The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 386, August 22, 1829

MICROSCOPIC AMUSEMENT

Mr. Carpenter, in Gill's Repository, speaking of the fine displays of anatomy and wonderful construction of insects, creatures so much "despised, and which are, indeed, but too often made the subject of wanton sport by many persons, who amuse their children by passing a pin through the bottom of their abdomen, in order to excite pain and long-suffering in the insect, and thus making them spin, as they ignorantly term it," has the following most humane and benevolent observations:—"Many of these cruel sports might undoubtedly be effectively checked, if the teachers of schools were occasionally to exhibit to their pupils, under the microscope, the various parts of an insect with which they are familiar; and, by interesting lectures of instruction, to point out the uses to which those parts are applied by the insect, for its preservation and comfort; and that, when they are deprived of them, or they are even injured, a degree of suffering takes place in the creature, which the children at present seem to be wholly uninformed of. I certainly think that, if the abovementioned useful lessons were inculcated, they would afford a check to those cruel propensities in many children, which they at present indulge in, for want of being better instructed."

NOTES OF A READER

ROYAL PROGRESSES, OR VISITS

The celebrity attendant on a royal visit adhered long to places as well as persons. A chamber in the decayed tower of Hoghton, in Lancashire, still bears the name of James the First's room. Elizabeth's apartment, and that of her maids of honour, are still known at Weston House, in Warwickshire; her walk "marked by old thorn-bushes," at Hengrave, in Norfolk; near Harefield, the farm-house where she was welcomed by allegorical personages; at Bisham Abbey, the well in which she bathed; and at Beddington, in Surrey, her favourite oak. She often shot with a cross-bow in the paddock at Oatlands. At Hawsted, in Suffolk, she is reported to have dropped a silver-handled fan into the moat; and an old approach to Kenninghall Place, in Norfolk, is called Queen Bess's Lane, because she was scratched by the brambles in riding through it.—Quarterly Review.

SHAKSPEARE'S MACBETH

During one of the progresses of James I. on passing the gate of St. John's College, at Oxford, his majesty was saluted by three youths, representing the weird sisters (sibyllae,) who, in Latin hexameters, bade the descendant of Banquo hail, as king of Scotland, king of England, and king of Ireland; and his queen as daughter, sister, wife, and mother of kings. The occasion is memorable in dramatic history, if it be true that this address, or a translation of it, led Shakspeare to write on the story of Macbeth. Much has been said for the probability of this supposition; but surely the legend of Macbeth and Banquo must have been abundantly discoursed of in England between James's accession and the year when this pageant was exhibited; and Shakspeare could find every circumstance alluded to by the Oxford speakers, and many more in Holinshed's Chronicle, which, through a great part of Macbeth, he has undoubtedly taken for his guide.—Ibid.

CHINESE DRAMA

The Chinese themselves make no technical distinctions between tragedy and comedy in their stage pieces;—the dialogue of which is composed in ordinary prose, while the principal performer now and then chants forth, in unison with music, a species of song or vaudeville, and the name of the tune or air is always inserted at the top of the passage to be sung.– Quarterly Review.

THE HAWTHORN

The trunk of an old hawthorn is more gnarled and rough than, perhaps, that of any other tree; and this, with its hoary appearance, and its fragrance, renders it a favourite tree with pastoral and rustic poets, and with those to whom they address their songs. Milton, in his L'Allegro, has not forgotten this favourite of the village:—

"Every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale."

When Burns, with equal force and delicacy, delineates the pure and unsophisticated affection of young, intelligent, and innocent country people, as the most enchanting of human feelings, he gives additional sweetness to the picture by placing his lovers

"Beneath the milk-white thorn, that scents the evening gale."

There is something about the tree, which one bred in the country cannot soon forget, and which a visiter learns, perhaps, sooner than any association of placid delight connected with rural scenery. When, too, the traveller, or the man of the world, after a life spent in other pursuits, returns to the village of his nativity, the old hawthorn is the only playfellow of his boyhood that has not changed. His seniors are in the grave; his contemporaries are scattered; the hearths at which he found a welcome are in the possession of those who know him not; the roads are altered; the houses rebuilt; and the common trees have grown out of his knowledge: but be it half a century or more, if man spare the old hawthorn, it is just the same—not a limb, hardly a twig, has altered from, the picture that memory traces of his early years.—Library of Entertaining Knowledge.

