There are many who delight to visit the police-offices for the sake of seeing those beings who appear there, of whom others only read: some of our readers may, perhaps, be bitten with a similar fancy; but, we warrant, that they will find the actual doings at Bow-street very different to what they had imagined; as Charles Mathews' _Sir Harry Skelton_ says, "There's nothing at all in it; people talk a great deal about it--but there's nothing in it, after all--nothing." It is not often that we look in at morning or evening sitting of the magistrates; we are content to have the police reports served up to us with our potted beef and buttered toast at breakfast; we enjoy them, although we feel convinced that many of them bear no more resemblance to the affairs they are founded on, than mock-turtle to calf's-head; still, like the soup, they are by far the most pleasant and palatable of the two.--_Every Night Book_. * * * * * THE CURRAL. The view in front was obstructed by a high ridge, of which we had nearly gained the highest point, when we left our horses, and running up a few yards of steep turf found ourselves all at once on the brink of the Curral. It is a huge valley, or rather crater, of immense depth, enclosed on all sides by a range of magnificent mountain precipices, the sides and summit of which are broken in every variety of buttress or pinnacle--now black and craggy and beetling--at other times spread with the richest green turf, and scattered with a profusion of the evergreen forest-trees, indigenous to the island; while far below, in the midst of all these horrors, smiles a fairy region of cultivation and fruitfulness, with a church and village, the white cabins of which seem half smothered in the luxuriance of their own vines and orchards. We gazed long and eagerly at the prospect. It is not easy to give an accurate notion of its peculiar character; and even painting would but ill assist, for one of the most striking features is the great and sudden _depth_ which you look down, the effect of which we know the pencil cannot at all convey. The side on which we stand, however, though steep, is not absolutely precipitous; on the contrary, the gradation of crag and projection, by which it descends to the bottom, is one of the finest things in the view. Close on our right a lofty peak presents its rocky face to the valley, to which it bears down in a magnificent mass, shouldering its way, as it seemed, half across it. The opposite sides appear more bare, precipitous, and lofty; and this last character is heightened by some white clouds that rest upon and conceal their summits.