And, rapt in darkness, keep his orgies there;

Lift the full bottle, joyous, to his head, Then, great as Cæsar, reel sublime to bed,

FROM

SONG

BANTAIN.

QUENTIN DURWARD."

Ah! County Guy, the hour is nigh,
The sun has left the lea,

The orange flower perfumes the bower,
The breeze is on the sea,

The lark his lay, who trill'd all day,
Sits hush'd his partner nigh;

Breeze, bird, and flower, they know the hour,

But where is County Guy?

The village maid steals thro' the shade,
Her shepherd's suit to hear;

To beauty shy, by lattice high,
Sings high-born Cavalier.

The star of Love, all stars above,
Now reigns o'er earth and sky,
And high and low the influence know,
But where is County Guy?

PEROONE, situated upon a deep river, in a flat country, and surrounded by strong bulwarks and profound moats, was accounted in ancient, as in modern times, one of the strongest fortresses in France. Indeed, though lying on an exposed and open frontier, it never was taken by an enemy, but preserved the proud name of Peronne la Pucelle, until the Duke of Wellington, a great destroyer of that sort of reputation, took the place in the memorable advance upon Paris in 1815. ("Quentin Durward," Vol. 3, p. 33.)

The Drury-lane company have revived the opera of the Travellers" -which they performed with ease in three hours and fifteen minutes.

By private letters from Paris we learn that his majesty Louis 18th-is as ladies wish to be who love their lords.

It is whispered that Mr. Murray has given Lord Byron 4000 guineas for the copyright of his-Lines to Mr. Richard Turner, on his Incomparable Blacking.

Advices from Corfu announce that the Greeks, after several hours hard fighting, have succeeded in taking-six large boxes of Hickman's Diuretic Pills.

H. R. H. the Duke of Sussex opened the ball with-a person living in an airy situation, who wishes for two or three families' washing.

We have anthority to state, that Mr. Ex-Sheriff Parkins-is desirous of procuring a situation as wet-nurse in a regular family. FRISK

THE NEW DROP, as it is still called, though its novelty has long been faded, was invented about five years ago, by one Deacon Brodie, a carpenter of Edinburgh, who, strange to say, was the first sufferer by his commodious gallows, being hanged for robbing the Excise Office. His friends had a notion that the new machine would not prove so effectual as the old way of being turned off a ladder, and to increase the chances of his escape, prevailed upon him to insert a silver tube in his wind-pipe. On the appointed day, he came forth very gaily, with his tube, a well-dressed perucque, and a grand silk waistcoat; but, alas! Brodie's drop was too much for Brodie, and every effort to restore animation proved fruitless.

The gossips say that similar expedients have been resorted to in various cases, particularly in that of Dr. Dodd, and some do not scruple to add that in this instance the experiment was successful. Whether this is possible or probable we shall not stay to enquire, but it seems that if the idea is a delusion, its influence is not confined to our own country, for the following paragraph, which we met with in a New York Paper of last December, shews that similar attempts to baffle the hangman have been resorted to in America.

"Police.-A man of decent appearance called at the office yesterday afternoon, to lodge a complaint, and ascertain how he should proceed against a certain desperate offender, whose name, for prudential purposes, is not at this moment given, and for whom and his coadjutors the police have been some time seeking. He had

swindled the complainant and two of his friends out of a large sum. His plan was, in the first instance, to procure a respectable introduction to the complainant, and then, with a display of forged checks and drafts on Philadelphia, to obtain the advance desired.

"A singular circumstance disclosed by the villain to an intimate of his was, that he was one of the robbers of the southern mail two or three years since, and was tried, condemned, and apparently executed by hanging ; but by a stratagem previously concerted with a surgeon, was restored to life and animation. The surgeon, he says, supplied him with a strong tube, which he forced down his throat, so that the neck bone could not be broken as he swung off; and that on the application of restoratives after he was cut down, he recovered! While his account seems improbable in itself, we may remember the case of Taylor many years since, restored to life, as is said, after being hanged, and the folly and gratuitous information of this fellow's acknowledgement if the fact were not so.

