Various

“ The good humoured Dutch looking face is, however, wanting; they have a savage angularity of feature, the effect of their antisocial trade; one feels a sort of creeping horror on approaching a fellow creature, armed at all points, in a lone and solemn place, the haunts of desperate men, and on whose tongue an embargo is laid to speak to no one, pacing the surly rocks, his hands on his arms, ready to deal forth death on the first legal opportunity. ”

“ The influence of the constellations is powerful; but He who made the heavens is more powerful than all, if his aid be invoked in sincerity and truth. You ought to dedicate this boy to the immediate service of his Maker, with as much sincerity as Samuel was devoted to the worship in the Temple by his parents. You must regard him as a being separated from the rest of the world. In childhood, in boyhood, you must surround him with the pious and virtuous, and protect him to the utmost of your power from the sight or hearing of any crime, in word or action. ”

“ Cobbett's harvest of tops was not so successful as it might have been: this arose from his absence at the favourable opportunity for stacking.
The ears of corn are stripped off when the grain is hard, and carried in carts to the barns, and placed in corn cribs adapted for the purpose. The grains are taken off the pithy cylinder on which they grow, by being rubbed or scraped on a piece of iron: in America a bayonet (a weapon called by the Yankees Uncle George's toasting fork) is invariably used for the purpose: the cylinder, now bared of its grain, is called the cobb. ”

“ Homany is the shape in which the corn meal is generally used in the southern states of America, but Mr. Cobbett has never seen it. Samp is the corn skinned, as we shell oats, or make pearl barley; it is then boiled with pork or other meat, as we boil peas. It is in fact corn soup, superior to all preparations of pulse, on account of their indigestible qualities.
The corn flour is not so adhesive as the wheat flour; it is consequently not so well adapted to puddings and bread-making: nevertheless, Mr. Cobbett contrives to show that his corn can make both inimitably ”

“ A Yankee will set hunger at defiance if you turn him into a wilderness with a flint and steel, and a bag of corn-meal or flour. He comes to the spot where he means to make his cookery, makes a large wood fire upon the ground, which soon consumes every thing combustible beneath, and produces a large heap of coals. While the fire is preparing itself, the Yankee takes a little wooden or tin bowl (many a one has done it in the crown of his hat) , in which he mixes up a sufficient quantity of his meal with water, and forms it into a cake of about a couple of inches thick. ”

“ Good style of living consists in having a mansion exquisitely fitted up with all the expensive bijouterie compatible with true elegance, yet avoiding the lavish superabundance of gimcrackery which borders on vulgarity; comely serving men in suitable liveries, all so well initiated into the mysteries of their respective duties, that a guest could imagine himself in a fairy palace, where plates vanish without the contamination of a mortal finger and thumb, and glasses move without a jingle: then the feast is exquisitely cooked and exquisitely served ”

“ There is no doubt that the proper study of mankind is WOMAN; and Mr. Pope was wrong; for the endless variety of character among the sex is of itself a mine, endless and inexhaustible; but to study them in their domestic capacity, is the sweetest of all—
Man may for wealth or glory roam,
But woman must be blest at home.
To this her efforts ever tend,
'Tis her great object and her end.
So says one poet, I have forgot his name. Another hath this expression—
O woman! ”

“ The branch of man-feeding is, of course, an important department of the subject. The forms in which it is made palatable and nutritious are numerous, and appear under names of American origin that will sound strange in the English ear. Before the corn is ripe it is frequently roasted in the state of green ears. "When the whole of the grains are brown, you lay them in a dish and put them upon the table; they are so many little bags of roasted milk, the sweetest that can be imagined, or, rather, are of the most delightful taste. ”

“ A hundred country seats, a hundred delightful gardens, ornament the borders of the lakes and rivers. The Alps at a great distance rise and terminate the horizon, and among their prodigious precipices, twenty leagues extent of mountain are beheld covered with eternal snows. ”

