The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 326, August 9, 1828

Is a man little? Let him always, if possible, stoop. We are sometimes tempted to lay sprawling in the mud fellows of from five feet to five feet eight, who carry the back of their heads on the extreme summit of their back-bone, and gape up to heaven as if they scorned the very ground. Let no little man wear iron heels. When we visit a friend of ours in Queen-street we are disturbed from our labours or conversation by a sound which resembles the well-timed marching of a file of infantry or a troop of dismounted dragoons. We hobble as fast as possible to the window, and are sure to see some chappie of about five feet high stumping on the pavement with his most properly named cuddy-heels; and we stake our credit, we never yet heard a similar clatter from any of his majesty's subjects of a rational and gentlemanly height—We mean from five feet eleven (our own height) up to six feet three.

Is a man tall? Let him never wear a surtout. It is the most unnatural, and therefore the most awkward dress that ever was invented. On a tall man, if he be thin, it appears like a cossack-trouser on a stick leg; if it be buttoned, it makes his leanness and lankness still more appalling and absurd; if it be open, it appears to be no part of his costume, and leads us to suppose that some elongated habit-maker is giving us a specimen of that rare bird, the flying tailor.

We go on a visit to the country for a few days, and the neighbourhood is famous for its beautiful prospects. Though, for our own individual share, we would rather go to the catacombs alone, than to a splendid view in a troop, we hate to balk young people! and as even now a walking-stick chair is generally carried along for our behoof, we seldom or ever remain at home when all the rest of the party trudge off to some "bushy bourne or mossy dell." On these occasions how infinitely superior the female is to the male part of the species! The ladies, in a quarter of an hour after the proposal of the ploy, appear all in readiness to start, each with her walking-shoes and parasol, with a smart reticule dangling from her wrist. The gentlemen, on the other hand, get off with their great, heavy Wellingtons, which, after walking half a mile, pinch them at the toe, and make the pleasure excursion confine them to the house for weeks. Then some fool, the first gate or stile we come to, is sure to show off his vaulting, and upsets himself in the ditch on the opposite side, instead of going quietly over and helping the damosels across. And then, if he does attempt the polite, how awkwardly the monster makes the attempt! We come to a narrow ditch with a plank across it—He goes only half way, and standing in the middle of the plank, stretches out his hand and pulls the unsuspecting maiden so forcibly, that before he has time to get out of the way, the impetus his own tug has produced, precipitates them both among the hemlock and nettles, which, you may lay it down as a general rule, are to be found at the thoroughfares in every field.

We hold that every man behaves with awkwardness when he is in love, and the want of the one is a presumption of the absence of the other. When people are fairly engaged, there is perhaps less of this directly to the object, but there is still as much of it in her presence; but it is wonderful how soon the most nervous become easy when marriage has concluded all their hopes. Delicate girl! just budding into womanly loveliness, whose heart, for the last ten minutes, has been trembling behind the snowy wall of thy fair and beautiful bosom, hast thou never remarked and laughed at a tall and much-be-whiskered young man for the mauvaise honte with which he hands to thee thy cup of half-watered souchong? Laugh not at him again, for he will assuredly be thy husband.

Love, when successful is well enough, and perhaps it has treasures of its own to compensate for its inconveniences; but a more miserable situation than that of an unhappy individual before the altar, it is not in the heart of man to conceive. First of all, you are marched with a solitary male companion up the long aisle, which on this occasion appears absolutely interminable; then you meet your future partner dressed out in satin and white ribbons, whom you are sure to meet in gingham gowns or calico prints, every morning of your life ever after. There she is, supported by her old father, decked out in his old-fashioned brown coat, with a wig of the same colour, beautifully relieving the burning redness of his huge projecting ears; and the mother, puffed up like an overgrown bolster, encouraging the trembling girl, and joining her maiden aunts of full fifty years, in telling her to take courage, for it is what they must all come to. Bride's-maids and mutual friends make up the company; and there, standing out before this assemblage, you assent to everything the curate, or, if you are rich enough, the rector, or even the dean, may say, shewing your knock-knees in the naked deformity of white kerseymeres, to an admiring bevy of the servants of both families, laughing and tittering from the squire's pew in the gallery. Then the parting!—The mother's injunctions to the juvenile bride to guard herself from the cold, and to write within the week. The maiden aunts' inquiries, of, "My dear, have you forgot nothing?"—the shaking of hands, the wiping and winking of eyes! By Hercules!—there is but one situation more unpleasant in this world, and that is, bidding adieu to your friends, the ordinary and jailor, preparatory to swinging from the end of a halter out of it. The lady all this time seems not half so awkward. She has her gown to keep from creasing, her vinaigrette to play with; besides, that all her nervousness is interesting and feminine, and is laid to the score of delicacy and reserve.

