"LOST LUGGAGE OFFICE OF THE NORTHWESTERN RAILWAY.

Immediately after the evacuation of each arriving train at the terminus, carriagesearchers examine the interior of the passenger coaches. They raise the cushions, search the pockets, take up the carpets, and diligently examine every part of the carriage, and it rarely happens that some articles, more or less, are not found which the passengers inadvertently leave behind them. These are sent by the searchers immediately to the "Lost Luggage Office," where they are delivered into the hands of a clerk, who enters in a register a description of the articles, the number and designation of the carriages in which they were left, the hour of the arrival of the train, and the route which the carriage, in which the articles were found, had followed. A label is attached to the article, numbered in accordance with the entry in this register, so that at any future period it may be compared with such entry and identified. If the article in question is marked with the address of its owner, or if any indication of such address can be discovered from its contents, it is sent without delay to the proprietor; if not, it is deposited in a certain place, according to its magnitude and quality, where it is left for a certain as.. signed time waiting for an application on the part of its owner. If, at the end of such specified time, which varies with different railways, no application be made, if it be a box, trunk, or other similar object, it is broken open and the contents ascertained. From the contents the ownership is frequently discovered, and it is restored; but if no clue to such discovery be thus obtained, then the article is transferred to a permanent place of deposit in the office or store-room, where it remains for a more extended period, such as one or two years. If at the end of this period no claim be made on the part of the owner, then the article, with others kept for a like time, is publicly sold by auction or otherwise, and the proceeds of the sale appropriated as directed by the managers of the railway. Such proceeds are usually applied to some charitable object in connexion with the railway business.

It frequently happens that applications are made at the railway stations for lost luggage which is not found in the Lost Luggage office. In that case a circular is despatched to all the stations along the line or system of lines at which the passenger sustaining the loss has touched, and where, by any possi bility, the lost object might have been left, and answers are rapidly obtained. This useful system of inquiry is greatly extended through the agency of the railway clearinghouse. By this means such inquiries can be extended not merely to all the stations be longing to the railway in which the inquiry originates, but to all the railways spread over the chief part of the United Kingdom.

In the Lost Luggage Office are to be seen. on shelves and in compartments, the

innumerable articles which have been left in the trains during the last two months, each being ticketed and numbered with a figure corresponding with the entry-book in which the article is defined.

Without, however, describing in detail this property, we will at once proceed to a large, pitch-dark, subterranean, vaulted chamber, warmed by hot-air iron pipes, in which are deposited the flock of lost sheep, or, without metaphor, the lost luggage of the last two years.

Suspended from the roof there hangs horizontally in this chamber a gas-pipe about eight feet long; and as soon as the brilliant burners at each end were lighted, the scene was really astounding. It would be infinitely easier to say what there is not, than what there is, in the forty compartments like great wine-bins in which this lost property is arranged.

One is choke-full of men's hats; another of parasols, umbrellas, and sticks of every possible description: one would think that all the ladies' reticules on earth were deposited in a third. How many little smelling-bottles-how many little embroidered pocket-handkerchiefs-how many little musty eatables and comfortable drinkables-how many little bills, important little notes, and other very small secrets each may have contained, we felt that we would not for the world have ascertained; but when we gazed at the enormous quantity of red cloaks, red shawls, red tartan plaids, and red scarves, piled up in one corner, it was, we own, impossible to help reflecting that surely English ladies of all ages who wear red cloaks, &c. must, in some mysterious way or other, be powerfully affected by the whine of compressed air, by the sudden ringing of a bell, by the sight of their friends-in short, by the various conflicting emotions that disturb the human heart on arriving at the up-terminus of the Euston station; for else, how, we gravely asked ourselves, could we possibly account for the extraordinary red mass before us?

Of course, in this Rolando-looking cave there were plenty of carpet- bags, gun-cases, portmanteaus, writing-desks, books, cigarcases, &c.; but there were a few articles that certainly we were not prepared to meet with, and which but too clearly proved that the extraordinary terminus excitement, which had suddenly caused so many virtuous ladies to elope from their red shawls-in short, to be not only in a bustle' behind, but all over -had equally affected men of all sorts and conditions. One gentleman had left behind him a pair of leather hunting-breeches! another his boot-jack! A soldier of the 22nd regiment had left his knapsack containing his kit. Another soldier of the 10th, poor fellow, had left his scarlet regimental coat! Some cripple, probably overjoyed at the sight of his family, had left behind him his crutches! But what astonished us above all was, that some honest Scotchman, probably

in the ecstasy of seeing among the crowd the face of his faithful Jeannie, had actually left behind him the best portion of his bagpipes!

