can no more shelter a salmon--what are the sports, and games, and pastimes of the parishioners--what books they read, if any--if the punishment of the stocks be obsolete--or the stang--or the jougs--if the bowels of the people yearn after strange doctrine--if the parish has produced any good or great murderer, incendiary, or other criminal. In short, why might not the history of each of the twenty or thirty thousand parishes of Great Britain--we speak at random--be each a history of human nature, at once entertaining and instructive? How infinitely better such books than pamphlets on political economy, for example, now encumbering the whole land! Nay, even than single sermons, or bundles of sermons, all like so many sticks--strong when tied all together, but when taken separately, weak and frush. We have no great opinion of county histories in general, though we believe there are some goodish ones, from which we purpose, ere long, to construct some superior articles. A county history, to be worth much, should run from sixty to six hundred volumes. No library could well stand that for many years. But a judicious selection might be made from the thirty thousand parish histories--that would afford charming reading to the largest family during the longest nights--in the intervals between the Scotch Novels. Form the circle round the fire--when winter crimps and freezes--or round the open bow-window, now that summer roasts and broils, and get her whose voice is like a silver bell to read it up, right on from beginning to end, only skipping a few lists of names now and then, and we pledge our credit on the prediction, that you will be delighted as on a summer ramble, now in sunlight and now in moonlight, over hill and dale, adorned with towers, turrets, pinnacles of halls and churches, and the low roofs,--blue or brown, slated or strawed.-- "Of huts where poor men lie!" _Blackwood's Magazine._ * * * * * THE GATHERER. "A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles." SHAKSPEARE. * * * * * IAMBICS. Iambe was a servant-maid of Metanira, wife of Celeus, king of Eleusis, who tried to exhilarate Ceres when she travelled over Attica in quest of her daughter Proserpine. From the jokes and stories which she made use of, free and satirical verses have been called _iambics_.--_Apollod_, i._c_. 5. HALBERT. * * * * * BISHOP AND NEGUS. Two dustmen were lately disputing the difference between _bishop_ and _negus_. "Don't you know?" said one of them; "I vonders at your ignorance-- vy bishop is made all vine vithout no vater vatsomever; vereas negus is made with vine and vater mixed--that's the difference, to be sure." * * * * * POLITE EVIDENCE.