OSE DOLLAR PER ANNUM, INVARIABLY IN ADVANCE,
T OWA N I)A:
Satnrimri Hlorninn, .febrnarn 2L 1855.
f ttttrj.
SUMMER FRIENDS,
DV VREKRIC S. COZ2EN3.
When spring the fields in daises dressed,
And flushed the woods with maple buds,
1 spied a little blue-bird's nest
Within a cedar's branchy .-tuds.
Its old pray grass, inlaid with hair,
The summer's sun had withered up,
And autumn's acorns still were there,
Though snows had brimmed its tiny cup.
What then? I heard a pilgrim hymn;
And half forgave the long neglect,
When perched upon the threshold rim
A little feathered architect.
And straw by straw the waits he wrought,
And hair by hair the floor he spread;
And when his blue-bird wife he brought,
Thev slept within the nuptial bed.
Oh! how I loved my pranksome guest!
For him 1 loved his help-mate too;
With jealous care I fenced their nest,
And watched tliem as they sung or flew.
tso April passed: and gentle .May
Went murmuring by with leaves aird bees;
And two small blue-winged chicks had they
When summer broadened on the trees.
My very solitude had made
Tiuit tiny household seem more sweet;
And often to the hank 1 strayed
To watch the nestlings chirp and eat.
But when the palsied autumn came,
And shook the boughs, and bared the wood,
1 scarce the feathered brood could blame,
Though void their puny wigwam stood:
For summer friends had coine like these,
Like these the summer friends had flown;
When stormy winter stripped the trees,
They left the cold and me alone.
iutium ou (fnglisj) poctrj.
Lecture by James Russell Lowell, Esq,,
AT THE LOWELL IXSTITUTE. BOSTOX.
[We are under many obligations to a friend
in Boston, for a series of Lectures recently de
livered at the Lowell Institute, in that city, by
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, of Cambridge. The
subject of these lectures is " English Poetry ;
tliev are unsurpassable in originality and beau
tv, and a perfect appreciation of the subject.
The Lecturer has very recently been elected
I'rofessor of Modern Languages and Belles let
ters in Harvard College. \\ e are certain our
readers will thank us for the privilege of perus
ing the following loctnre, upon a popular theme.
"Tlies? Lectures" —(so write the person, to
whom we are indebted for their perusal)—"are
quite popular here, and 1 hope you will find
them sufficiently interesting to re-publish part,
if not all in your own paper. The Lowell In
stitute belongs to " the people." It is a free
institution, founded by its namesake, who left
a handsome sum for the purpose—the interest
of which only is used. This donation has been
so well managed, as to enable the Directors to
extend their means from year to year,—they
have bought the old Marlboro' Chapel, which
is uow only used for their Society. There arc
usually four courses of Lectures given during
the season. The present course, has been so
jmpular that they are repeated Wednesday and
Saturday afternoons —the regular course being
given the Tuesday and Friday nights previous.
Tickets for these lectures are drawn by lot.—
All persons wishing them put down their names
in a big hook, opened for this purpose, and du
ly advertised. At the end of a specified time j
the number of tickets to be given out are coun
ted—the names divided accordingly. This
time all who heldJtiekets divisible by Jive drew
—of course four-fifths of the applicants were ;
disappointed."]
BALLADS.
One of the laws of the historical Macbeth de
clares that —" Fools, minstrels, bards, and all
other such idle people unless they be specially {
licensed by the King, shall be compelled to seek
some craft to win their living," and the old
Chronicler adds approvingly—" these and such
like laws were used by King Macbeth, through
which he governed the realm ten years in good
justice."
1 do not quote this in order to blacken the
memory of that unhappy monarch. The poets
commonly contrive to be even with their ene
mies in the end, and Shakspeare has taken an
ample revenge. I cite it only for the phrase,
unless they he specially licensed by the hivg, which
points to a fact on which I propose to dwell for
a few moments before entering upon my more
immediate object.
