The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 487, April 30, 1831

Common Mistake in Cooling Wine.

When ice is used to cool wine, it will be ineffectual if it be applied, as is frequently the case, only to the bottom of the bottle; in that case, the only part of the wine which will be cooled is that part nearest the bottom. As the application of ice to the top of the bottle establishes two currents, upwards and downwards, the liquid will undergo an effect in some degree similar to that which would be produced by shaking the bottle. If there be any deposit in the bottom whose weight, bulk for bulk, nearly equals that of the wine, such deposit will be mixed through the liquid as effectually as if it had been shaken. In such cases, therefore, the wine should be transferred into a clean bottle before it is cooled.

Why Cream collects on the surface of Milk.

There are numerous familiar effects which are manifestations of the principle now explained. When a vessel of milk is allowed to remain a certain time at rest, it is observed that a stratum of fluid will collect at the surface, differing in many qualities from that upon which it rests. This is called cream; and the property by which it ascends to the surface is its relative levity; it is composed of the lightest particles of the milk, which are in the first instance mixed generally in the fluid; but which, when the liquid is allowed to rest, gradually arise through it, and settle at the surface.

Directions engraved upon the Common Weather Glasses absurd.

The barometer has been called a weather glass. Rules are attempted to be established, by which, from the height of the mercury, the coming state of the weather may be predicted, and we accordingly find the words “Rain,” “Fair,” “Changeable,” “Frost,” &c., engraved on the scale attached to common domestic barometers, as if, when the mercury stands at the height marked by these words, the weather is always subject to the vicissitudes expressed by them. These marks are, however, entitled to no attention; and it is only surprising to find their use continued in the present times, when knowledge is so widely diffused. They are, in fact, to be ranked scarcely above the vox stellarum, or astrological almanac.

Two barometers, one near the level of the River Thames, and the other on the heights of Hampstead, will differ by half an inch; the latter being always half an inch lower than the former. If the words, therefore, engraved upon the plates are to be relied on, similar changes of weather could never happen at these two situations. But what is even more absurd, such a scale would inform us that the weather at the foot of a high building, such as St. Paul’s, must always be different from the weather at the top of it.

It is observed that the changes of weather are indicated, not by the actual height of the mercury, but by its change of height. One of the most general, though not absolutely invariable, rules is, that when the mercury is very low, and therefore the atmosphere very light, high winds and storms may be expected.

The following rules may generally be relied upon, at least to a certain extent:

Generally the rising of the mercury indicates the approach of fair weather; the falling of it shows the approach of foul weather.

In sultry weather the fall of the mercury indicates coming thunder. In winter, the rise of the mercury indicates frost. In frost, its fall indicates thaw; and its rise indicates snow.

Whatever change of weather suddenly follows a change in the barometer, may be expected to last but a short time. Thus, if fair weather follow immediately the rise of the mercury, there will be very little of it; and, in the same way if foul weather follow the fall of the mercury, it will last but a short time.

If fair weather continue for several days, during which the mercury continually falls, a long continuance of foul weather will probably ensue; and again, if foul weather continue for several days, while the mercury continually rises, it long succession of fair weather will probably succeed.

A fluctuating and unsettled state in the mercurial column indicates changeable weather.

The domestic barometer would become a much more useful instrument, if, instead of the words usually engraved on the plate, a short list of the best established rules, such as the above, accompanied it, which might be either engraved on the plate, or printed on a card. It would be right, however, to express the rules only with that degree of probability which observation of past phenomena has justified. There is no rule respecting these effects which will hold good with perfect certainty in every case.

This volume, we should add, is by Dr. Lardner, the editor of the Cyclopædia, and is a good model for his collaborateurs.

REFLECTION

It is better to reflect ourselves, than to suffer others to reflect for us. A philosopher has a system; he views things according to his theory; he is unavoidably partial; and, like Lucian’s painter, he paints his one-eyed princes in profile.

