May be thou lets this fleshly thorn If sae, thy hand maun e'en be borne, L-d, bless thy chosen in this place, Wha bring thine elders to disgrace, L-d, mind Gawn Hamilton's deserts, Wi' great and sma', Frae God's ain priests the people's hearts He steals awa'. An' whan we chasten'd him therefore, O' laughin' at us, L-d, hear my earnest cry an' pray'r, Thy strong right hand, L-d, make it bare, L-d, weigh it down, and dinna spare, O L-d, my G-d, that glib-tongued Aiken, L―d, in the day of vengeance try him, L-d, visit them wha did employ him, And pass not in thy mercy by 'em, Nor hear their pray'r; But, for thy people's sake, destroy 'em, And dinna spare. But, L-d, remember me and mine An' a' the glory shall be thine, ROBERT BURNS. A ROYAL QUANDARY. ON the first consignment of Seidlitz Powders to the capital of Delhi, the monarch was deeply interested in the accounts of the refreshing beverage. A box was brought to the king in full court, and the interpreter explained to his majesty how it was to be used. Into a goblet he put the contents of the twelve blue papers; and, having added water, the king drank it off. This was the alkali, and the royal countenance exhibited no sign of satisfaction. It was then explained that in the combination of the two powders lay the luxury; and the twelve white powders were quickly dissolved in water, and as eagerly swallowed by his majesty. With a shriek that will never be forgotten, the monarch rose, staggered, exploded, and, in his agony, screamed, "Hold me down!" Then, rushing from the throne, he fell prostrate on the floor. There he lay during the effervescence of the compound, spirting like a thousand pennyworths of imperial pop, and believing himself in the agonies of death, a melancholy and convincing proof that kings are mortal. CHARLES MATHEWS AND THE SILVER SPOON. SOON after Mathews went from York to the Haymarket Theatre, he was invited with other performers to dine with Mr. Atteborough, afterwards an eminent silversmith, but who at that period followed the business of a pawnbroker. It so happened that Atteborough was called out of the dining room, at the back of the shop, during dinner. Mathews, with wonderful celerity, altering his hair, countenance, hat, etc., took a large gravy-spoon off the dinner-table, ran instantly into the street, entered one of the little dark doors leading to the pawnbroker's counter, and actually pledged to the unconscious Atteborough his own gravy-spoon. Mathews contrived with equal rapidity to return and seat himself (having left the street door open) before Atteborough reappeared at the dinner-table. As a matter of course, this was made the subject of a wager. An éclaircissement took place before the party broke up, to the infinite astonishment of Atteborough. PRENTISS ON CORN WHISKEY. [S. S. PRENTISS, an American politician, noted for his gifts of eloquence as well as his humor, was born at Portland, Me., in 1808. Removed to Mississippi in 1827, where he became an eminent and successful lawyer and Representative in Congress. His powers of sarcasm were notable, and were often felt by his political adversaries. He died in 1850, near Natchez. The following is from Sparks's " Recollections of Fifty Years."] McNutt was the Democratic candidate for Governor. The campaign was a most animated one, and Prentiss, the Republican nominee, addressed the people in very nearly every county in the State; the people, en masse, flocked to hear him, and his name was in every mouth. The Democratic nominee did not attempt to meet him on the stump. Prentiss' march through the State was over the heads of the people, hundreds following him from county to county in his ovation. McNutt was a Virginian, and was a man of stupendous abilities; he was a lawyer by profession, and was Governor of the State. Next to Poindexter, he was the ablest man who ever filled the chair. Unfortunately, like most of the young and talented of that day in the West, he was too much addicted to the intoxicating bowl. Upon the only meeting of these, Prentiss and McNutt, the latter, in his speech, urged as a reason for the rejection or defeat of the former his dissipated habits, which, he said, were rendering him useless, with all his genius, learning, and eloquence. Prentiss in reply, said: "My fellow-citizens, you have heard the charge against my morals, sagely, and, I had almost said, soberly made by the gentleman, the Democratic nominee for the chief executive office of this State: had I said this, it would have been what the lawyers term a misnomer. It would be impossible for him to do or say anything soberly, for he has been drunk ten years; not yesterday, or last week, in a frolic, or, socially, with the good fellows, his friends, at the genial and generous board-but at home, and by himself and demijohn; not upon the rich wines of the Rhine or the Rhone, the Saone or the Guadalquiver; not with high-spirited or high-witted men, whose souls, when mellowed with glorious wine, leap from their lips sublimated words swollen with wit, or thought brilliant and dazzling as the blood of the grape inspiring them no, but by himself: selfish and apart from witty men, or ennobling spirits, in the secret seclusion of a dirty little back-room, and on corn-whiskey-these only, communing in affectionate brotherhood, the son of Virginia and the spirits of old Kentucky! Why, fellow-citizens, as the Governor of the State, he refused to sign the gallon-law