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+Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436
+       Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Robert Chambers and William  Chambers
+
+Release Date: July 8, 2006 [EBook #18796]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDINBURGH JOURNAL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Richard J. Shiffer and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                     CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL
+
+  CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
+  INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.
+
+
+  No. 436. NEW SERIES.   SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1852.   PRICE 1-1/2_d._
+
+
+
+
+THE MUSICAL SEASON.
+
+
+'The English are not a musical people.' The dictum long stood
+unquestioned, and, in general estimation, unquestionable. All the
+world had agreed upon it. There could be no two opinions: we had no
+national airs; no national taste; no national appreciation of sweet
+sounds; musically, we were blocks! At length, however, the creed began
+to be called in question--were we so very insensible? If so,
+considering the amount of music actually listened to every year in
+London and the provinces, we were strangely given to an amusement
+which yielded us no pleasure; we were continually imposing on
+ourselves the direst and dreariest of tasks; we were tormenting
+ourselves with symphonies, and lacerating our patience with sonatas
+and rondos. What was the motive? Hypocrisy was very generally
+assigned. We only affected to love music. It was intellectual,
+spiritual, in all respects creditable to our moral nature, to be able
+to appreciate Mozart and Beethoven, and so we set up for connoisseurs,
+and martyrised ourselves that Europe might think us musical. Is there
+more truth in this theory than the other? Hypocrisy is not generally
+so lasting as the musical fervour has proved itself to be. A fashion
+is the affair of a season; a mania goes as it came; but regularly and
+steadily, for many years back, has musical appreciation been
+progressing, and as regularly have the opportunities for hearing good
+music of all kinds been extending.
+
+Take up a daily newspaper, published any time between April and
+August, and range your eye down the third or fourth column of the
+first page--what an endless array of announcements of music, vocal and
+instrumental! Music for the classicists; music for the crowd;
+symphonies and sonatas; ballads and polkas; harmonic societies; choral
+societies; melodists' clubs; glee clubs; madrigal clubs. Here you have
+the quiet announcement of a quartett-party; next to it, the
+advertisement of one of the Philharmonic Societies--the giants of the
+musical world; pianoforte teachers announce one of their series of
+classic performances; great instrumental soloists have each a concert
+for the special behoof and glorification of the _bénéficiaire_. Mr
+So-and-so's grand annual concert jostles Miss So-and-so's annual
+benefit concert. There are Monday concerts, and Wednesday concerts,
+and Saturday concerts; there are weekly concerts, fortnightly
+concerts, and monthly concerts; there are concerts for charities, and
+concerts for benefits; there are grand morning concerts, and grand
+evening concerts; there are _matinées musicales_, and _soirées
+musicales_; there are meetings, and unions, and circles, and
+associations--all of them for the performance of some sort of music.
+There are musical entertainments by the score: in the City; in the
+suburbs; at every institute and hall of science, from one end of
+London to the other. One professor has a ballad entertainment; a
+second announces a lecture, with musical illustrations; a third
+applies himself to national melodies. All London seems vocal and
+instrumental. Every dead wall is covered with naming _affiches_,
+announcing in long array the vast army of vocal and instrumental
+talent which is to assist at such and such a morning performance; and
+the eyes of the owner of a vast musical stomach are dazzled and
+delighted by programmes which will at least demand five hours in the
+performance.
+
+So is London, in the course of the season, the congress of nearly all
+the performing musical notabilities of Europe. Time has been when they
+came to London for cash, not renown: now they come for both. A London
+reputation is beginning to rival a Parisian vogue, besides being ten
+times more profitable; and, accordingly, from every musical corner in
+Christendom, phenomena of art pour in, heralded by the utmost possible
+amount of puffing, and equally anxious to secure English gold and a
+London reputation. It is strange to observe how universally the
+musical tribute is paid. A tenor turns up from some Russian provincial
+town; a basso works himself to London from a theatre in
+Constantinople; rumours arrive of a peerless prima donna, with a voice
+which is to outstrip everything ever heard of, who has been dug out,
+by some travelling amateur, from her native obscurity in a Spanish or
+Norwegian village; an extraordinary soprano has been discovered in
+Alexandria; a wondrous contralto has been fished up from Riga. The
+instrumental phenomena are not one whit scarcer. Classical pianists
+pour in from Germany principally; popular pianists, who delight in
+fantasias rather than concertos, and who play such tricks with the
+keyboards, that the performances have much more of the character of
+legerdemain than of art, arrive by scores; violinists, violoncellists,
+professors of the trombone, of the ophicleide, of the bassoon, of
+every unwieldy and unmanageable instrument in fact, are particularly
+abundant; and perhaps the most popular of all are the particularly
+clever gentlemen who, by dint of a dozen years' or so unremitting
+practice, have succeeded in making one instrument sound like another.
+Quackery as this is, it is enormously run after by no small proportion
+of the public. Not that they do not appreciate the art of the device
+at its proper level, but that the trick is curious and novel; and most
+people, even the dignified classicists, have a gentle toleration for a
+little--just a little--_outré_ amusement of the kind in question.
+Paganini was the founder of this school. He might have played on four
+strings till he was tired, without causing any particular sensation;
+but the single string made his fortune. Sivori is one of the cleverest
+artists of the present day, who resorts to tricks with his violin, and
+wonderfully does he perform them. At a concert last season, he
+imitated the singing of a bird with the strangest and happiest skill.
+The 'severe' shook their heads, but smiled as they did so, and owned
+that the trick was clever enough, and withal agreeable to hear. But it
+is gentlemen who make one instrument produce the sounds of another,
+or, at all events, who extract from it some previously unknown effect,
+who carry all before them. The present phenomenon in this way is
+Bottesini, who, grasping a huge double-bass, the most unwieldy of
+instruments, tortures out of it the notes of a violin, of an oboe, and
+of a flute. A season or two ago, M. Vivier took all London by storm,
+by producing a chord upon the French horn, a feat previously
+considered impossible, and probably only the fruit of the most
+determined and energetic practice, extending over many years. At all
+the popular concerts, this trick-music is in immense request.
+Bottesini was the lion of Jullien's last series; but in his place in
+the orchestra of the Philharmonic, he plays his part and holds his
+instrument like any ordinary performer. Bagpipe music is not much
+appreciated on the banks of the Thames; but I can assure any
+enterprising Scotsman, that if he can only succeed in producing the
+notes of the bagpipe out of the trombone, he will make a fortune in
+five seasons or less.
+
+Such is musical London, then--rushing from concert to concert, and
+opera to opera--from severe classicism to the most miscellaneous
+_omnium gatherum_--from solemn ecclesiastical harmonic assemblages to
+the chanting of merry glees, and the warbling of sentimental ballads.
+Let us, then, contemplate a little closer the different kinds of
+concerts--their features and their character--their performers and
+their auditories. Our sketch must be very hurried and very vague, but
+it will give an idea of some of the principal characteristics of the
+London musical season.
+
+First, then, among the performances of mingled vocal and instrumental
+music, stand the two Sacred Harmonic Societies, which execute
+oratorios and similar works in Exeter Hall. The original Sacred
+Harmonic Society has within the last couple of years split into two
+bodies. It had long contained within itself the elements of division.
+There were the Go-ahead party and the Conservative party--the first,
+eager to try new ground, and aim at new effects; the second, lovers of
+the beaten way. At length, the split took place. The progressistas
+flung themselves into the arms of M. Costa, the famous conductor of
+the Royal Italian Opera orchestra, and the highest and most Napoleonic
+of musical commanders. The Tories of the society went peaceably on in
+the jog-trot ways of Mr Sarman, the original conductor. Each society
+can now bring into the field about 800 vocal performers, the immense
+majority of them amateurs, and their concerts take place
+alternately--Exeter Hall being invariably crammed upon either
+occasion. The Costaites, no doubt, have the _pas_. The discipline of
+their chief is perfect, and as rigid as it is excellent. The power
+which this gentleman possesses over his musical troops is very
+curious. The whole mass of performers seem to wait upon his will as
+the spirits did on Prospero. At the spreading of his arms, the music
+dies away to the most faintly-whispered murmurs. A crescendo or
+musical climax works gradually up step by step, and bar by bar, until
+it explodes in a perfect crash of vocal and instrumental tempest. The
+extraordinary choral effects produced in the performance of the
+_Huguenots_ almost bewildered the hearers; and the wondrous lights and
+shades of sound given in many of the oratorios, are little behind the
+dramatic achievement. The aspect of Exeter Hall on an oratorio night
+is one of the grandest things in London. The vastness of the
+assemblage, the great mountain of performers, crested by the organ,
+and rising almost to the ceiling, are thoroughly impressive, while the
+first burst of the opening chorus is grand in the extreme. The
+oratorio is, in fact, the Opera of the 'serious' world. It is at once
+a place in which to listen to music and a point of social reunion.
+There are oratorio _habitués_ as well as Opera _habitués_; and between
+the parts of the performance, the same buzzing hum of converse rises
+from the assemblage which you hear in the Opera corridors and lobbies.
+A glance at the audience will enlighten you as to their character.
+They represent the staid respectability of the middle class. The
+dresses of the ladies are often rich, seldom brilliant, and there is
+little sparkle of jewellery. You very frequently perceive family
+parties, under the care of a grave _pater familias_ and his
+staid and stately partner. Quakers abound; and the number of
+ecclesiastically-cut coats shews how many clergymen of the church are
+present. The audience are in the highest degree attentive. The rules
+forbid applause, but a gentle murmur of admiration rises at the close
+of almost every _morceau_. Here and there, you have a practical
+amateur, or a group of such with the open score of the oratorio before
+them, eagerly following the music. Often these last gentlemen are
+members of the rival Society, and, as might be expected, pick plenty
+of holes in the execution of their opponents, for which charitable
+purpose only they have probably attended. But in M. Costa's Society,
+at all events, the task is difficult; the orchestra 'goes,' as the
+phrase is, like one instrument, and the singers are beautifully under
+the control of the master-spirit who directs them.
+
+Let us pass from Exeter Hall to Hanover Square. Here, in the Queen's
+Concert Room--a _salle_ which once was smart, and the decorations of
+which were fashionable seventy years ago--we have unnumbered concerts,
+and chief among them the twelve annual performances of the
+Philharmonic Society. The 'Philharmonic,' as it is conversationally
+called, holds almost the rank of a national institution. The sovereign
+patronises it in an especial manner. It is connected with the Royal
+Academy of Music, and Her Majesty's private band is recruited from the
+ranks of its orchestra. The Philharmonic band may be indeed taken as
+the representative of the nation's musical executive powers; and, as
+such, comparisons are often instituted between it and the French,
+Austrian, and Prussian Philharmonics. The foreigners who hold places
+in the orchestra are resident, and in some sort naturalised, but the
+bulk of the executants are English. To be a member of the Philharmonic
+orchestra is, indeed, to take a sort of degree in executive music, and
+at once stamps the individual as a performer of distinguished merit.
+The music performed is entirely classic, and principally instrumental.
+New compositions are seldom given; and, in fact, it was the practice
+of adhering so exclusively to the standard works of great composers
+which started the new Philharmonic Society, which has just come into
+existence. The elder body stick stanchly to the safe courses of Bach,
+Gluck, Beethoven, Mozart, and Mendelssohn. The newly-created
+association proclaim that their mission is to look after aspirants, as
+well as to honour the veterans of the art; and accordingly they bring
+forward many compositions experimentally--a meritorious policy, but
+one not without its dangers. Few unprofessional people are aware of
+the cost of producing elaborate compositions. When _William Tell_ was
+played some years ago at Drury Lane--to mention one single item--the
+price of copying the parts from the full score, at 3d. a page, came to
+L.350. All the old music is of course to be had printed; and to these
+standard scores the steady-going Philharmonic principally devotes
+itself. Each performance consists in general of two symphonies, or a
+symphony and an elaborate concerto, each occupying at least
+three-quarters of an hour, with two overtures, and solos, vocal and
+instrumental--the former generally sung by performers from either
+Opera, but usually from Covent Garden. M. Costa wields the baton at
+Hanover Square as at Exeter Hall; and under his management, the band
+have attained a magnificent precision and _ensemble_ of effect. Its
+musical peculiarity over ordinary orchestras is the vast strength of
+stringed instruments, which gives a peculiar _verve_ and light vigour
+to the performances. The rush of the violins in a rapid passage is
+overwhelming in its impetuosity and vigour, and is said, of late years
+especially, to beat the 'attack,' as it is technically called, of any
+of the continental Philharmonic Societies. The Philharmonic concerts
+are very fashionable. It is good taste, socially and artistically, to
+be present; and, consequently, the room is always crowded by an
+assemblage who display most of the characteristics of an Opera
+audience. The musical notabilities of town always muster in full force
+at the Philharmonic. Composers, executants, critics, amateurs, and
+connoisseurs, are all there, watching with the greatest care the
+execution of those famous works, the great effect of which can only be
+produced by the most wary and appreciative tenderness of rendering. In
+the interval between the first and second parts, the very general hum
+of conversation announces how great the degree of familiarity
+subsisting among the _habitués_. There is none of the common stiffness
+of waiting one sees at ordinary entertainments. Everybody seems to
+know everybody else, and one general atmosphere of genial intercourse
+prevails throughout the room.
+
+Let us change the scene to a classic concert of quite another kind. In
+a quiet West-end street, we are in a room of singular construction. It
+is in the form of a right-angled triangle; and at the right angle,
+upon a small dais, is placed the pianoforte and the desks, and so
+forth, for the performers. The latter are thus visible from all
+points; but about one-half the audience in each angle of the room is
+quite hidden from the other. Everybody is in evening dress; the ladies
+very gay, and the party very quiet--a still, drawing-room sort of air
+presides over the whole. Many of the ladies are young--quite girls;
+and a good many of the gentlemen are solemn old foggies, who appear
+strongly inclined to go to sleep, and, in fact, sometimes do.
+Meantime, the music goes on. A long, long sonata or concerto--piano
+and violin, or piano, violin, and violoncello--is listened to in
+profound silence, with a low murmur of applause at the end of each
+movement. Then perhaps comes a little vocalism--sternly classic
+though--an aria from Gluck, or a solemn and pathetic song from
+Mendelssohn: the performer being either a well-known concert-singer,
+or a young lady--very nervous and a little uncertain--who, it is
+whispered, is 'an Academy girl;' a pupil, that is, of the institution
+in question. Sometimes, but not often--for it is _de rigueur_ that
+entertainments of this species shall be severely classic--we have a
+phenomenon of execution upon some out-of-the-way instrument, who
+performs certain miracles with springs or tubes, and in some degree
+wakens up the company, who, however, not unfrequently relapse into all
+their solemn primness, under a concerto manuscript, or a trio
+manuscript, the composition of the _bénéficiaire_. Between the parts,
+people go quietly into a room beneath, where there are generally some
+mild prints to be turned over, some mild coffee to drink, some mild
+conversation about mild things in general; and then the party remount
+the stairs, and mildly listen to more mild music. This is the common
+routine of a classical pianoforte soirée. The _bénéficiaire_ is a
+fashionable teacher, and, in a small way, a composer. He gives, every
+season, a series, perhaps two or three series, of classic evenings.
+The pupils and their families form the majority of the audience,
+interspersed with a few pianoforte amateurs, and those _fanatici per
+la musica_ who are to be found wherever a violin is tuned, or a piano
+is opened.
+
+Another species of classic concert is to be found in the
+quartett-meetings. These take place in some small concert-room, such
+as that I have described, or at the houses of the executants; and the
+audience comprehends a far larger proportion of gentlemen than the
+last-mentioned entertainments. The performers are four--pretty sure to
+be gentlemen of the highest professional abilities. The instruments
+are first and second violin, viola, and violoncello; and three or four
+quartetts by the great masters, or, very probably, as many
+compositions, marking the different stages of Beethoven's imagination,
+are played with the most consummate skill and the tenderest regard for
+light and shade. People not deep in the sympathies and tastes of the
+musical world, have no idea how these compositions are loved and
+studied by the real disciples of Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn; how
+particular passages are watched for; and how old gentlemen nod their
+heads, or shake them at each other, according as they agree or
+disagree in the manner of the interpretation. Half the audience
+probably know every bar of the music by heart, and no inconsiderable
+number could perhaps perform it very decently themselves. It is indeed
+at these quartett and quintett meetings, that you see genuine
+specimens of musical knowledge and musical enthusiasm. They take place
+by half-dozens during the season; and you always find the same class
+of audience, often the same individuals, regularly ranged before the
+executants.
+
+But place now for the real grand, miscellaneous, popular, and populous
+morning concert! Now for elephantine dimensions and leviathan bills of
+fare. It is nominally, perhaps, or really, perhaps, the annual benefit
+concert of some well-known performer, or it is the speculation of a
+great musical publishing house, in the name of one of their composing
+or performing _protégés_. The latter is, indeed, a very common
+practice. But whether the music-publishing and opera-box-letting firm
+be the real concert-giver, or merely the agent, to it is left the
+whole of the nice operation of 'getting up' the entertainment. It has
+then exhausted all the dodges of puffery in pumping up an unusual
+degree of excitement. The affair is to be a 'festival' or a 'jubilee;'
+'all the musical talent' of London is to be concentrated; the
+continent has been dragged for extra-ordinary executive attractions;
+every musical hit of the season is to be repeated; every effect is to
+be got up with new _éclat_: never was there to be such a _super extra,
+ne plus ultra_ musical triumph. The day approaches. Rainbow-hued
+_affiches_ have done their best; placard-bearers, by scores, have
+paraded, and are parading, the streets; advertisements have blazoned
+the scheme day after day, and week after week; the gratis-tickets have
+been duly 'planted;' puffs, oblique and implied, have hinted at the
+coming attraction in every Sunday paper; and programmes are fluttering
+in every get-at-able shop-front. The day comes. A long line of
+fashionable carriages, strangely intermingled with shabby cabs, file
+up to the doors, and the gay morning dresses, flaunting with colours,
+disappear between the two colossal placards which grace the entrance.
+The room is filled. _Habitués_, and knowing musical men on town,
+recognise each other, and congregate in groups, laughingly comparing
+notes upon the probabilities of what artists announced will make an
+appearance, and upon what apologies will be offered in lieu of those
+who don't. A couple of these last are probably already in circulation.
+Madame Sopranini is confined to bed with an inflammatory attack; and
+Signor Bassinini has got bronchitis. Nevertheless, the concert begins;
+and oh! the length thereof. The principal vocalists seem to have
+mostly mistaken the time at which they would be wanted; and the
+chopping and changing of the programme are bewildering. Bravuras take
+the place of concertos; a duet being missing, an aria closes the
+ranks; a solo on the trombone not being forthcoming, a vocal trio
+(unaccompanied) is hurriedly substituted. Still, there is plenty of
+the originally announced music; all the favourite airs, duets, and
+trios from the fashionable operas; all the ballads in vogue--the music
+published by the house which has set the whole thing on foot, of
+course; all the phenomena of executive brilliance are there, or are
+momentarily expected to appear. We begin after an overture with, say,
+an air from the _Puritani_, by a lovely tenor; another, from the
+_Somnambula_, by a charming soprano; a fantasia by a legerdemain
+pianist, with long hair, and who comes down on the key-board as though
+it was his enemy; the famous song from _Figaro_--encored; the
+madrigal, 'Down in a Flowery Vale'--the latter always a sure card; a
+duet from _Semiramide_, by two young ladies--rather shaky; solo on the
+clarionet, by a gentleman who makes the instrument sound like a
+fiddle--great applause; 'In manly Worth,' by an oratorio tenor; the
+overture to _Masaniello_, by the band; concerto (posthumous,
+Beethoven), by a stern classical man--audience yawn; pot pourri, by a
+romantic practitioner--audience waken up; ballad, 'When Hearts are
+torn by manly Vows,' by an English tenor--great delight, and
+encouragement of native talent; glee, 'Glorious Apollo,' or, 'The
+Red-cross Knight'--very well received; recitative and aria, from
+_Lucia di Lammermoor_--very lachrymose; violin solo, by Signor
+Rosinini, who throws the audience into a paroxysm of delight by
+imitating a saw and a grindstone; 'The Bay of Biscay,' by the
+'veteran' Braham, being positively his last appearance (the 'veteran'
+is announced for four concerts in the ensuing week!); ballad, again,
+by the native tenor, 'When Vows are torn by slumbering Hearts'--more
+great applause; the page's song from the _Huguenots_, for the
+contralto; 'When the Heart of a Man,' _Beggars' Opera_; quartett for
+four pianofortes, great bustle arranging them, and then only three
+performers forthcoming--an apology--attack of bronchitis--but Mr
+Braham will kindly (thunders of applause) sing 'The Death of Nelson;'
+quartett for double-bass, trombone, drum, and triangles--curious
+effect; the audience hardly know whether they like it or not; the
+bravura song of the 'Queen of Night,' from _Zauberflöte_; overture to
+_William Tell_; ballad, 'When Slumber's Heart is torn by Vows;' duet,
+'I know a Bank,' by the Semiramide young ladies; fantasia pianoforte,
+from the _Fille du Régiment_; 'Rode's air, with variations,' from the
+text; and the storm movement of the _Sinfonia Pastorale_, by
+Beethoven!
+
+Such may be taken as a fair specimen-slice of a _Concert Monstre_; and
+in listening to this wild agglomeration of chaotic music, the day
+passes, very likely from two o'clock until six. In a future paper, I
+may touch upon the peculiarities of the artists performing.
+
+                                                       A. B. R.
+
+
+
+
+THE TALLOW-TREE OF CHINA.
+
+
+It is one happy recommendation of the Natural system of botany, that
+many of its orders form groups of plants distinguished not only by the
+characteristics of general physiognomy, and the more accurate
+differences of structure, but in an especial manner by the medicinal
+and economical properties which they possess, and which are indeed
+frequently peculiar to the order. Such is the case with the natural
+order _Euphorbiaceæ_, or spurge family, to which the tallow-tree of
+China belongs. The order includes 2500 species, all of which are more
+or less acrid and poisonous, these properties being especially
+developed in the milky juices which abound in the plants, and which
+are contained, not in its ordinary tissues, but in certain special
+vessels. Many important substances are derived from this order,
+notwithstanding its acrid and poisonous character. Castor-oil is
+obtained from the seeds of _Ricinus communis_; croton-oil, and several
+other oleaginous products of importance in medicine and the arts, are
+obtained from plants belonging to the order. The root of _Janipha
+Manihot_, or Manioc-plant, contains a poisonous substance, supposed to
+be hydrocyanic acid, along with which there is a considerable
+proportion of starch. The poisonous matter is removed by roasting and
+washing, and the starch thus obtained is formed into the cassava-bread
+of tropical countries, and is also occasionally imported into Europe
+as Brazilian arrow-root.
+
+Many of the important economical productions of China are little known
+in this country; we are, however, daily gaining additions to our
+knowledge of them; and within the last few years, much valuable
+information has been obtained respecting the productive resources of
+the Eastern Empire. The grass-cloth of China only became known in
+Europe a few years ago, but it now ranks as one of the important
+fabrics of British manufacture. Daily discoveries seem to shew that
+there are Chinese products of equal importance, as yet unknown to us.
+On the present occasion, we call the attention of our readers to a
+substance which has been long known, as well as the plant which
+produces it, but neither of which has hitherto been prominently
+brought into general notice in Britain. For our information respecting
+the uses of the tallow-tree, we express our chief obligations to a
+paper by Dr D. J. Macgowan, published in the Journal of the
+Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India.[1]
+
+The tallow-tree of China is the _Stillingia sebifera_ of botanists; a
+plant originally indigenous to China, where it occurs in wet
+situations, but which is now somewhat common in various parts of India
+and America, chiefly as an ornamental tree. In Roxburgh's time, it was
+very common about Calcutta, where, in the course of a few years, it
+became one of the most common trees; and it has become almost
+naturalised in the maritime parts of South Carolina. In China alone,
+however, is it as yet appreciated as an economical plant, and there
+alone are its products properly elaborated. It is chiefly prized for
+the fatty matter which it yields, and from which it derives its
+appropriate name; but it affords other products of value: 'its leaves
+are employed as a black dye; its wood being hard and durable, may be
+easily used for printing-blocks and various other articles; and,
+finally, the refuse of the nut is employed as fuel and manure.... It
+grows alike on low alluvial plains and on granite hills, on the rich
+mould at the margin of canals, and on the sandy sea-beach. The sandy
+estuary of Hangchan yields little else; some of the trees at this
+place are known to be several hundred years old, and though
+prostrated, still send forth branches and bear fruit.... They are
+seldom planted where anything else can be conveniently cultivated--but
+in detached places, in corners about houses, roads, canals, and
+fields.'
+
+The sebaceous matter, or vegetable tallow, is contained in the
+seed-vessels of the _Stillingia_. The processes adopted for
+abstracting it are of importance, and meet with due consideration in
+Dr Macgowan's valuable paper. The following clear account is given of
+the whole process, as practised in China:--'In midwinter, when the
+nuts are ripe, they are cut off with their twigs by a sharp
+crescentric knife, attached to the extremity of a long pole, which is
+held in the hand, and pushed upwards against the twigs, removing at
+the same time such as are fruitless. The capsules are gently pounded
+in a mortar, to loosen the seeds from their shells, from which they
+are separated by sifting. To facilitate the separation of the white
+sebaceous matter enveloping the seeds, they are steamed in tubs,
+having convex open wicker bottoms, placed over caldrons of boiling
+water. When thoroughly heated, they are reduced to a mash in the
+mortar, and thence transferred to bamboo sieves, kept at a uniform
+temperature over hot ashes. A single operation does not suffice to
+deprive them of all their tallow; the steaming and sifting are
+therefore repeated. The article thus procured becomes a solid mass on
+falling through the sieve; and to purify it, it is melted and formed
+into cakes for the press. These receive their form from bamboo hoops,
+a foot in diameter, and three inches deep, which are laid on the
+ground over a little straw. On being filled with the hot liquid, the
+ends of the straw beneath are drawn up and spread over the top; and
+when of sufficient consistence, are placed with their rings in the
+press. This apparatus, which is of the rudest description, is
+constructed of two large beams, placed horizontally so as to form a
+trough capable of containing about fifty of the rings with their
+sebaceous cakes; at one end it is closed, and at the other adapted for
+receiving wedges, which are successively driven into it by ponderous
+sledge-hammers, wielded by athletic men. The tallow oozes in a melted
+state into a receptacle below, where it cools. It is again melted, and
+poured into tubs, smeared with mud, to prevent its adhering. It is now
+marketable, in masses of about eighty pounds each--hard, brittle,
+white, opaque, tasteless, and without the odour of animal tallow;
+under high pressure, it scarcely stains bibulous paper, and it melts
+at 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It may be regarded as nearly pure
+stearine.... The seeds yield about 8 per cent. of tallow, which sells
+for about five cents per pound.'
+
+There is a separate process for pressing the oil, which is carried on
+at the same time. The kernels yield about 30 per cent. of oil, which
+answers well for lamps. It is also employed for various purposes in
+the arts, and has a place in the Chinese pharmacopoeia, because of its
+quality of changing gray hair to black, and other imaginary virtues.
+
+The husks are used to feed the furnaces; the residuary tallow-cakes
+are also employed for fuel--a small quantity remaining ignited a whole
+day. The oil-cake forms a valuable manure, and is of course carefully
+used for this purpose in China, where so very great regard is paid to
+the collecting of manures. This kind is particularly used for
+enriching tobacco-fields, its powerful qualities recommending it for
+such a scourging crop.
+
+With regard to the uses of the vegetable tallow, Dr Macgowan observes:
+'Artificial illumination in China is generally procured by vegetable
+oils, but candles are also employed.... In religious ceremonies, no
+other material is used. As no one ventures out after dark without a
+lantern, and as the gods cannot be acceptably worshipped without
+candles, the quantity consumed is very great. With an unimportant
+exception, the candles are always made of what I beg to designate as
+vegetable stearine. When the candles, which are made by dipping, are
+of the required diameter, they receive a final dip into a mixture of
+the same material and insect-wax, by which their consistency is
+preserved in the hottest weather. They are generally coloured red,
+which is done by throwing a minute quantity of alkanet-root (_Anchusa
+tinctoria_), brought from Shan-tung, into the mixture. Verdigris is
+sometimes employed to dye them green.' We are not aware that the
+vegetable tallow has as yet been imported into Britain to any extent.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] 'Uses of the _Stillingia Sebifera_, or Tallow-Tree, &c., by D. J.
+Macgowan, M. D., &c.' The substance of the same communication was laid
+before the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 12th February, 1852, having
+been communicated by Dr Coldstream.
+
+
+
+
+THE TOLLMAN'S STORY.
+
+
+Some local travellers of about twenty-five years' practice, may still
+remember the keeper of a toll-bar on one of the western approaches to
+Glasgow, known in his neighbourhood as English John. The prefix was
+given, I believe, in honour of his dialect, which was remarkably pure
+and polished for one of his station in those days; and the solution of
+that problem was, that he had been from childhood, till the gray was
+thickening on his hair, in the service of an English family, who had
+come into possession, and constantly resided on, a handsome estate in
+his native parish in Dumbartonshire.
+
+Through their interest, he had been appointed to the office of power
+and trust in which I made his acquaintance. John was one of my
+earliest friends, though the remnant of his name was never heard nor
+inquired after by me. The great town has now grown much nearer his
+toll-house, which then stood alone on the country road, with no
+building in sight but the school, at which I, and some two score of
+the surrounding juveniles, were supposed to be trained in wisdom's
+ways, by the elder brother of our parish minister. A painstaking,
+kindly teacher he was; but the toll-house was a haunt more pleasant to
+our young fancies than his seminary. John was the general friend and
+confidant of all the boys; he settled our disputes, made the best tops
+and balls for us, taught us a variety of new tricks in play, and
+sometimes bestowed upon us good advices, which were much sooner
+forgotten. John never married. He had a conviction, which was
+occasionally avowed, that all women were troublesome; and whether this
+evidence be considered _pro_ or _con_, he was a man of rough sense and
+rustic piety, of a most fearless, and, what the Germans call, a
+self-standing nature--for solitude or society came all alike to John.
+You would as soon expect a pine-tree to be out of sorts, as his hard,
+honest face, and muscular frame. John was never sick, or disturbed in
+any way; he performed his own domestic duties with a neatness and
+regularity known to few housekeepers, and was a faithful and most
+uncompromising guardian of the toll-bar. I well remember how our young
+imaginations were impressed with the fact, that no man could pass,
+without, as it were, paying tribute to him; and George IV., though he
+appeared on the coppers with which we bought apples, cast by no means
+so mighty a shadow on our minds as English John. Before this glory
+waned, I was removed from his neighbourhood, being sent to cheer the
+heart and secure the legacy of a certain uncle who was a writer to the
+Signet in Edinburgh, and believed to be in profitable practice and
+confirmed bachelorhood. The worthy man has long ago married his
+landlady's daughter, and been blessed with a family sufficient to fill
+a church-pew. My own adventures--how I grew from garment to garment,
+how I became a law-student, and at length a writer myself--have little
+to do with the present narrative, and are therefore spared the reader
+in detail; but the first startling intelligence I received from home
+was, that English John had resigned his important office at the
+toll-house, and gone, nobody knew whither!
+
+Years had passed; my professional studies were finished, and I had
+occasion to visit a Fife laird near the East Neuk. The gentleman was
+notable for his taste in kitchen-gardening; and having a particularly
+fine bed of Jerusalem artichokes which I must see, he conducted me to
+the scene of his triumphs, when, hard at work with the rake and hoe,
+whom should I find as the much esteemed gardener, but my old friend
+English John! His hair had grown quite gray, and his look strangely
+grave, since last I saw him: time had altered me still more;
+nevertheless, John knew me at once--he had always a keen eye--but I
+perceived it was his wish not to be recognised at all in presence of
+the laird. That worthy was one of those active spirits who extend
+their superintendence to every department. He commanded in the pantry
+as well as on the farm; and while expatiating over the artichokes, a
+private message from his lady summoned him back to the house, as I
+sincerely believe, on some matter connected with the dinner; and he
+left me, with an understood permission to admire the artichokes, and
+the garden in general, as long as I pleased. Scarcely was he fairly
+out of sight, till I was at the gardener's side. 'John, my old
+fellow,' cried I, grasping his hand, 'I'm glad to see you once again.
+How has the world behaved to you these many years?'
+
+'Pretty well, Master Willie,' said John, heartily returning my shake;
+'and I'm glad to see you too; but your memory must be uncommon good,
+for many a one of the boys has passed me by on street and highway. How
+have they all turned out?' And he commenced a series of inquiries
+after schoolmates and old neighbours, to which my answers were as
+usual in such cases--some were dead, some were married, and some gone
+far away.
+
+'But, John,' said I at last, determined to make out the mystery which
+had so long puzzled me and the entire parish--'in exchange for all my
+news, tell me why you left the toll-house? It was surely a better
+place than this?'
+
+'You know what the old proverb says, Master Willie: "Change is
+lightsome,"' said John, beginning to dig, as if he would fain stave
+off the explanation.
+
+'Ha, John, that wont do!' said I; 'your mind was never so unsteady.
+Tell me the truth, for old times' sake; and if there is anything in
+the story that should not be made public, you know I was always a
+capital secret-keeper. Maybe it was a love-matter, John: are you
+married yet?'
+
+'No, Master Willie,' cried my old friend, with a look of the most
+sincere self-gratulation I ever saw. 'But it's a queer story, and one
+I shouldn't care for telling; only, you were always a discreet boy,
+and it rather presses on my mind at times. The master won't be back
+for awhile; he'll have the roast to try, and the pudding to taste--not
+to talk of seeing the table laid out, for there are to be some
+half-dozen besides yourself to-day at dinner. That's his way, you see.
+And I'll tell you what took me from the toll-house--but mind, never
+mention it, as you would keep peace in the west country.'
+
+This is John's story, as nearly in his own words as I can call them to
+mind:--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The family in whose service I was brought up lived on their estate in
+Dumbartonshire, which came through the mistress of the mansion, who
+had been heiress of entail, and a lady in her own right; we called her
+Lady Catherine, and a prouder woman never owned either estate or
+title. Her father had been a branch of the Highland family to whom the
+property originally belonged. Her mother was sprung from the old
+French nobility, an emigrant of the first Revolution, and she had been
+brought up in England, and married in due time to an Honourable Mr
+---- there. When she first came to the estate, her husband had been
+some years dead, and Lady Catherine brought with her a son, who was to
+be heir--at that time a boy like myself--and two handsome grown-up
+daughters. The castle was a great fabric, partly old and partly new.
+It stood in the midst of a noble park, with tall trees and red deer in
+it. Its last possessor had been a stingy old bachelor; but after Lady
+Catherine's coming, the housekeeping was put on a grand scale. There
+was a retinue of English servants, and continual company. I remember
+it well, for just then my poor mother died. She had been a widow,
+living in a low cottage hard by the park-wall, with me and a gray cat
+for company, and her spinning-wheel for our support. I was but a child
+when she died; and having neither uncle nor aunt in the parish, they
+took me, I think, by her ladyship's order, into the castle, to run
+small errands, and help in the garden; from which post, in process of
+time, I rose to that of footman. Lady Catherine was in great odour
+with the country gentry for her high-breeding, her fashionable
+connections, and her almost boundless hospitality. She was popular
+with the tenantry too, for there was not a better managed estate in
+the west, and the factor had general orders against distress and
+ejectment.
+
+They said her ladyship had been reckoned a beauty in London
+drawing-rooms, and our parish thought her wonderfully grand for the
+gay dresses and rich jewellery she wore. Doubtless, these were but the
+cast-offs of the season, for regularly every spring she and the family
+went up to London, where they kept a fine house, and what is called
+the best society. How much the gay dresses had to do with the beauty
+is not for me to say, but Lady Catherine was a large, stately woman,
+with a dark complexion, and very brilliant red, which the servants
+whispered was laid on in old court fashion. Her manner to her equals
+was graceful, and to her inferiors, gracious; but there was a look of
+pride in her dark gray eyes, and a stern resolution about the
+compressed lips, which struck my childish mind with strange fear, and
+kept older hearts in awe. Her daughters, Florence and Agnes, were
+pictures of their mother--proud, gay ladies, but thought the flower of
+the county. Their portions were good, and they would have been
+co-heiresses but for their brother Arthur. He was the youngest, but so
+different from his mother and sisters, that you wouldn't have thought
+him of the same family. His fair face and clear blue eyes, his curly
+brown hair and merry look, had no likeness to them, though he was not
+a whit behind them in air or stature. At eighteen, there was not a
+finer lad in the shire; and he had a frank, kindly nature, which made
+the tenantry rejoice in the prospect of his being their future
+landlord.
+
+Near the castle there stood a farmhouse, occupied by an old man whose
+great-grandfather had cultivated the same fields. He was not rich, but
+much respected by his neighbours for an honest, upright life. His wife
+was as old as himself. They had been always easy-living people, and
+had no child but one only daughter. Menie was a delicately pretty
+girl, a little spoiled, perhaps, in her station, for both father and
+mother made a queen of her at home. She was never allowed to do any
+rough work, was always dressed, and her neighbours said, kept in the
+parlour. Menie had a great many admirers, but her parents thought her
+too good for everybody, and had a wonderful belief of their own, that
+she was somehow to get a great match, and be made a lady. There was a
+strange truth in that notion, as things turned out, for we servants at
+the castle began to remark how often the young master was seen going
+and coming about the farmhouse. Maybe the old farmer and his wife
+encouraged him, for they had a story concerning their own descent from
+some great chief of the western Highlands, and a family of wild proud
+cousins, who lived up among the hills; but of this I know nothing
+more, only that the farmer's daughter was the prettiest girl in the
+parish. Master Arthur was beginning his nineteenth year, and there was
+a storm up stairs, such as had never been heard before in the castle,
+when Lady Catherine found out what was going on, as I think through
+our minister, who considered it his duty to let her know what every
+one talked of, but nobody else would dare to mention in her presence.
+Whether the tempest was more than Master Arthur could stand, or
+whether Lady Catherine, in her fury--for she had no joke of a tongue
+and temper--said something of Menie which drove the boy to finish the
+business in his own way, was long a disputed point in the servants'
+hall; but next morning he was missed in the castle, and in the course
+of my duties the same forenoon, I brought a letter from the village
+post-office, the reading of which sent the young ladies off in
+hysterics, and made Lady Catherine retire to her room--for it
+announced that her heir of entail and the farmer's daughter were gone
+to get married in Glasgow.
+
+The young ladies recovered in about two hours, and her ladyship came
+out, but only to prepare for a journey to Paris; and quick work she
+made of it. Within twenty-four hours from the receipt of that letter,
+she and her daughters were off in the family carriage; the best part
+of the servants despatched to live at their town-house on board-wages;
+all the good rooms locked up, and nobody but the gardener, a
+kitchen-girl, and myself left with the old housekeeper at the castle.
