Various

“ There lie, sunk alike in their last sleep—alike food for the worm that lives on death—the conqueror who filled the universe with his name, and the peasant scarcely known in his own hamlet; Sultan Mahmoud, and Sultan Mahmoud's perhaps more deserving horse; 4 elders bending under the weight of years, and infants of a single hour; men with intellects of angels, and men with understandings inferior to those of brutes ”

“ The splendour and extent of Constantinople are not within the compass of one of our pages; but the annexed Engraving furnishes some idea of a section of this queen of cities. It extends from Seraglio Point to the Janissaries' Tower, and though commanding only a portion of the city, includes the domes of the magnificent mosques of Santa Sophia and the Sultan Achmet, which rise from a vast assemblage of towers, palaces, minarets, &c. in every style of architecture. ”

“ There, said I to myself, lie, scarcely one foot beneath the surface of a swelling soil, ready to burst at every point with its festering contents, more than half the generations whom death has continued to mow down for nearly four centuries in the vast capital of Islamism. ”

“ Augustus Headerton had the run of the stables, the use of hunters and dogs, and was universally acknowledged to possess "a proper spirit," because he spent three times more than his income. "He bates the world and all, for beauty, in a hunting jacket," exclaimed the groom. ”

“ Among the suburbs of Constantinople, Scutari is not the least interesting, inasmuch as it leads us to notice the funereal customs of the Turks, and their cemeteries, of which Scutari is the principal site.
Interment almost immediately follows upon the decease of the person; a practice common to all classes at Constantinople. The corpse is carried to the grave on a bier by the friends of the deceased: this is considered as a religious duty, it being declared in the Koran, that he who carries a dead body the space of forty paces, procures for himself the expiation of a great sin. ”

“ The summits of the hills on which we stood had snow on them, in some places, many feet deep. The deer were migrating from the rugged and dreary mountains in the north, to the low mossy barren, and more woody parts in the south; and we inferred, that if any of the Red Indians had been at White Bay during the past summer, they might be at that time stationed about the borders of the low tract of country before us, at the deer-passes, or were employed somewhere else in the interior, killing deer for winter provision. ”

“ The population of the city and suburbs is estimated at upwards of 600,000; of these above one half are Turks, the remainder Jews, Franks, Greeks, &c.
We have only space to particularize a few of the most prominent buildings in our view. To the left is the Seraglio Point, or superb palace of the Sultan, whose treasures almost realize the fables of romance. Next is the superb dome of the Mosque of the Sultan Achmet, without exception the finest building ever raised by the Turks. ”

“ When a dead Mussulman is carried on his plank towards the cemetery, the devout Turk runs from his house as the procession passes his door, for a short distance relieves one of the bearers of the body, and then gives up his place to another, who hastens to perform the same charitable and holy office. ”

“ Give a Doctor Magnificus his due allowance of the worst tobacco, and the worst beer in the world, with a ream of half-brown paper, and a Leipsic catalogue to plunder, and he will in three months write any subject dead—smother the plainest truth with an accumulation of absurdity, astonishing, as the work of a creature with but two hands—and prove that the earth is but a huge oyster, in which Germany is the pearl ”

“ THE CONTEMPORARY TRAVELLER. JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF THE RED INDIANS OF NEWFOUNDLAND.
In the island of Newfoundland, an institution has been formed for opening a communication with, and promoting the civilization of, the Red Indians; and procuring, if possible, an authentic history of that unhappy race of people, in order that their language, customs, and pursuits, may be contrasted with those of other tribes of Indians and nations. The interior of the island is less known than any other British possessions abroad ”

“ No one who has been in Ireland, but must have seen the peasants leave their cottages or their work, to give a temporary assistance to those employed in bearing the dead to the grave an exertion by which they approach so many steps nearer to Paradise."
Footnote 4: (return) "Sultan Mahmoud's horse was actually interred in the cemetery of Scutari, under a dome supported by eight pillars."
Footnote 5: (return) Since my return, I learn from the captive Red Indian woman Shawnawdithit, that the vapour-bath is chiefly used by old people, and for rheumatic affections. ”

