Thirdly, her Majesty the Queen would either succeed to a quiet throne, or, if manufactured, would have to eat a prodigious quantity of jelly in her infancy; and so alter growing into proper sovereign condition, would issue forth, and begin her reign either with killing her royal sisters, or leading forth a colony to America or New South Wales. She would then take to husband some noble lord for the space of one calendar hour, and dismissing him to his dullness, proceed to lie in of 12,000 little royal highnesses in the course of the eight following weeks, with others too numerous to mention; all which princely generation with little exception, would forthwith give up their title, and divide themselves into lords or working-women as it happened; and so the story would go round to the end of the chapter, bustling, working, and massacring:--and here ends the sage example of the Monarchy of the Bees. We must observe nevertheless, before we conclude, that however ill and tragical the example of the bees may look for human imitation, we are not to suppose that the fact is anything like so melancholy to themselves. Perhaps it is no evil at all, or only so for the moment. The drones, it is true, seem to have no fancy for being massacred; but we have no reason to suppose, that they, or any of the rest concerned in this extraordinary instinct, are aware of the matter beforehand; and the same is to be said of the combats between the Queen-bees; they appear to be the result of an irresistible impulse, brought about, by the sudden pressure of a necessity. Bees appear to be very happy, during far the greater portion of their existence. A modern writer, of whom it is to be lamented that a certain want of refinement stopped short his perceptions, and degraded his philosophy from the finally expedient into what was fugitively so, has a passage on this point, as agreeable as what he is speaking of. "A bee among the flowers in spring," says Dr. Paley, "is one of the cheerfullest objects that can be looked upon. Its life appears to be all enjoyment, _so busy and so pleased_."--_Abridged from the New Monthly Magazine_. * * * * * THE GATHERER. * * * * * _Toast of a Scotch Peer_.--Lord K--, dining at Provost S--'s, and being the only peer present, one of the company gave a toast, "The Duke of Buccleugh." So the peerage went round till it came to Lord K--, who said he would give them a peer, which, although not toasted, was of more use than the whole. His lordship gave "The Pier of Leith."--_Chambers's Edin. Jour._ Caroline, Queen of George II. amused herself by reading Butler's _Analogy of Religion to Human Nature_; a book which Hoadley, Bishop of Winchester, said always gave him the head-ache, if he only looked into it.