STATUE OF PETER THE GREAT

This superb work of modern art stands in one of the finest squares of St. Petersburgh, and of Europe, according to Sir Robert Ker Porter. It was erected by command of the Empress Catherine, and, like all her projects, bears the stamp of greatness. The name of the artist is Falconet: “he was a Frenchman; but,” adds Sir R.K.P. “this statue, for genius and exquisite execution, would have done honour to the best sculptors of any nation. A most sublime conception is displayed in the design. The allegory is finely imagined; and had he not sacrificed the result of the whole to the prominence of his group, the grand and united effect of the statue and its pedestal striking at once upon the eye, would have been unequalled in the works of man. A mass of granite, of a size at present most immense, but formerly most astonishing, is the pedestal. A steep acclivity, like that of a rugged mountain, carries the eye to its summit, which looks down on the opposite side to a descent nearly perpendicular. The figure of the hero is on horseback, supposed to have attained the object of his ambition, by surmounting all the apparent impossibilities which so arduous an enterprise presented. The victorious animal is proudly rearing on the highest point of the rock, whilst his imperial master stretches forth his mighty arm, as the father and protector of his country. A serpent, in attempting to impede his course, is trampled on by the feet of the horse, and writhing in all the agonies of expiring nature. The Emperor is seated on the skin of a bear; and habited in a tunic, or sort of toga which forms the drapery behind. His left hand guides the reins; his right is advanced straight forward on the same side of the horse’s neck. The head of the statue is crowned with a laurel wreath.” It was formed from a bust of Peter, modelled by a young French damsel. The contour of the face expresses the most powerful command, and exalted, boundless, expansion of thought. “The horse, says Sir Robert, is not to be surpassed. To all the beauties of the ancient form, it unites the easy grace of nature with a fire which pervades every line; and gives such a life to the statue, that as you gaze you expect to see it leap from the pinnacle into the air. The difficulty of keeping so great a mass of weighty metal in so volant an attitude, has been admirably overcome by the artist. The sweep of the tail, with the hinder parts of the horse, are interwoven with the curvatures of the expiring snake; and together compose a sufficient counterpoise to the figure and forepart of the animal.”6

Our representation of this masterpiece of art is copied from a Russian medallion presented to our ingenious artist, Mr. W.H. Brooke, by M. Francia.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

FAMILY POETRY

—Modo sumptâ veste virili!—HORZooks! I must woo the Muse to-day,Though line before I’d never wrote!“On what occasion?” do you say?OUR DICK HAS GOT A LONG-TAIL’D COAT!Not a coatee, which soldiers wearButton’d up high about the throat,But easy, flowing, debonair—In short a civil long-tail’d Coat.A smarter you’ll not find in townCut by Nugee, that Snip of note;A very quiet olive-brown’s the colour of Dick’s long-tail’d Coat.Gay jackets clothe the stately Pole,The proud Hungarian, and the Croat,Yet Esterhazy, on the whole,Looks best when in a long-tail’d Coat.Lord Byron most admired, we know,The Albanian dress, or Suliote;But then he died some years ago,And never saw Dick’s long-tail’d Coat.Or, past all doubt, the Poet’s themeHad never been the “White Capote,”Had he once view’d, in Fancy’s dream,The glories of Dick’s long-tail’d Coat.We also know on Highland kiltPoor dear Glengary used to dote,And had esteem’d it actual guiltI’ “the Gael” to wear a long-tail’d Coat,No wonder ’twould his eyes annoy,Monkbarns himself would never quote“Sir Robert Sibbald,” “Gordon,” “Roy,”Or “Stukely” for a long-tail’d Coat.Jackets may do to ride a race,Or row in, when one’s in a boat;But, in the Boudoir, sure, for graceThere’s nothing like Dick’s long-tail’d Coat.Of course, in climbing up a tree,On terra firma, or afloat.To mount the giddy top-mast, heWould doff awhile his long-tail’d Coat.What makes you simper, then, and sneer?From out your own eye pull the mote;A pretty thing for you to jeer!Haven’t you, too, got a long-tail’d Coat?Oh! “Dick’s scarce old enough,” you mean?Why, though too young to give a vote,Or make a will, yet, sure, Fifteen’s a ripe age for a long-tail’d Coat.What! would you have him sport a chinLike Colonel Stanhope, or that goatO’Gorman Mahon, ere beginTo figure in a long-tail’d Coat?Suppose he goes to France—can heSit down at any table d’hôte,With any sort of decency,Unless he’s got a long-tail’d Coat?Why Louis Philippe, Royal Cit,There soon may be a sans culotte;And Nugents self must then admitThe advantage of a long-tail’d Coat.Things are not now as when, of yore,In Tower encircled by a moat,The lion-hearted chieftain woreA corselet for a long-tail’d Coat.Then ample mail his form embraced,Not, like a weazel, or a stoat,“Cribb’d and confined” about the waist,And pinch’d in, like Dick’s long-tail’d Coat;—With beamy spear, orbiting axe,To right and left he thrust and smote—Ah! what a change! no sinewy thwacksFall from a modern long tail’d Coat.For stalwart knights, a puny raceIn stays, with locks en papillote,While cuirass, cuisses, greaves give placeTo silk-net Tights, and long-tail’d Coat.Worse changes still! now, well-a-day!A few cant phrases learnt by roteEach beardless booby spouts away,A Solon, in a long-tail’d Coat.Prates of “The march of intellect”——“The schoolmaster” a PatrioteSo noble, who could ere suspectHad just put on a long-tail’d Coat?Alack! Alack! that every thick-skull’d lad must find an antidoteFor England’s woes, because, like Dick.He has put on a long-tail’d Coat.But lo! my rhymes begin to fail,Nor can I longer time devote;Thus rhyme and time cut short the tale,The long tale of Dick’s long-tail’d Coat.Blackwood’s Magazine.

