MISCELLANEOUS.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 602, 17 September 1853, Page 8

MISCELLANEOUS.

Memorandum for Mine- Proprietors. —In building a column you commence with the base, but to sink a shaft you should first lay down your capital. — Punch. Eyes are the Electric Telegraph of the heart, that will send a message any distance in a language only known to the two souls who correspond. Philharmonic Sentiment.— May every cottage contain a cottage piano. Betting by Ladies. — Ladies should never bet ; for though it may turn a man into a better, it invariably makes a woman worse. The Balance op PowER.-—One thousand pounds at your banker's. Patronage of Authors.— ln the reign of William 111., of Anne, and of George 1., even tach men as Congreve and Addison would scarcely have been able to live like gentlemen by the mere sale of their writings. But the deficiency of the natural demand for literature was, at the close of the seventeenth, and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, more than made up by artificial encouragement — by a vast system of bounties and premiums. There was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of literary merit were so splendid— at which men who could write well, found such easy admittance into the most distinguished society, and to the highest honours of the state. The chiefs of both the great parties into which the kingdom was divided, patronised literature with emulous munificence. Oongreve, when he had scarcely attained his majority, was rewarded for his first comedy with places which made him independent for life. Smith, though his " Hippolytusand Phaedra" failed, would have been consoled with £300 a year but for his own folly. Rowe was not only poet-laureate, but landBurveyorof the Customs in the port of London, Clerk of the Council to the Prince of Wales, nnd Secretary of the Presentations to the Lord Chancellor. Hughes was Secretary to the Commissioners of the Peace. Ambrose Phillips was judge of the Prerogative Court in Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of Appeals, and of the Board of Trade. Newton was Master of the Mint. S.epney and Prior were employed in embassies of high dignity and importance. Gay, who commenced as apprentice to a silkmercer, became a Secretary of Legation at five«and- twenty.