The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 285, December 1, 1827
TextENGLISH AND FRENCH
Why are the English so fond of clubs, corporate bodies, joint-stock companies, and large associations of all kinds?—Because they are the most unsociable set of people in the world; for being mostly at variance with each other, they are glad to get any one else to join and be on their side; having no spontaneous attraction, they are forced to fasten themselves into the machine of society; and each holds out in his individual shyness and reserve, till he is carried away by the crowd, and borne with a violent, but welcome, shock against some other mass of aggregate prejudice or self-interest. The English join together to get rid of their sharp points and sense of uncomfortable peculiarity. Hence their clubs, their mobs, their sects, their parties, their spirit of co-operation, and previous understanding in every thing. An English mob is a collection of violent and headstrong humours, acting with double force from each man's natural self-will, and the sense of opposition to others; and the same may be said of the nation at large. The French unite and separate more easily; and therefore do not collect into such formidable masses, and act with such unity and tenacity of purpose. It is the same with their ideas, which easily join together, and easily part company, but do not form large or striking masses; and hence the French are full of wit and fancy, but without imagination or principle. The French are governed by fashion, the English by cabal. London Weekly Review.
PROTESTANT BURIAL-GROUND AT ROME
The Cemeterio degli Inglesi, or the Protestant burial-ground, stretches calmly and beautifully below the Pyramid of Cestius. The site was admirably chosen,—nothing can be more poetically and religiously sepulchral than this most attractive spot. It is worth a thousand churches. No one can stand long there without feeling in full descent upon his spirit the very best influences of the grave. The rich, red, ruinous battlements of the city, broken only by the calm and solid unity of the Pyramid; the clustering foliage beginning to brown on the ancient towers of the entrance; the deep, still, blue sky; the fluttering leaves of the vines which floated around, as one by one they dropped from the branches; the freshness of the green mounds at my feet,—these and a thousand other features, fully felt at the time, but untranslateable to writing, conveyed precisely that philosophy of Death which the poet and sculptor have more than once attempted to breathe over their most enchanting works, and which here seems an emanation from every object which you feel or see. I would place in this spot their Genius of Repose, that beautiful statue which joins its hands indolently on its head, and casts its melancholy eyes for ever towards the earth; that statue, so beautiful that it has been often confounded with the Grecian Eros, or the Celestial Love, and is, in itself, the best type of the messenger who is one day to lead us gently from the heat and toils of this world, into the coolness and tranquillity of the next. Every thing here is in unison with these thoughts. At a few paces distant from the Pyramid, and adjoining the wall, the Cippi and funeral Soroi of the Strangers are to be seen. The bright verdure and the bright marbles, the classical purity of the monuments, the desert air, the austere solemnity of every thing about me, came with new force upon my imagination. I walked slowly amongst the tombs, and tried to decipher the inscriptions. The dead are of various nations,—English, American, but principally German. Sometimes a cluster of cypresses shadowed the tomb—sometimes a fair flowering shrub had twined around it. The epitaphs were written with elegance always; at times with the deepest tenderness and beauty. Each had his short history, each his melancholy interest and adventure. Here was the man of science and literature, who came to lay down his head, after a painful and varied pilgrimage, in this City of the Soul. A Humboldt was buried here; a Thorwalsden yet may. Here reposes clay too finely tempered for the unkindnesses of mankind—Keats lies near;—a little farther is one who, on the point of quitting Rome to rejoin an affectionate family after a too long absence, full of the anticipations of the traveller and of youth, is thrown from his carriage at a mile's distance from the city, and never quits Rome more;—beside him is an only child, whom the sun of Italy could not save;—and next, one who perished suddenly, like Miss Bathurst, in the very bud and bloom of existence,—or another, who died away, day after day, in the embraces of her parents, and now rests in the midst of the beautiful in vain. The graceful lines of Petrarch are inscribed on the sarcophagus—they are full of feeling and the country, and make one pause and dream:—
"Non come fiamma, che per forza è spenta,
Ma che per se medesma si consuma,
Se n'andò in pace, l'anima contenta."
No epitaph could be better. New Monthly Magazine.
QUACKS
Have nearly the same interest as knaves in concealing their ignorance and frauds, and for the most part regard with the same fear and detestation the instrument which unmasks their pretensions. This must be understood with some qualification, because the exposure of ignorance and fraud is not always sufficient to open the eyes, and enlighten the understandings, of mankind. Some perverse dupes are not to be reasoned out of their infatuation; they had rather hug the impostor, than confess the cheat; and quacks, speculating upon this infirmity of human nature, will sometimes court even an infamous notoriety.—Lancet.
ANECDOTES OF THE MARVELLOUS
Charming away the Hooping Cough.
An English lady, the wife of an officer, accompanied her husband to Dublin not very long ago, when his regiment was ordered to that station. She engaged an Irish girl as nurse-maid in her family; and, a short time after her arrival, was astonished by an urgent request from this damsel, to permit her to charm little miss from ever having the hooping-cough, (then prevailing in Dublin). The lady inquired how this charming business was performed; and not long after had, in walking through the streets, many times the pleasure of witnessing the process, which is simply this:—An ass is brought before the door of a house, into whose mouth a piece of bread is introduced; and the child being passed three times over and under the animal's body, the charm is completed; and of its efficacy in preventing the spread of a very distressing, and sometimes fatal disorder, the lower class of Irish are certain.
The Legend of Hell Mary Hill.
Not many miles from Sheffield, as I was told by one who resided near the place, there is a forest; and in an out-of-the-way part of it, a hill, tolerably high, covered with wood, and vulgarly called Hell Mary Hill, though probably this is a name corrupted from one more innocent or holy. Near the top of it is a cave, containing, it is said, a chest of money,—a great iron chest, so full, that when the sun shines bright upon it, the gold can be seen through the key-hole; but it has never yet been stolen, because, in the first place, a huge black cat (and wherever a black cat is there is mischief, you may be sure) guards the treasure, which bristles up, and, fixing a gashful gaze on the would-be marauder, with fiery eyes, seems ready to devour him if he approach within a dozen yards of the cave; and, secondly, whenever this creature is off guard, (and it has occasionally been seen in a neighbouring village,) and the treasure has been attempted to be withdrawn from its tomb, no mortal rope has been able to sustain its weight, each that has been tried invariably breaking when the coffer was at the very mouth of the cave; which, being endowed with the gift of locomotion, has immediately retrograded into its pristine situation! I have mentioned this tradition, as it was told to me, because it is so curiously coincident with the German superstition of treasure buried within the Hartz mountains, guarded, and ever disappointing the cupidity of those who would discover and possess themselves of it.
Fairy Loaves.
Being lately in Norfolk, I discovered that the rustics belonging to the part of it in which I was staying, particularly regarded a kind of fossil-stone, which much resembled a sea-egg petrified, and was found frequently in the flinty gravel of that county. They esteemed such stones sacred to the elfin train, and termed them fairy loaves, forbearing to touch them, lest misfortunes should come upon them for the sacrilege. An old woman told me, that as she was trudging home one night from her field-work, she took up one of these fossils, and was going to carry it home with her; but was soon obliged to drop it, and take to her heels as quick as might be, from hearing a wrathful voice exclaim, though she saw nobody, "Give me my loaf! Give me back my loaf, I say!"—New London Literary Gazette.