At length, a bailiff who had some private pique against him, to act as an additional stimulant, undertook the dangerous enterprize--succeeded in dogging him to his retreat, and on his attempting to snatch a pistol to defend himself, shot him through the head, and put an end to the career of a real Irish Dare-Devil. A. M’C. * * * * * PERVERSE CONDUCT OF MAN.--Among the many properties of human nature which almost exceed comprehension, comes the parsimony of the rich and the extravagance of the poor. Some rich men spare to-day, as if they feared starving tomorrow, and the indigent often consume in an hour what they may feel the want of for a week. These properties are the more unaccountable, because parsimony is chiefly found to predominate in aged people, who may expect death every day, and extravagance chiefly in the young, who may reasonably hope to live many years; as if old people hoard money because they cannot want it, and young ones throw it away because it is necessary to their subsistence. * * * * * FRIENDS AND ENEMIES.--While we value the praise of our friends, we should not despise the censures of our enemies; as from the malice of the latter we frequently learn our faults, which the partiality of the former led them to overlook or conceal. * * * * * GHOSTS EVERYWHERE.--Could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one, but could not, though he went to Cock-lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish doctor! Did he never, with the mind’s eye, as well as with the body’s, look round him into that full tide of human life he so loved? did he never so much as look into himself? The good doctor was a ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well nigh a million of ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Sweep away the illusion of time; compress the three-score years into three minutes: what else was he--what else are we? Are we not spirits, shaped into a body, into an appearance, and that fade away again into air and invisibility? This is no metaphor; it is a simple scientific _fact_: we start out of nothingness, take figure, and are apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is eternity; and to eternity minutes are as years and æons. Where now is Alexander of Macedon?--does the steel host that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela remain behind him: or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed goblins must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow retreats and Austerlitz campaigns--was it all other than the veriest spectre-hunt, which has now, with its howling tumult that made night hideous, flitted away? Ghosts!--there are nigh a thousand millions walking the earth openly at