folks more than our description of them would their elders. Nearly all
of them contain several figures, but one--The Riding School--about
twenty boys _playing at Soldiers_, horse and foot, very pleasantly
illustrates an observation in a recent number of the Edinburgh Review,
on the dramatic character of the amusements of children. The scene is a
large, ancient, dilapidated building, and the little people personate
the Duke of Wellington, the Marquess of Anglesea, &c., with all the
precision of military tactics--but no one has a taste for being a
private. So it is through life.

Our extract is almost a literary curiosity:


"THE INVALID'S PIPE.[2]


[2] This story has been transmitted to the Editor as the genuine
production of the son of a British military officer, only nine
years of age, and composed from a circumstance which actually
occurred in a noble German family.


"It was not far from the Castle of Fürstenstein, near the spot where the
gallant Blucher, with the brave army of Silesia, won such glory, that
the Baron of Fürstenstein met a maimed soldier, who was endeavouring to
reach Berlin to claim his pension, and whose age denoted that his wounds
had long been his honourable though painful companions. The Baron,
observing a very richly mounted pipe in the old man's possession,
accosted him with, 'God bless you, old soldier! does your pipe comfort
you this morning?' The pipe which the old soldier was smoking was made