Buch lesen: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 339, November 8, 1828», Seite 6
Notes of a Reader
A NEW CYCLOPAEDIA
A "Cabinet Cyclopaedia" is announced for publication, under the superintendance of Dr. Lardner. It is to consist of a series of "Cabinets" of the several sciences, &c. and upwards of 100 volumes, to be published monthly, are already announced in the prospectus; or nine years publishing. The design is not altogether new, it being from the Encyclopaedie Methodique, a series of dictionaries, now publishing in Paris; and about four years since a similar work was commenced in England, but only three volumes or dictionaries of the series were published. If this be the flimsy age, the "Cabinet Cyclopaedia" is certainly not one of the flimsiest of its projects; and for the credit of the age, we wish the undertaking all success.
"A GENTLEMAN"
Is a term very vaguely applied, and indistinctly understood. There are Gentlemen by birth, Gentlemen by education, Gentlemen's Gentlemen, Gentlemen of the Press, Gentlemen Pensioners, Gentlemen, whom nobody thinks it worth while to call otherwise; Honourable Gentlemen, Walking Gentlemen of strolling companies, Light-fingered Gentlemen, &c. &c. very respectable Gentlemen, and God Almighty's Gentlemen.—Blackwood's Magazine.
ROMAN THEATRES
There are five theatres at Rome to a population very nearly as considerable as that of Dublin. Each of these establishments is the property of one of the noble families in the city, who prefer doing by themselves what is usually done in England by committee.
CATS AND FELINE ANIMALS (once more!)
Animals of the cat kind are, in a state of nature almost continually in action both by night and by day. They either walk, creep, or advance rapidly by prodigious bounds; but they seldom run, owing, it is believed, to the extreme flexibility of their limbs and vertebral column, which cannot preserve the rigidity necessary to that species of movement. Their sense of sight, especially during twilight, is acute; their hearing very perfect, and their perception of smell less so than in the dog tribe. Their most obtuse sense is that of taste; the lingual nerve in the lion, according to Des Moulins, being no larger than that of a middle-sized dog. In fact, the tongue of these animals is as much an organ of mastication as of taste; its sharp and horny points, inclined backwards, being used for tearing away the softer parts of the animal substances on which they prey. The perception of touch is said to reside very delicately in the small bulbs at the base of the mustachios.—Wilson's Zoology.
TEA AND TAY
From Blackwood's last "Noctes."
North. As you love me, my dear James, call it not tea, but tay. That though obsolete, is the classical pronunciation. Thus Pope sings in the Rape of the Lock, canto i.
"Soft yielding minds to water glide away,
And sip with nymphs their elemental tea."
And also in canto iii—
"Where thou great Anna, whom these realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea."
And finally in the Basset Table—
"Tell, tell your grief, attentive will I stay,
Though time is precious, and I want some tea."
Shepherd. A body might think frae thae rhymes, that Pop had been an Eerishman.
"MERRY ENGLAND."
The people of England, we fear, have at last forfeited the proud title of "merry," to distinguish them from other and less happy, because more serious, nations; for now they sadden at amusement, and sicken and turn pale at a jest; so entirely have they forfeited it, that an ingenious critic cannot believe they ever possessed it; and has set himself accordingly to prove, that, in the old English, merrie does not mean merry, but sorrowful, or heart-broken, or some such thing.—Edin. Rev.
SYMPATHY
There is a tear, more sweet and soft
Than beauty's smiling lip of love;
By angel's eyes first wept and oft
On earth by eyes like those above:
It flows for virtue in distress.
It soothes, like hope, our sufferings here;
'Twas given, and it is shed, to bless—
'Tis sympathy's celestial tear.
Amulet.
MR. ABERNETHY
Was one day descanting upon the advantages of a public education for boys, when he concluded by saying, "And what think you of Eton? I think I shall send my son there to learn manners." "It would have been as well, my dear," responded his wife, "had you gone there too."
