Part 3
The population of the towns is, to that of the country, as one to five. The towns are small and far removed from each other, which has been a main cause of retarding the progress of civilization, commerce, and manufactures. There are only thirteen towns in Poland containing upwards of 10,000 people each: viz., Warsaw, containing about 120,000; Dantzic, about 50,000; Wilna, 30,000; Lemberg, 29,000; Cracow, 28,000; Kiev, 20,000; Posen, 20,000; Brady, 15,000; Witepsk, 13,000; Lublin, 13,000, Mahilev, 12,500; Kalisch, 12,000; Kharkof, 11,000; the population of the whole thirteen being equalled by the aggregate population of three or four of the Lancashire or Yorkshire towns. The maps contain a multitude of names of miserable wooden villages, inhabited merely by the peasant cultivators of the soil, and by a few shop-keeping Jews. Of the 451 towns of the kingdom, 353 are more than half, and 83 wholly, of wood; and but a very few towns contain a supply of the ordinary articles of consumption by persons in easy circumstances. The common articles of ladies’ wearing apparel are obliged to be procured either from Warsaw or Vienna, and it is common, in great families, to keep memorandum-books, in which the inmates of the family enter their wants, from time to time, which are supplied altogether at intervals of some months. In respect of all those comforts and conveniences of life which denote the progress of refinement, Poland is, perhaps, behind all other nations of Christian Europe.
The rate of increase of the Polish population, since 1815, has been stated at 100,000 individuals annually, or about two and a half per cent.
The Catholic religion is specially protected by the government, without imposing any disabilities on the members of other faiths. The Catholic establishment consists of an archbishop of Warsaw, eight bishops, and 2,740 clergy. The Greek Catholics have a bishop, and 354 priests. Next to the Roman Catholics, however, the Jews are of the most importance, and their numbers are stated to be fast increasing. They have of late been very unpopular, and have been charged with many malpractices, in monopolizing trade, and otherwise. The native writers have, for some time past, been in the habit of reproaching them as the ruin of their country, but sometimes, possibly, with more prejudice than reason. The religious statistics are as follows:--
Roman Catholics 3,400,000 Greek Church 100,000 Lutherans 150,000 Calvinists 5,000 Jews 400,000 Other Sects 5,000 --------- 4,060,000
The class of nobles in Poland is to that of the plebeians as one to thirteen. But this class is composed of persons of such various degrees of wealth, that the poorer nobles are often glad to be employed as stewards by the richer, and their wives and daughters take occupations as humble as nurses and ladies’ maids. The peasantry are still in a state of modified slavery, or villeinage, cultivating the land for the benefit of their lords, and not being allowed to remove from it without giving up their tenements. They are assigned a certain portion of the produce of the estate; the whole live and dead stock upon which belongs to the landlord, who lends the use thereof to the peasants, compelling them to take care of, and account for, it. The peasantry in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw have been nominally emancipated; but their condition has hitherto hardly been sensibly ameliorated thereby.
The exports of Poland consist chiefly of corn, cattle, timber, and other articles of raw produce; and the imports are wines, colonial produce, and articles of luxury. The manufactures of woollen cloth, linens, carpets, and leather have increased since 1815, and the breweries and distilleries are on a very extensive scale. Agriculture is, however, by far the largest source of occupation for the people; but suffers, at the present time, from a depression of prices, and has permanently to contend against the effects of a six months’ winter of frost and snow. The proximity to the cold regions of Russia, and the exposure to the sharp north-east winds from Siberia and the polar regions, render the climate incomparably colder than that of England, though the situation of Poland is not more northward. In the summer the heat is very great, the forests obstructing the free circulation of air.
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_Power of Steam._--It is on the rivers, and the boatman may repose on his oars, it is in highways, and begins to exert itself along the courses of land-conveyance; it is at the bottom of mines, a thousand feet below the earth’s surface; it is in the mill, and in the workshops of the trades. It rows, it pumps, it excavates, it carries, it draws, it lifts, it hammers, it spins, it weaves, it prints.--_From Webster’s Lectures._
_A Popular Error._--It is not at all an uncommon thing for even well-informed people to consider one event the cause of another, because the one has immediately preceded the other in the order of time. A curious instance of this error occurred in the last century. The fish, on which many of the inhabitants of Norway depended for subsistence, suddenly vanished from their coasts; the practice of inoculation for the small-pox had just then been introduced, and was instantly fixed upon as the cause of the calamity; and as the people considered the risk of that disorder a trifle in comparison with starvation, nothing could exceed their righteous indignation against all who undertook to prevent their taking the small-pox.
_Instruction and Amusement_ are more blended than the world in general is apt to imagine. Uninstructive amusement may be afforded for a moment by a passing jest or a ludicrous anecdote, by which no knowledge is conveyed to the mind of the hearer or the reader; but the man who would amuse others for an hour, either by his writing or his conversation, must tell his hearers or his readers something that they do not know, or suggest to them some new reflection upon the knowledge they have previously acquired. The more the knowledge bears upon their pursuits, upon their occupations, or upon their interests, the more attractive it will be, and the more entitled to be called useful.
