Papurau Newydd Cymru
Chwiliwch 15 miliwn o erthyglau papurau newydd Cymru
17 erthygl ar y dudalen hon
FACE-PAINTING. |
FACE-PAINTING. | To the above we may attach the following on a correlative subject, from the same book:— Long as patching lasted, it was but a thing of the day compared'with the more reprehensible custom of painting—a custom common to all ages, and pretty nearlv all countries since Jezebel painted her face and tired her head and looked out at a window," as the avenging Jehu entered in at the gate. There is evidence of English women using paint as early as the the fourteenth century, and the practice seems to have been common when Shakespeare tried his 'prentice hand on the drama. And when bitter Philip Stubbs complains that his countrywomen are not contented with a face of Heaven's making, but must "adul- terate the Lord's workmanship" with far-fetched, dear. bought liquors, unguents, and cosmetics, the worthy Puritan only echoes Hamlet's reproach:—"I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another." When Sir John Harrington declared he would rather salute a lady's glove than her lip or her cheek, he justified his seeming bad taste with the rhymes- If with my reason you would be acquainted, <! Your glove's perfumed, your lip and cheek are pair> Overbury describesa lady ofthe^en^fh her face in the glass eve^ morn^ and M t Qut stood byready to write ^red^ begt'Qr WQr^ pale t ere» wealth existed no respectable As long as the Con^ chetk but charlesll. had woman dare t Whitehall before the practice was n ej(jn,a'Xfe disgust of Evelyn and the discontent of pV1^ The latter vows he loathes Nelly Gwyn and ^JTKnipp (two of his especial favourites), and hates nis relative, pretty Mrs. Pierce, for putting red on their faces. Bulwer says:—" Sometimes they think they have too much colour, then they use art to make them pale and fair; now they have too little colour, then Spanish paper, red-leather, or other cosmeticaL- rubrics must be had." A little further on he accuses the gallants of beginning to vie patches and beauty spots, nay, painting, with the tender and fantastical ladies." Painting flourished under Anne. An unfortunate husband writes to the "Spectator" in 1711, asking if it be the law that a man marrying a woman, and finding her not to be the woman he intended to marry, can have a separation, and whether his case does not come within the meaning of the statute. Not to 2eep you in suspense," he says, as for my dear, never man was so enamoured as I was of her fair forehead, neck, and arms, as well as the bright jet of her hair; but, to my great astonishment, I find they were all the effect of art. Her skin ii so tarnished with this practice that when she first wakes in the morning she scarce seems young enough to be the mother of her whom I carried to bed the night before. I shall take the liberty to part with her by the first opportunity, unless her father will make her portion suitable to her real, not her assumed countenance." The'' Spectator" enters thereupon into a description of the Picts, as hejpalls the painted ladies. "The Picts, though never so beautiful, have dead, uninformed countenances. The muscles of a real face sometimes work with soft passions, sudden surprises, and are flushed with agreeable confusions, according as the object before them, or the ideas presented to them. affect their imaginations. But the Picts behold all things with the same air, whether they are joyful or sad; the same fixed insensibility appears on all occasions. A Pict, though she takes all the pains to invite the approach of lovers, is obliged to keep them at a certain distance a sigh in a languishing lover, if fetched too near, would dissolve a feature; and a kiss snatched by a forward one might transform the complexion of the mistress to the admirer. It is hard to speak of these false fair ones without saying something uncomplaisant, but I would only recommend them to consider how they like coming into a room newly painted they may assure themselves the near approach of a lady who uses this practice is much more offensive." If Walpole is to be believed, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu not only used the cheapest white paint she could get, but left it on her skin so long that it was obliged to be scraped off her. More than one belle of his time killed herself with painting, like beautiful Lady Coventry, whose husband used to chase her round the dinner-table, that he might remove the obnoxious colour with a napkin! Would that we could say that rouge, pearl-powder, and the whole tribe of cosmetics were strangers to the toilet-tables of our own day—a glance at the shop-window of a fashionable perfumer forbids us laying the flattering unction to our soul- that ladies no longer strive to With curious arts dim charms revive And triumph in the bloom of fifty-live. and tempts us, in the words of an old author, to exclaim:—" From beef without mustard, from a servant who overvalues himself, and from a woman who painteth herself, good Lord deliver us
A NEW MILITARY FOUNDER!
A NEW MILITARY FOUNDER! An Indian correspondent writes:— About sixteen years ago, and not long before we became masters of the Punjab, one Baluk Singh started a new Sikh sect, near Rawul Pindee, called Juggeaesees." After making a large number of converts, he died just a year ago. Of his three favourite chelas,"or pupils, Earn Singh, a carpenter, was chosen to succeed him. In many respects the doctrines of the sect are an improvement even on the Sikh creed. Ram Singh condemns caste, and preaches against adultery and fornication. He enjoins the marriage of widows. and advocates the inter- marriage of all classes. He takes no alms, nor allows his followers to do so. He condemns drunkenness, and urges cleanliness of person and truth-telling. He, however, allows too free an intercourse between the sexes, many of his followers consisting of girls and women, who, in thousands, rave at his meetings. All accept the Grunth as their inspired Bible, wear a peculiar turban, use as a Gooroo umuntair, or mystic watchword, the words Wah Gooroo," and have a necklace of knots made on a white woollen cord to represent beads. The three dangers of this fraternity to the peace of the community are these—each man must carry a staff, with which, instead of a musket, the whole are drilled; the leader, Ram Singh, declares himself to be Gooroo Govend the Second, or military founder of the Sikh faith, risen from the dead and he, but especially his followers, declare that they will very soon expel the English, who will leave all their wives behind them. Of course all this has long been well known to the Punjab authorities, and, besides, many of Ram Singh's devotees are in the Punjab police. Sir Robert Montgomery has acted most wisely by putting the man under surveillance during the last Dewallee fair at Umritsur, and believe he is again in gaol.
PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND THE…
PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND THE WORKING MEN. A correspondent of the Manchester Examiner and Times sends to that paper the following extract from a letter written from New York by a working man who, few months ago, emigrated from England, and who had been appointed to wait upon President Lincoln as one of a deputa- tion of three in respect of the mechanics' strike We left, on Sunday evening, New York, by express train, and reached Washington about eight o'clock next morning, having travelled a distance of 205 miles. We put up at one of the largest hotels in Washington, our individual expenses being 12s. 6d. per day but we lived like lords. We had to pay 5d. for cleaning our boots, the same for brushing our clothes, and 71d. for a shave. Such is the way a Yankee working men's deputation live. We spent Monday in visiting the dockyard, in which there are some splendid ships, and large cannon getting ready for the war. The railroads are guarded by soldiers for more than 100 miles this side of Wash- ington. As Tuesday was appointed for our interview with the President, we proceeded early on that day to the White House, where Mr. Lincoln should reside, but he prefers living in a more humble way, in a small cot- tage a little out of the city; but be reaches the White House as early as nine o'clock punctually every morn- ing. On arriving at the Presidential mansion we freely examined the most beautiful suite of rooms I ever witnessed, and walked in and out just as we pleased, without anyone saying a word or interfering with us. I had never seen such splendid furniture. We saw a coloured man lighting fires, whom we informed that we wanted to see the President, at the same time giving him a note to take to him. In less than five minutes after we were before the President, about whom I had heard so much in England. This was the man whose name was a signal for a burst of applause or the groans and hisses of the haters of freedom. I little thought when I used to clap at the announcement of his name in the Free Trade Hall and elsewhere in Manchester that I should ever grasp his hand or engage with him in a conversation. We opened the door ourselves. Mr. Lincoln was busy writing. When we had reached about half way into the room, he sprang to his feet with a smartness that quite surprised me, shook hands with us all in turn, drew forth some chair. and requested us to be seated. When we had complied, be sat himself down, threw out his long legs in true Yankee style, drew his hand across his face, lighted up with an honest smile, and began, Well, gentlemen, I see what your business is by your note but it is useless to note down all that was said, but I can say that it is almost impossible to keep a straight face in his company, he being so brim- ful of jokes, all having some bearing on the subject under consideration. But now and again in his argu- ment he rivets your serious attention. You cannot misunderstand him, he is so solid and then he will finish with a pun. I consider him to be astaunch sup- porter of the working man. Whilst we were talking to Lincoln, a boy came running into the room—just such a boy as you would feel inclined to give a penny to for fetching your coals. His clothes had seen much wear his billycock had worn itself into a sugar-loaf shape, and his strong shoes made no little noise. He appeared about ten years old. I fully expected to see him have his ears cuffed out of the room. This was one of Lincoln's sons. He had a bright, healthy face, and, as his father rubbed his head between his hand. laughintr lustily, the little fellow made quite a struggle to get loose. American Presidents are human nature. They can be sociable and fatherly, and still do their duty to their country in its greatest trials. Lincoln is just such a man as I love to be in company with. He finds a bright side to every question, and is sure to illustrate his argument with a witty joke. You cannot forget what he'says.