ENGLISH BENEVOLENCE
For several years previous to 1823, the crops in Ireland had been scanty, particularly those of potatoes. In 1821 the potato crop was a complete failure; and in 1822 it is impossible to tell, and dreadful to think, of what might have been the consequence, had not the English people come forward, and by the most stupendous act of national generosity which the world ever saw, and which none but a country so rich as England could afford, arrested "the plague of hunger," which must otherwise have desolated the country.
PAINTING IN FRESCO
The revival of this beautiful art is strongly recommended by a writer in the Edinburgh Review, for the internal decoration of private residences. "As we have begun to build houses upon a handsome scale in London, the lovers of art may venture to hope, that instead of spending enormous sums solely on the upholsterer for his fading ornaments, something may now be spared to the artist, for conferring on the walls unfading decorations of a far more delightful and intellectual kind. If the work be well executed, it will not suffer injury from being washed with clean and cold water." The reviewer then goes on to suggest "small foundations, like the fellowships at our universities. The fellow, a young artist of promise, might spend two or three years in painting the interior of a church, or other public building, maintaining himself meanwhile on his fellowship, or two or three hundred pounds a year." "If, however, the objections to painting our churches be deemed insuperable, we have buildings designed for civil purposes in abundance, which are well adapted for this species of decoration." He then instances Westminster Hall, the walls of which might be covered with fresco; and the outsides of houses in many German cities and towns in the German cantons of Switzerland, the outsides of which are painted with scriptural and historical subjects. "Painting," observes he, "were the use of it universal, would be a powerful means of instruction to children and the lower orders; and were all the fine surfaces, which are now plain and absolutely wasted, enriched with the labours of the art, if they once began to appear, they would accumulate rapidly; and were the ornamented edifices open to all, as freely as they ought to be, a wide field of new and agreeable study would offer itself."
PHILANTHROPY
Hast thou power? the weak defend,
Light?—give light: thy knowledge lend.
Rich?—remember Him who gave.
Free?—be brother to the slave.
Amulet.
LITERARY CLUBS
O what curses, not loud, but deep, has not old Simpkin, of the Crown and Anchor, in his day, and Willis and Kay in later times, groaned at the knot of authors who were occupying one of his best dining-rooms up-stairs, and leaving the Port, and claret, and Madeira to a death-like repose in the cellar, though the waiter had repeatedly popped his head into the apartment with an admonitory "Did you ring, gentlemen?" to awaken them to a becoming sense of the social duties of man.—New Monthly Mag.
ALLIGATORS SWALLOWING STONES
The Indians on the banks of the Oronoko assert, that previously to an alligator going in search of prey, it always swallows a large stone, that it may acquire additional weight to aid it in diving and dragging its victims under water. A traveller being somewhat incredulous on this point, Bolivar, to convince him, shot several with his rifle, and in all of them were found stones, varying in weight according to the size of the animal. The largest killed was about 17 feet in length, and had within him a stone weighing about 60 or 70 pounds.
CRICKET
Miss Mitford, in one of her charming sketches, tells us of a cricket-ball being thrown five hundred yards. This is what the people who write for Drury-lane and Covent-garden would call "pitching it pretty strong."
ADVANTAGES OF CHEAP BOOKS
When Goldsmith boasted of having seen a splendid copy of his poems in the cabinet of some great lord, saying emphatically, "This is fame, Dr. Johnson," the doctor told him that, for his part, he would have been more disposed to self-gratulation had he discovered any of the progeny of his mind thumbed and tattered in the cabin of a peasant.—Q. Rev.
REMEMBRANCE
I recollect my happy home,
My pleasures as a child;
The forest where I used to roam,
The rocks so bleak and wild.
That home is tenantless; the spot
It graced is rude and bare;
The lov'd ones gone, our name forgot.
And desolation there.
Forget Me Not—1829.
In how many thousand hearts will this lament find an echo!