until he had tested, by experiment, that a gallon would do him all day! "Now I will admit, fellow-citizens, that sometimes, when in the enjoyment of social communion with gentlemen, I am made merry with these, and the rich wines of glorious France. It is then I enjoy the romance of life. Imagination stimulated with the juice of the grape, gave to the world the Song of Solomon, and the Psalms of that old poet of the Lordglorious old David. "The immortal verse of wandering old Homer, the blind son of Scio's isle, was the inspiration of Samian wine, and good old Noah, too, would have sung some good and merry song, from the inspiration of the juice of the vine he planted, but having to wait so long, his thirst, like the Democratic nominee's here, became so great, that he was tempted to drink too deeply, and got too drunk to sing; and this, I fancy, is the true reason why this distinguished gentleman never sings. "Perhaps there is no music in his soul. The glug-glug-glug of his jug, as he tilts and pours from its reluctant mouth the corn-juice so loved of his soul, is all the music dear to his ear, unless it be the same glug-glug-glug-as it disappears down his rapacious throat. Now, fellow-citizens, during this ardent campaign, which has been so fatiguing, I have only been drunk once. Over in Simpson County I was compelled to sleep in the same bed with this distinguished nominee this delight of the Democracythis wonderful exponent of the principles and practices of the unwashed Democracy and in the morning I found myself drunk on corn whiskey; I had lain too close to this soaked mass of Democracy, and was drunk from absorption." This was more than the Governor could stand, and, amidst the shouts and laughter of the assembled multitude, he left the stand, and declined to meet again, before the people, the young Ajax-Telamon of the Whig party. CORWIN'S REPLY TO MCCRARY. tician, was born in Kentucky in 1794, died at Wash- savages were painted, whether red, black, or blue, or whether all were blended on their barbarian faces. Further, according to his views of the subject, before we vote money to make a road, we must know and approve of what General Harrison thought, said, and did, at the battle of Tippecanoe. Again, upon this process of reasoning, we must inquire where a General should 50, Secretary of the Treasury 1850-53, and Minister to be when a battle begins, especially in the Mexico in 1862. Mr. Corwin was one of the few natural night, and what his position during the orators who have risen without the advantages of fight, and where he should be found when liberal education to the highest honors. His intellect it is over; and particularly how a Kenwas keen and analytical, his power of statement masterly, tuckian behaves himself when he hears and his command of the lighter weapons of ridicule and an Indian war-whoop in day or night. satire unrivalled among his contemporaries. His And, after settling all these puzzling prospeeches in political campaigns drew great crowds, who positions, still we must fully understand were alternately kindled by his soaring flights of elo-how and by whom the battle of the quence and convulsed by his humorous sallies, which were set off by a facial expression so mobile and irresistibly comic, that it was often remarked that when Tom Corwin took to politics, the stage lost a great comic actor. His colloquial powers were brilliant, and he was the centre of a throng of amused and eager listeners in every company where he was present. The following is extracted from Mr. Corwin's im promptu speech in reply to General Crary of Michigan, a pompous little militia general, who had attacked fame of General W. H. Harrison, of Ohio (elected the in Congress the military Judgment and well-won same year President of the United States.) If the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Pickens], and the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Parris], who consider the Cumberland road a work of mere sectional advantage to a very small portion of the people, have attended to the sage disquisitions of the gentleman from Michigan on the art of war, they must now either come to the conclusion that almost the whole of the gentleman's speech is what oldfashioned people would call a "non sequitur," or else that this road connects itself with not merely the military defenses of the Union, but is interwoven most intimately with the progress of science, and especially that most difficult of all sciences, the proper application of strategy to the exigencies of barbarian warfare. It will be seen that the farseeing sagacity and long reaching understanding of the gentleman from Michigan has discovered that, before we can vote with a clear conscience on the instructions proposed, we must be well informed as to the number of Indians who fought at the battle of Tippecanoe, in 1811; how these Thames was fought, and in what manner it then and there became our troops, regular and militia, to conduct themselves. Sir, it must be obvious that if these topics are germain to the subject, then does the Cumberland road encompass all the interests and all the subjects that touch the rights, duties, and destinies of the civilized world; and I hope we shall hear no more from Southern gentlemen of the narrow, sectional, or unconstitutional, character of the proposed measure. That branch of the subject is, I hope, forever quieted, perhaps unintentionally, by