Of course, the weather should be fine, to admit of this luxurious idleness. Let the blue-bosomed clouds be sailing along, like Peter Bell's boat; let the sunbeams be gilding the face of nature, and tinging the landscape with multiform hues; let the breezes be gentle, the spot retired, and the heart at ease. Now, go and stretch yourself on the grassy couch, while the branches of an aged tree shadow forth the imaged leaves around you. What a congenial situation for philosophy--under an old tree, on a sunny summer day! How much more becoming than the immortal tub of the sour-minded Diogenes? Who will be able to refrain from philosophizing. I repeat it, beneath such an old tree? 'Tis at such times that the heart spontaneously unbends itself--that the fancy tranquillizes its thoughts--and that memory awakens her ----"treasured pictures of a thousand scenes." Place the palms of your hands beneath your pole, and survey the skies!--calm, beautifully unconscious! By-gone times, and by-gone friends--the thousand commingling scenes of varied life--how they all recur to you now! You fancy you could lie beneath the tree for eternity--so soothing is the employment of doing nothing--or field philosophy! Yet, to speak correctly, you are doing a great deal; your imagination is flying in all directions--from the death of Caesar to the last cup of Congou that you took with a regretted friend. What a mystery your existence is! The world turns round as gently as ever; the flowers bud into life; and the winter nips them. Man lives, thinks, and dies. All very wondrous truisms. Well, after a half-hour--or perchance more--you will be gradually relapsing into a state of soporific nothing-at-all-ness (the best word I can find to express my meaning.) May there be some clear little stream just behind you, laughing along its idle way;--some chirping birds, singing their roundelay--some buzzing flies--you will then be lulled into doziness. However, with or without the purling murmur of the brook--the joyous warbling of the birds--the busy bustling flies--you will not be able to resist the dozing temptations that will steal over you. Your eyes will close gently as flower-leaflets--your thoughts die away in a heavenly confusion--and then you doze!--neither sleeping nor waking, but absolved in delicious dreaminess! O, for such a doze!--_Monthly Magazine_. * * * * * THE SELECTOR, AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS. * * * * * THE CHINESE ALMANAC.