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WE are promised by an esteemed friend some interesting extracts from the original American correspondence of Mrs. GRANT of Laggan, whose 'Memoir and Correspondence,' edited by her son, has recently attracted so much attention and remark in Great-Britain. Mrs. GRANT appears to have been a woman of very remarkable powers, and of the most admirable common sense. Her observations upon the 'amusive talents' of THEODORE HOOK, and his entire devotion to their cultivation, are replete with the soundest wisdom. The distinction between living to amuse the public merely, and the exertion of one's intellectual powers for one's own benefit, and with an eye to the claims of riper years, is admirably discriminated and set forth. There is not perhaps a more instructive lesson than that conveyed by professional wits, who are 'first applauded and then endured, when people see that it is all they have.' As auxiliaries, as contrasts, with reflection and thoughtful exercitations of the mind, wit and humor are felicitous matters; as an intellectual main-stay, however, they have been weighed in the balance by a hundred brilliant examples, and have always been 'found wanting.' . . . PUNCH, at this present writing, save three or four numbers, in February, is among the missing. Late issues however, furnish some valuable contributions to academical statistics; as for example, Mr. BOYS, who in his report upon the metropolitan school-visitation, writes as follows:

'THE use of sponge for cleaning slates he found confined to 17-1/4 per cent.; of whom 5-1/2 used the sponge wet with water, and 11-3/4 with saliva; the remaining 82-3/4 made use of the latter liquid and the cuffs of their jackets instead of sponges, with an occasional recourse to the pocket-handkerchief. The author found, in schools in which the Latin language was not taught, a lamentable deficiency in the knowledge of the meaning of 'meum' and 'tuum;' he pointed out how the great extent of juvenile crime might thus be accounted for, as being caused by the absence of all instruction in the Latin language, and hoped that teaching it would soon be made obligatory upon all school-masters.'

There is a humorous sketch of an examination of law-students, from which we select an 'exercise' or two:

'QUES: Have you attended any and what law lectures? ANS: I have attended to many legal lectures, when I have been admonished by police magistrates for kicking up rows in the streets, pulling off knockers, etc.

QUES: What is a real action? ANS: An action brought in earnest, and not by way of a joke.

QUES: What are a bill and answer? ANS: Ask my tailor.

QUES: How would you file a bill? ANS: I don't know, but would lay the case before a blacksmith.

QUES: What steps would you take to dissolve an injunction? ANS: I should put it into some very hot water, and let it remain there until it was melted.

QUES: What are post-nuptial articles? ANS: Children.

QUES: What is simple larceny? ANS: Picking a pocket of a handkerchief, and leaving a purse of money behind.'

We have had books on etiquette, of various kinds, lately, but a work of this sort for prisons will be found, one would think, to supply an important desideratum. GEORGE SELWYN, when a servant was sent to Newgate, for stealing articles from the club-house of which SELWYN was a member, was very much shocked: 'What a horrid report,' said he, 'the fellow will give of us to the gentlemen in Newgate!' This feeling will doubtless be more general by and by:

'IN consequence of complaints that have been made by persons committed to prison before trial, who object to their not being allowed to mix with other prisoners, it has been thought necessary to frame a Book of Etiquette for prison purposes. Of course a superior delinquent, like a forger, could not be on visiting terms with a mere pick-pocket, nor could a man charged with stealing a hundred pounds, feel at his ease in the society of one whose alleged theft might be mean and insignificant. It is, we believe, intended to introduce the prisoners to each other formally, not by name, but by the offence with which they are charged. Thus, the Governor of Newgate would say to Felony: 'Allow me to introduce you to AGGRAVATED LARCENY. You ought to know each other—indeed you ought. AGGRAVATED LARCENY, FELONY; FELONY, AGGRAVATED LARCENY.' By a nice adjustment and proper application of the rules of etiquette, a very admirable system of social intercourse might be established in all our prisons, and the present complaint of a want of 'good society,' which falls so severely on superior scoundrels, would at once be got rid of.'