“ Cobbett's argument; he maintains that his variety of Indian corn may be grown in this country: but should this not be confirmed by more general experiments, still his praise of the plant, as a valuable substitute for wheat, and even its superior applicability to domestic purposes, demand the same attention as before; for if it may be grown, it may be imported, as from Canada, without the imposition of a burthensome duty. ”

“ Under the heads of pig-feeding, sheep-feeding, and cow-feeding, poultry-feeding, and horse-feeding, he gives an account of his own experiments and observations. Of the thriving condition of the American horses Cobbett gives an example in his amusing vein, and by a trial made at his own farm in Long Island, he proved that neither their strength nor speed deteriorates on corn. ”

“ On the appearance of a suspicious sail, the blockader, all vigilance, (Jack excepted) awaits in silence the running of the devoted cargo, when suddenly discharging one of his pistols, the air in a moment rocks with a hundred reports, answered successively by his companions. This arouses those in the cottages off duty; the cliffs instantly teem with life; all hurry to the beach, by slanting passages cut in the rocks for that purpose, and a scene of blood and death ensues too horrible for description. ”

“ LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION. Voltaire's Chateau, at Ferney.
Voltaire is the bronze and plaster poet of France. Cheek by jowl with Rosseau, (their squabbles are forgotten in the roll of fame) , you see him perched on mantel, bracket, ecritoire, and bookcase: in short, their effigies are as common as the plaster figures of Shakspeare and Milton are in England. How far the rising generation of France may profit by their household memorials—or the sardonic and satanic smile of their great poet—we will not pretend to determine; neither do we invite any comparison ”

“ Bad style of living—Shocking even to describe! A large house in streets or squares unknown; hot, ugly men servants, stumbling over one another in their uncouth eagerness to admit you; your name mispronounced, and shouted at the drawing-room door ”

“ The Author of Evil was present in the room with him in bodily shape, and, potent with spirits of a melancholy cast, was impressing upon him the desperation of his state, and urging suicide as the readiest mode to put an end to his sinful career. ”

“ Think how the dog, fond and faithful creature as he is, from being the most docile and obedient of all animals, is made the most dangerous, if he become mad; so men acquire a frightful and not less monstrous power when they are in a state of moral insanity, and break loose from their social and religious obligations. ”

“ But with much in his horoscope which promises many blessings, there is one evil influence strongly predominant, which threatens to subject him to an unhallowed and unhappy temptation about the time when he shall attain the age of twenty-one, which period, the constellations intimate, will be the crisis of his fate. In what shape, or with what peculiar urgency, this temptation may beset him, my art cannot discover. ”

“ Better, far better, that they torment him by ungrateful cravings, than that he should have to repent having satiated them by criminal indulgence." The dispositions of the young man were so excellent, that he combated, by reason and religion, the fits of gloom which at times overcast his mind; and it was not till he attained the commencement of his twenty-first year, that they assumed a character which made his father tremble for the consequences. ”

“ The wealth of a Burman, always insecure, is very generally expended on the luxury of temple-building. Religious merit, indeed, consists mainly in the construction of one of these huge, costly, and showy edifices; and is not considered as increased by building a durable one. No one ever thinks of repairing or restoring an old temple ”

“ He must be educated in religious and moral principles of the strictest description. Let him not enter the world, lest he learn to partake of its follies, or perhaps of its vices. In short, preserve him as far as possible from all sin, save that of which too great a portion belongs to all the fallen race of Adam. With the approach of his twenty-first birth-day comes the crisis of his fate. If he survive it, he will be happy and prosperous on earth, and a chosen vessel among those elected for heaven. But if it be otherwise"——The astrologer stopped and sighed deeply. ”

“ This mansion was bestowed on the princess Elizabeth, during the term of her life, by her brother Edward VI., when it became the residence of the Earl of Northumberland, and the scene of those important transactions we have just endeavoured to relate. On the death of Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh, to whom the mansion had been given by that queen, was obliged to surrender it to Toby Matthew, the then Bishop of Durham, in consequence of the reversion having been granted to that see by queen Mary, whose bigoted and narrow mind regarded the previous exchange as a sacrilege. ”

