The Empress Catherine of Russia having sent, as a present to Voltaire, a small ivory box made by her own hands, the poet induced his niece to instruct him in the art of knitting stockings; and he had actually half finished a pair, of white silk, when he became completely tired. Unfinished as the stockings were, however, he sent them to her Majesty, accompanied by a charmingly gallant poetical epistle, in which he told her that, "As she had presented him with a piece of man's workmanship made by a woman, he had thought it his duty to crave her acceptance, in return, of a piece of woman's work from the hands of a man."--When Constantia Phillips was in a state of distress, she took a small shop near Westminster Hall, and sold books, some of which were of her own writing. During this time, an apothecary who had attended her once when she was ill, came to her and requested payment of his bill. She pleaded her poverty; but he still continued to press her, and urged as a reason for his urgency, that he had saved her life. "You have," said Constantia, "you have indeed done so: I acknowledge it; and, in return, here is my life"--handing him at the same time the two volumes of her "Memoirs," and begging that he would now take _her life_ in discharge of his demand. * * * * * CHATTERTON'S PROFIT AND LOSS RECKONING. Chatterton, the marvellous boy, wrote a political essay for the _North Briton_, Wilkes's journal; but, though accepted, the essay was not printed, in consequence of the death of the Lord Mayor, Chatterton's patron. The youthful patriot thus calculated the results of the suppression of his essay, which had begun by a splendid flourish about "a spirited people freeing themselves from insupportable slavery:" "Lost, by the Lord Mayor's death, in this essay, £ 1 11 6 Gained in elegies, £ 2 2 0 Do. in essays, 3 3 0 -------- 5 5 0 ---------- Am glad he is dead by £ 3 13 6" * * * * * LOCKE'S REBUKE OF THE CARD-PLAYING LORDS.