Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 282, November 10, 1827», страница 6
A PERSIAN FABLE
A little particle of rain,
That from a passing cloud descended,
Was heard thus idly to complain:—
"My brief existence now is ended.
Outcast alike of earth and sky,
Useless to live, unknown to die."
It chanced to fall into the sea,
And there an open shell received it;
And, after years, how rich was he,
Who from its prison-house relieved it:
The drop of rain has formed a gem,
To deck a monarch's diadem.
Amulet.
THE GATHERER
"I am but a Gatherer and disposer of other men's stuff."—Wotton.
NEW READING
A witty wight, on seeing the following line in our last,
Necessitas non habet legem,
supplied this new reading,
Necessity without a leg to stand upon.
O. P. RIOTS
"What is doing to-night?" asked Kemble, of one of the ballet-masters; "Oh pis (O P) toujours, Monsieur," was the reply.
A CURIOUS FACT
An absent man, whose heart can seldom resist the importunities of beggars, was, a few mornings since, followed by a hungry half-starved dog, when he inadvertently took from his pocket a penny, which he was just about to give to the four-footed wanderer, when he perceived his mistake. It should be mentioned that the above individual had, on nearly the precise spot, on the previous night, assisted one of his fellow creatures in the same manner as that in which he was about to relieve the quadruped. The EDITOR of the MIRROR will be happy to substantiate this fact to such as may be disposed to doubt its authenticity:—"if it be madness, there's method in it."
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
Seventeen hundred individuals a year, for the last seven years, have been committed for poaching.—Report Prison Discip. Society.
Crime is a curse only to the period in which it is successful; but virtue, whether fortunate or otherwise, blesses not only its own age, but remotest posterity, and is as beneficial by its example, as by its immediate effects.
At the late Doncaster races, there were 30,000 persons well clothed, and apparently well fed and happy. 2000l. were taken at the grand stand for admission.
Mr. Kean is to receive, during the present season, fifty pounds for each night's performance—the yearly income of a curate!
Singing Non Nobis Domine after dinner is a very foolish custom. People in England pay 10,000l. a year for non nobis. Rather sing Dr. Kitchener's Universal Prayer and the English grace. The common people of every country understand only their native tongue; therefore if you do not understand them, you will not understand each other. All Italian music is detestable, and nothing like our genuine native song. Weber's "unconcatenated chords" ought not to be listened to, while we have such composers as Braham and Tom Cooke. The national songs of Great Britain have not sold so well as the Cook's Oracle. "People like what goes into the mouth better than what comes out of it."—Dr. Kitchener.
A museum, deanery, and a cattle-market are building at York. Various other improvements and repairs are also in progress in that city!
According to the Report of the Commissioners of Public Charities, the annual sum of 972,396l. has been bequeathed by pious donors to England only! This is surely the promised land of benevolence; but in Salop only, there are arrears now due to the poor for upwards of 42 years!
M. La Combe, in his Picture of London, advises those who do not wish to be robbed to carry a brace of blunderbusses, and to put the muzzle of one out of each window, so as to be seen by the robbers.
The silly habit of praising every thing at a man's table came in for a share of the late Dr. Kitchener's severity. He said, "Criticism, sir, is not a pastime; it is a verdict on oath: the man who does it is (morally) sworn to perform his duty. There is but one character on earth, sir," he would add, "that I detest; and that is the man who praises, indiscriminately, every dish that is set before him. Once I find a fellow do that at my table, and, if he were my brother, I never ask him to dinner again."
A daily literary journal has lately been started in Paris, and has, in less than three weeks, above 2,000 subscribers.
Reviewing, as a profession by which a certain class of men seek to instruct the public, and to support themselves creditably in the middle order, and to keep their children from falling, after the decease of enlightened parents, on the parish, is at the lowest possible ebb in this country; and many is the once well-fed critic now an hungered—Blackwood.