TURKISH JOKE

When the Caliph Haroun el Raschid (who was the friend of the great Charlemagne,) entertained Ebn Oaz at his court in the quality of jester, he desired him one day, in the presence of the Sultana and all her followers, to make an excuse worse than the crime it was intended to extenuate: the Caliph walked about, waiting for a reply. Alter a long pause, Ebn Oaz skulked behind the throne, and pinched his highness in the rear. The rage of the Caliph was unbounded. "I beg a thousand pardons of your Majesty," said Ebn Oaz, "but I thought it was her Highness the Sultana." This was the excuse worse than the crime; and of course the jester was pardoned.

FUND AND REFUND

Disappointment at the theatre is a bad thing: but the manager returning admission money is worse. Sheridan, who understood professional feelings on this subject in the most acute degree, was in the habit of saying that he could give words to the chagrin of a conqueror, on seeing the fruit of his victories snatched from him; or the miseries of a broken down minister, turned out in the moment when he thought the cabinet at his mercy; or a felon listening to a long winded sermon from the ordinary; or a debtor just fallen into the claws of a dun; but that he never could find words to express the sensibilities of a manager compelled to disgorge money once taken at his doors. "Fund," says this experienced ornament of the art of living by one's wits, "fund is an excellent word; but re-fund is the very worst in the language."—Monthly Magazine.

COURT SQUABBLES

Mr. Crawfurd, in his Embassy, describes the following ludicrous scene arising from a misunderstanding between the sovereign of Birmah and his ministers:—"The ministers last night reported to the king the progress of the negotiation. His majesty was highly indignant, said his confidence had been abused, and that now, for the first time, he was made acquainted with the real state of affairs. He accused the ministers of falsehoods, malversations, and all kinds of offences. His displeasure did not end in mere words; he drew his Dà, or sword, and sallied forth in pursuit of the offending courtiers. These took to immediate flight, some leaping over the balustrades which rail in the front of the Hall of Audience, but the greater number escaping by the stair which leads to it; and in the confusion which attended their endeavours, (tumbling head over heels,) one on top of another. Such royal paroxysms are pretty frequent, and, although attended with considerable sacrifices of the kingly dignity, are always bloodless. The late king was less subject to these fits of anger than his present majesty, but he also occasionally forgot himself. Towards the close of his reign, and when on a pilgrimage to the great temple of Mengwan, a circumstance of this description took place, which was described by an European gentleman, himself present, and one of the courtiers. The king had detected something flagitious, which would not have been very difficult. His anger rose; he seized his spear, and attacked the false ministers. These, with the exception of the European, who was not a party to the offence, fled tumultuously. One hapless courtier had his heels tripped up in his flight; the king overtook him, and wounded him slightly in the calf of the leg with his spear, but took no farther vengeance."

LULLABY

SHAKSPEARE, in Titus Andronicus, says,

"Be unto us, as is a nurse's song
Of Lullaby to bring her babe to sleep."

A learned commentator gives us what he facetiously calls a lullaby note on this.

"The verb to lull, means to sing Gently, and it is connected with the Greek λαλεω [Greek: laleo], loquor, or λαλα [Greek: lala], the sound made by the beach of the sea. The Roman nurses used the word lalla, to quiet their children, and they feigned a deity called Lullus, whom they invoked on that occasion; the lullaby, or tune itself was called by the same name."– Douce.

Lullaby is supposed a contraction for Lull-a-baby. The Welsh are celebrated for their Lullaby songs, and a good Welsh nurse, with a pleasing voice, has been sometimes found more soporific in the nursery, than the midwife's anodyne. The contrary effects of Swift's song, "Here we go up, up, up," and the smile-provoking melody of "Hey diddle, diddle," cum multis aliis, are too well known to be enumerated or disputed. "The Good Nurse" give us a chapter on the advantage of employing music in certain stages of protracted illness.

GOOD NIGHT

In northern Europe we may, without impropriety, say good night! to departing friends at any hour of darkness; but the Italians utter their Felicissima Notte only once. The arrival of candles marks the division between day and night, and when they are brought in, the Italians thus salute each other. How impossible it is to convey the exact properties of a foreign language by translation! Every word, from the highest to the lowest, has a peculiar significance, determinable only by an accurate knowledge of national and local attributes and peculiarites.

