btranings funt rrilittirals. VIEWS ON HISTORY . — " To be entirely
just in our estimate of other ages is not difficult—it is impossible. Even what is passing in,OUrsresenee we see but through a glass darkly. The mind as well as the e ad s someimf4trcrnmiiimettreisTitin.oef nithoestelineasrtersutcotebdietchlt, nckanenbehpavaienhteudt a limited advantage over the most illiterate. Those who know the most, approach least to agreement. The most careful investigations are diverging reads; the further men travel upon them the greater the interval by which they are divided. In the eyes of David Hume, the history of the Saxon Princes is the scuffling of kites and crows.' Father Newman would mortify the conceit of a degenerate England by pointing to the sixty saints and the hundred confessors who were trained in her royal palaces for the Calendar of the Blessed. How vast a chasm yawns between these two conceptions of the same wra! Through what common term can the student_pass from one into the ether? Or, to take an instance yet more noticeable. The history of England scarcely interests Mr. Macaulay before the Revolution of the seventeenth century. To Lord John Russell, the Reformation was the first outcome from centuries of folly and ferocity ; and Mr. Hallam's more temperate language softens, without concealing, a similar conclusion. These writers have all studied what they describe. Mr. Carlyle has studied the same subject with power at least equal to theirs, and to him the greatness of English character was waning with the dawn of English literature ; the race of heroes was already failing. The airs of action was yielding before the tura of speech."—Fromie, in Fra,ser's Magazine.
CALICO-PRINTING VerSUS OPITIM.—" As affecting ourselves, we mean British interests at large, inclusive of those of our empire in the East, the consequences of a relinquishment of the trade in opium with China would be, in the first instance, an earnest endeavour to develop in a fuller degree the several elements of national wealth throughout the peninsula, from the Punjab to Pegu, and from the temperate flanks of the Himalaya to Cape Comoriu. In five years, or less time, the Indian revenue would have recovered itself, and far more than recovered the momentary defalcation. But the second of these results of such a course would be a gradual and indefinite enlargement of the British commerce with China and the Eastern Islands. China, even if it continued to consume opium, would obtain it at a fraction of the present cost ; and its twenty millions of silver would be annually available for the purchase of commodities, which, instead of paralyzing the national industry, stimulate and feed it, and open before it new fields of gainful enterprise. Instances many and various in illustration of this assumption might be adduced : take one. Any one who may chance to have seen those samples of Chinese dyed woven fabrics which at different times have bean exhibited in Manchester, will have gathered from these specimens two inferences ; first, that from whatever causes, whether of climate or of chemical intelligence or of manipulative skill, the Chinese dyer is likely to beat us perhaps always, in lbringing out brilliant and deeptoned colours, the blues, the purples, the crimsons. But then, the woven tissue to which these rich dyes are imparted are far outdone in evenness of thread and beauty of texture by the looms of Lancashire ; our machinery does its office, both as spinner and as weaver, in a manner which defies rivalry. And although we do not reach the splendours of Chinese colours, (not in woven fabrics any more than in decorated potteries,) we are able, and on terms of the extremest cheapness, to print what we weave : the printed goods of Lancashire will please the people of China, if only we first send to China for the pattern, and then faithfully copy it. On this ground, then,—it is one among many instances,—there is a division of labour instituted between nations on the opposite sides of the planet ; it is a distribution of tasks which is founded upon the nature ot things within the two countries respectively; and it is therefore likely to be permanent; nor is it. out of reason to imagine that cotton, grown on the ilaM of the Mississippi and spun and woven in England, should be sent to China to be dyed, in whole colours, and then returned to the shops of London and Paris, taking a place and conmuinding a price as goods not to be matched, and as evi deuces of what may be done when Europe, America, and Asia join hands and work upon a system—a system which Nature has chalked out for them. Only take the poppy out of this world-wide field, and we shall all fare the better—China, India, England, and Ameriea."—North BMWs Review.
Isissotmos's STAR.—" One day, at Fontainebleau, Fesch was disputing harshly, as was his usual custom, indeed. The Emperor grew angry, and told him that he, a libertine, an infidel, had good grounds for assunung such
an hypocritical manner, Ste. It is possible,' said Pesch, but that does not prevent you from committing injustice ; you are devoid of reason, justice, and pretexts; you are the most unjust of men.' At the end, the Emperor took him by the hand, opened the window, and led hint on to the balcony. Look up there,' he said ; do you see anything ? " No ' replied Pesch, see nothing.' Well, then, learn to hold your tongue,'
went on ; I can see my star ; it is that which guides me. No longer dare to compare your weak and imperfect faculties to my superior organization.' "—Martnont's Memoirs, New Monthly.
