A tailor had a son who was half-witted. The father was out one day, and the child, who was left in the house, after the manner of children, looked about him in quest of some mischief which he might perpetrate. A pair of elegant breeches, just completed by his father, and designed for the legs of a nobleman, hung suspended from the wall. The child made a figured pattern upon the amber silk with his finger, dipped at intervals in the ink-pot. The mother was the first to discover the transformation of the breeches, and, not regarding the alteration in the same light as did her child, caught up the yard-measure and administered a castigation to the culprit, sufficient to “stir up the stagnating juices, dissolve the precipitating salts, and purify the coagulating humours,” in at least one portion of the lad’s body. The youth, under the impression that high art is never appreciated at first sight, made himself scarce for some hours. The father, on his return, used every effort to obliterate the flowering of ink which his son had drawn over the amber breeches, but with only a limited degree of success--so limited, in fact, that the nobleman for whom they were destined utterly refused to invest his person in them, and they were returned on the tailor’s hands. The boy, towards evening, impelled by hunger, had returned home, and was soothing his injured feelings with bread and butter, when the father re-entered the house. In a moment the parental left hand had grasped the scruff of his neck, whilst the right hand dexterously completed the stirring up the stagnant juices, dissolving of precipitating salts, and purifying of coagulating humours with such success, that Dr. Paullini assures us the child grew up a miracle of discretion, and never after decorated articles of clothing other than his own pinafore. Under the heading of “Swollen Breasts,” the learned doctor gives us his ideas on the subject of schoolmasters and their titles. These remarks are sensible enough in their way, but hardly come under the heading he has selected for the chapter. Connected still more vaguely with swollen breasts is the commentary on some verses in the twenty-first chapter of St. John’s Gospel, which closes the section.