After some delay, the day is fixed on which the caravan is to leave Cairo. He writes to his friends and to the African Association in great spirits; talks of cutting the continent across, and raises the expectations of his employers to a high pitch;--the very next letters from Cairo brought the melancholy intelligence of his death. It seems he was seized with a bilious complaint, for which he administered a strong solution of vitriolic acid, so powerful as to produce violent and burning pains, that threatened to be fatal unless immediate relief could be procured, which was attempted to be got by a powerful dose of tartar emetic. His death happened about the end of December, 1788, in the thirty-eighth year of his age. Thus perished, in the vigour of manhood, the first victim, in modern times, to African discovery. Too many, alas! have since shared the same fate in pursuit of the same object; which, so far from deterring, seems only to stimulate others, and produce fresh candidates for fame to tread the same perilous path.--_Quarterly Review--Article "Ledyard's Travels."_ [8] Sir James Hall of Douglass, Bart., the father of Captain Basil Hall, R.N., and, till lately, President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. * * * * * THE GATHERER. "A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles." SHAKSPEARE. * * * * * LARGE BONNETS. (_For the Mirror_.) The immense large bonnets which decorate the ladies of the present day are truly "_over the borders_," and seem to keep pace with the "_march of intellect_." A garden seems to bloom on their exterior, and roses and lilies vie with each other above and below, for underneath the living roses flourish on the cheeks of the fair. Perhaps in a few years small bonnets will usurp the day, for "Extremes produce extremes, extremes avoid, Extremes without extremes are not enjoyed." Some years ago, when straw bonnets were all the rage, the following _pithy_ lines were composed by M. P. Andrewes, Esq.:-- "Some ladies' heads appear like stubble fields; Who now of threaten'd famine dare complain, When every female forehead teems with grain? See how the _wheat-sheaves_ nod amid the plumes! Our barns are now transferr'd to drawing-rooms, And husbands who indulge in active lives, To fill their _granaries_ may _thrash their wives_." P.T.W. Our facetious correspondent does not notice the _golden oats_; but doubtless he recollects the anecdote of the horse mistaking a lady's hat with a tuft of oats for a moving manger stocked with his natural provender.--ED. * * * * * _Printed and Published by J. LIMBIRD, 143, Strand, London; sold by ERNEST FLEISCHER, 626, New Market, Leipsic, and by all Newsmen and booksellers._ End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, by Various