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POETRY OF THE LAST AGE AND THE PRESENT.—A writer in the last number of Fraser's Magazine says well that, "there is in periodicals and elsewhere, a vast amount of really poetic imagery, of true and tender feeling, and cultivated ingenuity, scattered up and down in the form of verse. We have no new great poets, but very many small ones—layers, as it were, and seedlings from the lofty geniuses of the last generation, showing in every line the influence of Scott, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, and their compeers, seeing often farther than their masters saw, but dwarfs on giants' shoulders. Not that we complain of this. Elizabethan ages must be followed by Caroline ones; and our second Elizabethan galaxy is past; Tennyson alone survives, in solitary greatness, a connecting link between the poetry of the past and that of the future. In poetry, and in many other things, ours is a Caroline age; greater than the first one, as every modern cycle in a God-taught world, will be nobler, richer, wiser than its ancient analogue; but still a merely Caroline age—an age of pedantries and imbecilities, of effete rulers, side by side with great nether powers, as yet unaccredited, anarchic, unconscious of their own laws and destinies—an age of formalisms and Pharisaisms, of parties embittered by the sense of their own decrepitude—an age of small men, destined to be the fathers of great ones. And in harmony with this, we have a poetic school of Herberts and Vaughans, Withers and Daniels, to be followed hereafter, it may be, by a Milton, of whom as yet the age has given no sign."
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DEATH-BED SUPERSTITIONS.—The practice of opening doors and boxes when a person dies is founded on the idea that the minister of purgatorial pains took the soul as it escaped from the body, and flattening it against some closed door, (which alone would serve the purpose,) crammed it into the hinges and hinge openings; thus the soul in torment was likely to be miserably pinched and squeezed by the movement on casual occasion of such door or lid. An open or swinging door frustrated this, and the fiends had to try some other locality. The friends of the departed were at least assured that they were not made the unconscious instruments of torturing the departed in their daily occupations. The superstition prevails in the north as well as in the west of England; and a similar one exists in the south of Spain, where I have seen it practiced. Among the Jews at Gibraltar there is also a strange custom when a death occurs in a house; and this consists in pouring away all the water contained in any vessel, the superstition being that the angel of death may have washed his sword therein.
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Old authors notice the training of camels to move in measured time by placing the animal on gradually heated plates, and at the same time sounding a musical instrument.
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AN ARAB GAME.—The Arabs are far more amusable, far more jovial and open-hearted. They have their coffee-houses every night, and their religious festivities periodically; they play at all sorts of complicated games, resembling draughts and chess, and find means ingeniously to vary their sports. If they compromise their dignity, they succeed in whiling away their leisure time far more successfully than the pride-stuffed Levantine. One of their amusements—called the game of plaff—is worth mentioning, especially as it is not only indulged in by the vulgar, but formed the chief delight of the venerable Moharrem Bey himself. Two men, often with respectable gray beards, sit on a carpet at a little distance one from the other. All Easterns are usually dry smokers; but on this occasion they manage to foment a plentiful supply of saliva, and the game simply consists in a series of attempts on the part of the two opponents to spit on the tips of each others noses. At first, this cleanly interchange of saliva goes on slowly and deliberately—Socrates never measured the leap of a flea with more seriousness—but presently one receives a dab in the eye, another in the mouth. They begin to grow hot and angry. "I hit your nose," cries one. "No, it was my cheek!" replied the other. They draw a little nearer, in order to ascertain the truth by feeling; spit, spit, they still go, like two vicious old cats; their palates grow dry; their throats become parched; but the contest continues, and they exhaust themselves in making spittoons of each other's faces and beards. Hamlet and Laertes were not more eager and desperate. "A hit, a very palpable hit!" they exclaim, as they hawk up their last supply of ammunition. Each denies the truth; they mutually proceed to a verification, and the game of plaff often ends in a regular match of nose-pulling.—Two Years' Residence in a Levantine Family.
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A MARRIAGE IN AMERICA.—A respectable farmer came in from some distance, and married the cook. The bridegroom was about fifty, and the bride was thirty years of age. The landlord and many of his boarders assisted at the ceremony, which was performed in the evening, and those of the boarders who had not been present were invited in afterward by the bridegroom to partake of wine and cake. After all were charged, he gave this sentiment, "Friendship to all, love to a few, and hatred to none." So systematically were matters managed, that next morning the bridegroom was sitting in the stove at the bar at seven o'clock, and at half-past seven breakfasted as usual at the public table, at which, of course, his wife, the cook, did not appear, and in the afternoon the happy pair left for their home. When I asked the landlord what the wife was like, he answered, "She is as pretty as a picture, and straight as a candle."—Sir J. Alexander's "Acadie," just published.
