Some one asked Heine, "Have you read B.'s new pamphlet?" "No, dear friend; I only read his great works: the three, four, and five-volumed ones suit me best." "Ah! you jest, and mean something." "Certainly: a great extent of water--a lake, sea, ocean--is a fine thing; but in a teaspoon I cannot stand it." Heine said of one of his acquaintances, "The man is really cracked; but I will confess that he has lucid intervals when he is only foolish." This was the same person whom Heine had in his mind when he said to a caller, "My head to-day is perfectly barren, and you will find me stupid enough; for a friend has been here, and we exchanged ideas." The old age of Lamartine exhibited a painful decline of his truly great qualities, and an exaggeration of his foibles. A French paper concluded his obituary with the remark, "He has ceased to survive himself." These are caustic specimens; but the last one contains a high per cent of pleasure, because we are left uncertain whether it was a serious case of wit. But none of them can scald as Douglas Jerrold did, when, meeting a man who was such an abject toady that if his friend Jones had the influenza he would contrive to get up a cold, Jerrold said to him, "Have you heard the rumor that is flying around town?" "No." "Well, they say that Jones pays the dog-tax for you." That is bitter. But when one gentleman during a supper of sheep's heads throws down his knife and fork in rapture, and exclaims, "Well, sheep's heads for ever, say I," and Douglas Jerrold remarks, "There's egotism," we have a point tempered in the flame of fun. So, too, when a member of his club, hearing an air mentioned, said, "That always carries me away when I hear it," Jerrold, merely to seize an opportunity, said, "Then can nobody whistle it?" This kind of wit easily rankles, if there be a drop or two of suspicion in our veins; for there is nothing in the tone to announce its discrimination from ill-nature. For instance: Sheridan, soliciting the votes of the shoemakers of Stafford, exclaimed, "May the trade of Stafford be trampled under foot of all the world!" and mortally offended them. We should like to know how the French attaché felt who, being at a soirée just after the dubious affair of the annexation of Nice and Savoy to France, met Lord Houghton, as he went towards the supper-room, and said, "_Je vais prendre quelque chose!_" "_Vous avez raison_," was the reply; "_c'est l'habitude de votre pays_."