“ The traces left by the Red Indians are so peculiar, that we were confident those we saw here were made by them.
"This spot has been a favourite place of settlement with these people. It is situated at the commencement of a portage, which forms a communication by a path between the sea-coast at Badger Bay, about eight miles to the north-east, and a chain of lakes extending westerly and southerly from hence, and discharging themselves by a rivulet into the River Exploits, about thirty miles from its mouth. A path also leads from this place to the lakes, near New Bay, to the eastward. ”

“ There lie, side by side, on the same level, in cells the size of their bodies, and only distinguished by a marble turban somewhat longer or deeper—somewhat rounder or squarer—personages, in life, far as heaven and earth asunder, in birth, in station, in gifts of nature, and in long laboured acquirements. ”

“ But among other plunders of the imagination, they are going to rob us of the unicorn. For two thousand years and upwards, a short date in the history of human quarrel about nothings, the sages of this world have been doubting and deciding on the existence of this showy creature. ”

“ Much is gained, unquestionably, as regards the health of the inhabitants, by burying without the cities; but the shallowness of the graves contributes to render these vast accumulations of animal dust, at certain seasons more especially, a source of pestilential miasmata. The cemeteries near Scutari are immense, owing to the predilection which the Turks of Europe preserve for being buried in Asia—that quarter of the world in which are situated the holy cities, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and Damascus. ”

“ Beyond, as far as the eye can reach, is an immense forest of cypress and mulberry trees, being the extensive cemeteries of all persuasions. From Galata, the European shore of the Bosphorus forms one continued line of towns; palaces in every style of architecture, pleasure gardens, and romantic villages. On the opposite, or Asiatic shore, stands the extensive town of Scutari, also a suburb of Constantinople, although in another quarter of the globe, and separated by a sea a mile in breadth ”

“ An Irish gentleman choose a profession! But the Honourable Mr. Augustus Headerton chose a wife, and threw all his relations, including Lord Headerton, the Honourable Justice Cleaveland, Admiral Barrymore, K.C.B., and his cousins to the fiftieth remove, into strong convulsions, or little fits. She, the lady, had sixty thousand pounds; that, of course, they could not object to. She had eloped with the Honourable Mr. Augustus Headerton;—mere youthful indiscretion. ”

“ By the last census, 1827, the population of Paris was 890,000.
Bread.—In Paris, 830,000 persons consume 227,760,000 pounds in a year.
Printing.—There are in Paris 80 printing establishments; 600 presses going; and 3,000 journeymen printers in constant employ.
Deaths.—The annual mortality is 21,033; average of suicides 200, of whom the greater number are single persons; and on an average, a death occurs every twenty minutes. Upwards of 1,100 children die annually from small-pox. ”

“ A canoe-rest, is simply a few beams supported horizontally about five feet from the ground, by perpendicular posts. A party with two canoes, when descending from the interior to the sea-coast, through such a part of the country as this, where there are troublesome portages, leave one canoe resting, bottom up, on this kind of frame, to protect it from injury by the weather, until their return. ”

“ In many parts of England any thing large is called a bumper. Hence a bumping lass is a large girl of her age, and a bumpkin is a large-limbed, uncivilized rustic; the idea of grossness of size entering into the idea of a country bumpkin, as well as that [pg 134] of unpolished rudeness. Dr. Johnson, however, strangely enough deduces the word bumpkin from bump; but what if it should prove to be a corruption of bumbard, or bombard: in low Latin, bombardus, a great gun, and from thence applied to a large flagon, or full glass. ”

“ Such is a mere outline of the natural and artificial beauty of Constantinople.
The city itself is surrounded by walls, built of freestone, with alternate layers of Roman brick, flanked by 478 towers; the walls, however, are in several places so dilapidated as to be incapable of any defence without great reparation. On the land side, the fortifications consist of a triple wall, with towers at every 150 yards; the first wall being 30 feet in height; the second 20, and about 30 feet from the first; the third is twelve feet in height ”

