Star.
London, England, 1830-05-03 00:00:00

Stud.—Not unless the ideal box hath the idea of salt contain-0
in it.

Prof.—True ; and therefore an abstract idea cannot be either salt
or fresh, round or square, loog or shat; and this shows the dif.
ference between a salt Ida and an idea dish. Is an aptitude to hold
salt an essential or an acddental property of a salt box ?
Stud.—lt is an essential ; but if there should be a stack in the
bottom of the box, the aptitude to spill salt would be termed an ac-
cidental property of that salt box.
Prof.—Very well, very well, indeed What is the salt celled
whit respect to the box ?
Stud—lt is called its contents.
Prof.—And why so?
Stud.—Because the cook is content, quoad hoc, to find plenty of 1
salt in the box.

Prof.—You are veri right.—Mirror.
DUELLING IN IRELAND.

Duelling had been formerly the opprobrium and stain
of this land, whose inhabitants, quick, sensitive, and irri-
table, were continually coming into collision for some
imaginary offence, which it was thought mean and spi-
ritless to explain by either party, till one had killed, or
endeavoured to kill, the other. So common, indeed, had
it become, that it was the ladder of preferment by which
young men rose in their professions, and almost the
amusement of every class of society who pretended to the
rank of gentlemen. Not only every fox hunt, county-
ball, and convivial meeting, but every assizes, election,
and sessions of parliament, was a continued period of per-
sonal encounters. But by far the most intolerable evil,
because it came home to the business and bosom of every
man, was a set of exclusives who called themselves
" Bucks," and who generally were, or had been, military
men. These persons frequented all public places, and
held it a point of honour to attack eath other, wherever
they met, with small swords, like game cocks armed with
steel spurs, and every coffee-house, theatre, square, or
street, was a scene of their murderous encounters. It is
a well-known het, that they have ordered at a tavern
pistols for two and breakfast for one, and the survivor
coolly returned to take his meal, leaving his companion
weltering in his blood at the back of the house. Had this
even been confined to themselves, the community could
well tolerate the mutual destruction of such a pestilent
race; but

" These powdered fops, of new commissions rain,
Who slept on thorns till they had killed their man,"
delighted in insulting and murdering the peaceable and
well-disposed. They literally " provoked a brawl, and
stabbed you for a jest." They walked about with long
trains to their gowns, and the persons who accidentally
trod on them were immediately attacked, and run through
the body, for their presumption.
The first check given to the practices of these persons
of quality, was by the execution of George Robert Fitz-
gerald. This man, of a distinguished rank and family in
Ireland, had been the most expert and noted duellist of
his day ; and after perpetrating sundry outrages in this
way with impunity, he basely waylaid and murdered some
persons with whom he had a dispute. Nothing could
mark more strongly the deplorable state of public opinion
in Ireland at the time, than the difficulty found in bring-
ing to condign punishment this malefactor. He was at
length, however, tried, convicted, and executed, to the
terror of his caste, and the comfort of all good and peace-
able men. His execution was followed up by that of a
gentleman of the name of Keon, who was convicted upon
the simple circumstance of killing another in a duel.
Some unfair practice was alleged and proved ; and he,
too, not less to the astonishment and the warning of his
associates, was hanged in the front of Newgate, in Dub-
lin, like any other felon. But the person to whom the
public in Ireland are more indebted, perhaps, than any
other, for putting a stop to the atrocious practice, is
Judge Mayne. He was a man of strict religious princi-
ples, and was considered as belonging to a sect of Me-
thodists ; he therefore set his face against duelling in any
form, not less from a sense of what he owed to the laws
of GOD than of man. He attacked the practice in its
strong hold, and where, at the time, it was rmnsidered
stain on any gentleman, of a certain age, not to have
gone out to the field with some antagonist. At the
usizes of Galway, a case of fair duelling, as it was
called, came before him, and instead of dismissing it in
the usual way, he charged the jury with such a solemn
determination, that for the first time in that part of Ireland
the simple act of duelling was pronounced a capital crime,
and the man found guilty narrowly escaped an ignomi-
nious execution. From that period the practice happily
fell into disuse, even in Connaught. When a man re-
ceived a challenge, he had the courage to decline it, and,
in return, to file a criminal information against the chal-
lenger ; and at one assizes, thirteen informations of this
kind came to be tried, which a few years before would
have probably terminated in so many murders.—British
Magazine.