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To the above we may attach the folkwins from a leader in the Times on the "Townley reprieve." The whole article is wortli pHusal, her-ause it takes a somewhat different view of the subject, to that of S. G. 0. but as it is too long for our columns, we can but give the closing sentences:- We hope that the inquiry now prayed for, whatever it may establish respecting the Derby Commission, will lead to there cognition of such principles as will place the administration of justice on an unexceptional footing for the future. If a trial by jury is to be fol- lowed by a trial of another kind, let the second be as fair as the first, with no advantage, either direct or indirect, for the rich over the poor. If the sanity of a convict is to be tested as Townley's was tested, provision should be made for the cases of those who may not have Townley's resources in friends and money. Money did not buy Townley favour, but it bought him energy and effort," employed unsparingly in his behalf. One of the magistrates candidly ad- mitted that he could not blame those who were thus engaged and who did their best to earn their fees. Of course he could not, Townley's family had a perfect right to employ the best advocacy available on his behalf; but the mis- fortune in such cases is, that whereas nothing is left undone on the side of the prisoner, a good deal may be left undone on the side of the public. The feeling, however, now abroad is a good sign. It is so easy to incline to mercy, and so cruelly invidious to press for the last rigour of the law, that strong opinions must be entertained before any persons would move as the Derbyshire magistrates have moved in the matter before us. We wait for the result which such a move- ment may produce. It would be satisfactory to learn that the Derby Commission was not open to the ob- jections advanced by the protesting magistrates, but it would be still more so to find that the course of justice in such cases will be left exposed to objections no longer.
THE WRONGS OF THE STOMACH.
THE WRONGS OF THE STOMACH. A good article has been published in the London Review entitled "The Wrongs of the Stomach," well worth the at- tention of all, whether inclined to indulge in the so-called pleasures of the table" or not, from which we make the following extracts In most of the early literatures is to be found a dialogue between the Body and the Soul, in which each accuses the other of their mutual perdition, recapitu- ialing the offences which have produced it. Something similar might be written, with good effect, dividing the imaginary conversation between, let us say the Stomach and the Man, and making an attack of gout the subject of their recriminations. The Man might accuse the Stomach of having done its duty so badly that he is tormented with a burning fire in his extremities, which will neither let him eat, drink, walk, nor rest. The Stomach might plead justification, and say that she had lighted the said fire as the only means of getting a moment's rest from an intolerable taskmaster. Again, the Man might complain that he had lost all enjoyment of life, that his spirits were depressed, his mind gloomy, his appetite gone, his once fine, muscular system reduced to llabby indolence that his food did him more harm than good, so that it had become a misery to eat, and that every meal was followed by a leaden oppression which rendered life an insupportable burden. The Stomach having listened to all this, delivered in a tone of anyry accusation, would reply, "My case is just as bad as your own. Once upon a time, before you took to evil courses, I was as healthy a stomach as you could meet in a day's march I went through my work regularly, and did it so cheerfully and so well that, like some unreasonable masters when they get hold of a willing servant, you seemed to think I could do with- out rest and didn't care even for an occasional holiday. Then you hearted burden upon burden unon me. Before I had well digested your breakfast for you, you gave me a meat luncheon to see to, and before I had got that out of the way, you thrust a dinner upon me large enough for three stomachs. Not satisfied with that, you wound up the day with a supper, drenching me all the time with ale, wir e, spirits, tea, coffee, rum, more wine, and more spirits, till I thought you had taken leave of your senses; and when I heard you groaning in your deep, starting up every now and then as if apoplexy had broken into the houce, and was gointr to carry you off, I said to myself, Serve him right if it did.' And in this way you went on year after year, treating all my remonstrances with contempt. I gave you headache after headache, I tried to recal you to reason with half a dozen attacks of ir fluerizi; gave you a bilious fever; made you smart with rheuma.'isua twinged you with gout till you roared. But all to no purpose, You went on making me digest till the work broke my back, and now 1 can digest no longer," This reproach might be made even pathetic, by a description of the Stomach watching its hard tasks come down to it from the regions above between dinner and btdtime. First, comes a plate of soup and bread, and a glass of sherry I can manage that," says the Stomach. Then a plate of fish, with more bread and more sherry; "and that," adds the Stomach, though these sauces don't quite agree with me." Then comes beef, or mutton, or both, and stout; then game and sherry; then a dish of tart; Confound this pastry," ways the Stomach, it gives me more trouble than anything else but if the master will only stop here, I think, if I put out all my powers, I can get even this rubbish out of the way." But she has hardly taken this hopeful view of the case, when down come cheese, celery, apples, oranges, nuts, fig", almonds and raisins, port, sherry, claret, and a tumbler of hot Hollands and water. Good gracious, was there ever such a mess?" exclaims the Stomach; what can the man mean? Does he think one pair of hands can manage all this ?" Still the willing slave goes to work, when presently there is a rush of hot tea from above with a thin slice of bread-and-butter. And when the Stomach with infinite labour has got the hodge-podge into some sort of homogeneous shape, and is preparing to take a nap after her exhaustion, lo! a devilled drumstick rushes into its laboratory, two devilled kidneys, a bottle of stout, and three tumblers of hot brandy and water.
A CASE OF UNDYING REVENGE!…
A CASE OF UNDYING REVENGE! Among the characteristics of half-settled and less than half-civilised territories, none illustrate the prevalent bar- barism more conspicuously than the extraordinary shapes assumed by crime. Not only are the culprits ferocious in the perpetration of their deeds, but the spirit in which they confront the result seems akin to that of the Red Indian-a wild, desperate, heartless stoicism transforming itself sud- denly at times into a sort of suppressed despair. Instances of this cruel fortitude have occasionally been exhibited in our own remoter agricultural districts and in the less cul- tivated regions of Ireland. They are presented occasionally by the lonelier rural population of France, among the shepherds of Valencia and Andalusia, and by the predatory mountaineers of Greece. The following account of a re- markable phase of half-civilised society in America is taken from the London Standard If we would mark the zone of the earth where human wickedness revels in brutal antics (so to speak), swaggers in stage garments, and is all the more revolting on account of its eccentricity, we must point to the fringe of raw wilderness, dotted with a few oases of cultured life, that skirts the realm of Federal America. There ruffian- ism wears a holiday apparel, attires itself in grotesque costume, mouths in a theatrical dialect, and struts from murder to execution as though the passion of the delinquent for insolence and bravado could never be appeased except by the last solemn rebuke of the scaffold. The case, however, to which we now ad- vert is not one of these. It wears, on the contrary, a far different complexion. Yet it is in itself, as a story, or rather a drama of crime, in its own way un- paralleled. Many a three-volume tale and many a three-act piece, both thrilling to transpontine au- diences, have been constructed from materials inti- nitely less romantic, if gloom, horror, and a deadly and unexpected climax constitute romance in the proper sense of the term. Indeed, were not the cir- cumstances patent in public records, and had not the evidence been duly reported, in the ordinary manner, through the columns of the local press, we might he- sitate to put faith in a series of events so singular, or in a catastrophe so unexampled. THE SCENE OF THE MURDER. The scene lies near the town of Albuquerque, a town situated in that part of Federal America which is styled New Mexico. The date at which the in- terest of the narrative begins is August 15, 1802; but the ultimate development of the plot was only a few weeks ago revealed, and even now there may be a sequel to come, since one chief actor in the drama has not been finally disposed of. On the day indicated the corpse of a beautiful boy, between nine and 'at years of age, was discovered floating in the Fly spot the bottom of an abandoned mine, at a neighbour- situated some distance from the inhale body, which hood. There were certain markgcl from the jagged might have been injuries sviS/inflicted by felonious • sides of the shaft, or y the local functionary who violence. At all ft*; and who very likely is a co- styles himself cushion of the outer clearings," re- roner attend an inquest, and more was accordingly solved +che affair than is customary in those happy mai where law regards not life," and where, as a title, a man more or less stabbed in the streets, or a woman strangled in a cowhouse, or any