Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 401, November 28, 1829», страница 4

AMERICAN LAW

A recent traveller, in describing the American courts of law and their proceedings, says, in one instance Counsellor Lloyd had grossly insulted Judge Turner in the street, and was tried for the offence by the judge. He was half-drunk, but defended himself by the vilest abuse of the judge, who could not silence him. No jury was appealed to; but (we suppose for contempt of court) he was ordered to give security for one year's good behaviour, and, not procuring sufficient bail, was committed to prison.

The Galwegians who attended David I. of Scotland to Custon Moor, had a favourite amusement of tossing infants upon their pikes!

A CAT STORY

Lady Morgan tells a story of an "amiable and intelligent" grimalkin, which belonged to a young girl who was subject to epileptic fits. Puss, by dint of repeated observation, knew when they were coming on, and would run, frisking her tail, to the girl's parents, mewing in the most heart-breaking tones, and clawing at their legs, till she made them follow her. Her name was Mina; and her history is extant in "choice Italian." At length the girl died, and poor puss went to the funeral of her own accord. Being a black cat, she was already in mourning—"nature's mourning!" She wanted to jump into the grave, but that was prevented. So puss, the "chief mourner," was carried home again. But her amiable heart could not survive the shock, for, after pining three months, refusing boiled liver and new milk, poor grimalkin was found "dead upon the green mound that covered her beloved mistress's remains." There was a cat for you!

TURKS AND RUSSIANS

The character of the Russ differs from that of the Turk in little more than in the quality of his barbarism. The Turk loves blood;—the Russ loves craft;—The Turk takes at once to the dagger;—the Russ begins by the snare; but when the matter presses, he will use the steel as readily as any Turk on earth. The ferocity of the Turk flourishes in the streets, in his own house, in the seraglio—every where that he has a victim within his reach, and that it pleases him to destroy that victim. The Russ knows something more of the law, and is by no means so domestic a cut-throat; but his mercy in the field or in the stormed city, is massacre.—Monthly Magazine.

MR. PITT

Lady Hester Stanhope related the following to Mr. Madden:—

When Mr. Pitt was out of office, I acted as his secretary, and he had then as much business as when he was in. He very seldom opposed my opinions, and always respected my antipathies. In private life he was cheerful and affable; he would rise in the midst of his gravest avocations to hand me a fallen handkerchief; he was always polite to women, and a great favourite with many of them; but he was wedded to the state, and nothing but death could divorce him from his country. He was fond of me; he loved originality in any shape. His great recreation, after the fatigue of business, was stealing into the country, entering a clean cottage, where there was a tidy woman and a nicely-scoured table, and there he would eat bread and cheese like any ploughman. He detested routs, and always sat down to plain dinners. He never ate before he went to the House; but when any thing important was to be discussed, he was in the habit of taking a glass of port wine with a tea-spoonful of bark.

ENGLISH AND FRENCH

In the arts, while French productions display resource, ingenuity, and dexterity, they at the same time show a striking want of the sense of fitness, and are unfinished and flimsy. Such, in the cities of France, is remarkably the case with whatever regards furniture and decoration, while the productions of cookery are at once impregnated with filth, and admirably calculated to conceal it. In the country, again, with a climate superior to that of England, there is everywhere to be seen open fields, later harvests, corn full of weeds, and inferior grain. The difference between French and English taste in dress is very remarkable. Even when English women take a hint from French contrivances, they endeavour to be more natural, modest, and classical. As to male dress, an English gentleman always desires his tailor to avoid the extremes of fashion; and, as his dress is grave and manly, it is generally followed throughout Europe. The French use of forks, napkins, &c. really requires some notice. A French gentleman, in adjusting himself at his coarse deal table and shabby cloth, does not hesitate to fix a napkin about his neck, in such a manner as to protect his clothes in front against the certainty of being bespattered by his mode of eating. An Englishman of the middle class would be ashamed of such a contrivance; for, without any particular care, he eats so as not even to stain the damask cloth with which his mahogany table is covered. The French gentleman is perpetually wiping his dirty fingers on a napkin spread out before him, and of which the beauties are not invisible to his neighbours on each side. The Englishman of the middle class requires no napkin, because his fingers are never soiled. The French gentleman, incapable of raising his left hand properly to his mouth, first hastily hacks his meat into fragments, then throws down his dirty knife on the cloth, and seizing the fork in his right hand, while his left fixes a mass of bread on his plate, he runs up each fragment against it, and having eaten these, he wipes up his plate with the bread and swallows it. An English peasant would blush at such bestiality. A French gentleman not only washes his filthy hands at table, but, after gulping a mouthful, and using it as a gargle, squirts it into the basin standing before him, and the company, who may see the charybdis or maelstrom he has made in it, and the floating filth he has discharged, and which is now whirling in its vortex. In England this practice is unknown, except to those whose taste and stomach are too strong for offence. It has been stupidly borrowed from the Oriental nations, who use no knives and forks, and where, though it has this apology, it has always excited the disgust of enlightened travellers. When dinner is over, the Englishman's carpet is as clean as before; the Frenchman's bare boards resemble those of a hog-sty. In short, in all that regards the table, the French are some centuries behind the English.—Blackwood's Magazine.

In the last Quarterly Review we find that "the safety of the British empire is now entrusted to 130,000 men. Now France, we believe, maintains about 200,000 soldiers. The forces of Austria and Prussia have always been on a much higher footing than ours. Even the late King of Bavaria kept, we know not how, 70,000 men under arms. Indeed Old England is by nothing more happily distinguished from her neighbours than by the silence of the trumpet and drum. At this moment, moreover, the due level of our peace establishment is but an object of speculative research. No man who looks to the placing of Roumelia, or whose vision reaches even to the palace of Elysée Bourbon, would consent that this country should lose the aid of a single right."

ALI PACHA'S HEAD

Dr. Walsh tells us that the head of Ali Pacha was sent to Constantinople, and exhibited to the public on a dish. As the name of Ali had made a considerable noise in Europe, and more particularly in England, in consequence of his negociations with Sir Thomas Maitland, and still more, perhaps, the stanzas in Childe Harold, a merchant of Constantinople thought it no bad speculation to purchase the head and dish, and send them to London for exhibition; but a former confidential agent obtained it from the executioner for a higher price than the merchant had offered; and together with the heads of his three sons and grandson, who, according to custom, were all seized and decapitated, had them deposited near one of the city gates, with a tombstone and inscription.

THE GOUT

Imagine a sensation in the great toe, as if it had been suddenly seized with a pair of red-hot pincers. Whew! There they are at it! nipping and tearing the flesh, and then rubbing the lacerated joint with aquafortis, or a solution of blue vitriol. And now, the pain shoots along the nerves on that side, till my head bumps and bumps as if a legion of imps were playing at leap-frog in it.

AMERICA

The state of business in the United States is thus described in a letter from Boston, dated the 7th of last July:—"The commercial world over the globe seems paralyzed, and many manufactories on a large scale, with the proprietors and stockholders, have failed, and are utterly ruined. All business is confined to the wants only of the day, teaching a necessary absolute economy, which men of business in times past have not been accustomed to."

Rice Paper is the pith of the Tong-t-sao—a valuable Chinese tree.