THE PENNY MAGAZINE

OF THE

Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

[May 26, 1832

9.]

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY.

BUTTER.

[Yorkshire Cow.]

The various circumstances attending the introduction and use of butter in antiquity, have been investigated by Beckmann with great learning and industry. The conclusion at which he arrives is, “that butter was not used either by the Greeks or Romans in cooking, as is everywhere customary at present. We never find it mentioned by Galen or any other ancient medical writer, as food, though they have spoken of it as applicable to other purposes. No notice is taken of it by the Roman epicure, Apicius, who wrote on cookery; nor is there anything said of it in that respect by the authors who treat of agriculture, though they have given us very particular information with respect to milk, cheese, and oil.

“This, as has been remarked by others, may be easily accounted for, by the ancients having accustomed themselves to the use of good oil; and in like manner butter is very little employed at present in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the southern parts of France.”—Butter is very extensively used in this and most other northern countries; that of England and Holland is reckoned the best.

The production and consumption of butter in Great Britain is very great.—The consumption in the metropolis may, it is believed, be averaged at about one half pound per week for each individual, being at the rate of 26 lbs. a year; and supposing the population to amount to 1,450,000, the total annual consumption would (on this hypothesis) be 37,700,000 lbs. or 16,830 tons: but to this may be added 4,000 tons for the butter required for the victualling of ships and other purposes, making the total consumption in round numbers 21,000 tons, or 47,040,000 lbs., which, at 10d. per pound, would be worth 1,960,000l.

The average produce per cow of the butter dairies is estimated by Mr. Marshall at 168 lbs. a year; so that, supposing we are nearly right in the above estimate, about 280,000 cows will be required to produce an adequate supply of butter for the London market.

Butter made in hot countries is generally liquid. In India it is called ghee, and is mostly prepared from the milk of buffaloes[1]: it is usually conveyed in duppers or bottles made of hide, each of which contains from ten to forty gallons. Ghee is an article of considerable commercial importance in many parts of India.

The Arabs are the greatest consumers of butter in the world. Burckhardt tells us, that it is a common practice among all classes to drink, every morning, a cupful of melted butter or ghee; and they use it in an infinite variety of other ways. The taste for it is universal, and even the poorest individuals will spend half their daily income that they may have butter for dinner, and butter in the morning. Large quantities are annually shipped from Cosseir, Sonakin, and Massona, on the west coast of the Red Sea, for Djidda and other Arabian ports.

We shall notice in our Supplementary number for this month the very valuable publication, M’Culloch’s Dictionary of Commerce, from which the above account is extracted.

[Zebus: from Specimens in the Zoological Gardens.]

1. The most common of the Indian breeds of the ox tribe is the Zebu, a humped variety, of which the smallest specimens are not bigger than a full-grown mastiff, while others are found almost as large as the finest English cow. They are all useful, both as affording food, and as beasts of burthen.

OF PEACE.—FROM LORD CLARENDON.

It was a very proper answer to him who asked, why any man should be delighted with beauty? that it was a question that none but a blind man could ask; since any beautiful object doth so much attract the sight of all men, that it is in no man’s power not to be pleased with it. Nor can any aversion or malignity towards the object irreconcile the eyes from looking upon it; as a man who hath an envenomed and mortal hatred against another who hath a most graceful and beautiful person, cannot hinder his eye from being delighted to behold that person, though that delight is far from going to the heart, as no man’s malice towards an excellent musician can keep his ear from being pleased with his music. No man can ask how or why men come to be delighted with peace but he who is without natural bowels,—who is deprived of all those affections which can only make life pleasant to him. Peace is that harmony in the state that health is in the body. No honour, no profit, no plenty can make him happy who is sick with a fever in his blood, and with defluctions and aches in his joints and bones; but health restored gives a relish to the other blessings, and is very merry without them: no kingdom can flourish or be at ease in which there is no peace,—which only makes men dwell at home and enjoy the labour of their own hands, and improve all the advantages which the air, and the climate, and the soil administer to them; and all which yield no comfort where there is no peace. God himself reckons health the greatest blessing he can bestow upon mankind and peace the greatest comfort and ornament he can confer upon states, which are a multitude of men gathered together. They who delight most in war are so much ashamed of it, that they pretend to desire nothing but peace,—that their heart is set upon nothing else. When Cæsar was engaging all the world in war, he wrote to Tully, “There was nothing worthier of an honest man than to have contention with nobody.” It was the highest aggravation that the prophet could find out in the description of the greatest wickedness, that “the way of peace they knew not;” and the greatest punishment of all their crookedness and perverseness was, that “they should not know peace.” A greater curse cannot befall the most wicked nation than to be deprived of peace. There is nothing of real and substantial comfort in this world but what is the product of peace; and whatsoever we may lawfully and innocently take delight in is the fruit and effect of peace. The solemn service of God, and performing our duty to Him in the exercise of regular devotion, which is the greatest business of our life, and in which we ought to take most delight, is the issue of peace. War breaks all that order, interrupts all that devotion, and even extinguisheth all that zeal which peace had kindled in us; lays waste the dwelling place of God as well as of man; and introduces and propagates opinions and practice as much against Heaven as against earth, and erects a deity that delights in nothing but cruelty and blood. Are we pleased with the enlarged commerce and society of large and opulent cities, or with the retired pleasures of the country? do we love stately palaces and noble houses, or take delight in pleasant groves and woods, or fruitful gardens, which teach and instruct nature to produce and bring forth more fruits, and flowers, and plants, than her own store can supply her with? all this we owe to peace; and the dissolution of this peace disfigures all this beauty, and, in a short time, covers and buries all this order and delight in ruin and rubbish. Finally, have we any content, satisfaction, and joy in the conversation of each other, in the knowledge and understanding of those arts and sciences which more adorn mankind than all those buildings and plantations do the fields and grounds on which they stand? even this is the blessed effect and legacy of peace; and war lays our natures and manners as waste as our gardens and our habitations; and we can as easily preserve the beauty of the one as the integrity of the other under the cursed jurisdiction of drums and trumpets.

