Gipsies, or _fortune-tellers_, are constantly to be found in Bagley Wood; and many a gay Oxonian may be seen in the company of some wandering Egyptian beauty. So partial, indeed, are several of the young men of the university to the tawny tribe, that they are frequently observed in their _academicals_, lounging round the picturesque tents, having _their_ fortunes told; though, it must be remarked, their countenances usually evince a waggish incredulity on those occasions, and they appear much more amused with the novel scene around them than gratified with the favourable predictions of the wily Egyptians. The merry gipsies of Bagley Wood might well sing with _Herrick_ "Here we securely live, and eat The cream of meat; And keep eternal fires By which we sit, _and do divine_." G.W.N. * * * * * EATING "MUTTON COLD." (_For the Mirror_.) A correspondent in a late number asks for a solution of the expression, "eating mutton cold." If the following one is worth printing, it is much at your service and that of the readers of the MIRROR. I consider then that it has simply the same meaning as that of "coming a day after the fair." To come at the end of a feast when the various viands (always including mutton as being easy of digestion for dyspeptic people) were still warm, though cut pretty near to the bone, would, by most persons, particularly aldermanic "bodies," be considered sufficiently vexatious; how doubly annoying then must it be to come so late as to find the meats more than half cold, and, perhaps, but little of them left even in that anti-epicurean state! Whoever has been unfortunate enough to miss a fine fat haunch either of venison or mutton, which, smoking on the board, even Dr. Kitchiner would have pronounced fit for an emperor, cannot but enter deeply and feelingly into the disappointment of that guest who, arriving, through some misdate of the invitation card, on the day subsequent to the feast, finds but, _horribile dictu_, cold lean ham, cold pea-soup, cold potatoes, and finally, _cold mutton_. Goldsmith's idea certainly was that Burke was never able to say, in the words of the Roman adage, _in tempore veni quod rerum omnium est primum_; but rather in plain English, "confound my ill luck, I never yet was invited to a feast but I either missed it in toto, or came so late as to be obliged to eat my mutton cold, a thing, which of all others, I most abhor." HEN. B. * * * * * POOL'S HOLE, DERBYSHIRE. (_For the Mirror_.)