"If you'd ameliorate our life, Let each select from them a wife; Good Captain Reece, that worthy man, "My daughter, that enchanting gurl, "But what are dukes and viscounts to "I have a widow'd mother who The captain saw the dame that day— "Well, well, the chaplain I will seek, The sisters, cousins, aunts, and niece, WILLIAM S. GILBERT. MR. MOLONY'S ACCOUNT OF THE BALL GIVEN TO THE NEPAULESE AMBASSADOR BY OH will ye choose to hear the news? To the Naypaulase ambassador. At which I've worn a pump, and I Must here relate the splendthor great Of th' Oriental Company. These men of sinse dispoised expinse, To fête these black Achilleses. "We'll show the blacks," says they, “Almack's, And take the rooms at Willis's." With flags and shawls, for these Nepauls, They hung the rooms of Willis up, And Jullien's band it tuck its stand And when the coort was tired of spoort, Where lashins of good dhrink there was! At ten, before the ball-room door His moighty Excellency was; He smoiled and bow'd to all the crowd- And bade the dhrums to thump; and he The welcome of his Company. And bright the oyes you saw there, was; This Gineral great then tuck his sate, With all the other ginerals All bleezed with precious minerals); The squeezin' and the pushin' was. O Pat, such girls, such jukes and earls, Just think of Tim, and fancy him Amidst the hoigh gentilitee! And I reckonized, with much surprise, There was Baroness Brunow, that look'd And Baroness Rehausen there, There was Lord Fingall and his ladies all, I wondther how he could stuff her in. there; And the widow Macrae, and Lord A. And the marchioness of Sligo there. Yes, jukes and earls, and diamonds and pearls, And pretty girls, was spoorting there; Behind the windies, coorting there. There was Lord De L'Huys, and the Porty- And I'd like to hear the pipers blow, geese Ministher and his lady there; And shake a fut with Fanny there! NOTES EXPLANATORY AND CORROBORATIVE. fortunes. Robert Burns. Page 3.-HOME, SWEET HOME!-The following when his wife had been fretting over their misadditional verses to the song of "Home, Sweet Home!" Mr. Payne affixed to the sheet music, and presented them to Mrs. Bates in London, a relative of his, and the wife of a rich banker: And both, as we think of Columbia, exclaim, 66 Home, home, sweet, sweet home! There's no place like home! There's no place like home!" -Life and Writings of John Howard Payne, 4to, Albany, 1875. Page 5.-THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT.The house of William Burns was the scene of this fine, devout, and tranquil drama, and William himself was the saint, the father, and the husband who gives life and sentiment to the whole. "Robert had frequently remarked to me," says Gilbert Burns, "that he thought there was something peculiarly venerable in the phrase, Let us worship God used by a decent, sober head of a family, introducing family worship." To this sentiment of the author the world is indebted for the "Cotter's Saturday Night." He owed some little, however, of the inspiration to Fergusson's "Farmer's Ingle," a poem of great merit. -Burns's Poetical Works, Svo ed., Philada. Page 9.-MATRIMONIAL HAPPINESS. - Lapraik was a very worthy facetious old fellow, late of Dalfram near Muirkirk, which little property he was obliged to sell in consequence of some connection as security for some persons concerned in that villainous bubble, The Ayr Bank." He has often told me that he composed this song one day The Page 12.-THE MARINER'S WIFE.-This most felicitous song is better known as There's nae Luck about the House." It first appeared on the streets about the middle of the last century, and was included in Herd's Collection, 1776. authorship is a matter of doubt. A copy of it, like a first draught, was found among the papers of William Julius Mickle, and the song has hence been believed to be his, notwithstanding that he did not include it in his own works. On the other hand, there has been some plausible argument to show that it must have been the work of a Mrs. Jane Adams, who kept a school at Crawford's Dyke, near Greenock; it is not, however, included in her volume of Miscellany Poems, published as early as 1734. Jane Adams gave Shakespearian readings to her pupils, and so admired Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe that she walked to London to see the author. Toward the close of her life she became a wandering beggar, died in the poorhouse of Glasgow on April 3, 1765, and was "buried at the house expense."-Notes and Queries, Third Series, vol. x. Notwithstanding the weighty authority of Notes and Queries, I am inclined to ascribe its authorship to Jean Adam (not Jane Adams). Mickle never lived near a scaport, and never wrote anything as good as this poem. The remarkable statement that the poem does not appear in any of the published works of either claimant is, as far as it goes, an argument in favor of Miss Adam. She was poor, and probably published but one edition of her poems, which had a sale so small that the industrious Allibone does not mention her name in his Dictionary of Authors, while the scholarly translator of the Lusiad published many volumes of poems, some of which ran into several editions; and the fact that he never included "The Mariner's Wife" in any of them should determine the question of its authorship in her favor. Page 13.-THE EXILE TO HIS WIFE.-Joseph Brennan (b. 1829, d. 1857) was a native of the north of Ireland. He joined the Young I-clan i party in 1818, and was one of the conductors of |