Here is a steel die with an elegant pyramidal pattern; the half of a watch-key. We see the inch of metal stamped; and then another inch, for the other half: and then the filing and snipping of the edges; and then the laying in of the solder inside; and the binding together of the two halves with wire; and the repose on the bed of wire on the pumice-stone, to be broiled red-hot; and the neat cleaning when cool; the polishing, and the leaving certain parts of the pattern dead, while others are burnished; and the firing of the steel cylinder at the point, and the turning of the rims. All this for a watch-key! But, we are shown another, which does not look like anything very studied; and we are told, and are at once convinced, that it consists of no less than thirteen parts. Other keys, which look more fanciful, consist of ten, eight, or seven. None are the simple affair that a novice would suppose, now that we require the convenience of being able to wind up our watches without twisting the chain or ribbon with every turn of the key. But we must leave these niceties; the little pistols, the deers feet, the bugle-horns, and all the dainty fancies embodied in watch-keys and knick-knacks. Here, as elsewhere, every atom is saved, of sweeping and wash; and we now find ourselves, writer and readers, like the materials of which we have been speaking, brought back, after all these various processes, to the refinery from which we set out. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[21] BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. BOOK X.-INITIAL CHAPTER. It is observed by a very pleasant writer--read now-a-days only by the brave pertinacious few who still struggle hard to rescue from the House of Pluto the souls of departed authors, jostled and chased as those souls are by the noisy footsteps of the living--it is observed by the admirable Charron, that "judgment and wisdom is not only the best, but the happiest portion God Almighty hath distributed amongst men; for though this distribution be made with a very uneven hand, yet nobody thinks himself stinted or ill-dealt with, but he that hath never so little is contented in _this_ respect."[22]