THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVII, Issue 1350, 16 November 1860, Page 6

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The Nineteenth Century, though little more than half run out, will prove one of the moat remarkable in the history of the world. As distance grows, many of what are now considered its great events shall, like mountains afar off, fade on the eye, and at length sink out of view. Time will fill up the letters which the sword has carved , new revolutions will throw down the barriers of existing empires ; and, some centuries hence the world will retain no trace of many who are now playing the chief parts on its stage. The men who have immortalised themselves and their times are those who, amid the din of machinery, or in retreats remote from the bustle of camps the intrigues of courts, and the roisy combats of public assemblies, have studied the arts, not of war, but of peace. When the world has lost almost all of Wellington Imt his name, James Watt shall live in his inventions. His genius shall continue through untold generations to subdue the soil, and triumph over the sea ; to employ the hands and nil the mouths of millions. Among many peculiar features of our age, one of the most remarkable is the expansive and the comprehensive character of its benevolence. Our grandfathers or great-grandfathers, though good people, were content to live for themselves. Their religion was contemplative rathec-than active, To live a holy life, to rear a virtuous and pious family, was the height of their ambition. Their sympathies were confined to a circle so narrow, that they remind one of the story told of an honest countryman, who, away from home, attended worship in the church of the parish where he chanced to be. The preacher was a great orator. The audience were moved to tears ; not so the rustic. He sat hard and stolid as the bench beneath him ; and replied, when asked how he could possibly sit unmoved by such a flood of pathos. "Oh, you see I don't belong to the parish." In olden times, what did not belong to the parish, the neighbourhood, or the family, excited little interest. With exceptions hardly worth mentioning, the churches of Christ did nothing for the conversion of the heathen, either abroad or at home. Though there are now five vessels belonging to missionary societies sailing about their works in the Pacific Ocean alone, formerly no ships left London, Liverpool, Glasgow, or any other port, with missionaries among their passengeis, and Bibles part of their argo. Foreign, Home, City, Medical Missions ; Sab>ath, Evening, Apprentice, Factory, and Bagged Schools ; Bible Tract, Pastoral Aid, and Total Abstinsnce Societies : — these, and many other such schemes, ire the growth and glory of our own age. Thus, while science and the arts have made unparalleled progress since haads now gray were black, and grown men ivere boys, the Church has not lagged behind. Pressng forward on her high career, she has kept *breast of ihem in the race. Another remarkable feature of our ;ra is the acknowledgment and practical application of ;he power of union ; of co-operation, as better than iniividual action. Separate the atoms that form a hammer, and in that state of minute division they would iall on a stone with no more effect than snow-flakes. Weld them into one solid mass, and swung round by the quarryman's brawny arm, they descend on the rock [ike a thunderbolt. Stand by the falls of Niagara, and is the waters, gathered from a hundred lakes, are rolling with the voice of a hundred thunders over the rocky precipice, fancy them divided into their individual atoms. They might gem with sparkling dew-drops vast tracts of field or forest ; in clouds of goid, and amber, and purple, they might hang curtains around the gates of day ; but where is the onward overwhelming power of the majestic flood ? Gone ; and gone the vaunt with which a New Englander met the boast of a Neapolitan during a brilliant eruption of Vesuvius. The poor Italian had the glory of Vesuvius, if he had nothing else, to boast of in his priest-ridden country. Directing the attention of his companion to the mountain, as it shot up showers of fiery stones, and licked the sky with long tongues of flame, and poured streams of glowing lava down its riven sides, he exclaimed, " You have nothing like that in your country." " No," said the other, with nasal twang, but thrust quick and sharp as a rapier's, "yet, I guess, we have a bit of water that would put ii out in two minutes." Now, as with" the combined powei of matter, so it is with the combined power of men, They do in masses what they would not attempt, or, attempting, could not achieve as individual units. Bravely and gallantly as our soldiers fought at Waterloo, I doubt if there were twenty men on that field who woulc have stood up singly for seven long hours to be shot a1 like targets ; yet, massed in solid square and column how they stood ! from morning to sundown, facing thi foe, and budging not a foot, till night crowned thei: brows with victory. The wise man say i that "twoar< better than one ; " and our Lord himself illustrated thi advantages of union when he lent forth his disciples tw< by two. — Seed Time and Harvest. By Thoma, Guthrie, D.D.

