submit it to the reader whether our correspondent is not excusable for the tardy fulfilment of a promise in which they were interested: 'I'VE had the tooth-ache, DIEDRICH, and have taken All sorts of extracts, essences, and lotions; Have held on blisters, till my jaws were baking, Of mustard, vinegar, and other notions; And for about a week, at midnight waking, Have drank raw fourth-proof brandy, in such portions, (Mixed with quinines, valerians, and morphines,) 'Twould put a dozen stout men in their coffins.' 'M.'s curt notelet is impertinent and ungentleman-like. His article was a mere _ébauche_, and very indifferent at that. The _nuclei_ of his associations were objects of the very smallest kind, and the language was kept down to a sympathetic degradation and due correspondence with the thoughts. The article was 'respectfully declined,' and in the manner prescribed by its author; and for this we are berated in no measured terms. 'Go to; you are a fishmonger.' * * * THE '_Lines to Old Ocean_' possess a kind of latent rough-and-tumble sublimity, not unlike a good borrowed thought smothered in windy words by JOHN NEAL. But we like DICKENS'S prose picture of 'the main' much better: 'The sea never knows what to do with itself. It hasn't got no employment for its mind, and is always in a state of vacancy. Like them polar bears in the wild-beast shows, as is constantly a-nodding their heads from side to side, it never _can_ be quiet.' This is at least '_clear_ to the meanest capacity.' * * * IT is said of RICHTER, that his foremost thought about a wife was, that she should be able to 'cook him something good.' Our Port-Chester epigrammatist seems to have a taste for the fragile in his estimate of the sex: 'LOVELY woman's a flower, so when you address her, If you wish to retain, I advise you to press her.'