Seventeen hundred individuals a year, for the last seven years, have
been committed for poaching.--_Report Prison Discip. Society_.
Crime is a curse only to the period in which it is successful; but
virtue, whether fortunate or otherwise, blesses not only its own age,
but remotest posterity, and is as beneficial by its example, as by its
immediate effects.
At the late Doncaster races, there were 30,000 persons well clothed, and
apparently well fed and happy. 2000l. were taken at the grand stand for
admission.
Mr. Kean is to receive, during the present season, _fifty pounds_ for
each night's performance--the yearly income of a curate!
Singing _Non Nobis Domine_ after dinner is a very foolish custom. People
in England pay 10,000l. a year for _non nobis_. Rather sing Dr.
Kitchener's Universal Prayer and the English grace. The common people of
every country understand only their native tongue; therefore if you do
not understand them, you will not understand each other. All Italian
music is detestable, and nothing like our genuine native song. Weber's
"unconcatenated chords" ought not to be listened to, while we have such
composers as Braham and Tom Cooke. The _national songs of Great Britain_
have not sold so well as the _Cook's Oracle_. "People like what goes
into the mouth better than what comes out of it."--_Dr. Kitchener_.
A museum, deanery, and a cattle-market are building at York. Various
other improvements and repairs are also in progress in that city!
According to the Report of the Commissioners of Public Charities, the
_annual_ sum of 972,396l. has been bequeathed by pious donors to
_England only_! This is surely the promised land of benevolence; but in
Salop only, there are arrears now due to the poor for upwards of 42
years!
M. La Combe, in his _Picture of London_, advises those who do not wish
to be robbed to carry a brace of blunderbusses, and to put the muzzle of
one out of each window, so as to be seen by the robbers.
The silly habit of praising every thing at a man's table came in for a
share of the late Dr. Kitchener's severity. He said, "Criticism, sir, is
not a pastime; it is a verdict on oath: the man who does it is (morally)
sworn to perform his duty. There is but one character on earth, sir," he
would add, "that I detest; and that is the man who praises,
indiscriminately, every dish that is set before him. Once I find a
fellow do that at my table, and, if he were my brother, I never ask him
to dinner again."
A _daily_ literary journal has lately been started in Paris, and has, in
less than three weeks, above 2,000 subscribers.
_Reviewing_, as a profession by which a certain class of men seek to
instruct the public, and to support themselves creditably in the middle
order, and to keep their children from falling, after the decease of
enlightened parents, on the parish, is at the lowest possible ebb in
this country; and many is the once well-fed critic now an
hungered--_Blackwood_.
_Oranges_.--It is not perhaps generally known or suspected, that the
rabbis of the London synagogues are in the habit of affording both
employment and maintenance to the poor of their own persuasion, by
supplying them with oranges at an almost nominal price.--Ibid.
_Noble Authors_.--The poor spinsters of the Minerva press can scarcely
support life by their labours, so completely are they driven out of the
market by the Lady Charlottes and the Lady Bettys; and a rhyming peer is
as common as a Birmingham button. It would take ten Horace Walpoles at
least to do justice to the living authors of the red book.
_Buying Books_.--Money is universally allowed to be the thing which all
men love best; and if a man buys a book, we may safely infer he thinks
well of it. What nobody buys, then, we may justly conclude is not worth
reading.
* * * * *
_On the Duchess of Devonshire's canvassing for Mr. Fox at the
Westminster Election._
Array'd in matchless beauty, Devon's fair
In Fox's favour takes a zealous part;
But, oh! where'er the pilferer comes beware,
She supplicates a vote, and steals a heart.
* * * * *
_Lines sent by a Surgeon, with a box of ointment, to a Lady who had an
inflamed eye._
The doctor's kindest wishes e'er attend
His beauteous patient, may he hope his friend;
And prays that no corrosive disappointment
May mar the lenient virtues of his ointment;
Of which, a bit not larger than a shot,
Or that more murd'rous thing, "a beauty spot,"
Warmed on the finger by the taper's ray,
Smear o'er the eye affected twice a day.
Proffer not gold--I swear by my degree,
From beauty's lily hand to take no fee;
No glittering trash be mine, I scorn such pelf,
The eye, when cured, will pay the debt itself.
* * * * *
George III. is said to have observed to a person who approached him in a
moment of personal restraint, indispensable in his situation, "Here you
see me _checkmated_."
* * * * *