+The next news we heard was, that the old farmer and his wife had set
+out to bring home their daughter and son-in-law, saying--poor people,
+in their pride or folly--that Menie and her husband could live with
+them till Providence cleared their way to the estate, which nobody
+could keep from them. I believe it was that speech, coming to her ears
+by some busy tongue or other, that made Lady Catherine so bitter
+afterwards; but Master Arthur and his bride came home to the
+farmhouse, where the parlour and the best bedroom were set apart for
+their use; and the poor old father and mother were proud to serve and
+entertain them. They were a young pair; for, as I have said, he was in
+his nineteenth, and she in her seventeenth year--a handsome pair, too,
+and more alike than one would have supposed from the difference of
+their birth. Menie had a genteel, quiet carriage, and really looked
+like a lady in the church-pew beside our young master, whom we seldom
+saw but at a distance--for his spirit was too high to come near the
+castle--and though it wasn't just told us, we all knew that going to
+the farmhouse would be reckoned the full value of our places.
+
+It was the fall of the year when Lady Catherine left us--all that
+winter she spent in Paris; and when the spring again came round, we
+heard of her opening house with even more than usual gaiety in London.
+That was a great season with her ladyship. In its course, she got her
+daughters both married to her mind. The one wedded a baronet, and the
+other a right honourable; but scarcely had the newspapers fully
+announced his sisters' wedding-breakfasts, and how the happy pairs set
+out, when Master Arthur was seized with sudden sickness. He had been
+fishing in a mountain-lake, and got drenched to the skin by the rain
+of a thunder-storm, overexerted himself in walking home, and caught a
+pleurisy. The whole parish felt for the poor young man, who had been
+so hardly used by his mother, and many were the inquiries made for him
+at the farmhouse. There was wild wo there, for every day he got worse;
+and within the week, Menie was left a widow. Lady Catherine had gone
+back to Paris at the close of the season; one of her married daughters
+was in Italy, and the other in Switzerland; but two cousins of their
+father were to be found in England; and Master Arthur was laid in the
+family vault, under our old parish church, before the intelligence
+reached them. Lady Catherine came back in deep mourning, and alone,
+but not a whit subdued in spirit: she had been heard to say, that her
+son was better dead than disgraced; and her estate was at least safe
+from being shared by peasants. Of her daughter-in-law, she never took
+the slightest notice. People said, the poor young widow's heart was
+broken, for she had thought more of Arthur than of his rank and
+property, and kept well out of the proud, hard woman's way. Her
+ladyship did not seem to like living at the castle; she stayed only to
+regulate matters with the factor at Martinmas, and went back again to
+London. Before she went, a report began to rise, that poor Menie had
+drooped and pined into a real sickness. They said it was a rapid
+decline, and a dog would have pitied the father and mother's grief.
+How strangely they strove to keep that only child, asking the prayers
+of the congregation, and sending for the best doctors; but all was in
+vain, for Menie died some days before Christmas. The girl had a simple
+wish to rest beside Arthur. It was the last words she spoke; and her
+relations believed that, being his wife, she had a right to a place in
+the vault without asking anybody's leave. So they laid her quietly
+beside her husband, no one about the castle caring to interfere,
+except the factor, who thought it incumbent on him to let her ladyship
+know.
+
+By way of answer to his letter, down came Lady Catherine herself, one
+dark, wintry morning; and, without so much as changing her travelling
+dress, she sent for four labourers, took them with her to the church,
+and saying her family burying-place was never intended for a peasant's
+daughter, made them take out Menie's coffin, and leave it at her
+parents' door. They said that the old pair never got over that sight;
+and the mother, in her bitterness of heart, declared that Providence
+had many a way to punish pride, and the woman who had disturbed her
+dead child, would never be suffered to keep her own grave in peace.
+
+The story made a marvellous stir in our parish, and grand as Lady
+Catherine was, she did not escape blame from all quarters. There was a
+great gathering of Highland relatives and Lowland friends to a second
+funeral, when they laid poor Menie among her humble kindred in the
+church-yard. It was but a little way from the park gate, and I stood
+there to see the crowd scatter off in that frosty forenoon. Many a sad
+and angry look was cast in the direction of the castle; but my
+attention was particularly drawn to an old man and two boys, who stood
+gazing on the place. He was close on the threescore-and-ten--they were
+little more than children; but all three had the same gaunt, yet
+powerful frames; dark-red hair, which in the old man was but slightly
+sprinkled with gray; almost swarthy complexions; and a fierce, hard
+look in the deep-set eyes. By after inquiries, I learned that these
+were the father of the Highland cousin family, and his two youngest
+sons. There were three elder brothers, but they were married, and
+settled on rough sheep-farms; and the old man intended to maintain the
+ancient honours of his house, by putting his younger boys into some of
+the learned professions.
+
+The married sisters, now heiresses of entail, never visited the castle
+again in my time. Lady Catherine came regularly at the terms from
+London, where she lived constantly; but her stay was no longer than
+the rent-roll required, and her maid said she rested but badly at
+night. So years passed on, and I rose in the service. On one of her
+visits, Lady Catherine thought I would do for a footman, which she
+happened to want, and sent me to be trained at the house in London.
+What great and gay doings I saw there needn't be told just now. Lady
+Catherine kept the best and most fashionable company, and she was
+never at home an evening that the house was not full. There was money
+to be made, and plenty of all things; but I did not like it; and
+having saved a trifle, one of her ladyship's sons-in-law--he was the
+best of the two--got me the place at the toll-bar.
+
+You remember me there, Master Willie, and what great times we had on
+Saturday afternoons. You may recollect, too, how many foot-passengers
+used to come and go. It was my amusement to watch them when I had
+nothing better to do; but of all who passed my window, there were none
+took my attention so completely as two young men, who always walked
+arm-in-arm, and seemed to be brothers. I thought I had seen their
+strongly-marked Highland faces before, and by degrees learned that
+they were none other than the old man's two sons, who had been at poor
+Menie's last funeral, but were now grown up, and studying for the
+medical profession at the college in Glasgow. Their father evidently
+kept them on short allowance, judging from their coarse tartan
+clothes, and continual munching of oaten cakes: but I was told they
+were hard students, and particularly clever in the anatomy class. One
+dark, dreary morning, about the Christmas-time, I noted that Lady
+Catherine and her family had been in my dreams all night--their grand
+house, and gay goings-on in London, mingling strangely with the old
+story of Master Arthur and the farmer's daughter. When the newspaper,
+which I shared with the schoolmaster, came, judge of my astonishment
+to read that her ladyship had died suddenly in a fit of apoplexy,
+which came upon her at the whist-table, and her remains had been
+conveyed to the family vault in Dumbartonshire. There was a lesson on
+the uncertainty of life! and it is my trust that I found in it a use
+of warning; but the continual news and strangers at the toll-bar, the
+exact gathering in of the dues, which was not always an easy task, and
+your own merry schoolmates, Master Willie, had in a manner shuffled it
+out of my mind before the second evening.
+
+It had been a dark, foggy day, and I went early to sleep, there being
+few travellers; but in the dead of night, between twelve and one, I
+was roused by a thundering summons at the toll-bar. The night was calm
+and starless, a mass of heavy clouds covered the sky, broken at times
+by gusts of moaning wind from the west, and broad bursts of moonlight.
+I threw on my coat, lit my lantern, and hurried out. There stood a
+large gig with three persons. They must have been tightly packed in
+it, and I never saw a more impatient horse. There was some delay in
+getting out the silver, and I had time to see that the two men who
+sat, one on each side, were the Highland brothers. There was a woman
+between them, in a dingy cloak and bonnet, with a thick black veil.
+She neither moved nor spoke, though the toll somehow puzzled the
+students. I was determined to have it any way, and one of them saying
+something to his companion in Gaelic, reached a half-crown to me. I
+knew I had no change, and told him so. 'I'll call in the morning,'
+said he; but the horse gave a bound, and the silver flew out of his
+fingers. Both the brothers looked down after it. I had a strange
+curiosity about their companion, and that instant a gust of wind blew
+back the veil, and the moonlight shone clear and full upon the face:
+it was the dead visage of Lady Catherine! I saw but one glance of it;
+the next moment the heavy veil had fallen. 'Get the silver yourself,
+and keep it all,' cried the two men, as I opened for them without a
+word: and from that day to this, no one has ever heard the story from
+me. I put the half-crown in the poor's-box next Sabbath. But, Master
+Willie, after that night I never cared for keeping the toll-bar. The
+sound of wheels coming after dark had always a strange effect on me,
+and I could never see a gig pass without shivering. So I gave up my
+situation, and took to the old trade of gardening again. The pleasant
+plants and flowers bring no dark stories to one's mind. But yonder's
+the laird: dinner will be ready by this time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And John was right; for it was ready, with a jovial party to despatch
+it. But I never saw my old friend after. He emigrated to Canada with
+his managing master in the following spring; and, having at least kept
+the real names with enjoined secrecy, it seems at this distance of
+time no breach of trust to repeat the toll-keeper's story.
+
+
+
+
+CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI.
+
+
+Among the lions of Rome during the last twenty years, not the least
+attractive, especially for literary visitors, was the celebrated
+Cardinal Mezzofanti. Easy of access to foreigners of every condition,
+simple, unpretending, cheerful, courteous even to familiarity, he
+never failed to make a most favourable impression upon his visitors;
+and marvellous as were the tales in circulation concerning him, the
+opportunity of witnessing more closely the exercise of his almost
+preternatural powers of language, served but to deepen the wonder with
+which he was regarded. The extent, the variety, and the solidity of
+his attainments, and, still more, his complete and ready command, for
+the purposes of conversation, of all the motley stores which he had
+laid up, were so far beyond all example, whether in ancient or modern
+times, as not only to place him in the very first rank of the
+celebrities of our generation, but to mark him out as one of the most
+extraordinary personages recorded in history.
+
+Giuseppe (Joseph) Mezzofanti was born at Bologna in 1774, of an
+extremely humble family. His father was a poor carpenter; and the
+eminence to which, by his own unassisted exertions, Mezzofanti,
+without once leaving his native city, attained in the exercise of the
+faculty of language--which is ordinarily cultivated only by the
+arduous and expensive process of visiting and travelling in the
+different countries in which each separate language is spoken--is not
+the least remarkable of the many examples of successful 'pursuit of
+knowledge under difficulties,' which literary history supplies. He was
+educated in one of the poor schools of his native city, which was
+under the care of the fathers of the celebrated Congregation of the
+Oratory; and the evidence of more than ordinary talent which he
+exhibited, early attracted the notice of one of the members of the
+order, to whose kind instruction and patronage Mezzofanti was indebted
+for almost all the advantages which he afterwards enjoyed. This good
+man--whose name was Respighi, and to whose judicious patronage of
+struggling genius science is also indebted for the eminent success of
+the distinguished naturalist Ranzani, the son of a Bolognese barber,
+and a fellow-pupil of Mezzofanti--procured for his young protégé the
+instruction of the best masters he could discover among his friends.
+He himself, it is believed, taught him Latin; Greek fell to the share
+of Father Emmanuel da Ponte, a Spanish ex-Jesuit--the order had at
+this time been suppressed; and the boy received his first initiation
+into the great Eastern family of languages from an old Dominican,
+Father Ceruti, who, at the instance of his friend Respighi, undertook
+to teach him Hebrew. Beyond this point, Mezzofanti's knowledge of
+languages was almost exclusively the result of his own unassisted
+study.
+
+From a very early age, he was destined for the church, and he received
+holy orders about the year 1797. During the period of his probationary
+studies, however, he obtained, through the kindness of his friend F.
+Respighi, the place of tutor in the family of the Marescalchi, one of
+the most distinguished among the nobility of Bologna; and the
+opportunities for his peculiar studies afforded by the curious and
+valuable library to which he thus enjoyed free access, may probably
+have exercised a decisive influence upon his whole career.
+
+His attainments gradually attracted the notice of his fellow-citizens.
+In the year 1797, he was appointed professor of Arabic in the
+university; a few years later, he was named assistant-librarian of the
+city library; and in 1803, he succeeded to the important chair of
+Oriental Languages. This post, which was most congenial to his tastes,
+he held, with one interruption, for a long series of years. In 1812,
+he was advanced to a higher place in the staff of the library; and in
+1815, on the death of the chief librarian, Pozetti, he was appointed
+to fill his place. When it is considered how peculiarly engrossing the
+study of languages is known to be, and especially how attractive for
+an enthusiastic scholar like Mezzofanti, it might be supposed that for
+him the office of librarian could have been little more than a nominal
+one. But the library of Bologna to the present day bears abundant
+evidence that it was far otherwise. The admirable order in which the
+Greek and Oriental manuscripts are arranged, the excellent _catalogue
+raisonné_ of these manuscripts, and the valuable additions to the
+notices of them by Assemani and Talmar which it contains, are all the
+fruit of Mezzofanti's labour as librarian.
+
+During his occupancy of this office, too, he continued to hold his
+professorship of Oriental languages, and, for a considerable part of
+the time, that of Greek literature in addition. Nor was he exempt from
+those domestic cares and anxieties which are often the most painful
+drawback upon literary activity. The death of a brother, which threw
+upon him the care of an unprovided family of eleven children, was the
+severest trial sustained in Mezzofanti's otherwise comparatively quiet
+career; and by driving him to the ordinary expedient of distressed
+scholars--that of giving private lectures--it tended more than all his
+public occupations to trench upon his time, and to abridge his
+opportunities of application to his favourite study.
+
+Perhaps, indeed, of all who have ever attained to the same eminence in
+any department which Mezzofanti reached in that of languages, there
+hardly ever was one who had so little of the mere student in his
+character. In the midst of these varied and distracting occupations,
+he was at all times most assiduous in his attendance upon the sick in
+the public hospitals, of which he acted as the chaplain. There was
+another also of his priestly duties, for the zealous discharge of
+which he was scarcely less distinguished, and which became subsidiary,
+in a very remarkable way, to his progress in the knowledge of
+languages. In the absence, up to the present time, of any regular
+memoir of him, it is impossible to fix with precision the history of
+his progress in the acquisition of the several languages. But it is
+well known, that at a very early period he was master of all the
+leading European languages, and of those Oriental tongues which are
+comprised in the Semitic family. Very early, therefore, in
+Mezzofanti's career, he was marked out among the entire body of the
+Bolognese clergy as in an especial manner the 'foreigners' confessor'
+(_confessario dei forestieri_). In him, visitors from every quarter of
+the globe had a sure and ready resource; and in several cases, it was
+to the very necessity thus created he was indebted for the
+acquisition, or at least the rudimentary knowledge, of a new language.
+More than once, it occurred that a foreigner, introduced to the
+_confessario dei forestieri_, for the purpose of being confessed,
+found it necessary to go through the preliminary process of
+_instructing his intended confessor_. For Mezzofanti's marvellous and
+almost instinctive power of grasping and systematising the leading
+characteristics even of the most original language, the names of a few
+prominent ideas in the new idiom sufficed to open a first means of
+communication. His prodigious memory retained with iron tenacity every
+word or phrase once acquired; his power of methodising, by the very
+exercise, became more ready and more perfect with each new advance in
+the study; and, above all, a faculty which seemed peculiar to himself,
+and which can hardly be described as other than instinctive, of
+seizing and comprehending by a single effort the general outlines of
+the grammatical structure of a language from a few faint
+indications--as a comparative anatomist will build up an entire
+skeleton from a single bone--enabled him to overleap all the
+difficulties which beset the path of ordinary linguists, and to
+attain, almost by intuition, at least so much of the required language
+as enabled him to interchange thought with sufficient freedom and
+distinctness for the purposes of this religious observance, which is
+so important in the eyes of Catholics. And he used to tell, that it
+was in this way he acquired more than one of his varied store of
+languages. For it will hardly be believed, that this prodigy of the
+gift of tongues had never, till his forty-eighth year, travelled
+beyond the precincts of his native province; and that, up to the
+period of his death, his most distant excursion from Rome, in which
+city he had fixed his residence in 1832, did not exceed a hundred
+miles--namely, to Naples, for the purpose of visiting the Chinese
+College which is there established.
+
+It is true that at the period of which we speak, Bologna lay upon the
+high-road to Rome, and that travellers more frequently rested for a
+space upon their journey, than in these days of steam-boat and railway
+communication. But, even then, the opportunities of intercourse with
+foreign-speaking visitors in Bologna were few and inconsiderable
+compared with the prodigious advances which, under all his
+disadvantages, Mezzofanti contrived to make. The ordinary European
+languages presented but little difficulty; the frequent passings and
+repassings of the allied forces during the later years of the war,
+afforded him a full opportunity of acquiring Russian; and the
+occasional establishment of Austrian troops in Bologna, brought him
+into contact with the motley tongues of that vast empire--the Magyar,
+the Czechish, the Servian, the Walachian, and the Romani; but beyond
+this, even his spirit of enterprise had no vent in his native city;
+and all his further conquests were exclusively the result due to his
+own private and unassisted study.
+
+His fame, nevertheless, began to extend to foreign countries. Among
+many distinguished foreigners to whose acquaintance his extraordinary
+faculties as a linguist became a passport, was the celebrated Russian
+general, Suwarrow; and with him Mezzofanti long maintained the most
+friendly relations. From the Grand-Duke of Tuscany he received a
+pressing invitation to fix himself at Florence; and Napoleon himself,
+with that engrossing spirit which desired to make Paris the centre of
+all that is great in science, in art, and in literature, offered him a
+most honourable and lucrative appointment, on condition of his
+removing to the French capital. But Mezzofanti declined both the
+invitations, and continued to reside in his native city, till the year
+1832. At the close of those political disturbances, of which Bologna
+was the centre, in the early part of the pontificate of Gregory XVI.,
+it was resolved to send a deputation to Rome on the part of the
+citizens. Of this deputation, Mezzofanti, as the chief celebrity of
+the city, was naturally a leader; and the pope, who had long known
+him, and who, before his elevation to the pontificate, had frequently
+corresponded with him on philological subjects, urged him so earnestly
+to remain at Rome, that with all his love of Bologna he was induced to
+consent. He was immediately appointed, in 1832, a canon of St Peter's;
+and on the translation of the celebrated Angelo (now Cardinal) Mai to
+the office of secretary of the Propaganda, he was named to succeed
+him in the honourable post of librarian of the Vatican.
+
+In this office Mezzofanti continued till the year 1840, when, in
+conjunction with the distinguished scholar just named, he was raised
+to the cardinalate. During the interval since his fixing his residence
+at Rome, he had enjoyed the confidence and friendship of Gregory XVI.;
+and although his narrow resources were utterly unequal to the very
+considerable expense which the state of a cardinal entails, Gregory,
+in acknowledgment of his distinguished merit, himself settled the
+necessary income upon the humble Bolognese; and even, with
+characteristic delicacy, supplied from his own means the equipage and
+other appurtenances which a new cardinal is obliged to provide on
+entering upon his office.
+
+From this period, Mezzofanti continued to reside at Rome. Far,
+however, from relaxing in the pursuit of his favourite study after his
+elevation, he only used the opportunities thus afforded for the
+purpose of cultivating it with more effect. When the writer of these
+pages first had the honour of being presented to him, he was in the
+full flush of the excitement of a new study--that of the language of
+the California Indians, two of whom had recently come as pupils to the
+College of the Propaganda; and up to his very last year, the same zeal
+continued unabated. His death occurred March 16, 1849, in the
+seventy-fifth year of his age, and was most probably hastened by the
+excitement and distress caused by the political troubles of the
+period.
+
+Such is a brief outline of the quiet and uneventful career of this
+extraordinary man. It remains that we give a short account of the
+nature and extent of his prodigious attainments as a linguist. It is
+observed by the author of an interesting paper read a few weeks since
+at a meeting of the Philological Society, that, taking the account of
+the linguistic accomplishments of King Mithridates even in the most
+exaggerated form in which it is given by the ancients, who represent
+him as speaking the languages of twenty-two nations, it fades into
+insignificance in contrast with the known and ascertained attainments
+of Mezzofanti. A Russian traveller, who published in 1846 a collection
+of _Letters from Rome_, writes of Mezzofanti:--'Twice I have visited
+this remarkable man, a phenomenon as yet unparalleled in the learned
+world. He spoke eight languages fluently in my presence. He expressed
+himself in Russian very purely and correctly. Even now, in advanced
+life, he continues to study fresh dialects. He learned Chinese not
+long ago. I asked him to give me a list of all the languages and
+dialects in which he was able to express himself, and he sent me the
+name of GOD written with his own hand in _fifty-six_ languages, of
+which thirty were European, not including their dialects; seventeen
+Asiatic, also without counting their dialects; five African, and four
+American!' We should add, however, from the cardinal's own avowal to
+ourselves, that of the fifty-six languages here alluded to, there were
+some which he did not profess to speak, and with which his
+acquaintance was more limited than with the rest; an avowal the
+honesty of which will be best appreciated when it is considered, on
+the one hand, how difficult it would have been to test his knowledge
+of the vast majority among these languages; and, on the other, how
+marvellously perfect was his admitted familiarity with those which he
+did profess really to know.
+
+The author of the memoir submitted to the Philological Society, has
+collected a number of notices of Mezzofanti by travellers in Italy,
+who had seen him at different periods of his career. Mr Stewart Rose,
+in 1817, tells of him that a Smyrniote servant, who was with him,
+declared that he might pass for a Greek or a Turk throughout the
+dominions of the Grand Seignior. A few years later, while he was still
+residing at Bologna, he was visited by the celebrated Hungarian
+astronomer, Baron Zach, editor of the well-known _Correspondences
+Astronomiques_, on occasion of the annular eclipse which was then
+visible in Italy. 'This extraordinary man,' writes the baron, February
+1820, 'speaks thirty-two languages, living and dead--in the manner I
+am going to describe. He accosted me in Hungarian, with a compliment
+so well-turned, and in such excellent Magyar, that I was quite taken
+by surprise. He afterwards spoke to me in German, at first in good
+Saxon, and then in the Austrian and Swabian dialects, with a
+correctness of accent that amazed me to the last degree, and made me
+burst into a fit of laughter at the thought of the contrast between
+the language and the appearance of this astonishing professor. He
+spoke English to Captain Smyth, Russian and Polish to Prince
+Volkonski, with the same volubility as if he had been speaking his
+native tongue.' As a last trial, the baron suddenly accosted him in
+_Walachian_, when, 'without hesitation, and without appearing to
+remark what an out-of-the-way dialect had been taken, away went the
+polyglot with equal volubility;' and Zach adds, that he even knew the
+Zingller or gipsy language, which had long proved a puzzle to himself.
+Molbech, a Danish traveller, who had an interview with him in 1820,
+adds to his account of this miraculous polyglotist, that 'he is not
+merely a linguist, but is well acquainted with literary history and
+bibliography, and also with the library under his charge. He is a man
+of the finest and most polished manners, and at the same time, of the
+most engaging good-nature and politeness.'
+
+It would be easy to multiply anecdotes, shewing the enthusiasm with
+which Mezzofanti entered on the study of language after language. He
+sought out new tongues with an insatiable passion, and may be said to
+have never been happy but when engaged in the mastering of words and
+grammars. No degree of bad health interrupted his pursuit. Till the
+day of his death, he was engaged in his darling task: life closed on
+him while so occupied. He died just as he had acquired a thorough
+proficiency in Californian--a singular instance of the power of mind
+exercised on a favourite subject, and shewing what may be accomplished
+when men set their heart on it. The career of this remarkable
+linguist, however, cannot be considered exemplary. We would recommend
+no person to plunge headlong into an absorbing passion for any
+accomplishment. Mezzofanti was a curiosity--a marvel--the wonder of
+the world of letters; and it is chiefly as such that a notice of him
+here will be considered interesting.
+
+
+
+
+CURIOSITIES OF POSTHUMOUS CHARITY.
+
+
+The curious observer, in his rambles about town, is occasionally
+struck with some singular demonstrations for which he is at a loss to
+account. Sometimes they assume a benevolent form, and sometimes they
+have a holiday-making aspect, yet with a touch of the lugubrious. In
+London, or in some one of the thriving towns lying within a score of
+miles of it, he strolls into a church, where he sees a number of
+loaves of bread piled up at the back of the communion-table, or
+ranged, as they are in a baker's shop, upon shelves against the wall.
+It is a pleasant sight, but apt to be somewhat puzzling. Perhaps he
+saunters into a country church-yard, and there finds amongst the rank
+grass and moss-grown and neglected memorials of the silent multitude,
+one trim and well-tended monument, uninvaded by cryptogamia, free from
+all stain of the weather, and the surrounding grassy sward neatly mown
+and fenced in, it may be, with budding willow branches or a circle of
+clipped box. Or he finds his way through a suburban village, blocked
+up some fine morning by a crowd of poor women and girls, clustered
+round the door of a retired tradesman or the curate of the place, from
+which three or four at a time emerge with gratified looks, and go
+about their business, while others enter in their turn. Such
+demonstrations as these, and we might mention many others, have their
+origin in certain charitable dispositions and bequests, many of which
+are of considerable antiquity. There is one in operation to this day,
+near Winchester, which dates from the time of William of Wykeham; by
+virtue of which every traveller passing that way, if he choose to make
+the demand, is regaled with a pint of beer and a meal of bread and
+cheese. There is another similar antique charity in operation in
+Wiltshire, near Devizes, where, on one occasion, the dispenser of the
+benevolence, in the exercise of his privilege to feed the hungry,
+threw a loaf of bread into the carriage of George III. as the royal
+_cortège_ passed the spot. The name of these post-mortem charities is
+legion. They abound in every city, burgh, town, and hamlet in England,
+to an extent absolutely startling to a person who looks into the
+subject for the first time. The number of them belonging to the city
+of London alone--that is, originating among her citizens, and mostly
+dispensed under the direction of the several worshipful companies--can
+hardly be fewer than 1500, if so few. The parochial charities only of
+London city yield an income of nearly L.40,000 a year. The history of
+all these charities would fill many bulky volumes. We propose merely
+to take a passing glance at a few, which are interesting from their
+singularity, or from the light which they reflect upon the benevolent
+aspect of a certain section of society in times long past; and which,
+perhaps, may be found in some degree instructive and suggestive, as
+illustrating the operation of post-mortem benevolence.
+
+At St ---- Church, not a hundred miles from St Martin's Le Grand,
+there prevails an amusing instance of the perversion of the funds of a
+charity to purposes which could not possibly have been intended by the
+founder. Many centuries ago, a Roman Catholic gentleman, dying,
+bequeathed to that church a small estate, the proceeds of which he
+directed should be devoted to the purpose of supplying the officiating
+priests with refreshment on the Sabbath-day. The Roman Catholic
+service has long since given place to a Protestant one, and the band
+of officiating priests has dwindled down to one clergyman--while the
+value of the estate has increased perhaps fiftyfold. At the present
+moment, the sum which the estate originally produced is paid over to
+the church-wardens, who are at times a little puzzled as to what to do
+with it. They get rid of a good portion in this way: at every service
+which is held in the church, they place a bottle of the best sherry
+which can be procured for money upon the vestry-table; from this the
+'officiating priest' strengthens his inner man with a glass or two
+before commencing his ministrations, and then the church-wardens sit
+down and finish the remainder comfortably by themselves, while the
+reverend gentleman is in the reading-desk or the pulpit. The cost of
+the wine, however, does not amount to half the sum in their hands, and
+the remainder goes to form a fund from which the church is painted,
+repaired, decorated, and kept in apple-pie order--the whole fabric
+undergoing a thorough revision and polish both outside and in as often
+as a pretext can be found. What becomes of the bulk of the
+property--the large surplus arising from the increased value of the
+devised estate--this deponent sayeth not: the reader may be in a
+condition to guess by the time he has read to the end of this paper.
+
+In the year 1565, a Mr Edward Taylor willed to the Leathersellers'
+Company a messuage, tenement, and melting-house, in the parish of St
+Olave, and other messuages in the same parish, upon condition that
+they should, quarterly and for ever, distribute among the poorest and
+neediest people in the Poultry Compter one kilderkin of beer and
+twelve pennyworths of bread, and the same to the poor of Wood Street
+Compter, Newgate, and the Fleet, the King's Bench, and the Marshalsea
+prisons. Under this bequest, the Company are at present in possession
+of considerable property, vastly increased in value since the date of
+the will; in respect of which property, 1s. worth of penny-loaves, and
+2s. in money, in lieu of beer, are sent by them every quarter to the
+poor prisoners in each of the prisons mentioned in the original
+testament!
+
+Robert Rogers devised in 1601 the sum of L.400 to the Leathersellers'
+Company, 'to be employed in lands, the best pennyworth they could
+get;' and that the house should have 40s. of it a year for ever. The
+remainder was to be bestowed upon poor scholars, students of
+divinity--two of Oxford, and two of Cambridge, for four years; and
+after them to two others of each university; and after them, to
+others; and so on for ever. He also, by the same will, devised L.200
+to be lent to four young men, merchant adventurers, at L.6, 13s. 4d.,
+for the L.200, interest. The whole of the interest was to be spent in
+bread--to be distributed among poor prisoners--and coal for poor
+persons, with the exception of some small fees and gratuities to the
+parish clerk and beadle, for their trouble in carrying out his
+intentions.
+
+Lewisham, once a town in Kent, but now nothing more than a suburb of
+London, enjoys the benefactions of the Rev. Abraham Colfe, who, in
+1656, bequeathed property for the maintenance of numerous charities.
+Some of them are singularly characteristic. Having provided for the
+erection of three strong alms-houses, he directed that certain
+alms-bodies should be periodically chosen, who were to be 'godly poor
+inhabitants of Lewisham, and being single persons, and threescore
+years old, past their hard bodily labour, and able to say the Lord's
+Prayer, the Belief, and the Ten Commandments,' &c. &c. All these
+alms-bodies were to have '3d. each allowed them every day for their
+comfortable sustenance--that is, 21d. a week--to be paid them every
+month during their _single_ life, and as long as they should behave
+themselves honestly and godly, and duly frequent the parish church.'
+They were to be summarily removed if guilty of profane or wicked
+conduct. The alms-bodies were not to exceed five in number at any one
+time. He directed a buttery to be built for their convenience, and
+also a little brick room, with a window in it, for the five
+alms-bodies to assemble in daily for prayer, and that the schoolmaster
+of the reading-school should pray with them there. He further directed
+the enclosure of gardens, of sixteen feet broad at the least, for
+their recreation. Mr Colfe also left money for lectures at Lewisham
+Church, as well as a sum for the purchase of Bibles, until they should
+amount to the number of thirty or forty, which were to be chained to
+the pews, or otherwise preserved; and he left 12d. a quarter to the
+clerk for writing down the names of those that should use them; also
+2s. 8d. to him for taking care of the clock and dial; also, 10s. for a
+sermon on the 5th of November, and 12d. in bread for the poor who
+should come and hear it, and 6d. to the parish clerk; also 20s., to be
+distributed a penny at a time, to the children and servants who could
+best say their catechism, and 6d. to the minister for catechising
+them; also, a yearly sum of money for distributing on every
+Lord's-day after the morning service, seven penny wheaten loaves, to
+seven of the most honest, peaceable, and godly poor householders of
+Lewisham, who could say the Lord's Prayer, the Belief, and the Ten
+Commandments; also, 5s. a year to poor maid-servants, who at the time
+of their marriage had continued seven years with their master or
+mistress in Lewisham; with numerous other bequests. He further left
+moneys for the preservation of his father's, grandfather's, his
+wife's, and his own monument--his own being an oaken plank oiled, and
+a stone 'a foot square every way, and three feet long.' The stone and
+plank were removed many years ago, and an inscribed tablet has been
+set into the outer wall of the church.
+
+The practice of leaving money for the sustentation of tomb-stones and
+monuments, appears to have prevailed for many generations; and may be
+very naturally accounted for, by the repugnance which most men would
+feel, to the idea of having their bones knocked about by the sexton's
+spade, and then wheeled off to the bone-house, if there happens to be
+a bone-house, or shot into the neighbouring river, or on a farmer's
+dung-heap, if there is no such convenience as a bone-house at hand. It
+was this feeling that induced the celebrated sculptor, Chantrey, to
+make sure of a quiet resting-place for his remains.[2] In so doing, he
+was, though perhaps unconsciously, but following the example of many
+who have gone before him. We have more than once encountered a sober
+party upon their annual visit to some country church-yard tomb, of
+which, by virtue of some bequest--which provides them with a good
+dinner upon the occasion--they are the appointed guardians. The
+worshipful members of the London companies sometimes choose to rest
+from their labours in a rural grave; and when they do, survivors are
+always to be found not unwilling to enjoy once a year a pensive
+holiday, coupled with the creature comforts, which the quiet comrade
+whose behest they execute has taken care to provide for them. It would
+be perhaps difficult to find a single church in all the little towns
+and hamlets within a dozen miles of London, which does not contain one
+tenant at least who has thus secured permanent possession of his last
+resting-place. So strong is this feeling in some individuals, that
+they shrink from confiding even in the stone-vaults in the interior of
+a city church. Thus, Sir William Rawlins, not so very long ago,
+bequeathed a certain sum of money for the preservation of his tomb and
+monument in Bishopsgate Church. The bequest provides for the
+remuneration of the visitors, who are specified parish functionaries,
+and entertains them with a good dinner on the day of the annual
+visitation, which they are bound to make--to inspect the monument and
+tomb, and to guarantee their good condition. In many instances, the
+sum originally devised for the sustentation of a grave or monument is
+not sufficient, in the present day, to remunerate residents in London
+for looking after it, and the money has been transferred to the parish
+in which the testator lies, and has become the perquisite of the
+sexton.
+
+In the year 1635, one John Fletcher bequeathed to the Fishmongers'
+Company the sum of L.120, to supply 10s. every month to the poor of St
+Peter's Hospital, to provide them with a dinner on Sunday.
+
+In the year 1653, Mr James Glassbrook bequeathed, after his wife's
+death, the sum of L.500 in the following words: 'and L.500 more to
+such uses as follow--to the poor of the parish of St Bololph Without,
+in which I dwell, L.5 in bread yearly; L.5 to the poor of St Giles's
+yearly in bread; to the poor of St Sepulchre's yearly in bread, L.5,
+to be given every Sabbath-day in the churches.' The amount of bread at
+the present time given away in London under this disposition,
+supplemented by some smaller bequests, is sixty-eight half-quartern
+loaves a week. The same poor persons, when they once get on the list,
+continue to receive the bread during their whole lives, unless they
+cease to reside in the parish, or are struck off the list of
+pensioners for misconduct.
+
+One Daniel Midwinter, in 1750, left L.1000 to the Stationers' Company,
+to pay L.14 a year to the parish of St Faith's; and a like sum to
+Hornsey parish, to be applied in apprenticing two boys or girls of the
+several parishes, and to fit them out in clothes. At the present time,
+the money is paid over to the parties receiving the apprentices, with
+a recommendation to lay it out in clothes for the children.
+
+By the will of John Stock, the parish of Christchurch received, among
+other legacies, the sum of L.100, the interest of which was directed
+to be applied in the following manner: one guinea to be paid to the
+vicar for a sermon to be preached by him on Good-Friday; 10s. to the
+curate for reading the prayers on that day; _and the remainder to be
+equally distributed among such poor women as chose to remain and
+receive the sacrament after the service!_
+
+A Mr James Wood, amongst other curious provisions, devised to the
+church-wardens of the parish of St Nicholas Cole Abbey, the sum of
+15s. annually, to be given away in twopences to such poor people as
+they should meet in the streets when going and returning from church
+on a specified day.
+
+The inhabitants of Watling Street, and other districts in the vicinity
+of St Antholin's Church, are familiar with the sound of what is known
+in the neighbourhood as the 'Fish-bell.' This is a bell which rings
+out every Friday night from St Antholin's tower, to summon the
+inhabitants to evening prayers: very few people attend to the summons,
+which comes at an inconvenient time for that busy locality. There
+stands almost against the walls of the church a pump, which is always
+in good repair, and yields an excellent supply of water, greatly to
+the convenience of the neighbourhood. Both the pump and the prayers
+are the legacy of an old fish-woman of the last century. It is said,
+that for forty years of her life she was in the habit of purchasing
+fish in the small hours of the morning at Billingsgate Market; these
+she washed and prepared for her customers at a small spring near St
+Antholin's Church, and afterwards cried them about the town upon her
+head. Having prospered in her calling, she bequeathed a sufficient sum
+to perpetuate a weekly service in the church, and a good and efficient
+pump erected over the spring of which she had herself enjoyed a
+life-long privilege.
+
+In St George's in the East, there is a charity, well-known as Raine's
+Charity, which was founded by Henry Raine, Esq., in the earlier part
+of the last century. The charity consists of two endowed schools,
+sufficiently well provided for the maintenance and instruction of
+fifty boys and as many girls, and the payment and support of a master
+and mistress. It is one part of the system of management, that six
+pupils of either sex leave the schools every year, to make room for as
+many new ones. By a somewhat whimsical provision in the will of the
+founder, a species of annual lottery comes off at the discharge of the
+six girls. If they have behaved well, have been attentive and
+obedient, and punctual and exact in the observance of their religious
+duties, they are entitled to draw lots for the sum of L.100,
+which will be paid to the fortunate holder of the prize as a
+marriage-portion upon her wedding-day. It is further provided, that
+the wedding is to take place on the 1st day of May; and that, in
+addition to the portion, L.5 is to be expended upon a marriage-dinner
+and a merry-making.
+
+Bequests for the portioning of poor girls and virtuous servant-maids
+are, indeed, not at all uncommon. In the village of Bawburgh, in
+Norfolk, there is one founded in the last century by a Quaker
+gentleman, who left a sum of money, the interest of which is shared
+among the servant-girls in the place who get married. The amount is
+not payable until twelve months after the wedding. The village being
+small, it will sometimes happen that a good sum accumulates before an
+applicant comes forward who can substantiate a claim upon it. The
+object of such bequests as these is sufficiently plain: the donors had
+evidently in view the counteracting of the wretched tendency of the
+old poor-law, which, by giving the mother of an illegitimate child a
+claim upon the parish funds, actually placed a premium upon female
+frailty.
+
+In London, there are charitable dispositions and bequests for the
+nursery of every virtue that could be named, but more especially of
+industry, providence, and thrift. A man may be brought into the world
+by voluntary contributions; he may be maintained and educated at a
+foundling asylum, if his parents, as thousands do, choose to throw him
+upon the public compassion; he may ride into a good business upon the
+back of a borrowed capital, for which he pays but a nominal interest;
+and if he fail to realise a competence by his own endeavours, he may
+perchance revel in some corporation sinecure, or, at the worst,
+luxuriate in an alms-house, and be finally deposited in the
+church-yard--and all at other people's expense. On the other hand, if
+he be made of the right metal, he may carve his way to fortune and to
+civic fame, and may die full of years and honours--in which case, he
+is pretty sure to add one more to the list of charitable donors whose
+legacies go to swell the expectancies of the city poor. It would be
+difficult for any eccentric testator in the present day to hit upon a
+new method of disposing of the wealth which he can no longer keep.
+Every device for the exercise of posthumous generosity seems to have
+been exhausted long ago.
