Mademoiselle Darlemont very soon perceiv-, I dangled after her for nearly two years, and

ed my prepossession in her favour, and gave
me the most flattering reason to think that
she returned it; but alas! I lost my mistress
through the most ridiculous blunder that ever
man was guilty of. An old Portuguese gentle-
man was one day telling me of some remark-
able circumstances in the life of St. Januarius;
and from the Saint he made a transition to the
miracles performed at his shrine; without
considering that Mademoiselle was present, I
undertook to prove that these pretended mi-ment, I quitted her without a reply.
racles were all impositions. The Portuguese
replied with great warmth, and Mademoiselle
instantly took his side of the argument. I saw
my error, and directly sounded a retreat; but
it was too late, the mischief was already done;
she informed me the next day that she was
willing to forgive my being a heretic, but she
could by no means think of keeping up any
, acquaintance with an infidel; and she was sure
that no one but an infidel could possibly treat
so sacred a subject with ridicule. It was in
vain that I blamed my own want of caution and
politeness; that I assured her I should never
again so far forget myself. All the apologies
I could make for my rudeness to the Saint were
insufficient to disarm her indignation; and
when I concluded my visit, she desired I would
never repeat it.

when at last she could no longer evade hearing
a declaration of my passion, she put on a face
of astonishment, and told me she could not
conceive how I could ever have supposed she
meant to encourage my addresses.

As she had permitted my visits, and accepted very graciously both my presents and attentions, I was equally surprised and iudignant at her effrontery; but as I considered her too contemptible an object for my resent

It was some years after this before I again summoned courage to look out for a wife; and my next essay was a wild-goose chase indeed. As a punishment for my sins (whether that against St. Januarius or any other, Heaven knows) I fell in love with a coquette This lady made a convert of me to one part of the Roman Catholic persuasion, for she convinced me that there was such a thing as Purgatory.

I have met with several other rebuffs from different ladies to whom I have addressed myself, but I shall not trouble you with an account of them. I am at this period in my fiftieth year, and my inclination is as strong as ever to enlist under the banners of the saffron-robed deity, if I could meet with a "help-mate meet for me."

I am not by any means fastidious in my choice of a wife; and fortune, I can assure your fair readers, will be no object; all I insist upon is, that the lady shall be possessed of sense, good-humour, and good-nature; that she shall have the manners and education of a gentlewoman; and that she shall be some few years younger than myself.

Should any of your lovely readers, of the above description, think me worthy of being rescued from the calamities attendant upon a state of old bachelorism, they will eternally oblige me by a written intimation of their wishes, addressed (if you will allow me the liberty) to your office.

In the hope that you will favour me by your insertion of this letter, I remain, Sir, Your very humble servant,

LAUNCELOT LASTHOPE.

AN INGENIOUS FICTION.

EXTRACTED FROM A FRENCH WORK ENTITLED "MELANGES D'HISTOIRE ET DE
LITTERATURE, PAR M. DE MARVILLE."

Two or three Frenchmen are supposed || him to dinner, and as he was pleased with bis

to arrive in London, and they give the follow- entertainment, he told me he had a great cuing account of what happened soon after :- riosity to show me. He then took out of a "Several tradesmen came to our lodgings shagreen box an instrument in a tortoishell in order to sell the commodities and curio- case, which proved to be a most excellent sities of their country. Every one of the microscope. I may well bestow this epithet company fixed his attention on what pleased upon it, since it was so as not only to discover him most, gloves, ribands, silk stockings, &c. an infinity of bodies imperceptible to the I chose to examine various perspective glasses || naked eye, but even the atoms of Epicurus, the and microscopes. He who sold them was an subtile matter of Descartes, the Monades of excellent mathematician, a man of great capa- || Leibnitz, the vapours of the earth, those city and spoke French tolerably well. I kept which flow from our own bodics, and such as

derive to us here the influence of some of the planets.