THEATRICAL FIRE.-The beautiful crimson fire, now commonly used to represent conflagrations and explosions in our Theatres, is produced from a composition made of the following ingredients :-Forty parts of dry nitrate of strontian, thirteen parts of finely-powdered sulphur, five parts of chlorate of pot ash, and four parts of sulphuret of antimony. The chlorate of pot ash and sulphuret of antimony should be powdered separately in a mortar, and then mixed together on paper; after which they may be added to the other ingredients, previous y powdered and mixed.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

RECEIVED-Hope, *, Clio, G. G., Jack Meggott, and George.-The plan suggested by Mentor shall be adopted as quickly as possible.

THE story of which the above cut il lustrates a STRIKING incident, forms one of those mixtures and history and romance, which, if not actually founded on fact, cannot be said to be absolutely false, though while the groundwork is real, the superstructure reared upon it is for the most part fanciful and fictitious. The outline of the circumstances, which is all we can spare room for, will shew our readers that whatever might originally be the state of the case, modern detailers of it have taken the liberty of fashioning it to suit their own purposes, and so contrived as to make the incidents correspond with others of a much more recent date.

About the year 1682, says our authority, the eldest son of the Elector of Hanover (afterwards George 1st of England) was married to his cousin Sophia, only child of the Duke of Zell. The match was entirely one of

state policy, and gave from the outset little promise of happiness, for the young Prince's thoughts were entirely engrossed by dissipation, while the affections of his bride had previously been bestowed upon Count Koningsmark, a Swedish nobleman, resident at her father's court. The seeds of mutual dislike and jealousy, this implanted, soon sprung up and brought forth fruit; for the coldness of the Prince was converted into utter aversion by the levity and unguarded conduct of his wife, who in her own conntry had imbibed notions of propriety utterly foreign to those which regulated the behaviour of her new associates. Complaint from either party produced only recrimination and defiance, and at one of their angry interviews, forgetting both his sex and quality, the Prince thrust her from him so rudely that she fell senseless on the ground. To enter upon a description

of all the farther provocations on the one side, and severity on the other, which existed for a long period, and which the original history details with painful minuteness, would be worse than useless; suffice it to add that the Princess was eventually conveyed to the castle of Alten, a strong fortress in the Electorate of Hanover, where she was imprisoned during the remainder of her existence, a period of nearly forty years; dying in 1727, a few months before her husband, and leaving behind her one son, afterwards George the Second.

Which portion of this narrative is genuine, and which fictitious, we have no means of distinguishing, but the outline, we believe, is strictly true, and adds one more to the many instances we daily witness of the sorrow and deadly discord engendered by those ill-judged marriages, the parties to which are paired but not matched, and the worst consequences of which generally fall to the lot of the weaker sex. "Alas, the love of women! it is known Te be a lovely and a fearful thing, For all of theirs upon that die is thrown, And if 'tis lost, life hath no more to bring,

To them but mockeries of the past alone, And their revenge is as the tiger's spring,

Deadly, and quick, and crushing; yet as real

more

He ac

Ayliffe, and pretended to practise physic. After he was cured of his wounds, and heard that all that were concerned with him were safe, which was in about six weeks, he returned to Rumford, and lived there, under the same disguise, for a considerable time, without being suspected or molested, notwithstanding a proclamation was published, with an offer of five hundred pounds reward, for apprehending the persons concerned in the rescue. It was, however, impossible for one of his restless temper to continue long quiet; but his next enterprise was in every respect more singular and hazardous than any he had hitherto attempted: this was seizing the person of his old antagonist, the Duke of Ormond, in the streets of London, with a view to murder him. tually attempted to put his design into execution on the 6th of December, 1670, and was very near completing his purpose; however the duke was fortunately rescued out of his hands, but himself and his associates all es caped, though closely pursued. An account of this transaction was immediately published by authority, together with a royal proclamation, offering a reward of one thousand pounds for apprehending any of the persons concerned therein, but to no purpose, for Blood was not so much as thought of or suspected. The clearest account that we have of this surprising transaction, is to this effect:-The Prince of Orange came that year into England, and, being invited on December the 6th to an entertainment in the City, his grace attended him thither. As he was returning home, in a dark night, and going up St. James's-street (at the end of which, facing the palace, stood Clarendon-house, where he then lived) he was attacked by Blood and five accomplices. The duke always used to go attended with six footmen but, as they were too heavy a load upon a coach, he had iron spikes behind it, to keep them from getting up, and continued this practice to his dying day, even after this attempt of assassination. These six footmen used to walk on both sides of the street, over-against the coach; but, by some