Oranges.—It is not perhaps generally known or suspected, that the rabbis of the London synagogues are in the habit of affording both employment and maintenance to the poor of their own persuasion, by supplying them with oranges at an almost nominal price.—Ibid.
Noble Authors.—The poor spinsters of the Minerva press can scarcely support life by their labours, so completely are they driven out of the market by the Lady Charlottes and the Lady Bettys; and a rhyming peer is as common as a Birmingham button. It would take ten Horace Walpoles at least to do justice to the living authors of the red book.
Buying Books.—Money is universally allowed to be the thing which all men love best; and if a man buys a book, we may safely infer he thinks well of it. What nobody buys, then, we may justly conclude is not worth reading.
On the Duchess of Devonshire's canvassing for Mr. Fox at the Westminster Election.
Array'd in matchless beauty, Devon's fair
In Fox's favour takes a zealous part;
But, oh! where'er the pilferer comes beware,
She supplicates a vote, and steals a heart.
Lines sent by a Surgeon, with a box of ointment, to a Lady who had an inflamed eye.
The doctor's kindest wishes e'er attend
His beauteous patient, may he hope his friend;
And prays that no corrosive disappointment
May mar the lenient virtues of his ointment;
Of which, a bit not larger than a shot,
Or that more murd'rous thing, "a beauty spot,"
Warmed on the finger by the taper's ray,
Smear o'er the eye affected twice a day.
Proffer not gold—I swear by my degree,
From beauty's lily hand to take no fee;
No glittering trash be mine, I scorn such pelf,
The eye, when cured, will pay the debt itself.
George III. is said to have observed to a person who approached him in a moment of personal restraint, indispensable in his situation, "Here you see me checkmated."
OLD GRIMALDI
The first Grimaldi celebrated on the stage, appeared at Paris about the year 1735, when his athletic force and extraordinary agility procured him the sobriquet of "Jambe de Fer," or iron-leg. In 1742, when Mahomet Effendi, ambassador of the Porte, visited Paris, he was received with the highest honour and utmost distinction; and the court having ordered a performance for the Turk's entertainment, Grimaldi was commanded to exert himself to effect that object. In obedience to his directions, in making a surprising leap, his foot actually struck a lustre, placed high from the stage, and one of the glass drops was thrown in the face of the ambassador. It was then customary to demand some reward from the personage for whom the entertainment was prepared, and, at the conclusion of the piece, Grimaldi waited upon the Mussulman for the usual present. If the Turk had concealed the expression of his anger at the accident, it was not however extinct, for on the appearance of the buffoon, he directed him to be seized by his attendants, and transported in his theatrical costume, to his residence, where, after undergoing a severe bastinado, the hapless actor was thrust into the street, with only his pedal honour for his recompense.
NEGROES' HEIR LOOM
Some years ago, the boiler-men negroes on Huckenfield estate were overheard by the book-keeper discoursing on this subject, (the superiority of the whites,) and various opinions were given, till the question was thus set at rest by an old African:—"When God Almighty make de world, him make two men, a nigger and a buckra; and him give dem two box, and him tell dem for make dem choice. Nigger, (nigger greedy from time,) when him find one box heavy, him take it, and buckra take t'other; when dem open de box, buckra see pen, ink, and paper; nigger box full up with hoe and bill, and hoe and bill for nigger till this day."—Barclay's Slavery in the West Indies.
GRATITUDE
When Suffer, who had been fifty years a servant in the English factory at Abesheber, or Bushire, a Persian sea-port, was on his death-bed, the English doctor ordered him a glass of wine. He at first refused, saying, "I cannot take it; it is forbidden in the Koran." But after a few moments, he begged the doctor to give it him, saying, as he raised himself in his bed, "Give me the wine; for it is written in the same volume, that all you unbelievers will be excluded from Paradise; and the experience of fifty years teaches me to prefer your society in the other world, to any place unto which I can be advanced with my own countrymen." He died a few hours after this sally.—Sketches of Persia.
