MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 381, 28 March 1849, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS.

Departed Royalty ! —Two gold rings, exhibiting beautiful miniatures of Geo. 111. and Queen Charlotte, sold at the Buckingham auction for £6 : 2s. 6d.

Water Drinking in Childhood. —lt is particularly with those who have been accustomed to water drinking in childhood, that it will show its good effects in after life. During the first nine months, the infant is to be nourished by its mother's milk, which serves as food and drink ; it is gradually accustomed to other sustenance, however, the infant should have fresh water as well as milk* By water drinking in childhood and youth, the foundation of a durable stomach is laid, aod thus of a healthy body throughout'life. The nervous and blood systems are over-excited by taking viands, spices, beer, wine, chocolate, coffee, &c, and thus a constant artificial statt of

fever is maintained, and the process of life is so much accelerated by it, that children fed in this manner do not attain perhaps half the age ordained by nature. Besides this, experience has taught that they generally become passionate and wilful, having neither the will nor the power to make themselves or others happy. Furthermore, too exciting and nutritious food gives rise to many diseases to which they fall a sacrifice in early years. Parents should weigh this well; they should throw aside their prejudice against water, which they look upon as weakening, ignorantly considering that the tender organism of children requires far more nourishing diet to bring it to maturity than the already perfected body^ of the adult. This is a wrong notion : children thrive best upon a simple, moderately nourishing vegetable diet, on milk and pure water ; we see this confirmed in the cottage of the peasant. — • From Hydrotherapia, by T. Smethurst, M.D. \

Literature and " Circumstances." — "Take the case of Beranger." — \_Goethe loquitur.'] — " He is the child of poor parents, the son of a poor tailor, then a poor journeyman printer, then a clerk with a small salary in some concern or other ; he had never been at a good school or university, and yet his songs are so full of ripe cultivation, so full of grace, so full of wit and delicate irony, and display such an artistic completeness and mas-ter-like handling of language, that he is not merely the admiration of France, but of the whole of cultivated Europe. Now figure to yourself this same Beranger, instead of being born in Paris, and growing up in that worldcity, figure him the son of a poor tailor in Jena or Weimar, and imagine him painfully prosecuting' hi t s career in these trifling towns, and then ask yourself what fruits this same tree, growing in such a soil and such an atmosphere, could well have produced. Therefore, my good fellow, I repeat it : a good deal of intellect and of thorough cultivation must already be circulating in a nation, if a new capacity is swiftly and joyfully to develop itself there. We admire the tragedies of the ancient Greeks ; but, strictly, we ought hss, to admire the individual authors than the age and the nation in which they were possible. For although there be a little difference in the merit of these pieces, and although one of these poets may appear to be somewhat greater and completer than his neighbour, nevertheless when looked at in the lump, they all display one peculiar and pervading character. This character is grandeur, manliness, health, completed humanity, lofty wisdom, elevated reflection, a power of vision undistorted and powerful, and how many other qualities might one not enumerate. And as we find all these qualities not merely in the dramatic works which have reached us, but in the lyrical and epic also ; since, further, we find them among the philosophers, rhetoricians, and historians, and, in an equally high degree, in those works of plastic art which have been preserved to us, ■ we cannot fail to be convinced that such qua- J lities were not -the appanage of individuals, but that they belonged to the nation and to i the whole age, and were generally diffused there and then. Again, take Burns. Whence his greatness, if not in this, that the old songs of his forefathers lived on the lips of the people, that they were sung to him, so to speak, in the cradle ; that as a boy, he grew up among them, and the high excellence of these master-pieces attained such a life in him that he had in them a living basis on which he could march forward ? And. further, by what is he great if not by this, that his own songs found among his own people susceptive hearers, I that in the fields their melody met him from the lips of the reaper and the binder, and jovial companions greeted him with them in the alehouse 1 How poor, on the contrary, is the outlook in that way among us Germans ! What was there, in my youth, of our not less important national songs that lived among the people strictly so, called ? Why Herder had first to make a cofflmencement in the way of preserving therairom oblivion, by collecting them ; so they got at least printed and laid up in the libraries. And later, what have not Burger and Voss effected in the way of songs? Who would say less excellent and less popular than those of the noble Burns ? But what of them has been retained vitally, so that it is echoed back to us from the lips of the people ? They have been written and printed and stand in libraries, conformably to the general fate of German poets. Of our own songs what is there that lives ? Here and there you find a pretty girl singing one or two of them to the piano ; but among the people all is silent. With what feelings must I think of the time when Italian fishermen sang to me passages fi om Tassp ! We Germans are of yesterday."r—JSckermaun's Conversations with Goethe, vol 2

To Preserveßotniuets. —About as much nitrate of soda as can be easily taken up between, the forefinger and thumb, put into the glass every time the , water is changed, - will preserve cut floviers in all their beauty for aboye $ fortnight ; common saltpetre, Japovrder, has nearly the same effect, - ' •<■:

A Philadelphia Dodge. —The tteaq boat runners of Philadelphia have a system 4 " noseing out" ,passengers, as it U «{dl« The fellow ,goea on board of «n ogpositro boat, and commences snuffing as thougli h smelt something unpleasant. " What dp y» smell ?" some one inquires. " Dead bodies, is the reply, " and I'll swear they h«ye ditf of small-pox." He then rushes for> the ofbt boat, followed by the frightened voyages.— < iVew York Courier.