DR. FRANKLIN’S MORAL CODE.

The great American philosopher and statesman, Benjamin Franklin, drew up the following list of moral virtues, to which he paid constant and earnest attention, and thereby made himself a better and a happier man:—

Temperance

Eat not to fulness; drink not to elevation.

Silence

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Order

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Resolution

Resolve to perform what you ought: perform without fail what you resolve.

Frugality

Make no expense, but do good to others or yourself; that is, waste nothing.

Industry

Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

Sincerity

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.

Justice

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

Moderation

Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries.

Cleanliness

Suffer no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

Tranquillity

Be not disturbed about trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

Humility

Imitate Jesus Christ.

The same great man likewise drew up the following plan for the regular employment of his time; examining himself each morning and evening as to what he had to do, what he had done, or left undone; by which practice he was better able to improve his future conduct.—

Morning. | Hours. |
The question, What good shall I do to-day? | { | 6 | } | Rise, wash, and address Almighty God! contrive the day’s business, and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study; and breakfast.
7
8
| { | 9 | } | work.
10
11
12
| { | 1 | } | Read or look over my accounts, and dine.
2
| { | 3 | } | work.
4
5
6
7
Evening. | Hours. |
The question, What good have I done to-day? what have I left undone which I ought to have done? | { | 8 | } | Put things in their places; amusement; supper; examination of the day; address the Almighty
9
10
| { | 11 | } | work.
12
1
2
3
4
5

A steady perseverance in some plan for the arrangement of our time, adapted to circumstances, cannot fail improving our general conduct in life, and rendering us better members of society, and better Christians.

PROGRESS OF EDUCATION IN ASIA MINOR.

An American missionary and his wife have established a school at Smyrna, for the instruction of children of both sexes in the English language, and in general elementary education, after the most approved system. This school is chiefly attended by the children of English parents settled in the country. It must be productive of important good; for it is a positive fact, that only a few years ago, from the want of some such establishment, and the carelessness of their fathers, many of whom had married women of the country, these children were not only sadly deficient in those rudiments which the poorest among us now acquire, but positively ignorant of the English language. You would meet, for example, a Mr. John this, and a Miss Mary that, with names the most English, who would not know how to address to you a single decent sentence in the idiom of their fathers; and it need scarcely be added, that in English character, intelligence, and energy, they were almost equally deficient. Two or three respectable families of Dutch descent also send their children to this school.

The other European settlers, who are nearly all Catholics, have not yet had the good sense to overcome their religious prejudices, and to send their children to be educated by a Protestant minister; but, even confined as they are, we look upon the labours of the respectable American missionary in this part of the world as praiseworthy and important.

What, however, is of still more importance at Smyrna, as regards numbers and a whole people, is the settlement of a good Greek seminary for the education of the young Greeks. The British consul has been recently allowed to take this establishment under his special protection; and, with the arms of England over its gateway, it has now nothing to fear from the Turks, but goes on teaching steadily and quietly.

An intelligent friend, who was in England a short time ago, delighted us with an account of an annual examination of the pupils of this Smyrna school. The Greeks, who, with all their defects—defects that have mainly resulted from the oppression of the Turks, and their own want of education—are a quick, intelligent people, curious, and eager for information, crowded the place of assembly, and when, in the course of the examination, a son, or a younger brother, or any young relative or friend, acquitted himself well, their satisfaction and glee were forcibly expressed by their animated countenances. It added to our satisfaction to learn that many of this audience were common sailors or artisans—a proof that education is, as it ought to be, cheap, and within the means of the industrious poor. A number of the youths thus educated are so far advanced in the study of the ancient Greek (which glorious language will be gradually restored to common use, as the modern Greeks advance in civilization), that they get up and play scenes from the tragedies of Euripides. To these representations the Greeks of Smyrna throng with the most lively delight. They do not at present understand one-third of what they hear, but they will “live and learn.”

Queen Elizabeth.—Lord Chief Justice Coke told this anecdote of Queen Elizabeth upon the bench:—“When I was the Queen’s Attorney-General she said to me, ‘I understand my counsel will strongly urge the Queen’s prerogative, but my will is, that they stand for our Lady the Truth, rather than for our Lady the Queen, unless that our Lady the Queen hath the truth on her side.’ And she also used to give this in charge many times, when any one was called to any office by her, that they should ever stand for the Truth rather than for the Queen.” This was told thirteen years after Queen Elizabeth’s death; yet too many facts prove that she was accustomed to violate her own precepts.