Oi/D Pam.— lt was getting late. Bright had spoken, and 80 had Whiteside, and the crowds of loungen at the bar and behind the chair began to press for a, division in their usual rough and boisterous way when "Old Pam" arose. He had been to Ascot with her Majesty that morning, had hurried home to attend this debate, and now, though we had entered the small hours, he sprang from his seat to the table as brisk as a four-year-old colt, and after a few prefatory remarks set the House in a roar of laughter and cheers, A short time before he was in so sound a sleep that neither Whiteside's fireworks nor Blight's ringing voice disturbed him ; and, if a, stranger had noticed him with his hat over his face and his chin upon his breast, said stranger would have been disposed to pity the old gentleman and to wish that he was comfortably tucked up in his bed. But look at him now, his face all radiant with smiles. See how firm he stands, and listen and note how his voice echoes through the House. That quiet snoose has made him as brisk as a lark, and, unless you are accustomed to late hours, we will venture to say he will tire you out, stranger, though you ore

young and he is'three-soote and six\eyond., Indeed]; the noble lord did tire outV most of i» that nighty for we pat till the daylight atfeamedin at the' windowi and the 1 Abbey clock Km tolling a quarter-past three.— Illustrated Timet. , „ ' Pbintibs' MiSTAicBB.-~During the Mexican war, one of the newspapers hurriedly announced an important item of news from Mexico, thit Generld Pillow and thirty-seven men had been lost in a bottle. Some other paper informed the publio, not long ago, " that a man in a brown surtout waa yesterday brought before ,the police-court on a charge of having stolen a small ox from a lady's work-bag". The stolen property was found in his waistcoat pocket." "A 1 rat," says another paper, " descending the river, came in contact with a steamboat ; and bo serious was the damage done to the boat that the greatest exertions were necessary to save it." An English paper once stated that " the Russian General Rakinoffskoswby was found dead with a long ccojtf in his mouth." Tt was perhaps the same paper that, in giving a description of a battle between the Poles and Russians, said that "the conflict was dreadful, and the enemy was repulsed with great lawjhter." Again : "A gentleman was yesterday brought up to answer the charge of having eaten a stage-driver for demanding more than his fare." At the late 4th July dinner, in the town of Charleston, none of the poultry were eatable except the owls. — American Paper. Cattle Forage.— How to Produce the Greatest Quantity. — Some persons contend that more cattle can be kept on a farm devoted to grain crops than one of equal size in grass, if the grain is ground aud fed with the straw and chaff. If this is true, the next query is, how can the grain, straw, and chaff be most cheaply reduced to a homogenous mass, in such a condition as will be convenient to feed the live stock, and so prepared as to go farthest in sustaining the same. In America, mills are oonstructed combining the process of cutting the straw and grinding it, together with the chaff and grain without thraslring. Bags may be prepared to stow it in secure from the ravages of rats and mice. When fed out, it could be dampened if dry. The attention of farmers is called to this fact. It is a question too, whether the grain should be allowed to ripen or whether it should be cut in a green state, and cured and fed as hay. It is a subject worthy of thought by many farmers. The Food a Man Consumes. — Alexander Soyer's Modern Housewife give the following calculation as the probable amount of food that an epicure of 70 years might have consumed. Supposing his gastronomic performances to commence at ten years, he will make 65,700 breakfasts, dinners, and suppers, to say nothing of luncheons and extra feastings. To supply the epicure's table for sixty years, Soyer calculates he will require 30 oxen, 200 sheep, 100 calves, 200 lambs, 50 pigs ; in poultry, 1200 fowls, 300 turkeys, 150 geese, 400 ducklings, 263 pigeons, 1400 partridges, pheasants, and grouse, 600 woodcocks and snipes, 600 wild ducks, widgeon, and teal, 450 plovers, ruffes, and reeves, 800 quails, ortolans, and dotterels, and a few guillemots and other foreign birds; also, 500 hares and rabbits, 40 deer, 120 Guinea fowl, 10 peacocks, and 360 wild-fowls. In the way of fish, 120 turbot, 140 salmon, 120 cod, 160 trout, 400 mackerel, 300 whitings, 800 soles and slips, 400 flounders, 400 red mullet, 200 eels, 150 haddocks, 400 herrings, 5000 smelts, and some hundred thousand of those delicious silvery white-bait, beside a few hundred species of fresh water fishes. In shell fish, 20 turtle, 30,000 oysters, 1500 lob&ters or crabs, 300,000 prawns, shrimps, sardines, and anchovies. In the way of fruit, about 500 pounds of grapes^ 360 pounds of pine-apples, 600 peaches, 1400 apricots, 240 melons, and some hundred thousand plums, green-gages, apples, pears, aud some millions of cherries, strawberries, raspberries, currants, mulberries, and an abundance of other small fruit, viz. : walnuts, chestnuts, dry figs and plums. In vegetables of all kinds, 5475 pounds weight, and 2434 pounds of butter, 684 pounds of cheese, 21,000 eggs, 800 plovers. Of bread, 44 tons, half-a-ton of salt and pepper, near 2£ tons of sugar. His drink during the same period may be set down as follows : 42 hogsheads of wine, 13,683 gallons of beer, 584 gallons of spirits, 342 gallons of liquor, 2394 gallons of coffee, cocoa, tea, &c, 304 gallons of milk, and 2736 gallons of water. This -mass of food m sixty years amounts to no less than 33J tons weight of meat, farinaceous food and vegetables, &c. ; out