are obliged to find our own red tape, pens, ink, and stationery. As I was walking on the glacis with a friend, he pointed out to me at a window an enormous fat man smoking his pipe, and told me that he had been in the Dutch service under William of Orange; but not being a very good hand at a forced march, he had been reduced with others to half-pay. He had not been many months in retirement when he went to the palace, and requested an audience of his Majesty, and, when admitted, stated that he had come to request that his Majesty would be pleased to put him again upon full pay. His Majesty raised many objections, and stated his inability to comply with his request; upon which the corpulent officer exclaimed, embracing with his arms as far as he could, his enormous paunch, "My God! your Majesty, how can you imagine that I can fill this big belly of mine with only my half-pay?" This _argumentum ad ventrem_ so tickled King William, that he was put on _full pay unattached_, and has continued so ever since. The first instance I ever heard of a _man_ successfully pleading as ladies do at the Old Bailey. It is hard for a wanderer from childhood like me, to find out anything new or interesting. I have travelled too much and have seen too much--I seldom now admire. I draw comparisons, and the comparison drawn between the object before my eyes, and that in my mind's eye, is unfortunately usually in favour of the latter. He who hath visited so many climes, mingled with so many nations, attempted so many languages, and who has hardly anything left but the North Pole or the crater of Vesuvius to choose between; if he still longs for something new, may well cavil at the pleasures of memory as a mere song. In proportion as the memory is retentive, so is decreased one of the greatest charms of existence-- novelty. To him who hath seen much, there is little left but comparison, and are not comparisons universally odious? Not that I complain, for I have a resource--I can fly to imagination--quit this every-day world, and in the region of fiction create new scenes and changes, and people these with new beings. Moreover, there is still endless variety, endless amusement, and food for study and contemplation, in our own species. In all countries still the same, yet ever varying:-- "The proper study of mankind is man." From which, I presume, we are to infer that it is time thrown away to study woman. At the same party in which the conversation was raised relative to diplomacy, a person with whom I was, until that day, wholly unacquainted, was sitting by me, and as it happened, the name of one with whom I had long been on terms of intimacy was mentioned. "Do you know him?" said my neighbour, with a very peculiar expression. I replied that I had occasionally met him, for I thought there was something coming forward. "Well, all I can say is, that he is rather a strange person." "Indeed!" replied I; "how do you mean?"