THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. Ad Candidum Lectorem. CUM legis hunc nostrum, Lector studiose, libellum, Decedat vultu tetrica ruga tuo. Non sunt hæc tristi conscripta Catonibus ore, Non Heraclitis, non gravibus Curiis: THE TIN TRUMPET; OR HEADS AND TALES. A.B.C.DARIAN-seems to have been an ancient term for a pedagogue. Wood, in his Athenæ Oxoniensis, speaking of Thomas Farnabie, says—“ When he landed in Cornwall, his distresses made him stoop so low, as to be an A.b.c.darian, and several were taught their horn books by him." By assuming this title, its wearer certainly proves himself to be a man of letters; but my friend T. H. suggests, that the schoolmaster who wishes to establish his aptitude for his office, instead of taking the three first, had better designate himself by the two last letters of the alphabet. ABLATIVE CASE-one that now is, or very soon will be, applicable to usurped power, to unjust privileges, and to abuses of all sorts. Though the schoolmaster is abroad, the times are more ungrammatical than ever. A boroughmonger has ceased to be in the nominative case; there is no longer a dative case to the Pension list; and when the public is in the accusative case, it governs the party or thing implicated, and makes it fall into the ablative case absolute. Though corruptions are nouns substantive, they cannot stand by themselves; and abuses, which used to be plural, will soon become singular. The verb "to love" is declined, not conjugated. Standard words, to which the utmost importance was attached by the wisdom of our ancestors, such, for instance, as "rotten boroughs," are arbitrarily cut off by elision. When John Bull is in the imperative mood, he is now, at the same time, in the potential; while the present tense has no longer the smallest reference to the past, provided it can improve the future. But we have still more startling changes;-Lady A. is a masculine, and Lord B. is a feminine person. What can be expected but irregularity and disturbance, when our grammar is in such a state of anarchy? This comes of Reform!! Ah! it is to be feared that we shall none of us have the consolation of Danjeau, the French grammarian, who, when told that a revolution was approaching, exclaimed, rubbing his hands, "Well, come what may, I have two hundred verbs well conjugated in my desk!" ABLUTION- -a duty somewhat too strictly inculcated in the Mahometan ritual, and sometimes too laxly observed in Christian practice. As a man may have a dirty body, and an undefiled mind, so may he have clean hands in a literal, and not in a metaphorical sense. All washes and cosmetics without, he may yet labour under a moral hydrophobia within. Pleasant to see an im-puritan of this stamp holding his nose, lest the wind should come between an honest scavenger and his gentility, while his own character stinks in the public nostrils. Oh, if the money and the pains that we bestow upon perfumes and adornments for the body, were applied to the purification and embellishment of the mind! Oh, if we were as careful to polish our manners as our teeth, to make our temper as sweet as our breath, to cut off our peccadilloes as to pare our nails, to be as upright in character as in person, to save our souls as to shave our chins, what an immaculate race should we become! Exteriorly, we are not a filthy people. We throw so much dirt at our neighbours, that we have none left for ourselves. We are only unclean in our hearts and lives. As occasional squalor, is the worst evil of poverty and labour, so should constant cleanliness be the greatest luxury of wealth and ease; yet even our aristocracy are not altogether without reproach in this respect. It is well known, that the celebrated Lord Nelson had not washed his hands for the last eight years of his life. Alas! upon what trifles may our reputation for cleanliness depend! Even a foreign accent may ruin us. In a trial, where a German and his wife were giving evidence, the former was asked by the counsel, “How old are you?”- "I am dirty."-" And what is your wife?"—" Mine wife is dirty-two.”— "Then, Sir, you are a very nasty couple, and I wish to have nothing further to say to either of you." 66 ABRIDGMENT—anything contracted into a small compass; such, for instance, as the abridgment of the statutes in twenty volumes, folio. To make a good abridgment, requires as much time and talent as to write an original work; a fact of which the reader will find abundant proof as he proceeds! When Queen Anne told Dr. South that his sermon had only one fault-that of being too short,--he replied, that he should have made it shorter if he had had more time. How comes it that no enterprising bookseller has ever thought of publishing an Abridgment of the Lives of the Fathers?" I know not whether the religious public would give it encouragement, but I am confident, that in this land of primogeniture and entailed estates, there is not an heir in the three kingdoms who would not exert himself to insure its success. 66 ABSCESS-a morbid tumour, frequently growing above the shoulders, and swelling to a considerable size, when it comes to a head, with nothing in it. It is not always a natural disease, for nature abhors a vacuum; yet fools, fops, and fanatics are very subject to it, and it sometimes attacks old women of both sexes. "I wish to consult you upon a little project I have formed," said a noodle to his friend. "I have an idea in my head-" "Have you?" interposed the friend, |