Blackwood's Magazine.

MANNERS & CUSTOMS OF ALL NATIONS

CURIOUS CHINESE CUSTOMS

(From the "Canton Register," the first English Newspaper published in China.)

BURIAL

No corpse is allowed to enter the gates of Pekin without an imperial order; because, it is said, a rebel entered in a coffin during the reign of Kienlung. However, even at Canton, and in all other cities of the empire, no corpse is permitted to enter the southern gate, because the Emperor of China gets on his throne with his face towards the south.

THE NEW YEAR

The Chinese make their new year commence on the new moon, nearest to the time when the sun's place is in the 15th degree of Aquarius. It is the greatest festival observed in the empire. Both the government and the people, rich and poor, take a longer or shorter respite from their cares and their labours at the new year.

The last day of the old year is an anxious time to all debtors and creditors, for it is the great pay-day, and those who cannot pay are abused and insulted, and often have the furniture of their house all smashed to pieces by their desperate creditors.

On the 20th of the twelfth moon, by an order from court, all the seals of office, throughout the empire, are locked up, and not opened till the 20th of the first moon. By this arrangement there are thirty days of rest from the ordinary official business of government. They attend, however, to extraordinary cases.

During the last few days of the old year, the people perform various domestic rites. On one evening they sweep clean the furnace and the hearth, and worship the god of their domestic fires.

On new-year's eve, they perfume hot water with the leaves of Wongpe and Pumelo trees, and bathe in it. At midnight they arise and dress in the best clothes and caps they can procure; then towards heaven kneel down, and perform the great imperial ceremony of knocking the forehead on the ground thrice three times. Next they illuminate as splendidly as they can, and pray for felicity towards some domestic idol. Then they visit all the gods in the various surrounding temples, burn candles, incense, gilt paper, make bows, and prostrate pray.

These services to the gods being finished, they sally forth about daylight in all directions, to visit friends and neighbours, leaving a red paper card at each house. Some stay at home to receive visitors. In the house, sons and daughters, servants and slaves, all dress, and appear before the heads of the family, to congratulate them on the new year.

After new year's day, drinking and carousing, visiting and feasting, idleness and dissipation, continue for weeks. All shops are shut, and workmen idle, for a longer or shorter period, according to the necessities, or the habits, of the several parties. It is, in Canton, generally a month before the business of life returns to its ordinary channel.

MEETING THE SPRING

February 4, is a great holiday throughout the empire. It is called Yingchun, that is, meeting the spring, to-morrow, when the sun enters the 15º of Aquarius, being considered the commencement of the spring season. It is a sort of Lord Mayor's day. The chief magistrate of the district goes forth in great pomp, carried on men's shoulders, in an open chair, with gongs beating, music playing, and nymphs and satyrs seated among artificial rocks and trees, carried in procession.

He goes to the general parade-ground, on the east side of Canton, on the following day, being Lapchun, the first day of spring, in a similar style. There a buffalo, with an agricultural god made of clay, having been paraded through the streets, and pelted by the populace, to impel its labours, is placed on the ground, in solemn state, when this official priest of spring gives it a few strokes with a whip, and leaves it to the populace, who pelt it with stones till it is broken to pieces; and so the foolish ceremony terminates. The due observance of this ancient usage is supposed to contribute greatly to an abundant year.

PAWNBROKING

Is carried on to a very great extent in China. The system seems divided into two parts; one branch affording aid to those in the very inferior walks of life, and chiefly confined to very small advances; the other granting loans upon deposits of higher value, and corresponding with similar establishments in England. These are authorized by the government; but there are others, we are informed, that exist without this sanction, and are directed to the relief of the mercantile interest. These assimilate very nearly to the late project in London of an Equitable Loan Company, making advances upon cargoes and large deposits of goods.

