The prompt withdrawal of his finger was scarcely a more natural movement than its transfer to his mouth, when he tasted oyster-juice for the first time, as the Chinaman in Elia's essay, having burnt his finger, first tasted cracklin. The savor was delicious,--he had made a great discovery; so he picked up the oyster, forced open the shells, banqueted upon the contents, and soon brought oyster-eating into fashion. Nothing, it is said, puzzled Bonaparte more than to meet an honest man of good sense; he did not know what to make of him. He would offer him money; if that failed, he would talk of glory, or promise him rank and power; but if all these temptations failed, he set him down for an idiot, or a half-mad dreamer. Conscience was a thing he could not understand. Rulhiere, who was at St. Petersburg in 1762, when Catherine caused her husband, Peter III., to be murdered, wrote a history of the transaction on his return to France, which was handed about in manuscript. The empress was informed of it, and endeavored to procure the destruction of the work. Madame Geoffrin was sent to Rulhiere to offer him a considerable bribe to throw it into the fire. He eloquently remonstrated that it would be a base and cowardly action, which honor and virtue forbade. She heard him patiently to the end, and then calmly replied, "What! isn't it enough?" Lord Orrery related as an unquestionable occurrence that Swift once commenced the service, when nobody except the clerk attended his church, with, "Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places." Mr. Theophilus Swift afterward discovered the anecdote in a jest-book which was published before his great kinsman was born. In Domenichi's Facetiae, and other old Italian books, there is this story of Dante. The famous poet, returning home one day out of the country, was overtaken by three gentlemen of Florence, his acquaintance; who, knowing how ready he was in his answers, they all three resolved, by way of proof, to make three successive attacks upon him in the following manner. The first said to him, "Good day, Master Dante;" the second, "Whence come you, Master Dante?" the third, "Are the waters deep, Master Dante?" To all of which, without once stopping his horse, or making the least pause, he answered thus: "Good day, and good year; From the Fair; To the very bottom." Not unlike this is a story of Henry IV. of France, who was overtaken upon the road by a clergyman that was posting to court; the king, putting his head out of his coach, asked the man in his hasty way, "Whence come ye? Whither go ye? What want ye?" The clergyman, without any ceremony or hesitation, made answer: "From Blois; To Paris; A benefice." With which the king was so well pleased, he instantly granted his request. It is related of Raphael, that one day, after he had begun the Galatea, and was already well advanced with it, while he was absent a visitor called to see him. The scaffoldings were around the