“ The astrologer was consulted by letter, and returned for answer, that this fitful state of mind was but the commencement of his trial, and that the poor youth must undergo more and more desperate struggles with the evil that assailed him. There was no hope of remedy, save that he showed steadiness of mind in the study of the Scriptures. "He suffers," continued the letter of the sage, "from the awakening of these harpies, the passions, which have slept with him as with others, till the period of life which he has now attained. ”

“ You take a thin piece of butter, which will cling to the knife [pg 88] on one side, while you gently rub it over the ear from the other side; then the ear is buttered: then you take a little salt according to your fancy, and sprinkle it over the ear: you then take the tail of the ear in one hand, and bite the grains off the cobb." In the shape of porridge the corn is called suppawn.
Mush is another form of the corn meal; Mr. Cobbett says, "it is not a word to squall out over a piano-forte," "but it is a very good word, and a real English word." ”

“ Petroleum wells supply the whole Burman empire with oil for lamps, and also for smearing timber, to protect it against insects, and particularly the white ant. Its consumption for burning is stated to be universal, until its price reaches that of sesamum oil, the only other kind used for lamps. ”

“ The mysterious stranger departed; but his words remained impressed upon the mind of the anxious parent. He lost his lady while his boy was still in infancy. This calamity, I think, had been predicted by the astrologer; and thus his confidence, which, like most people of the period, he had freely given to the science, was riveted and confirmed. The utmost care, therefore, was taken to carry into effect the severe and almost ascetic plan of education which the sage had enjoined. A tutor of the strictest principles was employed to superintend the youth's education ”

“ Snails, though in England they cannot be mentioned as an article of food without exciting disgust, are esteemed in many places abroad a delicacy even for the tables of the great. In Paris they are sold in the market ”

“ With a pole he then draws the fire open, and lays the cake down upon where the centre of the fire was. To avoid burning, he rakes some ashes over the cake first; he then rakes on a suitable quantity of the live embers, and his cake is cooked in a short space of time." According to Mr. Cobbett, he grew ninety-five bushels of corn on one acre of ground; reckoning the value of this corn equal to bad and stale samples of wheat, which, at the time Mr. Cobbett was writing, was selling at 45s. the quarter, Mr. Cobbett's crop would be worth nearly 27l. ”

“ Durham House, which formerly occupied that extensive space of ground on the southern side of the Strand, now covered by the stately pile of buildings called the Adelphi, was erected, according to Stow,4 in the reign of Edward III., by Thomas de Hatfield, created Bishop of Durham in 1345. Pennant,5 however, but upon what authority does not appear, traces its foundation to a period prior to the abovementioned, that of Edward I., when he says it was erected by Anthony de Beck, patriarch of Jerusalem and Bishop of Durham, but was afterwards rebuilt by Bishop Hatfield. ”

“ The astrologer on the morrow met the party who gathered around the breakfast-table with looks so grave and ominous, as to alarm the fears of the father, who had hitherto exulted in the prospects held out by the birth of an heir to his ancient property, failing which event it must have passed to a distant branch of the family. He hastened to draw the stranger into a private room. "I fear from your looks," said the father, "that you have bad-tidings to tell me of my young stranger ”

“ It is a science which I do not practise, like others who call themselves astrologers, for hire or reward; for I have a competent estate, and only use the knowledge I possess for the benefit of those in whom I feel an interest." The laird bowed in respect and gratitude, and the stranger was accommodated with an apartment which commanded an ample view of the astral regions. The guest spent a part of the night in ascertaining the position of the heavenly bodies, and calculating their probable influence ”

“ The beasts of the earth and the birds of the air appear upon the board, scorning disguise, in their own proper forms, just as they stepped out of Noah's ark, always excepting those who are too unwieldy to be present in whole skins ”