+
+The trust-estates, the source of so many of the city of London
+charities, are mostly, if not all, under the control of the corporate
+companies. How they are managed, is a secret altogether unknown to the
+public, and of which, indeed, the livery and freemen of some of the
+companies have but a very limited knowledge. The revenue derived from
+the trust-estates, according to their own shewing, is not much less
+than L.90,000 a year; but they have large revenues, of which they do
+not choose to shew any account at all. These are supposed to arise
+mainly from the increase in value of property originally devised to
+charitable uses--which increase it is their custom to appropriate as
+they please. 'Thus, for example,' says a writer on this subject, 'if a
+testator left to any one of these companies a piece of land then worth
+L.10 per annum, directing that L.10 should be annually appropriated to
+the support of a school, and the land subsequently increases in value
+to L.500, then the master and wardens of the company claim the right
+of appropriating to their own uses the surplus of L.490. In no
+equitable view of the case can this be deemed to be private property.'
+It seems probable that these things will be looked into before long.
+From a motion lately made in the House of Commons, we learn that a
+thorough investigation is contemplated into the management and
+application of all charities throughout the kingdom, the inquiry to be
+conducted at the cost of the several charities, the largest of which
+are not to pay more than L.50, and the smaller ones twopence in the
+pound, upon the amount of their capital. Perhaps this inquiry may lead
+to the recovery of some of the charities which are stated to be lost,
+and of which nothing but the titles, under the denomination of
+So-and-so's gift, remain upon the corporation records.
+
+The secret management of the trust-estates contrasts curiously with
+the pompous exhibition which some of the worshipful companies make of
+their deeds of benevolence. Some of the smaller and older churches of
+London are stuck over in the interior with enormous black boards, as
+big as the church door almost, upon which are emblazoned, in gilt
+letters, the donations to the poor, to the school, to the repair of
+the fabric, &c. from the worshipful company of This and That, from the
+days of King James--the inscriptions of whose time are illegible
+through the smoke and damp of centuries--down to the days of Queen
+Victoria, and the donations of last Christmas, fresh and glittering
+from the hands of the gilder. Thus, the interesting old church of St
+Bartholomew the Great is lined with the eleemosynary exploits of the
+worshipful Ironmongers' Company, whose multitudinous banners of black
+and gold are in abominable discordance with the severe and simple
+architecture of the ancient edifice. 'Let not thy left hand know what
+thy right hand doeth,' is a monition apparently not much in repute
+among the corporate companies.
+
+The reader may gather from the perusal of the above desultory
+examples, selected from a mass of similar ones, some idea of the
+enormous amount of the funds, intended for benevolent purposes, which
+Christian men have bequeathed to the world; and they may perhaps serve
+to enlighten the curious observer on the subject of some of the
+unobtrusive phenomena which occasionally excite his admiration and
+arouse his conjecture. They are the silent charities of men in the
+silent land. How much good they do, and how much harm, and on which
+side the balance is likely to lie--these are questions which for the
+present we have neither time nor space to discuss.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] See _Chambers's Pocket Miscellany_, vol. iv.
+
+
+
+
+LABOUR STANDS ON GOLDEN FEET.
+
+
+The condition of the working-classes in this country is a subject of
+intense interest to all thinking men; but it is profitable as well as
+amusing to transfer our attention sometimes to the same portions of
+society in other countries. In Germany, for instance, the people are
+as busy as we are with their 'hand-workers,' and the questions of
+freedom of industry and general instruction are as warmly discussed as
+at home. We have now before us a little volume by the philosopher and
+historian, Zschokke, which, in the form of a fictitious narrative,
+treats very fully of the status of the mechanic in Fatherland; and we
+are tempted to cull a few extracts which may afford the reader
+materials for perhaps an interesting comparison.[3]
+
+The real hero of the story is Hand-labour, and his progress is
+described throughout three generations of men. He is the Thought of
+the book, illustrated by adventure and vicissitude; living when the
+human agents die in succession; and leaving a distinct and continuous
+track in the reader's mind, when the names and persons fade or
+conglomerate in his memory. And yet some of these names and persons
+are not feebly individualised. The father, the son, and the grandson
+stand well out upon the canvas; and while the family likeness is
+strictly preserved from generation to generation, the men are seen
+independent and alone, each in his own special development. The
+patriarch was a travelling tinker, who wheeled his wares about the
+country in a barrow; and then, rising in the world, attained the
+dignity of a hawker, with a cart of goods, drawn by a little gray ass.
+His son Jonas trotted on foot beside him in all his journeys, dining
+like his father on bread and water, and sleeping in barns or stables.
+But when the boy was old enough, he was turned off to pick up his own
+subsistence like the redbreasts, the sparrows, and the woodpeckers.
+'Listen, my lad,' quoth Daddy Thaddaeus; 'this is the spring. Look for
+sloes and elderberries, rose-leaves and others for ointment; marjoram,
+spurge, and thyme, wherever thou mayst and canst. These we will sell
+to the apothecaries. In summer, gather basketfuls of strawberries,
+bilberries, and raspberries; carry them to the houses: they will yield
+money. In winter, let us gather and dry locks of wool, for the
+saddlers and tapestry-makers, and withes for the basket and mat
+manufacturers. From the table of the bountiful God, a thousand crumbs
+are falling for us: these we will pick up. They will give thee cheese
+to thy bread, and a piece of meat to thy potatoes. Only get to work! I
+will give thee a little barrow, and a belt for thy shoulders.'
+
+This was his first essay in business on his own account, and he worked
+hard and throve well. His separation from his father taught him how to
+stand on his own legs--an important piece of knowledge in a world that
+is as full of leave-takings as of meetings; and when they did come
+together, and the boy counted out his kreutzers, and the father patted
+him approvingly on the cheek, that boy would have changed places with
+no prince that ever sat on a throne. Jonas was at length apprenticed
+to a girdler, or worker in metals; and the old tinker in due time
+died, leaving his son the parting advice, to 'work, save, and pray,'
+and a box containing a thousand guilders.
+
+Jonas's apprenticeship passed on pretty much according to universal
+rule; that is, he did the drudgery of the house as well as learned the
+trade, and received kicks and cuffs from the journeymen. But in five
+years his servitude was out, and he was a journeyman himself. He was
+now, by the rules of his guild, obliged to travel for improvement; he
+spent five or six years in going to and fro upon the earth, and then
+came back to Altenheim an accomplished girdler. To become a master, it
+was necessary to prepare his 'master-piece,' as a specimen of what he
+could do; and the task allotted to him was to engrave on copper,
+without rule or compass, the prince's family-crest, and then to gild
+the work richly. This accomplished, he was received into the guild of
+masters with much pomp, strange ceremonies, and old-fashioned
+feasting--all at the charge of the poor beginner. 'Without reckoning
+the heavy expenses of his mastership, or of clothing, linen, and
+furniture, in the hired lodgings and workshops, no small sum was
+requisite for the purchase of different kinds of tools--a lathe, an
+anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers,
+chisels, tongs, scissors, &c.; and also for the purchase of brass and
+pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone,
+borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken,
+without premium, an apprentice, the child of very poor people, to help
+him. He would have been very glad to put the rest of his money out to
+interest again; but he had to provide the means of subsistence for at
+least one year in advance, for he had to begin with neither wares nor
+customers.'
+
+Jonas now appears in the character of a lover, and his wooing is one
+of the most beautiful pictures in the book. His choice has fallen upon
+a servant-girl, whom he had known in boyhood.
+
+'One morning, Master Jordan sent his apprentice with a message: "Miss
+Fenchel was to come to him directly: he had found a good place for
+her." Martha hastened thither gladly.
+
+'"Hast thou found a place for me, dear Jonas?" asked she, giving him
+her hand gracefully. "Thank God! I began to fear becoming troublesome
+to our kind friends. Come, tell me where?"
+
+'He looked anxiously into her joyous blue eyes; then, in confusion,
+down to the ground; then again upwards to the roof of the room, and
+round the four sides, as though he were seeking something lost.
+
+'"Come, tell me, then?" repeated she. "Why art thou silent?"
+
+'He collected himself, and began, hesitating: "It is--but Martha--thou
+must not be angry with me."
+
+'In surprise, she smiled. "Angry with thee, Jonas! If I would be, and
+should be, could I be?"
+
+'"Listen, Martha; I will shew thee--I must tell thee--I know a man
+anxious to have thy heart and hand--who--even who"----
+
+'"O Jonas, reproach me rather, but do not make mockery of me, a poor
+maiden!" exclaimed she, shocked or hurt, while her face lost all its
+colour, and she turned from him.
+
+'"Martha, look at me. He is assuredly no bad man. I will bring him to
+thee; I will give him to thee myself."
+
+'"No, Jonas! no! From thee, least of all, can I receive a lover."
+
+'"From me, least of all!" asked he with visible emotion. "From me,
+least of all! And if--I don't know--if I would give thee myself--Look
+at me, Martha! Tell me."
+
+'Here silence ensued. She stood before him with downcast eyes and
+glowing cheeks, and played with her apron-string. Then, as if still
+doubting, she looked up again, her eyes swimming with tears, and said,
+with trembling lips: "What must I say, then?"
+
+'Jonas took courage, and whispered, half aloud: "Dost thou love me
+with all thy heart?"
+
+'Half aloud, Martha whispered back: "Thy heart knows it."
+
+'"Canst thou be satisfied with dry bread and salt?"
+
+'"Rather salt from thee than tears from me!"
+
+'"Martha, I will work for thee; wilt thou save for me?"
+
+'"I will be sparing in everything, except my own pains!"
+
+'"Well then, darling, here is my hand! Take it. Wilt thou be mine?"
+
+'"Was I not thine eight years ago and more? Even as a child? Yet no!
+It ought not to be, Jonas."
+
+'Alarmed, he looked in her face, and asked: "Not be? and why?"
+
+'"Think well over it, Jonas! Do thyself no injustice. I am a poor
+creature, without portion or property. Any other burgher's daughter in
+the town would be glad to give thee her hand and heart, and a good
+dowry beside. Thou mightst live much better."
+
+'"Say nothing about that," cried Jonas, stretching out both his hands
+imploringly. "Be still: I shall feel that I am but beginning to live,
+if thou wilt promise to live with me."
+
+'"Live, then!" said she, in blushing embarrassment, and gave him her
+hand.
+
+'He took her hand, and at the same time clasped his bride to his
+bosom, that heaved with unwonted emotion. She wept on his breast in
+silent joy.'
+
+We would fain, if we had room, add to this the marriage sermon,
+preached by the bridegroom, and well preached too; for Jonas had
+knowledge, although, as he said himself, he never found half so much
+in books as is lying everywhere about the road.
+
+Martha was just the wife for the honest, sensible hand-worker; and as
+it frequently happens with such characters, his affairs prospered
+from the date of his marriage. He took a larger house in a
+better situation for trade; and having presented the useless
+'master-piece'--which nobody would buy--to the prince, he was rewarded
+by the dignity of 'Master-girdler to the Court.' But still 'uprightly
+and hardily the court-girdler lived with his wife, just as before;
+active in the workshop and warehouse, at markets and at fairs. Year
+after year fled, though, before the last guilder could be paid off, of
+the debt on the house. Days of joy and of sorrow succeeded each other
+in turn. They were all received with gratitude to God--these as well
+as those.'
+
+We now come hastily to the third generation; for Jonas had a son
+called Veit, who was first apprenticed to his father, and then sent to
+travel as a journeyman. The patriarch had had no education at all;
+Jonas had snatched at his just as opportunities permitted; but Veit
+went regularly through the brief and practical curriculum fitted for a
+tradesman's son. He was, consequently, better informed and more
+refined than either his father or grandfather; and spent so much time
+in gaining a thorough insight into the branches connected with his own
+business, that honest Jonas was quite puzzled. 'Where did the boy get
+all these notions?' said he. 'He did not get them from me, I'm sure.'
+Veit had a bad opinion of the travelling custom, and for these
+reasons: 'How should these men, most of them badly brought up, attain
+to any greater perfection in their business, if they have left home
+and school without any preparation for it? No one can understand, if
+his understanding has not been developed. From one publican they go to
+another, and from one workshop to another; everywhere they find the
+old common track--the mechanical, mindless life of labour, just as in
+the very first place to which they were sent to learn their trade. At
+most, they acquire dexterity by practice. Now and then they learn a
+trick from a master, or get a receipt, which had been cautiously kept
+secret; when possessed of this, they think something of themselves.
+Even the character of these ramblers is not seldom destroyed by
+intercourse with their fellows. They learn drinking and rioting,
+gambling and licentiousness, caballing and debating. Many are ruined
+before they return to their native place. Believe me, dearest father,
+the time of travel is to very few a true school for life; one in
+which, through frequent change of good and evil days, the head
+acquires experience, the thoughts strength and clearness, the heart
+courage, and reliance on God. Very few, even of those who bring a
+scientific education with them, can gain much of value for their
+calling in life; extend their views, transfer and apply to their own
+line of business the inventions and discoveries that have been made in
+other departments of art and industry.'
+
+Jonas understood little of the refinements of his son, but he opened
+his eyes when Veit obtained a lucrative appointment in a large
+metallic manufactory, first in London and then in Paris. In a letter
+informing his parents of this good-fortune, were enclosed the whole of
+the savings from his salary. 'Master Jordan shook his head at this
+passage, and cried out, deeply moved, yet as though vexed, while a
+tear of motherly tenderness stole down Martha's cheek: "No! no! by no
+means! What is the fool thinking of? He'll want the money himself--a
+simpleton. Let him wait till he comes to the master-piece. What
+pleases me most in the story, is his contentment and his humility. He
+is not ashamed of his old silver watch yet. It is not everybody that
+could act so. There must be strong legs to support such extraordinary
+good-luck. These the bursch has!"'
+
+After years of absence, the young man at last walks suddenly into the
+paternal home, on his father's birthday, and makes them all scream and
+weep with joy. '"Hark ye, bursch!" exclaimed Jonas, who regarded him
+with fatherly delight, "thou seem'st to me almost too learned, too
+refined, and too elegant for Veit Jordan. What turner has cut so neat
+a piece of furniture out of so coarse a piece of timber?"' His stay,
+however, was short. M. and Mme Bellarme (his employer at Paris) 'had
+been loth, almost afraid, to let him go. The feeble state of health of
+the former began to be so serious, that he durst not engage in the
+bulk of his affairs. In the space of a year, both felt so complete
+confidence in Veit's knowledge of business, and in his honour, that
+they had taken him as a partner in trade, and in the foundry.
+Henceforth, M. Bellarme contributed his capital only; Veit his
+knowledge, care, and industry.'
+
+The reform of the guilds, and the establishment of a technological
+school for the young hand-workers--both through the instrumentality of
+Jonas--we have no room to touch; for we must say a parting word on the
+reunion of the family by Veit's return permanently from abroad.
+Notwithstanding the prosperity of the now old couple, 'everything, ay,
+everything, was as he had left it years ago--as he had known it from
+childhood--only Christiane not. There stood yet the two well-scoured
+old deal-tables, wrinkled, though, from the protruding fibres of the
+wood; there were the straw-bottomed stools still; and at the window,
+Mother Martha's arm-chair, before which, as a child, he had repeated
+his lessons; there still hung the same little glass between the
+windows; and the wall-clock above the stove sent forth its tic-tac as
+fastly as ever. Father Jonas, in his enlarged workshop, with more
+journeymen and apprentices, smelted and hammered, filed and formed
+still, from morning to night, as before. The noble housewife flew
+about yet busy as a bee: she had managed the housekeeping without a
+servant since Christiane had been grown up. And Veit came back with
+the same cheerful disposition that he had ever shewn. In the
+simply-furnished rooms which Martha had fitted up for him, in the
+upper storey of the house, he forgot the splendid halls, the boudoirs,
+and antechambers of London, Paris, and the Bellarme estate; the
+Gobelin tapestry, the gold-framed pictures; the convenience of elegant
+furniture, and the artificial delicacies of the table on
+silver-plate.' Assisted by the patronage of the prince, he established
+a great foundry in his native town, of ball and cannon, bronze and
+brass; and on his marriage with the aforesaid Christiane, the
+sovereign made him a handsome present, in a handsome manner, 'as a
+small token of his gratitude to a family that had been so useful to
+the country.'
+
+In addition to the hand-workers' school, there now arose, under the
+auspices of this family, a training-school for teachers, a
+labour-school for females, and other establishments. The town was
+embellished; the land in the neighbourhood rose in value;
+uncleanliness and barbarism in food, clothing and houses, disappeared.
+'Only old men and women, grown rusty in the habits and the ignorance
+of many years, complain that the times are worse; at the sight of a
+higher civilisation, they complain of "the luxury and the pride of the
+world now-a-days;" as superstition dies out, they complain of "human
+incredulity, and the downfall of religion." "The day of judgment," say
+they, "is at hand."
+
+'But Master Jonas, when seventy years had silvered his hair, stood
+almost equal to a strong man of thirty, happy, indeed, by the side of
+the pious Martha, in a circle of his children and children's children,
+honoured by his fellow-citizens, and honoured by his prince. He often
+told the story of his boyhood, how he used to go about hawking with
+Father Thaddaeus the tinker; and his face glowed with inward
+satisfaction, when he compared the former period with present changes,
+in the production of which he could never have imagined he was to have
+so considerable a share. Then he used to exclaim: "Have I not always
+said it? Clear understanding only in the head, love to one's
+neighbour in the heart, frugality in the stomach, and industry in the
+fingers--then: HAND-WORK STANDS ON GOLDEN FEET."'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] _Labour Stands on Golden Feet; or, the Life of a Foreign Workman_,
+&c. By Heinrich Zschokke. London: Groombridge.
+
+
+
+
+LORD ROSSE'S DISCOVERIES.
+
+
+As Professor Nichol very truly remarks, 'investigation regarding such
+aggregations is virtually a branch of atomic and molecular inquiry,'
+with stars in place of atoms, mighty spheres in place of 'dust,' 'the
+firmament above' instead of 'the firmament beneath.' In fact, the
+astronomer, in sweeping with his telescopic eye the 'blue depths of
+ether,' is, as it were, some Lilliputian inhabitant of an atom prying
+into the autumnal structure of some Brobdignagian world of saw-dust;
+organised into spiral and other elementary forms, of life, it may be,
+something like our own. The infinite height appears, in short, like
+the infinite depth, and we knowing not precisely where we stand
+between the two immensities of depth and height! The shapes evolved by
+the wonderful telescope of Lord Rosse are, many of them, absolutely
+fantastical; wonder and awe are mingled with almost ridiculous
+feelings in contemplating the strange apparitions--strange
+monstrosities we had almost called them--that are pictured on the
+background of the illustrations. One aggregation looms forth out of
+the darkness like the skeleton face of some tremendous mammoth, or
+other monstrous denizen of ancient times, with two small fiery eyes,
+however, gazing out of its great hollow orbits; another consists of a
+central nucleus, with arms of stars radiating forth in all directions,
+like a star-fish, or like the scattering fire-sparks of some
+pyrotechnic wheel revolving; a third resembles a great wisp of straw,
+or twist or coil of ropes; a fourth, a cork-screw, or other spiral,
+seen on end; a fifth, a crab; a sixth, a dumb-bell--many of them
+scroll or scrolls of some thin texture seen edgewise; and so on. It is
+even a suggestion of the author's, that some of the spiral and armed
+wheels may be revolving yet in the vast ocean of space in which they
+are engulfed. Thus has the telescope traced the 'binding' influences
+of the Pleiades, loosened the bands of 'Orion'--erst the chief
+_nebulous_ hazy wonders, once and for all revealing its separate
+stars: and thus, in brief, has this wondrous instrument 'unrolled the
+heavens as a scroll.' Yet even these astonishing results are as
+nothing to the fact, that those fantastic shapes which it has revealed
+in the depths of this _lambo_ of creation, are not shapes merely of
+the present time--that thousands of years have passed since the light
+that shewed them left the starry firmaments only now revealed--that
+the telescope, in short, in reflecting these astonishing shapes,
+deliver to the eye of mind turned inward on the long-stored records of
+a universal and eternal memory of the past, than to a mere eye of
+sense looking outward on the things of passing time!--_The Builder_.
+
+
+
+
+SOUTH-AFRICAN REPTILES.
+
+
+I was going quietly to bed one evening, wearied by a long day's
+hunting, when, close to my feet, and by my bedside, some glittering
+substance caught my eye. I stooped to pick it up; but, ere my hand had
+quite reached it, the truth flashed across me--it was a snake! Had I
+followed my first natural impulse, I should have sprung away, but not
+being able clearly to see in what position the reptile was lying, or
+which way his head was pointed, I controlled myself, and remained
+rooted breathless to the spot. Straining my eyes, but moving not an
+inch, I at length clearly distinguished a huge puff-adder, the most
+deadly snake in the colony, whose bite would have sent me to the other
+world in an hour or two. I watched him in silent horror: his head was
+from me--so much the worse; for this snake, unlike any other, always
+rises and strikes back. He did not move; he was asleep. Not daring to
+shuffle my feet, lest he should awake and spring at me, I took a jump
+backwards, that would have done honour to a gymnastic master, and thus
+darted outside the door of the room. With a thick stick, I then
+returned and settled his worship. Some parts of South Africa swarm
+with snakes; none are free from them. I have known three men killed by
+them in one harvest on a farm in Oliphant's Hoek. There is an immense
+variety of them, the deadliest being the puff-adder, a thick and
+comparatively short snake. Its bite will kill occasionally within an
+hour. One of my friends lost a favourite and valuable horse by its
+bite, in less than two hours after the attack. It is a sluggish
+reptile, and therefore more dangerous; for, instead of rushing away,
+like its fellows, at the sound of approaching footsteps, it half
+raises its head and hisses. Often have I come to a sudden pull-up on
+foot and on horseback, on hearing their dreaded warning! There is also
+the cobra-capello, nearly as dangerous, several black snakes, and the
+boem-slang, or tree-snake, less deadly, one of which I once shot seven
+feet long. The Cape is also infested by scorpions, whose sting is
+little less virulent than a snake-bite; and by the spider called the
+tarantula, which is extremely dreaded.--_The Cape, by A. W. Cole_.
+
+
+
+
+LINES.
+
+
+  Ask me not with simple grace,
+    Pearls of thought to string for thee;
+  For upon thy smiling face,
+    Perfect gems I see--
+  In thine eyes of beauty trace
+    Lights that fadeless be.
+
+  Bid me not from Memory's land,
+    Cull fair flowers of rich perfume;
+  Love will shew with trembling hand,
+    Where far fairer bloom--
+  Clustering on thy cheek they stand,
+    Blushing deep--for whom?
+
+  Bid me not with Fancy's gale
+    Wake the music of a sigh;
+  From thy breath a sweeter tale,
+    Silver-winged, floats by;
+  Melodies that never fail,
+    Heard when thou art nigh!
+
+  Ask me not--yet, oh! for thee
+    Dearer thoughts my bosom fill,
+  Dimmed with tears I cannot see
+    To do thy gracious will:
+  Take, then, my prayer--In heaven may we
+    Behold thee lovelier still!
+
+                                      PERCIE.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS OF EXTREME MINUTENESS.
+
+
+Dr Wollaston obtained platinum-wire so fine, that 30,000 pieces,
+placed side by side in contact, would not cover more than an inch. It
+would take 150 pieces of this wire bound together to form a thread as
+thick as a filament of raw silk. Although platinum is the heaviest of
+the known bodies, a mile of this wire would not weigh more than a
+grain. Seven ounces of this wire would extend from London to New York.
+Fine as is the filament produced by the silkworm, that produced by the
+spider is still more attenuated. A thread of a spider's web, measuring
+four miles, will weigh very little more than a single grain. Every one
+is familiar with the fact, that the spider spins a thread, or cord, by
+which his own weight hangs suspended. It has been ascertained that
+this thread is composed of about 6000 filaments.--_Lardner's
+Handbook_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Printed and Published by W. and R. CHAMBERS, High Street, Edinburgh.
+Also sold by W. S. ORR, Amen Corner, London; D. N. CHAMBERS, 55 West
+Nile Street, Glasgow; and J. M'GLASHAN, 50 Upper Sackville Street,
+Dublin.--Advertisements for Monthly Parts are requested to be sent to
+MAXWELL & Co., 31 Nicholas Lane, Lombard Street, London, to whom all
+applications respecting their insertion must be made.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436, by Various
+
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436
+       Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Robert Chambers and William  Chambers
+
+Release Date: July 8, 2006 [EBook #18796]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDINBURGH JOURNAL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Richard J. Shiffer and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL</h1>
+
+<h2><a name="Contents" id="Contents">CONTENTS</a></h2>
+
+<div class="contents">
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#THE_MUSICAL_SEASON"><b>THE MUSICAL SEASON.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_TALLOW-TREE_OF_CHINA"><b>THE TALLOW-TREE OF CHINA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_TOLLMANS_STORY"><b>THE TOLLMAN'S STORY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CARDINAL_MEZZOFANTI"><b>CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CURIOSITIES_OF_POSTHUMOUS_CHARITY"><b>CURIOSITIES OF POSTHUMOUS CHARITY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LABOUR_STANDS_ON_GOLDEN_FEET"><b>LABOUR STANDS ON GOLDEN FEET.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LORD_ROSSES_DISCOVERIES"><b>LORD ROSSE'S DISCOVERIES.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#SOUTH-AFRICAN_REPTILES"><b>SOUTH-AFRICAN REPTILES.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LINES"><b>LINES.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#ILLUSTRATIONS_OF_EXTREME_MINUTENESS"><b>ILLUSTRATIONS OF EXTREME MINUTENESS.</b></a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[pg 289]</a></span></p>
+
+<img src="images/banner.png"
+          width="100%"
+          alt="Banner: Chambers' Edinburgh Journal" />
+
+<h4>CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
+INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &amp;c.</h4>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<table width="100%"
+        summary="Volume, Date and Price">
+<tr>
+<td align="left"><b><span class="sc">No.</span> 436.&nbsp;&nbsp; <span class="sc">New Series.</span></b></td>
+<td align="left"><b>SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1852.</b></td>
+<td align="right"><b><span class="sc">Price</span> 1&frac12;<i>d</i>.</b></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MUSICAL_SEASON" id="THE_MUSICAL_SEASON"></a>THE MUSICAL SEASON.</h2>
+
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+    Contents</a></p>
+
+<p>'The English are not a musical people.' The dictum long stood
+unquestioned, and, in general estimation, unquestionable. All the
+world had agreed upon it. There could be no two opinions: we had no
+national airs; no national taste; no national appreciation of sweet
+sounds; musically, we were blocks! At length, however, the creed began
+to be called in question&mdash;were we so very insensible? If so,
+considering the amount of music actually listened to every year in
+London and the provinces, we were strangely given to an amusement
+which yielded us no pleasure; we were continually imposing on
+ourselves the direst and dreariest of tasks; we were tormenting
+ourselves with symphonies, and lacerating our patience with sonatas
+and rondos. What was the motive? Hypocrisy was very generally
+assigned. We only affected to love music. It was intellectual,
+spiritual, in all respects creditable to our moral nature, to be able
+to appreciate Mozart and Beethoven, and so we set up for connoisseurs,
+and martyrised ourselves that Europe might think us musical. Is there
+more truth in this theory than the other? Hypocrisy is not generally
+so lasting as the musical fervour has proved itself to be. A fashion
+is the affair of a season; a mania goes as it came; but regularly and
+steadily, for many years back, has musical appreciation been
+progressing, and as regularly have the opportunities for hearing good
+music of all kinds been extending.</p>
+
+<p>Take up a daily newspaper, published any time between April and
+August, and range your eye down the third or fourth column of the
+first page&mdash;what an endless array of announcements of music, vocal and
+instrumental! Music for the classicists; music for the crowd;
+symphonies and sonatas; ballads and polkas; harmonic societies; choral
+societies; melodists' clubs; glee clubs; madrigal clubs. Here you have
+the quiet announcement of a quartett-party; next to it, the
+advertisement of one of the Philharmonic Societies&mdash;the giants of the
+musical world; pianoforte teachers announce one of their series of
+classic performances; great instrumental soloists have each a concert
+for the special behoof and glorification of the <i>b&eacute;n&eacute;ficiaire</i>. Mr
+So-and-so's grand annual concert jostles Miss So-and-so's annual
+benefit concert. There are Monday concerts, and Wednesday concerts,
+and Saturday concerts; there are weekly concerts, fortnightly
+concerts, and monthly concerts; there are concerts for charities, and
+concerts for benefits; there are grand morning concerts, and grand
+evening concerts; there are <i>matin&eacute;es musicales</i>, and <i>soir&eacute;es
+musicales</i>; there are meetings, and unions, and circles, and
+associations&mdash;all of them for the performance of some sort of music.
+There are musical entertainments by the score: in the City; in the
+suburbs; at every institute and hall of science, from one end of
+London to the other. One professor has a ballad entertainment; a
+second announces a lecture, with musical illustrations; a third
+applies himself to national melodies. All London seems vocal and
+instrumental. Every dead wall is covered with naming <i>affiches</i>,
+announcing in long array the vast army of vocal and instrumental
+talent which is to assist at such and such a morning performance; and
+the eyes of the owner of a vast musical stomach are dazzled and
+delighted by programmes which will at least demand five hours in the
+performance.</p>
+
+<p>So is London, in the course of the season, the congress of nearly all
+the performing musical notabilities of Europe. Time has been when they
+came to London for cash, not renown: now they come for both. A London
+reputation is beginning to rival a Parisian vogue, besides being ten
+times more profitable; and, accordingly, from every musical corner in
+Christendom, phenomena of art pour in, heralded by the utmost possible
+amount of puffing, and equally anxious to secure English gold and a
+London reputation. It is strange to observe how universally the
+musical tribute is paid. A tenor turns up from some Russian provincial
+town; a basso works himself to London from a theatre in
+Constantinople; rumours arrive of a peerless prima donna, with a voice
+which is to outstrip everything ever heard of, who has been dug out,
+by some travelling amateur, from her native obscurity in a Spanish or
+Norwegian village; an extraordinary soprano has been discovered in
+Alexandria; a wondrous contralto has been fished up from Riga. The
+instrumental phenomena are not one whit scarcer. Classical pianists
+pour in from Germany principally; popular pianists, who delight in
+fantasias rather than concertos, and who play such tricks with the
+keyboards, that the performances have much more of the character of
+legerdemain than of art, arrive by scores; violinists, violoncellists,
+professors of the trombone, of the ophicleide, of the bassoon, of
+every unwieldy and unmanageable instrument in fact, are particularly
+abundant; and perhaps the most popular of all are the particularly
+clever gentlemen who, by dint of a dozen years' or so unremitting
+practice, have succeeded in making one instrument sound like another.
+Quackery as this is, it is enormously run after by no small proportion
+of the public. Not that they do not appreciate the art of the device
+at its proper level, but that the trick is curious and novel; and most
+people, even the dignified classicists, have a gentle toleration for a
+little&mdash;just a little&mdash;<i>outr&eacute;</i> amusement of the kind in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[pg 290]</a></span> question.
+Paganini was the founder of this school. He might have played on four
+strings till he was tired, without causing any particular sensation;
+but the single string made his fortune. Sivori is one of the cleverest
+artists of the present day, who resorts to tricks with his violin, and
+wonderfully does he perform them. At a concert last season, he
+imitated the singing of a bird with the strangest and happiest skill.
+The 'severe' shook their heads, but smiled as they did so, and owned
+that the trick was clever enough, and withal agreeable to hear. But it
+is gentlemen who make one instrument produce the sounds of another,
+or, at all events, who extract from it some previously unknown effect,
+who carry all before them. The present phenomenon in this way is
+Bottesini, who, grasping a huge double-bass, the most unwieldy of
+instruments, tortures out of it the notes of a violin, of an oboe, and
+of a flute. A season or two ago, M. Vivier took all London by storm,
+by producing a chord upon the French horn, a feat previously
+considered impossible, and probably only the fruit of the most
+determined and energetic practice, extending over many years. At all
+the popular concerts, this trick-music is in immense request.
+Bottesini was the lion of Jullien's last series; but in his place in
+the orchestra of the Philharmonic, he plays his part and holds his
+instrument like any ordinary performer. Bagpipe music is not much
+appreciated on the banks of the Thames; but I can assure any
+enterprising Scotsman, that if he can only succeed in producing the
+notes of the bagpipe out of the trombone, he will make a fortune in
+five seasons or less.</p>
+
+<p>Such is musical London, then&mdash;rushing from concert to concert, and
+opera to opera&mdash;from severe classicism to the most miscellaneous
+<i>omnium gatherum</i>&mdash;from solemn ecclesiastical harmonic assemblages to
+the chanting of merry glees, and the warbling of sentimental ballads.
+Let us, then, contemplate a little closer the different kinds of
+concerts&mdash;their features and their character&mdash;their performers and
+their auditories. Our sketch must be very hurried and very vague, but
+it will give an idea of some of the principal characteristics of the
+London musical season.</p>
+
+<p>First, then, among the performances of mingled vocal and instrumental
+music, stand the two Sacred Harmonic Societies, which execute
+oratorios and similar works in Exeter Hall. The original Sacred
+Harmonic Society has within the last couple of years split into two
+bodies. It had long contained within itself the elements of division.
+There were the Go-ahead party and the Conservative party&mdash;the first,
+eager to try new ground, and aim at new effects; the second, lovers of
+the beaten way. At length, the split took place. The progressistas
+flung themselves into the arms of M. Costa, the famous conductor of
+the Royal Italian Opera orchestra, and the highest and most Napoleonic
+of musical commanders. The Tories of the society went peaceably on in
+the jog-trot ways of Mr Sarman, the original conductor. Each society
+can now bring into the field about 800 vocal performers, the immense
+majority of them amateurs, and their concerts take place
+alternately&mdash;Exeter Hall being invariably crammed upon either
+occasion. The Costaites, no doubt, have the <i>pas</i>. The discipline of
+their chief is perfect, and as rigid as it is excellent. The power
+which this gentleman possesses over his musical troops is very
+curious. The whole mass of performers seem to wait upon his will as
+the spirits did on Prospero. At the spreading of his arms, the music
+dies away to the most faintly-whispered murmurs. A crescendo or
+musical climax works gradually up step by step, and bar by bar, until
+it explodes in a perfect crash of vocal and instrumental tempest. The
+extraordinary choral effects produced in the performance of the
+<i>Huguenots</i> almost bewildered the hearers; and the wondrous lights and
+shades of sound given in many of the oratorios, are little behind the
+dramatic achievement. The aspect of Exeter Hall on an oratorio night
+is one of the grandest things in London. The vastness of the
+assemblage, the great mountain of performers, crested by the organ,
+and rising almost to the ceiling, are thoroughly impressive, while the
+first burst of the opening chorus is grand in the extreme. The
+oratorio is, in fact, the Opera of the 'serious' world. It is at once
+a place in which to listen to music and a point of social reunion.
+There are oratorio <i>habitu&eacute;s</i> as well as Opera <i>habitu&eacute;s</i>; and between
+the parts of the performance, the same buzzing hum of converse rises
+from the assemblage which you hear in the Opera corridors and lobbies.
+A glance at the audience will enlighten you as to their character.
+They represent the staid respectability of the middle class. The
+dresses of the ladies are often rich, seldom brilliant, and there is
+little sparkle of jewellery. You very frequently perceive family
+parties, under the care of a grave <i>pater familias</i> and his staid and
+stately partner. Quakers abound; and the number of
+ecclesiastically-cut coats shews how many clergymen of the church are
+present. The audience are in the highest degree attentive. The rules
+forbid applause, but a gentle murmur of admiration rises at the close
+of almost every <i>morceau</i>. Here and there, you have a practical
+amateur, or a group of such with the open score of the oratorio before
+them, eagerly following the music. Often these last gentlemen are
+members of the rival Society, and, as might be expected, pick plenty
+of holes in the execution of their opponents, for which charitable
+purpose only they have probably attended. But in M. Costa's Society,
+at all events, the task is difficult; the orchestra 'goes,' as the
+phrase is, like one instrument, and the singers are beautifully under
+the control of the master-spirit who directs them.</p>
+
+<p>Let us pass from Exeter Hall to Hanover Square. Here, in the Queen's
+Concert Room&mdash;a <i>salle</i> which once was smart, and the decorations of
+which were fashionable seventy years ago&mdash;we have unnumbered concerts,
+and chief among them the twelve annual performances of the
+Philharmonic Society. The 'Philharmonic,' as it is conversationally
+called, holds almost the rank of a national institution. The sovereign
+patronises it in an especial manner. It is connected with the Royal
+Academy of Music, and Her Majesty's private band is recruited from the
+ranks of its orchestra. The Philharmonic band may be indeed taken as
+the representative of the nation's musical executive powers; and, as
+such, comparisons are often instituted between it and the French,
+Austrian, and Prussian Philharmonics. The foreigners who hold places
+in the orchestra are resident, and in some sort naturalised, but the
+bulk of the executants are English. To be a member of the Philharmonic
+orchestra is, indeed, to take a sort of degree in executive music, and
+at once stamps the individual as a performer of distinguished merit.
+The music performed is entirely classic, and principally instrumental.
+New compositions are seldom given; and, in fact, it was the practice
+of adhering so exclusively to the standard works of great composers
+which started the new Philharmonic Society, which has just come into
+existence. The elder body stick stanchly to the safe courses of Bach,
+Gluck, Beethoven, Mozart, and Mendelssohn. The newly-created
+association proclaim that their mission is to look after aspirants, as
+well as to honour the veterans of the art; and accordingly they bring
+forward many compositions experimentally&mdash;a meritorious policy, but
+one not without its dangers. Few unprofessional people are aware of
+the cost of producing elaborate compositions. When <i>William Tell</i> was
+played some years ago at Drury Lane&mdash;to mention one single item&mdash;the
+price of copying the parts from the full score, at 3d. a page, came to
+L.350. All the old music is of course to be had printed; and to these
+standard scores the steady-going Philharmonic principally devotes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[pg 291]</a></span>
+itself. Each performance consists in general of two symphonies, or a
+symphony and an elaborate concerto, each occupying at least
+three-quarters of an hour, with two overtures, and solos, vocal and
+instrumental&mdash;the former generally sung by performers from either
+Opera, but usually from Covent Garden. M. Costa wields the baton at
+Hanover Square as at Exeter Hall; and under his management, the band
+have attained a magnificent precision and <i>ensemble</i> of effect. Its
+musical peculiarity over ordinary orchestras is the vast strength of
+stringed instruments, which gives a peculiar <i>verve</i> and light vigour
+to the performances. The rush of the violins in a rapid passage is
+overwhelming in its impetuosity and vigour, and is said, of late years
+especially, to beat the 'attack,' as it is technically called, of any
+of the continental Philharmonic Societies. The Philharmonic concerts
+are very fashionable. It is good taste, socially and artistically, to
+be present; and, consequently, the room is always crowded by an
+assemblage who display most of the characteristics of an Opera
+audience. The musical notabilities of town always muster in full force
+at the Philharmonic. Composers, executants, critics, amateurs, and
+connoisseurs, are all there, watching with the greatest care the
+execution of those famous works, the great effect of which can only be
+produced by the most wary and appreciative tenderness of rendering. In
+the interval between the first and second parts, the very general hum
+of conversation announces how great the degree of familiarity
+subsisting among the <i>habitu&eacute;s</i>. There is none of the common stiffness
+of waiting one sees at ordinary entertainments. Everybody seems to
+know everybody else, and one general atmosphere of genial intercourse
+prevails throughout the room.</p>
+
+<p>Let us change the scene to a classic concert of quite another kind. In
+a quiet West-end street, we are in a room of singular construction. It
+is in the form of a right-angled triangle; and at the right angle,
+upon a small dais, is placed the pianoforte and the desks, and so
+forth, for the performers. The latter are thus visible from all
+points; but about one-half the audience in each angle of the room is
+quite hidden from the other. Everybody is in evening dress; the ladies
+very gay, and the party very quiet&mdash;a still, drawing-room sort of air
+presides over the whole. Many of the ladies are young&mdash;quite girls;
+and a good many of the gentlemen are solemn old foggies, who appear
+strongly inclined to go to sleep, and, in fact, sometimes do.