Some little time ago, the superintendent, on breaking open, previous to a general sale, a locked leather hat box, which had lain in this dungeon two years, found in it, under the hat, £65 in Bank of England notes, with one or two private letters, which enabled him to restore the money to the owner, who, it turned out, had been so positive that he had left his hat-box at a hotel at Birmingham, that he had made no inquiry for it at the railway office.-Stokers and Pokers, by the author of Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau.

A GOOD COLLECTOR.

Dr. Michael Hutchinson, who collected £3249 for rebuilding All Saints' Church, Derby, in 1730, was so industrious and successful in this labour of love, that when the waits fiddled at his door for a Christmas-box, he invited them in, treated them with a tankard of ale, and persuaded them out of a guinea!

ACCURATE DESCRIPTION.

Doctor Duncan received a severe injury from something in the shape of cowskin, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Cincinnati. "Where were you hurt, doctor?" said a friend. "Was it near the vertebra?" "No, no," said the disciple of Galen; "it was near the race-course."

FISHING FOR COMPANY.

Walpole gives an odd account of a Mrs. Holman, whose passion was keeping an assembly, and inviting literally everybody to it. "She goes to the drawingroom to watch for sneezers, whips out a curtsey, and then sends next morning to know how your cold does, and desires your company on Thursday."

ORIGIN OF BOTTLED ALE.

Alexander Newell, Dean of St. Paul's, and Master of Westminster School, in the reign of Queen Mary, was an excellent angler. But (says Fuller) while Newell was ca ching of fishes, Bishop Bonner was catching of Newell, and would certainly have sent him to the shambles, had not a good London merchant conveyed him away upon the seas. Newell was fishing upon the banks of the Thames when he received the first intimation of his danger, which was so pressing, that he dare not go back to his own house to make any preparation for his flight. Like an honest angler, he had taken with him provision for the day; and when, in the first year of England's deliverance, he returned to his country and his old haunts, he remembered that, on the day of his flight, he had left a bottle of beer in a safe place on the bank there he looked for it, and "found it no bottle, but a gun-such the sound at the opening thereof; and this (says Fuller) is believed (casualty is mother of more invention than industry) the origin of Bottled Ale in England."

EASY REMEDY.

"I like to hear a child cry," jocosely said the Abbé Morold. 66 Why?" "Because then there is some hope of his being sent away."

IRISH ANTIQUITIES.

A Connemara gentleman being pressed to visit the ruins of a Roman villa, in Alsace, declined, observing, "What novelty was a Roman village to him? Within twenty

miles of his father's there was but one Protestant, and that was the parson; and his assistant was a Catholic, and, like the clerk of Ballyhain, when he finished at church, he served mass afterwards. Roman villages! he would be glad to know where there were any else, from one end of Connemara to the other."

An old woman, in a village in the west of England, was told one day that the King of Prussia was dead, such a report having arrived when the Great Frederick was in the noon-day of his glory. Old Mary lifted up her great sloe eyes at the news, and fixing them, in the fulness of vacancy, upon her informant, replied, "Is a! is a!-The Lord ha' mercy! Well! well! The King of Prussia! And who's he?" The "who's he?" of this old woman might serve as a text for a notable sermon upon ambition. "Who's he?" may now be asked of men greater as soldiers in their day than Frederick or Wellington; greater in discovery than Sir Isaac or Sir Humphry. Who built the Pyramids? Who ate the first oyster?

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HERODOTUS EVERY-DAY.

Few persons are aware how often they imitate this great historian. Thus, children and servants are remarkably "Herodotean" in their style of narration. They tell everything dramatically. Their "says hes" and says shes" are proverbial. Every person who has had to settle their disputes, knows that, even when they have no intention to deceive, their reports of conversation always require to be carefully sifted. If an educated man were giving an account of a late change of administration, he would say: "Lord John Russell resigned, and the Queen, in consequence, sent for Sir Robert Peel." porter would tell the story as if he had been behind the curtains of the Royal bed at Buckingham Palace. "So Lord John Russell says, I cannot manage this business, I must go out.' So the Queen says, 'Well, then, I must send for Sir Robert Peel, that's all.'" This is the very manner of the father of history.

