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,
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.
1801.Wordsworth.
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:
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.
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