The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 48 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 48 pages of information about The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction.
any one adequately comprehend the mighty agency of the steam-engine, who has not viewed the machinery of some of our mining districts, where it is employed on a scale of magnitude and power unequalled elsewhere.  In Cornwall,[5] especially, steam-engines may be seen working with a thousand horse power, and capable (according to a usual mode of estimating their perfection as machinery) of raising nearly 50,000,000 pounds of water through the space of a foot, by the combustion of a single bushel of coals.  No Englishman, especially if destined to public life, can fitly be ignorant of these great works and operations of art which are going on around him; and if time can be afforded in general education for Paris, Rome, and Florence, time is also fairly due to Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and Sheffield.—­Q.  Rev.

    [5] It is a remarkable proof of the amount of improvement effected
        in some of the Cornish steam engines, that the result obtained
        from a given quantity of coal, estimated in the manner alluded
        to above, is nearly three times as great now as it was twenty
        years ago.  Nor will the spectator find more cause for
        astonishment in the magnitude of these engines, than in the
        order, or even beauty, of every minute part pertaining to them. 
        The furniture of a drawing-room is not more scrupulously
        arranged, or preserved in a state of higher polish, than are
        those huge representatives of human power.

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LEARNING FRENCH.

Fashion dominates in this, as in other things.  Of late its dictation has been to cradle children in French; often, even to prohibit English in the nursery and school-room; and, frequently, at a later time, to detach our youth from their own country, for the sake of forwarding the same object in foreign pensions, or schools.  We have seen this fashion extending itself to more mature life; and serious and discreet men, senators and judges, toiling painfully through elements, vocabularies, and rules of pronunciation, to acquire an amount of speech sufficient to attract ridicule, and produce inconvenience, but very inadequate to any useful or ornamental purpose.—­Ibid.

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POOR-MAN-OF-MUTTON

Is a term applied to the remains of a shoulder of mutton, which, after it has done its regular duty as a roast at dinner, makes its appearance as a broiled bone at supper, or upon the next day.

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