THE UNHEEDED WARNING.—" Napoleon, talking one day with M. de Rervas, a good Spaniard, and since known under the name of the Marquis d'Almenarat said, With 30,000 men I could, if I pleased, conquer Spam.' You are mistaken,' Hervas replied. 'If you allude to the conquest of the Government, the 30,000 men would be useless ; a letter in your hand and a courier would be sufficient. If you wish to subjugate the nation, 300,000 men would not suffice.' The future proved that he spoke the truth."— Ident.
LORD DERRY AT GLASGOW.—" Just at the cathedral-gate, and boldly challenging comparison, like a blockhead trying to argue a point with Arch.bishop Whately, stands the hideously and monstrously ugly Barony Church. How could mortal men build it, with the cathedral before their eyes ? We were told that when the Earl of Derby was Rector of the University he visited the cathedral. On emerging from its gate on his return, on a sudden his presence of mind appeared to fail him, and he stood still, gazing intently at some object before him, as though fascinated. At length, recovering himself, the illustrious peer said, in faltering tones, Well, I once saw an uglier church than that ! ' Those around were silent. Had we been present, we should certainly have asked his Lordship, Where ?"—Fraser's Magazine.
COWPER THE POET AND THE PARISH CLERK.—" The celebrated Northampton Tables, the foundation of all the life insurance calculations, were framed by Dr. Price on the Bills of Mortality kept in the parish of All Saints, Northampton, considered at that time as a fair average for insurers and insured : the increased general longevity has now caused them to be abandoned as too favourable to the offices. The Northampton Bills, however, have a more poetical claim to fame. The clerk of All Saints, whose business it was to deliver them yearly to the Mayor and other worthv inhabitants, was accustomed, with the view to the augmentation of his Christmas-box, to accompany them with a copy of verses. No doubt the subject was growing oppressive and the theme a little threadbare, when John Cox, who held the important office in 1787, hearing that Cowper was staying at Weston Favell, walked over to ask the poet to favour him with a copy of mortuary verses. Cowper, in a letter to Lady Hesketh, humorously describes the interview. On his referring the plain, decent, elderly personage who sat before him to a namesake Cox, a statuary and a first-rate maker of verses, the clerk answered that he had already borrowed help from him, but that he was a gentleman of so much reading that the people of the town could not understand him. The simple, goodnatured Cowper came to the relief of his petitioner, and for seven successive years furnished the mortuary verses which now appear in the poet's collected works, and which founded at the same time the fame and the fortune of John Cox. The custom is still retained, and offers a fair opening for an aspiring native poet in a field which Cowper did not disdain to occupy."—Quarterly Review.
WALLACHIAN FEMALE Cosrustn.—" The women seemed bashful ; they were certainly shy and not pretty, and it struck me that some of them would have been the better for soap and water. Their dress, which was that common amongst their class in Wallachia, consisted of a shirt, fastened round the neck and completely covering the upper part of their persons. From the waist downwards they were dressed like the women of nearly all countries—that is to say, they wore a lot of petticoats ; but above the waist the chemise was their only covering. This costume has rather a striking effect, until one gets used to it. To very well-made women, who do not require the support of the corset—and many such are to be found amongst the Wallachian peasantry—it is far from unbecoming, since it displays the contour and graces of the form far better than any artificial tightening ; but in the case of women past a certain age, and who have been addicted to childbearing, stays are missed, and the coup d'ccil is by no means satisfactory. The shirt is sometimes of a material which, without being indecently transparent, allows a slight flesh tint to transpire ; but these shirts arc usually thickly sprinkled with stars or other devices worked in gold or silver ; and this is, I believe, considered the strict national costume. The usual ornaments of the women of the lower classes are gold and silver coins, and even the mixed metal piastres. They are pierced and strung, and worn as necklaces, and also in the form of a sort of cap or broad circlet over the hair. In full dress, a Wallachian peasant girl thus usually carries her dowry on her person. The temptation of these rosaries of ducats and dollars sometimes proved too strong for the virtue of the Austrian occupants of the Principalities; and many stories did I bear, too many of them well-authenticated, of poor girls being stripped of their little fortune by the rude hand of a brutal Kaiserlich."—Blackwood's Magazine.
Hisnuome Bars.—" It seems, in addition to his other merits, that he possesses dramatic genius. We have heard of military fleas, we have seen Jacko perform his miserable imitation of humanity on the top of a barrelorgan, but who ever heard of a rat's turn for tragedy ? Nevertheless, a Belgian newspaper not long since published an account of a theatrical performance by a troop of rats, which gives us a higher idea of their intellectual nature than anything else which is recorded of them. This novel company of players were dressed in the garb of men and women, walked on their hind legs, and mimicked with ludicrous exactness many of the ordinary stage-effects. On one point only were they intractable. Like the young lady in the fable, who turned to a cat the moment a mouse appeared, they forgot their parts, their audience, and their manager, at the sight of the viands which were introduced in the course of the piece, and, dropping on all fours, fell to with the native voracity of their race. The performance was concluded by their banging in triumph their enemy the cat, and dancing round her body."—Quarterly Review.
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