Good Effects of a Predilection for some celebrated Author.—A predilection for some great author, among the vast number which must transiently occupy our attention, seems to be the happiest preservative for our taste. Accustomed to that excellent author whom we have chosen for our favourite, we may possibly resemble him in this intimacy. It is to be feared, that if we do not form such a permanent attachment, we may be acquiring knowledge, while our enervated taste becomes less and less lively. Taste embalms the knowledge, which otherwise cannot preserve itself. He who has long been intimate with one great author will always be found to be a formidable antagonist; he has saturated his mind with the excellences of genius; he has shaped his faculties insensibly to himself by his model; and he is like a man who ever sleeps in armour, ready at a moment! The old Latin proverb reminds us of this fact—Cave ab homine unius libri: be cautious of the man of one book.—Curiosities of Literature.

THE WEEK.

May 27.—The anniversary of the birth at Florence, in the year 1265, of Dante Alighieri, the great father of Italian, and, it may almost be said, of modern European poetry. Dante, whose family was of noble descent, was carefully educated in all the learning of his age, and began to compose Latin poetry in his boyhood. Fortunately he relinquished the use of that language when he grew older, and applied himself to composition in his native Tuscan tongue—a circumstance not more fortunate for his own fame than for the literature of his country and the world. His life, passed among the political agitations of the time, was a busy, turbulent, and, upon the whole, unhappy one; the party in the state to which he attached himself having been defeated by their opponents, and he himself sentenced to be burnt alive—a fate from which he only preserved himself by remaining in banishment, and flying from one place of refuge to another. It was while he was thus a proscribed exile and wanderer that he is supposed to have written his famous ‘Commedia Divina, or Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise,’ a poem which has ranked him with the greatest masters of his art. He finally settled at Ravenna, and died there on the 14th of September, 1321, after a short illness, in the extremity of which he composed his own epitaph, in six rhyming Latin hexameters, which were engraved upon his tomb. Byron, in the fourth canto of ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,’ alludes to the foreign death and sepulchre of the great poet in the following lines:—

“Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,

  Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;

  Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,

  Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore

  Their children’s children would in vain adore

  With the remorse of ages.”

An old author mentions an anecdote of Dante, which forcibly illustrates the studious ardour of his mind. Having gone one day to the house of a bookseller, from one of whose windows he was to be a spectator of a public show exhibited in the square below, he by chance took up a book, in which he soon got so absorbed that on returning home, after the spectacle was over, he solemnly declared he had neither seen nor heard anything whatever of all that had taken place before his eyes.

May 28.—The birth-day of the late Right Honourable William Pitt, second son of the great Earl of Chatham, who was born in 1759. He was the favourite of his father, who even in his childhood, it is said, used to place him before him on a table, and encourage him to harangue with oratorical form and solemnity. He afterwards used to attend the debates in the House of Commons, where it was his practice, in listening to all the more distinguished speakers, to consider how every successive argument they used might be answered. He was educated for the bar, and went the western circuit once or twice; but being introduced into Parliament almost as soon as he was of age, he forthwith abandoned everything else for politics. On the dissolution of the Rockingham administration, in 1782, Mr. Pitt became Chancellor of the Exchequer, while yet little more than twenty-two years of age; and before the close of the following year he was prime-minister. From this period his life belongs to the history of his country, whose affairs he continued to direct, with the exception of the three years, from 1801 to 1804, till his death, in the forty-seventh year of his age, on the 23d of January, 1806. No man ever gave himself up more entirely to his high office than Mr. Pitt did. To his public duties he sacrificed alike his health and his fortune; and, owing to entire inattention to his private affairs, died not only poor, but encumbered with heavy debts, which Parliament voted a grant of money to pay.

May 29.—The Restoration of King Charles II.—By an act of parliament made in the twelfth year of the reign of Charles II. (the year of his restoration), the church still celebrates the return to the throne of this monarch.

May 31.—Ascension Day. Holy Thursday.—On this day the church celebrates the ascension of Our Saviour. It is usual for the bounds of parishes to be perambulated on this festival.

June 1.—The birth-day of the celebrated French painter, Nicolas Poussin, who was born at Andelys, in Normandy, in 1594. Poussin, whose family was poor, though ancient and respectable, endured many privations and hardships while studying his art, and, before his merits had become known, was frequently reduced to such straits as to be obliged to sell his pictures for little more than what the colours had cost him. But, even after he attained celebrity, Poussin made but little money, and lived in great simplicity. It is he of whom it is told, that having one evening received a visit from a certain bishop, he was lighting him down stairs himself, when the bishop said, “I much pity you, Poussin, that you have not one servant.”—“And I you, my Lord,” replied the painter, “that you have so many.” Poussin died at Rome, in 1665, at the age of seventy-one.

[Nicolas Poussin.]

THE BRITISH MUSEUM.—No. 2.

THE MEMNON.

Front view of the Younger Memnon.