A

In America, all females are "ladies;" the noble word, "woman," is never heard. Miss Martineau wishing to see the women-wards in a prison at Tennessee, was answered by the warden, "We have no ladies here at present, madam." A lecturer, discoursing on the characteristics of women, illustrated thas: "Who were the last at the cross? Ladies. Who were the first at the sepulchre? Ladies."

POLITICAL GUNPOWDER.

When Lord Bath was told of the determination of turning out Pitt and letting Fox remain in the Ministry, he said it put him in mind of a story of the Gunpowder Plot. The Lord Chamberlain was sent to examine the vaults under the Parliament House, and, returning with his report, said, "he had found five-and-twenty barrels of gunpowder; that he had removed ten of them, and hoped the other fifteen would do no harm."

THE FAMILY SUIT.

The son-in-law of a Chancery barrister having succeeded to the lucrative practice of the latter, came one morning, in breathless ecstacy, to inform him that he had succeeded in bringing nearly to its termination a cause which had been pending in the court of scruples for several years. Instead of ob taining the expected congratulations of the retired veteran of the law, his intelligence was received with indignation. "It was by this suit," exclaimed he, "that my father was enabled to provide for me, and to portion your wife; and, with the exercise of common prudence, it would have furnished you with the means of providing handsomely for your children and grandchildren."

LONG YARNS.

Amongst those long-winded and generally marvellous stories with which to while away the dreary "mid-watch," to the astonishment of the greenhorns, very astonishing is that called "the Merry Dun of Dover." This was a vessel of such magnitude that she has been known to be receiving a cargo of coals at her bow-port in Sunderland harbour, and discharging them out of her stern-port at the same time into the coal lighters below London-bridge. Such was the height of her masts, that a little boy, being sent aloft to clear the pendant, returned upon deck a greyheaded man. Working out of the Downs, this amazing vessel was of such a length, that, in tacking, her flying jib-boom knocked down Calais steeple, at the very instant that the tail of her ensign swept a flock of sheep off the summit of Dover cliff.

GROWTH OF FELICITY.

A poor gardener, on being asked what felicity meant, said he did not know, but he believed it was a bulbous root!

AN ILLUSTRATION.

Captain Wilbraham, inquiring of one of the Jholams at Tehran whether an account which one of the King's couriers had just related was likely to be true-"Oh no," answered the man; "you must not believe a word of it. A courier must have something to tell by the way. You should hear what lies I tell when I am travelling."

DEATH OF KEAN, THE TRAGEDIAN. In the year 1833, Edmund Kean was engaged at Drury, and played Othello to Macready's Iago. He had promised to play Iago also, and had a new dress made for it, but, we believe, determined not to do it. About this time, he had the Richmond theatre, and played there three nights per week. For his last benefit, he acted there Penruddock and Paul. Being in embarrassed circumstances, he requested a loan of £500; this, it was said, the management of Drury-Lane hesitated to advance, and he engaged himself at Covent-garden. On the 25th March, 1833, he appeared as Othello; Iago, Mr. Charles Kean; Cassio, Mr. Abbott; Desdemona, Miss Ellen Tree. The elder Kean came to the theatre in company with Mr. John Lee and Dr. Douchez; it was with difficulty he made up for the character, the nauseous process of browning his face occasioning sickness. He went languidly through the first two acts, but rallied in the third; he spoke the "Farewell" exquisitely, but at the passage

"Villain! be sure thou prov'st my love," &c.,

his energy failed him; he essayed to proceed, and then sank on the shoulder of his son. Mr. Payne, who played Ludovico, came on, and, with Mr. C. Kean, assisted the great actor from the stage, which he never again trod! It was singular that he should end his career in the arms of his son, and that that son's future wife should be Desdemona. He was taken to the Wrekin Tavern, Broadcourt, too weak to even bear the operation of having the paint removed. In a few days he sufficiently recovered to go to Richmond; here he was sedulously attended by Mrs. Tidswell, said to be his aunt. Mr. Lee, Mr. Hughes, and Dr. Douchez were constantly with him. He flattered himself that he was recovering, commenced studying Master Walter, and was underlined for it at the Haymarket, but his memory had gone for ever. On the 15th May, 1833, he expired. Kean did not know his birthday; he kept it on the 17th of March; but many of his early friends affirm that he was born in November. The year, as well as day, is doubtful. Kean himself said 1787. Mrs. Carey, who claimed to be his mother, died in the same week in the same house.

COLERIDGE AND THELWALL.

Thelwall and Coleridge were sitting once in a beautiful recess in the Quantock hills, when the latter said, "Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in!" "Nay, citizen Samuel," replied he; "it is rather a place to make a man forget that there is any necessity for treason!"

