"Fail not, but ze tak guid heyd that neither the dasks, windows, nor duris, be ony ways hurt or broken, uthe glassin wark, or iron wark."
FREDERICK THE GREAT AT TABLE.
The table of the great Frederic of Prussia was regulated by himself. There were always from nine to a dozen dishes, and these were brought in one at a time. The King carved the solitary dish, and helped the company. One singular circumstance connected with this table was, that each dish was cooked by a different cook, who had a kitchen to himself! There was much consequent expense, with little magnificence. Frederic ate and drank, too, like a boon companion. His last work, before retiring to bed, was to receive from the chief cook the bill of fare for the next day; the price of each dish, and of its separate ingredients, was marked in the margin. The monarch looked it cautiously through, generally made out an improved edition, cursed all cooks as common thieves, and then flung down the money for the next day's expenses.
ARTIFICIAL SWEETS.
Professor Playfair, in an able lecture delivered in the Great Exhibition, and since published, has raised a curtain, which displays a rather repulsive scene. He says, the perfume of flowers frequently consists of oils and ethers, which the chemist can compound artificially in his laboratory. Singularly enough these are generally derived from substances of an intensely disgusting odour. A peculiarly fetid oil, termed the "fusel" oil, is formed in making brandy. This fusel oil distilled with sulphuric acid and acetate of potass, gives the oil of pears (?). The oil of apples is made from the same fusel, by distillation with the same acid and chromate of potass. The oil of pineapples is obtained from the product of the action of putrid cheese on sugar! or by making a soap with butter. The artificial oil of bitter almonds is now largely employed in perfuming soap confectionary; extracted by nitric acid and the fetid oil of gas tar. Many a fair forehead is damped with eau de mille fleurs without the knowledge that its essential ingredient is derived from the drainage of cow-houses!
TEUTONIC HUT-SHAPED VASES.
Some remarkable sepulchral urns, of which we give a sketch, resembling those of the early inhabitants of Alba Longa, in Italy, have been found in Germany, and are distinctly Teutonic. They occur in the sepulchres of the period when bronze weapons were used, and before the predominance of Roman art. One found at Mount Chemnitz, in Thuringen, had a cylindrical body and conical top, imitating a roof. In this was a square orifice, representing the door or window, by which the ashes of the dead were introduced, and the whole then secured by a small door fastened with a metal pin. A second vase was found at Roenne; a third in the island of Bornholm. A similar urn exhumed at Parchim had a shorter body, taller roof, and door at the side. Still more remarkable was another found at Aschersleben, which has its cover modelled in shape of a tall conical thatched roof, and the door with its ring still remaining. Another, with a taller body and flatter roof, with a door at the side, was found at Klus, near Halberstadt. The larger vases were used to hold the ashes of the dead, and are sometimes protected by a cover, or stone, or placed in another vase of coarser fabric. The others are the household vessels, which were offered to the dead filled with different viands. Some of the smaller vases appear to have been toys.
Extraordinary popular superstitions have prevailed amongst the German peasantry as to the origin and nature of these vases, which in some districts are considered to be the work of the elves,—in others, to grow spontaneously from the ground like mushrooms—or to be endued with remarkable properties for the preservation of milk and other articles of food. Weights to sink nets, balls, discs, and little rods of terra-cotta, are also found in the graves.