HOOD'S COMIC ANNUAL.

MR. HOOD seems to have borne in mind our last year's hints as to the utility of making his Annual a satirical reflector of annual follies. The work as a whole possesses more purpose than its predecessors ; nearly every article having some relation to passing circumstances. But the choice of subjects is better than their execution. Accustomed for so long to points and punning, and other verbal witticisms, Mr. Hoop appears to forget that words are only the images of things, and are of little value except for the matter they contain. The jokes are perhaps less forced than in some nf his former volumes; and there is therefore less of flatness and failure. But the dilution of the wordcatcher is unpleasantly apparent; or we have read the volume in a humour unpropitious to jesting. The first subject is "The Carnaby Correspondence ;" a series of letters from a schoolmaster, his pupil, and the parent and uncle of the boy. Its intention is to ridicule the pompous pretensions and real shallowness of the scholastic profession, as well as to develop the characters of the uncle, a seaman, and the father, a weak illiterate person. There are some good points in the seaman's letter; but the misspellings in both reach perhaps beyond cari- cature—Mr. HOOD had Humphrey Clinker in his mind, without considering change of times and persons. The pupil's letter naïvely describes a badly-managed boys' school ; but the Doctor's is a very capital skit. In " Patronage," the idea of making the wife of the dissatisfied placebunter write to the Minister soliciting for promotion, is good; and the description of the candidate—a gentleman "whose mind and nerves are in such a state, as to make him unfit for any business whatever, except public atThirs " —is fair enough ; but the main idea is subsequently dropped, for an overcharged description of the distresses of an inspector of a gunpowder-mill in constant dread of a blow-up. We do not see the juke of the dialogue upon the North Polar expeditions. The author wants depth and strength to satirize the quackery of Animal Magnetism. " Hints to the Horticultural " is a pleasant enough ridicule of town gardening, though the utility of the sub- ject should have shielded it. "The Review " is a clever enough, but not a very striking hit at those writers who make a book a stalking-horse for egotistical stories. Besides these, there are several others both in prose and verse ; from which, as the .shortest, and perhaps the happiest, we take THE reaLoasr SHEPHERD'S COMPLAINT.

" Vell! Here I am—no matter how it suits A-keeping Company with them dumb Brutes, Old Park yes no bad Judge—confound his vig !- Of vot vood break the Sperrit of a Prig !

"Thu Like of Me, to come to New Sow Wales Togo &Awing arter Vethers' Tails And valk on Herbage as delights the Flock, But stinks of Sweet Herbs vorser nor the Dock !

"To go to set this solitary Job To Von whose Vork vos alvay in a Mob ! It's out of all our Lines, for sure I am Jack Shepherd even never kep a Lamb!

" I arn't ashamed to say I sit and veep To think of Seven Year of keepin Sheep, The spooniest Beasts in Neter, all to Sticks, And nut a Votch to take fur all their Ticks!

"If I'd fore-seed how Transports vould turn out

To only Baa! and Botanize about,

I'd quite as leaf have had the t'other Pull, And come to Cotton as to sdl this Vool !

" Von only happy moment I have bad

Since here I come to be a Farmer's Cad; And thou I eotebed a vild Beast hi a Snooze,

And picked her Pouch of three yowl Kangaroos!

1, Vat change have Ito go to Race or Mill?

Or show a sneaking kindness the a Till; And as for Vasbings, on a hedge to dry,

I'd put the Natives Linen in my Eye !

" If this whole Lot of Mutton I could scrag, And find a Fence to turn it into Swag, I'd give it all in Lonnon Streets to stand,

And if I had my pick, I'd say the Strand!

"But yen I goes, as maybe cones I shall, To any old Crib to meet with Jack and Sal, I've been so gallows honest in this Place, I shan't not like to show my sheepish Face.

" It's wery bard for nothing bat a Rox

Of Irish Blackguard to be keepin' Flocks, 'along naked Blacks, sich Savages to bus, They've neyther got a Pocket nor a Pus.

" But Folks may tell their Troubles till they're !irk To dumb brute Beasts, and so I'll cut my Stick t And vot's the Use a Feller's Eyes to pipe

Vere von can't borrow any Geminates Vipe? "