ECCENTRIC HUMANITY.

John, Duke of Montague, made two codicils to his will, one in favour of his servants, and the other of his dogs, cats, &c. Whilst writing the latter, one of his cats. jumped on his knee. "What!" says he, "have you a mind to be a witness, too? You can't, for you are a party concerned."

JOY OF GRIEF.

A Highland funeral used to be followed by a regular supper to the company, and a ball. Upon one occasion, the gentleman who was to lead down the dance asked the mistress of the house, whose husband had that day been buried, if she would stand up to the dance, and she with a deep sigh consented. He then asked the disconsolate widow to name the spring, i. e. the tune, she would wish to be played. "Oh," she said, "let it be a light spring, for I have a heavy heart."

TEA IN SCOTLAND.

Tea in Scotland appears to have been known a century later than in England. Sir Walter Scott used to relate, that people were living who recollected how the Lady Pumphraston, to whom a pound of fine green tea had been sent as a rare and valuable present, boiled the same, and served it up with melted butter, as condiment to a salted rump of beef; and complained that no cooking she could contrive "would make these foreign greens tender."

CARD-TABLE SIGNALS.

Theodore Hook's Code of Card-table Signals, in his clever novel of " Gilbert Gurney," might be very effectually reduced to practice. "Never," says he, "let man and wife play together at whist. There are always family telegraphs; and, if they fancy their looks are watched, they can always communicate by words. I found out that I could never win of Smigsmag and his wife. I mentioned this one day, and was answered, No, you never can win of them.' 'Why?' said I. 'Because,' said my friend, they have established a code.' Dear me,' said I; 'signals by looks?' 'No,' said he, by words. If Mrs. Smigsmag is to lead, Smigsmeg says, "Dear, begin:" Dear begins with D; so does diamond; and out comes one from the lady. If he has to lead, and she says "S. my love," she wants a spade. Smigsmag and spade begin with the same letter, and sure enough down comes a spade. "Harriet, my dear, how long you are sorting your cards!" Mrs. Smigsmag stumps down a heart; and a gentle "Come, my love," on either side, produces a club."

POLITE EVIDENCE.

At the Wells Assizes, a butcher's wife, in giving her evidence, repeatedly turned towards the prisoner at the bar, and designated him as "that gentleman." The Judge at last lost all patience, and exclaimed: "Old woman, you are become quite offensive." This reminds one of Steele's speaking of "Sin as a fine gentleman."

THE TWO WATCHES.

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About seventy years ago, there was a fancy for wearing two watches. The Earl of Bridgewater was stopped near Windsor by a footpad, who, after having obtained one watch, demanded the other. Why, do you suppose I have another ?" "I know it," said the robber; "I observed you cross your hand to your left fob when you gave me this."

SLIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES.

Sir Walter Scott, walking one day along the banks of the Yarrow, where Mungo Park was born, saw the traveller throwing stones into the water, and anxiously watching the bubbles that succeeded. Scott inquired the object of his occupation. "I was thinking," answered Park, "how often I had thus tried to sound the rivers in Africa, by calculating how long a time had elapsed before the bubbles rose to the surface." It was a slight circumstance, but the traveller's safety frequently depended upon it. In a watch, the mainspring forms a small portion of the works; but it propels and governs the whole. So it is in the machinery of human life: a slight circumstance is permitted by the Divine Ruler to derange or to alter it; a giant falls by a pebble; a girl at the door of an inn changes the fortune of an empire. "If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter," said Pascal, in his epigrammatic and brilliant manner, "the condition of the world would have been different." The Mahomedans have a tradition, that when their prophet concealed himself in Mount Shur, his pursuers were deceived by a spider's web, which covered the mouth of the cave; Luther might have been a lawyer, had his friend and companion escaped the thunder-storm at Erfurt; Scotland had wanted her stern reformer, if the appeal of the preacher had not startled him in the chapel of St. Andrew's Castle; and if Mr. Grenville had not carried, in 1764, his memorable resolution as to the expediency of charging "certain stamp duties" on the plantations in America, the western world might still have bowed to the British sceptre. Cowley might never have been a poet, if he had not found the "Faery Queen" in his mother's parlour; Opie might have perished in mute obscurity, if he had not looked over the shoulder of his young companion, Mark Otes, while he was drawing a butterfly; Giotto, one of the early Florentine painters, might have continued a rude shepherd boy, if a sheep drawn by him upon a stone had not attracted the notice of Cimabue as he went that way.

