The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 46 pages of information about The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 46 pages of information about The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction.

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TURKS AND RUSSIANS.

The character of the Russ differs from that of the Turk in little more than in the quality of his barbarism.  The Turk loves blood;—­the Russ loves craft;—­The Turk takes at once to the dagger;—­the Russ begins by the snare; but when the matter presses, he will use the steel as readily as any Turk on earth.  The ferocity of the Turk flourishes in the streets, in his own house, in the seraglio—­every where that he has a victim within his reach, and that it pleases him to destroy that victim.  The Russ knows something more of the law, and is by no means so domestic a cut-throat; but his mercy in the field or in the stormed city, is massacre.—­Monthly Magazine.

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MR. PITT.

Lady Hester Stanhope related the following to Mr. Madden:—­

When Mr. Pitt was out of office, I acted as his secretary, and he had then as much business as when he was in.  He very seldom opposed my opinions, and always respected my antipathies.  In private life he was cheerful and affable; he would rise in the midst of his gravest avocations to hand me a fallen handkerchief; he was always polite to women, and a great favourite with many of them; but he was wedded to the state, and nothing but death could divorce him from his country.  He was fond of me; he loved originality in any shape.  His great recreation, after the fatigue of business, was stealing into the country, entering a clean cottage, where there was a tidy woman and a nicely-scoured table, and there he would eat bread and cheese like any ploughman.  He detested routs, and always sat down to plain dinners.  He never ate before he went to the House; but when any thing important was to be discussed, he was in the habit of taking a glass of port wine with a tea-spoonful of bark.

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ENGLISH AND FRENCH.

In the arts, while French productions display resource, ingenuity, and dexterity, they at the same time show a striking want of the sense of fitness, and are unfinished and flimsy.  Such, in the cities of France, is remarkably the case with whatever regards furniture and decoration, while the productions of cookery are at once impregnated with filth, and admirably calculated to conceal it.  In the country, again, with a climate superior to that of England, there is everywhere to be seen open fields, later harvests, corn full of weeds, and inferior grain.  The difference between French and English taste in dress is very remarkable.  Even when English women take a hint from French contrivances, they endeavour to be more natural, modest, and classical.  As to male dress, an English gentleman always desires his tailor to avoid the extremes of fashion; and, as his dress is grave and manly, it is generally followed

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.