When Virgil said Arma, virvmquc cann, arms
ami the man I sing, be defined in the strictest
manner the original office of the po<'t, and the
object of the judicious Macbcth's ordinance was
to prevent any one from singing the wrong arms
ami the rival man. Formerly the poet held a
recognised place in the body politic, and, if lie
has been deposed from it, it may be some con
solation to think that the Fools, whom the
Seotefi usurper included in his penal statute,
have not lost their share in the government of
the world yet, nor, if we may trust appearances,
are likely to for some time to coine. But the
1 ooi- here referred to were not those who had
h ast, but those who had most wit, ami assumed
that disguise in order to take away any danger
ous ai.|earanee of intention from their jibes ami
THE BRADFORD REPORTER.
The poet was once what the political news
paper is now, and circulated from ear to ear
with satire or panegyric. He it was who first
made Public Opinion a power in the State bv
condensing it into a song. The invention of
printing, by weakening the faculty of memory,
and by transferring the address of language
from the ear to the eye, has lessened the imme
diate power of the poet. A newspaper maybe
suppressed, an editor may be silenced, every
copy ol an obnoxious book may be destroyed,
but in those old days when the minstrels were
a power, a verse could wander safely from heart
to heart to heart and from hamlet to hamlet
as unassailable as the memories on which it was
imprinted, its force was in its imjiersonality,
for Public Opinion is disenchanted the moment
it is individualized and is terrible only so long
as it is the opinion of no one in particular.—
Find its author, and the huge shadow which
but now darkened half the heaven, shrinks like
genius of the Arabian Story into the compass
ot a leaden casket which one can hold in his
hand, Now-a-days, one knows the editor, per-'
haps, and so is on friendly terms with public
opinion. ou may have dined with it yester
day, rubbed shoulders with it in the omni
bus to-day—nay, carried it in your pocket!
embodied in the letter of the special corres
pondent.
Spencer in his prose tract upon Ireland has
left perhaps the best description possible of the
primitive poet, as he was everywhere when the
copies of a poem were so many living men, and
all publication'was to the accompaniment of
music. He says "there is amongst the Irish a
certain kind of people called bards, which are
to them instead of poets, whose profession is to
set fonth the praises or dispraises of men in
their poems or rhythms; the which are held in
such high regard or esteem amongst them that
none dare displease them for fear of running
into reproach through this offence, and to be
made infamous in the mouths of all men.'' Nor
was the sphere of the bards contiueTl to the pre
sent alone. They were also the embodied
memory of the people. It was 011 wings of
verse that that the names of ancestral heroes
could float down securely broad tracts of j
desert time, and across the gulfs of oblivion.— '
And jwts were sometimes made use of by sa
gacious rulers to make legends serve apolitical i
purpose. The Persian poet Firdusi is aremar-j
kable instance of this. Virgil attempted also
to braid together the ravelled ends of Roman
and Greek tradition, and it Is not impossible
that the minstrels of the Norman metrical ro
mances were guided by an instinct somewhat
similar.
But the position of the inhabitants of Eng
land was a peculiar one. The Saxons bv their
conversion to Christianity, and the Normans
still more by their conversion and change of
language, were almost wholly cut off from the
past. The few fragments of the Celtic race 1
were the only natives of Britain who had an
antiquity. The English properly so-called were a
people who hardly knew their own grandfathers,
tliev no longer spoke the language, believed in
the religion, or were dominated by the ideas of
their ancestors.
English writers demand of us a national lit
erature. But where, for thirteen centuries was
their own ? ()ur ancestors brought a past wnh
them to Plymouth; they claimed descent from
a great race; the language they spoke had been
ennobled by recording the triumphs of ancestral
daring and genius; it had gone up to Heaven, 1
wafted on the red wings of martyr-fires; moth- ;
ors hushed their new-born babes, and priests j
scattered the farewell earth upon the colliu-lid, •
with words made sweet or sacred by immemo
rial association. But the Normans when they
landed in England were a new race of armed
men almost as much cut off from the influences ;
of the past as those which sprang out of the '
ground at the sowing of the dragon's teeth.— J
They found there a Saxon encampment occu- j
pyiug a country strange to them also. For we |
must remember that though Britain was histori
cally old, England was not, and it was as im
possible to piece the histories of the two to
gether to make a national record of, as it would I
be for 11s to persuade ourselves into a feeling of]
continental antiquity by adopting the Mexican j
annals.
