_What is an Author?_--He is a man who weaves words into sentences; he dissects the works of his predecessors and contemporaries, and ingeniously dovetails the pieces together again, so that their real owners can scarcely recognise them. He is furnished with a pair of scissors and a pot of paste. He frequents the Chapter Coffee-house by day, and the Cider-Cellar by night. He ruralises at Hampstead or Holloway, and perhaps once a year steams it to Margate. He talks largely, and forms the nucleus of a knot of acquaintances, who look up to him as an oracle. He is always _going_ to set about some work of great importance; he writes a page, becomes out of humour with the subject, and begins another, which shares the same fate. His coat is something the worse for wear; his wife is the only person in the world who is blind to his transcendant abilities; and he has too much to do in cultivating his own genius, to descend to the minutias of his children's education. SUPERSTITION. In a little manual of piety, composed, in 1712, for the young ladies who were then pensioners at the monastery of St. Augustin, at Bruges, we have been surprised into frequent smiles by the scrupulous watchfulness with which the ghostly writer followed the lady-pensioners (though with pious fancy only) to the very sacred of sacreds! He was not contented with directing them concerning the prayers which he believed proper to be used when they assumed, or laid aside, their respective garments, but even directed them what to do before they attempted to close an eye on the softness of their pillows! Prayers are specified by this zealous pastor for the following curious occasions:-- In putting on your petticoat. In putting on your night-gown. In dressing your head. In putting on your manteau. In regard to the ceremony of laying aside these memorials of the weakness of Eve, our general mother, there is a prayer to be offered "whilst you undress yourself;" and the ladies are strictly enjoined, before they "get into bed, to take holy water." The writer concludes this part of his instructions by saying, "when you are in bed, write the name of Jesus on your forehead with your thumb!" CROMWELL.