Those who visit the British Museum cannot fail to have observed in the room of Egyptian antiquities, a colossal statue of which only the head and breast remain. It is numbered 66 in the catalogue and on the stone.

Though this statue is commonly called the “younger Memnon,” a name to which for convenience we shall adhere, there is no reason in the world for calling it so, but a mistake of Norden, a Danish traveller who visited Egypt in 1737. He then saw this statue in its entire state, seated on a chair, in precisely the same attitude as the black breccia figure, No. 38, but lying with its face on the ground; to which accident indeed the preservation of the features is no doubt mainly due. Several ancient writers, and among them the Greek Geographer Strabo, speak of a large temple at Thebes on the west side of the Nile, to which they gave the name of the Memnonium, or Memnon’s temple. Norden fancied that the building, amidst whose ruins he saw this statue, was the ancient Memnonium; though he supposed, that another statue of much larger dimensions than this in the Museum, and now lying in numerous fragments in the same place, was the great Memnon statue, of which some ancient writers relate the following fact—that at sun-rise when the rays first struck the statue, it sent forth a sound something like that of the snapping of the string of a lute.

It is now generally admitted that the real statue of Memnon is neither the large one still lying at Thebes in fragments, nor this statue in the Museum, which came out of the same temple—but another statue still seated in its original position on the plain of Thebes, and showing by numerous Greek and Latin inscriptions on the legs, that it was the statue of which Strabo, Pausanias, and other ancient writers speak. The entire black statue, No. 38, is also a Memnon statue, for it resembles in all respects the great colossus with the inscriptions on its legs, and it has also the name of Memnon written on it and enclosed in an oblong ring, on each side of the front part of the seat, and also on the back.

If this colossus in the Museum (No. 66) was entire in 1737, it may be asked how came it to be broken? We cannot say further than the following statement:—

Belzoni, whose name must be fresh in the recollection of most people, went to Egypt in 1815, intending to propose to the Pasha some improved mechanical contrivances for raising water from the river in order to irrigate the fields. Owing to various obstacles this scheme did not succeed, and Belzoni determined to pay a visit to Upper Egypt to see the wonderful remains of its temples. Mr. Salt, then British Consul in Egypt, and Lewis Burckhardt, commissioned Belzoni to bring this colossal head from Thebes. Belzoni went up the river, and landing at Thebes found the statue exactly in the place where the Consul’s instructions described it to be[2]. It was lying “near the remains of its body and chair, with its face upwards, and apparently smiling on me at the thought of being taken to England. I must say that my expectations were exceeded by its beauty, but not by its size. I observed that it must have been absolutely the same statue as is mentioned by Norden, lying in his time with the face downwards, which must have been the cause of its preservation. I will not venture to assert who separated the bust from the rest of the body, by an explosion, or by whom the bust has been turned face upwards.”

It will be observed that the left shoulder of this figure is shattered, and that there is a large hole drilled in the right shoulder. We believe both are the work of the French who visited Thebes during the occupation of Egypt by the French army in 1800; and there is no doubt that Belzoni in the above extract means to attribute to them the separation of the head and shoulders from the rest of the body. In the magnificent work on Egyptian Antiquities, which has been published at Paris, there is a drawing of this head, which is pretty correct, except that the hole and the whole right shoulder are wanting. It seems that they drew the colossal bust in that form which it would have assumed, had they blown off the right shoulder. From what cause it happened we do not know, but they left the colossus behind them; and Belzoni, alone and unaided, accomplished what the French had unsuccessfully attempted.

All the implements that Belzoni had for removing this colossus were fourteen poles, eight of which were employed in making a car for the colossus, four ropes of palm-leaves, four rollers, and no tackle of any description. With these sorry implements and such wretched workmen as the place could produce, he contrived to move the colossus from the ruins where it lay to the banks of the Nile, a distance considerably more than a mile. But it was a no less difficult task to place the colossus on board a boat, the bank of the river being “more than fifteen feet above the level of the water, which had retired at least a hundred feet from it.” This, however, was effected by making a sloping causeway, along which the heavy mass descended slowly till it came to the lower part, where, by means of four poles, a kind of bridge was made, having one end resting on the centre parts of the boat and the other on the inclined plane. Thus the colossus was moved into the boat without any danger of tilting it over by pressing too much on one side.

From Thebes it was carried down the river to Rosetta and thence to Alexandria, a distance of more than 400 miles: from the latter place it was embarked for England.

The material of this colossus is a fine-grained granite, which is found in the quarries near the southern boundary of Egypt, from which masses of enormous size may be procured free from any split or fracture. These quarries supplied the Egyptians with the principal materials for their colossal statues and obelisks, some of which in an unfinished form may still be seen in the granite quarries of Assouan. There is considerable variety in the qualities of this granite, as we may see from the specimens in the Museum, some of which consist of much larger component parts than others, and in different proportions; yet all of them admit a fine polish. The colossal head, No. 8, opposite to the Memnon, and No. 2, commonly called an altar, will serve to explain our meaning.