"The first experiment I made was to look on the person from whom I received it, at the distance of four or five paces, which gave me the opportunity of observing an infinite number of little worms, that were feeding voraciously on his clothes; by which I perceived, that contrary to the common opinion, it is not we who wear out our own clothes, but they are fairly eaten off our backs by these invisible insects. I changed my situation, and considering my mathematician in another light, he appeared to be enveloped in a dark cloud. He told me that this appearance was owing to his perspiring strongly after dinner; and that this ought to convince me of the truth of what Sauctorius had delivered in respect to the proportion between this and other secretions.

and that might lose. I examined both with the microscope, and thereby easily distinguish ed the source of these passions. As the men were extremely heated with their exercise they perspired strongly, so that clouds of the matter flowing from them reached us. My glass showed me distinctly that the matter perspired by him for whom I had an inclination, was exactly similar to what was perspired by my-self; whereas the matter emitted from the other person was absolutely unlike mine, and so jagged and bearded, that it seemed to wound aud pierce me like so many arrows. Hence I discerned that the true cause of our sudden inclinations and aversious consists in the figures of the matter perspiring from us and from others, and in the similarity or contrariety of these insensible vapours.

"We went out of the city, and at some miles distance we saw some gentlemen divert|ing themselves with coursing a hare. As the poor animal passed very near us, I had just time to catch a glance of her with my glass. She appeared to me like a ball of fire moving with prodigious rapidity, and leaving a mighty smoke behind her. This was the matter per

"We went next into the kitchen, where there was a large piece of beef roasting for the servants; and I had the pleasure of seeing with the same microscope, how the fire separates all the parts of the wood upon which it acts, and darts them by the violence of its motion against the beef that turns before it, wounding it as it were with an infinite numberspired by the animal, and I saw that the dogs of shafts, and so tearing it to pieces. Some of which are converted into juice, and others into a delicate kind of smoke or vapour, which filled the kitchen, and was very sensibly distinguished by our nostrils.

"Going out of the house we saw four young men playing at ball. I, at first sight, felt a strong inclination in favour of one, and as strong an aversion from another, whence 1 began earnestly to wish that this might win,

followed exactly the track of that smoke, and were never at a loss except when the wind dissipated the cloud that issued from the flying || hare."

In this short account our author ingeniously rallies such persons as expect ocular demonstration of things that do not admit of any such evidence, which can only be apprehended by reason, and cannot be verified to the

senses.

CURIOUS ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE FATAL POWER OF IMAGINATION.

PROPHETIC DREAMS.-In Feb. 1786, Professor Meier, of Halle, was sent for by one of his pupils, a medical student, who lay dangerously ill. The patient told his doctor that he should certainly die, having had a warning dream to that effect." I wrote it down," he added, "the morning after it happened, and laid it in a drawer, of which this is the key; when I am gone read it over." On the 4th of March the student died, Professor Meier opened the drawer of the writing-desk, in which be found this narration :-"I thought I was walking in the church-yard of Halle,|| and admiring the great number of excellent epitaphs which are cut on the grave-stones there. Passing from one to another, I was struck by a plain tomb-stone, of which

went to read the inscription. With surprise I found upon it my own two fore names, and my surname, and that I died on the 4th of March. With progressive anxiety I tried to read the date of the year; but I thought there was some moss over the fourth cypher of 178-. I picked up a stone to scrape the figure clean, and just as I began to distingish a 6, with fearful palpitation I awoke." Professor Meier related this anecdote in his lectures as a proof of the influ ence of the mind in disease, this dream having caused its own fulfilment.