These houses are as conspicuously indicated, by an exterior sign over the door, as our shops in England are by the three golden balls; but, whether they indicate the same doctrine of chance as to the return of property, we will not pretend to say. Three years are allowed to redeem, with a grace of three months.

TORTURE

In China, the laws still permit torture, to a defined extent, and the magistrate often inflicts it, contrary to law. Compressing the ancles of men between wooden levers, and the fingers of women with a small apparatus, on the same principle, is the most usual form. But there are many other devices suggested and practised, contrary to law; and in every part of the empire, for some years past, there have been many instances of suspected persons, or those falsely accused, being tortured till death ensued. From Hoopih province, an appeal is now before the emperor, against a magistrate who tortured a man to death, to extort a confession of homicide; and we have just heard, from Kwang-se province, that on the 24th of the 11th moon, one Netseyuen, belonging to Canton, having received an appointment for his high literary attainments, to the magistracy of a Heen district, in a fit of drunkenness, subjected a young man, on his bridal day, to the torture, because he would not resign the band of music which he had engaged to accompany, according to law and usage, his intended wife to his father's house. The young man's name was Kwanfa. He died under the torture, and the affrighted magistrate went and hanged himself.

CHINESE PRISON

Prisoners who have money to spend, can be accommodated with private apartments, cards, servants, and every luxury. The prisoners' chains and fetters are removed from their bodies, and suspended against the wall, till the hour of going the rounds occurs; after that ceremony is over, the fetters are again placed where they hurt nobody. But those who have not money to bribe the keepers, are in a woful condition. Not only is every alleviation of their sufferings removed, but actual infliction of punishment is added, to extort money to buy "burnt-offerings" (of paper) to the god of the jail, as the phrase is. For this purpose the prisoners are tied up, or rather hung up, and flogged. At night, they are fettered down to a board, neck, wrists, and ancles, amidst ordure and filth, whilst the rats, unmolested, are permitted to gnaw their limbs! This place of torment is proverbially called, in ordinary speech, "Te-yuk," a term equivalent to the worst sense of the word "hell."

TOUR ROUND THE CITY WALLS

It is well known that the Chinese consider their walled towns in the same light as fortifications are regarded in Europe, and disallow foreigners entering them, excepting on special occasions. But there is no law against walking in the suburbs. Usage has, however, limited the Europeans in China to very small bounds. Some persons occasionally violate them, and attempt a longer walk. Once round the city walls has frequently been effected, but always at the risk of a scuffle, an assault and battery, from the idle and mischievous among the native population. On former occasions, some of the foreign tourists have returned to the factories relieved of the burden of their watches and clothes. An English baronet was once, on his passage round, robbed of his watch, and stripped either almost, or entirely naked.

A few days ago, a party of three started at six o'clock in the morning, and performed the circuit at about eight, with impunity. The distance round the walls they estimated to be nine miles. A few days afterwards, two persons set off in the evening for a walk under the city walls; but they were not so fortunate. They were violently assaulted by a rabble of men and boys, the former of whom pursued them with bludgeons, brickbats, and stones, which not only inflicted severe contusions, but really endangered their lives. The two foreigners were obliged to face about, and fight and run alternately the distance of several miles.

We, who know the hostile feelings of the population, are not surprised at the occurrence, and rather congratulate the tourists that they effected their escape so well. We notice the affair to put others on their guard; and (as the Chinese say) if they should get into a similar scrape, they cannot blame us for not warning them of their danger.

THE GATHERER

"A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles."

SHAKSPEARE.

BAPTISMAL PROMISES

One of the subjects for confirmation at a bishop's recent visitation, on being asked by the clergyman to whom she applied for her certificate of qualifications, what her godfathers and godmothers promised for her, said, with much naiveté, "I've a yeard that they promised to give me hafe a dozen zilver spoons, but I've never had 'em though."

A GOOD WIFE

The real portrait of a fine lady, wife to one of the ancient and noble family of the Fanes, Earls of Westmoreland, drawn by her husband, and inscribed in old characters upon a wall of a room in Buxton Place, a seat belonging to the noble family, near Maidstone, in Kent.—Taken from Mist's Journal.

