Part 20 (2/2)
It is well that invalids should be told, that at No. 76, in the Street of Maipu, the milk of an a.s.s ”recently confined” is always on sale; but the woodcut attached to the advertis.e.m.e.nt makes the fact appear doubtful; for a st.u.r.dier male animal than the ”burro” there depicted, was never painted by Morland or Gainsborough. This, however, may arise from the necessity which exists for one of a sort doing duty for all.
But there is another singularity in this advertis.e.m.e.nt. With no line to indicate a fresh subject, as is the case in every other instance, the portrait of the a.s.s is always followed by the words ”Long live the Confederation! Death to the Unitarians!” These lines have puzzled us; and we hesitate to give the only explanation that strikes us: something disrespectful, in short, to the Confederation of Buenos Ayres.
It is not only the slaves that run away in that part of South America: the infection extends to dogs, horses, and oxen, all of which, like Caliban, seem for ever on the look out to ”have a new master, get a new man,” to hunt, ride, or drive them. There is a daily column, headed ”Perdida,” in which long-tailed horses, with flowing manes, pointers in immovable att.i.tudes, for ever pointing, and sinister-looking bulls--thorough-paced gamblers, always ready for pitch-and-toss--are advertised as having left their owners, who strive to win them back by rewards varying twenty to fifty dollars. In all these cases the missing animals are described as having ”disappeared” (_desaparecido_)--a mild term for ”stolen;” it being the Spanish custom to refrain from ”wounding ears polite”--except when the blood is up; then, indeed, they may take the field against Uncle Toby's army, that swore so terribly in Flanders.
This delicate mode of appealing to the consciences of thieves--which, carried fairly out, would probably bear a strong resemblance in the end to the politeness of Mr. Chucks--is extended to property of all kinds. A large watch, of the genus turnip, the hands pointing to half-past eleven, the time, perhaps, when the robbery is supposed to have taken place, and accompanied by the expressive word ”Ojo” (look sharp) thrice repeated, indicates, what the advertis.e.m.e.nt soon plainly tells, that from No. 69, in Emerald-street, there have ”disappeared” a valuable lot of articles, which give a very good idea of the turn-out of a well-mounted horseman in South America. There are, first, several pairs of large silver spurs--and a pair of Spanish spurs, when melted down, would make a decent service of plate,--quite enough for a ”testimonial”
to ourselves; and then come braided headstalls and bridles, with twisted chains and cavessons of silver; the reins hung with silver-bells, and decorated with silver bosses, and the bits and curbs heavily mounted with the same costly metal. This robbery has been evidently ”a put-up thing,” for there is no word of housebreaking,--merely a disappearance; and all silversmiths, p.a.w.nbrokers, and the public in general, are entreated (_se suplica a los, &c._) to detain the article, if offered, and a reward of two hundred dollars will be given. Perhaps the gentlemen who caused the horses to disappear have taken this mode of procuring caparisons!
Quack-medicine vendors are not wanting in Buenos Ayres to render important services to humanity. Two magnificent cut-gla.s.s decanters, gigantic in proportion to a tree of wondrous virtues which stands between them, are stated to be full of a healing medicine, which will do the business of all whom the faculty have given up or are otherwise incurable, as effectually as Parr's Life Pills or Holloway's Ointment.
The chief establishment for the sale of this elixir is very carefully pointed out; and for the benefit of future travellers we may mention, that it is to be found at No. 496 in the street of Cangallo, and in the very last door on the left-hand side, behind the windmill; and that in the court-yard of the house there is a garden filled with statues, of which the originals are probably defunct; but whether the elixir out of the two large decanters had any thing to do with this apotheosis, we refrain from conjecturing.
The preceding advertis.e.m.e.nts are the most noticeable for embellishment and style. The ordinary kind of wants are set forth with woodcuts and text of a less striking kind, but almost all are ill.u.s.trated. Wine has a barrel for its sign; music, a violin; travelling, a carriage; gardening, a flower-pot; upholstery, a chair; the cobbler's mystery, a top-boot; the hatter's, a beaver; and the letter of lodgings, a house full of windows. Not all of them are confined to the Spanish language, for there are many English merchants and traders; and to accommodate the last, a notice like the following recommends the aforementioned Street of Piety:
”To Det. To roms in altos one Squaz from the Place of Victory.”
The author of this announcement certainly had not achieved a victory over the English language.
From the London Examiner.
GUIZOT AND MONTALEMBERT.
The greatest novelty now in Paris is a speech. Any specimen of oratory that the police will first allow to be spoken, and then to be printed, is quite an attraction. Indeed there is but one remaining chance of perpetrating a speech, and that is by achieving your election as a member of the Inst.i.tute, or being appointed as an old member to welcome the newly-elected academician. These are the only legitimate opportunities for making one's voice heard in public that M. Bonaparte's code has left to the Frenchman.
In pursuance of this solitary permission on the part of the authorities, the Paris journals have contained reports of two remarkable speeches, the one uttered by Count Montalembert on his being elected to the seat in the Academy, rendered vacant by the death of M. Droz; the other spoken by M. Guizot, in the form of an address of welcome to the new academician, M. de Montalembert. Now in the speeches of these, the first authorized orators of the new despotic _regime_, we find so little to awaken the susceptibilities of even M. Bonaparte's police, that we have heard with unaffected wonder of the scissors of the censors.h.i.+p having been applied even to them. The philosophy of the speeches is terribly Conservative. M. Bonaparte himself could have desired no other. If his highness the President had embraced the two academicians after their speeches, and decorated them with the Grand Cordon of his new Order, it would have been but a tribute justly due to these lay preachers of absolutism.