“ Every winter wigwam has close by it a small square-mouthed or oblong pit, dug into the earth, about four feet deep, to preserve their stores, &c. in. Some of these pits were lined with birch rind. We discovered also in this village the remains of a vapour-bath. The method used by the Boeothicks to raise the steam, was by pouring water on large stones made very hot for the purpose, in the open air, by burning a quantity of wood around them ”

“ HANS SACHS, one of the most famous of the early German poets, and a scholar of considerable learning, was the son of a tailor, and served an apprenticeship himself, first to a shoemaker, and afterwards to a weaver, at which last trade, indeed, he continued to work during the rest of his life. ”

“ At first agglomerated in a single confused mass, the lesser part of this immense whole seemed, as we advanced, by degrees to unfold, to disengage themselves from each other, and to grow into various groups, divided by wide chasms and deep indentures ”

“ In regard to Lammas, in addition to its being one of the days of reckoning, it appears from the Confessor's laws, that it was the specific day whereon the Peter-pence, a tax very rigorously executed, and the punctual payment of which was enforced under a severe penalty, was paid. In this view then, Lammas stands as a day of account, and Latter Lammas will consequently signify the day of doom, which in effect, as to all payments of money, or worldly transactions in money, is never. ”

“ In the last place, the vessel is substituted for the power itself, by an easy metonymy in the same manner as when we talk of "the sense of the house," we do not mean to ascribe intelligence to a material building ”

“ They had the satisfaction of ruining each other—the full purse was emptied by devouring duns, and the old nobility suffered by its connexion with vulgarity.
"I want to know, Honourable Mister Augustus Headerton"— (the lady always gave the full name when addressing her husband; she used to say it was all she got for her money) ,—"I want to know, Honourable Mister Augustus Headerton, the reason why the music master's lessons, given to the Misses Headerton (they were blessed with seven sweet pledges of affection) , have not been paid for? ”

“ Marriages.—The average of marriages is 6,316, or 1 marriage in every 108 persons. Marriages are most frequent in February, and least in December. There is rather more than an average of three children to each marriage. ”

“ The groan which followed this last pun of the voyage reechoed along the shore, and it was not until we reached Howe's hotel, a sort of Bath York House stuck in the middle of Golden Square, London, that the tumult died away.
THE UNICORN.
In the physical world, some of our secrets are disappearing; and though Captain Parry failed to find out the pole, and we believe, with that worthy navigator, that the world have been dreaming from the beginning, and that there is no pole ”

“ The River.—The river Seine where it enters Paris is 510 feet broad; at the [pg 144] Pont Neuf 864 feet, and where it leaves the city 400 feet broad.
Hospitals.—The income of the hospitals is 9,762,154 francs, or about £406,756.; the average cost to government for a day in the hospital, is about 11-1/2d. The maniacs from two prisons average 3,000 a year; and the majority of mad persons are unmarried. ”

“ Theatres.—There are 10,000 persons daily at the theatres, Of these, it is estimated, 6,816 pay for admission. The annual average receipts of all the theatres is £209,298.
Tombs.—The price for a tomb in Pere la Chaise, is about £4. without the right to the grave; some have cost £1,400. Those erected to women are fewer by half than those for men.
Travellers.—The average since the peace of 1814, is 17,676 English residents or travellers in Paris.
MOTTO AND TRANSLATION.
Presto et Presto. ”

“ There are fourteen imperial mosques, about 200 others, and above that number of messjids or chapels. The number of houses is prodigious; in 1796, the register of Effendissy gave 88,185 within the walls; they are mostly constructed of wood, and the dwellings of the lower classes are mere wooden boxes, cool in summer, the windows being unglazed, and in winter heated by pans of charcoal. Fires are consequently very frequent. ”

“ The celebrated Italian will also dance the Fandango,
and the theatre will be superbly illuminated.
"Write your name at full length the first time you order any thing which you ought to pay for, that the person so employed or ordered may have no difficulty of applying (legally) if necessary for payment."—The advice of one who from a common soldier died in opulence honestly gained by trade.
A French philosopher placed a statue in his hall, under which was the follow-distich:—
"Whoever you be, Sir, pray take off your castor ”