These considerations have induced us to give our most serious attention to the advancement and improvement of the art. We are confident that our researches in this line of literature have not been misapplied; and our readers will surely agree with us, when they reflect on the manifold utility of the study, when properly cultivated. There is so little variety in English Christian names, that, where friends are in the habit of using them, great mistakes must naturally take place. A surname, as Charles Surface observes, “is too formal to be registered in Love’s calendar.” A nickname avoids alike the ambiguity of one, and the stiffness of the other; it unites all the familiarity of the first with all the utility of the second. Besides this, the nickname is a brief description of its object: it saves a million of questions, and an hour of explanation: it is in itself a species of biography. Homer, when he gives to his Juno the nickname of “Bull-eyed,” expresses in a word what a modern rhymer would dilate into a canto. For the rescuing of nicknames from the obloquy into which they have fallen, we have collected a large assortment of them, which we are ready to dispose of to applicants at a very low price. We have in our stock appellations of every descriptions--the Classical, the Familiar, the Theatrical, the Absurd, the Complimentary, the Abusive, and the Composite. By an application at our publisher’s, new nicknames may be had at a moment’s notice. The wit and the blockhead, the sap and the idler, shall be fitted with denominations which shall be alike appropriate and flattering, so that they shall neither outrage propriety nor offend self-conceit. The dandy shall be suited with a name which shall bear no allusion to stays, and the coquette with one which shall in no way reflect upon rouge. In short, we have a collection of novelties adapted to both sexes, and proper for all ages. In one thing only is our stock deficient; and that, we are confident, will be supplied previous to the appearance of our second number. We have no doubt that some obligingly sarcastic associate will favour us with a new and an ingenious nickname for the _Etonian_. YES AND NO. “We came into the world like brother and brother, And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.” SHAKESPEARE. MR. LOZELL’S TREATISE ON THE ART OF SAYING “YES.” “He humbly answered ‘Yea! Bob.’” ANON. Our opinion is very much strengthened by the belief that many of our friends will assent to it, when we assert that no art requires in a greater degree the attention of a young man, on his entrance into life, than that of saying “Yes.” A man who deigns not to use this little word is a bulldog in society; he studies his own gratification rather than that of his friends, and of course accomplishes neither: in short, he deserves not to be called a civilized being, and is totally unworthy of the place which he holds in the creation.