* * * * *
_WISDOM._
Lessons of Wisdom have never such power over us as when they were
wrought into the heart through the ground work of a story which engages
the passions. Is it that we are like iron and must first be heated
before we can be wrought upon? or is the heart so in love with deceit,
that where a true report will not reach it, we must cheat it with a
fable, in order to come at truth?
* * * * *
_LEVITY._
A Devonshire droll has thus burlesqued the lullababy pastoral of
Shenstone. “My banks they are furnish’d with bees, &c.”
My beds are all furnish’d with fleas,
Whose bitings invite me to scratch;
Well stock’d are my orchards with jays,
And my pig sties white over with thatch.
I seldom a pimple have met,
Such health does magnecia bestow:
My horsepond is border’d with wet,
Where burdock and marsh-mallows grow.
* * * * *
_ANECDOTES._
A gentleman, reading in one of the public prints, that Mr. _Monday_, of
Oxford, was dead, exclaimed,--“Alas! my friends, we now have reason to
lament, like _Aurelius_, that we have _lost a day!_”
* * *
A gentleman, reading in one of the daily prints that thirteen hundred of
the French had been _drowned_, said, “Thus should the courage of all our
enemies be _damped_.”
* * * * *
* * * *
_THE FARRAGO._
* * *