thought; and added aloud: But you are very lame yet.' 'Ah, sir!' she replied, but see what I was!' This being a common form of speech, I was not prepared to have it realised by her pulling a plasterof-Paris model of her legs from under her bed, to which her own were graceful. 'See what I was,' she said. Then there was a general exhibition of legs (plaster), and I found each one had an infallible test of progress within reach. Poor things! they looked on the casts made when they entered the hospital as George Stephenson might at the model of an old stage-coach. don't think a hospital, though, generally a pleasant sight, high as its character deservedly is. You are overwhelmed with a consciousness of cleanliness and ventilation. It must be depressing, too, for sick to see sick; moreover, in my humble opinion, hospital walls are too white and staring; I should like to see more colour, and less rigid uniformity of arrangement. But still, even as opportunities for the gaining of experience by young surgeons, which they are, quite as much as anything else, the hospitals of London are sights well worth your going to see; and at least, you may learn from them to thank God for your own bedroom, where you sleep in private peace. AN AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS. A FEW weeks ago, as we were perusing an account of one of those numerous meetings at which in autumntime our jovial farmers are wont to enjoy themselves, and which supply Punch with themes for many a jest, the question all at once occurred to us: How do our transatlantic cousins-a little more than kin and less than kind-manage these things in America? Have they, for example, ploughing-matches across a prairie with ploughs of ten shares, drawn by wild bisons? Have they cattle-shows, prizes for enormous gooseberries, and medals for industrious labourers a hundred years old, with families of five-and-twenty, brought up without assistance from the parish? Above all, have they after-dinner agricultural harangues as full of self-laudation, bunkum, and brag, as American discourses usually are, from a pot-house debate to the president's message? Let us look across the Atlantic, and see for ourselves. Let us consider the 'Report of the Committee on Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables, and Agricultural and Dairy Productions,' albeit it is now more than ten years old. After a few sentences beginning mildly with, 'In presenting this report of the eighteenth annual fair of the American Institute,' 'your chairman' goes in for his first flourish. To every mind imbued with the spirit of patriotism, the contemplation of WHAT HAS BEEN DONE by this Institute for the interests of horticulture,' &c., must prompt the most ardent and sincere wishes for,' &c., &c. 'As a PROOF of the unwearied zeal of its members,' &c., 'the following enumeration of premiums is respectfully submitted by your chairman: Silver cups, 130; gold medals, 30; silver medals, 150; agricultural and horticultural books, 450; diplomas, 250.' Certainly, the society were not niggardly in their distribution of prizes; but these do not appear to have been overwhelmingly costly, since the average value of cups, medals, books, and diplomas is only three dollars apiece, the total sum being three thousand dollars. However, there is more to follow, for your chairman' exclaims, in a fine burst of capitals, NOR IS THIS ALL!' We naturally wonder what sublime achievement or magnificent guerdon is next to be brought to our notice, but are considerably disappointed to find, without any more capitals, or even italics, the following prosaic statement: 'Its services to the agriculturists are freely admitted from Maine to Georgia.' After a few more observations of no particular moment, the speaker quits his congratulatory tone for an apologetic style. With much regret, your committee' (apparently, when it came to regret, 'your chairman' thought it best to share his sorrow with sympathising colleagues) must here remark, that until within the last few years the art of cultivating the earth has been by many parents considered a degrading pursuit. From fallacious views, they have looked upon the handling of the plough, the spade, and the rake, as not so likely to confer riches, honour, and dignity as some other occupations.' Now, we should be the last to disparage agriculture, by which indeed the world is fed; but we much fear that, unless statistics are wholly false, the profession of a ploughman does not in these days confer anything like so much riches, honour, and dignity' as many other occupations which might be named. But listen to 'your committee.' 'The earliest records of history, however, establish the pleasing fact, that terra-culture' (we trust our language will be at once enriched with this truly classical compound) 'has excited the sweetest and loftiest strains of the poet; that it has engaged the attention of the great and good; and that the most profound philosophers have deemed it a study of importance.' Without stopping to dispute this broad assertion, we must venture to doubt whether the 'poets,' the great and the good,' and the 'profound philosophers,' ever made any marvellous profit out of terra-culture, which is the real point at issue. Unfortunately, 'your committee' does not appear to have been composed of practical men; for instead of telling us a little about the price of corn, the number of sacks to an acre, and so forth, the committee flies off at a tangent to a most extraordinary distance-in fact, to no less a place than the garden of Eden. Each order of religion has its system of creation, its heaven and its hell, and what more concerns us, each had its system of gardens (!). The garden of the Jewish tradition is for the use of man; that of the Eastern polytheism is appropriated to the gods; and the Mohammedan paradise is the reward held out to the good in a future state. The inhabitants of Ceylon-whose authority we suppose must be deemed conclusive on the point'say that paradise was situated in their country; and Johnson informs us that they point out the tree which bore the forbidden fruit, the Divi Lander, or tabernemontana alteanifolia (!) of botanists. The fruit of this tree is said to be of great beauty, and the shape gives the idea of a piece having been bitten off. It is now poisonous, though said to have been excellent before Eve ate of it. We recommend the adoption of this style of report to committees of the House of Commons; the insertion of similar allusions would greatly enliven the proverbial dulness of blue-books. After another little excursus, in the course of which 'your committee' or your chairman,' or both, get hopelessly muddled up with the Egyptians, Sir Isaac Newton, King |