other" diffi- culty of the kind, is little more than a nine minutes' wondpr to be dissipated at once by illimitable juleps and incalculable cocktails. However, for once, there was an excitement, followed up by a minute in- vestigation. THE CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. The facts proved were these, that the child was found dead in the abysses of the mine that its remains were strangely bruised and cut, though in no way mortally that no infantine footsteps were traced to the edge of the sepulchre; but that other footsteps were. There were deep prints of a man's foot, studded on the soles with heavy nails, such as were worn by the common people of the locality there were marks of another foot incased only in stockings. A curious fact was that every time these vestiges were identified, tile foot in stocking's appeared to have been invariably the left, while the booted foot changed alternately from left to right. But, as we have said, no child's wauderings were traceable around the desolate pit- mouth, though a little fishing-rod was found broken among the rocks. In spite, however, of these sus- picious circumstances, and the unintelligible aspect of the hurts upon the body, it was deemed impossible to record any other verdict than to the effect that the corpse of the boy had been found drowned, without any means possessed by the jury of ascertaining how or whether the death had been accidental or criminal. THE FATHER OF THE CHILD. But then arose another question-who was the c child ? He was the son of a man named O'Meara, an Irish emigrant, and not even the most scandalous or invidious tongues in or around the good town of Al- buquerque, in the Federal States of New Mexico, could surmise, or in any way suggest, why the boy had been murdered although, in spite of the verdict, all agreed in believing that foul play had been at work. They preferred the evidence of the footprints to the conclusions of the medical men. The poor little fellow had been generally liked, and loved by all his family. His parents were not known to have excited any enmities which could reach them in that secluded district of the New World; but in this in- stance it was destined that murder should out," and a scrap of O'Meara's biography gave the cue, which equals some among the most startling inventions of romance. A REJECTED SUITOR. Years before he had courted and married a young girl, who had rejected, or jilted; or both, one Patrick Logan, who thereupon vowed an inappeasable ven- geance against his triumphant rival. When O'Meara emigrated, Logan emigrated also. Logan followed O'Meara to Albuquerque, muttering still his vindictive declarations but being involved on a charge of horse. stealing, he was compelled to leave the country, and had not, in August, 1862, been heard of for ten years. It is now necessary, perhaps, to remember that we are not reading a novel. but the report of a criminal trial in our own days. The man's jealous fury kept alive during those ten years it brought him back at their expiration, at the risk of discovery and denunciation, to the spot inhabited by his old foe and when, like a skulking ghost, he was seen in the neighbourhood, O'Meara's favourite son suddenly disappeared, to be dragged, two days afterwards, out of the ghastly pit. A WITNESS FOUND! Several months elapsed, when O'Meara presented himself before a magistrate at Albuquerque, bringing with him a labouring man named Antonio Gomez. Upon the statements of this witness the police were ordered to hunt down Patrick Logan, and they ulti- mately succeeded. Several months ago the trial took place, and Antonio Gomez gave his evidence. On the 14th of August, 1862. he was near the deserted mine, about a mile from O'Meara's house. He saw a man stooping in the midst of a wild and dreary heath, throwing large stones into a wide, dark aperture, and heard him shouting, with fearful curses, "Will you never go to the bottom?" The man, upon per- ceiving him, turned his back, when Gomez said, Well, my friend, what excites you?" Logan, with- out facing him, auSwered that he was drowning a dog who had bitten him, and then walked rapidly away across the moorland. Presently, doubling upon the heath, he turned, and, swore the witness, I recog- nised Patrick Logan." He had no shoes on-only stockings, and he carried one boot under his left arm. A FATHER'S REVENGE. Corroborative testimony was now produced. John Smith, a shoemaker, deposed that he well knew Patrick Logan; that he saw him on the day named near the abandoned shaft; that he himself was carrying home a pair of boots for repair; that Logan complained of having lost a shoe, and tried to borrow—in fact, to appropriate one forcibly; that he seized those which the cobbler carried, but finding them too small, uttered an angry exclamation, leaped a ditch and ran away over the waste land. Upon this, and an immense mass of other testimony, including a minute measure- ment of the footprints, the jury found the prisoner guilty, and he was condemned to death by hanging, the execution to take place on Friday, the 16th oMast October. O'Meara heard-the sentence with ferocious joy. He had watched the trial with intense anxiety, every now and then muttering, when doubts were expressed as to the result, "Acquitted or not, his life is mine, and I will have it." A RETRIEVE But the narrative assumes at this point a political tinge. During the three months intervening between condemnation and execution rumours went abroad of a great Secessionist conspiracy in New Mexico-probably a fabrication of the Irish convict himself. He pre- tended to be an agent of the plot, to be acquainted with its leaders, and to possess secrets which would be invaluable to the Federal authorities. They listened to his story, granted him a respite, extending over fourteen. days, and commenced an inquiry into the truth of his statements, which, in all likelihood, were sufficiently malignant and reckless. The fourteen days went by; the 30th of October arrived, and there was no further reprieve. Patrick Logan passed the night in paroxysms of maddened agony. A scaffold If had actually been erected outside the principal gate of the town. The condemned had mounted its steps, and stood beneath the cross-beam, when the pardon reached the prison and was telegraphed to the marshal who instantly threw down his wand of office as a signal that the work of death waa\ not to proceed. Patrick Logan was eager to quit the scaffold, and swiftly ran down the steps. Before he reached the bottom he fell dead—shot through the brain, and O'Meara was seen struggling through the multitude, which parted, and closed again to facilitate his escape, and, according to the local journals, the assassin has not since been heard of. STRANGE-BUT TRUE. Here we have a remarkable phase of New World civilisation and of Old World passions exhibited. It is a strange history, but authentic. Its authenticity, in fact, is so strange a fact in itself, and so undeniable, that we are inclined to mark the fate of O'Meara's child and of his assassin, with the subsequent pardon of the murderer, and his death with the pardon in his hand, as a succession of incidents scarcely paralleled in the black romance of the criminal calendar in America or any other region of the civilised world.
FLOWERS IN PARIS!
FLOWERS IN PARIS! The following, from a correspondent, may interest those of our floral readers who have a desire to see a flower- market in the metropolis (for Covent Garden is one only in part), and who wish also to see a greater taste for flowers cultivated by the industrial classes as an occupation of their leisure Paris is about to be enriched with another flower- market, to be established on the Boulevard Richard L-noir, between the Bastile and the fountain of the Boulevard du Temple. The sale of flowers and shrubs, which now constitutes an important branch of com- merce in Paris, was until of late years of no great value. Gardeners in former years did not possess the variety they do at present, and they sold the few flowers they cultivated at the Marche-aux-Poirees or at the Pont. Neuf. Their collection comprised only the native violet and rose, the ranunculus of the Archi- pelago, and the Damascus rose, imported during the reign of Louis IX. the lilacs, imported from Persia. in the 16th century; and the pinks, of which Rabelais brought the first from Italy for his friend Cardinal EatiaMC. In the reign of Louis XIII. some Spanish women gave the Paris flower-market an additional attraction. The Parisian corporation of flower-sellers would not be surpassed, and in the following reigns the market on the Pont-Neuf acquired considerable importance. The French gardeners had by this time increased their stock by the Japan tulip, .which they received through Holland at the beginning of the 17th century, the narcissus from the East, and the hyacinth from Constantinople. The cultivation of flowers was thenceforth considerably extended, and mignonnette and the Bengal rose were imported into France to- wards the conclusion of the reign of Louis XV. the dahlia was sent to Paris in 1792 from the Botanical Garden of Madrid, which had received it from Mexico two years before. Some years later a French captain brought another new plant from China, which he called Hortensia, after his wife Hortense. Since then various exotics have arrived in such abundance that many plants which were at first received with favour are now neglected. Towards the end of the last century the Pont-Neuf was no longer sufficient for the ever-increasing number of dealers in flowers. The market spread over the rrl Quai de la Ferraille, and in 1808, the carriage way being completely blocked up, It was transferred to the Quai Desaix, in the island of the Cite. In 1824 the number of flower-markets was increased to four, and there is an additional market about to be established at present.
THE CENTENARIANS OF 1863.
