(To be continued.)
* On the margin of the manuscript, the following note was written by an unknown hand: “The Irishman has not been mistaken, for nine years are now past since the revolution has taken place, and the new king of Port***l has not yet been acknowledged by the court of Rome.”
ANECDOTE OF VOLTAIRE.
This extraordinary genius, in his younger life, wrote a very biting satire against a man of considerable influence in France. The injured gentleman, on meeting the poet one day in a narrow lane where it was impossible to escape, gave him a severe drubbing. The enraged author immediately made his complaint to the Regent, who very shrewdly replied---“What would you have me do? justice certainly has been done already,”
OSMIR.
AN ORIGINAL ESSAY.
The predecessors of Osmir were ignoble and obscure. For a race of generations they wept the conflicts of indigence, nor could the toils of application crown their efforts with advantage, nor the utmost frugality secure their labours from distress; the importance of command never owned their authority, and the radiance of splendour never shone on their dwelling. They eat of the bread of industry, they drank the waters of perseverence, they lived unnoticed and undistinguished among the children of poverty, as one atom in the sun-beam is undistinguished from another, and as the ebullitions of a current which float for a moment on its surface and die, even so they disappeared and were remembered no more.