+Meantime, the music goes on. A long, long sonata or concerto&mdash;piano
+and violin, or piano, violin, and violoncello&mdash;is listened to in
+profound silence, with a low murmur of applause at the end of each
+movement. Then perhaps comes a little vocalism&mdash;sternly classic
+though&mdash;an aria from Gluck, or a solemn and pathetic song from
+Mendelssohn: the performer being either a well-known concert-singer,
+or a young lady&mdash;very nervous and a little uncertain&mdash;who, it is
+whispered, is 'an Academy girl;' a pupil, that is, of the institution
+in question. Sometimes, but not often&mdash;for it is <i>de rigueur</i> that
+entertainments of this species shall be severely classic&mdash;we have a
+phenomenon of execution upon some out-of-the-way instrument, who
+performs certain miracles with springs or tubes, and in some degree
+wakens up the company, who, however, not unfrequently relapse into all
+their solemn primness, under a concerto manuscript, or a trio
+manuscript, the composition of the <i>b&eacute;n&eacute;ficiaire</i>. Between the parts,
+people go quietly into a room beneath, where there are generally some
+mild prints to be turned over, some mild coffee to drink, some mild
+conversation about mild things in general; and then the party remount
+the stairs, and mildly listen to more mild music. This is the common
+routine of a classical pianoforte soir&eacute;e. The <i>b&eacute;n&eacute;ficiaire</i> is a
+fashionable teacher, and, in a small way, a composer. He gives, every
+season, a series, perhaps two or three series, of classic evenings.
+The pupils and their families form the majority of the audience,
+interspersed with a few pianoforte amateurs, and those <i>fanatici per
+la musica</i> who are to be found wherever a violin is tuned, or a piano
+is opened.</p>
+
+<p>Another species of classic concert is to be found in the
+quartett-meetings. These take place in some small concert-room, such
+as that I have described, or at the houses of the executants; and the
+audience comprehends a far larger proportion of gentlemen than the
+last-mentioned entertainments. The performers are four&mdash;pretty sure to
+be gentlemen of the highest professional abilities. The instruments
+are first and second violin, viola, and violoncello; and three or four
+quartetts by the great masters, or, very probably, as many
+compositions, marking the different stages of Beethoven's imagination,
+are played with the most consummate skill and the tenderest regard for
+light and shade. People not deep in the sympathies and tastes of the
+musical world, have no idea how these compositions are loved and
+studied by the real disciples of Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn; how
+particular passages are watched for; and how old gentlemen nod their
+heads, or shake them at each other, according as they agree or
+disagree in the manner of the interpretation. Half the audience
+probably know every bar of the music by heart, and no inconsiderable
+number could perhaps perform it very decently themselves. It is indeed
+at these quartett and quintett meetings, that you see genuine
+specimens of musical knowledge and musical enthusiasm. They take place
+by half-dozens during the season; and you always find the same class
+of audience, often the same individuals, regularly ranged before the
+executants.</p>
+
+<p>But place now for the real grand, miscellaneous, popular, and populous
+morning concert! Now for elephantine dimensions and leviathan bills of
+fare. It is nominally, perhaps, or really, perhaps, the annual benefit
+concert of some well-known performer, or it is the speculation of a
+great musical publishing house, in the name of one of their composing
+or performing <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;s</i>. The latter is, indeed, a very common
+practice. But whether the music-publishing and opera-box-letting firm
+be the real concert-giver, or merely the agent, to it is left the
+whole of the nice operation of 'getting up' the entertainment. It has
+then exhausted all the dodges of puffery in pumping up an unusual
+degree of excitement. The affair is to be a 'festival' or a 'jubilee;'
+'all the musical talent' of London is to be concentrated; the
+continent has been dragged for extra-ordinary executive attractions;
+every musical hit of the season is to be repeated; every effect is to
+be got up with new <i>&eacute;clat</i>: never was there to be such a <i>super extra,
+ne plus ultra</i> musical triumph. The day approaches. Rainbow-hued
+<i>affiches</i> have done their best; placard-bearers, by scores, have
+paraded, and are parading, the streets; advertisements have blazoned
+the scheme day after day, and week after week; the gratis-tickets have
+been duly 'planted;' puffs, oblique and implied, have hinted at the
+coming attraction in every Sunday paper; and programmes are fluttering
+in every get-at-able shop-front. The day comes. A long line of
+fashionable carriages, strangely intermingled with shabby cabs, file
+up to the doors, and the gay morning dresses, flaunting with colours,
+disappear between the two colossal placards which grace the entrance.
+The room is filled. <i>Habitu&eacute;s</i>, and knowing musical men on town,
+recognise each other, and congregate in groups, laughingly comparing
+notes upon the probabilities of what artists announced will make an
+appearance, and upon what apologies will be offered in lieu of those
+who don't. A couple of these last are probably already in circulation.
+Madame Sopranini is confined to bed with an inflammatory attack; and
+Signor Bassinini has got bronchitis. Nevertheless, the concert begins;
+and oh! the length thereof. The principal vocalists seem to have
+mostly mistaken the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[pg 292]</a></span> time at which they would be wanted; and the
+chopping and changing of the programme are bewildering. Bravuras take
+the place of concertos; a duet being missing, an aria closes the
+ranks; a solo on the trombone not being forthcoming, a vocal trio
+(unaccompanied) is hurriedly substituted. Still, there is plenty of
+the originally announced music; all the favourite airs, duets, and
+trios from the fashionable operas; all the ballads in vogue&mdash;the music
+published by the house which has set the whole thing on foot, of
+course; all the phenomena of executive brilliance are there, or are
+momentarily expected to appear. We begin after an overture with, say,
+an air from the <i>Puritani</i>, by a lovely tenor; another, from the
+<i>Somnambula</i>, by a charming soprano; a fantasia by a legerdemain
+pianist, with long hair, and who comes down on the key-board as though
+it was his enemy; the famous song from <i>Figaro</i>&mdash;encored; the
+madrigal, 'Down in a Flowery Vale'&mdash;the latter always a sure card; a
+duet from <i>Semiramide</i>, by two young ladies&mdash;rather shaky; solo on the
+clarionet, by a gentleman who makes the instrument sound like a
+fiddle&mdash;great applause; 'In manly Worth,' by an oratorio tenor; the
+overture to <i>Masaniello</i>, by the band; concerto (posthumous,
+Beethoven), by a stern classical man&mdash;audience yawn; pot pourri, by a
+romantic practitioner&mdash;audience waken up; ballad, 'When Hearts are
+torn by manly Vows,' by an English tenor&mdash;great delight, and
+encouragement of native talent; glee, 'Glorious Apollo,' or, 'The
+Red-cross Knight'&mdash;very well received; recitative and aria, from
+<i>Lucia di Lammermoor</i>&mdash;very lachrymose; violin solo, by Signor
+Rosinini, who throws the audience into a paroxysm of delight by
+imitating a saw and a grindstone; 'The Bay of Biscay,' by the
+'veteran' Braham, being positively his last appearance (the 'veteran'
+is announced for four concerts in the ensuing week!); ballad, again,
+by the native tenor, 'When Vows are torn by slumbering Hearts'&mdash;more
+great applause; the page's song from the <i>Huguenots</i>, for the
+contralto; 'When the Heart of a Man,' <i>Beggars' Opera</i>; quartett for
+four pianofortes, great bustle arranging them, and then only three
+performers forthcoming&mdash;an apology&mdash;attack of bronchitis&mdash;but Mr
+Braham will kindly (thunders of applause) sing 'The Death of Nelson;'
+quartett for double-bass, trombone, drum, and triangles&mdash;curious
+effect; the audience hardly know whether they like it or not; the
+bravura song of the 'Queen of Night,' from <i>Zauberfl&ouml;te</i>; overture to
+<i>William Tell</i>; ballad, 'When Slumber's Heart is torn by Vows;' duet,
+'I know a Bank,' by the Semiramide young ladies; fantasia pianoforte,
+from the <i>Fille du R&eacute;giment</i>; 'Rode's air, with variations,' from the
+text; and the storm movement of the <i>Sinfonia Pastorale</i>, by
+Beethoven!</p>
+
+<p>Such may be taken as a fair specimen-slice of a <i>Concert Monstre</i>; and
+in listening to this wild agglomeration of chaotic music, the day
+passes, very likely from two o'clock until six. In a future paper, I
+may touch upon the peculiarities of the artists performing.</p>
+
+<p class="author">A. B. R.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="THE_TALLOW-TREE_OF_CHINA" id="THE_TALLOW-TREE_OF_CHINA"></a>THE TALLOW-TREE OF CHINA.</h2>
+
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+    Contents</a></p>
+
+<p>It is one happy recommendation of the Natural system of botany, that
+many of its orders form groups of plants distinguished not only by the
+characteristics of general physiognomy, and the more accurate
+differences of structure, but in an especial manner by the medicinal
+and economical properties which they possess, and which are indeed
+frequently peculiar to the order. Such is the case with the natural
+order <i>Euphorbiace&aelig;</i>, or spurge family, to which the tallow-tree of
+China belongs. The order includes 2500 species, all of which are more
+or less acrid and poisonous, these properties being especially
+developed in the milky juices which abound in the plants, and which
+are contained, not in its ordinary tissues, but in certain special
+vessels. Many important substances are derived from this order,
+notwithstanding its acrid and poisonous character. Castor-oil is
+obtained from the seeds of <i>Ricinus communis</i>; croton-oil, and several
+other oleaginous products of importance in medicine and the arts, are
+obtained from plants belonging to the order. The root of <i>Janipha
+Manihot</i>, or Manioc-plant, contains a poisonous substance, supposed to
+be hydrocyanic acid, along with which there is a considerable
+proportion of starch. The poisonous matter is removed by roasting and
+washing, and the starch thus obtained is formed into the cassava-bread
+of tropical countries, and is also occasionally imported into Europe
+as Brazilian arrow-root.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the important economical productions of China are little known
+in this country; we are, however, daily gaining additions to our
+knowledge of them; and within the last few years, much valuable
+information has been obtained respecting the productive resources of
+the Eastern Empire. The grass-cloth of China only became known in
+Europe a few years ago, but it now ranks as one of the important
+fabrics of British manufacture. Daily discoveries seem to shew that
+there are Chinese products of equal importance, as yet unknown to us.
+On the present occasion, we call the attention of our readers to a
+substance which has been long known, as well as the plant which
+produces it, but neither of which has hitherto been prominently
+brought into general notice in Britain. For our information respecting
+the uses of the tallow-tree, we express our chief obligations to a
+paper by Dr D. J. Macgowan, published in the Journal of the
+Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>The tallow-tree of China is the <i>Stillingia sebifera</i> of botanists; a
+plant originally indigenous to China, where it occurs in wet
+situations, but which is now somewhat common in various parts of India
+and America, chiefly as an ornamental tree. In Roxburgh's time, it was
+very common about Calcutta, where, in the course of a few years, it
+became one of the most common trees; and it has become almost
+naturalised in the maritime parts of South Carolina. In China alone,
+however, is it as yet appreciated as an economical plant, and there
+alone are its products properly elaborated. It is chiefly prized for
+the fatty matter which it yields, and from which it derives its
+appropriate name; but it affords other products of value: 'its leaves
+are employed as a black dye; its wood being hard and durable, may be
+easily used for printing-blocks and various other articles; and,
+finally, the refuse of the nut is employed as fuel and manure.... It
+grows alike on low alluvial plains and on granite hills, on the rich
+mould at the margin of canals, and on the sandy sea-beach. The sandy
+estuary of Hangchan yields little else; some of the trees at this
+place are known to be several hundred years old, and though
+prostrated, still send forth branches and bear fruit.... They are
+seldom planted where anything else can be conveniently cultivated&mdash;but
+in detached places, in corners about houses, roads, canals, and
+fields.'</p>
+
+<p>The sebaceous matter, or vegetable tallow, is contained in the
+seed-vessels of the <i>Stillingia</i>. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[pg 293]</a></span> processes adopted for
+abstracting it are of importance, and meet with due consideration in
+Dr Macgowan's valuable paper. The following clear account is given of
+the whole process, as practised in China:&mdash;'In midwinter, when the
+nuts are ripe, they are cut off with their twigs by a sharp
+crescentric knife, attached to the extremity of a long pole, which is
+held in the hand, and pushed upwards against the twigs, removing at
+the same time such as are fruitless. The capsules are gently pounded
+in a mortar, to loosen the seeds from their shells, from which they
+are separated by sifting. To facilitate the separation of the white
+sebaceous matter enveloping the seeds, they are steamed in tubs,
+having convex open wicker bottoms, placed over caldrons of boiling
+water. When thoroughly heated, they are reduced to a mash in the
+mortar, and thence transferred to bamboo sieves, kept at a uniform
+temperature over hot ashes. A single operation does not suffice to
+deprive them of all their tallow; the steaming and sifting are
+therefore repeated. The article thus procured becomes a solid mass on
+falling through the sieve; and to purify it, it is melted and formed
+into cakes for the press. These receive their form from bamboo hoops,
+a foot in diameter, and three inches deep, which are laid on the
+ground over a little straw. On being filled with the hot liquid, the
+ends of the straw beneath are drawn up and spread over the top; and
+when of sufficient consistence, are placed with their rings in the
+press. This apparatus, which is of the rudest description, is
+constructed of two large beams, placed horizontally so as to form a
+trough capable of containing about fifty of the rings with their
+sebaceous cakes; at one end it is closed, and at the other adapted for
+receiving wedges, which are successively driven into it by ponderous
+sledge-hammers, wielded by athletic men. The tallow oozes in a melted
+state into a receptacle below, where it cools. It is again melted, and
+poured into tubs, smeared with mud, to prevent its adhering. It is now
+marketable, in masses of about eighty pounds each&mdash;hard, brittle,
+white, opaque, tasteless, and without the odour of animal tallow;
+under high pressure, it scarcely stains bibulous paper, and it melts
+at 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It may be regarded as nearly pure
+stearine.... The seeds yield about 8 per cent. of tallow, which sells
+for about five cents per pound.'</p>
+
+<p>There is a separate process for pressing the oil, which is carried on
+at the same time. The kernels yield about 30 per cent. of oil, which
+answers well for lamps. It is also employed for various purposes in
+the arts, and has a place in the Chinese pharmacop&oelig;ia, because of
+its quality of changing gray hair to black, and other imaginary
+virtues.</p>
+
+<p>The husks are used to feed the furnaces; the residuary tallow-cakes
+are also employed for fuel&mdash;a small quantity remaining ignited a whole
+day. The oil-cake forms a valuable manure, and is of course carefully
+used for this purpose in China, where so very great regard is paid to
+the collecting of manures. This kind is particularly used for
+enriching tobacco-fields, its powerful qualities recommending it for
+such a scourging crop.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the uses of the vegetable tallow, Dr Macgowan observes:
+'Artificial illumination in China is generally procured by vegetable
+oils, but candles are also employed.... In religious ceremonies, no
+other material is used. As no one ventures out after dark without a
+lantern, and as the gods cannot be acceptably worshipped without
+candles, the quantity consumed is very great. With an unimportant
+exception, the candles are always made of what I beg to designate as
+vegetable stearine. When the candles, which are made by dipping, are
+of the required diameter, they receive a final dip into a mixture of
+the same material and insect-wax, by which their consistency is
+preserved in the hottest weather. They are generally coloured red,
+which is done by throwing a minute quantity of alkanet-root (<i>Anchusa
+tinctoria</i>), brought from Shan-tung, into the mixture. Verdigris is
+sometimes employed to dye them green.' We are not aware that the
+vegetable tallow has as yet been imported into Britain to any extent.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 'Uses of the <i>Stillingia Sebifera</i>, or Tallow-Tree, &amp;c.,
+by D. J. Macgowan, M. D., &amp;c.' The substance of the same communication
+was laid before the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 12th February,
+1852, having been communicated by Dr Coldstream.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="THE_TOLLMANS_STORY" id="THE_TOLLMANS_STORY"></a>THE TOLLMAN'S STORY.</h2>
+
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+    Contents</a></p>
+
+<p>Some local travellers of about twenty-five years' practice, may still
+remember the keeper of a toll-bar on one of the western approaches to
+Glasgow, known in his neighbourhood as English John. The prefix was
+given, I believe, in honour of his dialect, which was remarkably pure
+and polished for one of his station in those days; and the solution of
+that problem was, that he had been from childhood, till the gray was
+thickening on his hair, in the service of an English family, who had
+come into possession, and constantly resided on, a handsome estate in
+his native parish in Dumbartonshire.</p>
+
+<p>Through their interest, he had been appointed to the office of power
+and trust in which I made his acquaintance. John was one of my
+earliest friends, though the remnant of his name was never heard nor
+inquired after by me. The great town has now grown much nearer his
+toll-house, which then stood alone on the country road, with no
+building in sight but the school, at which I, and some two score of
+the surrounding juveniles, were supposed to be trained in wisdom's
+ways, by the elder brother of our parish minister. A painstaking,
+kindly teacher he was; but the toll-house was a haunt more pleasant to
+our young fancies than his seminary. John was the general friend and
+confidant of all the boys; he settled our disputes, made the best tops
+and balls for us, taught us a variety of new tricks in play, and
+sometimes bestowed upon us good advices, which were much sooner
+forgotten. John never married. He had a conviction, which was
+occasionally avowed, that all women were troublesome; and whether this
+evidence be considered <i>pro</i> or <i>con</i>, he was a man of rough sense and
+rustic piety, of a most fearless, and, what the Germans call, a
+self-standing nature&mdash;for solitude or society came all alike to John.
+You would as soon expect a pine-tree to be out of sorts, as his hard,
+honest face, and muscular frame. John was never sick, or disturbed in
+any way; he performed his own domestic duties with a neatness and
+regularity known to few housekeepers, and was a faithful and most
+uncompromising guardian of the toll-bar. I well remember how our young
+imaginations were impressed with the fact, that no man could pass,
+without, as it were, paying tribute to him; and George IV., though he
+appeared on the coppers with which we bought apples, cast by no means
+so mighty a shadow on our minds as English John. Before this glory
+waned, I was removed from his neighbourhood, being sent to cheer the
+heart and secure the legacy of a certain uncle who was a writer to the
+Signet in Edinburgh, and believed to be in profitable practice and
+confirmed bachelorhood. The worthy man has long ago married his
+landlady's daughter, and been blessed with a family sufficient to fill
+a church-pew. My own adventures&mdash;how I grew from garment to garment,
+how I became a law-student, and at length a writer myself&mdash;have little
+to do with the present narrative, and are therefore spared the reader
+in detail; but the first startling intelligence I received from home
+was, that English John had resigned his important office at the
+toll-house, and gone, nobody knew whither!</p>
+
+<p>Years had passed; my professional studies were finished, and I had
+occasion to visit a Fife laird near the East Neuk. The gentleman was
+notable for his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[pg 294]</a></span> taste in kitchen-gardening; and having a particularly
+fine bed of Jerusalem artichokes which I must see, he conducted me to
+the scene of his triumphs, when, hard at work with the rake and hoe,
+whom should I find as the much esteemed gardener, but my old friend
+English John! His hair had grown quite gray, and his look strangely
+grave, since last I saw him: time had altered me still more;
+nevertheless, John knew me at once&mdash;he had always a keen eye&mdash;but I
+perceived it was his wish not to be recognised at all in presence of
+the laird. That worthy was one of those active spirits who extend
+their superintendence to every department. He commanded in the pantry
+as well as on the farm; and while expatiating over the artichokes, a
+private message from his lady summoned him back to the house, as I
+sincerely believe, on some matter connected with the dinner; and he
+left me, with an understood permission to admire the artichokes, and
+the garden in general, as long as I pleased. Scarcely was he fairly
+out of sight, till I was at the gardener's side. 'John, my old
+fellow,' cried I, grasping his hand, 'I'm glad to see you once again.
+How has the world behaved to you these many years?'</p>
+
+<p>'Pretty well, Master Willie,' said John, heartily returning my shake;
+'and I'm glad to see you too; but your memory must be uncommon good,
+for many a one of the boys has passed me by on street and highway. How
+have they all turned out?' And he commenced a series of inquiries
+after schoolmates and old neighbours, to which my answers were as
+usual in such cases&mdash;some were dead, some were married, and some gone
+far away.</p>
+
+<p>'But, John,' said I at last, determined to make out the mystery which
+had so long puzzled me and the entire parish&mdash;'in exchange for all my
+news, tell me why you left the toll-house? It was surely a better
+place than this?'</p>
+
+<p>'You know what the old proverb says, Master Willie: "Change is
+lightsome,"' said John, beginning to dig, as if he would fain stave
+off the explanation.</p>
+
+<p>'Ha, John, that wont do!' said I; 'your mind was never so unsteady.
+Tell me the truth, for old times' sake; and if there is anything in
+the story that should not be made public, you know I was always a
+capital secret-keeper. Maybe it was a love-matter, John: are you
+married yet?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, Master Willie,' cried my old friend, with a look of the most
+sincere self-gratulation I ever saw. 'But it's a queer story, and one
+I shouldn't care for telling; only, you were always a discreet boy,
+and it rather presses on my mind at times. The master won't be back
+for awhile; he'll have the roast to try, and the pudding to taste&mdash;not
+to talk of seeing the table laid out, for there are to be some
+half-dozen besides yourself to-day at dinner. That's his way, you see.
+And I'll tell you what took me from the toll-house&mdash;but mind, never
+mention it, as you would keep peace in the west country.'</p>
+
+<p>This is John's story, as nearly in his own words as I can call them to
+mind:&mdash;</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>The family in whose service I was brought up lived on their estate in
+Dumbartonshire, which came through the mistress of the mansion, who
+had been heiress of entail, and a lady in her own right; we called her
+Lady Catherine, and a prouder woman never owned either estate or
+title. Her father had been a branch of the Highland family to whom the
+property originally belonged. Her mother was sprung from the old
+French nobility, an emigrant of the first Revolution, and she had been
+brought up in England, and married in due time to an Honourable Mr
+---- there. When she first came to the estate, her husband had been
+some years dead, and Lady Catherine brought with her a son, who was to
+be heir&mdash;at that time a boy like myself&mdash;and two handsome grown-up
+daughters. The castle was a great fabric, partly old and partly new.
+It stood in the midst of a noble park, with tall trees and red deer in
+it. Its last possessor had been a stingy old bachelor; but after Lady
+Catherine's coming, the housekeeping was put on a grand scale. There
+was a retinue of English servants, and continual company. I remember
+it well, for just then my poor mother died. She had been a widow,
+living in a low cottage hard by the park-wall, with me and a gray cat
+for company, and her spinning-wheel for our support. I was but a child
+when she died; and having neither uncle nor aunt in the parish, they
+took me, I think, by her ladyship's order, into the castle, to run
+small errands, and help in the garden; from which post, in process of
+time, I rose to that of footman. Lady Catherine was in great odour
+with the country gentry for her high-breeding, her fashionable
+connections, and her almost boundless hospitality. She was popular
+with the tenantry too, for there was not a better managed estate in
+the west, and the factor had general orders against distress and
+ejectment.</p>
+
+<p>They said her ladyship had been reckoned a beauty in London
+drawing-rooms, and our parish thought her wonderfully grand for the
+gay dresses and rich jewellery she wore. Doubtless, these were but the
+cast-offs of the season, for regularly every spring she and the family
+went up to London, where they kept a fine house, and what is called
+the best society. How much the gay dresses had to do with the beauty
+is not for me to say, but Lady Catherine was a large, stately woman,
+with a dark complexion, and very brilliant red, which the servants
+whispered was laid on in old court fashion. Her manner to her equals
+was graceful, and to her inferiors, gracious; but there was a look of
+pride in her dark gray eyes, and a stern resolution about the
+compressed lips, which struck my childish mind with strange fear, and
+kept older hearts in awe. Her daughters, Florence and Agnes, were
+pictures of their mother&mdash;proud, gay ladies, but thought the flower of
+the county. Their portions were good, and they would have been
+co-heiresses but for their brother Arthur. He was the youngest, but so
+different from his mother and sisters, that you wouldn't have thought
+him of the same family. His fair face and clear blue eyes, his curly
+brown hair and merry look, had no likeness to them, though he was not
+a whit behind them in air or stature. At eighteen, there was not a
+finer lad in the shire; and he had a frank, kindly nature, which made
+the tenantry rejoice in the prospect of his being their future
+landlord.</p>
+
+<p>Near the castle there stood a farmhouse, occupied by an old man whose
+great-grandfather had cultivated the same fields. He was not rich, but
+much respected by his neighbours for an honest, upright life. His wife
+was as old as himself. They had been always easy-living people, and
+had no child but one only daughter. Menie was a delicately pretty
+girl, a little spoiled, perhaps, in her station, for both father and
+mother made a queen of her at home. She was never allowed to do any
+rough work, was always dressed, and her neighbours said, kept in the
+parlour. Menie had a great many admirers, but her parents thought her
+too good for everybody, and had a wonderful belief of their own, that
+she was somehow to get a great match, and be made a lady. There was a
+strange truth in that notion, as things turned out, for we servants at
+the castle began to remark how often the young master was seen going
+and coming about the farmhouse. Maybe the old farmer and his wife
+encouraged him, for they had a story concerning their own descent from
+some great chief of the western Highlands, and a family of wild proud
+cousins, who lived up among the hills; but of this I know nothing
+more, only that the farmer's daughter was the prettiest girl in the
+parish. Master Arthur was beginning his nineteenth year, and there was
+a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[pg 295]</a></span> storm up stairs, such as had never been heard before in the castle,
+when Lady Catherine found out what was going on, as I think through
+our minister, who considered it his duty to let her know what every
+one talked of, but nobody else would dare to mention in her presence.
+Whether the tempest was more than Master Arthur could stand, or
+whether Lady Catherine, in her fury&mdash;for she had no joke of a tongue
+and temper&mdash;said something of Menie which drove the boy to finish the
+business in his own way, was long a disputed point in the servants'
+hall; but next morning he was missed in the castle, and in the course
+of my duties the same forenoon, I brought a letter from the village
+post-office, the reading of which sent the young ladies off in
+hysterics, and made Lady Catherine retire to her room&mdash;for it
+announced that her heir of entail and the farmer's daughter were gone
+to get married in Glasgow.</p>
+
+<p>The young ladies recovered in about two hours, and her ladyship came
+out, but only to prepare for a journey to Paris; and quick work she
+made of it. Within twenty-four hours from the receipt of that letter,
+she and her daughters were off in the family carriage; the best part
+of the servants despatched to live at their town-house on board-wages;
+all the good rooms locked up, and nobody but the gardener, a
+kitchen-girl, and myself left with the old housekeeper at the castle.
+The next news we heard was, that the old farmer and his wife had set
+out to bring home their daughter and son-in-law, saying&mdash;poor people,
+in their pride or folly&mdash;that Menie and her husband could live with
+them till Providence cleared their way to the estate, which nobody
+could keep from them. I believe it was that speech, coming to her ears
+by some busy tongue or other, that made Lady Catherine so bitter
+afterwards; but Master Arthur and his bride came home to the
+farmhouse, where the parlour and the best bedroom were set apart for
+their use; and the poor old father and mother were proud to serve and
+entertain them. They were a young pair; for, as I have said, he was in
+his nineteenth, and she in her seventeenth year&mdash;a handsome pair, too,
+and more alike than one would have supposed from the difference of
+their birth. Menie had a genteel, quiet carriage, and really looked
+like a lady in the church-pew beside our young master, whom we seldom
+saw but at a distance&mdash;for his spirit was too high to come near the
+castle&mdash;and though it wasn't just told us, we all knew that going to
+the farmhouse would be reckoned the full value of our places.</p>
+
+<p>It was the fall of the year when Lady Catherine left us&mdash;all that
+winter she spent in Paris; and when the spring again came round, we
+heard of her opening house with even more than usual gaiety in London.
+That was a great season with her ladyship. In its course, she got her
+daughters both married to her mind. The one wedded a baronet, and the
+other a right honourable; but scarcely had the newspapers fully
+announced his sisters' wedding-breakfasts, and how the happy pairs set
+out, when Master Arthur was seized with sudden sickness. He had been
+fishing in a mountain-lake, and got drenched to the skin by the rain
+of a thunder-storm, overexerted himself in walking home, and caught a
+pleurisy. The whole parish felt for the poor young man, who had been
+so hardly used by his mother, and many were the inquiries made for him
+at the farmhouse. There was wild wo there, for every day he got worse;
+and within the week, Menie was left a widow. Lady Catherine had gone
+back to Paris at the close of the season; one of her married daughters
+was in Italy, and the other in Switzerland; but two cousins of their
+father were to be found in England; and Master Arthur was laid in the
+family vault, under our old parish church, before the intelligence
+reached them. Lady Catherine came back in deep mourning, and alone,
+but not a whit subdued in spirit: she had been heard to say, that her
+son was better dead than disgraced; and her estate was at least safe
+from being shared by peasants. Of her daughter-in-law, she never took
+the slightest notice. People said, the poor young widow's heart was
+broken, for she had thought more of Arthur than of his rank and
+property, and kept well out of the proud, hard woman's way. Her
+ladyship did not seem to like living at the castle; she stayed only to
+regulate matters with the factor at Martinmas, and went back again to
+London. Before she went, a report began to rise, that poor Menie had
+drooped and pined into a real sickness. They said it was a rapid
+decline, and a dog would have pitied the father and mother's grief.
+How strangely they strove to keep that only child, asking the prayers
+of the congregation, and sending for the best doctors; but all was in
+vain, for Menie died some days before Christmas. The girl had a simple
+wish to rest beside Arthur. It was the last words she spoke; and her
+relations believed that, being his wife, she had a right to a place in
+the vault without asking anybody's leave. So they laid her quietly
+beside her husband, no one about the castle caring to interfere,
+except the factor, who thought it incumbent on him to let her ladyship
+know.</p>
+
+<p>By way of answer to his letter, down came Lady Catherine herself, one
+dark, wintry morning; and, without so much as changing her travelling
+dress, she sent for four labourers, took them with her to the church,
+and saying her family burying-place was never intended for a peasant's
+daughter, made them take out Menie's coffin, and leave it at her
+parents' door. They said that the old pair never got over that sight;
+and the mother, in her bitterness of heart, declared that Providence
+had many a way to punish pride, and the woman who had disturbed her
+dead child, would never be suffered to keep her own grave in peace.</p>
+
+<p>The story made a marvellous stir in our parish, and grand as Lady
+Catherine was, she did not escape blame from all quarters. There was a
+great gathering of Highland relatives and Lowland friends to a second
+funeral, when they laid poor Menie among her humble kindred in the
+church-yard. It was but a little way from the park gate, and I stood
+there to see the crowd scatter off in that frosty forenoon. Many a sad
+and angry look was cast in the direction of the castle; but my
+attention was particularly drawn to an old man and two boys, who stood
+gazing on the place. He was close on the threescore-and-ten&mdash;they were
+little more than children; but all three had the same gaunt, yet
+powerful frames; dark-red hair, which in the old man was but slightly
+sprinkled with gray; almost swarthy complexions; and a fierce, hard
+look in the deep-set eyes. By after inquiries, I learned that these
+were the father of the Highland cousin family, and his two youngest
+sons. There were three elder brothers, but they were married, and
+settled on rough sheep-farms; and the old man intended to maintain the
+ancient honours of his house, by putting his younger boys into some of
+the learned professions.</p>
+
+<p>The married sisters, now heiresses of entail, never visited the castle
+again in my time. Lady Catherine came regularly at the terms from
+London, where she lived constantly; but her stay was no longer than
+the rent-roll required, and her maid said she rested but badly at
+night. So years passed on, and I rose in the service. On one of her
+visits, Lady Catherine thought I would do for a footman, which she
+happened to want, and sent me to be trained at the house in London.
+What great and gay doings I saw there needn't be told just now. Lady
+Catherine kept the best and most fashionable company, and she was
+never at home an evening that the house was not full. There was money
+to be made, and plenty of all things; but I did not like it; and
+having saved a trifle, one of her ladyship's sons-in-law&mdash;he was the
+best of the two&mdash;got me the place at the toll-bar.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[pg 296]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>You remember me there, Master Willie, and what great times we had on
+Saturday afternoons. You may recollect, too, how many foot-passengers
+used to come and go. It was my amusement to watch them when I had
+nothing better to do; but of all who passed my window, there were none
+took my attention so completely as two young men, who always walked
+arm-in-arm, and seemed to be brothers. I thought I had seen their
+strongly-marked Highland faces before, and by degrees learned that
+they were none other than the old man's two sons, who had been at poor
+Menie's last funeral, but were now grown up, and studying for the
+medical profession at the college in Glasgow. Their father evidently
+kept them on short allowance, judging from their coarse tartan
+clothes, and continual munching of oaten cakes: but I was told they
+were hard students, and particularly clever in the anatomy class. One
+dark, dreary morning, about the Christmas-time, I noted that Lady
+Catherine and her family had been in my dreams all night&mdash;their grand
+house, and gay goings-on in London, mingling strangely with the old
+story of Master Arthur and the farmer's daughter. When the newspaper,
+which I shared with the schoolmaster, came, judge of my astonishment
+to read that her ladyship had died suddenly in a fit of apoplexy,
+which came upon her at the whist-table, and her remains had been
+conveyed to the family vault in Dumbartonshire. There was a lesson on
+the uncertainty of life! and it is my trust that I found in it a use
+of warning; but the continual news and strangers at the toll-bar, the
+exact gathering in of the dues, which was not always an easy task, and
+your own merry schoolmates, Master Willie, had in a manner shuffled it
+out of my mind before the second evening.</p>
+
+<p>It had been a dark, foggy day, and I went early to sleep, there being
+few travellers; but in the dead of night, between twelve and one, I
+was roused by a thundering summons at the toll-bar. The night was calm
+and starless, a mass of heavy clouds covered the sky, broken at times
+by gusts of moaning wind from the west, and broad bursts of moonlight.
+I threw on my coat, lit my lantern, and hurried out. There stood a
+large gig with three persons. They must have been tightly packed in
+it, and I never saw a more impatient horse. There was some delay in
+getting out the silver, and I had time to see that the two men who
+sat, one on each side, were the Highland brothers. There was a woman
+between them, in a dingy cloak and bonnet, with a thick black veil.
+She neither moved nor spoke, though the toll somehow puzzled the
+students. I was determined to have it any way, and one of them saying
+something to his companion in Gaelic, reached a half-crown to me. I
+knew I had no change, and told him so. 'I'll call in the morning,'
+said he; but the horse gave a bound, and the silver flew out of his
+fingers. Both the brothers looked down after it. I had a strange
+curiosity about their companion, and that instant a gust of wind blew
+back the veil, and the moonlight shone clear and full upon the face:
+it was the dead visage of Lady Catherine! I saw but one glance of it;
+the next moment the heavy veil had fallen. 'Get the silver yourself,
+and keep it all,' cried the two men, as I opened for them without a
+word: and from that day to this, no one has ever heard the story from
+me. I put the half-crown in the poor's-box next Sabbath. But, Master
+Willie, after that night I never cared for keeping the toll-bar. The
+sound of wheels coming after dark had always a strange effect on me,
+and I could never see a gig pass without shivering. So I gave up my
+situation, and took to the old trade of gardening again. The pleasant
+plants and flowers bring no dark stories to one's mind. But yonder's
+the laird: dinner will be ready by this time.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>And John was right; for it was ready, with a jovial party to despatch
+it. But I never saw my old friend after. He emigrated to Canada with
+his managing master in the following spring; and, having at least kept
+the real names with enjoined secrecy, it seems at this distance of
+time no breach of trust to repeat the toll-keeper's story.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="CARDINAL_MEZZOFANTI" id="CARDINAL_MEZZOFANTI"></a>CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI.</h2>
+
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+    Contents</a></p>
+
+<p>Among the lions of Rome during the last twenty years, not the least
+attractive, especially for literary visitors, was the celebrated
+Cardinal Mezzofanti. Easy of access to foreigners of every condition,
+simple, unpretending, cheerful, courteous even to familiarity, he
+never failed to make a most favourable impression upon his visitors;
+and marvellous as were the tales in circulation concerning him, the
+opportunity of witnessing more closely the exercise of his almost
+preternatural powers of language, served but to deepen the wonder with
+which he was regarded. The extent, the variety, and the solidity of
+his attainments, and, still more, his complete and ready command, for
+the purposes of conversation, of all the motley stores which he had
+laid up, were so far beyond all example, whether in ancient or modern
+times, as not only to place him in the very first rank of the
+celebrities of our generation, but to mark him out as one of the most
+extraordinary personages recorded in history.</p>
+
+<p>Giuseppe (Joseph) Mezzofanti was born at Bologna in 1774, of an
+extremely humble family. His father was a poor carpenter; and the
+eminence to which, by his own unassisted exertions, Mezzofanti,
+without once leaving his native city, attained in the exercise of the
+faculty of language&mdash;which is ordinarily cultivated only by the
+arduous and expensive process of visiting and travelling in the
+different countries in which each separate language is spoken&mdash;is not
+the least remarkable of the many examples of successful 'pursuit of
+knowledge under difficulties,' which literary history supplies. He was
+educated in one of the poor schools of his native city, which was
+under the care of the fathers of the celebrated Congregation of the
+Oratory; and the evidence of more than ordinary talent which he
+exhibited, early attracted the notice of one of the members of the
+order, to whose kind instruction and patronage Mezzofanti was indebted
+for almost all the advantages which he afterwards enjoyed. This good
+man&mdash;whose name was Respighi, and to whose judicious patronage of
+struggling genius science is also indebted for the eminent success of
+the distinguished naturalist Ranzani, the son of a Bolognese barber,
+and a fellow-pupil of Mezzofanti&mdash;procured for his young prot&eacute;g&eacute; the
+instruction of the best masters he could discover among his friends.
+He himself, it is believed, taught him Latin; Greek fell to the share
+of Father Emmanuel da Ponte, a Spanish ex-Jesuit&mdash;the order had at
+this time been suppressed; and the boy received his first initiation
+into the great Eastern family of languages from an old Dominican,
+Father Ceruti, who, at the instance of his friend Respighi, undertook
+to teach him Hebrew. Beyond this point, Mezzofanti's knowledge of
+languages was almost exclusively the result of his own unassisted
+study.</p>
+
+<p>From a very early age, he was destined for the church, and he received
+holy orders about the year 1797. During the period of his probationary
+studies, however, he obtained, through the kindness of his friend F.