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DEAFNESS, although sometimes rather annoying—as for example in the case mentioned in preceding pages by JOHN WATERS—is yet not without its advantages. Your conversational ''Deaf BURKE,' who can endure any amount of 'punishment' without being the worse for it,' enjoys not unfrequently a great deal of negative felicity. We envied the condition of such an one the other day, while sitting with a friend at the 'Globe,' over such potables and edibles as that matchless establishment can alone set before its guests. At a table in near proximity, sat two Englishmen, whose comments upon 'matters and things' in America were embodied in such 'voluble speech' that we could scarcely hear ourselves speak. 'They may talk about their hinstitutions as much as they please,' said one of the speakers, 'but honly look at 'em—see their heffect, from the 'ead of the government, down. Yesterday I perused in the 'Courier' newspaper an account of a negro's skin, hentire, that was found with the 'ead attached, in the Mississippi river!' ''Orid, isn't it! Think o' such a thing as that picked up in the Tems! And last week. I read in the 'Erald of a man near the Canada lines, who was found dead by the side of a fallen tree, half eaten up by wild hogs or panthers. He 'ad a flask of whiskey by his side, which he had taken 'neat,' till it had killed him; and in his pocket was a dirty pack o' cards, wrapped up in a copy of the Declaration of Hindependence! That's your liberty for ye!' [Symbol: Hand pointing right] See if these very absurdities be not found embodied within a twelve-month in some new work by a travelling Englishman, upon that 'miserable experiment at self-government, the United States of America!' . . . HERE are some scraps of 'Parisian Gossip' which will not be altogether uninteresting to American readers. One of our Paris letters states that at a splendid party given by Lady COWLEY, there occurred a rather curious incident. 'Among the guests was a Mr. L——, (one of the snobiculi, most likely,) who, believing that none but a friend whom he addressed was within hearing, said, 'And they call this a party? Why, I never saw any thing so dull in all my life. It is not worth the trouble of dressing for such an affair; and then the rooms are so intolerably hot.' Unfortunately, the noble hostess was standing near, and overheard him, and immediately said: 'Mr. L——, there (pointing to the ante-room,) is a cooler room, and beyond it is the hall, still cooler.' This prompt and significant hint was felt, understood, and taken.' 'Every body in Paris knows or has heard of HALEVY the composer, and his brother, the author. A bon mot of a pretty and sarcastic lady, at the expense of both of them, is now going the round of the gossipping circles. 'Do you like HALEVY, the author?' inquired a friend. 'Pas du tout, pas du tout!' answered the lady; 'He is as dull as if his brother had composed him!' EUGENE SUE has hatched a large brood of 'Mysteries.' The Journal des Debats having published 'Mysteries of Paris,' the Courier Francais is now publishing the 'Mysteries of London.' At Berlin no less than four different authors have published its 'Mysteries.' The 'Mysteries of Brussels' are being detailed in one of its journals. The 'Mysteries of Hamburg' have been exposed in print. At Vienna they are giving the 'Mysteries of Constantinople;' and a Paris newspaper promises in a short time the 'Mysteries of St. Petersburg.' Going on at this rate, there will soon be no 'Mysteries' in the world, and even the very word will become obsolete.' . . . 'The God of our Idolatry' contains some home-thrusts at the national love of money, and not a few just animadversions upon the standard of respectability which obtains, in certain quarters, among us. HAMILTON and BASIL HALL'S experience in this regard seems also to have been that of our correspondent. The tendency of this standard, in a social and intellectual point of view, is very far from elevating. 'You are going to the dinner at ——'s to-day, of course,' said a lady with 'an eye to the main chance' to a friend of ours, the other day; 'the company will be composed of some of our most 'fore-handed citizens—all heavy men,' Our friend did go to the dinner; and he found the guests as 'heavy' as their best friends could have wished them to be. . . . READING, in presence of a travelled friend, the proof of the admirable paper which opens the present number, we came to the passage which records the opinion of KEPLER, that 'the world is a vast animal, that breathes and reasons;' whereupon our listener remarked: 'No doubt of it; it is an animal; I've seen its four-quarters myself!' It was a pun worthy of a butcher. . . . WE are not so certain that the moral of 'The Independent Man' is 'an unexceptionable one.' The 'Charcoal-sketcher' expresses the general opinion, we fear, in this regard: 'There's a double set of principles in this world, one of which is to talk about and the other to act upon; one is preached and the other is practised. You've got hold, somehow, of the wrong set; the set invented by the knowing ones to check competition and to secure all the good things for themselves. That's the reason people are always praising modest merit, while they are pushing along without either the one or the other. You always let go when any body's going to take your place at table; you always hold back when another person's wanting the last of the nice things on the dish. That's not the way; bow and nod, and show your teeth with a fascination, but take what you want for all that. This is manners—knowing the world. To be polite is to have your own way gracefully; other people are delighted at your style—you have the profit.' . . . THE reader will not overlook the 'Alligatorical Sketch' in preceding pages. We begin to perceive how much the alligator has been slandered. It yawns merely, it would seem; and the only care requisite is, to be absent when its jaws close! 'The 'gator isn't what you may call a han'some critter, but there's a great deal of openness when he smiles!' The smile of an alligator!! . . . 'Cleanliness,' says FULLER, 'is godliness;' and he is not far out of the way; for no man, we think, can be a dirty Christian. In a moral and religious point of view, then, we are doing good service in calling public attention to the spacious baths of Mr. CHARLES RABINEAU, at the Astor-House, and at his new establishment at Number 123 Broadway, Albany. Go wash in them and be clean, reader, and thank us for the joy which you will experience, when you shall have come out of the water and gone your ways. . . . ONE of the late London pictorial publications contains a portrait of Sir HUDSON LOWE, the notorious keeper of NAPOLEON, the Emperor of the French, at St. Helena. It is in perfect keeping with the generally received estimate of the character of that functionary. The wretched thatch that disfigures without concealing the intellectual poverty of his narrow skull; the scowling features; the ragged penthouse brows; are 'close denotements' of the truth of 'Common Report.' In short, judging from the much-bepraised 'likeness' to which we allude, if Sir HUDSON LOWE was not a tyrant, and a small-minded one withal, GOD doesn't write a legible hand. . . . SOME clever wag in the last BLACKWOOD has an article, written in a hurry, upon the hurriedness of literary matters in these our 'go-ahead' days. 'People,' he says, 'have not only ceased to purchase those old-fashioned things called books, but even to read them. Instead of cutting new works page by page, they cut them altogether:

'WHEN England luxuriated in the novels of RICHARDSON, in eight volumes, it drove in coaches and four, at the rate of five miles an hour. A journey was then esteemed a family calamity; and people abided all the year round in their cedar parlors, thankful to be diverted by the arrival of the Spectator, or a few pages of the Pilgrim's Progress, or a new sermon. To their incidental lives, a book was an event. Those were the days worth writing for! The fate of RICHARDSON'S heroines was made a national affair; and people interceded with him by letter to 'spare Clarissa,' as they would not now intercede with her Majesty to spare a new EFFIE DEANS. The successive volumes of Pope's Iliad were looked for with what is called 'breathless' interest, while such political sheets as the Drapier's Letters, or Junius, set the whole kingdom in an uproar. And now, if POPE, or SWIFT, or FIELDING, or JOHNSON, or STERNE, were to rise from the grave, MS. in hand, the most adventurous publisher would pass a sleepless night before he undertook the risk of paper and print; would advise a small edition, and exact a sum down in ready money, to be laid out in puffs and advertisements! 'Even then, though we may get rid of a few copies to the circulating libraries,' he would observe, 'do not expect, Sir, to obtain readers. A few old maids in the county towns, and a few gouty old gentlemen at the clubs, are the only persons of the present day who ever open a book!' And who can wonder? Who has leisure to read? Who cares to sit down and spell out accounts of travels which he can make at less cost than the cost of the narrative? Who wants to peruse fictitious adventures, when rail-roads and steam-boats woo him to adventures of his own? People are busy ballooning or driving; shooting like stars along rail-roads, or migrating like swallows or wild-geese.'