contrivance or other, they were all stopped, and out of the way, when the duke was taken out of his coach by Blood and another, and mounted on horseback behind one of the horsemen in his company. The coachman drove on to Clarendon-house, and told the porter the duke had been seized by two men, who had carried him down Piccadilly. The porter immediately ran that way; and a Mr. James Clark, who chanced to be at that time in the house, followed with all possible haste, having first alarmed the family, and ordered the servants to come after him as fast as they could. Blood, it seems, to glut his revenge, by putting his grace to the same ignominions death which his accomplices in the treasonable design upon Dublin castle had suffered, had taken a strong fancy into his head to hang the duke at Tyburn. Nothing could have saved his grace's life, but this extravagant whim of the villain, who, leaving the duke mounted, and buckled to one of his comrades, rode on before, and (as is said), actually tied a rope to the gallows, and then rode back to see what was become of his accomplices, whom he met riding off in a great hurry. The horseman, to whom the duke was tied, was a person of great strength, but, being embarrassed by his grace's struggling, could not advance as fast as he desired. He had, however, got a good way beyond Berkley, (now Devonshire) house, towards Knightsbridge, when the duke, having got his foot under the man's, unhorsed him, and they both fell down together in the mud, where they were struggling when the porter and Mr. Clark came up. The villain then disengaged himself, and, seeing the neighbourhood alarmed, and numbers of people running towards the place, got on horseback, and having, with one of his comrades, fired their pistols at the duke (but missed him, from taking their aim in the dark, and in a hurry), rode off as fast as they could to save themselves. The duke (being sixty years of age) was quite spent with struggling; so that, when Mr. Clark and the porter came up, they knew him rather by his star,

than by any sound he could utter; and were forced to carry him home and lay him on a bed to recover his spirits. He received some wounds and bruises in the struggle, which confined him within doors for some days.-(Resumed at page 219.)

"TRUE NO-MEANING."

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NIC-NAC.

SIR, A friend of mine, a cheesemonger, who favours me with the privilege of inspecting his literary stores (which, unlike the generality of persons who purchase only the lighter and more flimsy productions, he values according to weight), and who, aware of my insatiable thirst for knowledge, punctually encloses my periodical supply of butter and cheese in a portion of the periodical publications (by the way, I never get so much as a leaf of the Nic-Nac" inthis manner). He sent me, a few days ago, among other interesting varieties, a part of the first (and LAST) No. of a small work, in which I met intended to give an exemplification of with the following blundering article,. the difference of meaning between the words ENOUGH and SUFFICIENT. The writer, whose intellect seems to have been "bemused in beer," has, in concert with his worthy helpmate, the printer, contrived to make the matter SUFFICIENTLY obscure, or, as the learned Dr. Dennis O'Reilly classically phrases it, "as clear as mud."/ Perhaps, Mr. Editor, you will think it worth while to use your "learned endeavours" in throwing a light on. the business, or, to borrow a metaphor from my friend Mr. White, to pare off the rind and cut away the and wholesome for the mental nutrirotten part, so as to render it sound ment of the babes and sucklings, who delight in and fatten on your weekly supply of good things, amongst whom I beg leave to subscribe myself,

Yours, JACK MEGGOTT.

*May 19, 1823.

"The following is an illustration of a precept of Dr. Blair, in his directions to obtain perspicuity and