+Respighi, the place of tutor in the family of the Marescalchi, one of
+the most distinguished among the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[pg 297]</a></span> nobility of Bologna; and the
+opportunities for his peculiar studies afforded by the curious and
+valuable library to which he thus enjoyed free access, may probably
+have exercised a decisive influence upon his whole career.</p>
+
+<p>His attainments gradually attracted the notice of his fellow-citizens.
+In the year 1797, he was appointed professor of Arabic in the
+university; a few years later, he was named assistant-librarian of the
+city library; and in 1803, he succeeded to the important chair of
+Oriental Languages. This post, which was most congenial to his tastes,
+he held, with one interruption, for a long series of years. In 1812,
+he was advanced to a higher place in the staff of the library; and in
+1815, on the death of the chief librarian, Pozetti, he was appointed
+to fill his place. When it is considered how peculiarly engrossing the
+study of languages is known to be, and especially how attractive for
+an enthusiastic scholar like Mezzofanti, it might be supposed that for
+him the office of librarian could have been little more than a nominal
+one. But the library of Bologna to the present day bears abundant
+evidence that it was far otherwise. The admirable order in which the
+Greek and Oriental manuscripts are arranged, the excellent <i>catalogue
+raisonn&eacute;</i> of these manuscripts, and the valuable additions to the
+notices of them by Assemani and Talmar which it contains, are all the
+fruit of Mezzofanti's labour as librarian.</p>
+
+<p>During his occupancy of this office, too, he continued to hold his
+professorship of Oriental languages, and, for a considerable part of
+the time, that of Greek literature in addition. Nor was he exempt from
+those domestic cares and anxieties which are often the most painful
+drawback upon literary activity. The death of a brother, which threw
+upon him the care of an unprovided family of eleven children, was the
+severest trial sustained in Mezzofanti's otherwise comparatively quiet
+career; and by driving him to the ordinary expedient of distressed
+scholars&mdash;that of giving private lectures&mdash;it tended more than all his
+public occupations to trench upon his time, and to abridge his
+opportunities of application to his favourite study.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, indeed, of all who have ever attained to the same eminence in
+any department which Mezzofanti reached in that of languages, there
+hardly ever was one who had so little of the mere student in his
+character. In the midst of these varied and distracting occupations,
+he was at all times most assiduous in his attendance upon the sick in
+the public hospitals, of which he acted as the chaplain. There was
+another also of his priestly duties, for the zealous discharge of
+which he was scarcely less distinguished, and which became subsidiary,
+in a very remarkable way, to his progress in the knowledge of
+languages. In the absence, up to the present time, of any regular
+memoir of him, it is impossible to fix with precision the history of
+his progress in the acquisition of the several languages. But it is
+well known, that at a very early period he was master of all the
+leading European languages, and of those Oriental tongues which are
+comprised in the Semitic family. Very early, therefore, in
+Mezzofanti's career, he was marked out among the entire body of the
+Bolognese clergy as in an especial manner the 'foreigners' confessor'
+(<i>confessario dei forestieri</i>). In him, visitors from every quarter of
+the globe had a sure and ready resource; and in several cases, it was
+to the very necessity thus created he was indebted for the
+acquisition, or at least the rudimentary knowledge, of a new language.
+More than once, it occurred that a foreigner, introduced to the
+<i>confessario dei forestieri</i>, for the purpose of being confessed,
+found it necessary to go through the preliminary process of
+<i>instructing his intended confessor</i>. For Mezzofanti's marvellous and
+almost instinctive power of grasping and systematising the leading
+characteristics even of the most original language, the names of a few
+prominent ideas in the new idiom sufficed to open a first means of
+communication. His prodigious memory retained with iron tenacity every
+word or phrase once acquired; his power of methodising, by the very
+exercise, became more ready and more perfect with each new advance in
+the study; and, above all, a faculty which seemed peculiar to himself,
+and which can hardly be described as other than instinctive, of
+seizing and comprehending by a single effort the general outlines of
+the grammatical structure of a language from a few faint
+indications&mdash;as a comparative anatomist will build up an entire
+skeleton from a single bone&mdash;enabled him to overleap all the
+difficulties which beset the path of ordinary linguists, and to
+attain, almost by intuition, at least so much of the required language
+as enabled him to interchange thought with sufficient freedom and
+distinctness for the purposes of this religious observance, which is
+so important in the eyes of Catholics. And he used to tell, that it
+was in this way he acquired more than one of his varied store of
+languages. For it will hardly be believed, that this prodigy of the
+gift of tongues had never, till his forty-eighth year, travelled
+beyond the precincts of his native province; and that, up to the
+period of his death, his most distant excursion from Rome, in which
+city he had fixed his residence in 1832, did not exceed a hundred
+miles&mdash;namely, to Naples, for the purpose of visiting the Chinese
+College which is there established.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that at the period of which we speak, Bologna lay upon the
+high-road to Rome, and that travellers more frequently rested for a
+space upon their journey, than in these days of steam-boat and railway
+communication. But, even then, the opportunities of intercourse with
+foreign-speaking visitors in Bologna were few and inconsiderable
+compared with the prodigious advances which, under all his
+disadvantages, Mezzofanti contrived to make. The ordinary European
+languages presented but little difficulty; the frequent passings and
+repassings of the allied forces during the later years of the war,
+afforded him a full opportunity of acquiring Russian; and the
+occasional establishment of Austrian troops in Bologna, brought him
+into contact with the motley tongues of that vast empire&mdash;the Magyar,
+the Czechish, the Servian, the Walachian, and the Romani; but beyond
+this, even his spirit of enterprise had no vent in his native city;
+and all his further conquests were exclusively the result due to his
+own private and unassisted study.</p>
+
+<p>His fame, nevertheless, began to extend to foreign countries. Among
+many distinguished foreigners to whose acquaintance his extraordinary
+faculties as a linguist became a passport, was the celebrated Russian
+general, Suwarrow; and with him Mezzofanti long maintained the most
+friendly relations. From the Grand-Duke of Tuscany he received a
+pressing invitation to fix himself at Florence; and Napoleon himself,
+with that engrossing spirit which desired to make Paris the centre of
+all that is great in science, in art, and in literature, offered him a
+most honourable and lucrative appointment, on condition of his
+removing to the French capital. But Mezzofanti declined both the
+invitations, and continued to reside in his native city, till the year
+1832. At the close of those political disturbances, of which Bologna
+was the centre, in the early part of the pontificate of Gregory XVI.,
+it was resolved to send a deputation to Rome on the part of the
+citizens. Of this deputation, Mezzofanti, as the chief celebrity of
+the city, was naturally a leader; and the pope, who had long known
+him, and who, before his elevation to the pontificate, had frequently
+corresponded with him on philological subjects, urged him so earnestly
+to remain at Rome, that with all his love of Bologna he was induced to
+consent. He was immediately appointed, in 1832, a canon of St Peter's;
+and on the translation of the celebrated Angelo (now Cardinal) Mai to
+the office of secretary of the Propaganda, he was named to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[pg 298]</a></span> succeed
+him in the honourable post of librarian of the Vatican.</p>
+
+<p>In this office Mezzofanti continued till the year 1840, when, in
+conjunction with the distinguished scholar just named, he was raised
+to the cardinalate. During the interval since his fixing his residence
+at Rome, he had enjoyed the confidence and friendship of Gregory XVI.;
+and although his narrow resources were utterly unequal to the very
+considerable expense which the state of a cardinal entails, Gregory,
+in acknowledgment of his distinguished merit, himself settled the
+necessary income upon the humble Bolognese; and even, with
+characteristic delicacy, supplied from his own means the equipage and
+other appurtenances which a new cardinal is obliged to provide on
+entering upon his office.</p>
+
+<p>From this period, Mezzofanti continued to reside at Rome. Far,
+however, from relaxing in the pursuit of his favourite study after his
+elevation, he only used the opportunities thus afforded for the
+purpose of cultivating it with more effect. When the writer of these
+pages first had the honour of being presented to him, he was in the
+full flush of the excitement of a new study&mdash;that of the language of
+the California Indians, two of whom had recently come as pupils to the
+College of the Propaganda; and up to his very last year, the same zeal
+continued unabated. His death occurred March 16, 1849, in the
+seventy-fifth year of his age, and was most probably hastened by the
+excitement and distress caused by the political troubles of the
+period.</p>
+
+<p>Such is a brief outline of the quiet and uneventful career of this
+extraordinary man. It remains that we give a short account of the
+nature and extent of his prodigious attainments as a linguist. It is
+observed by the author of an interesting paper read a few weeks since
+at a meeting of the Philological Society, that, taking the account of
+the linguistic accomplishments of King Mithridates even in the most
+exaggerated form in which it is given by the ancients, who represent
+him as speaking the languages of twenty-two nations, it fades into
+insignificance in contrast with the known and ascertained attainments
+of Mezzofanti. A Russian traveller, who published in 1846 a collection
+of <i>Letters from Rome</i>, writes of Mezzofanti:&mdash;'Twice I have visited
+this remarkable man, a phenomenon as yet unparalleled in the learned
+world. He spoke eight languages fluently in my presence. He expressed
+himself in Russian very purely and correctly. Even now, in advanced
+life, he continues to study fresh dialects. He learned Chinese not
+long ago. I asked him to give me a list of all the languages and
+dialects in which he was able to express himself, and he sent me the
+name of <span class="smcap">God</span> written with his own hand in <i>fifty-six</i> languages, of
+which thirty were European, not including their dialects; seventeen
+Asiatic, also without counting their dialects; five African, and four
+American!' We should add, however, from the cardinal's own avowal to
+ourselves, that of the fifty-six languages here alluded to, there were
+some which he did not profess to speak, and with which his
+acquaintance was more limited than with the rest; an avowal the
+honesty of which will be best appreciated when it is considered, on
+the one hand, how difficult it would have been to test his knowledge
+of the vast majority among these languages; and, on the other, how
+marvellously perfect was his admitted familiarity with those which he
+did profess really to know.</p>
+
+<p>The author of the memoir submitted to the Philological Society, has
+collected a number of notices of Mezzofanti by travellers in Italy,
+who had seen him at different periods of his career. Mr Stewart Rose,
+in 1817, tells of him that a Smyrniote servant, who was with him,
+declared that he might pass for a Greek or a Turk throughout the
+dominions of the Grand Seignior. A few years later, while he was still
+residing at Bologna, he was visited by the celebrated Hungarian
+astronomer, Baron Zach, editor of the well-known <i>Correspondences
+Astronomiques</i>, on occasion of the annular eclipse which was then
+visible in Italy. 'This extraordinary man,' writes the baron, February
+1820, 'speaks thirty-two languages, living and dead&mdash;in the manner I
+am going to describe. He accosted me in Hungarian, with a compliment
+so well-turned, and in such excellent Magyar, that I was quite taken
+by surprise. He afterwards spoke to me in German, at first in good
+Saxon, and then in the Austrian and Swabian dialects, with a
+correctness of accent that amazed me to the last degree, and made me
+burst into a fit of laughter at the thought of the contrast between
+the language and the appearance of this astonishing professor. He
+spoke English to Captain Smyth, Russian and Polish to Prince
+Volkonski, with the same volubility as if he had been speaking his
+native tongue.' As a last trial, the baron suddenly accosted him in
+<i>Walachian</i>, when, 'without hesitation, and without appearing to
+remark what an out-of-the-way dialect had been taken, away went the
+polyglot with equal volubility;' and Zach adds, that he even knew the
+Zingller or gipsy language, which had long proved a puzzle to himself.
+Molbech, a Danish traveller, who had an interview with him in 1820,
+adds to his account of this miraculous polyglotist, that 'he is not
+merely a linguist, but is well acquainted with literary history and
+bibliography, and also with the library under his charge. He is a man
+of the finest and most polished manners, and at the same time, of the
+most engaging good-nature and politeness.'</p>
+
+<p>It would be easy to multiply anecdotes, shewing the enthusiasm with
+which Mezzofanti entered on the study of language after language. He
+sought out new tongues with an insatiable passion, and may be said to
+have never been happy but when engaged in the mastering of words and
+grammars. No degree of bad health interrupted his pursuit. Till the
+day of his death, he was engaged in his darling task: life closed on
+him while so occupied. He died just as he had acquired a thorough
+proficiency in Californian&mdash;a singular instance of the power of mind
+exercised on a favourite subject, and shewing what may be accomplished
+when men set their heart on it. The career of this remarkable
+linguist, however, cannot be considered exemplary. We would recommend
+no person to plunge headlong into an absorbing passion for any
+accomplishment. Mezzofanti was a curiosity&mdash;a marvel&mdash;the wonder of
+the world of letters; and it is chiefly as such that a notice of him
+here will be considered interesting.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="CURIOSITIES_OF_POSTHUMOUS_CHARITY" id="CURIOSITIES_OF_POSTHUMOUS_CHARITY"></a>CURIOSITIES OF POSTHUMOUS CHARITY.</h2>
+
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+    Contents</a></p>
+
+<p>The curious observer, in his rambles about town, is occasionally
+struck with some singular demonstrations for which he is at a loss to
+account. Sometimes they assume a benevolent form, and sometimes they
+have a holiday-making aspect, yet with a touch of the lugubrious. In
+London, or in some one of the thriving towns lying within a score of
+miles of it, he strolls into a church, where he sees a number of
+loaves of bread piled up at the back of the communion-table, or
+ranged, as they are in a baker's shop, upon shelves against the wall.
+It is a pleasant sight, but apt to be somewhat puzzling. Perhaps he
+saunters into a country church-yard, and there finds amongst the rank
+grass and moss-grown and neglected memorials of the silent multitude,
+one trim and well-tended monument, uninvaded by cryptogamia, free from
+all stain of the weather, and the surrounding grassy sward neatly mown
+and fenced in, it may be, with budding willow branches or a circle of
+clipped box. Or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[pg 299]</a></span> he finds his way through a suburban village, blocked
+up some fine morning by a crowd of poor women and girls, clustered
+round the door of a retired tradesman or the curate of the place, from
+which three or four at a time emerge with gratified looks, and go
+about their business, while others enter in their turn. Such
+demonstrations as these, and we might mention many others, have their
+origin in certain charitable dispositions and bequests, many of which
+are of considerable antiquity. There is one in operation to this day,
+near Winchester, which dates from the time of William of Wykeham; by
+virtue of which every traveller passing that way, if he choose to make
+the demand, is regaled with a pint of beer and a meal of bread and
+cheese. There is another similar antique charity in operation in
+Wiltshire, near Devizes, where, on one occasion, the dispenser of the
+benevolence, in the exercise of his privilege to feed the hungry,
+threw a loaf of bread into the carriage of George III. as the royal
+<i>cort&egrave;ge</i> passed the spot. The name of these post-mortem charities is
+legion. They abound in every city, burgh, town, and hamlet in England,
+to an extent absolutely startling to a person who looks into the
+subject for the first time. The number of them belonging to the city
+of London alone&mdash;that is, originating among her citizens, and mostly
+dispensed under the direction of the several worshipful companies&mdash;can
+hardly be fewer than 1500, if so few. The parochial charities only of
+London city yield an income of nearly L.40,000 a year. The history of
+all these charities would fill many bulky volumes. We propose merely
+to take a passing glance at a few, which are interesting from their
+singularity, or from the light which they reflect upon the benevolent
+aspect of a certain section of society in times long past; and which,
+perhaps, may be found in some degree instructive and suggestive, as
+illustrating the operation of post-mortem benevolence.</p>
+
+<p>At St &mdash;&mdash; Church, not a hundred miles from St Martin's Le Grand,
+there prevails an amusing instance of the perversion of the funds of a
+charity to purposes which could not possibly have been intended by the
+founder. Many centuries ago, a Roman Catholic gentleman, dying,
+bequeathed to that church a small estate, the proceeds of which he
+directed should be devoted to the purpose of supplying the officiating
+priests with refreshment on the Sabbath-day. The Roman Catholic
+service has long since given place to a Protestant one, and the band
+of officiating priests has dwindled down to one clergyman&mdash;while the
+value of the estate has increased perhaps fiftyfold. At the present
+moment, the sum which the estate originally produced is paid over to
+the church-wardens, who are at times a little puzzled as to what to do
+with it. They get rid of a good portion in this way: at every service
+which is held in the church, they place a bottle of the best sherry
+which can be procured for money upon the vestry-table; from this the
+'officiating priest' strengthens his inner man with a glass or two
+before commencing his ministrations, and then the church-wardens sit
+down and finish the remainder comfortably by themselves, while the
+reverend gentleman is in the reading-desk or the pulpit. The cost of
+the wine, however, does not amount to half the sum in their hands, and
+the remainder goes to form a fund from which the church is painted,
+repaired, decorated, and kept in apple-pie order&mdash;the whole fabric
+undergoing a thorough revision and polish both outside and in as often
+as a pretext can be found. What becomes of the bulk of the
+property&mdash;the large surplus arising from the increased value of the
+devised estate&mdash;this deponent sayeth not: the reader may be in a
+condition to guess by the time he has read to the end of this paper.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1565, a Mr Edward Taylor willed to the Leathersellers'
+Company a messuage, tenement, and melting-house, in the parish of St
+Olave, and other messuages in the same parish, upon condition that
+they should, quarterly and for ever, distribute among the poorest and
+neediest people in the Poultry Compter one kilderkin of beer and
+twelve pennyworths of bread, and the same to the poor of Wood Street
+Compter, Newgate, and the Fleet, the King's Bench, and the Marshalsea
+prisons. Under this bequest, the Company are at present in possession
+of considerable property, vastly increased in value since the date of
+the will; in respect of which property, 1s. worth of penny-loaves, and
+2s. in money, in lieu of beer, are sent by them every quarter to the
+poor prisoners in each of the prisons mentioned in the original
+testament!</p>
+
+<p>Robert Rogers devised in 1601 the sum of L.400 to the Leathersellers'
+Company, 'to be employed in lands, the best pennyworth they could
+get;' and that the house should have 40s. of it a year for ever. The
+remainder was to be bestowed upon poor scholars, students of
+divinity&mdash;two of Oxford, and two of Cambridge, for four years; and
+after them to two others of each university; and after them, to
+others; and so on for ever. He also, by the same will, devised L.200
+to be lent to four young men, merchant adventurers, at L.6, 13s. 4d.,
+for the L.200, interest. The whole of the interest was to be spent in
+bread&mdash;to be distributed among poor prisoners&mdash;and coal for poor
+persons, with the exception of some small fees and gratuities to the
+parish clerk and beadle, for their trouble in carrying out his
+intentions.</p>
+
+<p>Lewisham, once a town in Kent, but now nothing more than a suburb of
+London, enjoys the benefactions of the Rev. Abraham Colfe, who, in
+1656, bequeathed property for the maintenance of numerous charities.
+Some of them are singularly characteristic. Having provided for the
+erection of three strong alms-houses, he directed that certain
+alms-bodies should be periodically chosen, who were to be 'godly poor
+inhabitants of Lewisham, and being single persons, and threescore
+years old, past their hard bodily labour, and able to say the Lord's
+Prayer, the Belief, and the Ten Commandments,' &amp;c. &amp;c. All these
+alms-bodies were to have '3d. each allowed them every day for their
+comfortable sustenance&mdash;that is, 21d. a week&mdash;to be paid them every
+month during their <i>single</i> life, and as long as they should behave
+themselves honestly and godly, and duly frequent the parish church.'
+They were to be summarily removed if guilty of profane or wicked
+conduct. The alms-bodies were not to exceed five in number at any one
+time. He directed a buttery to be built for their convenience, and
+also a little brick room, with a window in it, for the five
+alms-bodies to assemble in daily for prayer, and that the schoolmaster
+of the reading-school should pray with them there. He further directed
+the enclosure of gardens, of sixteen feet broad at the least, for
+their recreation. Mr Colfe also left money for lectures at Lewisham
+Church, as well as a sum for the purchase of Bibles, until they should
+amount to the number of thirty or forty, which were to be chained to
+the pews, or otherwise preserved; and he left 12d. a quarter to the
+clerk for writing down the names of those that should use them; also
+2s. 8d. to him for taking care of the clock and dial; also, 10s. for a
+sermon on the 5th of November, and 12d. in bread for the poor who
+should come and hear it, and 6d. to the parish clerk; also 20s., to be
+distributed a penny at a time, to the children and servants who could
+best say their catechism, and 6d. to the minister for catechising
+them; also, a yearly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[pg 300]</a></span> sum of money for distributing on every
+Lord's-day after the morning service, seven penny wheaten loaves, to
+seven of the most honest, peaceable, and godly poor householders of
+Lewisham, who could say the Lord's Prayer, the Belief, and the Ten
+Commandments; also, 5s. a year to poor maid-servants, who at the time
+of their marriage had continued seven years with their master or
+mistress in Lewisham; with numerous other bequests. He further left
+moneys for the preservation of his father's, grandfather's, his
+wife's, and his own monument&mdash;his own being an oaken plank oiled, and
+a stone 'a foot square every way, and three feet long.' The stone and
+plank were removed many years ago, and an inscribed tablet has been
+set into the outer wall of the church.</p>
+
+<p>The practice of leaving money for the sustentation of tomb-stones and
+monuments, appears to have prevailed for many generations; and may be
+very naturally accounted for, by the repugnance which most men would
+feel, to the idea of having their bones knocked about by the sexton's
+spade, and then wheeled off to the bone-house, if there happens to be
+a bone-house, or shot into the neighbouring river, or on a farmer's
+dung-heap, if there is no such convenience as a bone-house at hand. It
+was this feeling that induced the celebrated sculptor, Chantrey, to
+make sure of a quiet resting-place for his remains.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> In so doing, he
+was, though perhaps unconsciously, but following the example of many
+who have gone before him. We have more than once encountered a sober
+party upon their annual visit to some country church-yard tomb, of
+which, by virtue of some bequest&mdash;which provides them with a good
+dinner upon the occasion&mdash;they are the appointed guardians. The
+worshipful members of the London companies sometimes choose to rest
+from their labours in a rural grave; and when they do, survivors are
+always to be found not unwilling to enjoy once a year a pensive
+holiday, coupled with the creature comforts, which the quiet comrade
+whose behest they execute has taken care to provide for them. It would
+be perhaps difficult to find a single church in all the little towns
+and hamlets within a dozen miles of London, which does not contain one
+tenant at least who has thus secured permanent possession of his last
+resting-place. So strong is this feeling in some individuals, that
+they shrink from confiding even in the stone-vaults in the interior of
+a city church. Thus, Sir William Rawlins, not so very long ago,
+bequeathed a certain sum of money for the preservation of his tomb and
+monument in Bishopsgate Church. The bequest provides for the
+remuneration of the visitors, who are specified parish functionaries,
+and entertains them with a good dinner on the day of the annual
+visitation, which they are bound to make&mdash;to inspect the monument and
+tomb, and to guarantee their good condition. In many instances, the
+sum originally devised for the sustentation of a grave or monument is
+not sufficient, in the present day, to remunerate residents in London
+for looking after it, and the money has been transferred to the parish
+in which the testator lies, and has become the perquisite of the
+sexton.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1635, one John Fletcher bequeathed to the Fishmongers'
+Company the sum of L.120, to supply 10s. every month to the poor of St
+Peter's Hospital, to provide them with a dinner on Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1653, Mr James Glassbrook bequeathed, after his wife's
+death, the sum of L.500 in the following words: 'and L.500 more to
+such uses as follow&mdash;to the poor of the parish of St Bololph Without,
+in which I dwell, L.5 in bread yearly; L.5 to the poor of St Giles's
+yearly in bread; to the poor of St Sepulchre's yearly in bread, L.5,
+to be given every Sabbath-day in the churches.' The amount of bread at
+the present time given away in London under this disposition,
+supplemented by some smaller bequests, is sixty-eight half-quartern
+loaves a week. The same poor persons, when they once get on the list,
+continue to receive the bread during their whole lives, unless they
+cease to reside in the parish, or are struck off the list of
+pensioners for misconduct.</p>
+
+<p>One Daniel Midwinter, in 1750, left L.1000 to the Stationers' Company,
+to pay L.14 a year to the parish of St Faith's; and a like sum to
+Hornsey parish, to be applied in apprenticing two boys or girls of the
+several parishes, and to fit them out in clothes. At the present time,
+the money is paid over to the parties receiving the apprentices, with
+a recommendation to lay it out in clothes for the children.</p>
+
+<p>By the will of John Stock, the parish of Christchurch received, among
+other legacies, the sum of L.100, the interest of which was directed
+to be applied in the following manner: one guinea to be paid to the
+vicar for a sermon to be preached by him on Good-Friday; 10s. to the
+curate for reading the prayers on that day; <i>and the remainder to be
+equally distributed among such poor women as chose to remain and
+receive the sacrament after the service!</i></p>
+
+<p>A Mr James Wood, amongst other curious provisions, devised to the
+church-wardens of the parish of St Nicholas Cole Abbey, the sum of
+15s. annually, to be given away in twopences to such poor people as
+they should meet in the streets when going and returning from church
+on a specified day.</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants of Watling Street, and other districts in the vicinity
+of St Antholin's Church, are familiar with the sound of what is known
+in the neighbourhood as the 'Fish-bell.' This is a bell which rings
+out every Friday night from St Antholin's tower, to summon the
+inhabitants to evening prayers: very few people attend to the summons,
+which comes at an inconvenient time for that busy locality. There
+stands almost against the walls of the church a pump, which is always
+in good repair, and yields an excellent supply of water, greatly to
+the convenience of the neighbourhood. Both the pump and the prayers
+are the legacy of an old fish-woman of the last century. It is said,
+that for forty years of her life she was in the habit of purchasing
+fish in the small hours of the morning at Billingsgate Market; these
+she washed and prepared for her customers at a small spring near St
+Antholin's Church, and afterwards cried them about the town upon her
+head. Having prospered in her calling, she bequeathed a sufficient sum
+to perpetuate a weekly service in the church, and a good and efficient
+pump erected over the spring of which she had herself enjoyed a
+life-long privilege.</p>
+
+<p>In St George's in the East, there is a charity, well-known as Raine's
+Charity, which was founded by Henry Raine, Esq., in the earlier part
+of the last century. The charity consists of two endowed schools,
+sufficiently well provided for the maintenance and instruction of
+fifty boys and as many girls, and the payment and support of a master
+and mistress. It is one part of the system of management, that six
+pupils of either sex leave the schools every year, to make room for as
+many new ones. By a somewhat whimsical provision in the will of the
+founder, a species of annual lottery comes off at the discharge of the
+six girls. If they have behaved well, have been attentive and
+obedient, and punctual and exact in the observance of their religious
+duties, they are entitled to draw lots for the sum of L.100, which
+will be paid to the fortunate holder of the prize as a
+marriage-portion upon her wedding-day. It is further provided, that
+the wedding is to take place on the 1st day of May; and that, in
+addition to the portion, L.5 is to be expended upon a marriage-dinner
+and a merry-making.</p>
+
+<p>Bequests for the portioning of poor girls and virtuous servant-maids
+are, indeed, not at all uncommon. In the village of Bawburgh, in
+Norfolk, there is one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[pg 301]</a></span> founded in the last century by a Quaker
+gentleman, who left a sum of money, the interest of which is shared
+among the servant-girls in the place who get married. The amount is
+not payable until twelve months after the wedding. The village being
+small, it will sometimes happen that a good sum accumulates before an
+applicant comes forward who can substantiate a claim upon it. The
+object of such bequests as these is sufficiently plain: the donors had
+evidently in view the counteracting of the wretched tendency of the
+old poor-law, which, by giving the mother of an illegitimate child a
+claim upon the parish funds, actually placed a premium upon female
+frailty.</p>
+
+<p>In London, there are charitable dispositions and bequests for the
+nursery of every virtue that could be named, but more especially of
+industry, providence, and thrift. A man may be brought into the world
+by voluntary contributions; he may be maintained and educated at a
+foundling asylum, if his parents, as thousands do, choose to throw him
+upon the public compassion; he may ride into a good business upon the
+back of a borrowed capital, for which he pays but a nominal interest;
+and if he fail to realise a competence by his own endeavours, he may
+perchance revel in some corporation sinecure, or, at the worst,
+luxuriate in an alms-house, and be finally deposited in the
+church-yard&mdash;and all at other people's expense. On the other hand, if
+he be made of the right metal, he may carve his way to fortune and to
+civic fame, and may die full of years and honours&mdash;in which case, he
+is pretty sure to add one more to the list of charitable donors whose
+legacies go to swell the expectancies of the city poor. It would be
+difficult for any eccentric testator in the present day to hit upon a
+new method of disposing of the wealth which he can no longer keep.
+Every device for the exercise of posthumous generosity seems to have
+been exhausted long ago.</p>
+
+<p>The trust-estates, the source of so many of the city of London
+charities, are mostly, if not all, under the control of the corporate
+companies. How they are managed, is a secret altogether unknown to the
+public, and of which, indeed, the livery and freemen of some of the
+companies have but a very limited knowledge. The revenue derived from
+the trust-estates, according to their own shewing, is not much less
+than L.90,000 a year; but they have large revenues, of which they do
+not choose to shew any account at all. These are supposed to arise
+mainly from the increase in value of property originally devised to
+charitable uses&mdash;which increase it is their custom to appropriate as
+they please. 'Thus, for example,' says a writer on this subject, 'if a
+testator left to any one of these companies a piece of land then worth
+L.10 per annum, directing that L.10 should be annually appropriated to
+the support of a school, and the land subsequently increases in value
+to L.500, then the master and wardens of the company claim the right
+of appropriating to their own uses the surplus of L.490. In no
+equitable view of the case can this be deemed to be private property.'
+It seems probable that these things will be looked into before long.
+From a motion lately made in the House of Commons, we learn that a
+thorough investigation is contemplated into the management and
+application of all charities throughout the kingdom, the inquiry to be
+conducted at the cost of the several charities, the largest of which
+are not to pay more than L.50, and the smaller ones twopence in the
+pound, upon the amount of their capital. Perhaps this inquiry may lead
+to the recovery of some of the charities which are stated to be lost,
+and of which nothing but the titles, under the denomination of
+So-and-so's gift, remain upon the corporation records.</p>
+
+<p>The secret management of the trust-estates contrasts curiously with
+the pompous exhibition which some of the worshipful companies make of
+their deeds of benevolence. Some of the smaller and older churches of
+London are stuck over in the interior with enormous black boards, as
+big as the church door almost, upon which are emblazoned, in gilt
+letters, the donations to the poor, to the school, to the repair of
+the fabric, &amp;c. from the worshipful company of This and That, from the
+days of King James&mdash;the inscriptions of whose time are illegible
+through the smoke and damp of centuries&mdash;down to the days of Queen
+Victoria, and the donations of last Christmas, fresh and glittering
+from the hands of the gilder. Thus, the interesting old church of St
+Bartholomew the Great is lined with the eleemosynary exploits of the
+worshipful Ironmongers' Company, whose multitudinous banners of black
+and gold are in abominable discordance with the severe and simple
+architecture of the ancient edifice. 'Let not thy left hand know what
+thy right hand doeth,' is a monition apparently not much in repute
+among the corporate companies.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may gather from the perusal of the above desultory
+examples, selected from a mass of similar ones, some idea of the
+enormous amount of the funds, intended for benevolent purposes, which
+Christian men have bequeathed to the world; and they may perhaps serve
+to enlighten the curious observer on the subject of some of the
+unobtrusive phenomena which occasionally excite his admiration and
+arouse his conjecture. They are the silent charities of men in the
+silent land. How much good they do, and how much harm, and on which
+side the balance is likely to lie&mdash;these are questions which for the
+present we have neither time nor space to discuss.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See <i>Chambers's Pocket Miscellany</i>, vol. iv.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="LABOUR_STANDS_ON_GOLDEN_FEET" id="LABOUR_STANDS_ON_GOLDEN_FEET"></a>LABOUR STANDS ON GOLDEN FEET.</h2>
+
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+    Contents</a></p>
+
+<p>The condition of the working-classes in this country is a subject of
+intense interest to all thinking men; but it is profitable as well as
+amusing to transfer our attention sometimes to the same portions of
+society in other countries. In Germany, for instance, the people are
+as busy as we are with their 'hand-workers,' and the questions of
+freedom of industry and general instruction are as warmly discussed as
+at home. We have now before us a little volume by the philosopher and
+historian, Zschokke, which, in the form of a fictitious narrative,
+treats very fully of the status of the mechanic in Fatherland; and we
+are tempted to cull a few extracts which may afford the reader
+materials for perhaps an interesting comparison.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>The real hero of the story is Hand-labour, and his progress is
+described throughout three generations of men. He is the Thought of
+the book, illustrated by adventure and vicissitude; living when the
+human agents die in succession; and leaving a distinct and continuous
+track in the reader's mind, when the names and persons fade or
+conglomerate in his memory. And yet some of these names and persons
+are not feebly individualised. The father, the son, and the grandson
+stand well out upon the canvas; and while the family likeness is
+strictly preserved from generation to generation, the men are seen
+independent and alone, each in his own special development. The
+patriarch was a travelling tinker, who wheeled his wares about the
+country in a barrow; and then, rising in the world, attained the
+dignity of a hawker, with a cart of goods, drawn by a little gray ass.
+His son Jonas trotted on foot beside him in all his journeys, dining
+like his father on bread and water, and sleeping in barns or stables.
+But when the boy was old enough, he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[pg 302]</a></span> turned off to pick up his own
+subsistence like the redbreasts, the sparrows, and the woodpeckers.
+'Listen, my lad,' quoth Daddy Thaddaeus; 'this is the spring. Look for
+sloes and elderberries, rose-leaves and others for ointment; marjoram,
+spurge, and thyme, wherever thou mayst and canst. These we will sell
+to the apothecaries. In summer, gather basketfuls of strawberries,
+bilberries, and raspberries; carry them to the houses: they will yield
+money. In winter, let us gather and dry locks of wool, for the
+saddlers and tapestry-makers, and withes for the basket and mat
+manufacturers. From the table of the bountiful God, a thousand crumbs
+are falling for us: these we will pick up. They will give thee cheese
+to thy bread, and a piece of meat to thy potatoes. Only get to work! I
+will give thee a little barrow, and a belt for thy shoulders.'</p>
+
+<p>This was his first essay in business on his own account, and he worked
+hard and throve well. His separation from his father taught him how to
+stand on his own legs&mdash;an important piece of knowledge in a world that
+is as full of leave-takings as of meetings; and when they did come
+together, and the boy counted out his kreutzers, and the father patted
+him approvingly on the cheek, that boy would have changed places with
+no prince that ever sat on a throne. Jonas was at length apprenticed
+to a girdler, or worker in metals; and the old tinker in due time
+died, leaving his son the parting advice, to 'work, save, and pray,'
+and a box containing a thousand guilders.</p>
+
+<p>Jonas's apprenticeship passed on pretty much according to universal
+rule; that is, he did the drudgery of the house as well as learned the
+trade, and received kicks and cuffs from the journeymen. But in five
+years his servitude was out, and he was a journeyman himself. He was
+now, by the rules of his guild, obliged to travel for improvement; he
+spent five or six years in going to and fro upon the earth, and then
+came back to Altenheim an accomplished girdler. To become a master, it
+was necessary to prepare his 'master-piece,' as a specimen of what he
+could do; and the task allotted to him was to engrave on copper,
+without rule or compass, the prince's family-crest, and then to gild
+the work richly. This accomplished, he was received into the guild of
+masters with much pomp, strange ceremonies, and old-fashioned
+feasting&mdash;all at the charge of the poor beginner. 'Without reckoning
+the heavy expenses of his mastership, or of clothing, linen, and
+furniture, in the hired lodgings and workshops, no small sum was
+requisite for the purchase of different kinds of tools&mdash;a lathe, an
+anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers,
+chisels, tongs, scissors, &amp;c.; and also for the purchase of brass and
+pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone,
+borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken,
+without premium, an apprentice, the child of very poor people, to help
+him. He would have been very glad to put the rest of his money out to
+interest again; but he had to provide the means of subsistence for at
+least one year in advance, for he had to begin with neither wares nor
+customers.'</p>
+
+<p>Jonas now appears in the character of a lover, and his wooing is one
+of the most beautiful pictures in the book. His choice has fallen upon
+a servant-girl, whom he had known in boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>'One morning, Master Jordan sent his apprentice with a message: "Miss
+Fenchel was to come to him directly: he had found a good place for
+her." Martha hastened thither gladly.</p>
+
+<p>'"Hast thou found a place for me, dear Jonas?" asked she, giving him
+her hand gracefully. "Thank God! I began to fear becoming troublesome
+to our kind friends. Come, tell me where?"</p>
+
+<p>'He looked anxiously into her joyous blue eyes; then, in confusion,
+down to the ground; then again upwards to the roof of the room, and
+round the four sides, as though he were seeking something lost.</p>
+
+<p>'"Come, tell me, then?" repeated she. "Why art thou silent?"</p>
+
+<p>'He collected himself, and began, hesitating: "It is&mdash;but Martha&mdash;thou
+must not be angry with me."</p>
+
+<p>'In surprise, she smiled. "Angry with thee, Jonas! If I would be, and
+should be, could I be?"</p>
+
+<p>'"Listen, Martha; I will shew thee&mdash;I must tell thee&mdash;I know a man
+anxious to have thy heart and hand&mdash;who&mdash;even who"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'"O Jonas, reproach me rather, but do not make mockery of me, a poor
+maiden!" exclaimed she, shocked or hurt, while her face lost all its
+colour, and she turned from him.</p>
+
+<p>'"Martha, look at me. He is assuredly no bad man. I will bring him to
+thee; I will give him to thee myself."</p>
+
+<p>'"No, Jonas! no! From thee, least of all, can I receive a lover."</p>
+
+<p>'"From me, least of all!" asked he with visible emotion. "From me,
+least of all! And if&mdash;I don't know&mdash;if I would give thee myself&mdash;Look
+at me, Martha! Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>'Here silence ensued. She stood before him with downcast eyes and
+glowing cheeks, and played with her apron-string. Then, as if still
+doubting, she looked up again, her eyes swimming with tears, and said,
+with trembling lips: "What must I say, then?"</p>
+
+<p>'Jonas took courage, and whispered, half aloud: "Dost thou love me
+with all thy heart?"</p>
+
+<p>'Half aloud, Martha whispered back: "Thy heart knows it."</p>
+
+<p>'"Canst thou be satisfied with dry bread and salt?"</p>
+
+<p>'"Rather salt from thee than tears from me!"</p>
+
+<p>'"Martha, I will work for thee; wilt thou save for me?"</p>
+
+<p>'"I will be sparing in everything, except my own pains!"</p>
+
+<p>'"Well then, darling, here is my hand! Take it. Wilt thou be mine?"</p>
+
+<p>'"Was I not thine eight years ago and more? Even as a child? Yet no!