GOETHE.—Blackwood's Magazine.

THE ANECDOTE GALLERY

THE EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE

(For The Mirror.)

In the year 1696, Mr. Henry Winstanley, undertook to build the Eddystone Lighthouse, and in 1700 he completed it. So confident was this ingenious mechanic of the stability of his edifice, that he declared his wish to be in it during the most tremendous storm that could arise. This wish he unfortunately obtained, for he perished in it during the dreadful storm which destroyed it, November 27th, 1703. While he was there with his workmen and light-keepers, that dreadful storm began, which raged most violently on the night of the 26th of the month, and appears to have been one of the most tremendous ever experienced in Great Britain, for its vast and extensive devastation. The next morning, at daybreak, the hurricane increased to a degree unparalleled; and the lighthouse no longer able to sustain its fury, was swept into the bosom of the deep, with all its ill-fated inmates. When the storm abated, about the 29th, people went off to see if any thing remained, but nothing was left save a few large irons, whereby the work had been so fastened into a clink, that it could never afterwards be disengaged, till it was cut out in the year 1756. The lighthouse had not long been destroyed, before the Winchelsea, a Virginiaman, laden with tobacco, for Plymouth, was wrecked on the Eddystone rocks in the night, and every soul perished.

Smeaton, in his Narrative of the Construction of the Eddystone Lighthouse, says, "Winstanley had distinguished himself in a certain branch of mechanics, the tendency of which is to excite wonder and surprise. He had at his house at Littlebury, in Essex, a set of contrivances, such as the following:—Being taken into one particular room of his house, and there observing an old slipper carelessly lying in the middle of the floor, if, as was natural, you gave it a kick with your foot, up started a ghost before you; if you sat down in a certain chair, a couple of arms would immediately clasp you in, so as to render it impossible for you to disengage yourself till your attendant set you at liberty; and if you sat down in a certain arbour by the side of a canal, you were forthwith sent out afloat into the middle, from whence it was impossible for you to escape till the manager returned you to your former place."

Mr. John Smeaton, who erected the Eddystone Lighthouse, in the years 1757-58 and 59, was born on the 28th, of May, 1724, at Ansthorpe, near Leeds. The strength of his understanding, and the originality of his genius, (says his biographer) appeared at an early age: his playthings were not the playthings of children, but the tools which men employ, and when he was a mere child he appeared to take greater pleasure in seeing the operations of workmen, and asking them questions, than in any thing else. Before he was six years old, he was once discovered at the top of his father's barn, fixing up what he called a windmill of his own construction, and at another time, while he was about the same age, he attended some men fixing a pump, and observing them cut off a piece of a bored part, he procured it, and actually made a pump, with which he raised water. When he was under fifteen years of age, he made an engine for turning, and worked several things in ivory and wood. He made all his own tools for working in wood and metals, and he constructed a lathe, by which he cut a perpetual screw in brass, a thing but little known, and which was the invention of Mr. Henry Hendley of York. His father was an attorney, and being desirous to bring up his son to the same profession, he brought him up to London with him in 1724, and attended the courts in Westminster Hall; but after some time, finding that the law was not suited to his disposition, he wrote a strong memorial to his father on the subject, who immediately desired the young man to follow the bent of his inclination.

P.T.W.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

LINES

To a Friend who had spent some days at a Country Inn, in order to be near the Writer

BY MISS MITFORD

The village inn, the woodfire burning bright,
The solitary taper's flickering light,
The lowly couch, the casement swinging free,—
My noblest friend, was this a place for thee?
No fitting place! Yet there, from all apart,
We poured forth mind for mind and heart for heart,
Ranging from idle words and tales of mirth
To the deep mysteries of heaven and earth
Yet there thine own sweet voice, in accents low,
First breathed Iphigenias tale of wee,
The glorious tale, by Goethe fitly told,
And cast as finely in an English mould
By Taylor's kindred spirit, high and bold: [21 - Mr. Taylor's transition of Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris; one of the finest plays out of Shakspeare, and now extremely rare.]
No fitting place! yet that delicious hour
Fell on my soul, like dewdrops on a flower
Freshening and nourishing and making bright