THE CENTENARIANS OF 1863. Almost the whole of the newspaper world have given lists of biographies of the famous people who have died during the year lSH3, but none as yet have alluded to the deaths of those equally famous people, the oldest inhabitants," who occasionally turn up in every corner of the civilised world, and to whom physiologists look up as examples of the age to which, under proper circumstances, every man and woman should attain. The London Standard, however, hg a leader on the subject, from which we select the follr items of interest:— th d th The Bordeaux journals have annour Terrelt wue in that city of Madame Mar be;1 Frequent as°are aged 100 years and some mOrt,there js a popular paragraphs of a similar 'authenticity of the facts as disposition to doubtpartly from the truth that the stated. This armory is often repeated, over and over same wondejCoVincial newspapers, disinclining the again, ,Jr"accept any new assertion of the kind as puy; and partly from the knowledge we all possess jl the loose way in which ignorant people remember and declare their ages. Still it is unquestionable that an average -not a considerable, yet, when grouped, a striking average-of persons do attain to that longevity which renders them the marvel of their neighbours. We have a list before us, derived from official sources, of centenarian deaths during the past year-British French, and German. They number more than a hundred and fifty. The most extraordinary age re- corded is 114 years—the widow Perier of Paris-and the next 110 years and 10 months; so that Nelson's coxswain, who died at 103, was, after all, comparatively a junior. We take Soultana Medioni to be a myth, with her 120 years. An ancient lady, indeed, appropriately named "Vigorous," maybe cited who, in her 109th year might have justified the tradition of that motherly dame, who, her son dying at ninety, cried, I knew I never should rear him In fact, parish registers, when carefully examined, will exhibit more instances of this kind than might commonly be imagined. And what must be taken as very character- istic is the pride felt by almost every locality in its oldest inhabitant-that is, out of London, wherein no- body can tell who is the oldest inhabitant. The oldest inhabitant is the memorandum book of the village; he is keeper of the hamlet records his head is a wallet wherein he puts aloas for oblivion." We fear, moreover, that, although knowing everything, he forgets a good deal and dreams a little. For him life and Lethe lie very closely together. But his tenacious strength of pulse, that keeps the frail mechanism of our mortal state at work so far beyond the ordinary allotment of time, goes back even beyond the cradle in which, in the year 1763, he was rocked by nurses in costumes betokening the utmost griffinage of civilisation. But these examples, upon the whole, and casting an average from the very minute average already ob- tained, are rare. Generally speaking, the physical frame which can undergo, without failing, the wear and te3.r of a century, corresponds with the higher force within, and the eyes are bright, and the reason is lucid, and the sensations are natural to the last. But here a difficult problem arises—is there a secret, a science so to speak, of longevity? Physiologists reply in the affirmative. Dietists are absolute upon the point. They lay down certain laws of life to obey, which is to ensure, apart from hereditary predisposi- tion, at least an approach to a hundred years, and.to neglect which is treason against the principle of life. We must, in the midst of the controversies now in progress in England and on the Continent, confess to no small degree of bewilderment in the matter. We see consumers and non-consumers of alcohol, moderate eaters and ample eaters, smokers and non-smokers— men and women of all occupations and no occupation -lean and corpulent, tall and short, fair and dark, varying between blood heat and zero in the barometer of life, and why one proportion protract their existence while another break down earlier by & period of from thirty to forty years, appears inscrutable. Statistics do not help us much, but they do help us a little. Those of France exhibit a larger average of centenarians in the north than in the south. Those of Germany are favourable to the mountainous, as contrasted with the valley regions. But, in England, we seem to have fewer centenarians among us than formerly-so much so, indeed, that a regular declen- sion may almost be marked. The census of 1851 showed 215; that of 1861, 201; two-thirds at both dates being women, which may be assumed, if we please, as an inference on behalf of greater quietude and more temperate habits. And we may congratu- late ourselves, perhaps, upon the circumstance that very few bachelors or old maids ever live to be a hundred years old—a fact which cannot assuredly be too strongly ar vividly impressed upon the social memory. The next faintly distinguishable rule seems to be that a rural is more a conservative system of life than an urban, two-thirds of these oldest of old inhabitants belonging to the country, and one-third to towns. The great manufacturing cities exhibit very few. London is far from prolific. The midland counties of England make the worst show next rank the North and the East; but the West takes precedence of all. Norfolk, Gloucestershire, and Somersetshire are not very far from equality but Wales is the land of centenarians; she beats in that respect, by many degrees, both Lan- cashire and London, so that Long live the Welsh is an old bardic aspiration which has found its common sense in a fact. Of one thing we may feel certain; the quack doctors have not done this for the Llewellyns. Fresh air, in fact, would seem to be the great opera- tive. We count, in the latest census, thirteen out-door farm-servants a hundred years old and more, against one scrivener, one baker, one grocer, one carpenter, one marine-store dealer, and one lacemaker. We find three farmers, five labourers, three hawkers, three seamen, and three soldiers. There is a gipsy, more- over, who might tell strange stories, "an she would" -and so, perhaps, might the "scrivener." So, too, might all, especially that "member of the Royal household" who returned himself as a centenarian. But unfortunately, when the census catalogued their names, six were blind and nineteen were paupers. In connection with this statement, it is remarkable, how- ever we may account for it, that a centenarian is rarely, if ever, a rich man.
FACE-PATCHING AND PAINTING.
FACE-PATCHING AND PAINTING. Since crinoline came in, we have been threatened with sticks for the ladies, with hair-powder, and with patches- painting has never gone out altogether. It may be a few years longer before some of these come into vogue, as the Empress who .rules the fashions in France-as for that too over the whole civilised world-is still beautiful, with fine hair and a clear complexion bnt that time may once more bring in these unnatural fashions admits of belief. Meanwhile writers record the facts, and the most recent and succinct account has appeared in Chambers' Book of Days," from which we select the following :— FACE-PATCHING. The beauties of the court of Louis-Quinze thought they had made a notable discovery, when they gummed pieces of black taffeta on their cheeks to heighten the brilliancy of their complexions but the feps of Elizabethan England had long before anticipated them by decorating their faces with black stars, crescents, and lozenges. And the fashion prevailed through succeeding reigns, for Glapthorne writes in 1640 If it be a lover's part you are to act, take a black spot or two 'twill make your face more amorous, and appear more gracious in your mistress's eyes." The earliest mention of the adoption of patching by the ladies of England occurs in Bulwer'a "Artificial Changeling" (1653). Our ladies," he complains, have lately entertained a vain custom of spotting their faces, out of an affectation of a mole, to set off their beauty, such as Venus had and it is well if one black patch would serve to make their faces remark- able, for some fill their visages full of them, varied into all manner of shapes." He gives a cut of a lady's face patched in the then fashionable style, of which it might well be sung Her patches are of every cut, For pimples and for scars Here's all the wandering planets' signs, And some of the fixed stars. The coach-and-horses patch was an especial favour- ite. The author of England's Vanity" (1653) is goaded thereby into a kind of ^rim humour Methinks the mourning-coach and horses all in black, and plying on their foreheads, stands ready harnessed to whirl them to Acheron, though I pity poor Charon for the darkness of the night, since the moon on the cheek is all in eclipse, and the poor stars on the temples are clouded in sables, and no comfort left him but the lozenges on the chin, which, if he please, he may pick off for his cold." Mr. Pepys has duly recorded his wife's first appear- ance in patches, which seems to have taken place without his concurrence. as three months afterwards he makes an entry in his diary, My wife seemed very prettv to-dav. it being the first time T had envftn I her leave to wear a black patch," And a week or two later he declares that his wife, with two or three patches, looked far handsomer than the Princess Henrietta. Lady Castlemaine, whose word was law, decreed that patches could not be worn with mourn- ing but they seem to have been held proper on all other occasions, being worn in the afternoon at the theatre, in the parks in the evening, and in the draw- ing-room at night. When party-feeling ran high in the days of Anne, we have it on the "Spectator's" authority, that politically-minded dames used their patches as party symbols the Whig-s patching on the right, and the 1 ones on the left side of their faces, while those who were neutral decorated both cheeks. Patches seem to have fallen from their high estate towards the beginning of the present century, for the books of fashion of that period make no al- lusion to them whatever, but they did not become utterly extinct even then. A writer in 1826, describ- ing the toilet-table of a Roman lady, says :—" It looks nearly like that of our modern belles, all loaded with jewels, bodkins, false hair, fillets, ribands, washes, and patchboxea;" and the present generation may possibly witness a revival of the fashion, as it has witnessed the reappearance of the ridiculous, nngrace- I ful, intrusive hoop-petticoat, j
HOW A PRIEST SOLD HIS GOD…
HOW A PRIEST SOLD HIS GOD FOR A RUPEE! We select the following from a correspondence recently furnished to a Scotch newspaper Here was a lovely scene. Below us lay the broad river with its wooded banks and miniature islands— the blue mountains in the distance leaving, in the light of the afternoon sun, but a faint impression upon the still bluer sky beyond. On the other side, the rising ground upon which the pagoda stood sloped down gradually towards the banks of a lake which lay in the bosom of the trees, and rested at the foot of the hill we had at first marked as our destination. To the right of the lake were fields of corn, now quite ripe, here and there intersected by belts of trees, and gradually rising to a ridge of low hills which bounded the prospect. We were standing looking down upon this lovely view, when the poowjee, or priest, made his ippearance, and we accosted him, with the purpose 3f obtaining any information which he might be able to give of the pagoda. But, either from stupidity or ignorance, or both, he could not tell us anything about lt We asked him who built it? He didn't know.—How high was the pinnacle? He couldn't say. -How old it was ? The man looked confounded. "Well, but have you no idea?" No, he had no Well, tell us how old you should think it to be ?"— Oh, sahib, very old—may be 12,000 years;" and that was all we could get out of him. Wishing to take away some curiosity as a memento of our visit to the place, I picked up a blue earthen vessel and asked him what it was. It was a sacred jar to hold water for the gods. I ventmed to ask him if he would sell it, not exactly knowing, however, whether I might not shock his religious feelings by pro- posing the purchase a holy vessel dedicated to the service of the ffof* t(T)11 „ "Oh ye^' said he, "I'll sell it if the sahib likes." cs -yv'y well, how much do you want for it ?" jxe looked at the jar and then at me, and I was ?uite prepared to be imposed upon. But I found that had over-estimated the value of holy vessels, for he fixed the price at the moderate snm of four annas (sixpence), which I paid him forthwith. In a niche in the pinnacle were two small stone gods-the gods whose water-pot I had just bought. Now, these were the very things I would like to have had, but although the priest had sold me the holy water vessel at a very cheap price, I thought it would be rather too much to suppose that he would sell his gods too, for they were decorated with flowers and evidently in use. But M. had less scruple about it, and asked him if he would sell them.—Oh, of course he would. For how much ?"—" Five rupees." No, that's too much," and M. held out one rupee. It is not very often, I dare say, that rupees find their way so far up the Aracan River, and the temptation was too much for him. He said no, but he meant yes, and he never once took his eyes off the rupee, holding out his hand half- way, as if he was afraid M. was going to put it into his pocket again. He was not long in coming to the point, and then we marched off with our trophies, reaching the boat by the same way across the stubble, very heavy walking, and the sun as hot as I ever wish to eel it.
