At present watches are frequently made not thicker than a crown piece, and yet perform their functions with exactness; nay, there are some with perfect works, compressed into a smaller compass than a shilling! A friend of the writer's saw one, not long since, set in a ring, the hands and figures being composed of brilliants, upon a dial of blue enamel; and at the recent exhibition one filled the place usually occupied by a seal at the end of a pencil-case, and another appeared as an appendage to a lady's bracelet. There was also a large silver watch, such as mariners are fond of wearing, immersed in a vase of water, and yet impervious to any ill effects. Our subject is one which grows under our hands, and we might go on _ad libitum_ describing their different idiosyncracies; for watches, like individuals, have their several temperaments and ways of going. We have all met with _fast watches_ and slow ones, and some (a disposition they are apt to contract from their wearers) are very irregular--varieties of character, which so puzzled their first owner, the Emperor Charles V., who amused himself on his retirement to the monastery of St. John, by endeavoring to keep in order these by-gone companions of his dinner-table, that they produced a reflection on the absurdity of his attempts to keep together the powers of Europe, when even these little pieces of mechanism baffled him. * * * * * American women have less courtesy than any others in the world. A thousand rules of deference are established by concessions of the other sex, which they enforce with ungracious arrogance, as if they were but recognitions of "inalienable rights." This is their offence to all well-bred Europeans.--_Correspondent London Morning Post._ FOOTNOTES: [19] Sickerness--steady, secure. From Sharpe's Magazine. FÊTE DAYS AT ST. PETERSBURG. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF ALEXANDER DUMAS BY JANE STRICKLAND. New-Year's day and the Benediction of the Waters provide the inhabitants of St. Petersburg with two great national festivals, in which all classes share in the pleasures and devotion of the sovereign. The first is an imperial fête, the second an imposing religious ceremony. On New-Year's day, in virtue of an old and touching custom by which the Emperor and Empress of Russia are designated by their poorest subjects Father and Mother, these potentates at the commencement of the year receive their children as their own invited guests. Their family being too vast to invite by name, they adopt the simple but efficacious plan of scattering about the streets of their capital twenty-five thousand cards of invitation, indicative that they will be at home to such a number of their children. These cards bear no address, but they give admission to the bearers to the splendid saloons of the Winter Palace without the slightest distinction of rank or wealth.