The ballads are the first truly national poe
try in our language, and national poetry is not
that either of the drawing-room or the kitchen,
it is the common mother-earth of the universal
sentiment that the foot of the poet must touch,
through which shall steal up to heart and bruin
that tine virtue which puts him in sympathy,
not with his class, but with his kind.
Fortunately for the ballad-makers they were
not encumbered with any useless information.
They had not wit enough to lose their way. —
It is only the greatest brains and the most in
tense imagination that can fuse learning into
one substance with their own thought and feel
ing, and so interpenetrate it. with tlnmselcrs, that
the acquired is as much they as the native. —
The ballad-makers had not far to seek for ma
terial. The shipwreck, the runaway match,
the unhappy marriage, the village ghost, the
achievement of the border outlaw—in short,
what we read every day under the head of
Items in the newspapers, were the inspiration
of their song. And they sang well because
they thought and felt and believed just us their
hearers did, and because they never thought
anything about it. The ballads are pathetic
because the poet did not try to make them so,
and they are models of nervous and simple dic
tion, because the business of the poet was to
tell his story, and not to adorn it, and accord
ingly he went earnestly and straightforwardly
to work, and let the rapid thoughts snatch the
word as it ran, feeling quite sure of its getting
the right one. The only art of expression is to
have something to express. We feel as wide
a difference between what is manufactured and
what is spontaneous, as between the sparkles
of an electrical machine, which a sufficiently
muscular professor can grind out by the doz
en, and the wild-fire of God that writes mene,
t;icc 011 the crumbling palace-walls ot midnight
cloud.
ii :ieeius to me that the ballad-maker, in in
spect of diction, inni aiso this auvautage, that
he had no hooks. Language, when it speaks
to the eve oniv. loses bait its meaning 1 , lor
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT TOWANDA, BRADFORD COUNTY, PA., BY E. O'MEARA GOODRICH.
" KESARDLESS OF 'DENUNCIATION FROM ANY QUARTER."
the eye is an outpost of the brain, and wears
its livery oftener than that of the character.—
But the temperament, the deep human nature,
the aboriginal emotions, these utter themselves
in the voice. It is only by the ear that the
true mother-tongue that knows the short way
to the heart is learned. Ido not believe that
a man born deaf could understand Shakspeare,
or sound anything but the edges aud shores
of Lear's tempestuous woe. I think that Hie
great masters of speech have haunted men
and not libraries, and have found the secret
of their power in the street and not upon the
shelf.
It is the way of saying things that is learn
ed by commerce with men, and the best wri
ters have mixed mnch with the world. It is
there only that the language of feeling can be
acquired.
The ballads are models of narrative poetry.
They are not concerned with the utterance of
thought, but only of sentiment or passion, and
it is as illustrating poetic diction that 1 shall
chiefly cite them. If they moralize it is always
by picture and not by preachment. What dis
course of inconstancy has the force and biting
pathos of this grim old song of the " Twa Cor
bies ?"
As I was walking all alone,
I heard twa corbies making a moan,
The one unto the other did say,
Where shall we gang and dine to-day ?
In beyond that old tnrf dyke,
I wot there lies a new-slain knight,
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk and his hound and his lady fair.
Ills hound is to the hunting gone,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl haine,
His lady's tacn anither mate—
Sac we may make our dinner sweet,
You'll sit upon his white neck bone
And I'll pick out his bonny blue een;
With a lock of his golden hair
We'll tliatch our nest when it grows bare.