MADNESS AND MURDER!
MADNESS AND MURDER! As the questions of "What ismadnes3?" and "What is murder?" still occupy the attention of the country, apropos of the reprieve of Townley, we think we cannot do better than reprint the following letter from S. G. 0." in reference thereto, and more especially to a new court, to be called the Court of Last Appeal, which he thinks the course of justice in the case of Townley has shown too evidently to be needed:— It is suggested to me that I am wrong in supposing that it is necessary on a trial for murder to prove that the prisoner was previous to the act in a diseased state of mind in order to secure his acquittal on the ground of insanity. I am assured that all that is necessary is to prove that at the moment of the act he was thus insane. If I am wrong, I must plead the having been misled by the anthorities I have consulted, and by the evidence of my own senses, at two trials for murder last year, when the plea of "insanity" was unsuccessfully pleaded in both cases. THE CASE OF M'NAGHTEN. In reference to the case of M'Naghten, the whole of the judges met in conference to answer certain queries put to lb em by the House of Lords. I quote the fol- lowing from what is given in Taylor's Medical Juris- prudence,"} and other works as a part, the most im. portant part, of their answer or ruling The juiy ought in all cases to be told that every man should be considered of sane mind until the contrary was clearly proved in evidence that before a plea of insanity should be allowed, undoubted evidence ought to be adduced that the accused was of diseased mind, and that at the time he committed the act he was not conscious of right and wrong. I do not argue from this, that the judges thus gave a ruling or decision new to the law, but that they then gave the whole weight of their united declara- tion to this exposition of what they considered the law, and on which they were in the habit of acting. If I were told that a man was of diseased mind who had picked my pocket, I certainly should understand that he was thus mentally diseased previous to his putting his hand out for the purpose I should not understand that his doing so was the result of an in- stantaneous insane seizure. THE RULING OF THE JUDGES. In the case of Pate, tried in 1850, for an assault upon the Queen, the late Baron Alderson laid it down to the jury that the only insanity which legally excused a man for his acts was that species of delusion which conduced and drove him to commit the act allege d against him. They ought to have proof of a formed disease of the mind, a disease existing before the act was committed, and which made the person accused incapable of knowing at the time he did the act that t was a wrong act for him.to do. Mr. Serjeant Shee, at the trial of Fookes for murder, and also at that of Preedy, laid it down to the jury, that to establish the defence of insanity, it must be proved to their satisfaction that at the time the prisoner did the act charged against him he was labouring under such a defective reason from a diseased mind as not to knowthe nature and quality of the act lie was doing, or, if he did know it, not to know it was wrong." MOMENTARY MADNEE3 NO EXCUSE FOR MURDER. I know not whose life would be safe if momentary madness is to excuse murder, for I cannot see how this can be ever proved so satisfactorily as to justify the plea. There are men and women who, in a mo- 0 ment of sudden rage from some offence or other, will strike right and left, not caring whom they hit, will knock their furniture, valuable china, &c., to pieces, will bite their lips till the blood flows, and yet do all this being quite sane-i.e., having shown no one taint or trace of insanity all their lives; after the "rage" has passed off, they are again kind and sensible as.ever. Yet who would hope to get off from hanging a brother or sister of such a temper, who, in one of those fits of violence, struck a blow which destroyed the life of a person who had offended them ? I admit that in one or more such cases careful search might trace out an hereditary predisposition to insanity. Some relative with this same temper had so indulged it, that at last continued excitement had produced brain disease, and he had died in an asylum some other relative had drunk hard. and thus turned a naturally vile temper into the delirium that consigned him to a madhouse. Still, I think that the prisoner would be in singular luck who met with a judge and jury who would give him the benefit of this evidence, as proof that his in- termittent violence was the result of a diseased mind at times not cognisant of right or wrong. THE CASE OF TOWNLEY. With regard to the case of Townley, I can easily understand how he has escaped. I can never regret such a being not being hung, if I know he will never be let loose again but what I do regret is that his is another of the many cates of late in which convicts escape execution by a species of after-trial, at which no competent Judge appears to preside, and the nature of which seems to be subject to no one rule which can satisfy the public that it meets equally the case of the poor man, who has no friends, and the man of "means," who can by money command them, if he is not already possessed of them. We appear now to have a Court of Appeal open to no particular cases, but not alike open to all. It takes evidence in private, it listens to private solicitation, it receives evidence got up after conviction, submitted to none of the wholesome English sifting which all evidence undergoes in open court. It allows weight to mere sympathy, receives petitions to set aside the law's solemn judgment, got up as they may be, upon a plan and by a machinery which would have no real weight in any ordinary cause. THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERTS. The "experts" are often enough, and sometimes justly, snubbed in open court. Their evidence after trial in this private court receives all the weight those who are rich enough to retain it can desire. A COURT OF LAST APPEAL. It appears to me this must be altered, or the dignity of the law will suffer most severely. We must have a Court of Last Appeal, open to all alike, a public court, presided over by able and independent authority, with strict forms of procedure or we must seat by the side of our judges some one or more "experts in insanity to represent the Crown, sworn in all these cases to aid the judge and jury with their opinion as to the worth of the evidence for or against the plea every criminal for whom this plea is to be set up to give a certain notice to the Crown of such intention. Thus we might hope to see something like equal justice in this matter to the poor and rich. As to the plea that it is contrary to the principles of our law to hang a man in a state of insanity—that is, supposing him to become insane after his conviction—no one would wish to see it otherwise only let it be known what constitutes proof of it,— whether that which was not proof to save from con- viction is to be proof to save from execution. WHAT IS INSANITY ? It may be said that a prisoner is rightly condemned because he committed murder, at the time not knowing right from wrong, but that after his conviction it is made plain that he is a man of such peculiar ideas of what is right, what wrong, one who sets his own judg- ment so above all that Revelation or reason lays down as good or evil, that to hang him is to hang a man who, acting according to his own conscience, is found not to have the ordinary conscience of a human being, and therefore to be, according to all rational human estimation, not in a sane mind. If this is to be the law or the practice to set aside law, I shall never wonder at the increase of murder, for I feel satisfied there are a great number of people who scoff at all idea of Reve- lation, who regard laws as so many restraints on man's free action, the result of the combination of men of particular ideas to rule all who differ from them. I think I know where to go to find the published opinions of men who, if they don't go this full leneth. at least go very little short of all I have read of this man Townley's ideas of right and wrong. IS TOWNLEY'S REPRIEVE JUSTIFIABLE? If this reprieve is justifiable—I do not say it is not -let us know, from authority, its exact grounds. I trust at the meeting of Pavliament the Government will be forced to show the whole correspondence to print for public use, for public consideration, a truthful statement of everything said or done on which this murderer has been taken from the gallows foat to the asylum for the insane. There may be a good case, for the executive; but in my opinion the best case which can be made will still ledve the im- pression that, if this man be rightly saved, many have been wrongly hung who had not the means to com- mand the interest in their behalf that he had.
