* * * * * Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. “You drunken, lazy scoundrel!” cried a shrill and well-known voice, “you have been asleep these two hours:” and here he received another terrific box on the ear. It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the beautiful vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa. Nothing remained to corroborate his story, except the bladder of lake, and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches. “I wish,” said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, “that dreams were true;” and he went to work again at his portrait. * * * * * My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said that her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have been the only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion. BON-BON BY EDGAR ALLAN POE Quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac, Je suis plus savant que Balzac-- Plus sage que Pibrac; Mon bras seul faisant l’attaque De la nation cossaque, La mettroit au sac; De Charon je passerois le lac En dormant dans son bac; J’irois au fier Eac, Sans que mon cœur fit tic ni tac, Presenter du tabac. --_French Vaudeville._ That Pierre Bon-Bon was a _restaurateur_ of uncommon qualifications, no man who, during the reign of ----, frequented the little _café_ in the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre at Rouen, will, I imagine, feel himself at liberty to dispute. That Pierre Bon-Bon was, in an equal degree, skilled in the philosophy of that period is, I presume, still more especially undeniable. His _pâtés à la fois_ were beyond doubt immaculate; but what pen can do justice to his essays _sur la Nature_--his thoughts _sur l’Ame_--his observations _sur l’Esprit_? If his _omelettes_--if his _fricandeaux_ were inestimable, what _littérateur_ of that day would not have given twice as much for an “_Idée de Bon-Bon_” as for all the trash of all the “_Idées_” of all the rest of the _savants_? Bon-Bon had ransacked libraries which no other man had ransacked--had read more than any other would have entertained a notion of reading--had understood more than any other would have conceived the possibility of understanding; and although, while he flourished, there were not wanting some authors at Rouen to assert “that his _dicta_ evinced neither the purity of the Academy, nor the depth of the Lyceum”--although, mark me, his doctrines were by no means very generally comprehended, still it did not follow that they were difficult of comprehension. It was, I think, on account of their self-evidency that many persons were led to consider them abstruse. It is to Bon-Bon--but let this go no further--it is to Bon-Bon that Kant himself is mainly indebted for his metaphysics. The former was indeed not a Platonist, nor strictly speaking an