The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 377, June 27, 1829

During a tour through France shortly before Bonaparte's accession to the throne he received the addresses of the Priests and Prefects, who vied with each other in the grossness and impiety of their adulation. The Prefect of the Pas de Calais seems to have borne away the palm from all his brethren. On Napoleon's entrance into his department, he addressed him in the following manner:—"Tranquil with respect to our fate, we know that to ensure the happiness and glory of France, to render to all people the freedom of commerce and the seas, to humble the audacious destroyers of the repose of the universe, and to fix, at length, peace upon the earth, God created Bonaparte, and rested from his labour!"

INA

APOSTLES

In the diplomatic language of Charles I.'s time, were marginal notes, generally in the king's hand, written on the margin of state papers. The word, in somewhat a similar sense, had its origin in the canon law. There are many instances of apostles by Charles I. in Archbishop Laud's Diary

JAMES SILVESTER

When Voltaire was at Berlin, he wrote this epigram on his patron and host the king of Prussia:—

"King, author, philosopher, hero, musician,
Freemason, economist, bard, politician,
How had Europe rejoiced if a Christian he'd been,
If a man, how he then had enraptured his queen."

For this effort of wit, Voltaire was paid with thirty lashes on his bare back, administered by the king's sergeant-at-arms, and was compelled to sign the following curious receipt for the same:—

"Received from the righthand of Conrad
Backoffner, thirty lashes on my bare
back, being in full for an epigram on
Frederick the Third, King of Prussia."

I say received by me, VOLTAIRE.

Vive le Roi!

The church at Gondhurst, in Kent, is a fine old building, and remarkable for several reasons; one of which is, that thirty-nine different parishes may be distinctly seen from it, and in clear weather the sea, off Hastings, a distance of twenty-seven miles and a half.

SPECULATION

Sir William Adams, afterwards Sir William Rawson, which name he took in consequence of some property he succeeded to by right of his wife, was one of the victims of the South American mining mania. He plunged deeply into speculation, and wrote pamphlets to prove that so much gold and silver must ultimately find its way into Europe from Mexico, that all the existing relations of value would be utterly destroyed. He believed what he wrote, though he failed to demonstrate what he believed. At one period he might have withdrawn himself from all his speculations with at least a hundred thousand pounds in his pocket; but he fancied he had discovered the philosopher's stone—dreamed of wealth beyond what he could count—went on—was beggared—and you know how and where he died. Poor fellow! He deserved a better fate. He was a kind-hearted creature; and if he coveted a princely fortune, I am satisfied he would have used it like a prince. But I am forgetting my story. Well, then, it was after he had totally relinquished his profession as an oculist, that he might devote his entire time and attention to the Mexican mining affairs, that a gentleman, ignorant of the circumstance, called upon him one morning to consult him. Sir William looked at him for a moment, and then exclaimed, in the words of Macbeth, addressing Banquo's ghost, "Avaunt—there is no speculation in those eyes!"

Monthly Magazine.

THE SUPPLEMENT to Vol. xiii. containing Title, Preface, Index, &c. with a fine Steel-plate PORTRAIT of the late SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, Bart. and a copious Memoir of his Life and Discoveries—will be published with the next Number.

notes

1

The reader, who is interested in this subject, will find in Mr. Richards's treatise a candid description of the ill effects of drunkenness, explained with a view to admonish, rather than to censure the sufferer.

2

It commences from Henri de Ferrer, Lord of Tetbury, a Norman who came over with William the Conqueror.