SKATING DANGERS
SKATING DANGERS We take the following seasonable extract from the Boys' Own Magazine It is easier to get through ice than to get out again the edges break away the feet, as you cling to the ice, rise up underneath, and the unhappy man falls back and sinks never to rise again. No mortal man can swim many yards in skates. Very few could swim even in Wellington boots but the iron of a skate is so heavy it weighs down the feet, and, what is worse, it cuts the water instead of presenting the resistance of a swim- mer's naked foot to help him on. Therefore, be careful in being no thet first to try the ice at the beginning of the frost; and even after all seems safe, do not ven- ture blindly over a large tract of water, still less down a frozen river, But beware of springs that will not freeze at all, and also of sheltered parts which have rozen late. I one day skated three miles with a party of friends, and about the fourth mile, passing under the shelter of a high hill, crack crack went the ice at every step, till we rushed in terror to the bank. I had one foot through the ice, and one of the party was lucky in escaping with merely a ducking. A valuable secret for the skater is, when you feel in danger, lie down and crawl away. I once saw three men escape over one wide watery crack, and crawl, or rather wriggle, like snakes to the shore, when the weight of a child would have broken through. I had, myself on that occasion been only saved by touch- ing the bottom, as it happened to be very shallow water; and the question was, how to get the rest of the party ashore. "Lie down and crawl" was the word, and all came off in safety. By this wriggling you may approach a man in danger, and pass over very weak ice, and thus throw him a cord and give help in many ways: Lastly, remember that, according to the annals of the Humane Society, one minute under water will place most men past recovery. Even half a minute's submersion will stop the heart, not always to go on again. Four minutes is the longest submersion on record with eventual recovery, and even of that brief space the evidence is doubtful.
.EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN.
EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN. We take the following account of trades followed by females, which are necessarily fluctuating through fashion and trade, from an article in All the Year Hound Changes of fashion sometimes throw the girls out of employ. Buglers who used to advertise for hundreds of hands are now themselves bankrupt. We have met with one woman whose sole occupation was to make the cockades or rosettes with which the carriage horses of the polite world are adorned on the days of the queen's drawing-rooms, and other important state occasions. She was a person of unsteady habits, but, when she chose to work, could earn with ease three or four pounds a week in the season. No one could be found by the harness-makers so well able to give style and fashion to those ornaments. la an ill-ventilated room in a dark alley in the east of London, we have seen a.woman and seven children, boys and girls, engaged a making birdcages. The woman's husband, who had been in this trade, was dead, and after his death, she went on with the labour. One child cut the thin wood into proper shapes, the woman, with singular rapidity, fixed the slips together; others prepared the wires and put them into their right position; others were engaged in polishing and finishing the work. But, notwithstanding all these efforts, their income was miserably small. The woman had no capital. At times the dealers became over- stocked with cages; then, such was the need of the family, that it was necessary to sell them for any sum that might be offered. In several neighbourhoods many women and young girls make a scanty income by the French polishing of furniture, barometer-cases, and the like. Print and map-colouring is also a kind of work on which, not- withstanding the large quantity of colour nrintinr now done by manl««*^y, many tamihes are employed. In this way, often in miserable rooms, father, mother, and all the children who are able, work at a large table. The most skilful tint the faces, hands, and other delicate parts of figures others colour the blue, red, green, and other portions of the drapery, back- grounds, &c., so that when a print has been passed round the board, the colouring is finished. There are various forms of this work; that which requires artistic ability is the best paid for but in the homes of most print-colourers, even when well-employed, there is evidently great distress. The work, too, is for the most part uncertain. Towards Valentine's Day and Christmas there is generally a rush of business at other periods, the families dependent on such work are often brought to the brink of starvation.
A PETTY TYRANT AND HIS TOMB.
A PETTY TYRANT AND HIS TOMB. If any one wants to know why revolutions have hitherto prevailed in the south of Europe, he has only to read the particulars which Mr. Hare has collected respecting Iionorious V., one of the last princes of Monaco (says a reviewer in the Daily News) During twenty-five years this little tyrant oppressed his little territory in a style from which even a Czar of Muscovy might learn something. In the first place, he went to live in Paris in order that lie might be beyond the reach of murmurs or petitions, and then com- menced a system of plunder and oppression which it is hardly possible to believe could have been tolerated for a whole quarter of the enlightened nineteenth cen- tury. He confiscated the property of churches, communes, and hospitals, not sparing the poor-boxes in the charitable collections. He forced the people to buy inferior flour at his own mills, whilst he seized their gopd corn, and exported it for his profit. He wove all the linen they wore, and charged double the price at which they could get a superior article else- where. At last his men laid hands on the pollenta, the staple food of the poorer classes, and by these and similar means squeezed a revenue of 14,0001. a year out of a territory containing not more than 6,000 inhabitants. Of this sum 3,000Z. a year went to support thrf instruments of his tyranny, and the remainder he spent in Paris, well out of earshot of the complaints of his subjects. When at last this pattern prince was removed, "the people with one voice gave thanks to God for his death. He was buried in the parish church of Monaco, and over his grave was placed an inscription, which he had dictated himself when dying, informing the world and posterity that underneath were deposited the mortal remains of "a prince whose only study during life had been to promote the welfare of his subjects." [In February, 1861, the French government pur- chased from the present representative of this illus- trious house everything .but the rock of Monaco itself and the title for the sum of nOO,OOOl. sterling, and the inhabitants of Mentone, Koccabruna, and Monaco now enjoy the blessings of French rule, with the ad- vantages in addition of French taxation and the
A CONTRAST.
In the same article is a further illustration of the above, which we may entitle- A CONTRAST. Some one has said that if all a man eats in a day were placed upon a dish before him, he would wonder how, after such consumption, he could live, and not die. Others put the matter more truly, and tell the good liver" that he is daily killing himself; not feed- ing his body, but starving it; filling his blood with the seeds of disease preparing the way for a short life and a miserable one. Here is a young man of five-and-twenty, a model of strength and activity, brimful of energy and elasticity. Twenty years pass over his head, and the fine muscle has degenerated into fat. He has become corpulent, bloated about the face, wheezy in the chest; complains of indigestion; feels the premonitions of gout in slight quivering pains in the toes and feet, or the creeping stiffness which shows that rheumatism is on its way to console the evening of his life. That is not the effect of time. Look at that sprightly old gentleman, a little shrivelled, it is true, but erect, and still light upon his feet, who walks in and out to business every day from Clapham. He is between sixty and seventy, and tells you he has never had a day's illness in his life. What has been the difference between the two men which has produced such opposite results ? In ninety- nine cases out of a hundred it is not a difference of constitution, but of habit. The spare, active old man has been a spare eater, a moderate consumer of stimu- lants. He has been a reasonable master to his stomach. He has known how properly to,value a willing servant, and has not overburdened it. He has not taxed the vis medicatrix natiira to get him out of unnecessary hobbles, but has kept clear of them by regular habits, light eating and drinking, and wholesome exercise. Head all this backwards, and you see how the gen- tleman at forty-five has brought himself to the corpu- lency of a prize ox, and seems so bursting all over that you are afraid to see him cough or laugh lest he should have a fit of apoplexy. In ten years more you will find him hobbling about his room upon a pair of crutches, a martyr to gout; or, if Nature resents his excesses in some other form, you may find that he is crippled with rheumatism or afflicted with paralysis or that he is a martyr to dyspepsia—sour, morose, a misery to himself and to every one obliged to be near him. He has over-eaten himself, or wasted the powers of his stomach by excessive stimulants, till the greatest act of mercy you could show him, if law and religion would permit it, would be to smother him out- right between two feather-beds.
LONDON to be ECLIPSED by PARIS!