+It ought not to be, Jonas."</p>
+
+<p>'Alarmed, he looked in her face, and asked: "Not be? and why?"</p>
+
+<p>'"Think well over it, Jonas! Do thyself no injustice. I am a poor
+creature, without portion or property. Any other burgher's daughter in
+the town would be glad to give thee her hand and heart, and a good
+dowry beside. Thou mightst live much better."</p>
+
+<p>'"Say nothing about that," cried Jonas, stretching out both his hands
+imploringly. "Be still: I shall feel that I am but beginning to live,
+if thou wilt promise to live with me."</p>
+
+<p>'"Live, then!" said she, in blushing embarrassment, and gave him her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>'He took her hand, and at the same time clasped his bride to his
+bosom, that heaved with unwonted emotion. She wept on his breast in
+silent joy.'</p>
+
+<p>We would fain, if we had room, add to this the marriage sermon,
+preached by the bridegroom, and well preached too; for Jonas had
+knowledge, although, as he said himself, he never found half so much
+in books as is lying everywhere about the road.</p>
+
+<p>Martha was just the wife for the honest, sensible hand-worker; and as
+it frequently happens with such characters, his affairs prospered from
+the date of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[pg 303]</a></span> marriage. He took a larger house in a better
+situation for trade; and having presented the useless
+'master-piece'&mdash;which nobody would buy&mdash;to the prince, he was rewarded
+by the dignity of 'Master-girdler to the Court.' But still 'uprightly
+and hardily the court-girdler lived with his wife, just as before;
+active in the workshop and warehouse, at markets and at fairs. Year
+after year fled, though, before the last guilder could be paid off, of
+the debt on the house. Days of joy and of sorrow succeeded each other
+in turn. They were all received with gratitude to God&mdash;these as well
+as those.'</p>
+
+<p>We now come hastily to the third generation; for Jonas had a son
+called Veit, who was first apprenticed to his father, and then sent to
+travel as a journeyman. The patriarch had had no education at all;
+Jonas had snatched at his just as opportunities permitted; but Veit
+went regularly through the brief and practical curriculum fitted for a
+tradesman's son. He was, consequently, better informed and more
+refined than either his father or grandfather; and spent so much time
+in gaining a thorough insight into the branches connected with his own
+business, that honest Jonas was quite puzzled. 'Where did the boy get
+all these notions?' said he. 'He did not get them from me, I'm sure.'
+Veit had a bad opinion of the travelling custom, and for these
+reasons: 'How should these men, most of them badly brought up, attain
+to any greater perfection in their business, if they have left home
+and school without any preparation for it? No one can understand, if
+his understanding has not been developed. From one publican they go to
+another, and from one workshop to another; everywhere they find the
+old common track&mdash;the mechanical, mindless life of labour, just as in
+the very first place to which they were sent to learn their trade. At
+most, they acquire dexterity by practice. Now and then they learn a
+trick from a master, or get a receipt, which had been cautiously kept
+secret; when possessed of this, they think something of themselves.
+Even the character of these ramblers is not seldom destroyed by
+intercourse with their fellows. They learn drinking and rioting,
+gambling and licentiousness, caballing and debating. Many are ruined
+before they return to their native place. Believe me, dearest father,
+the time of travel is to very few a true school for life; one in
+which, through frequent change of good and evil days, the head
+acquires experience, the thoughts strength and clearness, the heart
+courage, and reliance on God. Very few, even of those who bring a
+scientific education with them, can gain much of value for their
+calling in life; extend their views, transfer and apply to their own
+line of business the inventions and discoveries that have been made in
+other departments of art and industry.'</p>
+
+<p>Jonas understood little of the refinements of his son, but he opened
+his eyes when Veit obtained a lucrative appointment in a large
+metallic manufactory, first in London and then in Paris. In a letter
+informing his parents of this good-fortune, were enclosed the whole of
+the savings from his salary. 'Master Jordan shook his head at this
+passage, and cried out, deeply moved, yet as though vexed, while a
+tear of motherly tenderness stole down Martha's cheek: "No! no! by no
+means! What is the fool thinking of? He'll want the money himself&mdash;a
+simpleton. Let him wait till he comes to the master-piece. What
+pleases me most in the story, is his contentment and his humility. He
+is not ashamed of his old silver watch yet. It is not everybody that
+could act so. There must be strong legs to support such extraordinary
+good-luck. These the bursch has!"'</p>
+
+<p>After years of absence, the young man at last walks suddenly into the
+paternal home, on his father's birthday, and makes them all scream and
+weep with joy. '"Hark ye, bursch!" exclaimed Jonas, who regarded him
+with fatherly delight, "thou seem'st to me almost too learned, too
+refined, and too elegant for Veit Jordan. What turner has cut so neat
+a piece of furniture out of so coarse a piece of timber?"' His stay,
+however, was short. M. and M<sup>me</sup> Bellarme (his employer at Paris) 'had
+been loth, almost afraid, to let him go. The feeble state of health of
+the former began to be so serious, that he durst not engage in the
+bulk of his affairs. In the space of a year, both felt so complete
+confidence in Veit's knowledge of business, and in his honour, that
+they had taken him as a partner in trade, and in the foundry.
+Henceforth, M. Bellarme contributed his capital only; Veit his
+knowledge, care, and industry.'</p>
+
+<p>The reform of the guilds, and the establishment of a technological
+school for the young hand-workers&mdash;both through the instrumentality of
+Jonas&mdash;we have no room to touch; for we must say a parting word on the
+reunion of the family by Veit's return permanently from abroad.
+Notwithstanding the prosperity of the now old couple, 'everything, ay,
+everything, was as he had left it years ago&mdash;as he had known it from
+childhood&mdash;only Christiane not. There stood yet the two well-scoured
+old deal-tables, wrinkled, though, from the protruding fibres of the
+wood; there were the straw-bottomed stools still; and at the window,
+Mother Martha's arm-chair, before which, as a child, he had repeated
+his lessons; there still hung the same little glass between the
+windows; and the wall-clock above the stove sent forth its tic-tac as
+fastly as ever. Father Jonas, in his enlarged workshop, with more
+journeymen and apprentices, smelted and hammered, filed and formed
+still, from morning to night, as before. The noble housewife flew
+about yet busy as a bee: she had managed the housekeeping without a
+servant since Christiane had been grown up. And Veit came back with
+the same cheerful disposition that he had ever shewn. In the
+simply-furnished rooms which Martha had fitted up for him, in the
+upper storey of the house, he forgot the splendid halls, the boudoirs,
+and antechambers of London, Paris, and the Bellarme estate; the
+Gobelin tapestry, the gold-framed pictures; the convenience of elegant
+furniture, and the artificial delicacies of the table on
+silver-plate.' Assisted by the patronage of the prince, he established
+a great foundry in his native town, of ball and cannon, bronze and
+brass; and on his marriage with the aforesaid Christiane, the
+sovereign made him a handsome present, in a handsome manner, 'as a
+small token of his gratitude to a family that had been so useful to
+the country.'</p>
+
+<p>In addition to the hand-workers' school, there now arose, under the
+auspices of this family, a training-school for teachers, a
+labour-school for females, and other establishments. The town was
+embellished; the land in the neighbourhood rose in value;
+uncleanliness and barbarism in food, clothing and houses, disappeared.
+'Only old men and women, grown rusty in the habits and the ignorance
+of many years, complain that the times are worse; at the sight of a
+higher civilisation, they complain of "the luxury and the pride of the
+world now-a-days;" as superstition dies out, they complain of "human
+incredulity, and the downfall of religion." "The day of judgment," say
+they, "is at hand."</p>
+
+<p>'But Master Jonas, when seventy years had silvered his hair, stood
+almost equal to a strong man of thirty, happy, indeed, by the side of
+the pious Martha, in a circle of his children and children's children,
+honoured by his fellow-citizens, and honoured by his prince. He often
+told the story of his boyhood, how he used to go about hawking with
+Father Thaddaeus the tinker; and his face glowed with inward
+satisfaction, when he compared the former period with present changes,
+in the production of which he could never have imagined he was to have
+so considerable a share. Then he used to exclaim: "Have I not always
+said it? Clear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[pg 304]</a></span> understanding only in the head, love to one's
+neighbour in the heart, frugality in the stomach, and industry in the
+fingers&mdash;then: <span class="smcap">Hand-work stands on golden feet</span>."'</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Labour Stands on Golden Feet; or, the Life of a Foreign
+Workman</i>, &amp;c. By Heinrich Zschokke. London: Groombridge.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="LORD_ROSSES_DISCOVERIES" id="LORD_ROSSES_DISCOVERIES"></a>LORD ROSSE'S DISCOVERIES.</h2>
+
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+    Contents</a></p>
+
+<p>As Professor Nichol very truly remarks, 'investigation regarding such
+aggregations is virtually a branch of atomic and molecular inquiry,'
+with stars in place of atoms, mighty spheres in place of 'dust,' 'the
+firmament above' instead of 'the firmament beneath.' In fact, the
+astronomer, in sweeping with his telescopic eye the 'blue depths of
+ether,' is, as it were, some Lilliputian inhabitant of an atom prying
+into the autumnal structure of some Brobdignagian world of saw-dust;
+organised into spiral and other elementary forms, of life, it may be,
+something like our own. The infinite height appears, in short, like
+the infinite depth, and we knowing not precisely where we stand
+between the two immensities of depth and height! The shapes evolved by
+the wonderful telescope of Lord Rosse are, many of them, absolutely
+fantastical; wonder and awe are mingled with almost ridiculous
+feelings in contemplating the strange apparitions&mdash;strange
+monstrosities we had almost called them&mdash;that are pictured on the
+background of the illustrations. One aggregation looms forth out of
+the darkness like the skeleton face of some tremendous mammoth, or
+other monstrous denizen of ancient times, with two small fiery eyes,
+however, gazing out of its great hollow orbits; another consists of a
+central nucleus, with arms of stars radiating forth in all directions,
+like a star-fish, or like the scattering fire-sparks of some
+pyrotechnic wheel revolving; a third resembles a great wisp of straw,
+or twist or coil of ropes; a fourth, a cork-screw, or other spiral,
+seen on end; a fifth, a crab; a sixth, a dumb-bell&mdash;many of them
+scroll or scrolls of some thin texture seen edgewise; and so on. It is
+even a suggestion of the author's, that some of the spiral and armed
+wheels may be revolving yet in the vast ocean of space in which they
+are engulfed. Thus has the telescope traced the 'binding' influences
+of the Pleiades, loosened the bands of 'Orion'&mdash;erst the chief
+<i>nebulous</i> hazy wonders, once and for all revealing its separate
+stars: and thus, in brief, has this wondrous instrument 'unrolled the
+heavens as a scroll.' Yet even these astonishing results are as
+nothing to the fact, that those fantastic shapes which it has revealed
+in the depths of this <i>lambo</i> of creation, are not shapes merely of
+the present time&mdash;that thousands of years have passed since the light
+that shewed them left the starry firmaments only now revealed&mdash;that
+the telescope, in short, in reflecting these astonishing shapes,
+deliver to the eye of mind turned inward on the long-stored records of
+a universal and eternal memory of the past, than to a mere eye of
+sense looking outward on the things of passing time!&mdash;<i>The Builder</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="SOUTH-AFRICAN_REPTILES" id="SOUTH-AFRICAN_REPTILES"></a>SOUTH-AFRICAN REPTILES.</h2>
+
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+    Contents</a></p>
+
+<p>I was going quietly to bed one evening, wearied by a long day's
+hunting, when, close to my feet, and by my bedside, some glittering
+substance caught my eye. I stooped to pick it up; but, ere my hand had
+quite reached it, the truth flashed across me&mdash;it was a snake! Had I
+followed my first natural impulse, I should have sprung away, but not
+being able clearly to see in what position the reptile was lying, or
+which way his head was pointed, I controlled myself, and remained
+rooted breathless to the spot. Straining my eyes, but moving not an
+inch, I at length clearly distinguished a huge puff-adder, the most
+deadly snake in the colony, whose bite would have sent me to the other
+world in an hour or two. I watched him in silent horror: his head was
+from me&mdash;so much the worse; for this snake, unlike any other, always
+rises and strikes back. He did not move; he was asleep. Not daring to
+shuffle my feet, lest he should awake and spring at me, I took a jump
+backwards, that would have done honour to a gymnastic master, and thus
+darted outside the door of the room. With a thick stick, I then
+returned and settled his worship. Some parts of South Africa swarm
+with snakes; none are free from them. I have known three men killed by
+them in one harvest on a farm in Oliphant's Hoek. There is an immense
+variety of them, the deadliest being the puff-adder, a thick and
+comparatively short snake. Its bite will kill occasionally within an
+hour. One of my friends lost a favourite and valuable horse by its
+bite, in less than two hours after the attack. It is a sluggish
+reptile, and therefore more dangerous; for, instead of rushing away,
+like its fellows, at the sound of approaching footsteps, it half
+raises its head and hisses. Often have I come to a sudden pull-up on
+foot and on horseback, on hearing their dreaded warning! There is also
+the cobra-capello, nearly as dangerous, several black snakes, and the
+boem-slang, or tree-snake, less deadly, one of which I once shot seven
+feet long. The Cape is also infested by scorpions, whose sting is
+little less virulent than a snake-bite; and by the spider called the
+tarantula, which is extremely dreaded.&mdash;<i>The Cape, by A. W. Cole</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="LINES" id="LINES"></a>LINES.</h2>
+
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+    Contents</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ask me not with simple grace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Pearls of thought to string for thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For upon thy smiling face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Perfect gems I see&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In thine eyes of beauty trace<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lights that fadeless be.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bid me not from Memory's land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Cull fair flowers of rich perfume;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love will shew with trembling hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where far fairer bloom&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clustering on thy cheek they stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Blushing deep&mdash;for whom?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bid me not with Fancy's gale<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wake the music of a sigh;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From thy breath a sweeter tale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Silver-winged, floats by;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Melodies that never fail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Heard when thou art nigh!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ask me not&mdash;yet, oh! for thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Dearer thoughts my bosom fill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dimmed with tears I cannot see<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To do thy gracious will:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take, then, my prayer&mdash;In heaven may we<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Behold thee lovelier still!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="author sc">Percie.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS_OF_EXTREME_MINUTENESS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS_OF_EXTREME_MINUTENESS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS OF EXTREME MINUTENESS.</h2>
+
+<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
+    Contents</a></p>
+
+<p>Dr Wollaston obtained platinum-wire so fine, that 30,000 pieces,
+placed side by side in contact, would not cover more than an inch. It
+would take 150 pieces of this wire bound together to form a thread as
+thick as a filament of raw silk. Although platinum is the heaviest of
+the known bodies, a mile of this wire would not weigh more than a
+grain. Seven ounces of this wire would extend from London to New York.
+Fine as is the filament produced by the silkworm, that produced by the
+spider is still more attenuated. A thread of a spider's web, measuring
+four miles, will weigh very little more than a single grain. Every one
+is familiar with the fact, that the spider spins a thread, or cord, by
+which his own weight hangs suspended. It has been ascertained that
+this thread is composed of about 6000 filaments.&mdash;<i>Lardner's
+Handbook</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p>Printed and Published by W. and R. <span class="smcap">Chambers</span>, High Street, Edinburgh.
+Also sold by W. S. <span class="smcap">Orr</span>, Amen Corner, London; D. N. <span class="smcap">Chambers</span>, 55 West
+Nile Street, Glasgow; and J. <span class="smcap">M'Glashan</span>, 50 Upper Sackville Street,
+Dublin.&mdash;Advertisements for Monthly Parts are requested to be sent to
+<span class="smcap">Maxwell</span> &amp; Co., 31 Nicholas Lane, Lombard Street, London, to whom all
+applications respecting their insertion must be made.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436, by Various
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436
+       Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Robert Chambers and William  Chambers
+
+Release Date: July 8, 2006 [EBook #18796]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDINBURGH JOURNAL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Richard J. Shiffer and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
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+
+
+                     CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL
+
+  CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
+  INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.
+
+
+  No. 436. NEW SERIES.   SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1852.   PRICE 1-1/2_d._
+
+
+
+
+THE MUSICAL SEASON.
+
+
+'The English are not a musical people.' The dictum long stood
+unquestioned, and, in general estimation, unquestionable. All the
+world had agreed upon it. There could be no two opinions: we had no
+national airs; no national taste; no national appreciation of sweet
+sounds; musically, we were blocks! At length, however, the creed began
+to be called in question--were we so very insensible? If so,
+considering the amount of music actually listened to every year in
+London and the provinces, we were strangely given to an amusement
+which yielded us no pleasure; we were continually imposing on
+ourselves the direst and dreariest of tasks; we were tormenting
+ourselves with symphonies, and lacerating our patience with sonatas
+and rondos. What was the motive? Hypocrisy was very generally
+assigned. We only affected to love music. It was intellectual,
+spiritual, in all respects creditable to our moral nature, to be able
+to appreciate Mozart and Beethoven, and so we set up for connoisseurs,
+and martyrised ourselves that Europe might think us musical. Is there
+more truth in this theory than the other? Hypocrisy is not generally
+so lasting as the musical fervour has proved itself to be. A fashion
+is the affair of a season; a mania goes as it came; but regularly and
+steadily, for many years back, has musical appreciation been
+progressing, and as regularly have the opportunities for hearing good
+music of all kinds been extending.
+
+Take up a daily newspaper, published any time between April and
+August, and range your eye down the third or fourth column of the
+first page--what an endless array of announcements of music, vocal and
+instrumental! Music for the classicists; music for the crowd;
+symphonies and sonatas; ballads and polkas; harmonic societies; choral
+societies; melodists' clubs; glee clubs; madrigal clubs. Here you have
+the quiet announcement of a quartett-party; next to it, the
+advertisement of one of the Philharmonic Societies--the giants of the
+musical world; pianoforte teachers announce one of their series of
+classic performances; great instrumental soloists have each a concert
+for the special behoof and glorification of the _beneficiaire_. Mr
+So-and-so's grand annual concert jostles Miss So-and-so's annual
+benefit concert. There are Monday concerts, and Wednesday concerts,
+and Saturday concerts; there are weekly concerts, fortnightly
+concerts, and monthly concerts; there are concerts for charities, and
+concerts for benefits; there are grand morning concerts, and grand
+evening concerts; there are _matinees musicales_, and _soirees
+musicales_; there are meetings, and unions, and circles, and
+associations--all of them for the performance of some sort of music.
+There are musical entertainments by the score: in the City; in the
+suburbs; at every institute and hall of science, from one end of
+London to the other. One professor has a ballad entertainment; a
+second announces a lecture, with musical illustrations; a third
+applies himself to national melodies. All London seems vocal and
+instrumental. Every dead wall is covered with naming _affiches_,
+announcing in long array the vast army of vocal and instrumental
+talent which is to assist at such and such a morning performance; and
+the eyes of the owner of a vast musical stomach are dazzled and
+delighted by programmes which will at least demand five hours in the
+performance.
+
+So is London, in the course of the season, the congress of nearly all
+the performing musical notabilities of Europe. Time has been when they
+came to London for cash, not renown: now they come for both. A London
+reputation is beginning to rival a Parisian vogue, besides being ten
+times more profitable; and, accordingly, from every musical corner in
+Christendom, phenomena of art pour in, heralded by the utmost possible
+amount of puffing, and equally anxious to secure English gold and a
+London reputation. It is strange to observe how universally the
+musical tribute is paid. A tenor turns up from some Russian provincial
+town; a basso works himself to London from a theatre in
+Constantinople; rumours arrive of a peerless prima donna, with a voice
+which is to outstrip everything ever heard of, who has been dug out,
+by some travelling amateur, from her native obscurity in a Spanish or
+Norwegian village; an extraordinary soprano has been discovered in
+Alexandria; a wondrous contralto has been fished up from Riga. The
+instrumental phenomena are not one whit scarcer. Classical pianists
+pour in from Germany principally; popular pianists, who delight in
+fantasias rather than concertos, and who play such tricks with the
+keyboards, that the performances have much more of the character of
+legerdemain than of art, arrive by scores; violinists, violoncellists,
+professors of the trombone, of the ophicleide, of the bassoon, of
+every unwieldy and unmanageable instrument in fact, are particularly
+abundant; and perhaps the most popular of all are the particularly
+clever gentlemen who, by dint of a dozen years' or so unremitting
+practice, have succeeded in making one instrument sound like another.
+Quackery as this is, it is enormously run after by no small proportion
+of the public. Not that they do not appreciate the art of the device
+at its proper level, but that the trick is curious and novel; and most
+people, even the dignified classicists, have a gentle toleration for a
+little--just a little--_outre_ amusement of the kind in question.
+Paganini was the founder of this school. He might have played on four
+strings till he was tired, without causing any particular sensation;
+but the single string made his fortune. Sivori is one of the cleverest
+artists of the present day, who resorts to tricks with his violin, and
+wonderfully does he perform them. At a concert last season, he
+imitated the singing of a bird with the strangest and happiest skill.
+The 'severe' shook their heads, but smiled as they did so, and owned
+that the trick was clever enough, and withal agreeable to hear. But it
+is gentlemen who make one instrument produce the sounds of another,
+or, at all events, who extract from it some previously unknown effect,
+who carry all before them. The present phenomenon in this way is
+Bottesini, who, grasping a huge double-bass, the most unwieldy of
+instruments, tortures out of it the notes of a violin, of an oboe, and
+of a flute. A season or two ago, M. Vivier took all London by storm,
+by producing a chord upon the French horn, a feat previously
+considered impossible, and probably only the fruit of the most
+determined and energetic practice, extending over many years. At all
+the popular concerts, this trick-music is in immense request.
+Bottesini was the lion of Jullien's last series; but in his place in
+the orchestra of the Philharmonic, he plays his part and holds his
+instrument like any ordinary performer. Bagpipe music is not much
+appreciated on the banks of the Thames; but I can assure any
+enterprising Scotsman, that if he can only succeed in producing the
+notes of the bagpipe out of the trombone, he will make a fortune in
+five seasons or less.
+
+Such is musical London, then--rushing from concert to concert, and
+opera to opera--from severe classicism to the most miscellaneous
+_omnium gatherum_--from solemn ecclesiastical harmonic assemblages to
+the chanting of merry glees, and the warbling of sentimental ballads.
+Let us, then, contemplate a little closer the different kinds of
+concerts--their features and their character--their performers and
+their auditories. Our sketch must be very hurried and very vague, but
+it will give an idea of some of the principal characteristics of the
+London musical season.
+
+First, then, among the performances of mingled vocal and instrumental
+music, stand the two Sacred Harmonic Societies, which execute
+oratorios and similar works in Exeter Hall. The original Sacred
+Harmonic Society has within the last couple of years split into two
+bodies. It had long contained within itself the elements of division.
+There were the Go-ahead party and the Conservative party--the first,
+eager to try new ground, and aim at new effects; the second, lovers of
+the beaten way. At length, the split took place. The progressistas
+flung themselves into the arms of M. Costa, the famous conductor of
+the Royal Italian Opera orchestra, and the highest and most Napoleonic
+of musical commanders. The Tories of the society went peaceably on in
+the jog-trot ways of Mr Sarman, the original conductor. Each society
+can now bring into the field about 800 vocal performers, the immense
+majority of them amateurs, and their concerts take place
+alternately--Exeter Hall being invariably crammed upon either
+occasion. The Costaites, no doubt, have the _pas_. The discipline of
+their chief is perfect, and as rigid as it is excellent. The power
+which this gentleman possesses over his musical troops is very
+curious. The whole mass of performers seem to wait upon his will as
+the spirits did on Prospero. At the spreading of his arms, the music
+dies away to the most faintly-whispered murmurs. A crescendo or
+musical climax works gradually up step by step, and bar by bar, until
+it explodes in a perfect crash of vocal and instrumental tempest. The
+extraordinary choral effects produced in the performance of the
+_Huguenots_ almost bewildered the hearers; and the wondrous lights and
+shades of sound given in many of the oratorios, are little behind the
+dramatic achievement. The aspect of Exeter Hall on an oratorio night
+is one of the grandest things in London. The vastness of the
+assemblage, the great mountain of performers, crested by the organ,
+and rising almost to the ceiling, are thoroughly impressive, while the
+first burst of the opening chorus is grand in the extreme. The
+oratorio is, in fact, the Opera of the 'serious' world. It is at once
+a place in which to listen to music and a point of social reunion.
+There are oratorio _habitues_ as well as Opera _habitues_; and between
+the parts of the performance, the same buzzing hum of converse rises
+from the assemblage which you hear in the Opera corridors and lobbies.
+A glance at the audience will enlighten you as to their character.
+They represent the staid respectability of the middle class. The
+dresses of the ladies are often rich, seldom brilliant, and there is
+little sparkle of jewellery. You very frequently perceive family
+parties, under the care of a grave _pater familias_ and his
+staid and stately partner. Quakers abound; and the number of
+ecclesiastically-cut coats shews how many clergymen of the church are
+present. The audience are in the highest degree attentive. The rules
+forbid applause, but a gentle murmur of admiration rises at the close
+of almost every _morceau_. Here and there, you have a practical
+amateur, or a group of such with the open score of the oratorio before
+them, eagerly following the music. Often these last gentlemen are
+members of the rival Society, and, as might be expected, pick plenty
+of holes in the execution of their opponents, for which charitable
+purpose only they have probably attended. But in M. Costa's Society,
+at all events, the task is difficult; the orchestra 'goes,' as the
+phrase is, like one instrument, and the singers are beautifully under
+the control of the master-spirit who directs them.
+
+Let us pass from Exeter Hall to Hanover Square. Here, in the Queen's
+Concert Room--a _salle_ which once was smart, and the decorations of
+which were fashionable seventy years ago--we have unnumbered concerts,
+and chief among them the twelve annual performances of the
+Philharmonic Society. The 'Philharmonic,' as it is conversationally
+called, holds almost the rank of a national institution. The sovereign
+patronises it in an especial manner. It is connected with the Royal
+Academy of Music, and Her Majesty's private band is recruited from the
+ranks of its orchestra. The Philharmonic band may be indeed taken as
+the representative of the nation's musical executive powers; and, as
+such, comparisons are often instituted between it and the French,
+Austrian, and Prussian Philharmonics. The foreigners who hold places
+in the orchestra are resident, and in some sort naturalised, but the
+bulk of the executants are English. To be a member of the Philharmonic
+orchestra is, indeed, to take a sort of degree in executive music, and
+at once stamps the individual as a performer of distinguished merit.
+The music performed is entirely classic, and principally instrumental.
+New compositions are seldom given; and, in fact, it was the practice
+of adhering so exclusively to the standard works of great composers
+which started the new Philharmonic Society, which has just come into
+existence. The elder body stick stanchly to the safe courses of Bach,
+Gluck, Beethoven, Mozart, and Mendelssohn. The newly-created
+association proclaim that their mission is to look after aspirants, as
+well as to honour the veterans of the art; and accordingly they bring
+forward many compositions experimentally--a meritorious policy, but
+one not without its dangers. Few unprofessional people are aware of
+the cost of producing elaborate compositions. When _William Tell_ was
+played some years ago at Drury Lane--to mention one single item--the
+price of copying the parts from the full score, at 3d. a page, came to
+L.350. All the old music is of course to be had printed; and to these
+standard scores the steady-going Philharmonic principally devotes
+itself. Each performance consists in general of two symphonies, or a
+symphony and an elaborate concerto, each occupying at least
+three-quarters of an hour, with two overtures, and solos, vocal and
+instrumental--the former generally sung by performers from either
+Opera, but usually from Covent Garden. M. Costa wields the baton at
+Hanover Square as at Exeter Hall; and under his management, the band
+have attained a magnificent precision and _ensemble_ of effect. Its
+musical peculiarity over ordinary orchestras is the vast strength of
+stringed instruments, which gives a peculiar _verve_ and light vigour
+to the performances. The rush of the violins in a rapid passage is
+overwhelming in its impetuosity and vigour, and is said, of late years
+especially, to beat the 'attack,' as it is technically called, of any
+of the continental Philharmonic Societies. The Philharmonic concerts
+are very fashionable. It is good taste, socially and artistically, to
+be present; and, consequently, the room is always crowded by an
+assemblage who display most of the characteristics of an Opera
+audience. The musical notabilities of town always muster in full force
+at the Philharmonic. Composers, executants, critics, amateurs, and
+connoisseurs, are all there, watching with the greatest care the
+execution of those famous works, the great effect of which can only be
+produced by the most wary and appreciative tenderness of rendering. In
+the interval between the first and second parts, the very general hum
+of conversation announces how great the degree of familiarity
+subsisting among the _habitues_. There is none of the common stiffness
+of waiting one sees at ordinary entertainments. Everybody seems to
+know everybody else, and one general atmosphere of genial intercourse
+prevails throughout the room.
+
+Let us change the scene to a classic concert of quite another kind. In
+a quiet West-end street, we are in a room of singular construction. It
+is in the form of a right-angled triangle; and at the right angle,
+upon a small dais, is placed the pianoforte and the desks, and so
+forth, for the performers. The latter are thus visible from all
+points; but about one-half the audience in each angle of the room is
+quite hidden from the other. Everybody is in evening dress; the ladies
+very gay, and the party very quiet--a still, drawing-room sort of air
+presides over the whole. Many of the ladies are young--quite girls;
+and a good many of the gentlemen are solemn old foggies, who appear
+strongly inclined to go to sleep, and, in fact, sometimes do.
+Meantime, the music goes on. A long, long sonata or concerto--piano
+and violin, or piano, violin, and violoncello--is listened to in
+profound silence, with a low murmur of applause at the end of each
+movement. Then perhaps comes a little vocalism--sternly classic
+though--an aria from Gluck, or a solemn and pathetic song from
+Mendelssohn: the performer being either a well-known concert-singer,
+or a young lady--very nervous and a little uncertain--who, it is
+whispered, is 'an Academy girl;' a pupil, that is, of the institution
+in question. Sometimes, but not often--for it is _de rigueur_ that
+entertainments of this species shall be severely classic--we have a
+phenomenon of execution upon some out-of-the-way instrument, who
+performs certain miracles with springs or tubes, and in some degree
+wakens up the company, who, however, not unfrequently relapse into all
+their solemn primness, under a concerto manuscript, or a trio
+manuscript, the composition of the _beneficiaire_. Between the parts,
+people go quietly into a room beneath, where there are generally some
+mild prints to be turned over, some mild coffee to drink, some mild
+conversation about mild things in general; and then the party remount
+the stairs, and mildly listen to more mild music. This is the common
+routine of a classical pianoforte soiree. The _beneficiaire_ is a
+fashionable teacher, and, in a small way, a composer. He gives, every
+season, a series, perhaps two or three series, of classic evenings.
+The pupils and their families form the majority of the audience,
+interspersed with a few pianoforte amateurs, and those _fanatici per
+la musica_ who are to be found wherever a violin is tuned, or a piano
+is opened.
+
+Another species of classic concert is to be found in the
+quartett-meetings. These take place in some small concert-room, such
+as that I have described, or at the houses of the executants; and the
+audience comprehends a far larger proportion of gentlemen than the
+last-mentioned entertainments. The performers are four--pretty sure to
+be gentlemen of the highest professional abilities. The instruments
+are first and second violin, viola, and violoncello; and three or four
+quartetts by the great masters, or, very probably, as many
+compositions, marking the different stages of Beethoven's imagination,
+are played with the most consummate skill and the tenderest regard for
+light and shade. People not deep in the sympathies and tastes of the
+musical world, have no idea how these compositions are loved and
+studied by the real disciples of Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn; how
+particular passages are watched for; and how old gentlemen nod their
+heads, or shake them at each other, according as they agree or
+disagree in the manner of the interpretation. Half the audience
+probably know every bar of the music by heart, and no inconsiderable
+number could perhaps perform it very decently themselves. It is indeed
+at these quartett and quintett meetings, that you see genuine
+specimens of musical knowledge and musical enthusiasm. They take place
+by half-dozens during the season; and you always find the same class
+of audience, often the same individuals, regularly ranged before the
+executants.
+
+But place now for the real grand, miscellaneous, popular, and populous
+morning concert! Now for elephantine dimensions and leviathan bills of
+fare. It is nominally, perhaps, or really, perhaps, the annual benefit
+concert of some well-known performer, or it is the speculation of a
+great musical publishing house, in the name of one of their composing
+or performing _proteges_. The latter is, indeed, a very common
+practice. But whether the music-publishing and opera-box-letting firm
+be the real concert-giver, or merely the agent, to it is left the
+whole of the nice operation of 'getting up' the entertainment. It has
+then exhausted all the dodges of puffery in pumping up an unusual
+degree of excitement. The affair is to be a 'festival' or a 'jubilee;'
+'all the musical talent' of London is to be concentrated; the
+continent has been dragged for extra-ordinary executive attractions;
+every musical hit of the season is to be repeated; every effect is to
+be got up with new _eclat_: never was there to be such a _super extra,
+ne plus ultra_ musical triumph. The day approaches. Rainbow-hued
+_affiches_ have done their best; placard-bearers, by scores, have
+paraded, and are parading, the streets; advertisements have blazoned
+the scheme day after day, and week after week; the gratis-tickets have
+been duly 'planted;' puffs, oblique and implied, have hinted at the
+coming attraction in every Sunday paper; and programmes are fluttering
+in every get-at-able shop-front. The day comes. A long line of
+fashionable carriages, strangely intermingled with shabby cabs, file
+up to the doors, and the gay morning dresses, flaunting with colours,
+disappear between the two colossal placards which grace the entrance.
+The room is filled. _Habitues_, and knowing musical men on town,
+recognise each other, and congregate in groups, laughingly comparing
+notes upon the probabilities of what artists announced will make an
+appearance, and upon what apologies will be offered in lieu of those
+who don't. A couple of these last are probably already in circulation.
+Madame Sopranini is confined to bed with an inflammatory attack; and
+Signor Bassinini has got bronchitis. Nevertheless, the concert begins;
+and oh! the length thereof. The principal vocalists seem to have
+mostly mistaken the time at which they would be wanted; and the
+chopping and changing of the programme are bewildering. Bravuras take
+the place of concertos; a duet being missing, an aria closes the
+ranks; a solo on the trombone not being forthcoming, a vocal trio
+(unaccompanied) is hurriedly substituted. Still, there is plenty of
+the originally announced music; all the favourite airs, duets, and
+trios from the fashionable operas; all the ballads in vogue--the music
+published by the house which has set the whole thing on foot, of
+course; all the phenomena of executive brilliance are there, or are
+momentarily expected to appear. We begin after an overture with, say,
+an air from the _Puritani_, by a lovely tenor; another, from the
+_Somnambula_, by a charming soprano; a fantasia by a legerdemain
+pianist, with long hair, and who comes down on the key-board as though
+it was his enemy; the famous song from _Figaro_--encored; the
+madrigal, 'Down in a Flowery Vale'--the latter always a sure card; a
+duet from _Semiramide_, by two young ladies--rather shaky; solo on the
+clarionet, by a gentleman who makes the instrument sound like a
+fiddle--great applause; 'In manly Worth,' by an oratorio tenor; the
+overture to _Masaniello_, by the band; concerto (posthumous,
+Beethoven), by a stern classical man--audience yawn; pot pourri, by a
+romantic practitioner--audience waken up; ballad, 'When Hearts are
+torn by manly Vows,' by an English tenor--great delight, and
+encouragement of native talent; glee, 'Glorious Apollo,' or, 'The
+Red-cross Knight'--very well received; recitative and aria, from
+_Lucia di Lammermoor_--very lachrymose; violin solo, by Signor
+Rosinini, who throws the audience into a paroxysm of delight by
+imitating a saw and a grindstone; 'The Bay of Biscay,' by the
+'veteran' Braham, being positively his last appearance (the 'veteran'
+is announced for four concerts in the ensuing week!); ballad, again,
+by the native tenor, 'When Vows are torn by slumbering Hearts'--more
+great applause; the page's song from the _Huguenots_, for the
+contralto; 'When the Heart of a Man,' _Beggars' Opera_; quartett for
+four pianofortes, great bustle arranging them, and then only three
+performers forthcoming--an apology--attack of bronchitis--but Mr
+Braham will kindly (thunders of applause) sing 'The Death of Nelson;'
+quartett for double-bass, trombone, drum, and triangles--curious
+effect; the audience hardly know whether they like it or not; the
+bravura song of the 'Queen of Night,' from _Zauberfloete_; overture to
+_William Tell_; ballad, 'When Slumber's Heart is torn by Vows;' duet,
+'I know a Bank,' by the Semiramide young ladies; fantasia pianoforte,
+from the _Fille du Regiment_; 'Rode's air, with variations,' from the
+text; and the storm movement of the _Sinfonia Pastorale_, by
+Beethoven!
+
+Such may be taken as a fair specimen-slice of a _Concert Monstre_; and
+in listening to this wild agglomeration of chaotic music, the day
+passes, very likely from two o'clock until six. In a future paper, I
+may touch upon the peculiarities of the artists performing.
+
+                                                       A. B. R.
+
+
+
+
+THE TALLOW-TREE OF CHINA.
+
+
+It is one happy recommendation of the Natural system of botany, that
+many of its orders form groups of plants distinguished not only by the
+characteristics of general physiognomy, and the more accurate
+differences of structure, but in an especial manner by the medicinal
+and economical properties which they possess, and which are indeed
+frequently peculiar to the order. Such is the case with the natural
+order _Euphorbiaceae_, or spurge family, to which the tallow-tree of
+China belongs. The order includes 2500 species, all of which are more
+or less acrid and poisonous, these properties being especially
+developed in the milky juices which abound in the plants, and which
+are contained, not in its ordinary tissues, but in certain special
+vessels. Many important substances are derived from this order,
+notwithstanding its acrid and poisonous character. Castor-oil is
+obtained from the seeds of _Ricinus communis_; croton-oil, and several
+other oleaginous products of importance in medicine and the arts, are
+obtained from plants belonging to the order. The root of _Janipha
+Manihot_, or Manioc-plant, contains a poisonous substance, supposed to
+be hydrocyanic acid, along with which there is a considerable
+proportion of starch. The poisonous matter is removed by roasting and
+washing, and the starch thus obtained is formed into the cassava-bread
+of tropical countries, and is also occasionally imported into Europe
+as Brazilian arrow-root.
+
+Many of the important economical productions of China are little known
+in this country; we are, however, daily gaining additions to our
+knowledge of them; and within the last few years, much valuable
+information has been obtained respecting the productive resources of
+the Eastern Empire. The grass-cloth of China only became known in
+Europe a few years ago, but it now ranks as one of the important
+fabrics of British manufacture. Daily discoveries seem to shew that
+there are Chinese products of equal importance, as yet unknown to us.
+On the present occasion, we call the attention of our readers to a
+substance which has been long known, as well as the plant which
+produces it, but neither of which has hitherto been prominently
+brought into general notice in Britain. For our information respecting
+the uses of the tallow-tree, we express our chief obligations to a
+paper by Dr D. J. Macgowan, published in the Journal of the
+Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India.[1]
+
+The tallow-tree of China is the _Stillingia sebifera_ of botanists; a
+plant originally indigenous to China, where it occurs in wet
+situations, but which is now somewhat common in various parts of India
+and America, chiefly as an ornamental tree. In Roxburgh's time, it was
+very common about Calcutta, where, in the course of a few years, it
+became one of the most common trees; and it has become almost
+naturalised in the maritime parts of South Carolina. In China alone,
+however, is it as yet appreciated as an economical plant, and there
+alone are its products properly elaborated. It is chiefly prized for
+the fatty matter which it yields, and from which it derives its
+appropriate name; but it affords other products of value: 'its leaves
+are employed as a black dye; its wood being hard and durable, may be
+easily used for printing-blocks and various other articles; and,
+finally, the refuse of the nut is employed as fuel and manure.... It
+grows alike on low alluvial plains and on granite hills, on the rich
+mould at the margin of canals, and on the sandy sea-beach. The sandy
+estuary of Hangchan yields little else; some of the trees at this
+place are known to be several hundred years old, and though
+prostrated, still send forth branches and bear fruit.... They are
+seldom planted where anything else can be conveniently cultivated--but
+in detached places, in corners about houses, roads, canals, and
+fields.'