the gentleman from Michigan. His military criticism, if it has not answered the purposes intended, has at least, in this way, done some service to the Cumberland road. And if my poor halting comprehension has not blundered, in pursuing the soaring upward flight of my friend from Michigan, he has in this discussion written a new chapter in the "regula philosophandi," and made not ourselves only, but the whole world his debtors in gratitude, by overturning the old worn-out principles of the "inductive system.' Mr. Speaker, there have been many and ponderous volumes written, and various unctuous discourses delivered, on the doctrine of "association." Dugald Stewart, a Scotch gentleman of no mean pretensions in his day, thought much and wrote much concerning that principle in mental philosophy; and Brown, another of the same school, but of later date, has also written and said much on the subject. This latter gentleman, I think, calls it "suggestion," but never, I venture to say, did any metaphysician, pushing his researches furthest and deepest into that occult science, dream that would come to pass which we have discovered and clearly developed that is, that two subjects so unlike as an appropriation to a road in 1840, and the tactics proper in Indian war in 1811 were not merely akin, but actually, identically, the same. what I have to say, as coming from an Such as becomes comrades free, occur to every one that we, to whom these questions are submitted and these criticisms are addressed, being all colonels at least, and most of us, like the gentleman himself, brigadiers, are, of all conceivable tribunals, best qualified to decide any nice point connected with military science. I hope the House will not be alarmed by an impression that I am Mr. Speaker, this discussion, I should about to discuss one or the other of think, if not absolutely absurd and utterly the military questions now before us ridiculous, which my respect for the at length, but I wish to submit a regentleman from Michigan and the Ameri- mark or two, by way of preparing us can Congress will not allow me to suppose, for a proper appreciation of the merits has elicited another trait in the American of the discourse we have heard. I trust, character which has been the subject of as we are all brother officers, that the great admiration with intelligent travelers gentleman from Michigan and the two from the old world. Foreigners have hundred and forty colonels or generals admired the ease with which we Yankees, of this honorable House, will receive as they call us, can turn our hands to any business or pursuit, public or private; and this has been brought forward by our own people as a proof that man, in this great and free republic is a being very far superior to the same animal in other parts of the globe less favored than ours. A proof of the most convincing character of this truth, so flattering to our national pride, is exhibited before our eyes in the gentleman from Michigan delivering to the world a grave lecture on the campaigns of General Harrison, including a variety of very interesting military events in the years 1811, 1812, and 1813. In all other countries, and in all former times, before now, a gentleman who would either speak or be listened to, on the subject of war, involving subtle criticisms on strategy, and careful reviews of marches, sieges, battles, regular and casual, and irregular onslaughts, would be required to show, first, that he had studied much, investigated fully, and digested well, the science and history of his subject. But here, sir, no such painful preparation is required; witness the gentleman from Michigan. He has announced to the House that he is a militia general on the peace establishment. That he is a lawyer we know, tolerably well read in Tidd's practice and Espinasse's Nisi Prius. These studies, so happily adapted to the subject of war, with an appointment in the militia in time of peace, furnish him at once with all the knowledge necessary to discourse to us, as from high authority, upon all the mysteries in the "trade of death." Again, Mr. Speaker, it must re Sir, we all know the military studies of the gentleman from Michigan before he was promoted. I take it to be beyond a reasonable doubt, that he had perused with great care the title-page of "Baron Steuben." Nay, I go further; as the gentleman has incidentally assured us he is prone to look into musty and neglected volumes, I venture to assert, without vouching the fact from personal knowledge, that he has prosecuted his searches so far as to be able to know, that the rear rank stands right behind the front. This, I think, is fairly inferable from what I understand him to say of the two lines of encampment at Tippecanoe. Thus we see, Mr. Speaker, that the gentleman from Michigan, so far as study can give us knowledge of a subject, comes before us with claims of great profundity. But this is a subject which, of all others, requires the aid of actual experience to make us wise. Now the gentleman from Michigan, being a militia general, as he has told us, his brother officers, in a simple statement has revealed the glorious history of toils, privations, sacrifices, and bloody scenes, through which we know, from experience and observation, a militia officer in time of peace is sure to pass. We all, in fancy, now see the gentleman from Michigan in that most dangerous and glorious event in the life of a militia |