This Memnon’s bust consists of one piece of stone, of two different colours, of which the sculptor has judiciously applied the red part to form the face. Though there is a style of sculpture which we may properly call Egyptian as distinguished from and inferior to the Greek, and though this statue clearly belongs to this Egyptian style, it surpasses as a work of art most other statues from that country by a peculiar sweetness of expression and a finer outline of face. Though the eyebrows are hardly prominent enough for our taste, the nose somewhat too rounded, and the lips rather thick, it is impossible to deny that there is great beauty stamped on the countenance. Its profile, when viewed from various points, will probably show some new beauties to those only accustomed to look at it in front.

The position of the ear in all Egyptian statues that we have had an opportunity of observing is very peculiar, being always too high; and the ear itself is rather large. We might almost infer that there was some national peculiarity in this member from seeing it so invariably placed in the same singular position. The appendage to the chin is common in Egyptian colossal statues, and is undoubtedly intended to mark the beard, the symbol of manhood: and it may be observed not only on numerous statues, but also on painted reliefs, where we frequently see it projecting from the end of the chin and not attached to the breast, but slightly curved upwards. Osiris, one of the great objects of Egyptian adoration, is often thus represented; but the beard is generally only attached to the clothed figure, being, for the most part, but not always, omitted on naked ones. The colossal figures, No. 8 and 38, have both lost their beards. There is a colossal head in the Museum, No. 57, that is peculiar in having the upper margin of the beard represented by incisions on the chin after the fashion of Greek bearded statues. It is the only instance we have seen, either in reality or in any drawing, of a colossus with a genuine beard.

There is more variety in the head-dresses of colossal statues than in their beards. No. 8, opposite the Memnon, has the high cap which occurs very often on Egyptian standing colossi which are placed with their backs to pilasters. No. 38 has the flat cap fitting close to the head and descending behind, very much like the pigtails once in fashion. The Memnon head-dress differs from both of these, and has given rise to discussions, called learned, into which we cannot enter here.

On the forehead of this colossus may be seen the remains of the erect serpent, the emblem of royalty, which always indicates a deity or a royal personage. This erect serpent may be traced on various monuments of the Museum, and perhaps occurs more frequently than any single sculptured object.

Our limits prevent us from going into other details, but we have perhaps said enough to induce some of our readers to look more carefully at this curious specimen of Egyptian art; and to examine the rest of the ornamental parts. The following are some of the principal dimensions:—

| ft. | in.
The whole height of the bust from the top of the head-dress to the lowest part of the fragment, measured behind | 8 | 9
Round the shoulders and breast, above | 15 | 3
Height of the head from the upper part of the head-dress to the end of the beard | 6 | 0½
From the forehead to the chin | 3 | 3½

Judging from these dimensions, the figure in its entire state would be about 24 feet high as seated on its chair; which is about half the height of the real Memnon, who still sits majestic on his ancient throne, and throws his long shadow at sun-rise over the plain of Thebes.

Side view of the Younger Memnon.

2. Belzoni’s Narrative. London, 1820, p. 39.

THE FLUTE-PLAYER;

A TALE.

“Oh! bless’d with temper, whose unclouded ray

  Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day!

  She who ne’er answers till a husband cools,

  Or if she rules him, never shows she rules;

  Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,

  Yet has her humour most when she obeys.”—Pope.

Harry Jones was one of the smartest young men of the village in which he was born. His parents were industrious and contented; and he himself was of that active and cheerful disposition which derives a pleasure from habitual employment, and requires no excitement of vice or folly in the hours of leisure. Harry Jones was by trade a cabinet-maker. He was a skilful and ingenious workman, and his master delighted to exhibit the tables and drawers which Harry manufactured, as the best specimens of his workshop. He lived in a small town to which the refinement of large societies was almost entirely unknown. On a summer evening he might be distinguished on a neighbouring green as the best bowler at cricket; and at the annual revel he could try a fall with any lad of the surrounding villages. But his chief delight was his proficiency as a flute-player. He made himself master of the newest country-dances; and occasionally astonished his friends with some more elaborate piece of harmony, which required considerable science and taste in its execution. He was a distinguished member of the band of volunteer performers at his parish church; and had several times received the praises of the clergyman for the skill with which he regulated the less practised abilities of his companions. All these recreations were in themselves innocent: and Harry Jones had sufficient sense and virtue not to permit them to divert his attention from the duties of his occupation, nor to make him forget that life had more important objects than the pursuit even of sinless amusement.

By his industry and frugality, Harry, at the age of five and twenty, had saved a little money. His master was kind and liberal towards him, and having himself other occupations to attend to, resigned his little interest as a cabinet-maker to the hero of our story. Harry became, if possible, more assiduous; he did not want friends and customers, and there was a particular object which gave an additional spur to his industry; he naturally and properly desired a wife as soon as he had acquired the means of maintaining one. In a neighbouring village he had formed an acquaintance with a young woman, who possessed those excellences which strongly recommended themselves to the prudential part of his character. Her parents were honest and pious people, who had brought up their daughter with the strictest attention to economy, and with those habits of regularity which assign to every duty an exact time and place for its fulfilment. These habits of order and punctuality had become a second nature to Martha. She would not allow herself to deviate from the prescribed path, nor could she endure any deviation in those by whom she was surrounded. She had a sincere and affectionate heart; but this precision had given something of coldness and formality to her character. Harry, with the fondness of a lover’s eyes, saw every thing to admire; he considered that her seriousness would properly regulate his cheerfulness, and that the strict discipline which she exercised over her own actions would control his inclination for hasty and various modes of occupation. He was satisfied that he could not make a more prudent choice, and the world thought so also. They married.