SIR JOHN HAWKINS’S HISTORY OF MUSIC

The fate of this work was decided like that of many more important things, by a trifle, a word, a pun. A ballad, chanted by a fille-de-chambre, undermined the colossal power of Alberoni; a single line of Frederic the Second, reflecting not on the politics but the poetry of a French minister, plunged France into the seven years’ war; and a pun condemned Sir John Hawkins’s sixteen years’ labour to long obscurity and oblivion. Some wag wrote the following catch, which Dr. Callcott set to music:—

“Have you read Sir John Hawkins’s History? Some folks think it quite a mystery; Both I have, and I aver That Burney’s History I prefer.”

Burn his History was straightway in every one’s mouth; and the bookseller, if he did not follow the advice à pied de la lettre, actually wasted, as the term is, or sold for waste paper, some hundred copies, and buried the rest of the impression in the profoundest depth of a damp cellar, as an article never likely to be called for, so that now hardly a copy can be procured undamaged by damp and mildew. It has been for some time, however, rising,—is rising,—and the more it is read and known, the more it ought to rise in public estimation and demand.—Harmonicon.

ITALIAN, AT THE KING’S THEATRE

A Liberal and sensible correspondent of the Harmonicon writes thus:

Mrs. Wood is not the first of our countrywomen who has attained the same rank; the names of Billington, Cecilia Davies (called Inglesina,) and in remoter times, that of Anastasia Robinson, (afterwards Countess of Peterborough,) will immediately occur to the musical reader; but, with the exception of the latter, who lived at a time when the Italian opera in England was in its infancy, Mrs. Wood is, if I mistake not, the first Englishwoman who has achieved that distinction without a certificate of character from Italy. Even Billington was not thought worthy of our opera stage until she had delighted the audiences of San Carlo, the Scala, and the Fenice. Mrs. Wood, on the other hand, is our own, and wholly our own; she has not basked in the suns of Naples, nor breathed the musical atmosphere of Venice or Milan; yet I, who am an old stager, like Iago, “nothing if not critical,” and have heard every prima donna from Billington down to this present writing, have seldom uttered any brava with more unction than when listening to Mrs. Wood’s Angelina and Ottavia.

My intent is to hail Mrs. Wood’s appearance and success at the opera as an auspicium melioris ævi, as the dawn of a coming day, when the staple commodity of our Italian opera shall be furnished by our own island, instead of being imported from a country which, I boldly assert, does not produce either superior voices, or better educated musicians than our own—nay, so well educated. Has Italy ever furnished us with such a tenor singer as Braham; the Braham that I am, per mia disgrazia, qualified, by age, to remember; the Braham of 1801? Has Italy ever sent us a prima donna, considered as a singer only, like Billington? On the contrary, do we not, in gauging our progressive musical importations, subject them to immediate comparison with Billington and Braham? And who, except Catalani and Fodor, Siboni and Donzelli, would bear that comparison? The French, the Germans, cultivate assiduously native talent, and we import, now a Fodor, and now a Sontag; we English alone persist in the sapient policy of making the exclusion of the native artist from the highest point to which his ambition could be directed, the rule; and his admission, the exception which the grammarians say (though my grammar-master never could drive it into my head why) proves the rule.