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ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS IN OUR OWN TIME.—The Arabs, who have among them most imaginative and finished improvisatori, compare the elegant movements of a beautiful bride to those of a young camel. The Thousand and One Nights, like most clever fables, have some foundation in fact, as is well known to the friends of the Arabian man of rank, who keeps his professed story-teller as an indispensable part of his establishment. African travelers relate that these friends will assemble before his tent, or on the platform with which the house of a Moorish Arab is roofed, and there listen night after night, to a consecutive history, related for sixty or even one hundred nights in succession. The listeners on such occasions have all the air of being spell-bound, especially while hearing some of their native songs, which are frequently extemporized, full of fire, and appealing with irresistible force to the passions. "I have seen," says Major Denham, "a circle of Arabs straining their eyes with a fixed attention at one moment and bursting with loud laughter; at the next melting into tears and clasping their hands in all the ecstacy of grief and sympathy."—Leaves from the Diary of a Naturalist.
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THE LAST YEAR'S LEAF.
The last year's leaf, its time is brief Upon the beechen spray; The green bud springs, the young bird sings Old leaf, make room for May: Begone, fly away, Make room for May.
Oh, green bud smile on me awhile, Oh, young bird, let my stay— What joy have we, old leaf, in thee? Make room, make room for May: Begone, fly away, Make room for May.—Philip Taylor.
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DIVINATION BY THE BIBLE AND KEY.—This superstition is very prevalent amongst the peasantry of this and adjoining parishes. When any article is suspected to have been stolen, a Bible is procured; and opened at the 1st chapter of Ruth; the stock of a street door key is then laid on the 16th verse of the above chapter, the handle protruding from the edge of the Bible; and the key is secured in this position by a string, bound tightly round the book. The person who works the charm then places his two middle fingers under the handle of the key, and this keeps the Bible suspended. He then repeats in succession the names of the parties suspected of theft; repeating at each name a portion of the verse on which the key is placed, commencing, "Whither thou goest, I will go," &c. When the name of the guilty party is pronounced, the key turns off the fingers, the Bible falls to the ground, and the guilt of the party is determined. The belief of some of the more ignorant of the lower orders in this charm is unbounded. I have seen it practiced in other counties, the key being laid over the 5th verse of the 19th chapter of Proverbs, instead of the 1st chapter of Ruth.—Godalming, April, 1850.—Notes and Queries.
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SIR THOMAS MORE'S HOUSEHOLD.—The conduct of this great man's house was a model to all, and as near an approach to his own Utopia as might well be. Erasmus says, "I should rather call his house a school or university of Christian religion, for there is none therein but readeth or studieth the liberal sciences; their special care is piety and virtue; there is no quarreling or intemperate words heard; none are seen idle; which household that worthy gentleman doth not govern, but with all courteous benevolence." The servant men abode on one side of the house, the women on the other, and met at prayer time or on Church festivals, when More would read and expound to them. He suffered no cards or dice, but gave each one his garden-plot for relaxation, or set them to sing or "play music." He had an affection for all who truly served him, and his daughters' nurse is as affectionately mentioned in his letters when from home as they are themselves. "Thomas More sendeth greeting to his most dear daughters Margaret, Elizabeth and Cecily; and to Margaret Giggs as dear to him as if she were his own," are his words in one letter; and his valued and trustworthy domestics appear in the family pictures of the family by Holbein. They requited his attachment by truest fidelity and love; and his daughter Margaret, in her last passionate interview with her father on his way to the Tower, was succeeded by Margaret Giggs and a maid-servant, who embraced and kissed their condemned master, "of whom he said after, it was homely but very lovingly done." Of these and other of his servants, Erasmus remarks, "after Sir Thomas More's death, none ever was touched with the least suspicion of any evil fame."—Mrs. Hall, in the Art Journal.
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THE "PASSION PLAY" IN BAVARIA.—This year, the foreign journals state, is the year of the passion play of the Ammergau in Bavaria. The last representation took place in the month of July; the spectators were betwixt eight and nine thousand, collected in an open air theatre; the corps of actors, three hundred and fifty in number, some of them, says a French account, men and women as old as eighty years.
The play, which was written in 1633, and which had been recently retouched, is in twelve acts and eleven entr'acts interspersed with tableaux. The representation lasted from eight o'clock in the morning, till four in the afternoon, was most elaborately prepared, and perfectly executed. At its close, the actors fell on their knees and recited prayers in which they thanked God that their performance had succeeded so well. They were of the peasant class, and almost all belonged to the Ammergau. "This same Ammer-valley," says the Athenaeum, "lies in a most picturesque country, betwixt Munich and Innspruck—on the road by the Lake of Staremberg and Partenkirch."