Many a one for him makes moan,
But none sail ken where he is gone;
O'er his white bones when they grow bare
The wind shall blow forevermare.
Observe, the wind simply blows. That is
enough—but a modern poet would have sought
to intensify by making the wind moan, or shriek,
or sob, or something of the kind.
[Mr. Lowell here quoted a ballad which tells
a story of child-murder. It begins:
Fair lady .Anne sate in her bower
Down by the greenwood side,
And the flowers did spring, and the birds did sing,
'Twas the pleasant Mayday tide.]
The ballad singers had all the advantage of
that spur of the moment which the excitement
of speaking gives, aud they also received the
magnetism which came from the sympathy of
their hearers. They knew what told, for they
had their hand upon the living pulse of feeling.
There was no time to palaver, they must come
to the point.
The Percy out of Northumberland
And a vow to <:<> l made he
That he would hunt in the mountains
Of Cheviot within days three,
In the maugre of doughty Douglas
Aud all that ever with him be.
They plunge into deep water at once. And
there is never any tilling up. The transitions
are abrupt. Vou can no more foretell the swift
wheel of the feeling than that of a falcon, and
the phrases flash forth sharp-edged and deadly
like a sword drawn in wrath. The passions
speak out savagely and without any delicacies
of circumlocution.
It is Worth thinking of whether the press
which have a habit of calling such a fine insti
tution be not weakening the fibre and damag
ing the sincerity of our English, and our think
ing quite as fast as it diffuses intelligence. Con
sider the meaning of expression—something
wrung from us by the grip of thought or pas
sion whether we will or no. But the editor is
qnite as often compelled to write that he may
fill an empty column, as that he may relieve an
overfilled brain. And in a country like ours,
where newspapers are the only reading of the
mass of the people there is danger of a general
contentedness in common place. For we al
ways become what we habitually read. We
let our newspapers think for us, argue for us,
criticise for us, remember for us, do every thing
for 11s, in short, that will save us from the mis
fortune of being ourselves. And so,instead of
men aud women, we find ourselves iu a world
inhabited by incarnated leaders or paragraphs,
or items of this or.that journal. We are apt
to wonder at the scholarship of the men of two
centuries ago. They were scholars because they
did not read so much as we do. We spend
more time over print than they did, but instead
of communing with the choice thought of choice
spirits, and insensibly acquiring the grand man
ner of that supreme society, we diligently in
form ourselves of such facts as that a fine horse
belonging to Mr. Smith ran away 011 Wednes
day, and that a son of Mr. Brown fell into the
canal on Thursday, or that a gravel-bank cav
ed in and buried alive Patrick O'Callahan on
Friday. And it is our own mult, and not that
of the editor. For we make the newspapers,
and the editor would be glad to give us better
stuff' if we did not demand such as this,
Another evil of this state of things is the
watering or milk and watering of our English.
Writing to which there is 110 higher compelling
destiny thau the coming of the printer's devil
must end in this at last. The paragraphist
must make his paragraph, and the longer he
makes it, the better for him and worse for us.
The virtue of words becomes wholly a matter
of length. Accordingly we have uow 110 long
er any fires, but "disastrous conflagrations;"
nobody dies, but" deceases" or " demises;' men
do not fall from houses, but are precipitated
from mansions or edifices; a convict is not hang
ed, but suffers the extreme penalty of the of
fended law, &e.
The old baliad makers lived iu a better day.
They did not hear of so many events that none
of them made any impression. They did not
live as we do in a world that seems a great car
of Dionysius, where, if a scandal is whispered
in Pekin we hear of it in New-York. The min
strels had no metaphysical bees in their bon
nets. They did not speculate about this world
or the ne.vt. They had not nude the great
modern discovery that a bird in the bush was
worth two in the hand. They did not analyze or
refine till nothing genuine was left of this beau
tiful world but an indigestion.
| The ballads neither harangue nor describe;
but only state things in the least complex wuy.
