class="numcol">136

Of this expenditure we borrowed 834½ millions, and raised by taxes 1,189 millions. During the 127 years, the annual poor-rates rose from ¾ of a million to 5½ millions, and the price of wheat from 44s. to 92s. 8d. per quarter.

But it is time to clear the table, for it “strikes us more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.”

CHAIN OF BEING.

Our thanks are due to Mr. Dillon for a copy of the second edition of his Popular Premises Examined, which we have read with considerable interest. The “opinions” are as popularly examined as is consistent with philosophical inquiry; but they are still not just calculated for the majority of the readers of the MIRROR. We, nevertheless, make one short extract, which will be acceptable to every well-regulated mind; and characteristic of the tone of good-feeling throughout Mr. Dillon’s important little treatise.

“The spheres which we behold may each have their variety of intelligent ‘being,’ as links in nature’s beautiful chain, connecting the smallest insect with the incomprehensible and immutable God. The beautiful variety we see in his works portrays His will, and we are justified in following this variety up to His throne. His attributes of love and joy beam forth from the heavens, and are reflected from every species of sensitive being. All have different capacities for enjoyment, all have pleasure and delight, from the lark warbling above her nest, to man walking in the resplendent gardens of heaven, and enjoying, under the smiling approbation of Providence, the flowers and fruits that surround him.”

No man without the support and encouragement of friends, and having proper opportunities thrown in his way, is able to rise at once from obscurity, by the force of his own unassisted genius.—Pliny’s Letters.

RABBIS

Constitute a sort of nobility of the Jews, and it is the first object of each parent that his sons shall, if possible, attain it. When, therefore, a boy displays a peculiarly acute mind and studious habits, he is placed before the twelve folio volumes of the Talmud, and its legion of commentaries and epitomes, which he is made to pore over with an intenseness which engrosses his faculties entirely, and often leaves him in mind, and occasionally in body, fit for nothing else; and so vigilant and jealous a discipline is exercised so to fence him round as to secure his being exclusively Talmudical, and destitute of every other learning and knowledge whatever, that one individual has lately met with three young men, educated as rabbis, who were born and lived to manhood in the middle of Poland, and yet knew not one word of its language. To speak Polish on the Sabbath is to profane it—so say the orthodox Polish Jews. If at the age of fourteen or fifteen years, or still earlier, (for the Jew ceases to be a minor when thirteen years old,) this Talmudical student realizes the hopes of his childhood, he becomes an object of research among the wealthy Jews, who are anxious that their daughters shall attain the honour of becoming the brides of these embryo santons; and often, when he is thus young, and his bride still younger, the marriage is completed.

BARBER-SURGEONS.

Jacob de Castro was one of the first members of the Corporation of Surgeons, after their separation from the barbers in the year 1745. On which occasion Bonnel Thornton suggested “Tollite Barberum” for their motto.

The barber-surgeons had a by-law, by which they levied ten pounds on any person who should dissect a body out of their hall without leave. The separation did away this and other impediments to the improvement of surgery in England, which previously had been chiefly cultivated in France. The barber-surgeon in those days was known by his pole, the reason of which is sought for by a querist in “The British Apollo,” fol. Lond. 1708, No. 3:—