with horns for the head, and a tail of serpentine proportions. Their great difficulty was to find some poor devil poor enough to wear it. After many vain appeals to boardmen, and many refusals, more or less courteous, with divers humorous suggestions that they had better play the devil on their own account, they encountered one man in so deplorably a poverty-stricken state, that he possibly would have sold his soul to the evil one on pretty moderate terms. However, they only wanted his body.

"I say, my good man," began M

do for five shillings a day?"

"what would you

"Do!" said the man, "I'd do anything that was honest." "Anything?" said G

Anything!" replied the beggar, emphatically.

"Would you dress up as the devil, and distribute handbills?"

"I should think I would-I'm starving."

"Well, come and dine, and you shall begin at once."

No sooner said than done. When the poor man had appeased his appetite, he was disguised in the satanic paraphernalia; and as the tail was a shade too long, M-ingeniously tied it in a knot to shorten it, and the devil sallied forth, prospectuses in hand, along Oxford Street, followed, at a respectful distance, by the two speculators, who were mightily elated with the success of their enterprise. In ten minutes, the crowd was tremendous. No one who has not visited London can conceive the wonderful rapidity with which a mob collects in that city. The devil grew frightened. The boys pulled his tail. Fiendlike gibes and roars of laughter made him almost feel himself a denizen of that hell whose monarch he represented. Siezed with a sudden panic, he cast one despairing look around, and-beheld the faces of his two employers staring at him over the heads of the crowd. Then, with the instinctive clutch of the drowning man, he loudly claimed their protection. The roaring mob followed the direction of his eyes. The alarmed editors, too dismayed at the chance of possible exposure to quite choke themselves with laughter, took ingloriously to their heels. The poor persecated devil followed them with a cry of despair. The crowd followed the devil, the boys pulled his tail. The editors ran as if no, not as if, but precisely because the devil was behind them. Run, devil! run, boys! run, editors! run, policemen! Never, since the days of John Gilpin the Great, was seen such a chase! The editors escaped down a side street, and did not stop running till they had lost their way and their breath,

and been mistaken for a couple of pickpockets, and very nearly had a second hue and cry raised behind them. The devil was caught-by the tail-and taken before the Lord Mayor, who sent him to the house of correction, and made some severe comments on the profanity of such proceedings. The editors had to pay for the devil's skin, and the "Hell Post" was constrained to resort to the vulgar medium of posters in order to attain publicity.

The modern "dodge" is for magazines, by way of prospectus, to publish a list of all the authors in the country as a catalogue of its contributors; the fact of most of the names being unauthorized by their proprietors being entirely unimportant, as of course the public cannot know it; and to write to them all, would ruin the publishers in postage. Strange to say, the names of men who actually write such magazines are not mentioned at all.

But the subject of literary speculations is as inexhaustible as the cellar of a teetotaller. I do not conclude; I leave off. Many were the periodicals I started, many were the books I printed. Yet I have not become a millionaire. I am going to California. No more literary speculations for me. I have had enough of them!

FORTHCOMING DRAMATIC NOVELTY.

[We have been politely favored by the author with the following scene from a splendid allegorical spectacle to be brought forward at the opening of the New Opera House, with appropriate scenery, dresses, and decorations. The whole piece has been set to music by an eminent German composer, who was banished by a decree of the Emperor, as punishment for his fiddle being out of tune in a Grand Royal Concert.]

Enter PAST, PRESENT and FUTURE, in a state of great excitement, preceded by a crash of music from the orchestra, accompanied by a grand chorus of voices, after the manner of the ancient Greek Tragedy. PAST is represented by an "old fogie," with a bald pate, wrinkled brow, spectacled nose, a coat very much out at the elbows, and short breeches scarcely covering his knee-pan; PRESENT appears dressed in the extreme of modern fashion, with enormous whiskers, his hat on one side, his hands in his pockets, and an arrogant, conceited look, extremely becoming; while FUTURE wears the costume that will probably be adopted about the time of the millen

nium, when women will wear the breeches, and men figure in short petticoats and busks.

Present, in a great fume. I tell you, you are an old fogie-a limping, croaking, worn-out, superannuated, brokendown hack, only fit to drag an omnibus, or an ash-cart; who can't keep up with the spirit of the age, or the march of mind, any more than a stage-coach with a locomotive. You are no better than a superannuated coxcomb.

Past. And I tell you, you are no better than a premature puppy, who knows nothing worth knowing, but what he has learned from me, and if he had not my experience for his guide, would hardly know how to make use of his five senses.

Future. Pooh, pooh! gentlemen, what is the use of disputing about precedency? I shall leave you both behind, quite out of sight, and be as much before you, Mr. Present, as you are before Mr. Past. I should as soon expect to hear a dispute about precedency between a ground-mole and a woodchuck, as you two. You are a pair of ignorant blockheads, compared to what I shall be when I come to years of discretion.