At the end of the first fortnight after their union, Harry sat down by his evening fireside exceedingly fatigued; he felt incapable of exertion, and remained for some time listless and dispirited. Martha began to read aloud from a serious book;—but she did not choose the most favourable moment for making a proper impression: Harry yawned and almost fell asleep. Martha laid down her book, and recommended him to look over his accounts: with every disposition to do right and oblige his wife, Harry felt that the labours of the day were past. He thought of his flute. The sense of fatigue was at once forgotten, as he again placed his old book of tunes before him. He played his briskest jigs—but Martha did not beat time: he tried his most pathetic airs—but Martha remained unmoved. He discovered to his mortification that his wife did not love music.

The next evening Harry did not forget the recreation of his flute; he played in his very best style, and he appealed to Martha for encouragement and approbation. Her praise was of a very negative quality. Sunday came, and Harry, as usual, took his place in the music gallery; he put forth all his powers, and exercised no common address to make his associates play in tune. As they walked home he ventured to ask Martha what she thought of their little band. She answered in a tone between indifference and contempt. His pride was hurt, and he determined to say no more upon the subject.

The flute continued to be produced every evening, and Harry ceased to expect the praise, or ask the attention of his wife. But even this indifference did not long continue. On one occasion he observed something like a frown upon her brow; on another, he heard a pettish expression pronounced in a whispered and hurried tone. At length hostility was openly declared against the flute; and Martha wondered how a man of any sense could waste his time, and annoy his family by such a stupid pursuit.

Harry bore this exceedingly well; for the love of his wife came to the aid of his naturally good temper. He locked up the flute. But he was disappointed in expecting Martha would offer him any substitute for his favourite amusement after his hours of labour. Her notions were those of rigid and unsparing industry. She was never tired of her domestic occupations, and she could not understand how a man who had his living to get could ever tire in the pursuit of his calling. When the hour of work was over, Harry sat down in his little parlour,—but his wife was seldom with him. It was true that the boards of his house were cleaner than the floor of any of his neighbours;—that the saucepans of his kitchen shone with a brightness which all the good housewives of the parish envied;—and that not a cinder deformed the neatness of his hearth without calling forth the brush and the shovel for its instant removal. But then it was also true that he sometimes caught cold at his dinner-hour, from the wetness which the floor acquired from the indefatigable cleanliness of his mate; that he sometimes made a fatal error when he forgot to clean his shoes before he crossed the sanded threshold; that while his wife was rubbing the skillets into looking-glasses, he was desirous of the conversation of a friend and companion; and that his well-swept hearth had no charms for his eyes while he was left alone to enjoy its neatness. He was debarred too of his favourite flute;—and it cannot therefore be wondered that he sometimes said in his heart, “why did I marry?”

It was at this juncture that Harry met with an old companion who had something of the vivacity, but nothing of the goodness which he himself possessed. Harry appeared uneasy and dispirited;—the cause of his discomfort was at length communicated. His companion told him, with the common cant of libertines, that the way to make wives amiable was to neglect them;—that his home was uncomfortable because he appeared too fond of it;—and that he might find society where his merits would be properly rated. Harry was persuaded to fetch his flute, to spend the evening at a neighbouring ale-house.

The harmless vanity which had been so long pent up now broke forth beyond its natural boundaries. Harry played well, and he played to a late hour, for he was flattered and caressed. On his return home, Martha was angry, and he was sullen.

The next night brought with it the same temptation. What was intended to be a rare indulgence at length became a confirmed habit. The public-house could not be frequented without expense; and late hours could not be kept without diminishing the capacity for the performance of ordinary duties. Harry, too, acquired the practice of drinking freely; and, as his mind was ill at ease, the morning draught often succeeded to the evening’s intoxication. He was not, as before, seen constantly at his workshop, to receive orders with good temper, and to execute them with alacrity. He was not distinguished for the brightest shoes and the cleanest apron of any mechanic in the town: his habits were idle, and his garb was slovenly. He slunk away from public observation to bury himself in the haunts of drunkenness and profligacy. As his business failed, he made to himself pretences for employment in vagabond parties of anglers or lark-shooters. One by one every article of furniture was pawned for present support. The fatal flute was the last thing consigned to the grasp of the money-lender.

Martha did not want sense. She reflected deeply upon the causes of their misery; and she at length perceived the error which she had committed in opposing her own fixed habits to the equally confirmed inclinations of her husband. She took her resolution. Honestly and impartially she stated her distresses, and the cause of them, to the vicar of the parish. He was a pious, a sensible, and a charitable pastor. He pointed out to her, what she herself at length acknowledged, that a small portion of time devoted to an innocent amusement is not incompatible with the more serious duties of a citizen and a Christian; that the engagements even of the most lowly might afford some leisure for cheerful relaxation; and that religion did not require a course of intense exertion and unbending gravity. The worthy clergyman furnished Martha the means of realizing a plan which her own judgment had devised.

