newspaper upon a public officer-some parochial Bumble-which said he had been "tried in the balance and found panting," was as likely to be correct as if it had said he had been "found wanting." A child was once reported as having died from eating a large quantity of piers-well, stone fruit is said to be rather indigestible. An American paper, describing a political demonstration, averred that the procession was very fine, and nearly two miles long, as was also the prayer of the chaplain. Another American paper reporting the speeches at a Burns' festival, made one of the orators say—

"O Caledonia! stern and wild!
Wet nurse for a poetic child."

It must have taxed the ingenuity of the compositor, who set up the paragraph in which we are told "the Christian religion strictly enjoins mahogany," instead of "monogamy." A serious fight took place lately in a public-house in the Cowgate of Edinburgh, on the occasion of a painting being disposed of by Raphael-" raffle" was the mode adopted. A provincial paper speaks of the excitement caused by a recent highway bobbery; and another, in printing the report of a Life Insurance Society, congratulated the members on the low rate

Considerable

of morality during the past year. annoyance was caused at a public meeting by a lady having taken an historical fit-" hysteria" was the nature of the attack. In criticising the plan of a public building, the beauty of the edifice was represented as much marred by the number of acute angels introduced-"acute angles" being no doubt the object of disapproval. Many confusions of the limbs took place at a recent railway accident. In the giving of the surgeon's statement of the post-mortem examination of the body of a lady supposed to have been poisoned, it was incidentally mentioned that a great deal of anatomy had been found-it should have been "antimony." latter word crops up again in another place where it is not wanted-as in a recent criticism of a speech by Mr. Gladstone: "What, then, by way of novelty, does Mr. Gladstone propose? Simply the extension to the other Christian powers of Turkey of the antimony now enjoyed by Roumania." Of course, the word should have been "autonomy." Again, "Mr. Gladstone dwelt on the right which England had earned by expenditure of blood and treasure to interfere in Turkish provinces; but now, with a leopard and a hound, he has formulated a plan for making the Christian provinces practi

This

cally autonomous"-a "leap and a bound was meant here. These two last examples are "firstproof" faults, and were corrected before publication.

One or two more, and we have done. In the Times report of Disraeli's speech upon the causes of the rebellion in India, that usually exceptionally correct paper made him refer to the law which "permitted Hindoo windows to marry." A still more curious instance occurred in the same paper in connection with the Jamaica prosecutions. Mr. Stephens was reported to have said that he had treated Mr. Eyre as he had often treated obscene and uninteresting criminals. It was easy to see that this was a misprint for "obscure," but the editor insisted that the error was in the manuscript. Towards the close of the American Civil War, a newspaper contained a strong leader upon the failure of the Southern States to establish their independence, and contained the curious statement that since General Lee had capitulated, the other divisions of the Confederate armies "would, in all likelihood, now commence a gorilla warfare”. guerilla, of course, was here meant. About the same time, there appeared a report of the seizure of the goods of a certain refractory gentleman for the non-payment of a local tax which had been.

the occasion of much trouble in one of our northern cities, and mention was made of one article which had been seized among the rest, and this was characterised as "an eloquent chest of drawers." In complimenting a soldier as a "battle-scarred veteran," a paper gave him the character of a "battle-scared veteran," and in afterwards inserting an erratum and apology, made matters worse by styling him a "bottle-scarred veteran!"

SHAPED POEMS.

IGURATE or Shaped Poems have considerable antiquity, and several in Greek, attributed to Theocritus, Simmias of Rhodes, and others, have come down to us; while mediæval Latin poetry also furnishes many of these curious versifications. The minor poets of Dryden's time were much given to this literary folly, though it sometimes required a little aid from the imagination to trace the resemblance to the object indicated, and greater attention was frequently paid to the shape of the verse than to its sense or rhythm. Ben Jonson satirised these early poets for their facility in this pattern-cutting style, saying they could fashion

"A pair of scissors and a comb in verse."

Bottles, glasses, axes, fans, hearts, wings, true-love knots, ladies' gowns, flying angels, trumpets of fame, &c., were all favourite forms; and, with another class of poets, pulpits, altars, and tombstones were