+
+The sebaceous matter, or vegetable tallow, is contained in the
+seed-vessels of the _Stillingia_. The processes adopted for
+abstracting it are of importance, and meet with due consideration in
+Dr Macgowan's valuable paper. The following clear account is given of
+the whole process, as practised in China:--'In midwinter, when the
+nuts are ripe, they are cut off with their twigs by a sharp
+crescentric knife, attached to the extremity of a long pole, which is
+held in the hand, and pushed upwards against the twigs, removing at
+the same time such as are fruitless. The capsules are gently pounded
+in a mortar, to loosen the seeds from their shells, from which they
+are separated by sifting. To facilitate the separation of the white
+sebaceous matter enveloping the seeds, they are steamed in tubs,
+having convex open wicker bottoms, placed over caldrons of boiling
+water. When thoroughly heated, they are reduced to a mash in the
+mortar, and thence transferred to bamboo sieves, kept at a uniform
+temperature over hot ashes. A single operation does not suffice to
+deprive them of all their tallow; the steaming and sifting are
+therefore repeated. The article thus procured becomes a solid mass on
+falling through the sieve; and to purify it, it is melted and formed
+into cakes for the press. These receive their form from bamboo hoops,
+a foot in diameter, and three inches deep, which are laid on the
+ground over a little straw. On being filled with the hot liquid, the
+ends of the straw beneath are drawn up and spread over the top; and
+when of sufficient consistence, are placed with their rings in the
+press. This apparatus, which is of the rudest description, is
+constructed of two large beams, placed horizontally so as to form a
+trough capable of containing about fifty of the rings with their
+sebaceous cakes; at one end it is closed, and at the other adapted for
+receiving wedges, which are successively driven into it by ponderous
+sledge-hammers, wielded by athletic men. The tallow oozes in a melted
+state into a receptacle below, where it cools. It is again melted, and
+poured into tubs, smeared with mud, to prevent its adhering. It is now
+marketable, in masses of about eighty pounds each--hard, brittle,
+white, opaque, tasteless, and without the odour of animal tallow;
+under high pressure, it scarcely stains bibulous paper, and it melts
+at 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It may be regarded as nearly pure
+stearine.... The seeds yield about 8 per cent. of tallow, which sells
+for about five cents per pound.'
+
+There is a separate process for pressing the oil, which is carried on
+at the same time. The kernels yield about 30 per cent. of oil, which
+answers well for lamps. It is also employed for various purposes in
+the arts, and has a place in the Chinese pharmacopoeia, because of its
+quality of changing gray hair to black, and other imaginary virtues.
+
+The husks are used to feed the furnaces; the residuary tallow-cakes
+are also employed for fuel--a small quantity remaining ignited a whole
+day. The oil-cake forms a valuable manure, and is of course carefully
+used for this purpose in China, where so very great regard is paid to
+the collecting of manures. This kind is particularly used for
+enriching tobacco-fields, its powerful qualities recommending it for
+such a scourging crop.
+
+With regard to the uses of the vegetable tallow, Dr Macgowan observes:
+'Artificial illumination in China is generally procured by vegetable
+oils, but candles are also employed.... In religious ceremonies, no
+other material is used. As no one ventures out after dark without a
+lantern, and as the gods cannot be acceptably worshipped without
+candles, the quantity consumed is very great. With an unimportant
+exception, the candles are always made of what I beg to designate as
+vegetable stearine. When the candles, which are made by dipping, are
+of the required diameter, they receive a final dip into a mixture of
+the same material and insect-wax, by which their consistency is
+preserved in the hottest weather. They are generally coloured red,
+which is done by throwing a minute quantity of alkanet-root (_Anchusa
+tinctoria_), brought from Shan-tung, into the mixture. Verdigris is
+sometimes employed to dye them green.' We are not aware that the
+vegetable tallow has as yet been imported into Britain to any extent.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] 'Uses of the _Stillingia Sebifera_, or Tallow-Tree, &c., by D. J.
+Macgowan, M. D., &c.' The substance of the same communication was laid
+before the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 12th February, 1852, having
+been communicated by Dr Coldstream.
+
+
+
+
+THE TOLLMAN'S STORY.
+
+
+Some local travellers of about twenty-five years' practice, may still
+remember the keeper of a toll-bar on one of the western approaches to
+Glasgow, known in his neighbourhood as English John. The prefix was
+given, I believe, in honour of his dialect, which was remarkably pure
+and polished for one of his station in those days; and the solution of
+that problem was, that he had been from childhood, till the gray was
+thickening on his hair, in the service of an English family, who had
+come into possession, and constantly resided on, a handsome estate in
+his native parish in Dumbartonshire.
+
+Through their interest, he had been appointed to the office of power
+and trust in which I made his acquaintance. John was one of my
+earliest friends, though the remnant of his name was never heard nor
+inquired after by me. The great town has now grown much nearer his
+toll-house, which then stood alone on the country road, with no
+building in sight but the school, at which I, and some two score of
+the surrounding juveniles, were supposed to be trained in wisdom's
+ways, by the elder brother of our parish minister. A painstaking,
+kindly teacher he was; but the toll-house was a haunt more pleasant to
+our young fancies than his seminary. John was the general friend and
+confidant of all the boys; he settled our disputes, made the best tops
+and balls for us, taught us a variety of new tricks in play, and
+sometimes bestowed upon us good advices, which were much sooner
+forgotten. John never married. He had a conviction, which was
+occasionally avowed, that all women were troublesome; and whether this
+evidence be considered _pro_ or _con_, he was a man of rough sense and
+rustic piety, of a most fearless, and, what the Germans call, a
+self-standing nature--for solitude or society came all alike to John.
+You would as soon expect a pine-tree to be out of sorts, as his hard,
+honest face, and muscular frame. John was never sick, or disturbed in
+any way; he performed his own domestic duties with a neatness and
+regularity known to few housekeepers, and was a faithful and most
+uncompromising guardian of the toll-bar. I well remember how our young
+imaginations were impressed with the fact, that no man could pass,
+without, as it were, paying tribute to him; and George IV., though he
+appeared on the coppers with which we bought apples, cast by no means
+so mighty a shadow on our minds as English John. Before this glory
+waned, I was removed from his neighbourhood, being sent to cheer the
+heart and secure the legacy of a certain uncle who was a writer to the
+Signet in Edinburgh, and believed to be in profitable practice and
+confirmed bachelorhood. The worthy man has long ago married his
+landlady's daughter, and been blessed with a family sufficient to fill
+a church-pew. My own adventures--how I grew from garment to garment,
+how I became a law-student, and at length a writer myself--have little
+to do with the present narrative, and are therefore spared the reader
+in detail; but the first startling intelligence I received from home
+was, that English John had resigned his important office at the
+toll-house, and gone, nobody knew whither!
+
+Years had passed; my professional studies were finished, and I had
+occasion to visit a Fife laird near the East Neuk. The gentleman was
+notable for his taste in kitchen-gardening; and having a particularly
+fine bed of Jerusalem artichokes which I must see, he conducted me to
+the scene of his triumphs, when, hard at work with the rake and hoe,
+whom should I find as the much esteemed gardener, but my old friend
+English John! His hair had grown quite gray, and his look strangely
+grave, since last I saw him: time had altered me still more;
+nevertheless, John knew me at once--he had always a keen eye--but I
+perceived it was his wish not to be recognised at all in presence of
+the laird. That worthy was one of those active spirits who extend
+their superintendence to every department. He commanded in the pantry
+as well as on the farm; and while expatiating over the artichokes, a
+private message from his lady summoned him back to the house, as I
+sincerely believe, on some matter connected with the dinner; and he
+left me, with an understood permission to admire the artichokes, and
+the garden in general, as long as I pleased. Scarcely was he fairly
+out of sight, till I was at the gardener's side. 'John, my old
+fellow,' cried I, grasping his hand, 'I'm glad to see you once again.
+How has the world behaved to you these many years?'
+
+'Pretty well, Master Willie,' said John, heartily returning my shake;
+'and I'm glad to see you too; but your memory must be uncommon good,
+for many a one of the boys has passed me by on street and highway. How
+have they all turned out?' And he commenced a series of inquiries
+after schoolmates and old neighbours, to which my answers were as
+usual in such cases--some were dead, some were married, and some gone
+far away.
+
+'But, John,' said I at last, determined to make out the mystery which
+had so long puzzled me and the entire parish--'in exchange for all my
+news, tell me why you left the toll-house? It was surely a better
+place than this?'
+
+'You know what the old proverb says, Master Willie: "Change is
+lightsome,"' said John, beginning to dig, as if he would fain stave
+off the explanation.
+
+'Ha, John, that wont do!' said I; 'your mind was never so unsteady.
+Tell me the truth, for old times' sake; and if there is anything in
+the story that should not be made public, you know I was always a
+capital secret-keeper. Maybe it was a love-matter, John: are you
+married yet?'
+
+'No, Master Willie,' cried my old friend, with a look of the most
+sincere self-gratulation I ever saw. 'But it's a queer story, and one
+I shouldn't care for telling; only, you were always a discreet boy,
+and it rather presses on my mind at times. The master won't be back
+for awhile; he'll have the roast to try, and the pudding to taste--not
+to talk of seeing the table laid out, for there are to be some
+half-dozen besides yourself to-day at dinner. That's his way, you see.
+And I'll tell you what took me from the toll-house--but mind, never
+mention it, as you would keep peace in the west country.'
+
+This is John's story, as nearly in his own words as I can call them to
+mind:--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The family in whose service I was brought up lived on their estate in
+Dumbartonshire, which came through the mistress of the mansion, who
+had been heiress of entail, and a lady in her own right; we called her
+Lady Catherine, and a prouder woman never owned either estate or
+title. Her father had been a branch of the Highland family to whom the
+property originally belonged. Her mother was sprung from the old
+French nobility, an emigrant of the first Revolution, and she had been
+brought up in England, and married in due time to an Honourable Mr
+---- there. When she first came to the estate, her husband had been
+some years dead, and Lady Catherine brought with her a son, who was to
+be heir--at that time a boy like myself--and two handsome grown-up
+daughters. The castle was a great fabric, partly old and partly new.
+It stood in the midst of a noble park, with tall trees and red deer in
+it. Its last possessor had been a stingy old bachelor; but after Lady
+Catherine's coming, the housekeeping was put on a grand scale. There
+was a retinue of English servants, and continual company. I remember
+it well, for just then my poor mother died. She had been a widow,
+living in a low cottage hard by the park-wall, with me and a gray cat
+for company, and her spinning-wheel for our support. I was but a child
+when she died; and having neither uncle nor aunt in the parish, they
+took me, I think, by her ladyship's order, into the castle, to run
+small errands, and help in the garden; from which post, in process of
+time, I rose to that of footman. Lady Catherine was in great odour
+with the country gentry for her high-breeding, her fashionable
+connections, and her almost boundless hospitality. She was popular
+with the tenantry too, for there was not a better managed estate in
+the west, and the factor had general orders against distress and
+ejectment.
+
+They said her ladyship had been reckoned a beauty in London
+drawing-rooms, and our parish thought her wonderfully grand for the
+gay dresses and rich jewellery she wore. Doubtless, these were but the
+cast-offs of the season, for regularly every spring she and the family
+went up to London, where they kept a fine house, and what is called
+the best society. How much the gay dresses had to do with the beauty
+is not for me to say, but Lady Catherine was a large, stately woman,
+with a dark complexion, and very brilliant red, which the servants
+whispered was laid on in old court fashion. Her manner to her equals
+was graceful, and to her inferiors, gracious; but there was a look of
+pride in her dark gray eyes, and a stern resolution about the
+compressed lips, which struck my childish mind with strange fear, and
+kept older hearts in awe. Her daughters, Florence and Agnes, were
+pictures of their mother--proud, gay ladies, but thought the flower of
+the county. Their portions were good, and they would have been
+co-heiresses but for their brother Arthur. He was the youngest, but so
+different from his mother and sisters, that you wouldn't have thought
+him of the same family. His fair face and clear blue eyes, his curly
+brown hair and merry look, had no likeness to them, though he was not
+a whit behind them in air or stature. At eighteen, there was not a
+finer lad in the shire; and he had a frank, kindly nature, which made
+the tenantry rejoice in the prospect of his being their future
+landlord.
+
+Near the castle there stood a farmhouse, occupied by an old man whose
+great-grandfather had cultivated the same fields. He was not rich, but
+much respected by his neighbours for an honest, upright life. His wife
+was as old as himself. They had been always easy-living people, and
+had no child but one only daughter. Menie was a delicately pretty
+girl, a little spoiled, perhaps, in her station, for both father and
+mother made a queen of her at home. She was never allowed to do any
+rough work, was always dressed, and her neighbours said, kept in the
+parlour. Menie had a great many admirers, but her parents thought her
+too good for everybody, and had a wonderful belief of their own, that
+she was somehow to get a great match, and be made a lady. There was a
+strange truth in that notion, as things turned out, for we servants at
+the castle began to remark how often the young master was seen going
+and coming about the farmhouse. Maybe the old farmer and his wife
+encouraged him, for they had a story concerning their own descent from
+some great chief of the western Highlands, and a family of wild proud
+cousins, who lived up among the hills; but of this I know nothing
+more, only that the farmer's daughter was the prettiest girl in the
+parish. Master Arthur was beginning his nineteenth year, and there was
+a storm up stairs, such as had never been heard before in the castle,
+when Lady Catherine found out what was going on, as I think through
+our minister, who considered it his duty to let her know what every
+one talked of, but nobody else would dare to mention in her presence.
+Whether the tempest was more than Master Arthur could stand, or
+whether Lady Catherine, in her fury--for she had no joke of a tongue
+and temper--said something of Menie which drove the boy to finish the
+business in his own way, was long a disputed point in the servants'
+hall; but next morning he was missed in the castle, and in the course
+of my duties the same forenoon, I brought a letter from the village
+post-office, the reading of which sent the young ladies off in
+hysterics, and made Lady Catherine retire to her room--for it
+announced that her heir of entail and the farmer's daughter were gone
+to get married in Glasgow.
+
+The young ladies recovered in about two hours, and her ladyship came
+out, but only to prepare for a journey to Paris; and quick work she
+made of it. Within twenty-four hours from the receipt of that letter,
+she and her daughters were off in the family carriage; the best part
+of the servants despatched to live at their town-house on board-wages;
+all the good rooms locked up, and nobody but the gardener, a
+kitchen-girl, and myself left with the old housekeeper at the castle.
+The next news we heard was, that the old farmer and his wife had set
+out to bring home their daughter and son-in-law, saying--poor people,
+in their pride or folly--that Menie and her husband could live with
+them till Providence cleared their way to the estate, which nobody
+could keep from them. I believe it was that speech, coming to her ears
+by some busy tongue or other, that made Lady Catherine so bitter
+afterwards; but Master Arthur and his bride came home to the
+farmhouse, where the parlour and the best bedroom were set apart for
+their use; and the poor old father and mother were proud to serve and
+entertain them. They were a young pair; for, as I have said, he was in
+his nineteenth, and she in her seventeenth year--a handsome pair, too,
+and more alike than one would have supposed from the difference of
+their birth. Menie had a genteel, quiet carriage, and really looked
+like a lady in the church-pew beside our young master, whom we seldom
+saw but at a distance--for his spirit was too high to come near the
+castle--and though it wasn't just told us, we all knew that going to
+the farmhouse would be reckoned the full value of our places.
+
+It was the fall of the year when Lady Catherine left us--all that
+winter she spent in Paris; and when the spring again came round, we
+heard of her opening house with even more than usual gaiety in London.
+That was a great season with her ladyship. In its course, she got her
+daughters both married to her mind. The one wedded a baronet, and the
+other a right honourable; but scarcely had the newspapers fully
+announced his sisters' wedding-breakfasts, and how the happy pairs set
+out, when Master Arthur was seized with sudden sickness. He had been
+fishing in a mountain-lake, and got drenched to the skin by the rain
+of a thunder-storm, overexerted himself in walking home, and caught a
+pleurisy. The whole parish felt for the poor young man, who had been
+so hardly used by his mother, and many were the inquiries made for him
+at the farmhouse. There was wild wo there, for every day he got worse;
+and within the week, Menie was left a widow. Lady Catherine had gone
+back to Paris at the close of the season; one of her married daughters
+was in Italy, and the other in Switzerland; but two cousins of their
+father were to be found in England; and Master Arthur was laid in the
+family vault, under our old parish church, before the intelligence
+reached them. Lady Catherine came back in deep mourning, and alone,
+but not a whit subdued in spirit: she had been heard to say, that her
+son was better dead than disgraced; and her estate was at least safe
+from being shared by peasants. Of her daughter-in-law, she never took
+the slightest notice. People said, the poor young widow's heart was
+broken, for she had thought more of Arthur than of his rank and
+property, and kept well out of the proud, hard woman's way. Her
+ladyship did not seem to like living at the castle; she stayed only to
+regulate matters with the factor at Martinmas, and went back again to
+London. Before she went, a report began to rise, that poor Menie had
+drooped and pined into a real sickness. They said it was a rapid
+decline, and a dog would have pitied the father and mother's grief.
+How strangely they strove to keep that only child, asking the prayers
+of the congregation, and sending for the best doctors; but all was in
+vain, for Menie died some days before Christmas. The girl had a simple
+wish to rest beside Arthur. It was the last words she spoke; and her
+relations believed that, being his wife, she had a right to a place in
+the vault without asking anybody's leave. So they laid her quietly
+beside her husband, no one about the castle caring to interfere,
+except the factor, who thought it incumbent on him to let her ladyship
+know.
+
+By way of answer to his letter, down came Lady Catherine herself, one
+dark, wintry morning; and, without so much as changing her travelling
+dress, she sent for four labourers, took them with her to the church,
+and saying her family burying-place was never intended for a peasant's
+daughter, made them take out Menie's coffin, and leave it at her
+parents' door. They said that the old pair never got over that sight;
+and the mother, in her bitterness of heart, declared that Providence
+had many a way to punish pride, and the woman who had disturbed her
+dead child, would never be suffered to keep her own grave in peace.
+
+The story made a marvellous stir in our parish, and grand as Lady
+Catherine was, she did not escape blame from all quarters. There was a
+great gathering of Highland relatives and Lowland friends to a second
+funeral, when they laid poor Menie among her humble kindred in the
+church-yard. It was but a little way from the park gate, and I stood
+there to see the crowd scatter off in that frosty forenoon. Many a sad
+and angry look was cast in the direction of the castle; but my
+attention was particularly drawn to an old man and two boys, who stood
+gazing on the place. He was close on the threescore-and-ten--they were
+little more than children; but all three had the same gaunt, yet
+powerful frames; dark-red hair, which in the old man was but slightly
+sprinkled with gray; almost swarthy complexions; and a fierce, hard
+look in the deep-set eyes. By after inquiries, I learned that these
+were the father of the Highland cousin family, and his two youngest
+sons. There were three elder brothers, but they were married, and
+settled on rough sheep-farms; and the old man intended to maintain the
+ancient honours of his house, by putting his younger boys into some of
+the learned professions.
+
+The married sisters, now heiresses of entail, never visited the castle
+again in my time. Lady Catherine came regularly at the terms from
+London, where she lived constantly; but her stay was no longer than
+the rent-roll required, and her maid said she rested but badly at
+night. So years passed on, and I rose in the service. On one of her
+visits, Lady Catherine thought I would do for a footman, which she
+happened to want, and sent me to be trained at the house in London.
+What great and gay doings I saw there needn't be told just now. Lady
+Catherine kept the best and most fashionable company, and she was
+never at home an evening that the house was not full. There was money
+to be made, and plenty of all things; but I did not like it; and
+having saved a trifle, one of her ladyship's sons-in-law--he was the
+best of the two--got me the place at the toll-bar.
+
+You remember me there, Master Willie, and what great times we had on
+Saturday afternoons. You may recollect, too, how many foot-passengers
+used to come and go. It was my amusement to watch them when I had
+nothing better to do; but of all who passed my window, there were none
+took my attention so completely as two young men, who always walked
+arm-in-arm, and seemed to be brothers. I thought I had seen their
+strongly-marked Highland faces before, and by degrees learned that
+they were none other than the old man's two sons, who had been at poor
+Menie's last funeral, but were now grown up, and studying for the
+medical profession at the college in Glasgow. Their father evidently
+kept them on short allowance, judging from their coarse tartan
+clothes, and continual munching of oaten cakes: but I was told they
+were hard students, and particularly clever in the anatomy class. One
+dark, dreary morning, about the Christmas-time, I noted that Lady
+Catherine and her family had been in my dreams all night--their grand
+house, and gay goings-on in London, mingling strangely with the old
+story of Master Arthur and the farmer's daughter. When the newspaper,
+which I shared with the schoolmaster, came, judge of my astonishment
+to read that her ladyship had died suddenly in a fit of apoplexy,
+which came upon her at the whist-table, and her remains had been
+conveyed to the family vault in Dumbartonshire. There was a lesson on
+the uncertainty of life! and it is my trust that I found in it a use
+of warning; but the continual news and strangers at the toll-bar, the
+exact gathering in of the dues, which was not always an easy task, and
+your own merry schoolmates, Master Willie, had in a manner shuffled it
+out of my mind before the second evening.
+
+It had been a dark, foggy day, and I went early to sleep, there being
+few travellers; but in the dead of night, between twelve and one, I
+was roused by a thundering summons at the toll-bar. The night was calm
+and starless, a mass of heavy clouds covered the sky, broken at times
+by gusts of moaning wind from the west, and broad bursts of moonlight.
+I threw on my coat, lit my lantern, and hurried out. There stood a
+large gig with three persons. They must have been tightly packed in
+it, and I never saw a more impatient horse. There was some delay in
+getting out the silver, and I had time to see that the two men who
+sat, one on each side, were the Highland brothers. There was a woman
+between them, in a dingy cloak and bonnet, with a thick black veil.
+She neither moved nor spoke, though the toll somehow puzzled the
+students. I was determined to have it any way, and one of them saying
+something to his companion in Gaelic, reached a half-crown to me. I
+knew I had no change, and told him so. 'I'll call in the morning,'
+said he; but the horse gave a bound, and the silver flew out of his
+fingers. Both the brothers looked down after it. I had a strange
+curiosity about their companion, and that instant a gust of wind blew
+back the veil, and the moonlight shone clear and full upon the face:
+it was the dead visage of Lady Catherine! I saw but one glance of it;
+the next moment the heavy veil had fallen. 'Get the silver yourself,
+and keep it all,' cried the two men, as I opened for them without a
+word: and from that day to this, no one has ever heard the story from
+me. I put the half-crown in the poor's-box next Sabbath. But, Master
+Willie, after that night I never cared for keeping the toll-bar. The
+sound of wheels coming after dark had always a strange effect on me,
+and I could never see a gig pass without shivering. So I gave up my
+situation, and took to the old trade of gardening again. The pleasant
+plants and flowers bring no dark stories to one's mind. But yonder's
+the laird: dinner will be ready by this time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And John was right; for it was ready, with a jovial party to despatch
+it. But I never saw my old friend after. He emigrated to Canada with
+his managing master in the following spring; and, having at least kept
+the real names with enjoined secrecy, it seems at this distance of
+time no breach of trust to repeat the toll-keeper's story.
+
+
+
+
+CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI.
+
+
+Among the lions of Rome during the last twenty years, not the least
+attractive, especially for literary visitors, was the celebrated
+Cardinal Mezzofanti. Easy of access to foreigners of every condition,
+simple, unpretending, cheerful, courteous even to familiarity, he
+never failed to make a most favourable impression upon his visitors;
+and marvellous as were the tales in circulation concerning him, the
+opportunity of witnessing more closely the exercise of his almost
+preternatural powers of language, served but to deepen the wonder with
+which he was regarded. The extent, the variety, and the solidity of
+his attainments, and, still more, his complete and ready command, for
+the purposes of conversation, of all the motley stores which he had
+laid up, were so far beyond all example, whether in ancient or modern
+times, as not only to place him in the very first rank of the
+celebrities of our generation, but to mark him out as one of the most
+extraordinary personages recorded in history.
+
+Giuseppe (Joseph) Mezzofanti was born at Bologna in 1774, of an
+extremely humble family. His father was a poor carpenter; and the
+eminence to which, by his own unassisted exertions, Mezzofanti,
+without once leaving his native city, attained in the exercise of the
+faculty of language--which is ordinarily cultivated only by the
+arduous and expensive process of visiting and travelling in the
+different countries in which each separate language is spoken--is not
+the least remarkable of the many examples of successful 'pursuit of
+knowledge under difficulties,' which literary history supplies. He was
+educated in one of the poor schools of his native city, which was
+under the care of the fathers of the celebrated Congregation of the
+Oratory; and the evidence of more than ordinary talent which he
+exhibited, early attracted the notice of one of the members of the
+order, to whose kind instruction and patronage Mezzofanti was indebted
+for almost all the advantages which he afterwards enjoyed. This good
+man--whose name was Respighi, and to whose judicious patronage of
+struggling genius science is also indebted for the eminent success of
+the distinguished naturalist Ranzani, the son of a Bolognese barber,
+and a fellow-pupil of Mezzofanti--procured for his young protege the
+instruction of the best masters he could discover among his friends.
+He himself, it is believed, taught him Latin; Greek fell to the share
+of Father Emmanuel da Ponte, a Spanish ex-Jesuit--the order had at
+this time been suppressed; and the boy received his first initiation
+into the great Eastern family of languages from an old Dominican,
+Father Ceruti, who, at the instance of his friend Respighi, undertook
+to teach him Hebrew. Beyond this point, Mezzofanti's knowledge of
+languages was almost exclusively the result of his own unassisted
+study.
+
+From a very early age, he was destined for the church, and he received
+holy orders about the year 1797. During the period of his probationary
+studies, however, he obtained, through the kindness of his friend F.
+Respighi, the place of tutor in the family of the Marescalchi, one of
+the most distinguished among the nobility of Bologna; and the
+opportunities for his peculiar studies afforded by the curious and
+valuable library to which he thus enjoyed free access, may probably
+have exercised a decisive influence upon his whole career.
+
+His attainments gradually attracted the notice of his fellow-citizens.
+In the year 1797, he was appointed professor of Arabic in the
+university; a few years later, he was named assistant-librarian of the
+city library; and in 1803, he succeeded to the important chair of
+Oriental Languages. This post, which was most congenial to his tastes,
+he held, with one interruption, for a long series of years. In 1812,
+he was advanced to a higher place in the staff of the library; and in
+1815, on the death of the chief librarian, Pozetti, he was appointed
+to fill his place. When it is considered how peculiarly engrossing the
+study of languages is known to be, and especially how attractive for
+an enthusiastic scholar like Mezzofanti, it might be supposed that for
+him the office of librarian could have been little more than a nominal
+one. But the library of Bologna to the present day bears abundant
+evidence that it was far otherwise. The admirable order in which the
+Greek and Oriental manuscripts are arranged, the excellent _catalogue
+raisonne_ of these manuscripts, and the valuable additions to the
+notices of them by Assemani and Talmar which it contains, are all the
+fruit of Mezzofanti's labour as librarian.
+
+During his occupancy of this office, too, he continued to hold his
+professorship of Oriental languages, and, for a considerable part of
+the time, that of Greek literature in addition. Nor was he exempt from
+those domestic cares and anxieties which are often the most painful
+drawback upon literary activity. The death of a brother, which threw
+upon him the care of an unprovided family of eleven children, was the
+severest trial sustained in Mezzofanti's otherwise comparatively quiet
+career; and by driving him to the ordinary expedient of distressed
+scholars--that of giving private lectures--it tended more than all his
+public occupations to trench upon his time, and to abridge his
+opportunities of application to his favourite study.
+
+Perhaps, indeed, of all who have ever attained to the same eminence in
+any department which Mezzofanti reached in that of languages, there
+hardly ever was one who had so little of the mere student in his
+character. In the midst of these varied and distracting occupations,
+he was at all times most assiduous in his attendance upon the sick in
+the public hospitals, of which he acted as the chaplain. There was
+another also of his priestly duties, for the zealous discharge of
+which he was scarcely less distinguished, and which became subsidiary,
+in a very remarkable way, to his progress in the knowledge of
+languages. In the absence, up to the present time, of any regular
+memoir of him, it is impossible to fix with precision the history of
+his progress in the acquisition of the several languages. But it is
+well known, that at a very early period he was master of all the
+leading European languages, and of those Oriental tongues which are
+comprised in the Semitic family. Very early, therefore, in
+Mezzofanti's career, he was marked out among the entire body of the
+Bolognese clergy as in an especial manner the 'foreigners' confessor'
+(_confessario dei forestieri_). In him, visitors from every quarter of
+the globe had a sure and ready resource; and in several cases, it was
+to the very necessity thus created he was indebted for the
+acquisition, or at least the rudimentary knowledge, of a new language.
+More than once, it occurred that a foreigner, introduced to the
+_confessario dei forestieri_, for the purpose of being confessed,
+found it necessary to go through the preliminary process of
+_instructing his intended confessor_. For Mezzofanti's marvellous and
+almost instinctive power of grasping and systematising the leading
+characteristics even of the most original language, the names of a few
+prominent ideas in the new idiom sufficed to open a first means of
+communication. His prodigious memory retained with iron tenacity every
+word or phrase once acquired; his power of methodising, by the very
+exercise, became more ready and more perfect with each new advance in
+the study; and, above all, a faculty which seemed peculiar to himself,
+and which can hardly be described as other than instinctive, of
+seizing and comprehending by a single effort the general outlines of
+the grammatical structure of a language from a few faint
+indications--as a comparative anatomist will build up an entire
+skeleton from a single bone--enabled him to overleap all the
+difficulties which beset the path of ordinary linguists, and to
+attain, almost by intuition, at least so much of the required language
+as enabled him to interchange thought with sufficient freedom and
+distinctness for the purposes of this religious observance, which is
+so important in the eyes of Catholics. And he used to tell, that it
+was in this way he acquired more than one of his varied store of
+languages. For it will hardly be believed, that this prodigy of the
+gift of tongues had never, till his forty-eighth year, travelled
+beyond the precincts of his native province; and that, up to the
+period of his death, his most distant excursion from Rome, in which
+city he had fixed his residence in 1832, did not exceed a hundred
+miles--namely, to Naples, for the purpose of visiting the Chinese
+College which is there established.
+
+It is true that at the period of which we speak, Bologna lay upon the
+high-road to Rome, and that travellers more frequently rested for a
+space upon their journey, than in these days of steam-boat and railway
+communication. But, even then, the opportunities of intercourse with
+foreign-speaking visitors in Bologna were few and inconsiderable
+compared with the prodigious advances which, under all his
+disadvantages, Mezzofanti contrived to make. The ordinary European
+languages presented but little difficulty; the frequent passings and
+repassings of the allied forces during the later years of the war,
+afforded him a full opportunity of acquiring Russian; and the
+occasional establishment of Austrian troops in Bologna, brought him
+into contact with the motley tongues of that vast empire--the Magyar,
+the Czechish, the Servian, the Walachian, and the Romani; but beyond
+this, even his spirit of enterprise had no vent in his native city;
+and all his further conquests were exclusively the result due to his
+own private and unassisted study.
+
+His fame, nevertheless, began to extend to foreign countries. Among
+many distinguished foreigners to whose acquaintance his extraordinary
+faculties as a linguist became a passport, was the celebrated Russian
+general, Suwarrow; and with him Mezzofanti long maintained the most
+friendly relations. From the Grand-Duke of Tuscany he received a
+pressing invitation to fix himself at Florence; and Napoleon himself,
+with that engrossing spirit which desired to make Paris the centre of
+all that is great in science, in art, and in literature, offered him a
+most honourable and lucrative appointment, on condition of his
+removing to the French capital. But Mezzofanti declined both the
+invitations, and continued to reside in his native city, till the year
+1832. At the close of those political disturbances, of which Bologna
+was the centre, in the early part of the pontificate of Gregory XVI.,
+it was resolved to send a deputation to Rome on the part of the
+citizens. Of this deputation, Mezzofanti, as the chief celebrity of
+the city, was naturally a leader; and the pope, who had long known
+him, and who, before his elevation to the pontificate, had frequently
+corresponded with him on philological subjects, urged him so earnestly
+to remain at Rome, that with all his love of Bologna he was induced to
+consent. He was immediately appointed, in 1832, a canon of St Peter's;
+and on the translation of the celebrated Angelo (now Cardinal) Mai to
+the office of secretary of the Propaganda, he was named to succeed
+him in the honourable post of librarian of the Vatican.
+
+In this office Mezzofanti continued till the year 1840, when, in
+conjunction with the distinguished scholar just named, he was raised
+to the cardinalate. During the interval since his fixing his residence
+at Rome, he had enjoyed the confidence and friendship of Gregory XVI.;
+and although his narrow resources were utterly unequal to the very
+considerable expense which the state of a cardinal entails, Gregory,
+in acknowledgment of his distinguished merit, himself settled the
+necessary income upon the humble Bolognese; and even, with
+characteristic delicacy, supplied from his own means the equipage and
+other appurtenances which a new cardinal is obliged to provide on
+entering upon his office.
+
+From this period, Mezzofanti continued to reside at Rome. Far,
+however, from relaxing in the pursuit of his favourite study after his
+elevation, he only used the opportunities thus afforded for the
+purpose of cultivating it with more effect. When the writer of these
+pages first had the honour of being presented to him, he was in the
+full flush of the excitement of a new study--that of the language of
+the California Indians, two of whom had recently come as pupils to the
+College of the Propaganda; and up to his very last year, the same zeal
+continued unabated. His death occurred March 16, 1849, in the
+seventy-fifth year of his age, and was most probably hastened by the
+excitement and distress caused by the political troubles of the
+period.
+
+Such is a brief outline of the quiet and uneventful career of this
+extraordinary man. It remains that we give a short account of the
+nature and extent of his prodigious attainments as a linguist. It is
+observed by the author of an interesting paper read a few weeks since
+at a meeting of the Philological Society, that, taking the account of
+the linguistic accomplishments of King Mithridates even in the most
+exaggerated form in which it is given by the ancients, who represent
+him as speaking the languages of twenty-two nations, it fades into
+insignificance in contrast with the known and ascertained attainments
+of Mezzofanti. A Russian traveller, who published in 1846 a collection
+of _Letters from Rome_, writes of Mezzofanti:--'Twice I have visited
+this remarkable man, a phenomenon as yet unparalleled in the learned
+world. He spoke eight languages fluently in my presence. He expressed
+himself in Russian very purely and correctly. Even now, in advanced
+life, he continues to study fresh dialects. He learned Chinese not
+long ago. I asked him to give me a list of all the languages and
+dialects in which he was able to express himself, and he sent me the
+name of GOD written with his own hand in _fifty-six_ languages, of
+which thirty were European, not including their dialects; seventeen
+Asiatic, also without counting their dialects; five African, and four
+American!' We should add, however, from the cardinal's own avowal to
+ourselves, that of the fifty-six languages here alluded to, there were
+some which he did not profess to speak, and with which his
+acquaintance was more limited than with the rest; an avowal the
+honesty of which will be best appreciated when it is considered, on
+the one hand, how difficult it would have been to test his knowledge
+of the vast majority among these languages; and, on the other, how
+marvellously perfect was his admitted familiarity with those which he
+did profess really to know.
+
+The author of the memoir submitted to the Philological Society, has
+collected a number of notices of Mezzofanti by travellers in Italy,
+who had seen him at different periods of his career. Mr Stewart Rose,
+in 1817, tells of him that a Smyrniote servant, who was with him,
+declared that he might pass for a Greek or a Turk throughout the
+dominions of the Grand Seignior. A few years later, while he was still
+residing at Bologna, he was visited by the celebrated Hungarian
+astronomer, Baron Zach, editor of the well-known _Correspondences
+Astronomiques_, on occasion of the annular eclipse which was then
+visible in Italy. 'This extraordinary man,' writes the baron, February
+1820, 'speaks thirty-two languages, living and dead--in the manner I
+am going to describe. He accosted me in Hungarian, with a compliment
+so well-turned, and in such excellent Magyar, that I was quite taken
+by surprise. He afterwards spoke to me in German, at first in good
+Saxon, and then in the Austrian and Swabian dialects, with a
+correctness of accent that amazed me to the last degree, and made me
+burst into a fit of laughter at the thought of the contrast between
+the language and the appearance of this astonishing professor. He
+spoke English to Captain Smyth, Russian and Polish to Prince
+Volkonski, with the same volubility as if he had been speaking his
+native tongue.' As a last trial, the baron suddenly accosted him in
+_Walachian_, when, 'without hesitation, and without appearing to
+remark what an out-of-the-way dialect had been taken, away went the
+polyglot with equal volubility;' and Zach adds, that he even knew the
+Zingller or gipsy language, which had long proved a puzzle to himself.
+Molbech, a Danish traveller, who had an interview with him in 1820,
+adds to his account of this miraculous polyglotist, that 'he is not
+merely a linguist, but is well acquainted with literary history and
+bibliography, and also with the library under his charge. He is a man
+of the finest and most polished manners, and at the same time, of the
+most engaging good-nature and politeness.'
+
+It would be easy to multiply anecdotes, shewing the enthusiasm with
+which Mezzofanti entered on the study of language after language. He
+sought out new tongues with an insatiable passion, and may be said to
+have never been happy but when engaged in the mastering of words and
+grammars. No degree of bad health interrupted his pursuit. Till the
+day of his death, he was engaged in his darling task: life closed on
+him while so occupied. He died just as he had acquired a thorough
+proficiency in Californian--a singular instance of the power of mind
+exercised on a favourite subject, and shewing what may be accomplished
+when men set their heart on it. The career of this remarkable
+linguist, however, cannot be considered exemplary. We would recommend
+no person to plunge headlong into an absorbing passion for any
+accomplishment. Mezzofanti was a curiosity--a marvel--the wonder of
+the world of letters; and it is chiefly as such that a notice of him
+here will be considered interesting.
+
+
+
+
+CURIOSITIES OF POSTHUMOUS CHARITY.
+
+
+The curious observer, in his rambles about town, is occasionally
+struck with some singular demonstrations for which he is at a loss to
+account. Sometimes they assume a benevolent form, and sometimes they
+have a holiday-making aspect, yet with a touch of the lugubrious. In
+London, or in some one of the thriving towns lying within a score of
+miles of it, he strolls into a church, where he sees a number of
+loaves of bread piled up at the back of the communion-table, or
+ranged, as they are in a baker's shop, upon shelves against the wall.