In allusion to the illustrated newspapers, now vieing with each other in enterprise and expense, in the British metropolis, the writer says: 'The pictorial printing press is now your only wear! Every thing is communicated by delineation. We are not told but shown how the world is wagging. Views of the Holy Land are superseding even the Holy Scriptures, and a pictorial BLACKSTONE is teaching the ideas of sucking lawyers how to shoot. Libels are veiled in carricature. Instead of writing slander and flat blasphemy, the modern method is to draw it, and not to 'draw it mild' either. The columns of certain papers bear a striking likeness to a child's alphabet, such as 'A was an Archer, and shot at a frog.' All the world is now instructed by symbols, as formerly the deaf and dumb. We have little doubt of shortly seeing announcements, standing like tomb-stones in those literary cemeteries, the Saturday papers, of 'A new work upon America, from the graver of GEORGE CRUIKSHANK;' or 'A new fashionable novel, (diamond edition,) from the accomplished pencil of 'H. B.'' . . . WE have a 'Query' from a Philadelphia correspondent, as to whether Mr. and Mrs. WOOD would not be likely to come over here, if invited, and in company with BROUGH, and other artists, establish English opera among us. Touching the disposition of the WOODS in this matter, we know nothing; but BROUGH is too busily employed to admit of such a consummation. What with his agency for the new sporting gun-powder, (which DANIEL WEBSTER declares to be superior in strength and cleanliness to any other thing of the kind in the world,) and for the 'Illustrated London News,' 'Old PARR'S Life-pills' etc., he has scarcely leisure to achieve his private calls, and execute occasionally, for the gratification of his friends, those charming airs which are indissolubly associated with his name. . . . Messrs. SNELLING AND TISDALE'S 'Metropolitan Library and Reading-Room,' at 599 Broadway, near Houston-street, supplies an important desideratum in that quarter of the metropolis. In addition to a well-stocked library and reading-room, there are coffee, conversation, chess, and cigar-apartments, and all the belongings of a first establishment after its kind. . . . WE had clipped for insertion, from a Baltimore journal, a poem in honor of OLE BULL, entitled 'The Bewitched Fiddle,' which we have unluckily mislaid or lost. It was by Mr. HEWITT, a popular song-writer and musical composer, and was one of the most fanciful and felicitous things we have seen in a month of Sundays. As it is at this moment out of our power to print it, we can only counsel our readers, if they encounter it any where, not to fail of its perusal. . . . WE have a pleasant metropolitan story to tell one of these days, (at least we think so,) of which we have been reminded by the following from a late English magazine:

'THE vulgar genteel are nervously cautious concerning every thing they say or do; they are ever alive to the dread of compromising their 'gentility.' At a ball—it was a charity-ball!—given at a fashionable watering-place, a pretty young woman, who was sitting by her mother, was invited by a gentleman to dance. He led her to a set; when, instantly, two 'young ladies' who were of it, haughtily, withdrew to their seats. 'They had no notion of dancing in such company'—and with good reason. The young person was nothing more than the daughter of a wealthy and respectable tradesman of the place; while they—the two Misses KNIBBS—were members of its resident small 'aristocracy.' The places they had vacated were good-naturedly filled by two ladies who had witnessed the proceeding, one of whom was the daughter, the other, the niece, of a nobleman. Their position was too well established to be compromised by dancing for a quarter of an hour in the same set with a respectable tradesman's daughter; but the two Misses KNIBBS were the daughters of a retired soap-boiler.'

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.*. WE have numerous communications in prose and verse, several of them from favorite contributors, of which we shall make more particular mention in our next. Three pages of 'Literary Record,' although in type, are unavoidably omitted.

THE END