Those old singers caught lauguage fresh and
with a flavor of the soil in it still, and their
hearers were people of healthy sensibilities who
must be hit directly ami hard. Accordingly
there is very vigorous handling. They speak
bluntly and to the purpose. If a maiden loses
her lover, she merely—•
Turns lier face unto the wall,
Atid there h< r heart it breaks. '
A modern poet would have hardly thrown
away the opportunity offered him of describing
the chamber and its furniture; lie would put a
painted window into it—for the inkstand will
supply them quite as cheaply as plain glass.—
He would tell you all about the tapestry which
the eyes of the dying maiden in her extreme
agony would have been very likely of course to
have been minutely interested in. He would
have given a clinical lecture ou the symptoms,
and a post-mortem examination. It was so
lucky for those old ballad-mongers that they had
not any ideas!
And when they give a dying speech they do
not make their heroes take leave of the uni
verse in general as if that were going iuto
mourning for a death more or less. When Earl
Douglas is in his death-thraw, he says to his
nephew—
My wound is deep; I fain would sleep;
Take thou the vanguard of the three,
And hide me by the biakenbush
That grows on yonder lily lee:
O bury me by the brakenbush
Beneath the blooming brcre,
Let never living mortal ken
That a kindly scot lies here!
The ballads are the only true-folk songs that
we have in English. There is 110 other poetry
in the language that addresses us so simply as
mere men and women. Learning has tamper
ed with modern poetry, and the Muse, like Por
tia wears a Doctor's cap and gown.
The force aud earnestness of style that mark
the old ballad become very striking when con
trasted with later attempts in the same way.
It is not flatness and insipidity that they are
remarkable for, but for a bare rocky grandeur
in whose crevices tenderness nestles its chance
tufts of ferns or harebells. One of these sincere
old verses imbedded in the insipidities of a mo
dern imitation looks out stern and colossal as
that charcoal head, which Michael Angelodrew
on the wall of the Faruesina, glowers through
the ]inline frescoes.
[Mr. Lowell here read a number of passages
from the ohi ballad entitled " Margaret's Ghost,"
and compared them with a few stanzas from an
" improved" version of the same by Mallet.—
He also read from the ballad of Helen of Kir
conucl and from others.]
Of the tenderness of the ballads I must give
an instance or two before I leave them.
Iu the old ballad of Clerk Saunders, Mar
garet follows the ghost of her lover to his
grave.
So painfully she climbed the wall
She climbed the wall up after him,
H<>se nor shoon upon her feet,
She had no time to put them on.
O bonny, bonny, sang the bird
Sat ou a coil o' hay
But mournfu', inourafu' was the maid
That followed the corpse o' clay.
Is there any room at your head, Saunders?
Or any room at your feet ?
Is there any room at your side, Saunders?
For fain, fain, I would sleep.
She's sat her down upon the grave
And mourned sac lang aud sair
That the eloch- and wanton flies at last
Came and built iu her yellow hair.
[ln further illustration, Mr. Lowell read
from "the Clerk's Two Sous of Oxenford."—
He concluded his lecture thus.]
I think that the makers of the old ballads
did stand face to face with life in away that
is getting more and more impossible for us.—
Day by day the art of printing isolates us more
and more from our fellows, aud from the healthy
and inspiring touch of our fellows. M'e learn
continually more and more of mankind and less
of man. We know more of Europe than of our
own village. We feel humanity from afar.—
But I must not forget that the ballads have
passed through a scive which no modern author
lias the advantage of. Only those have come
down to us which imprinted themselves on the
general heart. The new editions were struck
oil' by mothers crooning their children to sleep,
or by wandering minstrels who went about sow
ing the seeds of courtesy and valor in the cot
tage on the hill side. Print, which like the
amber preserves all an author's grubs, gives
men the chance to try liitu by the average ra
ther than the best of his yield. Moreover the
Review of the ballad singer was iu the faces of
his ring of hearers, in whose glow or chill he
could read at a glance a criticism from
which there was no appeal. It was not Smith
or Brown, but the hmnan heart that judged
hiui.