But I shall be told that few of our native artists can speak the Italian language, or sing Italian music, and more especially recitative. My answer is, let them once know that the mere circumstance of their being English born does not shut the stage-door of the King’s Theatre against them, all will look up to its boards as the goal of their ambition, and the study of Italian and recitative will form an important part of every singer’s education. Another common objection is, that we cannot acquire the purity of pronunciation required by the refined audience of the King’s Theatre. I trust it is no heresy to say that I am somewhat sceptical as to the powers of euphoniacal criticism which that audience possesses. If one in ten, even of the box company, can really distinguish the true bocca romana from the patois of the Venetian gondolieri or the Neapolitan lazzaroni, it is, I am persuaded, as much as the truth will justify. In fact it is not the audience that is so critical: it is the associated band of foreign parasites who attach themselves to our aristocracy with the tenacity of leeches, as purveyors des menus plaisirs, and whose interests are vitally concerned in excluding English talent, and negotiating the concerns of foreign artists, that raise the cry of “pronunciation.” It is these gentry who, in phrase that a Tuscan would spurn at, and in a brogue from which a Roman, ear would be averted with disgust, assure our fashionable opera goers that we poor Englishers cannot learn to pronounce Italian.

But, after all, do we, by employing only foreigners—for we are not particular, so they be foreigners, as to whether they were born and bred beyond, or on this side the Alps,—do we, by employing only foreigners, secure this essential purity of Italian pronunciation? Will these super-delicate critics favour a plain man, by informing me which of the great singers I have heard for the last thirty years I should select as my canon of true Italian pronunciation—Catalani and Camporese, or Garcia the Spaniard and Begrez the Fleming? There is not more difference between the English, whether we look to phraseology or pronunciation, of a Londoner, a Gloucestershire man, or a Northumbrian, than there is between the Italian of a Tuscan, a Venetian and a Neapolitan. Have the stage lamps of Drury Lane or Covent Garden the virtue of curing the Northumbrian’s burr, or correcting the Gloucestershireman’s invincible abhorrence of h’s and w’s? If not, can we expect that even the theatres of Rome and Florence will neutralize at once the provincial accent of a Neapolitan or Venetian? Was it in Morelli, the stable-boy, or Banti, the street ballad-singer, that the beau ideal of pure Italian pronunciation was to be recognised?

But, to be serious. I will venture to affirm that, on this side the Alps, there is no country in Europe whose natives have so little to learn, or to unlearn, in acquiring a good Italian pronunciation, as the English. We have neither the gutturals of the German and the Spaniard, nor the mute vowels and nasal n’s of the French to get rid of; there is scarcely a sound in the Italian language which we are not in the daily habit of uttering, and nearly our whole task would be confined to the learning that certain conventional alphabetical symbols, which represent one sound in English, represent another in Italian. Away, then, with the jargonal pretence that English singers cannot acquire a good and pure Italian pronunciation; make it worth their while, open the stage-doors of the King’s Theatre to the native artist, and you will soon find talent more than enough.

THE COSMOPOLITE

COINCIDENT POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS

(Continued from page 284.)[Transcriber's note: See Mirror 486]

Such is the tale, which is either of itself the fragment of some popular superstition, or has given rise to many coincident legends. “I am sure,” says the kind friend who furnished us with the narrative, speaking of the Beresford from whom she received it, “that neither he, nor any of his relations, disbelieves the statements recorded.” Possibly not; nor dare we profess to be utterly sceptical—simply as Christians—to all narratives of this description; but, allowing the possibility, nay, the necessity in some cases, of supernatural agency, still, a spirit should have some just and striking reason for its permitted appearance; and we cannot exactly discover the object of Sir Tristram’s mission. Would it be unfair to hazard a conjecture that the lady, being a Catholic, married in Captain Georges a Protestant (a supposition which the double performance of the marriage ceremony with him seems to favour), whom, being anxious to convert to her own faith, she thought to deceive, by the “cunningly devised fable” of a spirit with a burning hand, into the Papistical tenet of purgatory? and, that by a confusion of real circumstances with her original fiction, is derived the remarkable family tradition recorded? Leaving this speculation for the private rumination of our readers, we proceed:

The stories of the young lady suffocated by accidentally enclosing herself in a chest with a spring lock7 —of the girl frightened into complete idiotcy by those who placed a skeleton, or, as some say, a skull only, in her bed8—and of ladies, bishops, &c. obtaining their livelihoods privately by highway robbery9 , with similar narratives, rather romantic than superstitious, are general property, and to be met with under various modifications throughout England. The tale of the King of the Cats10, a German tradition, has its exact counterpart in an Irish one, related to us as an original Hibernian legend, and published some time since in an excellent work, which having now disappeared, we may perhaps venture to give, as a novelty, the little tradition in these pages:

A man passing, late at night, a ruined house, observed that it was lighted, and heard a great mewing, as of a conclave of cats, within. As he marvelled at the circumstance, a cat jumped upon one of the broken walls, and said—“Tell Dildrum that Doldrum’s dead.” The man, little dreaming of these words being addressed to him, pursued his way home; where, when he arrived, a good, fire, an excellent supper, and his wife’s conversation, seem to have banished for a time from his recollection what he had seen and heard. At last, he began to laugh so heartily that he was nearly choked, and his wife pressed him to tell her the cause of his mirth. This he did; but no sooner had he uttered the words “Tell Dildrum that Doldrum’s dead,” when his own favourite grimalkin, who had lent an attentive ear to his narrative, whilst demurely basking before the fire, started upon his feet, and exclaiming, “O murder! and is Doldrum dead?” dashed up the chimney, and was never seen more.

A Scottish tradition concerning The Cat o’ the Craigs, as given by a correspondent in vol. iv. of the Mirror, p. 85, and which has a most fatal termination, is evidently but another version of the same story.

In a little work just published, on “Cambrian Superstitions,” by Mr. Howells, several are mentioned so exactly similar to those prevalent in Ireland, Scotland, and England, as to leave no doubt of their common origin. The Welsh coast has also its spectre-ships, like America and the seas of the Cape, ere shipwreck.

The Mirror’s able correspondent VYVYAN has, in vol. xii. p. 408, noticed the connexion between the German Peter Klaus and Emperor Barbarossa, with the oriental Seven Sleepers and the American Rip Von Winkle. We may add, that there is a similar Welsh superstition respecting the enchanted slumber of King Arthur, and his expected reappearance upon earth before the last day, to take part in the holy wars of the times. The Poles and Turks, if we mistake not, have among them a corresponding legend; and whilst Sir W. Scott has given us that of the purchase of horses by Thomas the Rhymour, and the magic slumbers of the gigantic men-at-arms appointed to ride them, in the subterranean mews, H. has rescued very happily from oblivion a coincident English superstition. The legendary lore of mountainous and mining countries, is, with little variation, the same; and whether America, Germany, Sweden, Scotland, Wales, or our own peculiar mining districts in England be the locale of such, still may be discovered, under different names indeed, and circumstances, the demons of the mines, the guardians of hidden treasures, the freakish dwarfs and fays, who delight in unexpectedly enriching the poor and virtuous, whilst they delude most miserably all idle and worthless treasure-seekers, &c. Nay, what, we may inquire, are the oriental genii of kings, and lamps, &c., but modifications of one and the same superstition? And what are the said Ginns—who erect splendid palaces in the course of a few brief hours, and transport them at pleasure from place to place—but the Evil Ones of more modern times and northern countries, who build, according to popular tradition, bridges, and mills, &c.?—who cleave mountains, excavate ditches, and fly away with monasteries and hermitages, in an incredibly short space of time?

However, we have finished; for less than a folio could not do that justice to our subject in its various bearings which it requires;—nor, indeed, would less than an intimate acquaintance with all the tongues and traditions of all nations that are, or ever have been, upon the face of the earth—so intermingled are divine revelations, corrupt mythologies, wild and palpable fictions, fantastic imaginings, exaggerated allegories, poetical machinery, and the very insanity of human hopes, fears, and wishes, &c. &c., in the great and never to be analyzed body of popular superstition!