LONDON to be ECLIPSED by PARIS! It seems that M. le Breton is very confident of obtaining the 000,000,000f. required to form his proposed maritime canal which is to make a London of Paris-a London so far as her commerce is concerned, for she does not attempt to compare her architectural beauties, knowing, as is true, that London must shrink her diminished head before them. On this subject the London Standard has a good leader, and from it we quote the following :— THE ECLIPSE OF LONDON! The French people have just been informed that every heart in the Empire is now profoundly agitated, Not, however, by rumours of war, by the last appeal on behalf of a Congress, or by the debates in the Legis- lative Chamber. The gentleman who feels the pulse of France and pronounces it decidedly feverish, is M. le Breton; and the exciting topic is the eclipse of London, within two years to come, by Paris. France, the projector affirms, is perfect in all else but it wants a London. Paris is a palace, a paradise, a promenade, a city of Augustan architecture, an apex to the political pyramid of Europe but it wants a Thames, a range of docks, a concourse of shipping; it ought to anchor iron-clads within cannon-shot of the Tuileries, and welcome any bulk of tonnage into its waters. In point of fact, the Imperial metropolis is becoming ashamed of the handsome canal which intersects it, and the .Emperor Napoleon, upon the alert to patronise showy national ideas, however mag- nificently impracticable, has by implication sanctioned the Sesostrian scheme. Why not, it may be asked ? Already, a little deputy Pharaoh is at work, defacing the configuration of the earth, and digging a ditch between the Mediterranean and Red Seas. PARIS A SEAPORT Accordingly, armed with a flattering, thoucdvrT" sive, letter irom tho Minister, of Pub^" M. le Breton instantly proclaims tnat Paris is to be a great seaport, that the waters of the ocean are to bathe her foundations, that two millions or more of additional inhabitants are to people the banks of the Seine, and that the British capital must henceforth be very careful of its own commercial supremacy. UTOPIAN COMPANIES! We recollect that when the Limited Liability Act had just been passed into law about a hundred and seventy new companies were immediately registered. One proposed to carry all the soiled linen in England, twice a week, to be washed by the Dutch, and brought back again on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Another suggested doubling the available space in London by erecting everywhere light iron stages, level with the first floors, so that one world of business could be in operation above another. But a third dived into the underground dream of a tunnel between Dover and Calais, the promoting engineer remarking calmly that this was preferable to a bridge upon arches, or a tubular railway raised upon artificial rocks. THE CANAL OF LANGUEDOC. M. le Breton is immeasurably more confident, and his friends discuss the plan for converting Paris into a clean London with imperturbable complacency. He and they, of course, have rivals to dispose of, and the preliminary is got over at an amazing rate of self- sustained demonstration. Originally it was suggested, so far back as the rei-n of Henrv IV., to canalise the Seine, and Colbert and Sully approved the notion, and Biquet, who excavated the great canal of Languedoc, laughed at the disbelievers. All the results re- corded, however, have been the appointment of innu- merable commissions and the squanderings of endless money. Surveys, of course, there have been, and engineers have battened upon official credulity but, excepting that two flat-bottomed barges were dragged up the Seine to Passy. a few years ago, we never heard of any return for the immense sums expended. CANALS AND THEIR PROJECTORS. Then arose another idea-worthy of old Lord Bridgewater, or, rather, of the mighty Kings of Spades who dug the great Canal of Ku in China. It was no less than that of a freshwater communication between Paris and Dieppe, more than a hundred and fifty miles long, a. hundred and sixty feet wide, and thirty feet deep, with thirty-three locks, big enough to transfer the largest vessels from one level to another, and a prodigious system of reservoirs, to sustain the ever-subsiding current. Considering that the com- paratively insignificant canal of Ile-et-Itance destroyed the fertility of the lands it drained, and ruined their cultivators far and wide, we are at no loss to under- stand why this scheme for absorbing and exhausting the irrigation supplies of entire provinces should meet, from Paris to the sea, with the most bitter and im- placable opposition. THE IMPERIAL MARITIME CANAL. Thereupon, to silence the dissentients and to con- ciliate public opinion generally, M. le Breton has laid his programme before the Emperor, and has encountered an ambiguous approval. He wants to cut, direct from Paris to the sea, a wide and deep canal, without locks or dependence on the tides, which shall be accessible at all hours, every day and night of the year; which shall be navigable even by ocean steamers; which shall be open to the heaviest commerce; and which shall exhibit to the Parisians, when they desire it, the broadside of a 130-gun ship. Then will Paris be in reality a seaport. WHY LONDON IS LONDON! Suppose, urge the supporters of M. le Breton, London had not its Thame's, would not the Londoners have made a channel to the sea for themselves ? This is slightly begging the question. London is London, in a great degree, precisely because it was built at the most favourable point of the Thames, to which it stands in relation equivalent with that of Glasgow to the Clyde and Liverpool to the Mersey. Possibly the tunnelling of the Simplon and Mont Cenis offers encouragement to men who, like M. de Lesseps and M. le Breton, conceive these vast projects of which it is so easy to draw a sectional view, supplemented by a brilliant anticipation of profits; hut, although "adhesions" are many, practical responses are few, and Necho, and Sesae, and Trajan, and Ptolemy are likely to remain without imitators, in this hard-hearted nineteenth century, at least so far as the Grand Paris and Dieppe Imperial Maritime Canal is concerned. ROOM FOR A MAN TO BECOME IMMORTAL. People of strong intellectual proclivities assure its every now and then that steam is to be superseded by a rather dangerous Chinese puzzle in the shape of air incessantly rebelling against a vacuum; but M. le Breton proposes to do more; he promises to restore the equilibrium between iron and water." Perhaps at this crisis of infinite peril to all the nations and interests of Europe, a man might become an immortal benefactor by confiscating all the metals employed in the arsenals, and hammering cannon, bayonets, sabres, and all the tinsel trash which reconciles a soldier to a soldier's fate, into plates for lining a new canal, and giving M. le Breton's sea water a smooth bottom upon which to fluctuate. ONLY SIX HUNDRED MILLIONS OF FRANCS WANTED We take nothing from the land!" exclaims M. le Breton, and the sea will not miss what we take from it." lie prophesies a revenue of tMlrty millions of francs to the shareholders, balancing an outlay which must yield twenty per cent, upon the humblest calculation. To be sure, the outlay, "scarcely worth mentioning," reaches 600,000,000 francs upon the esti- mate, and may, therefore, be calculated at threefold that modest sum. But, then, what an impetus to indus- try what employment of labour ? Breadand games" could not more effectually have diverted the lioman populace. And all to be completed, to the last finishing of a culvert and the embedding of a kerb, within two years. ENGLAND AND FRANCE THE ONLY COMMERCIAL NATIONS Like Rip Van Winkle, M. le Breton avows that he has been for seven years dreaming this Titanic dream, bethinking him how the scale may be turned against .49% the iron, or railway principle, and plotting a revival of canals. That which the commerce and industry of France demand (he declares) is a seaport at Paris that will permit us to create there the great maritime establishments which we envy in London that which nourishes a nautical feeling, a habit of arming for long expeditions and distant adventures that will secure an equality of rank with England to the naval power of France, that will confer a commercial preponderance to the French flag in every market of the globe, and that will render Paris the grand metropolis of the civilised earth, the general entrepot of European trade, and the partner with Great Britain in the entire trade of the two worlds. All to be done by a canal, no matter what difficul- ties may be foreseen by practical engineers. A MONUMENT TO THE PROJECTOR-WHEN HE DESERVES IT! The little boy at Haarlem who saved a province by making an abnormal use of his body as a bung to stop a hole in a dyke, though his name be lost to history, deserved a monument. So, perhaps, will M. le Breton— when he coaxes the sea to Paris, when he creates firat- class harbours in the depths of a great continent, when he makes salt water run, deep and level, for a hundred and fifty miles, where less ambitious vision- aries anticipate nearly forty formidable locks, when ho makes a London of Paris and a Liverpool of Dieppe, and when he creates, as proposed by himself to the Emperor, important and wealthy naval and trading centres at no less than sixteen stations on the route, with havens" capable of containing from a hundred to a hundred and fifty vessels. It may be, and is, refreshing, amid the turbulence of European politics, and the menaces of universal war, to admire these giant projects, symbolising so much innocent cún- fidence in the ordering of human affairs upon this earth; but we fear that before Paris becomes a seaport, in more than the sense in which it was a seaport, when the two famous flat-bottomed boats crawled up the patriarchal Seine, other prodigies, not all so benignant or so incredible, will astonish the world
.llktllitrats §mml ftcius.
