THE Tories vow the Whigs are black as night, And boast that they are only blessed with light. Peel's politics to both sides so incline, He may be called the _equinoctial line_. CCLXXXVI.--THE WORST OF ALL CRIMES. AN old offender being asked whether he had committed all the crimes laid to his charge, answered, "I have done still worse! I suffered myself to be apprehended." CCLXXXVII.--A PHENOMENON ACCOUNTED FOR. DR. BYRON, of Manchester, eminent for his promptitude at an epigram, being once asked how it could happen that a lady rather stricken in years looked so much better in an evening than a morning, thus replied:-- "Ancient Phyllis has young graces, 'Tis a strange thing, but a true one. Shall I tell you how? She herself makes her own faces, And each morning wears a new one! _Where's the wonder now_?" CCLXXXVIII.--BRIGHT AND SHARP. A LITTLE boy having been much praised for his quickness of reply, a gentleman present observed, that when children were keen in their youth, they were generally stupid and dull when they were advanced in years, and _vice versa_. "What a _very sensible boy_, sir, must _you_ have been!" returned the child. CCLXXXIX.--A WOODMAN. A YOUNG man, boasting of his health and constitutional stamina, was asked to what he chiefly attributed so great a happiness. "To laying in a good foundation, to be sure. I make a point, sir, to eat a great _deal_ every morning."--"Then I presume, sir, you usually breakfast in a _timber-yard_," was the rejoinder. CCXC.--HUMAN HAPPINESS. A CAPTAIN in the navy, meeting a friend as he landed at Portsmouth, boasted that he had left his whole ship's company the _happiest_ fellows in the world. "How so?" asked his friend. "Why, I have just flogged seventeen, and they are happy it is over; and all the rest are happy that they have escaped." CCXCI.--MEASURE FOR MEASURE. A FELLOW stole Lord Chatham's large gouty shoes: his servant, not finding them, began to curse the thief. "Never mind," said his lordship, "all the harm I wish the rogue is, that the shoes may _fit him_!" CCXCII.--A DESERVED RETORT. A SPENDTHRIFT, who had nearly wasted all his patrimony, seeing an acquaintance in a coat not of the newest cut, told him that he thought it had been his great-grandfather's coat. "So it was," said the gentleman, "and I have also my great-grandfather's _lands_, which is more than you can say." CCXCIII.--A POETICAL SHAPE. WHEN Mr. Pope once dined at Lord Chesterfield's, some one observed that he should have known Pope was a great poet by his very shape; for it was _in and out_, like the lines of _a Pindaric ode_. CCXCIV.--A COMMON CASE. A SAILOR meeting an old acquaintance, whom the world had frowned upon a little, asked him where he lived? "Where I _live_," said he, "I don't know; but I _starve_ towards Wapping, and that way." CCXCV.--EPIGRAM.