Shakspeare's soliloquies-Ham-let alone.""La! you're such a wag," cried Mrs. Hoggins, "there's no being up to you; but if you don't like the ham, take a slice of this edge-bone-nothing's better than cold beef." -"I beg your pardon, Madam," replied the indefatigable joker-" cold beef's better than nothing-Ha! ha! ha!"

"How do you find yourself now, my darling?” said Mrs. Cleaver to her son, who had been driven below by a shower, and kept his hat on, because, as he said, his "'air was quite vet."-" Vy, mother, I have been as sick aa a cat, but I'm bang up now, and so peckish that I feel as if I could heat any thing."-" Then just warm these potatoes," said Smart, handing him the dish, "for they are almost cold.”—“I'll thank you not to run your rigs upon me," quoth the young Cockney, looking glumpish, "or I shall fetch you a vipe vith this here hash-stick. If one gives you a hinch, you take a hell.” —“Never mind him, my dear,” cried his mother, “eat this mutton-chop, it will do you good; there's no gravy, for Mr. Smart has all the sauce to himself. Haw! haw! haw!"-"Very good!" exclaimed the latter, clapping his hands; " egad! Ma'am, you are as good a wag as your own double chin." This was only ventured in a low tone of voice, and, as the fat dame was at that moment handing the plate to her son, it was fortunately unheard. Dick being still rather giddy, contrived to let the chop fall on the floor,-an occurrence at which Mr. Smart declared he was not in the least surprised, as the young man, when first he came into the cabin, looked uncommonly chop-fallen. Dick, however, had presently taken a place at the table, and began attack

ing the buttock of beef with great vigour and vivacity, protesting he had got a famous "happetite," and felt

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as ungry as an ound."- "I never say any thing to discourage any body," said Mr. Croak, "particularly young people; it's a thing I hate, but t'other day a fine lad sate down to his dinner in this very packet, after being sea-sick, just as you may be doing now, when it turned out he had broke a blood-vessel, and in twelve hours he was a corpse, and a very pretty one he made.”

"I'm not going to be choused out of my dinner for all that," replied the youth, munching away with great industry, and at the same time calling out-"Steward ! take away this porter-pot, it runs."-"I doubt that," cried Smart." I say it does," resumed Dick angrily, "the table-cloth is all of a sop."-"I'll bet you halfa-crown it doesn't." 'Done! and done!' were hastily exchanged, when Mr. Smart, looking round with a smirk, exclaimed-"Ladies and gentlemen, I appeal to every one of you whether the pot has not been perfectly still, and nothing has been running but the beer." This elicited a shout at poor Dick's expense, who sullenly muttered, “I'm not going to be bamboozled out of an 'alf-crown in that there vay; and vat's more I von't be made a standing joke by no man."-"I don't see how you can," replied his antagonist, "so long as you are sitting."-" Vy are you like a case of ketchup?" cried Dick, venturing for once to become the assailant, and immediately replying to his own inquiry, "Because you are a saucebox."-" Haw! haw!" roared his mother, "bravo, Dick! well done, Dick! there's a proper rap for you, Mr. Smart."-Somewhat nettled at this joke, poor as it was, the latter returned to the charge, by in

quiring of Dick why his hat was like a giblet-pie? and after suffering him to guess two or three times in vain, cried, "Because there's a goose's head in it,” and instantly set the example of the horse-laugh, in which the company joined. Finding he was getting the worst of it, Dick thought it prudent to change the conversation, by observing that it would luckily be "'igh-vater in the arbour vhen they arrived.”—“Then I recommend you by all means to use some of it," said the pertinacious Mr. Smart; "perhaps it may cure your squint."

Both mother and son rose up in wrath at this personality, and there would infallibly have been a bourrasque (as the French say) in the hold, but that there was just then a tremendous concussion upon the deck, occasioned by the fall of the main-boom, and followed by squeaks and screams, of all calibres, from the panicstricken company at the dinner-table. "Lord have mercy upon us!" ejaculated Croak with a deep groan, "it's all over with us—we are going to the bottom—I like to make the best of every thing—it's my way, and I therefore hope no lady or gentleman will be in the least alarmed, for I believe drowning is a much less painful death than is generally supposed."

Having run upon deck at this juncture for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of the accident, which he found to be unattended with the smallest danger, the writer cannot detail any more of the conversation that ensued until their arrival at Calais.

MEMNON'S HEAD.

Ir is well known, that there were two statues of Memnon a smaller one, commonly called the young Memnon, whose bust, by the skill and perseverance of Belzoni, has been safely deposited in the British Museum; and a larger and more celebrated one, from which, when touched by the rays of the morning sun, harmonious sounds were reported to have issued. Cambyses, suspecting that the music proceeded from magic, ordered this statue to be broken up, from the head to the middle of the body; and its prodigious fragments now lie buried amid the ruins of the Memnonium.— Strabo, who states himself to have been a witness of the miracle, attributes it either to the quality of the stone, or to some deception of the priests; while Pausanias suspects that some musical instrument was concealed within, whose strings, relaxed by the moisture of the night, resumed their tension from the heat of the sun, and broke with a sonorous sound. Ancient writers vary so much, not only as to the cause of this mysterious music, but even as to the existence of the fact itself, that we should hardly know what to believe, were it not for the authority of Strabo, a grave geographer, and an eye-witness, who, without any apparent wish to impose upon his readers, declares that he stood beside the statue, and heard the sounds which proceeded from it:-" Standing," he says, "with Elius Gallus, and a party of friends, examining the colossus, we heard a certain sound, without being exactly able to

determine whether it proceeded from the statue itself, or its base; or whether it had been occasioned by any of the assistants, for I would rather believe any thing than imagine that stones, arranged in any particular manner, could elicit similar noises."

Pausanias, in his Egyptian travels, saw the ruins of the statue, after it had been demolished by Cambyses, when the pedestal of the colossus remained standing; the rest of the body, prostrated upon the ground, still continued, at sunrise, to emit its unaccountable melody. Pliny and Tacitus, without having been eye-witnesses, report the same fact; and Lucian informs us, that Demetrius went to Egypt, for the sole purpose of seeing the Pyramids, and the statue of Memnon, from which a voice always issued at sunrise. What the same author adds, in his Dialogue of the False Prophet, appears to be only raillery: "When (he writes) I went in my youth to Egypt, I was anxious to witness the miracle attributed to Memnon's statue, and I heard this sound, not like others, who distinguish only a vain noise; but Memnon himself uttered an oracle, which I could relate, if I thought it worth while."-Most of the moderns affect to discredit this relation altogether, but I cannot enroll myself among them; for, if properties, even more marvellous, can be proved to exist in the head of the young Memnon, it would be pushing scepticism too far, to deny that there was any thing supernatural in the larger and more celebrated statue. Unless I have been grossly deceived by imagination, I have good grounds for maintaining, that the Head, now in the British Museum, is endued with qualities quite as inexplicable as any that have been attributed to its more enormous