llktllitrats §mml ftcius. THE EXACT TRUTHS—Mr. Renter's telegram 11 from Paris, dated the 7th instant, giving an account of the arrest of four foreigners of suspicious appear- ance, coming from England," and at whose residence "a great quantity of English gunpowder had been found," was, it seems, nothing more or less than a tolerably exact" translation of a paragraph con- spicuously inserted in the semi-official French journal LaPatrie. Our veracious French contemporary (re- marks the Daily Neivs), no doubt with no motive more malignant than that of emphasising a piece of latest news," prefaced its account of the arrest of "four foreigners," &c., with the following characteristic words, Voici l'exacte verite. It now turns out that the four foreigners," &u., did not come from England, but from Italian Switzerland; not from London, but from Lugano; and that all the rest of the paragraph in La Patrie was equally truthful and exact. Let U3 hope that the "exact truth" was supplied in this in- stance to that accommodating journal by the Prefec- ture of Police. We would, however, suggest to Mr. Reuter the propriety of exercising a little more caution in adopting "the exact truth" from La Patrie, and presenting it to the English public without acknow- ledging the unadulterated source frcn which he takes it. MYSTERIOUS POISONING CASE.—The circum- stances attending the death of a young lady named Amelia Huband, the niece of the Rev. J. Vernon, curate of Humbleton, near Droitwich, who expired suddenly after a short illness on the 7th of October, and was buried under a certificate from a surgeon that death arose from bilious cholera will be remem- bered by our readers. In consequence, however, of rumours that got abroad after the funeral, the coroner of the district, Mr. Hughes, ordered the body to be disinterred, and being opened by a surgeon (Mr. Budd, of Worcester), it was discovered that she had been poisoned, a large quantity of arsenic being found in the stomach and intestines. It was also discovered that she was six months gone with child. At the inquest Mrs. Parker, the aunt of the deceased, stated her utter ignorance of the condition of her niece. She had been told that Miss Huband had given clandestine meetings to a young man in the village named Cole, but on charging her with it, the deceased resolutely denied it. Cole, however, on beings examined by the coroner, admitted that he had been intimate with the deceased, and it turned out that he and the deceased had frequent meetings in the kitchen and back premises of the rectory, with the connivance of the servants. A large packet of arsenic was found in a cupboard at the rectory, but Mrs. Vernon and the servants denied all knowledge of how it got there. The inquiry terminated in a verdict that deceased had died from the effects of poison, but that there was no evidence to show how it was administered. The matter has thus remained until this week, when, in consequence of other rumours set afloat, the magis- trates of the district held a meeting, and on Thursday and the next day held a preliminary investigation into the affair at Droitwich. The Right Hon. Sir J. S. Pakington was in the chair, and six or eight magis- trates of the district were present. It was determined for the present to keep the inquiry private, but it is expected to result in a more public investigation. CHASING THE WRONG ONE !-An exciting chase took place a few days since off the port of Brest in consequence of the commander off the Federal corvette Kerseage mistaking the Framer TTnr.—'■■■ <■»■" «-VTTrfMnprpfV- corvette .Honda, I he Kerseage was cruising off Ushant, watching for the in Florida, having received orders to attack the Con- federate steamer on her quitting Brest. The Renaudin, which resembles the Florida, was going out to sea, and was passing Iroise when the captain of the Kerseage gave chase. The commander of the French ship having made himself known, the captain of the Kerseage hastened to apologise. This incident, it appears, has attracted the attention of the French naval authorities, and proved to them that the captain of the American steamer may involuntarily attack his adversary in French waters, of which he is not well acquainted with the boundaries. The port admiral at Brest has consequently given orders that the steamship- of-the-line Wagram shall watch the movements of the two ships, and prevent them from engaging in French waters. The Florida, moreover, is not yet ready for sea. She made a trial trip on the Gth inst., and steamed as far as Conquet. The trial was most satis- factory, and the log gave a speed of thirteen knots an hour even within thegoulet. The Confederate corvette Rappahannock is still in the port of Calais under repairs. EXTRAORDINARY ELOPEMENT. — One day last week Mrs. Goodwin, of Noble county, Ohio (says an American paper (started from her home to go to Pennsylvania to visit some relatives who reside in Greene county, in that State, leaving her husband and two small children, aged respectively about five and seven years, and a hired girl, at home to keep house." Her husband amply provided her with funds to j)ay her way before her departure. About the same time Mr. Taylor, who resides in the same neighbour- hood, and who was able to rejoice in the possession of a handsome wife and two intelligent little pledges of affection," started West "on business," but somehow or other he took the wrong road, and arrived in Wheeling about the same time with Mrs. Goodwin. Arriving just before meal time, after a hastily pre. pared toilet, they passed to the dining-room and were seated near the head of- the table—Mrs. Goodwin im- mediately opposite her husband, and Mr. Taylor im- mediately opposite his wife. It seems that a day or two after Mrs. Goodwin left home, Mr. Goodwin took it into his head to attempt to seduce Mrs. Taylor from her sacred allegiance to her lord," and induce her to elope with him in her husband's absence, in which it seems he had but little trouble in succeed- ing, neither of them ever dreaming that their com- panions had done just the same thing. The scene that ensued after the mutual recognition at the Wheeling .1 dinner-table was neither tragic nor ridiculous, as might be imagined; but, like philosophical people who found themselves in a very bad spell" would do, they quietly, and, as if moved by some secret understand ing, withdrew to a private room, where they arranged that each man should take his own wife, and go back to their homes and children, and try and live wiser and better men and women in the future. THE TYLNEY-LONG ESTATES. — Amongst the vicissitudes of families which have taken place during the past year a brief notice of the passing away of the celebrated Tylney-Long estates into a new family may be of interest to the public. The heiress of these extensive estates has been disinherited by a will of her brother, the late Earl of Mornington, which was made three weeks and two days before his death, and which left all his landed property to his father's cousin, Lord Cowley, her Majesty's ambassador at Paris. The Tylney property came into the Long family by the marriage of thelast Earl Tylney's only sister Lady Emma Child to Sir Robert Long, the owner of the Draycot estate. His grand-daughter, Catherine Long, became the heiress of both fami- lies at the death of her father, Sir James Tylney-Long. She married the Hon. Wm. Wel- lesley Pole, afterwards Earl of Mornington. Their son, the late earl, inherited all his mother's j estates, and after the death of his brother the Hon, James Wellesley, his only sister. Lady Victoria f Tylney-Long Wellesley, became his heiress-at-law, and though he had joined with his father in cutting j off the entail, he left all his lan :1s to her. A new will, J however, made during his last illness, has caused the | broad lands of the Tylney-Longs to pass away from all the heirs of the family, male and female. The Longs had held the Draycot estate for centuries. THE KING AND HEENAN PRIZE FrollT.-The New York Evening Post, writing on this subject, says :— The general feeling on this side of the water among tha < deceuter classes in regard to the result of the recent prize fight in England is one of unalloyed satisfaction. It is not a case in which victory was to be desired, or in which any one solicitous for his country's honour would care to have the success credited to America. There are many peculiari- ties in English life and character which we can imitate far more creditably than the brutal practice of prize fighting. There can be no doubt, moreover, that if he who was put forward by his friends as the American champion had beaten his antagonist, a considerable impulse would have been given in this country to an amusement, as it is called, which is disgusting anddegrading in its nature, its incidents, and its influence, England is the ouly civilised nation on the face of the earth which tolerates the custom. Even there it is forbidden by the laws, though these are often rendered ineffective by public opinion. We should not like to see the United States share with England in the disgrace of en- couraging a pastime which has no single benefit to recom- mend it, but a thousand evil effects to condemn it in the eyes of all worthy people. SCENE ON THE ICE.—A singular scene presented itself on the Forth, near the New Bridge of Stirling, on Saturday afternoon last. The ice had been bearing for some days previously, and was of considerable thickness. At the time mentioned at least /-I'om fiOO to 700 persons, including a number of ladies, were on the ice. About 4 o'clock, when the stream tide was at its height and the ebb had set in, the ice, from the action of the water, cracked and broke from bank to bank. and several extensive blocks became detached and floated slowly with the tide downwards. Thest" "rafts" were covered with skaters and others, several of whom leaped from the smaller to the larger blocks. A cry was made for planks and ladders, which were speedily procured; but from the rush made to the side, great conf union and even danger was caused. Boats were launched, but they became fixed among the ice. and were of little service- At length, when the alarm had subsided, the large number on the ice got ashore, one at a time, principally by means of planks and ladders, and fortunately without any serious acci- dent resulting from it.