This trifle was sent to the _Mirror_ a few days since, and last Saturday
it appeared in the _Literary Gazette_, with the same signature, E.L.J.--Is
not this double-dealing?
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_Pantomimes_.--Four hundred persons are nightly employed in the pantomime
at Covent Garden Theatre, on the stage, behind the scenes, and in the
orchestra. Of this number are 90 carpenters in the machinery, property,
and scenic department. The usual cost of one of these relics of olden
Christmas at a patent theatre is £2,000.; and upwards of £10,000. are
annually expended in producing pantomimes for the amusement of the large
and little children of this great metropolis.
_How to keep away the Cholera_.--Fear has proved at all times, but more
particularly during the prevalence of cholera, a fruitful predisposing
cause of disease; be firm, therefore, and confident. Cheerfulness of
disposition, equanimity and serenity of mind, are essential means of
preservation from epidemic disorders, cholera especially. You have now the
consoling assurance of the New Board of Health, in confirmation of what we,
the anti-contagionists, in regard to cholera, had long before declared and
contended for, that the disease _does not pass to those about the sick_,
and seldom spreads in families. Cholera, therefore, is thus disarmed of
one of its worst terrors. You only run the average share of risk of one in
1,200,000 individual inhabitants of the metropolis, of being affected by
the epidemic influence of the atmosphere, while that influence lasts; and
as you are put in possession of several means to counteract that influence,
the chances are greatly in your favour that you will not be attacked by
cholera at all. To this conclusion I am authorized to come by my
experience, which has been very considerable, and my observations, in more
than one general epidemic, and by what I have read in all the authors
(twenty or thirty of them) who have treated of cholera.--_Dr. Granville_.
_The Cholera_.--An interesting experiment was tried at Newcastle last week,
on the state of the atmosphere. A kite was sent up, having attached to it
a piece of fresh butcher's meat, a fresh haddock, and a small loaf of
bread. The kite ascended to a considerable height, and remained at that
elevation for an hour and a quarter. When brought to the ground, it was
found that the fish and the piece of meat were both in a putrid state,
particularly the fish; and the loaf, when examined through, a microscope,
was discovered to be pervaded with legions of animalculae. It may be worth
while to repeat the experiment in other places to which cholera may
unfortunately extend itself.--_Evening Paper._
_Foreign Books._--From official accounts it appears that the foreign books
imported into the United Kingdom in the year 1830, weighed 3,441 cwt.
3 qrs. 13 lbs. the amount of duty upon which was £11,865 4_s_. 4_d_.
We find this in a paper on the Duties on Foreign Books in the _Foreign
Quarterly Review_, just published; in which the imported old books have
obtained a considerable ascendancy over the new ones.
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The lovers of the Fine Arts will hear with sorrow, the destruction by fire
of Mr. Wilmshurst's splendid Painted Window of the Tournament of the Field
of the Cloth of Gold, described at page 246, vol. xv. of _The Mirror_. It
was completed about two years since at a cost of nearly 2,000_l_., and
three years' labour of the artist.
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