AN ODD RACE.

The Herveys, Earls of Bristol, produced so many eccentric characters, that some one said, who was desirous of expressing his sense of the singularities of the family, that "God made man, woman, and Herveys."

PRAYING FOR A PARTNER.

The Hungarian ladies are passionately fond of dancing. A lady told Mr. Paget that, in her dancing times, she well remembered that she never said her prayers for her "daily bread," without adding "and plenty of partners at the next ball, I beseech thee."

WHAT IS A GENTLEMAN.

To tell the reader exactly what class of persons was intended to be designated by the word gentleman, is a difficult task. The last time we heard it was on visiting a stable, to look at a horse, when inquiring for the coachman, his stable-keeper replied, "he had just stepped to the public-house along with another gentleman.”

DR. PARR AT WHIST.

Dr. Parr had a high opinion of his own skill at whist, and could not even patiently tolerate the want of it in his partner. Being engaged with a party in which he was unequally matched, he was asked by a lady how the fortune of the game turned? when he replied, "Pretty well, madam, considering that I have three adversaries."

THE REBEL LORDS.

At the trial of the rebel Lords, George Selwyn, seeing Bethel's sharp visage looking wistfully at the prisoners, said, "What a shame it is to turn her face to the prisoners until they are condemned."

Some women were scolding Selwyn for going to see the execution, and asked him how he could be such a barbarian to see the head cut off? "Nay," replied he, "if that was such a crime, I am sure I have made amends; for I went to see it sewed on again."

Walpole relates: "You know Selwyn never thinks but à la tête tranchée." On having a tooth drawn, he told the man that he would drop his handkerchief for the signal.

A NIGHT'S REST.

Captain Wilbraham, when at a village in Armenia, was crowded into a stable for the night, which resembled Noah's ark. Children were squalling the whole night through, and two young buffaloes walked over the Captain in the dark! We had such a night of disquiet, a few years since, upon a walk across Hampshire. The village inn was "full," and we were compelled to seek rest in a cottage, where our bed room partition was only twothirds of the entire height of the apartment: our neighbour snored most lustily, a child in the house had the hooping-cough, and the father rose at day-break, and killed a pig just under our window!

A COOL HAND.

Robespierre, in making out the list of his victims for the guillotine, wrote down the name of Jean Lambert Tallien with a slow hand, that shaped each letter with a stern distinctness, saying, "That one head is my necessity!"

GOOD RIDDANCE.

A certain well-known provincial_bore having left a tavern party of which Burns was one, he (the bard) immediately demanded a bumper, and, addressing himself to the chairman, said, "I give you the health, gentlemen all, of the waiter that called my Lord out of the room."

AN ULTIMATUM.

A luckless undergraduate of Cambridge being examined for his degree, and failing in every subject upon which he was tried, complained that he had not been questioned upon the things which he knew. Upon which the examining master took off about an inch of paper, and, pushing it towards him, desired him to write upon that all he knew.

DYSPEPSY.

A thorough-bred fox-hunter found himself so much out of health a little before the season of this sport began, that he took what was then thought a long journey to consult a physician, and get some advice which he hoped would put him into a condition for the field. Upon his return, his friends asked him what the doctor had said. "Why," said the squire, "he told me that I'd got a dyspepsy. I don't know what that is: but it's some d-d thing or other, I suppose."

GRACE MAL-APROPOS.

A milliner's apprentice, about to wait upon a Duchess, was fearful of committing some error in her deportment. She, therefore, consulted a friend as to the manner in which she should address this great personage; and was told that, on going before the Duchess, she must say her Grace, and so on. Accord

ingly, away went the girl, and, on being introduced, after a very low curtsey, she said, "For what I am going to receive, the Lord make me truly thankful." To which the Duchess answered, "Amen!"

WILKES AND SIR WILLIAM STAINES.

Sir William Staines, by persevering steadily in the pursuit of one object, accumulated an immense fortune, and rose to the statecoach and the Mansion-House. His first entrance into life was as a common bricklayer. At one of the Old Bailey dinners, after a sumptuous repast of turtle and venison, Sir William was eating a great quantity of butter with his cheese. "Why, brother," said Wilkes, " 'you lay it on with a trowel!"

A son of Sir William Staines fell from a lofty ladder, and was killed; when the father, on being fetched to the spot, broke through the crowd, exclaiming, "See that the poor fellow's watch is safe."