Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 274, September 22, 1827», страница 7
MISCELLANIES
SONNET
ON A YOUTH WHO DIED OF EXCESSIVE FRUIT-PIE
Currants have check'd the current of my blood,
And berries brought me to be buried here;
Pears have pared off my body's hardihood,
And plums and plumbers spare not one so spare.
Fain would I feign my fall, so fair a fare
Lessens not hate, yet 'tis a lesson good:
Gilt will not long hide guilt; such thin wash'd ware
Wears quickly, and its rude touch soon is rued.
Grave on my grave some sentence grave and terse,
That lies not as it lies upon my clay,
But, in a gentle strain of unstrained verse,
Prays all to pity a poor patty's prey—
Rehearses I was fruitful to my hearse,
Tell that my days are told, and soon I'm toll'd away!
THE VEIL OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
Maria Stuart has been canonized, and placed among the martyrs by the Jesuits. Of course there are relics of hers. Her prayer-book was long shown in France; and her apologist published in an English journal a sonnet which she was said to have composed, and to have written with her own hand in this book. A celebrated German actress, Mrs. Hendel-Schutz, who excited admiration by her attitudes, and also performed Schiller's "Maria" with great applause in several cities of Germany, affirmed that a cross which she wore on her neck was the very same that once belonged to the unfortunate queen. Relics of this description have never yet been subjected to the proof of their authenticity. But if there is anything which may be reasonably believed to have been once the property of the queen, it is the veil with which she covered her head on the scaffold, after the executioner, whether from awkwardness or confusion is uncertain, had wounded the unfortunate victim in the shoulder by a false blow. This veil still exists, and is in the possession of Sir J.C. Hippisley, who claims to be descended from the Stuart's by the mother's side. He had an engraving made from it by Matteo Diottavi, in Rome, 1818, and gave copies to his friends.
The veil is embroidered with gold spangles by (as is said) the queen's own hand, in regular rows crossing each other, so as to form small squares, and edged with a gold border, to which another border has been subsequently joined, in which the following words are embroidered in letters of gold:—
"Velum Serenissimæ Mariæ, Scotiæ et Galliæ Reginæ Martyris, quo induebatur dum ab Heretica ad mortem iniustissimam condemnata fuit. Anno Sal. MDLXXXVI. a nobilissima matrona Anglicana diu conservatum et tandem, donationis ergo Deo, Societati Jesu consecratum."
On the plate there is an inscription, with a double certificate of its authenticity, which states, that this veil, a family treasure of the expelled house of Stuart, was finally in possession of the last branch of that family, the cardinal of York, who preserved it for many years in his private chapel, among the most precious relics, and at his death bequeathed it to Sir J. Hippisley, together with a valuable Plutarch, and a Codex with painted (illuminated) letters, and a gold coin struck in Scotland in the reign of queen Mary; and it was specially consecrated by Pope Pius VII. in his palace on the Quirinal, April 29, 1818. Sir John Hippisley, during a former residence at Rome, had been very intimate with the cardinal of York, and was instrumental in obtaining for him, when he with the other cardinals emigrated to Venice in 1798, a pension of £4,000. a-year from the Prince of Wales, now King George IV.; but for which, the fugitive cardinal, all whose revenues were seized by the French, would have been exposed to the greatest distress. The cardinal desired to requite this service by the bequest of what he considered so valuable. According to a note on the plate, the veil is eighty-nine English inches long, and forty-three broad, so that it seems to have been rather a kind of shawl or scarf than a veil. If we remember rightly, Melville in his Memoirs, which Schiller had read, speaks of a handkerchief belonging to the queen, which she gave away before her death, and Schiller founds upon this anecdote the well-known words of the farewell scene, addressed to Hannah Kennedy.
"Accept this handkerchief! with my own hand
For thee I've work'd it in my hours of sadness
And interwoven with my scalding tears:
With this thou'lt bind my eyes."
DREAMS
Oh! there is a dream of early youth,
And it never comes again;
'Tis a vision of light, of life, and truth,
That flits across the brain:
And love is the theme of that early dream.
So wild, so warm, so new,
That in all our after years I deem,
That early dream we rue.
Oh! there is a dream of maturer years,
More turbulent by far;
'Tis a vision of blood, and of woman's tears,
For the theme of that dream is war:
And we toil in the field of danger and death,
And shout in the battle array,
Till we find that fame is a bodyless breath,
That vanisheth away.
Oh! there is a dream of hoary age,
'Tis a vision of gold in store—
Of sums noted down on the figured page,
To be counted o'er and o'er:
And we fondly trust in our glittering dust,
As a refuge from grief and pain,
Till our limbs are laid on that last dark bed,
Where the wealth of the world is vain.
And is it thus, from man's birth to his grave—
In the path which all are treading?
Is there naught in that long career to save
From remorse and self-upbraiding?
O yes, there's a dream so pure, so bright,
That the being to whom it is given,
Hath bathed in a sea of living light—
And the theme of that dream is Heaven.
THE LECTURER
AN EXCERP FROM ABERNETHY'S LECTURES
When I was speaking of the cure of the digestive organs, I spoke of stomachic irritation, and said it was occasioned by some morbid peculiarity. It is difficult to find out the exigents; it must be done by experiment. We give a medicine, it answers. The digestive organs have such a sympathy with contiguous organs, that no wonder if such contiguous organs are affected. The liver, for instance, cannot perform its office aright if the bowels are uncomfortable. Violent drastics are wrong, they do not do good; you cannot go on giving physic every day, this will teaze the bowels and not tranquilize them, The cure is to repeat the excitement of progressive action. People in general will not find out that what may be an adequate excitement one day, may not be an adequate excitement on another day. As to these things, they are easily managed, and you should attend to them. Every person advanced in life knows this, and attends to it. Doctor Curry, whom I used to call the poetical doctor, says, very justly, "It is in medicine as it is in morals, you must break bad habits, and establish good ones."
Where the liver is primarily affected, small doses of quicksilver act in a wonderful and a prodigious manner. How the stomach, when wrong, disturbs the head, is apparent to every one. How a faulty action of the liver disturbs the head is also well known; but the liver, in an especial manner, disturbs the head.
A Yorkshireman came three hundred miles, as he told me, on purpose to see me, and he said he was going back again by the mail the same night. I asked him what could induce him to come so far. His reply was, "Why you once set up a friend of mine, and I thought you could set me up too."
I would have you keep your eyes open to this, that we are perpetually putting wrong our digestive organs by our absurdities in diet. These organs, if long wrong, will affect the spinal chord, producing lumbar numbness. Now, then, I have surveyed the influence of local maladies in disturbing the nervous energies, and now I say there is a reflected action in them, and they become a fruitful source of a numerous and dissimilar progeny of local diseases.
People are disposed to say I am apt to exaggerate too much; but I merely relate what I have seen in my time, and you will all have numerous instances by and by of making the same observations, and I think at last you will come to the same conclusions.
I now speak of local diseases; and, first, of phlegmonous inflammation. I do not much like the term phlegmonous inflammation, because phlegmon alone is inflammation. That the vessels, particularly the arteries, of inflamed parts are disposed to receive more blood, is manifest. Mr. Hunter froze the ears of rabbits, and the arteries inflamed and were filled with blood, throbbing, and pain. When there is great disturbance of the arterious system, with throbbing, there is always acute pain. In common whitlow of the finger, how the arteries of the arm, the brachial in particular, throb, is well known. In proportion as arteries are excited to vehement action, some difficulty occurs to the transmission of the blood into the veins. Dr. Phillips found that inflamed blood is slower in cooling than common blood.
