The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 341, November 15, 1828

Romantic, picturesque, and wild,
In this prosaic era.

Ye sole freebooters of the wood
Since Adam Bell and Robin Hood—
Kept every where asunder
From other tribes—King, Church, and State
Spurning, and only dedicate
To freedom, sloth, and plunder.
Your forest-camp—the forms one sees
Banditti like amid the trees,
The ragged donkies grazing,
The Sibyl's eye prophetic, bright
With flashes of the fitful light,
Beneath the caldron blazing,—

O'er my young mind strange terrors threw:
Thy history gave me Moore Carew!
A more exalted notion
Of Gipsy life, nor can I yet
Gaze on your tents, and quite forget
My former deep emotion.

For "auld lang syne" I'll not maltreat
Yon pseudo-Tinker, though the Cheat,
Ay sly as thievish Reynard,
Instead of mending kettles, prowls
To make foul havock of my fowls,
And decimate my hen-yard.

Come thou, too, black-eyed lass, and try
That potent skill in palmistry.
Which sixpences can wheedle;
Mine is a friendly cottage—here
No snarling mastiff need you fear,
No Constable or Beadle.

'Tis yours, I know, to draw at will
Upon Futurity a bill,
And Plutus to importune:—
Discount the bill—take half yourself
Give me the balance of the pelf.
And both may laugh at fortune.

    Ibid.

GEORGE HARVEST

The Rev. George Harvest, of Trinity College, Cambridge, having been private tutor to the Duke of Richmond, was invited to dine with the old duchess, and to accompany her party to the play. He used to travel with a night-cap in his pocket, and having occasion for a handkerchief at the theatre, made use of his cap for that purpose. In one of his reveries, however, it fell from the side-box, where he was sitting, into the pit, where a wag, who picked it up, hoisted it upon the end of a stick, that it might be claimed by its rightful proprietor. Judge of the consternation of a large party of ladies of rank and fashion, when George Harvest rose in the midst of them, and claimed the night-cap (which was somewhat greasy from use) by the initials G.H., which were legibly marked on it. The cap was restored to him amidst shouts of laughter, that ran through the pit to the great discomfiture of the duchess and the rest of the party.—Ibid.

SCIENTIFIC RECREATIONS

ELECTRICAL PHENOMENA

(From the Treatise on Electricity—in the Library of Useful Knowledge.)

The colours produced by the electric explosion of metals have been applied to impress letters or ornamental devices on silk and on paper. For this purpose Mr. Singer directs that the outline of the required figure should be first traced on thick drawing paper, and afterwards cut out in the manner of stencil plates. The drawing paper is then placed on the silk or paper intended to be marked; a leaf of gold is laid upon it, and a card over that; the whole is then placed in a press or under a weight, and a charge from a battery sent through the gold leaf. The stain is confined by the interposition of the drawing paper to the limit of the design, and in this way a profile, a flower, or any other outline figure may be very neatly impressed.

Most combustible bodies are capable of being inflamed by electricity, but more especially if it be made to strike against them in the form of a spark or shock obtained by an interrupted circuit, as by the interposition of a stratum of air. In this way may alcohol, ether, camphor, powdered resin, phosphorus, or gunpowder be set fire to. The inflammation of oil of turpentine will be promoted by strewing upon it fine particles of brass filings. If the spirit of wine be not highly rectified, it will generally be necessary previously to warm it, and the same precaution must be taken with other fluids, as oil and pitch; but it is not required with ether, which usually inflames very readily. But on the other hand, it is to be remarked that the temperature of the body which communicates the spark appears to have no sensible influence on the heat produced by it. Thus the sparks taken from a piece of ice are as capable of inflaming bodies as those from a piece of red-hot iron. Nor is the heating power of electricity in the smallest degree diminished by its being conducted through any number of freezing mixtures which are rapidly absorbing heat from surrounding bodies.

HEATING ROOMS

A new invention for heating rooms has met with much encouragement in Paris. A piece of quick-lime dipped into water, and shut hermetically into a box constructed for the purpose, is said to give almost a purgatory-heat, and prevent the necessity of fire during winter.—Lit. Gaz.

THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

GOLDEN RULES. TO RENDER MEN HONEST, RESPECTABLE, AND HAPPY

By Sir Richard Phillips

All members of the human family should remember, that the human race is, as to time and nature, but as one totality; for, since every man and woman had two parents, each parent two parents, and so on in geometrical progression, hence every individual, high or low, must necessarily be descended from every individual of the whole population as it existed but a few hundred years before, whether they were high or low, virtuous or abandoned; while every procreative individual of the existing race must be the actual progenitor of the entire race which may exist at the same distance of future time. What motives for charity, for forbearing from injuries, for benevolence, for universal love.

The bed of sickness, with its increased sensibility of nerves, is a delicate test of man's conscience, and of self-approbation or reprobation. Requiring sympathy himself, he now sympathizes with others; and, unable to direct his thoughts to external things, they are forced upon himself. Great is then his solace, and efficacious his medicines, if he has no other reflections than such as are supplied by his justice, liberality, and benevolence; but accumulated will be his sufferings, and dangerous the result, if crimes and misdeeds force themselves at such a time on his mind; while in any delirium of fever he will rave on those subjects, and, without vision, will often perceive, by the mere excitement of his brain, the spectres of the injured making grimaces before him.

