A NEW LIFE-PRESERVER.

"Of hair-breadth 'scapes."-Othello.

HAVE read somewhere of a Traveller, who carried with him a brace of pistols, a carbine, a cutlass, a dagger, and an umbrella, but was indebted for his preservation to the umbrella: it grappled with a bush when he was rolling over a precipice. In like manner, my friend Wthough armed with a sword, rifle, and hunting-knife, owed his existence to his wig!

He was specimen-hunting (for W- is a first-rate naturalist) somewhere in the backwoods of America, when, happening to light upon a dense covert, there sprang out upon him,-not a panther or catamountain,-but, with terrible whoop and yell, a wild Indian,—one of a tribe then hostile to our settlers. W-'s gun was mastered in a twinkling, himself stretched on the earth, the barbarous knife, destined to make him balder than Granby's celebrated Marquis, leaped eagerly from its sheath.

Conceive the horrible weapon making its preliminary flourishes and circumgyrations; the savage features, made savager by paint and ruddle, working themselves up to a demoniacal crisis of triumphant malignity; his red right hand clutching the shearing-knife; his left, the frizzled top-knot; and then, the artificial scalp coming off in the Mohawk grasp !

W- says, the Indian catchpole was, for some moments, motionless with surprise: recovering, at last, he dragged his captive along, through brake and jungle, to the encampment. A peculiar whoop soon brought the whole horde to the spot. The Indian addressed them with vehement gestures, in the course of which W. was again thrown down, the knife again performed its circuits, and the whole transaction was pantomimically described. All Indian sedateness and restraint

were overcome.

The assembly made every demonstration of wonder; and the wig was fitted on, rightly, and askew, and hind part before, by a hundred pair of red hands. Captain Gulliver's glove was not a greater puzzle to the Houyhnhnms. From the men it passed to the squaws; and from them, down to the least of the urchins; W's head, in the .meantime, frying in a midsummer sun. At length, the phenomenon returned into the hands of the chief-a venerable greybeard: he examined it afresh, very attentively, and, after a long deliberation, maintained with true Indian silence and gravity, made a speech in his own tongue, that procured for the anxious trembling captive very unexpected honours." In fact, the whole tribe of women and warriors danced round

him, with such unequivocal marks of homage, that even W- ― comprehended that he was not intended for sacrifice. He was then carried in triumph to their wigwams, his body daubed with their body colours of the most honourable patterns; and he was given to understand, that he might choose any of their marriageable maidens for a squaw. Availing himself of this privilege, and so becoming, by degrees, more a proficient in their language, he learned the cause of this extraordinary respect. It was considered, that he had been a great warrior; that he had, by mischance of war, been overcome and tufted; but that, whether by valour or stratagem, each equally estimable amongst the savages, he had recovered his liberty and his scalp.

As long as W kept his own counsel, he was safe; but trusting his Indian Delilah with the secret of his locks, it soon got wind amongst the squaws, and from them became known to the warriors and chiefs. A solemn sitting was held at midnight, by the chiefs, to consider the propriety of knocking the poor wig-owner on the head; but he had received a timely hint of their intention, and, when the tomahawks sought for him, he was far on his way, with his Lifepreserver, towards a British settlement.

A Dream.

A DREAM.

N the figure above, (a medley of human

faces,

wherein certain features belong in common to different visages, the eyebrow of one, for instance, forming the mouth of another,)—I have tried to typify a common characteristic of dreams, namely, the entanglement of divers ideas, to the waking mind distinct or incongruous, but, by the confusion of sleep, inseparably ravelled up, and knotted into Gordian intricacies. For, as the equivocal feature, in the emblem, belongs indifferently to either countenance, but is

appropriated by the head that happens to be presently the object of contemplation; so, in a dream, two separate notions will mutually involve some convertible incident, that becomes, by turns, a symptom of both in general, or of either in particular. Thus are begotten the most extravagant associations of thoughts and images,-unnatural connexions, like those marriages of forbidden relationships, where mothers become cousin to their own sons or daughters, and quite as bewildering as such genealogical embarrassments.

I had a dismal dream once, of this nature, that will serve well for an illustration, and which originated in the failure of my first, and last, attempt as a dramatic writer. Many of my readers, if I were to name the piece in question, would remember its signal condemnation. As soon as the Tragedy of my Tragedy was completed, I got into a coach and rode home. My nerves were quivering with shame and mortification. I tried to compose myself over "Paradise Lost," but it failed to soothe me. I flung myself into bed, and at length slept; but the disaster of the night still haunted my dreams; I was again in the accursed theatre, but with a difference. It was a compound of the Drury Lane Building and Pandemonium. There were the old shining green pillars, on either side of the stage, but, above, a sublimer dome than ever overhung mortal playhouse. The wonted familiars were in keeping of the fore-spoken seats, but the first companies they admitted were new and strange to the place. The first and second tiers,

"With dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms," I