GRATITUDE.
When Suffer, who had been fifty years a servant in the English factory at Abesheber, or Bushire, a Persian sea-port, was on his death-bed, the English doctor ordered him a glass of wine. He at first refused, saying, "I cannot take it; it is forbidden in the Koran." But after a few moments, he begged the doctor to give it him, saying, as he raised himself in his bed, "Give me the wine; for it is written in the same volume, that all you unbelievers will be excluded from Paradise; and the experience of fifty years teaches me to prefer your society in the other world, to any place unto which I can be advanced with my own countrymen." He died a few hours after this sally.—Sketches of Persia.
Footnote 1:[(return)]
We thank our correspondent for the above communication on one of the most interesting phenomena of British geology; for, as we hinted in our last, the pleasantest hours of our sojourn at Margate, about three years since, were passed in the watchmaker's museum, nearly opposite the Marine Library, which collection contains many Sheppey fossils, especially a prawn, said to be the only one in England. We remember the proprietor to have been a self-educated man: he had been to the museum at Paris twice or thrice, and spoke in high terms of the courteous reception he met with from M Cuvier; and we are happy to corroborate his representations. With respect to the reptile, or, as we should say, insect, alluded to in the preceding letter, we suppose it to have been a vermicular insect, similar to those inhabiting the cells of corallines, of whose tiny labours, in the formation of coral islands, we quoted a spirited poetical description in No. 279 of the MIRROR. Corallines much resemble fossil or petrified wood; and we recollect to have received from the landlady of an inn at Portsmouth a small branch of fossil wood, which she asserted to be coral, and that upon the authority of scores of her visiters; but the fibres, &c. of the wood were too evident to admit of a dispute.
Footnote 2:[(return)]
"Which, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along"—POPE.
Footnote 3:[(return)]
It is, indeed, difficult to avoid one, call it what you will, and quite as difficult to find a more absurd name than that adopted, unless, indeed, (why the machine goes but five miles an hour,) it is called a diligence from not being diligent, as the speaker of our House of Commons may be so designated from not speaking. It consists of three bodies, carries eighteen inside, and is not unfrequently drawn by nine horses. A cavalry charge, therefore, could scarcely make more noise. Hence, and from the other circumstance, its association in the second stanza with the triune sonorous Cerberus. A diligence indeed!
Footnote 4:[(return)]
The intrusive garrulity of French waiters at dinner is notorious.
Footnote 5:[(return)]
This "sea Mediterranean" is a most filthy, fetid, uncovered gutter, running down the middle of the most, even of the best streets, and with which every merciless Jehu most liberally bespatters the unhappy pedestrian. Truly la belle nation has little idea of decency, or there would be subterranean sewers like ours.
Footnote 6:[(return)]
French houses are cleaner even than ours externally, being all neatly whitewashed! mais le dedans! le dedans!
Footnote 7:[(return)]
The servants are as notorious for their incivility as for their intrusive loquacity.
Footnote 8:[(return)]
As Scott well observes in the introduction to Waverley, "the word comfortable is peculiar to the English language." The thing is certainly peculiar to us, if the word is not.
Footnote 9:[(return)]
All the tragedies are in rhyme, and that of the very worst description for elocutionary effect. It is the anapestic, like, as Hannah More remarks, "A cobbler there was, and he lived in a stall!"
Footnote 10:[(return)]
It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the absurdity (exploded in England at the Reformation) of a Latin liturgy still obtains in France.
Footnote 11:[(return)]
The Palais Royal! that pandemonium of profligacy! whose gaming tables have eternally ruined so many of our countrymen! So many, that he who, unwarned by their sad experience, plays at them, is—is he not?—"complete ass."
Footnote 12:[(return)]
There are none, even in the leading streets; our ambassador's, for instance.
Footnote 13:[(return)]
As the Etoile lately translated John Bull. "When John's no longer chamber-maid." Of the propria quæ maribus of French domestic economy, this is not the least amusing feature. At my hotel (in Rue St. Honoré) there was a he bed-maker; and I do believe the anomalous animal is not uncommon.
"When printed well a book is."
Both paper and types are very inferior to ours. But that I respect the editor's modesty, I would say it were not easy to find a periodical in Paris, at once so handsomely and economically got up as—this MIRROR.
"When printed well a book is."
Footnote 14:[(return)]
See MIRROR, vol. 8, page 296.
Footnote 15:[(return)]
These names are descriptive of the manner in which the women, so called, perform their part of the work, To todle, is to walk or move slowly, like a child; to trodle, is to walk or move more quickly.
Footnote 16:[(return)]
From our Correspondent's description of these cakes, we suppose them to resemble the wafers sold by the confectioners, except in the elegant designs on their surface.
Footnote 17:[(return)]
We remember the proverb, "Honour among thieves."
Footnote 18:[(return)]
But we cannot so far forget our country as to be indifferent to them.—See a passage in the Two Drovers.
Printed and Published by J. LIMBIRD, 143, Strand, (near Somerset-House,) and sold by all Newsmen and Booksellers.