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AMBASSADORS.—Holland, Germany, France, America, Spain, send forth their eminent lawyers, historians, merchants, jurists, and publicists, to fill embassies and conduct negotiations; while we content ourselves with recruiting our diplomatic corps from the younger branches of the aristocracy, or from the sons of men of wealth apeing the manners and travestying the mode of life of the grand seigneurs, who conceive themselves made of "the porcelain of earth's clay." The Schimmelpennicks, the De Serres, the Rushes, the Wheatons, the Clays, the Adamses, the Jeffersons, the Rufus Kings, the Daniel Websters, the Dr. Bankses, have all been lawyers; the Washington Irvings, the Bancrofts, the Guizots, the Bunsens, the Niebuhrs, the Humboldts, the Ancillons, were men of letters before and during the period they continued ambassadors.—Fraser.
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M. GUIZOT has been compelled to sell at auction a portion of his valuable and extensive library, and a London paper describes some of the more remarkable books, and states the prices for which they were sold. "Comte Auguste de Bastard, Peintures et Ornemens des Manuscrits Francais depuis le huitieme siecle jusqu'a la fin du seizieme," 20 parts, all at present published, in five portfolios, Paris, 1835. This splendid work was described as the most sumptuous, unique, and costly book that has ever been produced. Each part contains eight plates, copied from the most superb examples known to exist; they are colored and finished with gold and silver equal to the exquisite originals; the whole series extends to 160 engravings in 20 livraisons, each of which was sold to subscribers only at 1800f., amounting in the whole to 36,000f., or in our money to 1,500l. No perfect copy of this production has been offered for sale in this country prior to the present time; it was sold for 200l. "Voyage de la Corvette l'Astrolabe pendant les Annees, 1826, 1827, 1828, 1829, sous le Commandement de Capitaine d'Urville," containing copious descriptions of all the objects in science and history met with on the voyage, the whole being illustrated by splendid engravings, 30l.; "Voyage Pittoresque et Romantique en Bretagne," one of the most magnificent and extensive works ever published on the scenery and antiquities of any part of the world; the illustrations to this were executed in the most superb style of lithography; the stones were broken as soon as the plates were printed; 26l. 5s.
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SIR STRATFORD CANNING.—This eminent civilian and ambassador, whose former residence in this country is remembered with so much pleasure by his friends here, is thus referred to in a series of papers on the Diplomacy, Diplomatists, and Diplomatic Servants of England, now in course of publication in Fraser's Magazine: "He who has been forty-three years in the public service, who commenced his duties as precis-writer in the Foreign Office in July 1807, and who, having served as Secretary of Embassy to the Porte, as Envoy to the Swiss Confederation, as Minister to the United States, as Plenipotentiary on a special mission to Russia, as Plenipotentiary on a special mission to Spain, and as Ambassador three times near the Sublime Porte, is now serving with credit and advantage in that very Stamboul whose towers and minarets he first saw in 1808."
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THE SEVEN-MILE TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS.—Dr. Granville says: "To give at once some idea of the boldness of Chev. Mons' undertaking, we may, in the first place, state that in its progress the tunnel must pass under some of the most elevated crests of Mont Cenis,—one, in particular, where there will be 4,850 feet of mountain, capped with eternal glaciers, over head, at the middle of the tunnel, so that not only will the workmen and machinery in construction, and the passengers and trains in transit, be buried to that depth in the heart of the mountain, but all idea of shafts, either to facilitate excavation, or to promote ventilation, must be out of the question. The breath of life itself must be respired, from either extremity, with artificial aid, in shape of currents of fresh air transmitted, and of foul air withdrawn, by mechanical apparatus ever at work, at least during excavation, which is also itself to be effected by machinery of a new and simple nature, worked by water-power of mountain streams whereby the trains are also to be run through the tunnel, which ascends, from the northern or Savoy side, at Modane, all the way to its exit at Bardonneche, with a gradient equal to 19 in 1000. The machine, once presented to the rock, projects into it simultaneously four horizontal series of sixteen scalpels, working backward and forward, by means of springs cased in, and put in motion by the same water power. While these are at work, one vertical series on each side works simultaneously up and down, so that together they cut out four blocks, or rather insulate four blocks on all sides, except on the rock behind, from which they are afterward detached by hand. It has been already ascertained that each of the two machines, at the opposite ends of the tunnel, will excavate to the extent of 22 feet a day, and it is estimated that the whole excavation will be completed in four years. The gallery to be perforated by the machines will be 13 feet wide by 7 feet high, and this once cut through, the bore will be enlarged by ordinary means to 25 feet in width and 19 feet in height, and a double line of rails laid. The estimated cost of this great tunnel is only 13,804,942f. It is to be immediately commenced at the north entrance."
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Medicine has killed as many people as war. Powder and pills are as fatal as powder and ball. Be careful, therefore, how you allow people to shoot them into you.
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