Having brought the history of the stage to the end of the Greek theatre, this chapter cannot be better concluded than with an extract from an admirable work lately published on the subject in England, to which this history is indebted for some of its materials. "It remains now only to say, that from the parodies of the ancient writers, begun by Aristophanes, and awkwardly imitated by his contemporaries and successors, sprung mimes, farces, and the grossest buffoonery; and though the Grecian theatre still kept up an appearance of greatness, and there was often some brilliancy beamed across the heterogeneous mass which obscured truth and nature, to which the people were no longer sensible; yet the grandeur and magnificence of public exhibitions decreased; till, at length the fate of the stage too truly foretold the fate of the empire. So certain it is that where the arts are redundant they introduce luxury, and sap the foundation of a state." BIOGRAPHY. For those readers who love biography, the editors of The Mirror have selected one of the most interesting memoirs to be found in the rich treasury of British literature. As a simple, yet animated picture of natural genius, forcing its way through the impediments which waylay early poverty, and breaking forth like the sun in meridian splendor after a morning of tempest, clouds, and darkness, it will be a fit companion for that of Hodgkinson. As a piece of composition, it is perhaps the very finest specimen to be found in any language of the unaffected, unadorned modest style that becomes a biographer, and particularly a writer of his own life. This memoir first appeared prefixed to that author's translation of Juvenal. LIFE OF WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ. AUTHOR OF THE BAEVIAD AND MAEVIAD, AND TRANSLATOR OF JUVENAL. I am about to enter on a very uninteresting subject; but all my friends tell me that it is necessary to account for the long delay of the following work; and I can only do it by adverting to the circumstances of my life. Will this be accepted as an apology? I know but little of my family, and that little is not very precise. My great-grandfather (the most remote of it, that I ever recollect to have heard mentioned) possessed considerable property at Halsworthy, a parish in the neighbourhood of Ashburton; but whether acquired or inherited, I never thought of asking, and do not know. He was probably a native of Devonshire, for there he spent the last years of his life; spent them too, in some sort of consideration, for Mr. T. a very respectable surgeon of Ashburton, loved to repeat to me, when I first grew into notice, that he had frequently hunted with his hounds.