Past. Ah! that will be about the time of the millennium. Present. Yes-or when time travels backwards, according to your venerable worship's theory.

Future. None of your sneers, gentlemen. If one of you were not so old and decrepid as to be below my notice, and the other such a conceited puppy as to be still more so, I would knock both your pates together, to see whether they would not answer instead of drums.

Past and Present, speaking both together and squaring up to the other with fists doubled. You would-would you? Come on, then, most arrogant of all arrogant pretenders, who is always boasting of what he intends to be-we will soon see which has the drum-head.

Future. Have at you, then, my bullies. I'll show you a specimen of the march of mind in my improvement in boxing. Come on, I say-ye crabs, that have all your lives been walking backwards.

[As they approach each other in attitudes of defiance, the orchestra strikes up a most delightful and soul-subduing andante, accompanied by a solemn deprecatory chorus, whereupon the combatants shout bravo! encore! and kiss each other on both cheeks.]

Future. Come, come, gentlemen-it is beneath the dignity of persons of such consequence to the general welfare of man

kind, to forget ourselves in this unseemly manner. I don't so much wonder at this promising young stripling, who, it must be confessed, is a conceited puppy, running riot a little; but for a venerable old fogie in spectacles and short breeches to forget himself in this manner, is only another proof that our ancestors were little better than ignorant barbarians. I have a proposal to make, gentlemen.

Present. Well, let us hear it.

Past. Ay, ay-speak, representative of the wisdom of posterity.

Future. It is this. Instead of dealing in sarcasms, inuendoes, and reproaches, let us proceed calmly to discuss your claims to superiority, as becomes the representatives of millions, past, present, and to come.

Past. With all my heart.

Present. Agreed. Who shall begin?

Future. Mr. Past, as being the oldest, though certainly not the wisest, should have precedence on this occasion. What do you know, and what have you done, you old fogie: eh?

Present. Done? Why, nothing, but what I mean to undo, as fast as possible.

Future. Pray, young gentlemen, speak to the purpose, if you please. I ask what you have done, and what you know, Mr. Past. I desire to hear what you have each to say for yourselves, and to be constituted sole umpire between you, as I have a presentiment amounting to a certainty, that I shall be as much wiser than Mr. Present, as Mr. Present is wiser than Mr. Past, for you know the human mind never goes

backwards.

Past. Why, you have given judgment already, and there is no use in bearing the arguments.

Future. Well, well-never mind, old gentleman. As the human mind is always progressing, I may become wiser before you have done, and reverse my judgment. You know the progress of knowledge is like the tides of the ocean, that sweep away all before them, and

Past (interrupting). And bring with them only a new crop of straws, chips, chaff, and foam, to mark the extent of their progress. They always leave behind as much trash as they sweep away, or rather always add to the heap of rubbish. Future. Be quiet, old gentleman, if you please, and don't interrupt the court.

Present. O, let him talk he will only prove what he has contradicted, and contradict what he has proved.

Past. And you will contradict everything and prove nothing.

Future. Enough of this, gentlemen. By my faith, if I thought I should not know more than these fellows, I should wish never to be born (aside). Come, old gray-beard-I repeat my question-what have you done, and what do you know?

Past. Why, judge-hem-why-faith, I know so much, and have done so much, that I can't tell where to begin, and shall certainly never come to an end.

Present. That I'll be sworn. You old fogies never know where to stop when they begin to boast of their own wisdom, and that of their ancestors.

Future. You conceited young coxcomb, if you don't cease interrupting the proceedings of the court, I'll place you in charge of high constable Hays.

Present. Old Hays? Why he has been dead almost half a century, more or less.

Future. Well, what of that? He belongs to posterity, of which I am the representative. I can summon the dead as well as the living.

Present. And so can I-videlicet, the spiritual knockings. Past. If this babbling, conceited young gentleman will permit me, I will go on, please your honor.

Future. Proceed, sir, and if he interrupts you again, I'll place him under your special tuition, that he may becomehem!-as wise as your worship.

Past. May it please your honor, in order that I may present a clear and succinct view of this momentous question, which involves the reputation of countless millions of the human race, above and under ground, I shall divide my subject into three hundred and sixty-five heads, being one for every day in the year, Sundays not excepted. I shall begin by stat ing what was the condition of the world before the creation of Adam; from thence I shall proceed, point by point, to detail man's progress backwards and forwards, through different ages, and in all the known countries of the world, exhibiting clearly to your honor what he has learned, and what he has forgotten, and proving that one has pretty well balanced the other; that his advances in knowledge have for the most part only led him into new errors, and that in rectifying one blunder he always fell into a greater. In short, please your honor, I design to present to you a brief abstract of the entire history of the world-which I trust will not encroach on your time, as you pretend to be little less than immortal.