A man of wit is allowed by his friends to take many liberties with other persons for their private amusement, and he should always help himself, and take a great many more, if for no other reason, for this that it is very pleasant at all times to have your full swing of liberty even to license, and a glorious privilege to have your own wilful, headlong way in anything. A pleasant fellow has an undoubted right-"the law allows it, and the court awards it"-to make himself unpleasant if he thinks fit so to indulge; and no one, not so gifted and permitted, should be suffered to put him out, or put him down. Not that it is impossible to be a man of wit or waggery without offence; but as it limits the range of the light artillery of your wanton Wit, and prescribes certain marks, targets, and bull's-eyes to be hit, or aimed at, and no others, lest his Majesty's lieges should suffer from his random firing, such limitations are a restraint on the liberty of the subject, to which his wilful witship will not easily submit: you might as well hope to prescribe to an impartial Irishman what particular heads he should break at Donnybrook Fair, when his philanthropy is universal enough to embrace the heads of all mankind. A thorough, persevering punster, or a true wag, should be like nothing on earth so much as Michael Malone recreating himself on that favourite field just mentioned-free, flourishing, "quick, nimble, forgetive"

of a quarrel, all alive and alert, "anybody's customer" at the shortest notice, his dearest friend his dearest foe, till he has "rattled his canister" and polished him off: that done, it is then quite time enough to explain, shake hands, and be friends again. I take a man of wit to be a fellow with lively parts and superior audacity of intellect―one who has the presence of mind to make himself and friends very merry at the expense of some inferior person with a dull disposition and the spirit of a mouse. Such a man is the proper butt for his bolts. He hits him in all his tender places, probes him to the quick, lashes him with "steel whips," makes him writhe, wriggle, and tortuously twist about as though a score of scorpions were stinging him, but all in jest―he means nothingonly to entertain "the groundlings" with a laugh, or that substitute for it a shriek"-the now fashionable phrase for a laugh. I know a few good-natured wits, but they are poor fellows, and will never become popular, on that very weak account. Wits who are afraid to wound should never enter the field: the dashing fellows-the Murats of wit-will drive them out, or ride them down, in no time. A wit, if he seeks popular applause and conquest, should be armed and accontred like a matador in a Spanish bull-ring, with a cloak, and a dagger under it, to irritate and strike. If you can make up your mind to be such

› you, who

a man as this, my merry friend are ambitious of such a reputation, may be a man of wit. But if you are not, as I hope you are not, one

"Who, for the poor renown of being smart,

Would leave a sting within a brother's heart ;"

if you cannot, from some "compunctious visitings of nature," afford to "go the whole hog," go no farther than you have gone, but be "merry and wise;"-which I take to mean-be good-humoured and considerate of your own feelings and the feelings of others—the happiest aim in the end.

"A wit's a feather, and a

But you know the rest.

THE YOUNG MAN AT NINETY.

A PORTRAIT FROM THE LIFE.

of

"HE is a Citizen," thought I, as I gazed respectfully at the venerable object of my cogitation, "who, having grown weary of the ways the working-day world, now, in the seventh-day and Sabbath of his old age-wisely forsaking the Mart, the 'Change, and the populous paths that lead up to and terminate at the Temple-doors of too-much-worshipped Mammon-nestles here in this pleasant suburban hamlet, and passes away the small remainder of his days in undisturbed peace and meditative quietness—

"The Town forgetting, by the Town forgot."

It was an old gentleman who had, a few minutes previously, entered the cleanly, cozy parlour of one of my favourite baiting-places in my untiring perambulations, round and round, and in and out of the unceasing suburbs of this ever-extending

city, and was now not unpleasantly engaged in sipping his half-pint of sherry and glancing through the morning paper, who had given occasion for these introductory reflections. He was a remarkable man; for, as I shortly afterwards ascertained, he was more than ninety years of age, though looking less than sixty-was hearty and activequick-footed, with a steady gait—quick-eyed— quick-thoughted-the least bit in the world deaf, not more than was agreeable, and with no other apparent infirmity-short, stout, and well-set upon legs which might make an Irish paviour undervalue his own; and these were becomingly clad in black silk stockings, and it struck me that legs which had stood by a man in the handsome manner his had done, through so many years, were worthy of the honour of such costly hose. A pair of bright silver buckles, of the large old-fashioned pattern, conferred additional brilliancy on the warranted "brilliant Warren" of his shoes; a smaller pair gave dignity and compactness to his knees. His coat, of raven black, was of the old-school cutlengthy and capacious in all parts—ample in pocket and flap-in short, a reminiscence of the coat of "other days," ere tailors had turned out that

"Starveling in a scanty vest,"

-an exquisite. This was surmounted by the oldfashioned, dark-brown, knotted sort of Bath great