A great deal is said of a new company, whose object is to take advantage of a well-known fact in chemistry. It is known that diamonds can be resolved into charcoal, as well as that charcoal can be ultimately reduced to air; and a company is to be founded with the view of simply _reversing the process_. Instead of getting air from diamonds, their object will be to get diamonds from air; and in fact the chief promoters of it have generally drawn from that source the greater part of their capital. The whole sum for shares need not be paid up at once; but the Directors will be satisfied in the first instance with 10 per cent. on the whole sum to be raised from the adventurers. It is intended to declare a dividend at the earliest possible period, which will be directly the first diamond has been made by the new process. * * * * * CON. BY SIBTHORP AND STULTZ. Why are batteries and soldiers like the hands and feet of tailors?--Because the former make breaches (_breeches_), and the latter pass through them. * * * * * THE ROMANCE OF A TEACUP. SIP THE THIRD. GOS-SIP. That hour devoted to thy vesper "service"-- Dulcet exhilaration! glorious tea!-- I deem my happiest. Howsoe'er I swerve, as To mind or morals, elsewhere, over thee I am a perfect creature, quite impervious To care, or tribulation, or _ennui_-- In fact, I do agnize to thee an utter Devotion even to the bread and butter. The homely kettle hissing on the bar-- (Urns I detest, irrelevant pomposities)-- The world beyond the window-blinds, as far As I can thrust it--this defines what "cosset" is-- What woe that rhyme such scene of bliss must mar! But rhyme, alas! is one of my atrocities; In common with those bards who have the scratch Of writing, and are all right with Catnach. "How Nancy Sniggles was the village pride,-- How Will, her sweetheart, went to be a sailor; How much at parting Nancy Sniggles cried,-- And how she snubb'd her funny friend the tailor; How William boldly fought and bravely died; How Nancy Sniggles felt her senses fail her--" Then comes a sad _denouement_--now-a-days It is not virtue dominant that pays. Such tales, in this, the post-octavo age, Our novelists incontinently tells us-- Tales, wherein lovely heroines engage With highwaymen, good-looking rogues but callous, Who go on swimmingly till the last page, And then take poison to escape the gallows-- Tales, whose original refinement teaches The pride of eloquence in--dying speeches! What an apotheosis have we here! What equal laws th' awards of fame dispose! Capture a fort--assassinate a peer-- Alike be chronicled in startling prose-- Alike be dramatised--(how near Is clever crime to virtue!)--at Tussaud's Be grouped with all the criminals at large, From burglar Sheppard unto fiend Laffarge!