I remember in India once driving one of the snake-jugglers to discovery. He told the servants there were snakes in the stable; and offered to produce one. He accordingly went, with piping and other ceremonies, and soon demonstrated a goodly _cobra de capello_ struggling by the tail. He secured this in his repertory of snakes, and said he thought there was another; on which he went through the same operations again. Though he had been too quick for me on both occasions, I offered him a rupee to produce a third, which he agreed to; and this time I saw the snake's head, struggling rather oddly in his nether garments. He ran into the horse's stall, rushed forward with a shriek to distract attention, and then I saw him jerk out a snake of some four feet long, and drag it backwards by the tip of the tail as if desperately afraid of it. Knowing his snakes must be an exhaustible quantity, I proffered a second rupee for another, taking care to keep between him and the snake-basket; which he declined. But on turning round and giving him a chance to communicate with his receptacle, he quickly presented himself with the assurance that now he thought he knew where a serpent might be lodged. The Indian servants all devoutly believed in his skill; but it is impossible not to be ashamed of Europeans, who adorn their books with marks of similar gullibility.--_Abridged from Tait's Edinburgh Mag._ * * * * * Notes of a Reader * * * * * RECREATIONS IN THE LAW. Gentle reader, we are not about to direct your notice to the Temple Gardens, the olden feasts in our Law Halls--through which men ate their way to eminence--nor to prove that looking to a Chancellorship is woolgathering--nor to invite you to the shrubby groves of Lincoln's Inn, or to promenade with the spirit of BACON in Gray's Inn. All these may be pleasurable occupations; but there is mirth in store in the _study_ of the Law itself, which is not "dull and crabbed as some fools (or knaves) suppose."