Doubtless another advantage of these old
poets was their out of door life. They went
from audience to audience 011 foot, and had no
more cramped a study thau the arch of Hea
ven, no library but clouds, streams, mountains,
woods and men. There is something more in
sunshine than mere light and heat. I fancy
that a kind of flavor we detect in the old bal
lads is due to it, and that it ma v give color aud
bloom to the braiu as well as to the apple and
plum. ludoor inspiration is like the stove-heat
of the forcing-house, and the fruits ripened by
it are pale, dropsical apd wanting in tang.—
There mav be also a virtue in the fireside, which
gives to the portheru wind a domestic and fami
ly warmth, and makes it skilled to teach the
ethics uf Louie, Bui ic is not to the chimney
corner that we euu trace the spiritual dynasties
that have swayed mankind. These have sun
shine in their veins.
Perhaps another charm of the ballads is that
nobody made them. They seem to hu\e come
up like violets, and wc have only to thank God
for them. And we imply a sort of fondness
when we call them old. It is an epithet we
give endearingly not as supposing any decrepi
tude or senescence in them. Like all true joe
try they are not only young themselves, but
the reuewers of youth in us; they do not lost
but accumulate strength and life. A true poem
gets a part of its inspiring force from each gen
eration of men. The great stream of Homer
rolls down to us out of the past swollen with
the tributary delight and admiration of the
ages. The next generation w ill find Shakspeare
fuller of meaning aud energy by the addition
of our enthusiasm. Sir Philip Sidney's admi
ration is part of the breath that souuds through
the trumpet of Chevy Chacc. That is 110 emp
ty gift with which we invest a poem when we
bestow 011 it our own youth, and that is no small
debt we owe the true poem that it preserves for
us some youth to bestow.
Glass Eyes and their Manufacture.
On the subject of the manufacture of glass
eyes there is but little known in this country,
as most of these comes from the manufactories
of France and Germany. It is an operation of
no little dexterity, care, labor, and ingenuity
to make a feature of the " human race divine,"
and much more so that of that " window of the
soul," the eye—to give it the proper form, size,
color, and that indescribable character which
two pairs of eyes have in common—for no two
pair are exactly alike. It may be of interest
to speak of the manufacture, by which a piece
of senseless glass is made to imitate so nearly
as to evade sometimes the closest scrutiny and
detection, the natural eye. There are several
large factories in Europe where this is the chief
subject of work— and their workmanship fairly
rivals nature.
In the first place the glass is assorted, aud
only that of the clearest and purest kind chosen
for the purpose. It is then fused with the pri
ming or white which is formed by the addition
of some metalic substance, generally arsenic, to
give the pearly opacity which is necessary.—
Sometimes slight traces of cobalt are mingled, j
to give the delicate bluish cast which the white
portion of the healthy natural eye has. This
being done —and the utmost care is requisite
in order that the fusion be so conducted that
no part becomes more or less opaque, or more j
or less tinged thau the rest—the next point is
the coloring of the iris; and this is done with {
metalic colors also—laid on the priming in the !
proper position, with a fine pencil, by an ex-! <
perieneed artist, who, if the eye is made to or-' ,
der, must have an accurate description, or still j ,
better must have an opportunity of seeing the ! j
eye of the individual for whom it is to be made. ! ,
For the different shades and colors, many
different metalic oxides are necessary—the '
" cerulean blue," and " azure," the " hazel"and j,
" gray," the "jet black" and "chestnut brow u," 1'
with their infinite variations of shade are all |
prepared 011 the porcelain parlette of an eye- j
tinder. These once laid on, the fusion is again ,
gone through with; and now there remains the I
most difficult of all—the pupil to be laid in.— i
For this purpose, a jet glossy black is necessa
ry—uud that it may appear more natural, it
must be so so laid on that it may appear trans
spa rent, so that one can look into it, or more ! (
properly through it. And this is accomplished !
by sinking the pupil at first, while it is in a !
state of partial fusion, by pressure, and laying j
in the color, over which the smallest fragment
of clearest glass is laid, the heat increased and
the eye is completed—all except the necessary :
smoothing and finishing that follows. This ;
process of the manufacture of a single eye em- j
ploys a large number of workmen, to each of
whom a sjiccial department of labor is allot
ted—one to sort the crystal glass, one to the
fusion, one to the color, etc., etc.; and to this
fact it is owing that the art has advanced to
great perfection.
