(I mean the tribe of flies,) that spiders are a thoughtful, contriving, plotting, sanguinary race.*

The Lychnis, then, which lays a snare for, and devours an incautious fly, does it merely inwrap insects, or does it also envelope mind?

I beg to refer the answer to this question, to yourself.

* I take the course and sequence of the sorites to be this.Spiders think; they therefore must have mind: but mind is immaterial; and being immaterial, must therefore be immortal. Therefore spiders, so far as regards their mentality, are im mortal.-Do flies think? They certainly appear to me to be a thoughtless race. But if really, though giddily, they think, and accordingly have mind,-which, it is said, cannot be material, and being immaterial, must therefore be immortal,—if all this be so, it is to be hoped, that in the muscarian paradise, not a cobweb will be found. That the sanguinary and devouring "creature," whose terrestrial life is spent in ensnaring and taking theirs, will not, in elysium, be "at its dirty work again ;" but that, imitating the liberality of the Lion, every spider there, will

in his claw, Dandle the fly.

O! what a pile of delightful children's stories can be reared upon this broad foundation, that as thought is exclusively the offspring of mind, every thinking creature must have mind;— and that as mind must be immaterial, and mental immateriality

Well; at least if it think, its intellectual substance must be as immortal as that of the fly which it feeds upon while, as to ants and bees,

O! I grant you, that if immortality admitted of degrees, these would be ten times as immortal as the vegetable-spider, the polypus, or mimosa.*

Then the mandrake.

Pooh! pooh!

Be it so. I echo your pooh! pooh! and apprehend, that if I attempted to raise the mandrake, the groan, or outcry, would proceed from you. Therefore, nor poppy, nor mandragora shall medicine you to rest. The privilege of putting you to sleep, I reserve exclusively to myself.

I wish too, that you would give over the comparing of vegetables to the human race.

be immortal, no insect, that knows how to think, can ever die!

O genus attonitum gelidæ formidine mortis,

Araneum, quid tenebras, quid nomina vana timetis?

Morte carent animæ.

* Sensitive plant.

Yet are there many points of mutual resemblance. Do not men occasionally, and even periodically, sleep?

They do especially when of the reader class.

Vegetables also do the same.

I have heard that they do.

Linnæus gives numerous instances of this curious fact. The sleep of plants forms one of the most interesting items of his philosophia botanica. One plant droops its head; another folds its petals: they assume various languid postures; but one and all go sleep; and make choice of night, as we do, for taking their repose.

And I dare say their somnolency provokes no harsh criticism from you.

No: I like the bed myself. I come with appetite and relish, to

great Nature's second course;

and so, they tell me, does Lord Melbourne. So, I know, did the late Lord Londonderry; and so, in his day, (as well as night,) did Alexander.

On whose authority do you state this?

On that of Plutarch; who assures us that he often slept till noon; and sometimes passed the entire day in bed.* Yet who more alert and active, on occasion, than " Philip's warlike son ?" Brutus too, probably, was not "early to rise;" for we know he was not " early to bed."

And he paid dearly for not going to rest in better time. It was after midnight, while he was unseasonably vigilant, and his lamp expiring, and only not extinguished, that his Evil Genius appeared, at Abydos, within his tent; and uttered the terrific promise, of repeating his visit at Philippi.t

This strange occurrence, I admit, must be considered as vouched by the steady Brutus ; for if he had not disclosed it, the fact could not

*Life of Alexander, ch. 23. Ἐκάθευδε πολλάκις μέχρι μέσης ἡμέρας· ἔςι δ' ὅτε και διημέρευεν ἐν τῶ καθεύδειν.—Thus translated by Ricard-Apres le souper, il prenait un second bain, et se couchait: il dormait souvent jusqu'à midi, quelquefois tout le jour. The Duke of Wellington, too, I am proud to say, once took an heroic nap, in the very sight of Soult, whilst this latter was meditating a prompt attack.

+ Plutarch, Life of Cæsar, ch. 69. “‘O ros, ŵ Bgoûte, daiμwv xaxós." The phantom (párμa) thus described itself.

have been known; inasmuch as the scaring apparition and he were tête à tête.

But the anecdote is a serious one: what induces you to smile?

I was thinking whether I should be frightened, if I were to see the ghost of an Ogre Lychnis, which had died of the indigestion of an overgrown bluebottle; or been mortally stung by a wasp, which he had been gulping down.

Nay, the pallid lily would make a better apparition. I once, by the way, addressed a few verses to this flower. Could you endure to

hear them, do you think?

Endure! I shall be too happy to hear you recite them. But stop; provided they be not am-a-tory. No politics, if you love me.

I love you as I do myself; and as for politics, I detest them. Yet, all whig though he may be, Tom Moore has not refrained from writing am-a-tory verses. But to my Blondes.

TO THE WHITE LILY.

Fair, spotless flower, reflecting every ray,

That joins to form bright effluence of Day,*

* The colour, white, is said to be the result of a reflection of all the solar rays.