"Shee feared God, and knew how to serve him; Shee assigned times for hir devotions and kept them; She was a perfect wife and a true friend, and shee joyed most to affect those nearest and dearest unto me; She was still the same: ever kind and never troublesome; oft preventing my desires, disputing none; providently managing all was mine; living in apparence above my state; yet advanced it; Shee was of a great spirit, sweetly tempered; of a sharp wit, without offence; of excellent speech, blest with silence; of a cheerfull temper modestly governed; of a brave fashion to win respect to daunt boldness; pleasing to all of hir sex; entyre with few, delighting in the best; ever avoiding all places and persons in the honours blemished; and was as free from doing ill as giving the occasion: Shee dyed as she lived, well and blessed; in hir greatest extremity most patient, sending up hir pure soule with many zealous prayers and hymnes to hir maker; powring forth hir passionate heart with affectionate streams of love to hir"—

"Husband" should have followed, but tradition tells us that by this time his grief swelled to such a height that he could not proceed any further.

T. H.

At the recent sale of a provincial theatre and its appurtenances, one article was to be included in the purchase, of which a short lease is by no means desirable—a new drop.

BRITISH TARS,

Who are so fond of harmony among themselves, have a great dislike to concord as applied to their enemies, and find even a disagreeable association in the very sound of the word, as the following anecdote will exemplify:—Among the illuminations for the last peace, were some of a very grand description, and on the door of a foreign ambassador in London, the words "Peace and Concord" figured at full length in characters of flame. "What say you, Mounsier, Conquered!" exclaimed an honest sailor, to whom a stander-by was explaining the mystic words; "shiver my timbers, who ever dared to call us 'Conquered' yet?" and so saying, was proceeding to extinguish the unlucky blaze, when a civil explanation, to which British bravery is ever ready to yield, restored Peace, and allowed Concord to continue.

REMEDY FOR DULNESS

Lord Dorset used to say of a very goodnatured, dull fellow, "'Tis a thousand pities that man is not illnatured! that one might kick him out of company."

NATIONAL COMPLAINTS

The Englishmen at Paris find fault with the French roast beef; the Frenchmen in London complain of the British brandy.

The English who visit Paris, imagine that the tavern-keepers have served in the cavalry, as they are so expert in making a charge.

A foreigner inquiring the way to a friend's lodging, whom he said lived at Mr. Bailey's, senior, was shown to the Old Bailey, by a Bow-street officer. When he entered the court he imagined that it was his friend's levee.

BENEFIT OF CORRECTION

A certain bishop declared one day, that the punishment used in schools did not make boys a whit better, or more tractable; it was insisted that whipping was of the utmost service, for every one must allow it made a boy smart.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH

"C'est la Soupe," says one of the best of proverbs, "qui fait le Soldat;" "It is the soup that makes the soldier." Excellent as our troops are in the field, there cannot be a more unquestionable fact, than their immense inferiority to the French in the business of cookery. The English soldier lays his piece of ration beef at once on the coals, by which means, the one and the better half is lost, and the other burnt to a cinder. Whereas six French troopers fling their messes into the same pot, and extract a delicious soup, ten times more nutritious than the simple Rôti could ever be.

THE FAMILY SUIT

The son-in-law of a chancery barrister having succeeded to the lucrative practice of the latter, came one morning in breathless ecstasy to inform him that he had succeeded in bringing nearly to its termination, a cause which had been pending in the court of scruples for several years. Instead of obtaining the expected congratulations of the retired veteran of the law, his intelligence was received with indignation. "It was by this suit," exclaimed he, "that my father was enabled to provide for me, and to portion your wife, and with the exercise of common prudence it would have furnished you with the means of providing handsomely for your children and grand-children."

PORK CHOPS

It is related, that Fuseli, the celebrated artist, when he wished to summon Nightmare, and bid her sit for her picture, or any other grotesque or horrible personations, was wont to prime himself for the feat by supping on about three pounds of half-dressed pork-chops.

ARDUOUS BAPTISM

An infant was brought for baptism into a country church. The clergyman, who had just been drinking with his friends a more than usual quantum of the genial juice, could not find the place of the baptism in his ritual, and exclaimed, as he was turning over the leaves of the book, "How difficult this child is to baptize!"

DULL READING

St. Jerome says, that there is no book so dull, but it meets a suitable dull reader. "Nullus est imperitus scriptor, qui lectorem non inveniat."

1

from an exquisite lithograph by J. Goldicutt.

2

Hence it was found necessary for the pages and servants to run about to warm themselves with different diversions before going to bed.