A SMART BOY.—" Well, sonny, whose pigs
are those ?"
" Old sow's, sir."
" Whose sow is it?*'
" Old man's sir."
" Well, then, who is your old man?"
" Yon mind the pigs, I'll run home and ask
the old woman."
" Never, mind, sonny, I want a smart boy. j
what can you do?"
"Oh! I can do more than considerable, I
can milk the geese, ride the turkeys to water,
hamstring the grasshoppers, light tires for flics
to court by, cut buttons off' of dad's coat w hen j
he is at prayer', keep tally for dad and mam
when they scold at a mark—old woman is al
ways ahead."
" Got any brothers?"
" Lots of 'em—all named Bill except Bob,
his nam's Sain—my name's Larry, but they
call me Lazy Lawrence for shortness."
" Well, you're most too smart for me."
" Travel on, old stick in the mud, 1 shan't
hire you for a boss to-day."
MORGAN FOUND AT LAST.— The Masonic
Mirror publishes a rather curious story, to die
effect that Morgan, who, it was alleged, was
murdered by the Free Masons, for disclosing
their secrets, has been found in Smyrna, iu
Turkey; that he uow r goes by the name of
Mnslapha, aud is engaged iu teaching the Eng
lish language. The authority given for this
report, is ouc Joseph A. Bloom. According I
to the Mirror, this man Bloom met Morgan, at
a house in Symrna, to whom the latter gave a
detailed account of his adventures. It is stat
ed that Morgan left the country in the ship
Mervinc, which sailed from Boston to Smyrna,
and belonged to the firm of Lungdun & Co.—
The captain's uamo of the Mervine, was Welch.
It matters little now, perhaps, whether the
story be true or false,
teg- Lessing, the celebrated German poet,
was remarkable for his frequent absence of
mind. Having missed inouey at different times
without being able to discover who took it, he
determined to put the honesty of his servant
to test, and left a handful of gold upou the ta
ble. "Of course you counted it," said one of
his friends. " Counted it!" baid Le.- ing, rath
er embarrassed, "no, I forgot that "
VOL. XY.-NO. 37.
Letter from Dr. Goodrich, U. S. Consul at Lyotu,
The Wine Trade of France.
Tito most productive wine districts of France
are the South and Southwestern, and the least
productive is the Northwestern. The vine
grows not only on the level and uuduating lands,
but also on the hill side and monntuin summits.
These lands are mostly ston v, sandy and sterile,
worn out and uufit for wheat growing. Dur
ing the last three or four years a destructive
disease has attacked the vine, nut onlv iu
France, but in Italy, Spain and Portugal.—
This malady is of a fungoid character, and its
preventive or remedy has hitherto eluded the
vigilance and researches of the chemist and na
turalist.
In the statistics I shall give you—and they
will be official—l will, for brevity uvoid the
smaller numerals, as my object can be attained
without them. The number of acres of land
under the vine culture in France differs but lit
tle from 5,000,000. There are about 2,000,-
000 of persons (mostly females) employed iu
the cultivation of the vine aud manufacture of
wine, exclusive of 250,000 engaged in the trans
portation and sale of wine. The annual aver
age product is a little more than 800,000,000
gallons—for obvious reasons I give you Amer
ican rather than French terms. The domestic
or home value varies of course with the supply
and demand, say from ton to twenty cents a
gallon. For the last two years, owing to the
"disease," the price has augmented from one
to two hundred JK.T cent, on former prices. The
annual value may be set down in round numbers
at §100,000,000.
lii the year 1849, which is probably the best
in several years, the number of acres under cul
tivation was 5,500,000 producing 925,000,000
gallons of wine. This was au increase of 115,-
000,000 over that of the last decade, 1839.
