COLONEL MANNERS' MUSICAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

Miss Port and myself had, afterwards, an extremely risible
evening with Colonels Goldsworthy, Wellbred, and Manners the rest
were summoned away to the king, or retired to their own
apartments. Colonel Wellbred began the sport, undesignedly, by
telling me something new relative to Dr. Herschel's volcanoes.
This was enough for Colonel Manners, who declared aloud his utter
contempt for such pretended discoveries. He was deaf to all that
could be said in answer, and protested he wondered how any man of
common sense could ever listen to such a pack of stuff.

Mr. de Luc's opinion upon the subject being then mentioned--he
exclaimed, very disdainfully, "O, as to Mr. de Luc, he's another
man for a system himself, and I'd no more trust him than anybody:
if you was only to make a little bonfire, and put it upon a hill
a little way off, you might make him take it for a volcano
directly!--And Herschel's not a bit better. Those sort of
philosophers are the easiest taken in in the world."
Our next topic was still more ludicrous. Colonel Manners asked
me if I had not heard something, very harmonious at church in the
morning? I answered I was too far off, if he meant from himself.

"Yes," said he; "I was singing with Colonel Wellbred; and he said
he was my second.--How did I do that song?"

"Song?--Mercy!" exclaimed Colonel Goldsworthy, "a song at
church!--why it was the 104th Psalm!"