of which are named in detail the probable delicacies that would be selected by an epicure tlirough life. But observe that the first ten years of his life are not counted, at the beginning of which he lived upon pap, bread and milk, &c, also a little meat, the expense of which is added to the age fiom ten to twenty, ar no one can really be called an epicure before that age ; it will thus make the expenses more equal as regards the calculation. ' The following is the list of his daily meals : — Breakfast. — Three-quarters of a pint of coffee, four ounces of bread, one ounce of butter, two egga, or four ounces of meat, or four ounces of fish. Lunch. — two oimces of bread, two ounces of meat, or poultry or game, two ounces of vegetables, and a half-pint of beer, or a glass of wine. Dinner. — Half a pint of soup, a quarter of a pound of fish, half a pound of meat, a quarter of a pound of poultry, a quarter of a pound of savoury dishes or game, two oimces of vegetables, two oimces of br,ead, two ounces of pastry or roasts, half an ounce of cheese, a quarter of a pound of fruit, one pint of wive, one glass of liquor, one cup of coffee or tea : at night one glass of spirits and water. Lancashire. — Dangers op Flirtation. — An incident has occurred not far from Shaw'n-brow, which produced hearty amusement to everybody but the principle perion concerned. This was a young gentleman, who has of late been flirting with two ladies, one of whom having been told of him that this attachment to her was only a little nonsense, resolved to give him a little nonsense in return. Her notion of nonsense was peculiar, for she took a stout riding whip and soundly beat the faithless swain about the head and face. He was so stung by the pain that he raised his fist with the intention of striking his fair assailant. This was perceived by a bystander, who, to prevent anything of that kind, knocked him down. A sympathising young lady, seeing the blood flowing from the young man's nose, and learning the cause of the disturbance, kindly procured a handful of flour and another of soot, and by the time these wore thrown in his face his appearance was, to say the least, a little singular. ludeed, he looked like a sweep in a snow itonn. Having sufficiently triumphed over her faithless admirer, the Liverpool Lola Montes took her depal ture in good spirits from the scene of conflict. — Liverpool Daily Post. Change of Air in Sickness. — Change, a change of air, is of the very first importance as soon as the disease has " taken a turn." Everybody must have remarked how a person recovering remainß sometimes for weeks without making any progress, yet with apparently nothing the matter with him. The change from a ground floor to an up stairs ward will sometimes hasten a patient's recovery. The mere move to what he considers the " convalscent" ward will give him a fillip. Change is essential. He must go to another place, or even only to another room. Then he immediately begins to "pick up." This is everyday experience. But, with the poor, " change of air" is next to impossible. And people without large experience, and who have never had a levere illness themselves to enlighten them, have little idea how large a class there is (and for how long a time) who require an intermediate place between an hospital and a convalescent inititution, where there is no nursing. A place with the most careful pursing, and every hospital comfort, together with country air, would save many lives from being spent in the union workhouse, many from requiring poor-law relief at all, many from giving birth to unhealthy families, and many premature death*. — Mils Florence Nightingale. Sheep Dogs. — We have lately seen a letter addressed to a gentleman in Christchurch, by a wellknown stockowner of this province, describing a tour just concluded by him jlirough the sheep-breeding -districts of Western Texas. He gives the following account of the mode which he witnessed of "breeding dogs :— " Here I was greatly amused to see a great block bulldog in charge of a flock of sheep and goats, and at Perham's there are two kangaroo dogs always with the flock as if they were themselves sheep, but will attack anything that disturbs the nook, and they never leave it except to be fed at night. The Mexicans take the pups before they can see and put them into a close pen with a lamb or kids, and they suck the goat or sheep together. Children are never allowed to go near them or they come away from the pen ; and so never seeing anything else, they naturally take to the sheep. The Thurso corrcipondent of the 'John O'Groat Journal' mention* that in one of the churches there, on • recent Sunday, two person*, riot belonging to the congregation, but resident in the locality, instead of listening to the sermon, took out a pack of cards and began to pl»y. Sir Alexiinder Gordon Cumming, Bart., of Alyon, from the 7th to the 14th instant, killed/with a fly, in the river Lochy, fifteen salmon. , Their average weight was 131b., Abz. The, largeit weighed -351b. 'I hero was alto one lalmbn-lax, 221b*. „ The whole were taken with a Voiy fine «ingle-gut line. John Kermnth, commiision-ngent, Forar, wai icrved with his indictment, on Saturday last, fot trial at the High Court of Juitiuiury at Edinburgh, on chargei of forgery, &c, on Liverpool mwohanti. —Aberdeen Htrald, , >

hai received 5,000,000 francs from the King of , Naples, m a .lpan .bearing no^ wterert, and l/eOO.OOO'franci 1 the produce 6f the Peters ponce coleotedtin England and America. ' the-Pwnoe'lmperial of France, having fallen down while running about the garden of. the Tuileiie*, beeanto cry, "What Moneeigneur," said hw tutor, are you crying?" "Yes, butdori't tell my regiment, snid the Prince abashed.— Cowt Journal.