Nearly 50,000,000 gallons are annually e.\j>ort
cd as French wines. In 1819, 41,000,00(1
were exported; in 1850, 42,000,000; 1851,
49,500,000; in 1852, 53,200,000; in 1853,
43,500,000. Ninety millions of gallons are
annually distilled into brandy, although for the
ensuing vear, owing to government restrictions
there will be but little French brandy export
ed to the L nited States except that made from
American whisky imported into France. One
seventh, or about 133,000,000 galloas of wiuo
are annually exported from France either as
wine or its distillations. The excise duty on
wine and its products paid into the French Ex
chequer during the past year was $22,800,000.
This includes the ordinary excise, as also the
" Octroi," or city duty. There are by estimate,
220,000,000 gallons of wine manufactured in
to spirits, inclusive of the 90,000,000 made iu
tobrandy. This leaves more than 700,000,000
gallons of wine for home consumption, or about
twenty-one gallons for each inhabitant for the
year.
"Wine, as a beverage, is universally used hero
by all classes. The stronger liquors are chielly
for exportation; heuce, you see very little
drunkenness in la Idle France.
The disease of the vine iu France lias for the
last two years been very destructive, audit has
greatly diminished the production of wine.—
This is on the increase, and fears are entertain
ed that it may totally destroy the vine. Un
der this apprehension, may not Ihe subject uf
vine culture legitimately and appropriately at
tract the attention of our Southern and South
western planters? Many of our southern lands
I opine, arc peculiarly adapted to the vine,
and from their natural sterility or other causes
are unsuited to products requiring richer and
stronger soils. The lands of Southern Europe
employed by the vine are light and sterile, un
suited to wheat and other grains.— 3lcrcJoint's
Mig., Feb.
EFFECTUAL METHOD FOK DESTROYING RATS
—A correspondent of the Genesee Farmer
gives the following method for destroying rats,
lie says:—■
" One day a stranger came to the house to
buy some barley, and hearing my father men
tion the difficulty he had in freeing the house
j of these disagreeable tenants, he said he could
put him iu the way of getting rid of them witVt
I very little trouble, llis directions were simp
i ly these: mix a quantity of arsenic with any
i sort of grease, and plaster it pretty thick around
all their holes. The rats, he said, if tiny did
not eat the poison, would soil their coats in
passing through the holes, and as, like all fur
red animals, they are very cleanly, and cannot
I endure any dirt upon their coats, to remove the
offensive matter they would lick their fur, iuai
thus destroy themselves. This plan was imme
diately put in practice, and in a month's time
not a rat was to be secu about the house or
barn."
PITCH INTO NTCODEMUS.-—A celebrated char
acter of the State of New York, holding a high
post in the law, was lately taken ill and con
fined to his bed for several days. His wife,
who is au angel of a woman (as wives general
ly are,) proposed to read to him, to which he
readily assented.
" My dear, what shall I read'"
"Oh, 1 don't care much what, anything you
please."
" But have you no choice, my dear!"
" None in the world, love; please yourself."
" Shall I read you a chapter or two of the
Scriptures?"
" Oh, yes, that will do very well."
" But wbai part of the Scriptures shall I
read?"
" Any part you like, love."
"But my dear you must have some choice,
some little preference—we all have that."
"No, I have noue iu the world, dear; read
any part you like best."
" But i would rather please you, dear John,
and surely you have a preference."
" Well, well, dear, if you will please me,
•' then pitch into Xiccdanusd
• YOUNG AMERICA AT HIS DEVOTIONS.—TUEOL
i itor of the Detroit Times he heard a few
- days since the following illustration of early pi
r etv: "l'ray God bless father and mother.
- and Aaua, and by jinks I must scrabble quick
to sret into bed before Mary doer."