4. The remainder of ancient Poland, comprising the bulk of what was
before the Grand Duchy of Warsaw; made to revert to Russia.
The kingdom was divided into eight Palatinates: viz., Masovia, Cracow,
Sandomir, Kalisz, Lublin, Plotsk, and Augustowa. The population,
according to the last census of 1829, was, exclusive of the army,
4,088,290, which have been thus classed:--
Employed in agriculture (householders) 1,871,259
Their families and servants 2,221,188
In manufactures 140,377
Their families 358,035
Tradesmen 49,888
Their families 131,331
Landed Proprietors 4,205
Copyholders 1,886
Freeholders in towns 41,654
Employed under government 8,414
Patients in the 592 public hospitals 5,376
Prisoners in the 76 prisons 7,926
The population of the towns is, to that of the country, as one to five.
The towns are small and far removed from each other, which has been a
main cause of retarding the progress of civilization, commerce, and
manufactures. There are only thirteen towns in Poland containing upwards
of 10,000 people each: viz., Warsaw, containing about 120,000; Dantzic,
about 50,000; Wilna, 30,000; Lemberg, 29,000; Cracow, 28,000; Kiev,
20,000; Posen, 20,000; Brady, 15,000; Witepsk, 13,000; Lublin, 13,000,
Mahilev, 12,500; Kalisch, 12,000; Kharkof, 11,000; the population of the
whole thirteen being equalled by the aggregate population of three or
four of the Lancashire or Yorkshire towns. The maps contain a multitude
of names of miserable wooden villages, inhabited merely by the peasant
cultivators of the soil, and by a few shop-keeping Jews. Of the 451
towns of the kingdom, 353 are more than half, and 83 wholly, of wood;
and but a very few towns contain a supply of the ordinary articles of
consumption by persons in easy circumstances. The common articles of
ladies’ wearing apparel are obliged to be procured either from Warsaw or
Vienna, and it is common, in great families, to keep memorandum-books,
in which the inmates of the family enter their wants, from time to time,
which are supplied altogether at intervals of some months. In respect of
all those comforts and conveniences of life which denote the progress of
refinement, Poland is, perhaps, behind all other nations of Christian
Europe.
The rate of increase of the Polish population, since 1815, has been
stated at 100,000 individuals annually, or about two and a half per
cent.
The Catholic religion is specially protected by the government, without
imposing any disabilities on the members of other faiths. The Catholic
establishment consists of an archbishop of Warsaw, eight bishops, and
2,740 clergy. The Greek Catholics have a bishop, and 354 priests. Next
to the Roman Catholics, however, the Jews are of the most importance,
and their numbers are stated to be fast increasing. They have of late
been very unpopular, and have been charged with many malpractices, in
monopolizing trade, and otherwise. The native writers have, for some
time past, been in the habit of reproaching them as the ruin of their
country, but sometimes, possibly, with more prejudice than reason. The
religious statistics are as follows:--
Roman Catholics 3,400,000
Greek Church 100,000
Lutherans 150,000
Calvinists 5,000
Jews 400,000
Other Sects 5,000
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4,060,000
The class of nobles in Poland is to that of the plebeians as one to
thirteen. But this class is composed of persons of such various degrees
of wealth, that the poorer nobles are often glad to be employed as
stewards by the richer, and their wives and daughters take occupations
as humble as nurses and ladies’ maids. The peasantry are still in a
state of modified slavery, or villeinage, cultivating the land for the
benefit of their lords, and not being allowed to remove from it without
giving up their tenements. They are assigned a certain portion of the
produce of the estate; the whole live and dead stock upon which belongs
to the landlord, who lends the use thereof to the peasants, compelling
them to take care of, and account for, it. The peasantry in the Grand
Duchy of Warsaw have been nominally emancipated; but their condition has
hitherto hardly been sensibly ameliorated thereby.
The exports of Poland consist chiefly of corn, cattle, timber, and other
articles of raw produce; and the imports are wines, colonial produce,
and articles of luxury. The manufactures of woollen cloth, linens,
carpets, and leather have increased since 1815, and the breweries and
distilleries are on a very extensive scale. Agriculture is, however, by
far the largest source of occupation for the people; but suffers, at the
present time, from a depression of prices, and has permanently to
contend against the effects of a six months’ winter of frost and snow.
