the door of entrance, which the Colonel confidently pronounces to be situated at the North Pole. It is conjectured that all the mountains of the undiscovered land are formed of loadstone, and that the position of the aperture leading to them occasions the polarity of the needle. Its name occasioned some little difficulty, the term New World being already applied, the New New World being deemed tautologous; Simsia was rejected as not being classical; Simia, as exposed to a ludicrous perversion; Subterranea, as not strictly accurate, the country being rather within than beneath our own; on which account it was finally resolved to term it Interranea. A loan has already been raised for the new government, and the Interranean five per cents. are quoted at 96, having been done at a 100. A bookseller in the Row has given a considerable sum for the copy-right of the voyage, and the public of both Continents (who now discover the appropriateness of that designation since they contain another within them) are looking with the utmost anxiety for the results of this interesting voyage.

A HINT TO PEDESTRIANS.

AN amusing public writer, with a very praiseworthy feeling, has lately been deploring the distressing vacancy that is likely to sit upon the countenances of the chance-meeters in the streets, when the pending proceedings of the Holly Alliance, and of Mr.

Mac Adam shall have been respectively brought to a conclusion.-After the magnificent events to which we have been lately accustomed, these are paltry topics; but drowning men will catch at straws, and these are infinitely better than nothing; infi, nitely better than the consciousness, that after we have met a friend at a sudden corner, and gone through the established routine of inquiries into the health of ourselves and our mutual acquaintances, and indulged in a few original speculations upon the appearances of the weather, we are positively at a nonplus for further subjects of conversation. Few dilemmas are more embarrassing than to find yourself in this state of conversational insolvency, writhing under the expectant look of your friend, who, from having made the last observation, has a sort of legal claim upon you for an impromptu in return. In vain do you search the pockets of your mind for an unexpended thought, you find nothing there but the health and the weather, which have been already tendered; and at length, with suffused cheeks, you are obliged to make a desperate effort, and get out of the scrape by a sudden good morning, and an abrupt rush across the street. After such an operation, the patients generally endeavour to walk off their embarrassments by a bustling acceleration of motion, as if anxious to make the energy of their bodies atone for the sluggishness of their minds, and prove their command of limbs, if not of words.-This is a process I can safely recommend; as the stretching of my legs, and swinging of my arms, (if duly persevered in,) has

scarcely ever failed in reconciling me to myself, and satisfying me that I was in fact a very brisk and clever personage. I have also obtained considerable relief from reflecting, that those who have the most solid sense are in general least gifted with the talent of prompt though superficial smattering, and that I was in the situation of a man who has plenty of money at his bankers, although he cannot give change for a one pound note as often as he may be asked for it in the streets.

There is a species of distress, however, occasioned by a superabundance of these tip-o'-the-tongue common-places, even more acute than that caused by the total want of them. Many a hasty bolt have I made across a knee-deep kennel, or down a blind alley, or into the sanctuary of a shop, when my keen eye has caught a glimpse of my approaching friend Loquax. His first operation is to harpoon his prey through the button-hole, or grasp his hand till the fingers tingle, gradually relaxing his hold while he pours out a torrent of voluble impertinence; and if you attempt to redeem your imprisoned limb, he gives it another friendly squeeze that brings the tears into your eyes, and leaves a fac-simile of your ring indented for some weeks upon the adjoining finger. Thus have I been detained on a rainy day in one of the most populous thoroughfares of London, stopping the whole living stream of Fleet-street, compelling some to walk into the kennel, but receiving the elbows of the far greater number in my ribs; having my hat repeatedly knocked into the puddle by umbrellas, and once nar

rowly escaping the loss of my eye from the point of a butcher's tray, while my tormentor most inexorably persevered in holding my hand and not holding his tongue. In vain do I ask him to walk my way ;—he never has a moment to spare, though he will waste hours in rattling egotism and flippant ribaldry, and I must either remain pinned in the predicament I have described, or walk a mile or two out of my course till I can plan and execute my escape.-As he is a gentleman in every thing but his conduct and conversation, I cannot palpably cut him; for though his nonsense goes in at one ear and out at the other, I should not like him to try the same experiment with a bullet, and I shall therefore be very happy, if this letter, by catching his eye, should cause me to lose it when next we meet in the public streets.

My friend Proser has a fund of good qualities, if not of good talents, and indeed I have an unfeigned respect for him, for I look upon him as indisputably one of the worthiest bores in existence.—He is perpetually doing some neighbour a good office, some little attentive civility for one acquaintance or another, and we are all of us excessively glad when he calls, and amazingly more so when he goes away. The fellow, Sir, has such interminable stories, and tells them in such a monotonous tone, with such a profusion of" say I's, and says he's," that even when he is relating some kindness conferred on ourselves, we are only the more annoyed that we cannot, consistently with common decency, tell him how very piously we wish him at the devil I would rather meet a

hyæna in the streets, than this very good sort of nuisance. When he begins one of his humdrum stories, how he traced out Wilson's Stilton cheese that had been left at the wrong house, and had recovered the parcel that Miss Brown had left in the hackneycoach,-how have I wished for an earthquake to stop him!-Not that I believe it would, for I suspect him to be of close kin to the persevering gentleman mentioned in Josephus, or some of the jest-books, who was telling his friend in Cranbourne-alley how shabbily their mutual acquaintance Higgins had behaved, when they were accidentally parted :—the complainant embarked next day for India, remained there twenty years, and on his return to England, happening to meet the same friend, instantly resumed-" Well, Sir, this shabby fellow Higgins, about whom I was speaking to you

These are feelings of which a Frenchman has scarcely a conception: he is altogether a different animal, compounded, like the Centaur, of two materials, and may be described as half snuff-box and half chatter-box. These reciprocally minister to each other, and combine to make up the character; for his head is always very full of snuff, and his snuff-box is always very full of expression. Then they have all a sort of freemasonry peculiar to themselves, by which they are enabled to maintain a long dialogue in the streets without the clumsy intervention of words, or even ideas. There is more eloquent amazement in a shrug of the shoulders, than in a dozen exclamations, or a whole file of printed notes of admiration: the arch of