(_From the Latin of Owen._)
Bella, your image just returns your smile--
You weep, and tears its lovely cheek bedew--
You sleep, and its bright eyes are closed the while--
You rise, the faithful mimic rises too.--
Bella, what art such likeness could increase
If glass could talk, or woman hold her peace?
Rufus.
* * * * * {309}
_Journeyman._--Three or four years since, a paragraph went the round of
the press, deriving the English word "journeyman" from the custom of
travelling among work-men in Germany. This derivation is very doubtful.
Is it not a relic of Norman rule, from the French _journée_, signifying
a day-man? In support of this it may be observed, that the German name
for the word in question if _Tagelöhner_, or day-worker. It is also well
known, that down to a comparatively recent period, artisans and free
labourers were paid daily.
Gomer.
_Balloons._--In one of your early numbers you mention the _History of
Ringwood_, &c. Many years since I sent to a periodical (I cannot
recollect which) a circumstance connected with that town, which I never
heard or read of anywhere, and which, as it is rather of importance, I
forward to you in hopes that some of your correspondents may be able to
throw some light upon it. When my father was in the Artillery Ground at
the ascension of Lunardi's balloon, he remarked to several persons
present, "This is no novelty to _me_; I remember well, when I was at
school in Ringwood [about the year 1757], an apothecary in that town
that used to let off _balloons_ (he had no other name, I suppose, to
give them) on a smaller scale, but exactly corresponding with what he
then saw, _many_ a time."
I had several letters addressed to me, requesting further explanation,
which, as my father was dead, I was unable to give. It is highly
improbable that any persons now living may have it in their power to
corroborate the fact, but some of their relations or descendants may. I
suppose they must have been _fire-balloons_, and these of the rudest
construction; and my father, being a boy at the time, would have given
perhaps little valuable information, except as to the name of the
apothecary, which, however, I never heard him mention.