_The Secret of great Workers._--M. Dumont, in his ‘Recollections of Mirabeau,’ the leading orator of the French Revolution, thus describes the persevering industry of our illustrious countryman, Sir Samuel Romilly:--“Romilly, always tranquil and orderly, has an incessant activity. He never loses a minute: he applies all his mind to what he is about. Like the hand of a watch, he never stops, although his equal movements in the same way almost escape observation.”
_Devotion of a great Mind to its Duties._--Milton, the poet of Paradise Lost, who, during an active life in the most troublesome times, was unceasing in the cultivation of his understanding, thus describes his own habits:--“Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home; not sleeping or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring; in winter, often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labour or devotion; in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary, or memory have its full fraught; then with useful and generous labours preserving the body’s health and hardiness, to render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to the mind, to the cause of religion and our country’s liberty.”
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An era is fast approaching, when no writer will be read by the great majority, save and except those who can effect that for bales of manuscript, that the hydrostatic screw performs for bales of cotton, by condensing that matter into a period that before occupied a page.--_Colton._
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Two painters undertook a portrait of Hannibal; one of them painted a full likeness of him, and gave him two eyes, whereas disease had deprived him of one. The other painted him in profile, but with his blind side from the spectators. He severely reprimanded the first, but handsomely rewarded the second.
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The petty sovereign of an insignificant tribe in North America every morning stalks out of his hovel, bids the sun good morrow, and points out to him with his finger the course he is to take for the day.
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When the air-balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it? The doctor answered this question by asking another: “What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man.”
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The Chinese affect to despise European ingenuity, but they cannot mend a common watch; when it is out of order they say it is dead, and barter it away for a living one.
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A friend called on Michael Angelo, who was finishing a statue. Some time afterwards he called again; the sculptor was still at his work. His friend, looking at the figure, exclaimed, You have been idle since I saw you last. By no means, replied the sculptor, I have retouched this part, and polished that; I have softened this feature, and brought out this muscle; I have given more expression to this lip, and more energy to this limb. Well, well, said his friend, but all these are trifles. It maybe so, replied Angelo, but recollect that trifles make perfection, and that perfection is no trifle.
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A POSTSCRIPT TO OUR FIRST READERS.
It is said that amongst the Mahomedans the following curious custom is observed:--They never destroy any fragment of paper, however small, which chance may place in their way. For this custom, which may appear in its practice to be ridiculous, a remarkable reason is assigned:--“It is the duty,” say the Mahomedan teachers, “of every true believer to throw away no opportunity of communicating to his fellow-creatures a knowledge of the one God and of his Prophet. The few words which express the short and comprehensive article of our faith may be written on any the smallest fragment of paper: let not true believers lose this opportunity which Allah himself presents to them! neglect not, destroy not that fragment. Let the word of the Prophet be written upon it, and the winds of Heaven will, under the direction of Providence, convey it into the hand of some one whose memory needs to be refreshed from the fountain of Truth, or whose mind’s eye hath not seen the light of Heaven.”
In the desire, and certainly in the power of enlightening their fellow-creatures, the Christian need fear no comparison with the Mahomedan world; but, in the mode of accomplishing this object, the custom alluded to affords a lesson for study, and an example for imitation.
By a Society which has undertaken the task of contributing, as far as lies in its power, to the diffusion of useful knowledge, no means should be neglected by which instructive amusement can be afforded. Timid (although well-meaning) persons might perhaps be inclined to censure such a society, should it set the example of applying the powers of the press to the production of a Penny Periodical Magazine. They might object that the instrument which is intended for good might be used for evil; that publications in form so cheap as to be accessible to the lowest class of readers, would soon fall into the hands of the lowest class of writers. We doubt this, although we know it is the opinion of many excellent persons; we have good and substantial reasons to assign for our doubts, but into those reasons we shall not now enter; the time for them is past. The evil (if it be an evil) is already in being. The demand of the public has already called into existence penny periodical publications, of which eight or ten have established a regular sale. It will be cheering intelligence to those who would have dissuaded from this undertaking, that the most noxious of them have been hitherto the least successful. The channel, then, is open. Through its course must flow much of the information conveyed to the minds of a large and increasing class of readers. We are called upon to pour into it, as far as we are able, clear waters from the pure and healthy springs of knowledge. That duty we will not neglect: in the attempt to fulfil it we think that we ought not to fail.
The success of our undertaking will be the measure of its utility.
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LONDON:--CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST.
_Shopkeepers and Hawkers may be supplied Wholesale by the following Booksellers:_--
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Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Duke Street, Lambeth.
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Transcriber’s Notes
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text. New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain. Itemized changes from the original text:
• p. 1: Added period after phrase “carefully examined by the more perfect instrument.” • p. 2: Added period after phrase “was replaced by Colonel Arthur, the present Governor.” • p. 6: Added closing single quotation mark after phrase “But should be blind and lose it in your blaze.” • p. 7: Added period after phrase “which I find in my text to be these four--M.A.L.T.”