If you are rich, and want to enjoy the exalted luxury of relieving distress, go to the Bankrupt Court, to the Court for Insolvent Debtors, to the gaols, the work-houses, and the hospitals. If you are rich and childless, and want heirs, look to the same assemblages of misfortune; for all are not culpable who appear in the Bankrupt and Insolvent Lists; nor all criminal who are found in gaols; nor all improvident who are inmates of work-houses and hospitals. On the contrary, in these situations, an alloy of vice is mixed with virtue enough to afford materials for as deep tragedies as ever poet fancied or stage exhibited; and visiters of relief would act the part of angels descending from Heaven among men, whose chief affliction is the neglect of unthinking affluence.

Marriage is a circumstance of life, which, in its actual course, involves the feelings and fortunes of human beings more than any other event of their lives. It is a connexion generally formed by inexperience, under the blindness and caprice of passion; and, though these conditions cannot be avoided, as forming the bases of the connexion, yet it is so important, that a man is never ruined who has an interesting, faithful, and virtuous wife; while he is lost to comfort, fortune, and even to hope, who has united himself to a vicious and unprincipled one. The fate of woman is still more intimately blended with that of her husband; for, being in the eyes of the law and the world but second to him, she is the victim of his follies and vices at home, and of his ill success and degradation abroad. Rules are useless, where passions, founded on trifling associations and accidents, govern; but much mischief often results from fathers expecting young men to be in the social position of old ones, and from present fortune being preferred to virtues; for industry and talent, stimulated by affection, and fostered by family interests, soon create competency and fortune; while a connexion founded on mere wealth, which is often speedily wasted by dissipation, habits of extravagance, and the chances of life, necessarily ends in disappointment, disgust, and misery.

Wretched is the man who has no employment but to watch his own digestions; and who, on waking in the morning, has no useful occupation of the day presented to his mind. To such a one respiration is a toil, and existence a continued disease. Self-oblivion is his only resource, indulgence in alcohol in various disguises his remedy, and death or superstition his only comfort and hope. For what was he born, and why does he live? are questions which he constantly asks himself; and his greatest enigmas are the smiling faces of habitual industry, stimulated by the wants of the day, or fears for the future. If he is excited to exertion, it is commonly to indulge some vicious propensity, or display his scorn of those pursuits which render others happier than himself. If he seek to relieve his inanity in books, his literature ascends no higher than the romances, the newspapers, or the scandal, of the day; and all the nobler pursuits of mind, as well as body, are utterly lost in regard to him. His passage through life is like that of a bird through the air, and his final cause appears merely to be that of sustaining the worms in his costly tomb.

The decline of life, and the retrospections of old age, furnish unequivocal tests of worthiness and unworthiness. Happy is the man, who, after a well-spent life, can contemplate the rapid approach of his last year with the consciousness that, if he were born again, he could not, under all the circumstances of his worldly position, have done better, and who has inflicted no injuries for which it is too late to atone. Wretched, on the contrary, is he, who is obliged to look back on a youth of idleness and profligacy, on a manhood of selfishness and sensuality, and on a career of hypocrisy, of insensibility, of concealed crime, and of injustice above the reach of law. Visit both during the decay of their systems, observe their feelings and tempers, view the followers at their funerals, count the tears on their graves; and, after such a comparison, in good time make your own choice.

Constant change is the feature of society. The world is like a magic lantern, or the shifting scenes in a pantomime. TEN YEARS convert the population of schools into men and women, the young into fathers and matrons, make and mar fortunes, and bury the last generation but one. TWENTY YEARS convert infants into lovers, and fathers and mothers, render youth the operative generation, decide men's fortunes and distinctions, convert active men into crawling drivellers, and bury all the preceding generation. THIRTY YEARS raise an active generation from nonentity, change fascinating beauties into merely bearable old women, convert lovers into grandfathers and grandmothers, and bury the active generation, or reduce them to decrepitude and imbecility. FORTY YEARS, alas! change the face of all society; infants are growing old, the bloom of youth and beauty has passed away, two active generations have been swept from the stage of life, names so cherished are forgotten, and unsuspected candidates for fame have started from the exhaustless womb of nature. FIFTY YEARS! why should any desire to retain their affections from maturity for fifty years? It is to behold a world which they do not know, and to which they are unknown; it is to live to weep for the generations passed away, for lovers, for parents, for children, for friends, in the grave; it is to see every thing turned upside down by the fickle hand of fortune, and the absolute despotism of time; it is, in a word, to behold the vanity of human life in all its varieties of display!

Social Philosophy.

THE GATHERER

A snapper up of unconsidered trifles.—SHAKSPEARE

SHERRY

Commentators have puzzled themselves to find out Falstaff's sherries sack: there can be no doubt but that it was dry sherry, and the French word sec dry, corrupted into sack. In a poem printed in 1619, sack and sherry are noted throughout as synonymous, every stanza of twelve ending—

Give me sack, old sack, boys,
To make the muses merry,
The life of mirth, and the joy of the earth,
Is a cup of old sherry.

CURIOUS WILL