The Deutsche Reform publishes as a curiosity a selection, though an imperfect one, from the catalogue of the flying leaves and small cheap journals, political and satirical, that sprung into existence after the revolution, mostly in Berlin and Vienna; not more than three or four of them now exist. The insect world was a favorite source of names for the satirist, the sting of whose production was frequently only in the title: every week produced the Hornet, the Wasp, the Gadfly, and their plurals, the Wasps and the Gadflies; there was also an Imperial Gadfly, and one Wasp's Nest. The necessity of enlightenment exhausted the means of doing it through the Torch, the Taper, the Jet of Gas, the Lamp, the Everburning Lamp (the last flickers still at uncertain intervals, the extinguisher of the Berlin police coming down on it whenever it appears), the Lantern and the White Lamp, the Snuffers followed the list of lights, and the whole category concluded in an Egyptian Darkness, to which most of them have descended. The other titles are not so well classified: there was a Democratic Reasoner, a Shrieker (or Shouter), and the Berlin Widemouth, the Barricade Journal, the Street Journal, the Cat's Music, the Red Cap, the Sansculottes (Ohne-Hosen), the Tower of Fools, are miscellaneous: there was a variety of devils—the Travelling Devil, the Devil Untied, the Church Devil, the Revolutionary Devil. Some of the titles were cant words, quite untranslatable, as Kladderadatsch (the Berlin Punch, still existing), the Klitsch-Klatsch, and the Pumpernickel (a kind of black bread); the three last were—The Prussians Have Come, the General Wash, and the Political Ass. In the provincial towns all the flying leaves were something for the people—Volks-boten, Volks-freunde, Volks-zeitung—in a list that would be too long to repeat.
TRUE PROGRESS.—The civilization of antiquity was the advancement of the few and the slavery of the many—in Greece 30,000 freemen and 300,000 slaves—and it passed away. True civilization must be measured by the progress, not of a class or nation, but of all men. God admits none to advance alone. Individuals in advance become martyrs—nations in advance the prey of the barbarian. Only as one family of man can we progress. But man must exist as an animal before he can exist as a man: his physical requirements must be satisfied before those of mind; and hitherto it has taken the whole time and energies of the many to provide for their physical wants. Such wants have spread mankind over the whole globe—the brute and the savage have disappeared before the superior race—the black blood of the torrid zone has been mixed with the white of the temperate, and a superior race, capable of living and laboring under a zenith sun, has been formed, and we seem to be preparing for a united movement onward. The elements have been pressed into our service, the powers of steam and electricity would appear boundless, and science has given man an almost unlimited control over nature. The trammels which despotisms have hitherto imposed on body and mind have been thrown off, and constitutional liberty has rapidly and widely spread. The steamship and railway, and mutual interests in trade and commerce, have united nation to nation, and the press has given one mind and simultaneous thoughts to the whole community. Power there is in plenty for the emancipation of the whole race; since the steam engine and machinery may be to the working-classes what they have hitherto been to those classes above them. All that is wanted is to know how to use these forces for the general good. The powers of production are inexhaustible; we have but to organize them, and justly to distribute the produce.—Charles Bray.
COFFEE AND THE SAVANS.—In a letter from Paris it is said: "Some of our eminent scientific men are again squabbling on the vexed question as to whether coffee does or does not afford nourishment. One of them has laid down what seems a paradox, viz., that coffee contains fewer nutritive properties than the ordinary food of man, and yet that the man who makes it his principal food is stronger than one who feeds on meat and wine. In support of this paradox, our savant calls the example of the miners of the coal-pits of Charleroi, who never eat meat except a very small quantity on Sundays, and whose daily meals consist exclusively of bread and butter and coffee. These men, he says, are strong, muscular, and able to do, and actually perform, more hard work than the miners of the coal-pits of Onzin, in France, who feed largely on the more nutritive articles, meat and vegetables, and drink wine or beer. Another savant, taking nearly the same views, insists that the Arabs are able to live moderately, and to make long abstinences, as they do, entirely on account of their extensive use of coffee. But this last assertion is demolished, by the declaration of M. d'Abbadie, who has just returned from Abyssinia, that certain tribes of Arabs and Abyssinians who do not use coffee can support greater fatigue than those who do. In presence of such very contradictory facts, who shall say which of the learned doctors is in the right?"
A CURIOUS TRIO.—Mr. Dallas, when Secretary of the Treasury, says Mr. Paulding, told me the following story, which he had from Mr. Breck:—When the Duc de Liancourt was in Philadelphia, sometime after the execution of Louis the Sixteenth, Mr. Breck called to see him at his lodgings, in Strawberry-alley. Knocking at the door of a mean looking house, a little ragged girl came out, who, on being asked for the Duke, pointed to a door, which Mr. B. entered. At a little deal table he found Cobbett, teaching the Duke and Monsieur Talleyrand English!