The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 51 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 51 pages of information about The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction.

  The spacious streets are exceedingly smooth and level,
  Each being crossed by others at intervals;
  On either side perambulate men and females,
  In the centre, career along the carriages and horses;
  The mingled sound of voices is heard in the shops at evening. 
  During midwinter the accumulated snows adhere to the pathway,
  Lamps are displayed at night along the street sides,
  Their radiance twinkling like the stars of the sky.

* * * * *

Mozart was rather vain of the proportion of his hands and feet—­but not of having written the Requiem or the Don Juan.

* * * * *

BURMESE DIGNITY.

Mr. Crawfurd, in his account of the Embassy to Ava, relates the following specimen of the dignity of a Burmese minister.  While sitting under an awning on the poop of the steam vessel, a heavy squall, with rain, came on.—­“I suggested to his excellency the convenience of going below, which he long resisted, under the apprehension of committing his dignity by placing himself in a situation where persons might tread over his head, for this singular antipathy is common both to the Burmese and Siamese.  The prejudice is more especially directed against the fair sex; a pretty conclusive proof of the estimation in which they are held.  His excellency seriously demanded to know whether any woman had ever trod upon the poop; and being assured in the negative, he consented at length to enter the cabin.”

* * * * *

STEAM.

A quotation from Agathias clearly establishes a knowledge of the applicability of steam to mechanical purposes so early as the reign of the emperor Justinian, when the philosopher Anthemius most unphilosophically employed its powerful agency at Constantinople to shake the house of a litigious neighbour.  It is also recorded, that Pope Sylvester II. constructed an organ, that was worked by steam.  As compared with recent ingenuity, however, these applications may fairly bring to mind the Frenchman’s boast of his countryman’s invention of the frill and the ruffle; while his English opponent claimed for his native land the honour of suggesting the addition of the shirt.

* * * * *

MEDICAL MUSIC.

Sharp, the surgeon, Sir Charles Blicke’s master, was a great amateur of music, but he never used it as a means of curing patients, only in attracting them.  It was said that he “fiddled himself into practice, and fiddled Mr. Pott out of it;” certain it is Mr. Pott, not being a flat, did not choose to act in concert with Sharp, and made a quick movement to the westward.

* * * * *

Boerhaave tells us, that one of the greatest orators of antiquity, Tiberius Gracchus, when animated, used to cry out like an old woman; to avoid which, he had a servant, who, at these periods, sounded a pipe, by way of hint, as well as to pitch the tone, so sensible was he of the importance of a well-regulated voice.

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