THE EXPLOSIVE BOX. Sir Hussey Vivian was relating to Sir Robert Peel the failure of the Duke of Normandie’s experiment with a terrible self- explosive box, which he had buried in a mound at Woolwich, in the expectation that it would shortly blow up, but which still remains there, to the great terror of the neighbourhood, who are afraid to approach the spot where this destructive engine is interred. Sir Robert, on hearing the circumstance, declared that Lord John Russell had served him the same trick, by burying the corn-law question under the Treasury bench. No one knew at what moment it might explode, and blow them to ——. “The question,” he added, “now is—who will dig it out?” EXCLUSIVE INTELLIGENCE. (From OUR West-end and “The Observer’s” Correspondent.) We have every reason to believe, unless a very respectable authority, on whom we are in the habit of relying, has grievously imposed upon us, that a very illustrious personage has consulted a certain exalted individual as to whether a certain other person, no less exalted than the latter, but not so illustrious as the former, shall be employed in a certain approaching event, which at present is involved in the greatest uncertainty. Another individual, who is more dignified than the third personage above alluded to, but not nearly so illustrious as the first, and not half so exalted as the second, has nothing whatever to do with the matter above hinted at, and it is not at all probable that he will be ever in the smallest way mixed up with it. For this purpose we have cautiously abstained from giving his name, and indeed only allude to him that there may be no misapprehension on this very delicate subject. ANIMAL MAGNETISM. The Times gives a horrible description of some mesmeric experiments by a M. Delafontaine, by which a boy was deprived of all sensation. We suspect that some one has been operating upon the Poor Law Commissioners, for their total want of feeling is a mesmeric phenomenon. ON SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER, BART., not M.P. FOR LINCOLN. That Bulwer’s from fair Lincoln bann’d, Doth threaten evil days; For, having much waste time on hand, Alas! he’ll scribble plays. [pg 29] THE NEW HOUSE. “This is the House that Jack (Bull) built.” Once there lived, as old histories learnedly show, a Great sailor and shipbuilder, named MISTER NOAH, Who a hulk put together, so wondrous—no doubt of it— That all sorts of creatures could creep in and out of it. Things with heads, and without heads, things dumb, things loquacious, Things with tails, and things tail-less, things tame, and things pugnacious; Rats, lions, curs, geese, pigeons, toadies and donkeys, Bears, dormice, and snakes, tigers, jackals, and monkeys: In short, a collection so curious, that no man E’er since could with NOAH compare as a show-man At length, JOHNNY BULL, with that clever fat head of his, Design’d a much stranger and comical edifice, To be call’d his “NEW HOUSE”—a queer sort of menagerie