21 MAY 1842, Page 12

TRIED TOOLS.

MEN entertain a natural preference for a tool which has been tried and found to work well, over one, however goodly to look at, which is yet untried. Leatherlegs, the hero of FENIMORE COOPER'S half- dozen tales, would not have exchanged his old rifle Kill-deer for the best that ever issued from Maivrox's shop. There is something in this more than the mere goodness of the instrument : a man would feel ashamed to fail when using what hail always proved efficient in other hands. Who or what could withstand the polemical divine who should be lucky enough to get bold of the inkstand which LUTHER threw at the head of Satan ? Men have therefore in all ages been anxious to get hold of tools which they felt they would be ashamed to fail with. When BYRON'S hero exclaims, " Then forth, my father's scimitar " we feel certain that he is about to set to work in right-down earnest. Two great men are living instances of confidence in the influence of such associations. Mr. GEORGE Roams would use nothing for a tribune at the Strawberry Hill sale but the seat of the Abbot of Glastonbury : he felt that the chair from which the relics of saints had often been commended with unction and success would inspire him with double power to palm off the temporal relics he had to dispose of. And Sir ROBERT PEEL, having buckled himself to the task of reestablishing the national finances, has not disdained to recruit his forces by purchasing the silver inkstand which was once Sir ROBERT WALPOLE'S. " Not Amurath on Amurath succeeds, but Harry Harry." ROBERT the Second is about to walk in the footsteps of ROBERT the First : the Income-tax is only a type of the ingenious inventions which are to Bow from that black fountain ; and who knows but it may hereafter prove the Castellon spring to a Minister combining all the qualities of his predecessors ? Our grandchildren may live to say,

" The force of Nature could no further go, To make a third she joiu'd the other two."