MISCELLANEA. A TENDER FAREWELL. A Frenchman, looking at a bas-relief representing Justice embracing Peace, exclaimed: «Look! they are saying their last adieux, for they are parting for ever. » A Parisian fishwoman, who was one of the audience at the opera on a day of free admission, listening to the chorus, said: « See these rascals, they know that only the common people are here, and so they are singing all together to finish the sooner! » SINGULAR DISCOVERY -A few days since, whilst two sawyers were engaged in cutting a log of rough elm timber, upwards of 3 feet in diameter, to make the gripe (a piece of wood that is fixed at the lower end of the stem, and fore part of the keel, and materially helps the ship to work to windward) for the Albion, 90 guns, building at Plymouth dock-yard, there were discovered five pieces of oak, about 2 inches thick by 4 inches wide, and each piece about 1 foot in length, lying in a direction towards the centre of the log; the pieces were closely and firmly united to the tree, and quite sound, and overgrown by the bark so as to render them entirely hid from sight.. : SUIT THE ACTION TO The word. A clown, employed to carry a present of two fine figs, could not resist the temptation of eating one of them the person to whom they were sent, aware that there should have been two, asked the messenger what he had done with the other. The rustic took the remaining fig, and swallowing it, said: I did as I do now. » STEAM PILE-DRIVER. Among the many improvements in " machinery which are daily taking place, we notice with pleasure the introduction recently, at the harbour works, of a self-acting machine for driving piles. The moving power is taken from a cylinder connected with the engine erected for pumping out the water in the dock, which does its work in a most admirable manner. There are two other pile-driving machises, wrought by manual labour, in operation alongside of it, requiring nine men to each; and this self-acting machine, attended by one man, gives seven strokes for every one that the others give, so that it does the work of sixty-three men. It can be extended in the same proportion to any power. It is the invention of Mr. James Milne, engineer at the dock. NOT AT HOME. A stingy citizen had a country house with a terrace, on which he used to walk, so contrived that when he saw anybody coming to dine with him, he could escape. by a back-door. A gentleman sent him word that he would come to dinner on a certain day. Tell your master,» said our cit to the servant; that I am much obliged to him for letting me know, and that I shall not be at home. " "O THE WONDERFUL WORKS OF PROVIDENCE ! » A methodist preacher remarked how benevolent Providence was, in putting death at the end of life: «for otherwise,» said he we should not have been able to prepare ourselves for it. » A LONDON FOG. A foreigner described the climate of LonEight months of winter, and four months of bad don as : " weather. » THE MELOPHONIC GUITAR, is the very appropriate name of a new instrument which was introduced to the musical public, a few days ago, by the inventor, M. Barelli, at a Soirée musicale given at the Hanover Square Rooms, purposely to ascertain the effect it would produce upon a numerous audience. Sig. Regondi the well-known and accomplished guitarist, performed on it four times with extraordinary applause. The audience (about 700 persons, the large Concert room being full,) accustomed to the insignificant sound of the common Guitar were taken by surprise and delighted by the sweet and full-bodied tones of this new instrument. Of its speedily superseding the old guitar there can be no doubt; or as we should rather say, perhaps, there can be no doubt of its occupying the place, once held by that instrument in popular esteem, for so much has it gone out of fashion that the town of Mirecourt in France, the chief seat of the guitar manufacture, and which used to export annually about 20,000 instruments, has at present only two or three hands employed in it. M. Barelli, the inventor of the Melophonic, is about to establish a manufactory in London, and we should not wonder if this becomes ere long, instead of France, the guitarexporting country. ་ A blockhead wrote to one of his friends: Just SECOND THOUGHTS. "My dear Friend, I have left my snuff-box at your lodgings: pray do me the favour to send it me by the bearer. as he was going to seal his note, he found his box and added the following postscript to the note. «P.S. Do not trouble yourself to look for the box, for I have found it. » and sent off his letter. : LONGEVITY OF TREES. The following trees are calculated to live about-elm, 335 years; cypress, 350; cheiros-lemon, 400; ivy, 450; larch, 575; orange, 630; olive, 700; ornamental plane, 720; cedar, 800; lime, 1147; oak, 1500; yew, 2830; baobah, 5150; and the taxodium, 6000 years! PERMITTED TO BE PRINTED, St. Petersburg, October 1st, 1842. P. KORSAKOFF, CENSOR. Printed at the Office of the "Journal de St. Pétersbourg. » MENDICITY, ITS CAUSES, AND STATISTICS. The Twenty-Third Report of the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity. London: 1841. An Exposure of the various Impositions daily practised by Vagrants of every Description. 8vo. Birmingham: 1841. Mendicity has become an evil of frightful magnitude in every portion of the British empire; but its increase in England is pregnant with mighty mischiefs and untold dangers. In this paper we intend to limit ourselves to a descriptive account of that evil, and its various aspects, leaving the remedies to the consideration of those whose duty it is to provide them. Pauperism and mendicity, in ordinary times, must not, and should not be confounded. The law in England provides for pauperism, viz. for want, for sickness, for infirmity, for destitution. But inasmuch as the law of England is generous and paternal, in making such a provision for all who are really entitled to its protection, it visits with summary and severe punishment the systematic and persevering mendicant. Does it, however, do this effectually and permanently? Let us examine the facts of the case, and see to what is to VOL. IV. 13 be attributed the great increase of mendicity in England; notwithstanding the application of the workhouse system on the one hand, and the provisions of the vagrant act on the other. For the information of those who may not be accurately acquainted with either 'the workhouse system,' or the vagrant act, we shall here briefly state their objects. The first is that system established by the English Poor Law Commissioners, under the amended poor laws, of requiring all who apply for parochial relief to give the best evidence they can supply of their destitution, by leaving their cottages and houses, and becoming inmates of the workhouse, or, in other words, of the Union. The vagrant act was passed to prevent the existence of idle and disorderly persons, vagabonds, and incorrigible rogues. To the clauses and penalties of this act we shall refer hereafter. Mendicity is of ancient date in England. With its history, and the history of the laws which have been passed for its repression, we are not, nor are our readers, unfamiliar. But there are two general descriptions of mendicity, besides the various sectional differences into which these general descriptions are divided. The FIRST is the mendicity which is the offspring of criminal habits, bad education, indolence, and crime. The SECOND is the mendicity which is momentary, which is the accompaniment of a state of transition from one condition of life or occupation to another, or which is the result of sudden accidents, and, for the time, overwhelming personal disasters. Thus the drunkard-the offspring of mendicants taught to beg, and prohibited from labour-the man who prefers begging to digging or to spinning-he who chooses a barn for his bedroom, and the shelter of a hedge for his dwelling-place, and who will not rise up early and go late to rest, work with his hands, and support, by honesty and industry, himself and his family-all belong to those whose mendicity is an offence against morals, civilization, the laws of man and of heaven. But this is not the case with the second class; and it is to these that we must draw the attention, more especially, of |