There are some persons whose every look, feature, expression, and tone of voice conduce to comic effects; and many an actor has owed his success more to these than to any mental qualities or dispositions corresponding with them; or has even been successful in spite of these latter being in no degree adapted to the profession which circumstances have induced him to adopt. In proof of this fact, comic actors are quite as often dull and solemn people, as droll ones, in private life. The most remarkable instance of a face being a fortune, in this respect, is our own Liston. If he had not possessed a comic countenance, nothing could have prevented him from being a tragic actor, or have made him a comic one; for it is well understood that all his inclinations led him in that direction. The truth is, that Liston's style of acting is too chaste and natural to have been so universally popular as it is, but for the irresistible drollery of his features--which are the finest farce that ever was written. Now in this respect, as in all others, Potier differs from his contemporaries. His voice, his face, and his person altogether, are in themselves antidotes to mirth, and might almost be supposed to set it at defiance. He might play the _Apothecary_, in _Romeo and Juliet_, or the _Anatomie Vivante_, without painting for them--as Stephen Kemble used to play their antithesis, _Falstaff_, without stuffing. And yet, instead of this seeming contradiction counteracting the essentially comic turn of his mind, the latter is so completely paramount, that it changes every thing within its reach to its own complexion.--_New Monthly Magazine._ * * * * * FRAGMENT OF THE NARRATIVE OF A STUDENT AT LAW. This is a portion of what the writer calls "a series of the most singular and mysterious events," commenced January 29,1791. It is perhaps a romance of _real life_, although there is something in it beyond probability--but nothing impossible. Our _student_ is at first almost _cut_ by an acquaintance for neglecting to notice him in the park, when in fact he was not in the park: the hall butler of the Temple proves by the parchment that he dined there four days of term, when he was sick, and some distance from town: next he is _cut_ by a second acquaintance for not recognising him at a masquerade: then a similar affair occurs with a beautiful girl in ----- square; at the Theatre; and on the Serpentine. He is next recognised by an old friend at a gaming-table, who mentions the sale of an estate there for his last stake, which property our student really had sold, though under different circumstances; and then rejected by his _chère amie_ for a slight which he never offered. The last event or link of this mysterious chain is familiarly narrated as follows:--