Martha expended the good pastor’s friendly loan in procuring the restoration of their furniture; but she did not as yet bring it home. Her husband had one evening returned without intoxication, and in a temper which promised that the succeeding day would be one of industry. She exerted herself to accomplish her plan at this favourable moment. Before the next evening arrived her cottage was once more neat and comfortable; and the flute, which she had also redeemed, lay upon the table. Harry came in dejected, but his dejection became astonishment as Martha threw her arms around him and pointed to the indications of their future happiness. She confessed the error which had been the original cause of their misery. He felt her generosity, and with bitter tears made a vow of amendment. He was too much affected to take up his flute that evening;—but on the next his wife pressed it upon him. She listened to his performance;—she strove to fancy that she had a taste for music; she praised him. By this effort of kindness on one part, mutual kindness took the place of mutual discomfort. The hour of flute-playing was succeeded by the hour of serious meditation on the divine commands, and of humble prayer before the throne of grace. Their tastes and their pursuits gradually became assimilated. A timely concession saved Martha from hopeless misery, and a timely reformation saved Harry from the wretched life and the miserable death of a vagabond and a drunkard.

FORKS.

Some of our readers may be surprised to learn that the use of forks at table was not introduced into England earlier than the reign of James the First, and that we derived this piece of refinement from the Italians. The fact appears from the following curious extract from a book entitled, ‘Coryat’s Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months’ Travells in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhætia (commonly called the Grisons country), Helvetia (alias Switzerland), some parts of High Germany, and the Netherlands.’ The book was first published in 1611. “Here I will mention,” says the traveller, “a thing that might have been spoken of before in discourse of the first Italian towne. I observed a custome in all those Italian cities and townes through the which I passed, that is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels; neither do I think that any other nation of Christendome doth use it, but only Italy. The Italian, and also most strangers that are commorant in Italy, do alwaies at their meales use a little forke, when they cut their meate. For while with their knife, which they hold in one hand, they cut the meate out of the dish, they fasten their forke, which they hold in the other hand, upon the same dish. So that whatsoever he be that sitting in the company of any others at meale, should unadvisedly touch the dish of meate with his fingers from which all at the table doe cut, he will give occasion of offence unto the company, as having transgressed the lawes of good manners; insomuch that for his error he shall be at least brow-beaten, if not reprehended in wordes. This forme of feeding, I understand, is generally used in all places in Italy, their forkes being for the most part made of yron or steele, and some of silver; but those are used only by gentlemen. The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men’s fingers are not alike cleane. Hereupon I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this forked cutting of meate, not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home; being once quipped for that frequent using of my forke by a certaine learned gentleman, a familiar friend of mine, one Master Laurence Whitaker, who in his merry humour doubted not at table to call me Furcifer[3], only for using a forke at feeding, but for no other cause.”

The use of forks was at first much ridiculed in England, as an effeminate piece of finery; in one of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, “your fork-carving traveller” is spoken of with much contempt; and Ben Jonson has joined in the laugh against them in his ‘Devil’s an Ass,’ Act V, Scene 4. Meercraft says to Gilthead and Sledge,

  “Have I deserved this from you two? for all

    My pains at Court, to get you each a patent.

Gilthead.   For what?

Meercraft.   Upon my project of the forks.

Sledge.   Forks! What be they?

Meercraft.   The laudable use of forks,

    Brought into custom here as they are in Italy,

    To the sparing o’ napkins.”

3. Furcifer literally meant a slave, who, for punishment of some fault, was made to carry a fork or gallows upon his neck through the city, with his hands tied to it; hence it came to signify generally a rogue, a villain.

SONNET.

I grieved for Buonaparté, with a vain

And an unthinking grief! for who aspires

To genuine greatness but from just desires,

And knowledge such as he could never gain?

’Tis not in battles that from youth we train

The governor who must be wise and good,

And temper with the sternness of the brain

Thoughts motherly and weak as womanhood.

Wisdom doth live with children round her knees:

Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk

Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk

Of the mind’s business: these are the degrees

By which true sway doth mount: this is the stalk

True power doth grow on; and her rights are these.

1801.Wordsworth.

THE OLD MAN’S COMFORTS, AND HOW HE GAINED THEM.

You are old, Father William, the young man cried,

The few locks which are left you are grey;

You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,

Now tell me the reason, I pray.

In the days of my youth, Father William replied,

I remember’d that youth would fly fast,

And abused not my health and my vigour at first,

That I never might need them at last.

You are old, Father William, the young man cried,

And pleasures with youth pass away,

And yet you lament not the days that are gone,

Now tell me the reason, I pray.

In the days of my youth, Father William replied,

I remember’d that youth could not last;

I thought of the future, whatever I did,

That I never might grieve for the past.

You are old, Father William, the young man cried,

And life must be hastening away;

You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death,

Now tell me the reason, I pray.

I am cheerful, young man, Father William replied,

Let the cause thy attention engage;

In the days of my youth I remember’d my God!

And He hath not forgotten my age.

⁂ The above Stanzas are ascribed to Mr. Southey.