EFFECTS OF FORTUNE-TELLING.-As additional and curious illustrations of the fatal power of imagination, the two following facts, the first of which fell within the personal ob.

their experiment. Nothing, however, was able to counteract the impression already given. The man became worse, and, in the space of a few months, fell a martyr to his imagina tion. It is unnecessary to remark, that, had the melancholy result been foreseen, the experiment never would have been tried.

servation of the writer, will not be unacceptable to our readers.-A few years since, a young lady, whose name and residence must, for very obvious reasons, be concealed, was, when in the full possession of health and spirits, forewarned by a gipsy, by whom she, in a mere frolic, had the curiosity to have her fortune told, that she would assuredly die on SINGULAR CASE OF INSANITY.-The fola certain day, within a few months from that lowing anecdote, founded on fact, is related time. This wanton and idle prediction || in " Dr. Perfect's Select Cases of Insanity." gradually made a strong and unusual impres- The Doctor informs us, that the name of the sion on the girl's mind. Her dejection and person stood on the books of the parish for alteration of manner being observed by her several years, with the addition of “the Lufriends, she was asked the cause, upon which natic King," the first entry was Jan. 1, 1727. she related the circumstance just mentioned, -"Some years ago, a poor man, who having adding, that she felt conscious the prediction studied the art of government, and the bawould be verified. Her friends, of course, at lance of the European power with greater atfirst endeavoured to laugh her out of the idea; tention than his business, grew insane, and but, when they perceived, notwithstanding, fancied himself a King, and in this situation her melancholy daily increase, they had re- was admitted into the work house of St. Giles's course to reasoning and remonstrance on the in the Fields, where there then happened to absurdity of indulging in such a mere air- be an idiot of nearly his own age; the imagindrawn phantom. Ridicule and remonstrance ary King appointed the idot his Prime Miproved equally ineffectual. The poor girl, at nister; besides which post, he officiated as his length becoming seriously ill, took to her barber and menial servant-he brought their bed, from which she never more arose. As the common food, and stood behiud his Majesty time of the prophecy drew nearer, she grew whilst he dined, when he had permission to visibily worse, and on the very day foretold by make his own repast. There would sit, the the gipsy, she expired, under all the fictitious || King upou an eminence, and his Minister behorrors of a deluded imagination. low him, for whole days, issuing their precepts to their imaginary subjects; in this manner they lived about six years, when, unfortunately, the Minister, impelled by hunger, so far deviated from his line of allegiance, as to eat his breakfast before his Sovereign appeared, which so exasperated the King, that he fell upon him, and would certainly have put a period to his existence, if he had not been prevented. When his anger was thought to have abated, the Minister was again introduced to his quondam Sovereigu; but he seized him immediately, and could pever after be prevailed upon to see him.— The degraded Minister catched a fever in his exile, and when his Majesty was beginning to relent, and almost prevailed upon to forgive him, he died; which had such an effect upon the fancied Monarch, that after living almost without sustenance, and in continued silence, he, in a few weeks, died of mere grief."

The second instance, with which the writer was not personally acquainted, but of which he has every reason to believe the truth.Some persons, determined to try the power of imagination, fixed on, for their experiment, a hale and robust countryman, who had never known a day's illness in his life. This man they told, with an assumed air of seriousness and concern, that he looked unwell. The fellow, as may be supposed, at first treated the observation with contempt and ridicule, but on hearing it continually repeated, he at length brought himself to imagine there might be some truth in it. Fancy soon realizes the object of its hope or fear; what he at first only thought probable, he at length firmly believed to be true. This belief, by a natural and obvious consequence, soon occasioned a real indisposition. Those who had first possessed him with this notion, now began to be alarmed at the success of

SINGULARITY OF TWO BROTHERS.

put on the same kind of dress, which they did now and then for amusement, their servants

IN a manuscript in one of the Libraries at Paris, we are told that the Count de Ligniville and Count d'Autricourt, twins, desceud-could not distinguish the one from the other. cd from an ancient family in Loraine, re- Their voice, gait, aud deportment the same, sembled each other so much, that when they and these marks of resemblance were so per

||

THE NEW SYSTEM OF BOTANY,

WITH PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF FLORA, &c. &c. &c. (Continued from Page 38.)

