But these things can
only take place provided the public tranquillity be maintained, and the
government keep their engagements with foreigners inviolate. The
insecurity arising from the domestic feuds now disturbing this fine
country, must, if it continues, finally annihilate its best
resources.--_Foreign Quarterly Review._
* * * * *
Of the abhorrence with which the Dutch regard the French tongue, the
following lines of Bilderdyk are an amusing example:--
Begone, thou bastard-tongue! so base--so broken--
By human jackals and hyaenas spoken;
Formed for a race of infidels, and fit
To laugh at truth--and scepticize in wit;
What stammering, snivelling sounds, which scarcely dare,
Bravely through nasal channels meet the ear--
Yet helped by apes' grimaces--and the devil,
Have ruled the world, and ruled the world for evil!
_Ibid._
* * * * *
COALS.
One of the pamphlets of the age of the Commonwealth is said, in the
title-page, to be
Printed in the year
That sea-coal was exceeding dear.
The remembrance of this inconvenience, which the Londoners had suffered
during the stoppage of their supply from Newcastle, made "the committees
of both kingdoms conclude and agree among themselves, that some of the
most notorious delinquents and malignants, late coal-owners in the town
of Newcastle, be wholly excluded from intermeddling with any shares or
parts of colleries;" "but as the parliament might find a difficulty in
_driving on the trade_, they did not conceive it for their service to
put out all the said malignants at once, but were rather constrained,
for the present, to make use of those delinquents in working their own
collieries as tenants and servants.
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