About the same time, we are informed that 'the celebrated J.J. Rousseau hath for the present taken up his residence at a friend's house in Putney.'—The number for October 26, 1765, contains an advertisement of a 'beggar's stand' (copied from the Public Advertiser), 'to be let, in a charitable neighbourhood. Income, about 30s. a week.'
The following reference to our acquaintances, the Sikhs, now sufficiently well known, is curious, as it is doubtless one of their first appearances in the columns of the English press. It is dated July 5, 1766: 'The Seyques, an idolatrous people inhabiting the neighbourhood of Cachemire, whose name was hardly known two years ago, have beaten Abdaly and the Patanes whom he commanded.' Modern Cockneys would stare to read a paragraph like this: 'A great deal of grass hath been cut down about Islington, Kentish-Town,' &c.
We will conclude our selections, which have now grown quite desultory and miscellaneous, by the brief obituary of a 'remarkable' man, from the Chronicle of July 26, 1766: 'Thursday, died at his house near Hampstead, the Rev. Mr Southcote, remarkable for having a leg of mutton every night for supper during a course of forty years, smoking ten pipes as constantly, and drinking three bottles of port.'
GENIUS FOR EMIGRATION.
Lady E. Stuart Wortley, in the account of her journey in America, mentions that she saw a man proceeding on foot across the Isthmus of Panama, bound for the Pacific, carrying a huge box on his back that would almost have contained a house. It was really a dreadful thing to see the poor man, full-cry for California, toiling along with his enormous burden, under a tropical sun, the heat of which he required to endure through forty miles of wilderness, and no chance of relief or refreshment by the way. Yet this serio-comic spectacle is not singular. Multitudes seem to have gone to the diggings with every species of encumbrance, and in a totally unsuitable garb. Splendid dress-coats and waistcoats, boots and pantaloons, but no working-clothes, nor implements for camping, and in many instances not even a cloak: everything suitable for the enjoyment of their golden promises, with nothing to assist in realising them.
Nearly the same thing has occurred in innumerable instances as regards Australia. The men going thither must in general be shepherds or their masters; and to be either to any purpose, they must go far into the bush. For this they required a talent for constructing huts for themselves and servants, and hurdles for the cattle, and consequently tools to assist them; but they often went without either tools or talents, and so had to pay extravagantly for very common services. They may have had common clothes, but they had made no provision for living far from the assistance of women; and consequently, if a coat-sleeve was torn, it must hang just as it was; if a stocking was out at heel, having neither needles nor worsted, nor the power of using them, they had no other resource but to tie the hole together. They had no idea of washing and dressing, and consequently must want clean linen, or stockings, and every other article of clean apparel, till a woman could be heard of, and bribed to assist them. The consequence was, that it was cheaper to buy new articles than either wash or mend the old. It is doubtful whether many had not omitted to learn to shave themselves, or to provide razors or strops, or even scissors.
Then as to baking bread, or cooking the humblest meal, they were equally at a loss. They seem to have had no idea of the humblest grate, or even of a flat and easily-cleaned stone for a hearth; and so, having kneaded their 'damper,' it is never said how they thrust it in the ashes till it was partially heated, and comparatively fit to be eaten. They have mutton, and mutton only; but how cooked is equally unknown. It is not known that they have any apparatus whatever, stew or frying pan, or even a hook and string. Yet the natives of Scotland may have seen many things nicely baked by means of a hot hearthstone below, a griddle with live coals above, and burning turf all round. A single pot with water is a boiler; with the juice of the meat, or little more, a stew-pan; or merely surrounded by fire, an oven: but it is believed many have not that single pot. Even the cheap crock that holds salted meat might also be turned into a pudding-dish; and such a vessel as that which of old held the ashes of the dead, and now occasionally holds salt, the French peasant often turns into a pot-au-feu—a pot for boiling his soup—and makes that soup out of docks and nettles collected by the wayside, with a little meal—delicious if seasoned with salt and a scrap of meat, or a well-picked lark or sparrow, or even a nicely-skinned and washed thigh of a frog!
The natives of New Holland themselves get fat upon serpents well-killed—that is, with the heads adroitly cut off, so as not to suffer the poison to go through the body; or upon earth or tree worms nicely roasted. The Turks roast their kebabs—something near to mutton-chops—by holding them to the fire on skewers. But the inhabitants of Great Britain, accustomed to comforts unknown to any other part of the world, are, when deprived of these comforts, the most helpless in the world.