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down as often as he got on his legs. In all the sulkiness of a fuddled man, he resolved to go away; but he discovered that his hat had gone before him, and suddenly finding a pause and a subject for his oratory, he exclaimed, "Gentlemen, I came here to emancipate you, and, d-n you, you have stolen my hat."

A propos to university graduations: when the present Duke of Gloucester took his degree, his father, who was at Cambridge to witness the ceremony, was also complimented with an honorary doctorate.

The opportunity was seized

upon by the professors to bring into the speeches (in which they introduce their children, the new graduates) an appropriate compliment to their illustrious guest. Of this the royal visitor was duly warned; and as it was supposed that he might not have recently "rubbed up his Latin," as Queen Elizabeth phrased it, he was directed to be upon the alert, and whenever he caught the word "principes," to infer a compliment and bow accordingly. With the professors of divinity and of law, things passed as had been pre-arranged, but Sir I. P., the Professor of Physic, was "ill at

these numbers," and too indolent to compose a speech especially for the occasion; so away he went with the old humdrum string of common-places, touching the rise, progress, dignity, and importance of the art of honestly committing manslaughter: he had not, however, travelled far, before he arrived at a sentence beginning with "Hippocrates et Galen, principes medicinæ," and down went the head of the old duke, as if Galen and Hippocrates had belonged to the House of Hanover.

PROVIDENCE.

ARISTOTLE maintained that the barbarians were created expressly to become slaves;—while La Fiteau, a jesuit, who wrote an history of the aboriginal Americans, believed that none but an atheist would dare to say they were creatures of God's forming. In the same spirit, a modern judge had the assurance to assert that slavery is not contrary to Christianity, because bishops voted for it. Providence is, under all systems, the "prête-nom" for the injustices of man.

Madame de Genlis (Dictionnaire des Etiquettes) says, "Providence has instilled an irresistible love of the marvellous into the heart of man, in order to predispose him for receiving without difficulty the celestial lights of faith." Unfortunately for the hypothesis, this capital contrivance has been as much at the service of the "devilish darkness" of a thousandand-one false religions, as of the "celestial lights" of catholicity. If Voltaire had uttered such a sentiment, it would have been said, and with justice, that his object was to bring religion into contempt, and to expose the roguery of priests, who trade upon the weakness of human nature. Men love the marvellous, because they are greedy of strong sensations; and, as this propensity hurries them into false tastes, so it predisposes them to superstition and false creeds. Protestantism has too little of the marvellous for the warm sensibilities of the south; and even Madame de Genlis's popery is not wonderful enough for the good people of Spain and Portugal.

TAKING A SHOWER BATH.

A GREAT Senator and statesman of the "Irish nation," being ordered a shower-bath lately, sent to the physician, who had prescribed the remedy, to know if he might soften the shock by wearing a brazen bason on his head. Oh, Cruikshank! what a subject! Bath, bason, statesman, and all!! And yet this being is a particle of the "collective wisdom" to which the destiny of a great nation is confided. Institutions which provide for human happiness can throw up no barricado to stem the influx of human absurdity: that which is made for man, and by man, is inevitably exposed to the imperfections both of the agent and object of all systems.

VIEWS OF THE CATHOLIC QUESTION.

"I SUPPOSE, .my lord," said the foreign valet of the Earl of P―, the other day, "I suppose we shall have the opera and the theatres open in England on Sundays, comme ailleurs, if the Catholic Bill passes ?"

"I have not heard that," replied his lordship, smiling; "and I should rather think the contrary."

"Diantre," replied the French emancipator, grinding his teeth, "Eh à quoi bon donc leur émancipation? qu'est ce que ça fait ?” *

"Let me send you some turbot, L-," said Mr. the other day at dinner, to a well known and respectable Irish catholic barrister. "Turbot," replied the papist counsellor, coldly, "O! I am emancipated—I have done with fish!” The Irish catholics hate fish; but are rigorous

"What, then, is the use of emancipation ?"

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