The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 388, September 5, 1829

LONDON

Literally translated from a Chinese Poem, by a Chinese who visited England in 1813

 
The towering edifices rise story above story,
In all the stateliness of splendid mansions:
Railings of iron thickly stud the sides of every entrance;
And streams from the river circulate through the walls;
The sides of each apartment are variegated with devices;
Through the windows of glass appear the scarlet hangings.
And in the street itself is presented a beautiful scene;
The congregated buildings have all the aspect of a picture.
 
 
In London, about the period of the ninth moon,
The inhabitants delight in travelling to a distance;
They change their abodes and betake themselves to the country,
Visiting their friends in their rural retreats.
The prolonged sound of carriages and steeds is heard through the day;
Then in autumn the prices of provisions fall,
And the greater number of dwellings being untenanted,
Such as require it are repaired and adorned.
 
 
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.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

LINES ON THE DEPARTURE OF EMIGRANTS FOR NEW SOUTH WALES

BY T. CAMPBELL

 
On England's shore I saw a pensive hand,
With sails unfurl'd for earth's remotest strand,
Like children parting from a mother, shed
Tears for the home that could not yield them bread;
Grief mark'd each face receding from the view,
'Twas grief to nature honourably true.
And long, poor wand'rers o'er th' ecliptic deep,
The song that names but home shall bid you weep;
Oft shall ye fold your flocks by stars above
In that far world, and miss the stars ye love;
Oft, when its tuneless birds scream round forlorn,
Regret the lark that gladdens England's morn.
And, giving England's names to distant scenes,
Lament that earth's extension intervenes.
 
 
But cloud not yet too long, industrious train,
Your solid good with sorrow nursed in vain:
For has the heart no interest yet as bland
As that which binds us to our native land?
The deep-drawn wish, when children crown our hearth,
To hear the cherub-chorus of their mirth.
Undamp'd by dread that want may e'er unhouse,
Or servile misery knit those smiling brows:
The pride to rear an independent shed,
And give the lips we love unborrow'd bread;
To see a world, from shadowy forests won,
In youthful beauty wedded to the sun;
To skirt our home with harvests widely sown,
And call the blooming landscape all our own,
Our children's heritage, in prospect long.
These are the hopes, high-minded hopes and strong.
That beckon England's wanderers o'er the brine,
To realms where foreign constellations shine;
Where streams from undiscovered fountains roll,
And winds shall fan them from th' Antarctic pole.
And what though doom'd to shores so far apart
From England's home, that ev'n the home-sick heart
Quails, thinking, ere that gulf can be recross'd,
How large a space of fleeting life is lost:
Yet there, by time, their bosoms shall be changed,
And strangers once shall cease to sigh estranged,
But jocund in the year's long sunshine roam,
That yields their sickle twice its harvest home.
 
 
There, marking o'er his farm's expanding ring
New fleeces whiten and new fruits upspring.
The grey-haired swain, his grandchild sporting round,
Shall walk at eve his little empire's bound,
Emblazed with ruby vintage, ripening corn,
And verdant rampart of Acacian thorn,
While, mingling with the scent his pipe exhales,
The orange-grove's and fig-tree's breath prevails;
Survey with pride beyond a monarch's spoil,
His honest arm's own subjugated soil;
And summing all the blessings God has given,
Put up his patriarchal prayer to Heaven,
That when his bones shall here repose in peace,
The scions of his love may still increase,
And o'er a land where life has ample room,
In health and plenty innocently bloom.
 
 
Delightful land, in wildness ev'n benign,
The glorious past is ours, the future thine!
As in a cradled Hercules, we trace
The lines of empire in thine infant face.
What nations in thy wide horizon's span
Shall teem on tracts untrodden yet by man!
What spacious cities with their spires shall gleam.
Where now the panther laps a lonely stream.
And all but brute or reptile life is dumb!
Land of the free! thy kingdom is to come,
Of states, with laws from Gothic bondage burst,
And creeds by charter'd priesthood's unaccurst;
Of navies, hoisting their emblazon'd flags,
Where shipless seas now wash unbeacon'd crags;
Of hosts review'd in dazzling files and squares,
Their pennon'd trumpets breathing native airs,
For minstrels thou shalt have of native fire.
And maids to sing the songs themselves inspire;
Our very speech, methinks, in after time.
Shall catch th' Ionian blandness of thy clime;
And whilst the light and luxury of thy skies
}
Give brighter smiles to beauteous woman's eyes,
The Arts, whose soul is love, shall all spontaneous rise.
 
 
Untrack'd in deserts lies the marble mine,
Undug the ore that midst thy roofs shall shine;
Unborn the hands—but born they are to be—
Fair Australasia, that shall give to thee
}
Proud temple domes, with galleries winding high,
So vast in space, so just in symmetry,
They widen to the contemplating eye,
With colonnaded aisles in lone array,
And windows that enrich the flood of day
O'er tesselated pavements, pictures fair,
And niched statues breathing golden air,
Nor there, whilst all that's seen bids Fancy swell,
Shall Music's voice refuse to seal the spell;
But choral hymns shall wake enchantment round,
And organs blow their tempests of sweet sound.
 
 
Meanwhile, ere Arts triumphant reach their goal,
How blest the years of pastoral life shall roll
Ev'n should some wayward hour the settler's mind
Brood sad on scenes for ever left behind,
Yet not a pang that England's name imparts,
Shall touch a fibre of his children's hearts;
Bound to that native world by nature's bond,
Full little shall their wishes rove beyond
Its mountains blue, and melon-skirted streams.
Since childhood loved and dreamt of in their dreams.
How many a name, to us uncouthly wild,
Shall thrill that region's patriotic child,
And bring as sweet thoughts o'er his bosom's chords,
As aught that's named in song to us affords!
Dear shall that river's margin be to him,
Where sportive first he bathed his boyish limb.
Or petted birds, still brighter than their bowers,
Or twin'd his tame young kangaroo with flowers.
But mere magnetic yet to memory
Shall be the sacred spot, still blooming nigh,
The bower of love, where first his bosom burn'd,
And smiling passion saw its smile return'd.
 
 
Go forth and prosper then, emprizing band;
May He, who in the hollow of his hand
The ocean holds, and rules the whirlwind's sweep,
Assuage its wrath, and guide you on the deep!
 

New Monthly Magazine.