+It is a pleasant sight, but apt to be somewhat puzzling. Perhaps he
+saunters into a country church-yard, and there finds amongst the rank
+grass and moss-grown and neglected memorials of the silent multitude,
+one trim and well-tended monument, uninvaded by cryptogamia, free from
+all stain of the weather, and the surrounding grassy sward neatly mown
+and fenced in, it may be, with budding willow branches or a circle of
+clipped box. Or he finds his way through a suburban village, blocked
+up some fine morning by a crowd of poor women and girls, clustered
+round the door of a retired tradesman or the curate of the place, from
+which three or four at a time emerge with gratified looks, and go
+about their business, while others enter in their turn. Such
+demonstrations as these, and we might mention many others, have their
+origin in certain charitable dispositions and bequests, many of which
+are of considerable antiquity. There is one in operation to this day,
+near Winchester, which dates from the time of William of Wykeham; by
+virtue of which every traveller passing that way, if he choose to make
+the demand, is regaled with a pint of beer and a meal of bread and
+cheese. There is another similar antique charity in operation in
+Wiltshire, near Devizes, where, on one occasion, the dispenser of the
+benevolence, in the exercise of his privilege to feed the hungry,
+threw a loaf of bread into the carriage of George III. as the royal
+_cortege_ passed the spot. The name of these post-mortem charities is
+legion. They abound in every city, burgh, town, and hamlet in England,
+to an extent absolutely startling to a person who looks into the
+subject for the first time. The number of them belonging to the city
+of London alone--that is, originating among her citizens, and mostly
+dispensed under the direction of the several worshipful companies--can
+hardly be fewer than 1500, if so few. The parochial charities only of
+London city yield an income of nearly L.40,000 a year. The history of
+all these charities would fill many bulky volumes. We propose merely
+to take a passing glance at a few, which are interesting from their
+singularity, or from the light which they reflect upon the benevolent
+aspect of a certain section of society in times long past; and which,
+perhaps, may be found in some degree instructive and suggestive, as
+illustrating the operation of post-mortem benevolence.
+
+At St ---- Church, not a hundred miles from St Martin's Le Grand,
+there prevails an amusing instance of the perversion of the funds of a
+charity to purposes which could not possibly have been intended by the
+founder. Many centuries ago, a Roman Catholic gentleman, dying,
+bequeathed to that church a small estate, the proceeds of which he
+directed should be devoted to the purpose of supplying the officiating
+priests with refreshment on the Sabbath-day. The Roman Catholic
+service has long since given place to a Protestant one, and the band
+of officiating priests has dwindled down to one clergyman--while the
+value of the estate has increased perhaps fiftyfold. At the present
+moment, the sum which the estate originally produced is paid over to
+the church-wardens, who are at times a little puzzled as to what to do
+with it. They get rid of a good portion in this way: at every service
+which is held in the church, they place a bottle of the best sherry
+which can be procured for money upon the vestry-table; from this the
+'officiating priest' strengthens his inner man with a glass or two
+before commencing his ministrations, and then the church-wardens sit
+down and finish the remainder comfortably by themselves, while the
+reverend gentleman is in the reading-desk or the pulpit. The cost of
+the wine, however, does not amount to half the sum in their hands, and
+the remainder goes to form a fund from which the church is painted,
+repaired, decorated, and kept in apple-pie order--the whole fabric
+undergoing a thorough revision and polish both outside and in as often
+as a pretext can be found. What becomes of the bulk of the
+property--the large surplus arising from the increased value of the
+devised estate--this deponent sayeth not: the reader may be in a
+condition to guess by the time he has read to the end of this paper.
+
+In the year 1565, a Mr Edward Taylor willed to the Leathersellers'
+Company a messuage, tenement, and melting-house, in the parish of St
+Olave, and other messuages in the same parish, upon condition that
+they should, quarterly and for ever, distribute among the poorest and
+neediest people in the Poultry Compter one kilderkin of beer and
+twelve pennyworths of bread, and the same to the poor of Wood Street
+Compter, Newgate, and the Fleet, the King's Bench, and the Marshalsea
+prisons. Under this bequest, the Company are at present in possession
+of considerable property, vastly increased in value since the date of
+the will; in respect of which property, 1s. worth of penny-loaves, and
+2s. in money, in lieu of beer, are sent by them every quarter to the
+poor prisoners in each of the prisons mentioned in the original
+testament!
+
+Robert Rogers devised in 1601 the sum of L.400 to the Leathersellers'
+Company, 'to be employed in lands, the best pennyworth they could
+get;' and that the house should have 40s. of it a year for ever. The
+remainder was to be bestowed upon poor scholars, students of
+divinity--two of Oxford, and two of Cambridge, for four years; and
+after them to two others of each university; and after them, to
+others; and so on for ever. He also, by the same will, devised L.200
+to be lent to four young men, merchant adventurers, at L.6, 13s. 4d.,
+for the L.200, interest. The whole of the interest was to be spent in
+bread--to be distributed among poor prisoners--and coal for poor
+persons, with the exception of some small fees and gratuities to the
+parish clerk and beadle, for their trouble in carrying out his
+intentions.
+
+Lewisham, once a town in Kent, but now nothing more than a suburb of
+London, enjoys the benefactions of the Rev. Abraham Colfe, who, in
+1656, bequeathed property for the maintenance of numerous charities.
+Some of them are singularly characteristic. Having provided for the
+erection of three strong alms-houses, he directed that certain
+alms-bodies should be periodically chosen, who were to be 'godly poor
+inhabitants of Lewisham, and being single persons, and threescore
+years old, past their hard bodily labour, and able to say the Lord's
+Prayer, the Belief, and the Ten Commandments,' &c. &c. All these
+alms-bodies were to have '3d. each allowed them every day for their
+comfortable sustenance--that is, 21d. a week--to be paid them every
+month during their _single_ life, and as long as they should behave
+themselves honestly and godly, and duly frequent the parish church.'
+They were to be summarily removed if guilty of profane or wicked
+conduct. The alms-bodies were not to exceed five in number at any one
+time. He directed a buttery to be built for their convenience, and
+also a little brick room, with a window in it, for the five
+alms-bodies to assemble in daily for prayer, and that the schoolmaster
+of the reading-school should pray with them there. He further directed
+the enclosure of gardens, of sixteen feet broad at the least, for
+their recreation. Mr Colfe also left money for lectures at Lewisham
+Church, as well as a sum for the purchase of Bibles, until they should
+amount to the number of thirty or forty, which were to be chained to
+the pews, or otherwise preserved; and he left 12d. a quarter to the
+clerk for writing down the names of those that should use them; also
+2s. 8d. to him for taking care of the clock and dial; also, 10s. for a
+sermon on the 5th of November, and 12d. in bread for the poor who
+should come and hear it, and 6d. to the parish clerk; also 20s., to be
+distributed a penny at a time, to the children and servants who could
+best say their catechism, and 6d. to the minister for catechising
+them; also, a yearly sum of money for distributing on every
+Lord's-day after the morning service, seven penny wheaten loaves, to
+seven of the most honest, peaceable, and godly poor householders of
+Lewisham, who could say the Lord's Prayer, the Belief, and the Ten
+Commandments; also, 5s. a year to poor maid-servants, who at the time
+of their marriage had continued seven years with their master or
+mistress in Lewisham; with numerous other bequests. He further left
+moneys for the preservation of his father's, grandfather's, his
+wife's, and his own monument--his own being an oaken plank oiled, and
+a stone 'a foot square every way, and three feet long.' The stone and
+plank were removed many years ago, and an inscribed tablet has been
+set into the outer wall of the church.
+
+The practice of leaving money for the sustentation of tomb-stones and
+monuments, appears to have prevailed for many generations; and may be
+very naturally accounted for, by the repugnance which most men would
+feel, to the idea of having their bones knocked about by the sexton's
+spade, and then wheeled off to the bone-house, if there happens to be
+a bone-house, or shot into the neighbouring river, or on a farmer's
+dung-heap, if there is no such convenience as a bone-house at hand. It
+was this feeling that induced the celebrated sculptor, Chantrey, to
+make sure of a quiet resting-place for his remains.[2] In so doing, he
+was, though perhaps unconsciously, but following the example of many
+who have gone before him. We have more than once encountered a sober
+party upon their annual visit to some country church-yard tomb, of
+which, by virtue of some bequest--which provides them with a good
+dinner upon the occasion--they are the appointed guardians. The
+worshipful members of the London companies sometimes choose to rest
+from their labours in a rural grave; and when they do, survivors are
+always to be found not unwilling to enjoy once a year a pensive
+holiday, coupled with the creature comforts, which the quiet comrade
+whose behest they execute has taken care to provide for them. It would
+be perhaps difficult to find a single church in all the little towns
+and hamlets within a dozen miles of London, which does not contain one
+tenant at least who has thus secured permanent possession of his last
+resting-place. So strong is this feeling in some individuals, that
+they shrink from confiding even in the stone-vaults in the interior of
+a city church. Thus, Sir William Rawlins, not so very long ago,
+bequeathed a certain sum of money for the preservation of his tomb and
+monument in Bishopsgate Church. The bequest provides for the
+remuneration of the visitors, who are specified parish functionaries,
+and entertains them with a good dinner on the day of the annual
+visitation, which they are bound to make--to inspect the monument and
+tomb, and to guarantee their good condition. In many instances, the
+sum originally devised for the sustentation of a grave or monument is
+not sufficient, in the present day, to remunerate residents in London
+for looking after it, and the money has been transferred to the parish
+in which the testator lies, and has become the perquisite of the
+sexton.
+
+In the year 1635, one John Fletcher bequeathed to the Fishmongers'
+Company the sum of L.120, to supply 10s. every month to the poor of St
+Peter's Hospital, to provide them with a dinner on Sunday.
+
+In the year 1653, Mr James Glassbrook bequeathed, after his wife's
+death, the sum of L.500 in the following words: 'and L.500 more to
+such uses as follow--to the poor of the parish of St Bololph Without,
+in which I dwell, L.5 in bread yearly; L.5 to the poor of St Giles's
+yearly in bread; to the poor of St Sepulchre's yearly in bread, L.5,
+to be given every Sabbath-day in the churches.' The amount of bread at
+the present time given away in London under this disposition,
+supplemented by some smaller bequests, is sixty-eight half-quartern
+loaves a week. The same poor persons, when they once get on the list,
+continue to receive the bread during their whole lives, unless they
+cease to reside in the parish, or are struck off the list of
+pensioners for misconduct.
+
+One Daniel Midwinter, in 1750, left L.1000 to the Stationers' Company,
+to pay L.14 a year to the parish of St Faith's; and a like sum to
+Hornsey parish, to be applied in apprenticing two boys or girls of the
+several parishes, and to fit them out in clothes. At the present time,
+the money is paid over to the parties receiving the apprentices, with
+a recommendation to lay it out in clothes for the children.
+
+By the will of John Stock, the parish of Christchurch received, among
+other legacies, the sum of L.100, the interest of which was directed
+to be applied in the following manner: one guinea to be paid to the
+vicar for a sermon to be preached by him on Good-Friday; 10s. to the
+curate for reading the prayers on that day; _and the remainder to be
+equally distributed among such poor women as chose to remain and
+receive the sacrament after the service!_
+
+A Mr James Wood, amongst other curious provisions, devised to the
+church-wardens of the parish of St Nicholas Cole Abbey, the sum of
+15s. annually, to be given away in twopences to such poor people as
+they should meet in the streets when going and returning from church
+on a specified day.
+
+The inhabitants of Watling Street, and other districts in the vicinity
+of St Antholin's Church, are familiar with the sound of what is known
+in the neighbourhood as the 'Fish-bell.' This is a bell which rings
+out every Friday night from St Antholin's tower, to summon the
+inhabitants to evening prayers: very few people attend to the summons,
+which comes at an inconvenient time for that busy locality. There
+stands almost against the walls of the church a pump, which is always
+in good repair, and yields an excellent supply of water, greatly to
+the convenience of the neighbourhood. Both the pump and the prayers
+are the legacy of an old fish-woman of the last century. It is said,
+that for forty years of her life she was in the habit of purchasing
+fish in the small hours of the morning at Billingsgate Market; these
+she washed and prepared for her customers at a small spring near St
+Antholin's Church, and afterwards cried them about the town upon her
+head. Having prospered in her calling, she bequeathed a sufficient sum
+to perpetuate a weekly service in the church, and a good and efficient
+pump erected over the spring of which she had herself enjoyed a
+life-long privilege.
+
+In St George's in the East, there is a charity, well-known as Raine's
+Charity, which was founded by Henry Raine, Esq., in the earlier part
+of the last century. The charity consists of two endowed schools,
+sufficiently well provided for the maintenance and instruction of
+fifty boys and as many girls, and the payment and support of a master
+and mistress. It is one part of the system of management, that six
+pupils of either sex leave the schools every year, to make room for as
+many new ones. By a somewhat whimsical provision in the will of the
+founder, a species of annual lottery comes off at the discharge of the
+six girls. If they have behaved well, have been attentive and
+obedient, and punctual and exact in the observance of their religious
+duties, they are entitled to draw lots for the sum of L.100,
+which will be paid to the fortunate holder of the prize as a
+marriage-portion upon her wedding-day. It is further provided, that
+the wedding is to take place on the 1st day of May; and that, in
+addition to the portion, L.5 is to be expended upon a marriage-dinner
+and a merry-making.
+
+Bequests for the portioning of poor girls and virtuous servant-maids
+are, indeed, not at all uncommon. In the village of Bawburgh, in
+Norfolk, there is one founded in the last century by a Quaker
+gentleman, who left a sum of money, the interest of which is shared
+among the servant-girls in the place who get married. The amount is
+not payable until twelve months after the wedding. The village being
+small, it will sometimes happen that a good sum accumulates before an
+applicant comes forward who can substantiate a claim upon it. The
+object of such bequests as these is sufficiently plain: the donors had
+evidently in view the counteracting of the wretched tendency of the
+old poor-law, which, by giving the mother of an illegitimate child a
+claim upon the parish funds, actually placed a premium upon female
+frailty.
+
+In London, there are charitable dispositions and bequests for the
+nursery of every virtue that could be named, but more especially of
+industry, providence, and thrift. A man may be brought into the world
+by voluntary contributions; he may be maintained and educated at a
+foundling asylum, if his parents, as thousands do, choose to throw him
+upon the public compassion; he may ride into a good business upon the
+back of a borrowed capital, for which he pays but a nominal interest;
+and if he fail to realise a competence by his own endeavours, he may
+perchance revel in some corporation sinecure, or, at the worst,
+luxuriate in an alms-house, and be finally deposited in the
+church-yard--and all at other people's expense. On the other hand, if
+he be made of the right metal, he may carve his way to fortune and to
+civic fame, and may die full of years and honours--in which case, he
+is pretty sure to add one more to the list of charitable donors whose
+legacies go to swell the expectancies of the city poor. It would be
+difficult for any eccentric testator in the present day to hit upon a
+new method of disposing of the wealth which he can no longer keep.
+Every device for the exercise of posthumous generosity seems to have
+been exhausted long ago.
+
+The trust-estates, the source of so many of the city of London
+charities, are mostly, if not all, under the control of the corporate
+companies. How they are managed, is a secret altogether unknown to the
+public, and of which, indeed, the livery and freemen of some of the
+companies have but a very limited knowledge. The revenue derived from
+the trust-estates, according to their own shewing, is not much less
+than L.90,000 a year; but they have large revenues, of which they do
+not choose to shew any account at all. These are supposed to arise
+mainly from the increase in value of property originally devised to
+charitable uses--which increase it is their custom to appropriate as
+they please. 'Thus, for example,' says a writer on this subject, 'if a
+testator left to any one of these companies a piece of land then worth
+L.10 per annum, directing that L.10 should be annually appropriated to
+the support of a school, and the land subsequently increases in value
+to L.500, then the master and wardens of the company claim the right
+of appropriating to their own uses the surplus of L.490. In no
+equitable view of the case can this be deemed to be private property.'
+It seems probable that these things will be looked into before long.
+From a motion lately made in the House of Commons, we learn that a
+thorough investigation is contemplated into the management and
+application of all charities throughout the kingdom, the inquiry to be
+conducted at the cost of the several charities, the largest of which
+are not to pay more than L.50, and the smaller ones twopence in the
+pound, upon the amount of their capital. Perhaps this inquiry may lead
+to the recovery of some of the charities which are stated to be lost,
+and of which nothing but the titles, under the denomination of
+So-and-so's gift, remain upon the corporation records.
+
+The secret management of the trust-estates contrasts curiously with
+the pompous exhibition which some of the worshipful companies make of
+their deeds of benevolence. Some of the smaller and older churches of
+London are stuck over in the interior with enormous black boards, as
+big as the church door almost, upon which are emblazoned, in gilt
+letters, the donations to the poor, to the school, to the repair of
+the fabric, &c. from the worshipful company of This and That, from the
+days of King James--the inscriptions of whose time are illegible
+through the smoke and damp of centuries--down to the days of Queen
+Victoria, and the donations of last Christmas, fresh and glittering
+from the hands of the gilder. Thus, the interesting old church of St
+Bartholomew the Great is lined with the eleemosynary exploits of the
+worshipful Ironmongers' Company, whose multitudinous banners of black
+and gold are in abominable discordance with the severe and simple
+architecture of the ancient edifice. 'Let not thy left hand know what
+thy right hand doeth,' is a monition apparently not much in repute
+among the corporate companies.
+
+The reader may gather from the perusal of the above desultory
+examples, selected from a mass of similar ones, some idea of the
+enormous amount of the funds, intended for benevolent purposes, which
+Christian men have bequeathed to the world; and they may perhaps serve
+to enlighten the curious observer on the subject of some of the
+unobtrusive phenomena which occasionally excite his admiration and
+arouse his conjecture. They are the silent charities of men in the
+silent land. How much good they do, and how much harm, and on which
+side the balance is likely to lie--these are questions which for the
+present we have neither time nor space to discuss.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] See _Chambers's Pocket Miscellany_, vol. iv.
+
+
+
+
+LABOUR STANDS ON GOLDEN FEET.
+
+
+The condition of the working-classes in this country is a subject of
+intense interest to all thinking men; but it is profitable as well as
+amusing to transfer our attention sometimes to the same portions of
+society in other countries. In Germany, for instance, the people are
+as busy as we are with their 'hand-workers,' and the questions of
+freedom of industry and general instruction are as warmly discussed as
+at home. We have now before us a little volume by the philosopher and
+historian, Zschokke, which, in the form of a fictitious narrative,
+treats very fully of the status of the mechanic in Fatherland; and we
+are tempted to cull a few extracts which may afford the reader
+materials for perhaps an interesting comparison.[3]
+
+The real hero of the story is Hand-labour, and his progress is
+described throughout three generations of men. He is the Thought of
+the book, illustrated by adventure and vicissitude; living when the
+human agents die in succession; and leaving a distinct and continuous
+track in the reader's mind, when the names and persons fade or
+conglomerate in his memory. And yet some of these names and persons
+are not feebly individualised. The father, the son, and the grandson
+stand well out upon the canvas; and while the family likeness is
+strictly preserved from generation to generation, the men are seen
+independent and alone, each in his own special development. The
+patriarch was a travelling tinker, who wheeled his wares about the
+country in a barrow; and then, rising in the world, attained the
+dignity of a hawker, with a cart of goods, drawn by a little gray ass.
+His son Jonas trotted on foot beside him in all his journeys, dining
+like his father on bread and water, and sleeping in barns or stables.
+But when the boy was old enough, he was turned off to pick up his own
+subsistence like the redbreasts, the sparrows, and the woodpeckers.
+'Listen, my lad,' quoth Daddy Thaddaeus; 'this is the spring. Look for
+sloes and elderberries, rose-leaves and others for ointment; marjoram,
+spurge, and thyme, wherever thou mayst and canst. These we will sell
+to the apothecaries. In summer, gather basketfuls of strawberries,
+bilberries, and raspberries; carry them to the houses: they will yield
+money. In winter, let us gather and dry locks of wool, for the
+saddlers and tapestry-makers, and withes for the basket and mat
+manufacturers. From the table of the bountiful God, a thousand crumbs
+are falling for us: these we will pick up. They will give thee cheese
+to thy bread, and a piece of meat to thy potatoes. Only get to work! I
+will give thee a little barrow, and a belt for thy shoulders.'
+
+This was his first essay in business on his own account, and he worked
+hard and throve well. His separation from his father taught him how to
+stand on his own legs--an important piece of knowledge in a world that
+is as full of leave-takings as of meetings; and when they did come
+together, and the boy counted out his kreutzers, and the father patted
+him approvingly on the cheek, that boy would have changed places with
+no prince that ever sat on a throne. Jonas was at length apprenticed
+to a girdler, or worker in metals; and the old tinker in due time
+died, leaving his son the parting advice, to 'work, save, and pray,'
+and a box containing a thousand guilders.
+
+Jonas's apprenticeship passed on pretty much according to universal
+rule; that is, he did the drudgery of the house as well as learned the
+trade, and received kicks and cuffs from the journeymen. But in five
+years his servitude was out, and he was a journeyman himself. He was
+now, by the rules of his guild, obliged to travel for improvement; he
+spent five or six years in going to and fro upon the earth, and then
+came back to Altenheim an accomplished girdler. To become a master, it
+was necessary to prepare his 'master-piece,' as a specimen of what he
+could do; and the task allotted to him was to engrave on copper,
+without rule or compass, the prince's family-crest, and then to gild
+the work richly. This accomplished, he was received into the guild of
+masters with much pomp, strange ceremonies, and old-fashioned
+feasting--all at the charge of the poor beginner. 'Without reckoning
+the heavy expenses of his mastership, or of clothing, linen, and
+furniture, in the hired lodgings and workshops, no small sum was
+requisite for the purchase of different kinds of tools--a lathe, an
+anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers,
+chisels, tongs, scissors, &c.; and also for the purchase of brass and
+pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone,
+borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken,
+without premium, an apprentice, the child of very poor people, to help
+him. He would have been very glad to put the rest of his money out to
+interest again; but he had to provide the means of subsistence for at
+least one year in advance, for he had to begin with neither wares nor
+customers.'
+
+Jonas now appears in the character of a lover, and his wooing is one
+of the most beautiful pictures in the book. His choice has fallen upon
+a servant-girl, whom he had known in boyhood.
+
+'One morning, Master Jordan sent his apprentice with a message: "Miss
+Fenchel was to come to him directly: he had found a good place for
+her." Martha hastened thither gladly.
+
+'"Hast thou found a place for me, dear Jonas?" asked she, giving him
+her hand gracefully. "Thank God! I began to fear becoming troublesome
+to our kind friends. Come, tell me where?"
+
+'He looked anxiously into her joyous blue eyes; then, in confusion,
+down to the ground; then again upwards to the roof of the room, and
+round the four sides, as though he were seeking something lost.
+
+'"Come, tell me, then?" repeated she. "Why art thou silent?"
+
+'He collected himself, and began, hesitating: "It is--but Martha--thou
+must not be angry with me."
+
+'In surprise, she smiled. "Angry with thee, Jonas! If I would be, and
+should be, could I be?"
+
+'"Listen, Martha; I will shew thee--I must tell thee--I know a man
+anxious to have thy heart and hand--who--even who"----
+
+'"O Jonas, reproach me rather, but do not make mockery of me, a poor
+maiden!" exclaimed she, shocked or hurt, while her face lost all its
+colour, and she turned from him.
+
+'"Martha, look at me. He is assuredly no bad man. I will bring him to
+thee; I will give him to thee myself."
+
+'"No, Jonas! no! From thee, least of all, can I receive a lover."
+
+'"From me, least of all!" asked he with visible emotion. "From me,
+least of all! And if--I don't know--if I would give thee myself--Look
+at me, Martha! Tell me."
+
+'Here silence ensued. She stood before him with downcast eyes and
+glowing cheeks, and played with her apron-string. Then, as if still
+doubting, she looked up again, her eyes swimming with tears, and said,
+with trembling lips: "What must I say, then?"
+
+'Jonas took courage, and whispered, half aloud: "Dost thou love me
+with all thy heart?"
+
+'Half aloud, Martha whispered back: "Thy heart knows it."
+
+'"Canst thou be satisfied with dry bread and salt?"
+
+'"Rather salt from thee than tears from me!"
+
+'"Martha, I will work for thee; wilt thou save for me?"
+
+'"I will be sparing in everything, except my own pains!"
+
+'"Well then, darling, here is my hand! Take it. Wilt thou be mine?"
+
+'"Was I not thine eight years ago and more? Even as a child? Yet no!
+It ought not to be, Jonas."
+
+'Alarmed, he looked in her face, and asked: "Not be? and why?"
+
+'"Think well over it, Jonas! Do thyself no injustice. I am a poor
+creature, without portion or property. Any other burgher's daughter in
+the town would be glad to give thee her hand and heart, and a good
+dowry beside. Thou mightst live much better."
+
+'"Say nothing about that," cried Jonas, stretching out both his hands
+imploringly. "Be still: I shall feel that I am but beginning to live,
+if thou wilt promise to live with me."
+
+'"Live, then!" said she, in blushing embarrassment, and gave him her
+hand.
+
+'He took her hand, and at the same time clasped his bride to his
+bosom, that heaved with unwonted emotion. She wept on his breast in
+silent joy.'
+
+We would fain, if we had room, add to this the marriage sermon,
+preached by the bridegroom, and well preached too; for Jonas had
+knowledge, although, as he said himself, he never found half so much
+in books as is lying everywhere about the road.
+
+Martha was just the wife for the honest, sensible hand-worker; and as
+it frequently happens with such characters, his affairs prospered
+from the date of his marriage. He took a larger house in a
+better situation for trade; and having presented the useless
+'master-piece'--which nobody would buy--to the prince, he was rewarded
+by the dignity of 'Master-girdler to the Court.' But still 'uprightly
+and hardily the court-girdler lived with his wife, just as before;
+active in the workshop and warehouse, at markets and at fairs. Year
+after year fled, though, before the last guilder could be paid off, of
+the debt on the house. Days of joy and of sorrow succeeded each other
+in turn. They were all received with gratitude to God--these as well
+as those.'
+
+We now come hastily to the third generation; for Jonas had a son
+called Veit, who was first apprenticed to his father, and then sent to
+travel as a journeyman. The patriarch had had no education at all;
+Jonas had snatched at his just as opportunities permitted; but Veit
+went regularly through the brief and practical curriculum fitted for a
+tradesman's son. He was, consequently, better informed and more
+refined than either his father or grandfather; and spent so much time
+in gaining a thorough insight into the branches connected with his own
+business, that honest Jonas was quite puzzled. 'Where did the boy get
+all these notions?' said he. 'He did not get them from me, I'm sure.'
+Veit had a bad opinion of the travelling custom, and for these
+reasons: 'How should these men, most of them badly brought up, attain
+to any greater perfection in their business, if they have left home
+and school without any preparation for it? No one can understand, if
+his understanding has not been developed. From one publican they go to
+another, and from one workshop to another; everywhere they find the
+old common track--the mechanical, mindless life of labour, just as in
+the very first place to which they were sent to learn their trade. At
+most, they acquire dexterity by practice. Now and then they learn a
+trick from a master, or get a receipt, which had been cautiously kept
+secret; when possessed of this, they think something of themselves.
+Even the character of these ramblers is not seldom destroyed by
+intercourse with their fellows. They learn drinking and rioting,
+gambling and licentiousness, caballing and debating. Many are ruined
+before they return to their native place. Believe me, dearest father,
+the time of travel is to very few a true school for life; one in
+which, through frequent change of good and evil days, the head
+acquires experience, the thoughts strength and clearness, the heart
+courage, and reliance on God. Very few, even of those who bring a
+scientific education with them, can gain much of value for their
+calling in life; extend their views, transfer and apply to their own
+line of business the inventions and discoveries that have been made in
+other departments of art and industry.'
+
+Jonas understood little of the refinements of his son, but he opened
+his eyes when Veit obtained a lucrative appointment in a large
+metallic manufactory, first in London and then in Paris. In a letter
+informing his parents of this good-fortune, were enclosed the whole of
+the savings from his salary. 'Master Jordan shook his head at this
+passage, and cried out, deeply moved, yet as though vexed, while a
+tear of motherly tenderness stole down Martha's cheek: "No! no! by no
+means! What is the fool thinking of? He'll want the money himself--a
+simpleton. Let him wait till he comes to the master-piece. What
+pleases me most in the story, is his contentment and his humility. He
+is not ashamed of his old silver watch yet. It is not everybody that
+could act so. There must be strong legs to support such extraordinary
+good-luck. These the bursch has!"'
+
+After years of absence, the young man at last walks suddenly into the
+paternal home, on his father's birthday, and makes them all scream and
+weep with joy. '"Hark ye, bursch!" exclaimed Jonas, who regarded him
+with fatherly delight, "thou seem'st to me almost too learned, too
+refined, and too elegant for Veit Jordan. What turner has cut so neat
+a piece of furniture out of so coarse a piece of timber?"' His stay,
+however, was short. M. and Mme Bellarme (his employer at Paris) 'had
+been loth, almost afraid, to let him go. The feeble state of health of
+the former began to be so serious, that he durst not engage in the
+bulk of his affairs. In the space of a year, both felt so complete
+confidence in Veit's knowledge of business, and in his honour, that
+they had taken him as a partner in trade, and in the foundry.
+Henceforth, M. Bellarme contributed his capital only; Veit his
+knowledge, care, and industry.'
+
+The reform of the guilds, and the establishment of a technological
+school for the young hand-workers--both through the instrumentality of
+Jonas--we have no room to touch; for we must say a parting word on the
+reunion of the family by Veit's return permanently from abroad.
+Notwithstanding the prosperity of the now old couple, 'everything, ay,
+everything, was as he had left it years ago--as he had known it from
+childhood--only Christiane not. There stood yet the two well-scoured
+old deal-tables, wrinkled, though, from the protruding fibres of the
+wood; there were the straw-bottomed stools still; and at the window,
+Mother Martha's arm-chair, before which, as a child, he had repeated
+his lessons; there still hung the same little glass between the
+windows; and the wall-clock above the stove sent forth its tic-tac as
+fastly as ever. Father Jonas, in his enlarged workshop, with more
+journeymen and apprentices, smelted and hammered, filed and formed
+still, from morning to night, as before. The noble housewife flew
+about yet busy as a bee: she had managed the housekeeping without a
+servant since Christiane had been grown up. And Veit came back with
+the same cheerful disposition that he had ever shewn. In the
+simply-furnished rooms which Martha had fitted up for him, in the
+upper storey of the house, he forgot the splendid halls, the boudoirs,
+and antechambers of London, Paris, and the Bellarme estate; the
+Gobelin tapestry, the gold-framed pictures; the convenience of elegant
+furniture, and the artificial delicacies of the table on
+silver-plate.' Assisted by the patronage of the prince, he established
+a great foundry in his native town, of ball and cannon, bronze and
+brass; and on his marriage with the aforesaid Christiane, the
+sovereign made him a handsome present, in a handsome manner, 'as a
+small token of his gratitude to a family that had been so useful to
+the country.'
+
+In addition to the hand-workers' school, there now arose, under the
+auspices of this family, a training-school for teachers, a
+labour-school for females, and other establishments. The town was
+embellished; the land in the neighbourhood rose in value;
+uncleanliness and barbarism in food, clothing and houses, disappeared.
+'Only old men and women, grown rusty in the habits and the ignorance
+of many years, complain that the times are worse; at the sight of a
+higher civilisation, they complain of "the luxury and the pride of the
+world now-a-days;" as superstition dies out, they complain of "human
+incredulity, and the downfall of religion." "The day of judgment," say
+they, "is at hand."
+
+'But Master Jonas, when seventy years had silvered his hair, stood
+almost equal to a strong man of thirty, happy, indeed, by the side of
+the pious Martha, in a circle of his children and children's children,
+honoured by his fellow-citizens, and honoured by his prince. He often
+told the story of his boyhood, how he used to go about hawking with
+Father Thaddaeus the tinker; and his face glowed with inward
+satisfaction, when he compared the former period with present changes,
+in the production of which he could never have imagined he was to have
+so considerable a share. Then he used to exclaim: "Have I not always
+said it? Clear understanding only in the head, love to one's
+neighbour in the heart, frugality in the stomach, and industry in the
+fingers--then: HAND-WORK STANDS ON GOLDEN FEET."'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] _Labour Stands on Golden Feet; or, the Life of a Foreign Workman_,
+&c. By Heinrich Zschokke. London: Groombridge.
+
+
+
+
+LORD ROSSE'S DISCOVERIES.
+
+
+As Professor Nichol very truly remarks, 'investigation regarding such
+aggregations is virtually a branch of atomic and molecular inquiry,'
+with stars in place of atoms, mighty spheres in place of 'dust,' 'the
+firmament above' instead of 'the firmament beneath.' In fact, the
+astronomer, in sweeping with his telescopic eye the 'blue depths of
+ether,' is, as it were, some Lilliputian inhabitant of an atom prying
+into the autumnal structure of some Brobdignagian world of saw-dust;
+organised into spiral and other elementary forms, of life, it may be,
+something like our own. The infinite height appears, in short, like
+the infinite depth, and we knowing not precisely where we stand
+between the two immensities of depth and height! The shapes evolved by
+the wonderful telescope of Lord Rosse are, many of them, absolutely
+fantastical; wonder and awe are mingled with almost ridiculous
+feelings in contemplating the strange apparitions--strange
+monstrosities we had almost called them--that are pictured on the
+background of the illustrations. One aggregation looms forth out of
+the darkness like the skeleton face of some tremendous mammoth, or
+other monstrous denizen of ancient times, with two small fiery eyes,
+however, gazing out of its great hollow orbits; another consists of a
+central nucleus, with arms of stars radiating forth in all directions,
+like a star-fish, or like the scattering fire-sparks of some
+pyrotechnic wheel revolving; a third resembles a great wisp of straw,
+or twist or coil of ropes; a fourth, a cork-screw, or other spiral,
+seen on end; a fifth, a crab; a sixth, a dumb-bell--many of them
+scroll or scrolls of some thin texture seen edgewise; and so on. It is
+even a suggestion of the author's, that some of the spiral and armed
+wheels may be revolving yet in the vast ocean of space in which they
+are engulfed. Thus has the telescope traced the 'binding' influences
+of the Pleiades, loosened the bands of 'Orion'--erst the chief
+_nebulous_ hazy wonders, once and for all revealing its separate
+stars: and thus, in brief, has this wondrous instrument 'unrolled the
+heavens as a scroll.' Yet even these astonishing results are as
+nothing to the fact, that those fantastic shapes which it has revealed
+in the depths of this _lambo_ of creation, are not shapes merely of
+the present time--that thousands of years have passed since the light
+that shewed them left the starry firmaments only now revealed--that
+the telescope, in short, in reflecting these astonishing shapes,
+deliver to the eye of mind turned inward on the long-stored records of
+a universal and eternal memory of the past, than to a mere eye of
+sense looking outward on the things of passing time!--_The Builder_.
+
+
+
+
+SOUTH-AFRICAN REPTILES.
+
+
+I was going quietly to bed one evening, wearied by a long day's
+hunting, when, close to my feet, and by my bedside, some glittering
+substance caught my eye. I stooped to pick it up; but, ere my hand had
+quite reached it, the truth flashed across me--it was a snake! Had I
+followed my first natural impulse, I should have sprung away, but not
+being able clearly to see in what position the reptile was lying, or
+which way his head was pointed, I controlled myself, and remained
+rooted breathless to the spot. Straining my eyes, but moving not an
+inch, I at length clearly distinguished a huge puff-adder, the most
+deadly snake in the colony, whose bite would have sent me to the other
+world in an hour or two. I watched him in silent horror: his head was
+from me--so much the worse; for this snake, unlike any other, always
+rises and strikes back. He did not move; he was asleep. Not daring to
+shuffle my feet, lest he should awake and spring at me, I took a jump
+backwards, that would have done honour to a gymnastic master, and thus
+darted outside the door of the room. With a thick stick, I then
+returned and settled his worship. Some parts of South Africa swarm
+with snakes; none are free from them. I have known three men killed by
+them in one harvest on a farm in Oliphant's Hoek. There is an immense
+variety of them, the deadliest being the puff-adder, a thick and
+comparatively short snake. Its bite will kill occasionally within an
+hour. One of my friends lost a favourite and valuable horse by its
+bite, in less than two hours after the attack. It is a sluggish
+reptile, and therefore more dangerous; for, instead of rushing away,
+like its fellows, at the sound of approaching footsteps, it half
+raises its head and hisses. Often have I come to a sudden pull-up on
+foot and on horseback, on hearing their dreaded warning! There is also
+the cobra-capello, nearly as dangerous, several black snakes, and the
+boem-slang, or tree-snake, less deadly, one of which I once shot seven
+feet long. The Cape is also infested by scorpions, whose sting is
+little less virulent than a snake-bite; and by the spider called the
+tarantula, which is extremely dreaded.--_The Cape, by A. W. Cole_.
+
+
+
+
+LINES.
+
+
+  Ask me not with simple grace,
+    Pearls of thought to string for thee;
+  For upon thy smiling face,
+    Perfect gems I see--
+  In thine eyes of beauty trace
+    Lights that fadeless be.
+
+  Bid me not from Memory's land,
+    Cull fair flowers of rich perfume;
+  Love will shew with trembling hand,
+    Where far fairer bloom--
+  Clustering on thy cheek they stand,
+    Blushing deep--for whom?
+
+  Bid me not with Fancy's gale
+    Wake the music of a sigh;
+  From thy breath a sweeter tale,
+    Silver-winged, floats by;
+  Melodies that never fail,
+    Heard when thou art nigh!
+
+  Ask me not--yet, oh! for thee
+    Dearer thoughts my bosom fill,
+  Dimmed with tears I cannot see
+    To do thy gracious will:
+  Take, then, my prayer--In heaven may we
+    Behold thee lovelier still!
+
+                                      PERCIE.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS OF EXTREME MINUTENESS.
+
+
+Dr Wollaston obtained platinum-wire so fine, that 30,000 pieces,
+placed side by side in contact, would not cover more than an inch. It
+would take 150 pieces of this wire bound together to form a thread as
+thick as a filament of raw silk. Although platinum is the heaviest of
+the known bodies, a mile of this wire would not weigh more than a
+grain. Seven ounces of this wire would extend from London to New York.
+Fine as is the filament produced by the silkworm, that produced by the
+spider is still more attenuated. A thread of a spider's web, measuring
+four miles, will weigh very little more than a single grain. Every one
+is familiar with the fact, that the spider spins a thread, or cord, by
+which his own weight hangs suspended. It has been ascertained that
+this thread is composed of about 6000 filaments.--_Lardner's
+Handbook_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Printed and Published by W. and R. CHAMBERS, High Street, Edinburgh.
+Also sold by W. S. ORR, Amen Corner, London; D. N. CHAMBERS, 55 West
+Nile Street, Glasgow; and J. M'GLASHAN, 50 Upper Sackville Street,
+Dublin.--Advertisements for Monthly Parts are requested to be sent to
+MAXWELL & Co., 31 Nicholas Lane, Lombard Street, London, to whom all
+applications respecting their insertion must be made.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436, by Various
+
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