Encouragement to Persons of mature Age to cultivate the Mind.—Instances have frequently occurred of individuals, in whom the power of imagination has at an advanced period of life been found susceptible of culture to a wonderful degree. In such men what an accession is gained to their most refined pleasures! What enchantments are added to their most ordinary perceptions! The mind awakening, as if from a trance to a new existence, becomes habituated to the most interesting aspects of life and of nature; the intellectual eye is “purged of its film;” and things, the most familiar and unnoticed, disclose charms invisible before. The same objects and events, which were lately beheld with indifference, occupy now all the powers and capacities of the soul; the contrast between the present and the past serving only to enhance and to endear so unlooked-for an acquisition. What Gray has so finely said of the pleasures of vicissitude, conveys but a faint image of what is experienced by the man who, after having lost in vulgar occupations and vulgar amusements his earliest and most precious years, is thus introduced at last to a new heaven and a new earth:

“The meanest floweret of the vale,

The simplest note that swells the gale,

The common sun, the air, the skies,

To him are op’ning Paradise.”

Dugald Stewart’s Essay on the Cultivation of
Intellectual Habits.

Cure of Drunkenness.—A man in Maryland, notoriously addicted to this vice, hearing an uproar in his kitchen one evening, had the curiosity to step without noise to the door, to know what was the matter, when he beheld his servants indulging in the most unbounded roar of laughter at a couple of his negro boys, who were mimicking himself in his drunken fits; showing how he reeled and staggered,—how he looked and nodded, and hiccupped and tumbled. The picture which these children of nature drew of him, and which had filled the rest with so much merriment, struck him so forcibly, that he became a perfectly sober man, to the unspeakable joy of his wife and children.—Anatomy of Drunkenness.

Lesson to Rulers.—The Chinese Emperor Tchou set out on a journey to visit the vast provinces of his empire, accompanied by his eldest son. One day he stopped his car in the midst of some fields where the people were hard at work. “I took you with me,” said he to his son, “that you might be an eye-witness of the painful toils of the poor husbandmen, and that the feeling their laborious station should excite in your heart might prevent your burdening them with taxes!”

How to prolong Life.—For many years there prevailed in China an extraordinary superstition and belief that the secret sect of Tao had discovered an elixir which bestowed immortality. No less than three Emperors died after swallowing a drink presented to them by the eunuchs of the palace, as the draught that was to confer never-ending life. “The best method of prolonging life, and of making life happy,” said a wise Mandarin to one of these infatuated princes, “is to control your appetites, subdue your passions, and practise virtue! Most of your predecessors, O Emperor! would have lived to a good old age had they followed the advice which I give you!”

A wise man’s kingdom is his own breast; or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of giving him solid and substantial advice.

Time tries the characters of men, as the furnace assays the quality of metals, by disengaging the impurities, dissipating the superficial glitter, and leaving the sterling gold bright and pure.

It was said, with truth, by Charles the Twelfth, of Sweden, that he who was ignorant of the arithmetical art was but half a man. With how much greater force may a similar expression be applied to him who carries to his grave the neglected and unprofitable seeds of faculties, which it depended on himself to have reared to maturity, and of which the fruits bring accessions to human happiness—more precious than all the gratifications which power or wealth can command.—Dugald Stewart.

A Ship of War.—It is a mighty and comprehensive problem to contemplate all the essential elements connected with the construction of so massy and stupendous a fabric as a ship destined for the terrible purposes of war, which, in the magnificent voyages it undertakes, has to cross wide and immeasurable seas, agitated at times by the unbridled fury of the winds, subjecting it to strains of the most formidable kind;—which shall possess mechanical strength to resist these, and at the same time be adapted for stowage and velocity,—which is expected in all cases to overtake the enemy, and yet must contain within itself the materiel of a six months’ cruise. These and many other complicated inquiries which the naval architect has to contemplate, must all be involved in the general conditions of his problem, the elements of which he must estimate while he is rearing his mighty fabric in the dock, and be prepared to anticipate their effects before he launches his vessel on the turbulent bosom of the deep.—Review of Hervey’s Article, Ship-building, Edinburgh Encyclopædia.

Average Duration of Life.—Nothing is more proverbially uncertain than the duration of human life, where the maxim is applied to an individual; yet there are few things less subject to fluctuation than the average duration of a multitude of individuals. The number of deaths happening amongst persons of our own acquaintance is frequently very different in different years; and it is not an uncommon event that this number shall be double, treble, or even many times larger in one year than in the next succeeding. If we consider larger societies of individuals, as the inhabitants of a village or small town, the number of deaths is more uniform; and in still larger bodies, as among the inhabitants of a kingdom, the uniformity is such, that the excess of deaths in any year above the average number, seldom exceeds a small fractional part of the whole. In the two periods, each of fifteen years, beginning at 1780, the number of deaths occurring in England and Wales in any year did not fall short of, or exceed, the average number one-thirteenth part of the whole; nor did the number dying in any year differ from the number of those dying in the next by a tenth part.—Babbage on the Assurance of Lives.

How many minds—almost all the great ones—were formed in secrecy and solitude, without knowing whether they should ever make a figure or not! All they knew was, that they liked what they were about, and gave their whole souls to it.

LONDON:—CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST.

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Transcriber’s Notes

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.