Eulogy of Droz was the theme which afforded Count Montalembert the opportunity to ventilate his opinions, as M. Guizot's theme was the eulogy of Montalembert. Montalembert depicted how Droz, who had reached youth at the commencement of the great revolution, joined in all its theories, its hopes, and its excesses, anathematizing kings and priests, and believing in the happy and final reign of pure democracy; and how all this the same Droz lived to unlearn and to correct, and to settle down as quiet and as arrant a Conservative as ever supported monarchic government and a restored church. This is the true path of repentance, exclaimed Montalembert, and the only road to wisdom.
The compliment to tergiversation, which M. Montalembert thus paid to Droz, M. Guizot applied to Montalembert himself, whom he (M. Guizot) had remembered commencing his political career in full opposition, thundering against corrupt majorities, against kingly influence, and even against that want of spirit which preferred being at peace with neighbors to provoking them. But all that sort of const.i.tutional opposition leads, as the people have seen, to the triumph of socialism; and so all wise people, like M. Montalembert, naturally become sick of it, and abandon it, betaking themselves for a preference to the old political religion of legitimacy and wors.h.i.+p of absolutism. Of all the national disgraces inflicted upon France by M. Bonaparte's triumph, we know of none greater than such a hymn to servility, such anathemas and farewells to const.i.tutional freedom, uttered by these two Talleyrands of the professorial and ecclesiastical schools, who have been changing principles all their lives, and now proclaim at last that absolutism is the only anchor to hold by.
On one point M. Montalembert impugned the philosophy of M. Droz, and in doing so impugned not less the opinion of M. Thiers, and most of the eminent men who have written histories or judgments upon the great events of the Revolution. Droz, relating these events in after life, saw in their march and series the influence of stern necessity. Such was the congregated ma.s.s of evils of all kinds produced by the long misgovernment of the despotism and corrupt regime of the Bourbons, that a catastrophe like that of the Great Revolution was, according to Droz, not to be avoided. No human power could stop it, no moderation, no wisdom. In its path men were like the mere vegetable growth of a valley down which a torrent comes in inundation, sweeping all before it.
But M. Montalembert, for his own part, has another way of viewing the events of the Revolution. He denies the doctrine of fatalism or of necessity. He will not allow that the follies of the monarchy drew down after them the crimes of the Republic as a natural consequence. He sees in all those events, on the contrary, a direct intervention of Providence, who inflicted the sufferings of the Revolution upon the French simply as retribution for their crimes and a punishment for their sins. Providence, in the imagination of Count Montalembert, is a Nemesis with sword and scourge in hand, exercising its chief duty in castigating humanity; and thus doth the French Academy in the middle of the nineteenth century proclaim the philosophy of history.
M. Guizot avoided the recognition of any a.s.sertion so extravagant as this, and so very unfair to poor Jaques Bonhomme. The crimes of the old monarchy were confined to the court, the clergy, the aristocracy, and the financiers; whereas the poor peasant was ground to poverty, yet a proverbially honest and cheerful fellow amidst his ignorance and privations. But, according to Montalembert, Providence sent the Revolution to punish the crimes of d.u.c.h.esses; and this Revolution decimated, arrested, and sent to perish all over the world poor Jaques Bonhomme. Was this justice? M. Guizot did not, as we say, endorse this portion of the Montalembert philosophy. But he warned the Count of having in his early life made one grand mistake, in allying religion with liberalism, and putting the names of both combined on the banners of opposition. M. Guizot could hardly mean that religion, like fortune, should be always on the side of the greatest number of battalions. For should not this be the creed of M. Bonaparte, rather than of his ill.u.s.trious Academicians?
From Household Words.
AN ACCOUNT OF SOME TREATMENT OF GOLD AND GEMS.
Those who visit the metal works of Birmingham naturally desire to know where the metals come from; and especially the precious metals. Among the materials shown to the visitor, are drawers full of the brightest and cleanest gold; and ingots of silver, pure, or slightly streaked with copper. We have handled to-day an ingot which contains, to ninety-two ounces ten pennyweights of silver, seven ounces ten pennyweights of copper. We ask whether the gold comes from California; but we find that it has just arrived--from a much nearer place--from a refinery next door. We hear high praises of the Californian gold. It is so pure that some of it can be used, without refining, for second-rate articles. Some small black specks may be detected in it, certainly, though they are so few and so minute, that the native gold is wrought in large quant.i.ties.
But what _is_ this neighboring refinery? Whence does it obtain the metals it refines? Let us go and see.
It is a strange murky place; a dismal inclosure, with ugly sheds, and yards not more agreeable to the eye. Its beauties come out by degrees, as the understanding opens to comprehend the affairs of the establishment. In the sheds, are ranges of musty-looking furnaces; some cold and gaping, others showing, through crevices, red signs of fire within. There are piles of blocks of coal, of burnt ladles and peels, and rivulets of black refuse, which has flowed out from the furnaces into safe beds of red sand. In a special shed, is a black moist-looking heap of what appears to be filth, battened into the shape of a large compost bed. A man is filling a barrow with this commodity, and smoothing it down with loving care. And well he may; for this despicable-looking dirt is the California of the concern! Here is their gold mine, and their silver mine, and their copper mine. In another shed, is a mill-stone on edge, revolving with the post to which it is fixed, to crush the material which is to be calcined. In the yard, we see heaps of scoriae--the s.h.i.+ning, heavy, gla.s.sy-looking fragments, which tell tales of the prodigious heat to which they have been subjected. We see picks, and more ladles, and lanterns, and a most sordid-looking bonfire. A heap of refuse is burning on the stones; old rags, fragments of shoes, cinders, dust, and nails--the veriest sweepings that can be imagined. Something precious is there; but the ma.s.s must be burned to become manageable. The ashes will be swept up for the refinery.
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