"If aught possess thee from me, it is dross, "Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss;

early period of literature. Chaucer lived at New Elm, Dryden's residence was at Nine

"Who all, for want of pruning, with intru- Elms; and it is supposed that the name

sion,

"Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion!"

of Barn Elms is of still greater antiquity. Chelsea was also famous for many years for an elm planted by the hand of Elizabeth herOf this genus there are seven species, all self; it stood, and served as a parochial comprised under the general name of Ulmus, a boundary, near the site of the present turaword of very uncertain derivation, and of pike in Church-lane, was called by her name, course, very high antiquity; these seven vaand was one hundred and ten feet in heighth, rieties are, the common elm; Dutch elm; and thirteen in girt at the ground; but perbroad-leaved elm, or witch hazel; American haps the most remarkable circumstance reelm, which includes the red, white, and specting it is, that this tree, almost sacred drooping elms; hornbeam-leaved elm; dwarf from its antiquity and history, was actually ent elm; and entire-leaved eim. In scientific ar- down by Sir Hans Sloane, the parent of English rangement, the whole of these varieties are Botany! and sold for the paltry sum of one classed as PENTANDRIA DIGYNIA, and reguinea!!! in the year 1745. Those who are ferred to the natural order Scabride. In in the babit of sauntering in Gray's Inn generic character, the calyx has the perianth Walks in the summer, may there repose under one leaved, turbinate, wrinkled, border five the shade of some venerable elms, planted bý cleft, erect, coloured within, permanent. The the hand of the still more venerable Sit stamen has five filaments (but sometimes four, Francis Bacon; nay, some of the elms in St. or eight), the anthers are four-grooved, erect, James's Park are upwards of two hundred short; the pistil has the germ orbicular, erect; || years of age. The lovers of picturesque the styles are two, and shorter than the sta- beauty will, however, form but a very impermen. In essential character, the calyx is five fect idea of this tree from its appearance in cleft, inferior, and permanent, the capsule is the regular fines of a plantation or a vista; it membranaceous, compressed, flat, and one- is in more scattered situations that it is so seeded. elegantly described by Gilpin, as growing upright, and when it meets with a soil it loves, rising higher than most other trees. After it bas assumed, says this elegant writer, the dignity and roughness of age, there are few of its forest brethren that can excel its grandeur and beauty. At a distance, indeed, when a winter skeleton, it may be mistaken for the oak; but when in all the luxuriance of full foliage, its picturesque character is better marked; and whether it is intended to fill up a span in the natural landscape, of introduced on the imitative canvas, there is no tree whatever which can be justly cousidered as better adapted to receive grand masses of light, though it does not actually require them, to give effect; as its foliage from the shadowing contrasts of its colour, particularly when agitated by the evening breeze, is by no means of the heavy kind. Those who are forming landscapes round their country residences, will find this tree extremely useful in producing shade rapidly, as trees of a foot in circumference may be transplanted with à certainty of their succeeding. Of its other uses we need only observe, that it has furnished Plautus with a good hyperbole; for being used in ancient times instead of birch, he describes a rascal as having exhausted all the elm twigs in the country! In some parts of England the leaves are collected for winter

It is also a singular circumstance both in generic and in essential character, that the flower possesses no corolla. We may also observe of the general qualities of this tree, that the flowers appear about the end of March, even before the leaves come forth; the Jatter are well known to be of dark green; but it may perhaps have escaped general observation, that although the bark of the old trees, as they increase in size, is torn aud rent into roughness, yet that of the young trees is smooth and tough, and will even strip off to a considerable length. There can be no doubt that this tree was known in England before the Norman accession, as many places named from it, according to Saxon derivation, are noticed in Domesday Book; yet a very scientific writer doubts if it is indigenous, || and conceives it to have been first brought from Lombardy. It is, indeed, a well ascertained fact, that about two centuries ago, it was not to be met with north of Grantham; and we have the authority of Linnæus to say, that it is scarcely to be found in Finland at the present day. It is however known to be a native of both Europe and Barbary; but it is not the less curious, that the famous vistas at the palaces of Aranjuez, &c. were formed by Philip II. of Spain, by plants brought from England. It is indeed not unknown to our