The proximity to the cold regions of Russia, and the exposure to the
sharp north-east winds from Siberia and the polar regions, render the
climate incomparably colder than that of England, though the situation
of Poland is not more northward. In the summer the heat is very great,
the forests obstructing the free circulation of air.
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_Power of Steam._--It is on the rivers, and the boatman may repose on
his oars, it is in highways, and begins to exert itself along the
courses of land-conveyance; it is at the bottom of mines, a thousand
feet below the earth’s surface; it is in the mill, and in the workshops
of the trades. It rows, it pumps, it excavates, it carries, it draws, it
lifts, it hammers, it spins, it weaves, it prints.--_From Webster’s
Lectures._
_A Popular Error._--It is not at all an uncommon thing for even
well-informed people to consider one event the cause of another, because
the one has immediately preceded the other in the order of time. A
curious instance of this error occurred in the last century. The fish,
on which many of the inhabitants of Norway depended for subsistence,
suddenly vanished from their coasts; the practice of inoculation for the
small-pox had just then been introduced, and was instantly fixed upon as
the cause of the calamity; and as the people considered the risk of that
disorder a trifle in comparison with starvation, nothing could exceed
their righteous indignation against all who undertook to prevent their
taking the small-pox.
_Instruction and Amusement_ are more blended than the world in general
is apt to imagine. Uninstructive amusement may be afforded for a moment
by a passing jest or a ludicrous anecdote, by which no knowledge is
conveyed to the mind of the hearer or the reader; but the man who would
amuse others for an hour, either by his writing or his conversation,
must tell his hearers or his readers something that they do not know, or
suggest to them some new reflection upon the knowledge they have
previously acquired. The more the knowledge bears upon their pursuits,
upon their occupations, or upon their interests, the more attractive it
will be, and the more entitled to be called useful.
_The Secret of great Workers._--M. Dumont, in his ‘Recollections of
Mirabeau,’ the leading orator of the French Revolution, thus describes
the persevering industry of our illustrious countryman, Sir Samuel
Romilly:--“Romilly, always tranquil and orderly, has an incessant
activity. He never loses a minute: he applies all his mind to what he is
about. Like the hand of a watch, he never stops, although his equal
movements in the same way almost escape observation.”
_Devotion of a great Mind to its Duties._--Milton, the poet of Paradise
Lost, who, during an active life in the most troublesome times, was
unceasing in the cultivation of his understanding, thus describes his
own habits:--“Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home;
not sleeping or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up
and stirring; in winter, often ere the sound of any bell awake men to
labour or devotion; in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or
not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till
the attention be weary, or memory have its full fraught; then with
useful and generous labours preserving the body’s health and hardiness,
to render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to the mind, to
the cause of religion and our country’s liberty.”
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An era is fast approaching, when no writer will be read by the great
majority, save and except those who can effect that for bales of
manuscript, that the hydrostatic screw performs for bales of cotton, by
condensing that matter into a period that before occupied a
page.--_Colton._
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Two painters undertook a portrait of Hannibal; one of them painted a
full likeness of him, and gave him two eyes, whereas disease had
deprived him of one. The other painted him in profile, but with his
blind side from the spectators. He severely reprimanded the first, but
handsomely rewarded the second.
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The petty sovereign of an insignificant tribe in North America every
morning stalks out of his hovel, bids the sun good morrow, and points
out to him with his finger the course he is to take for the day.
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When the air-balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr.
Franklin what was the use of it? The doctor answered this question by
asking another: “What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a
man.”
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The Chinese affect to despise European ingenuity, but they cannot mend a
common watch; when it is out of order they say it is dead, and barter it
away for a living one.
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A friend called on Michael Angelo, who was finishing a statue. Some time
afterwards he called again; the sculptor was still at his work. His
friend, looking at the figure, exclaimed, You have been idle since I saw
you last. By no means, replied the sculptor, I have retouched this part,
and polished that; I have softened this feature, and brought out this
muscle; I have given more expression to this lip, and more energy to
this limb. Well, well, said his friend, but all these are trifles. It
maybe so, replied Angelo, but recollect that trifles make perfection,
and that perfection is no trifle.
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