Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 38

[Footnote 31: It seems almost to indicate a crossing of the breeds between the grave tiger and the playful ape, that the Place de Greve in Paris is the place where malefactors are executed, and where the populace a.s.semble for fetes--that on the selfsame spot horses tear a regicide to pieces and citizens celebrate the accession of a new king; the fire wheels of the fireworks and of the people who are broken on the wheel whirling at the selfsame time and place. Frightful contrasts!

we may not adduce others lest we should get to imitating those whom we have here found fault with.]

[Footnote 32: This is an allusion to 'Hesperus.']

[Footnote 33: Jocular discourses were delivered on Easter Sunday in the middle-ages, and went by the name of "Christian Easter-Merriment."]

[Footnote 34: In the 3rd part of the Lichtenberg Philosophical Magazine,' the case is mentioned of a woman, who, while smelling at a flower, inhaled a worm into her brain, which tormented her with delirium, headache, &c., till it came out at her nose again, still alive.]

[Footnote 35: Voltaire proves that a person who is 23 years old, has only lived 3 years in the proper sense of the word.]

[Footnote 36: The poisonous Boa Upas, beneath which one loses one's hair in a few minutes.]

[Footnote 37: The musicians among the ancients wore them. Bartholin de Tib. Vet. iii. 4.]

[Footnote 38: The common German dinner-time then.--Translator.]

[Footnote 39: So do men forget it, though in a lesser degree. Suppose a man who does ninety things every day, accurately remembering them, should once or twice forget a ninety-first thing, he'll go on forgetting that afterwards, though he remembers all the rest. There's no remedy for this unless some person happens to come in, or something chances to occur just at the instant of forgetting, and recalls the ninety-first thing to his mind. If he once forgets to forget, he won't forget any more.]

[Footnote 40: According to the Rabbin, the pains of the d.a.m.ned are intermitted on the Sabbath; the Christians hold that the same was the case during the descent into Hades.]

[Footnote 41: In Bern and the Pays-du-Vaud, two male witnesses, or four female, are necessary for a legal proof.]

[Footnote 42: The sand-gla.s.s is upright during the time the torture goes on.]

[Footnote 43: We cannot say, however, that it is by carrying away noxious vapours that the wind purifies the air, since while it blows _my_ noxious emanations to the person behind me, it brings me those of the person before me; and because stagnant water does not become putrid solely because there is no current to carry away decaying matter.]

[Footnote 44: A woman finds it much easier to yield and say nothing when she is in the right than when she is in the wrong.]

[Footnote 45: h.e.l.ler = half-a-farthing.]

[Footnote 46: _I.e_. a sum which people pay to the exchequer for permission to leave the country.]

[Footnote 47: Jews were formerly obliged to stand with bare feet on pig's-skin when they took oath.]

[Footnote 48: Animals may not carry anything on the Schabbes; even the lappets which fowls sometimes have tied to them as marks of distinction, have to be taken off on that day; and the Jews must get non-Jews to milk for them; they may not even wipe off dust or moisture from their persons.]

[Footnote 49: Prizelius trained war-horses to stand the beating of the drums in battle, by strewing oats on the tops of drums, and beating on the lower side of them while the horses ate the oats as they jumped about on the top.]

[Footnote 50: There is no plant with eleven stamens.]

[Footnote 51: Two holes in a hazel-nut show that the beetle which gnawed away its kernel, in the shape of a little larval worm, has crept out in its transformed state.]

[Footnote 52: Allusion to the fable that the male birds of paradise hatch the eggs on the backs of the females up in air.]

[Footnote 53: Particularly on cold bright winter mornings and evenings.

I (and Siebenkaes for the same reason) have been troubled with this complaint for more than twenty years, and I have had an attack of it on this coldest of Christmas eves, just as I was describing it. It is nothing but a pa.s.sing paralysis of the nerves of the lungs--particularly of the _nervus vagus_--and in course of time (for you see even twenty years have not been enough), lends to that pulmonary apoplexy which Leville in Paris, und recently Hohnbaum, have held to be a new form of the disease, and which, perhaps, after the precedent of "Miller's Asthma," may receive the name of "Siebenkaesian,"

or "Jean Paulish apoplexy."]

[Footnote 54: Buffon.]

[Footnote 55: The husband should always play the lover by rights--and the lover the husband. It is impossible to describe the amount of soothing influence which little acts of politeness and innocent flatteries exercise upon just the very people who usually expect, and receive, none--wives, sisters, relations--and this even when they quite understand what this politeness really amounts to. We ought to be applying this emollient pomade to our rude rough lips all day long, even if we have only three words to speak,--and we should have a similar one for our hands, to soften down their actions. I trust that I shall always keep my resolution never to flatter any woman, not even my own wife, but I know I shall begin to break it four months and a-half after my betrothal, and go on breaking it all my life.]

[Footnote 56: Sander, on "The Great and Beautiful in Nature."]

[Footnote 57: The anchor proof consists in casting the anchor forcibly down upon a deep hard bottom.]

[Footnote 58: Servants were _called_ "knaves" of old, and deserve the name pretty often at the present day.]

[Footnote 59: Lack of money and of health.]

[Footnote 60: One continued until fainting supervenes.]

[Footnote 61: Persons condemned by the secret tribunals were so styled.]

[Footnote 62: The former plant opens after eight in the morning, the latter at eleven.]

[Footnote 63: It is explained in a long note in the original, that she _could_ do this even before being married.]

[Footnote 64: The Silhouette took its name from the Controller-General so called. In Paris, an empty, blank physiognomy is called a face "a la silhouette."]

[Footnote 65: Which are called "weavers' ships" in German.]

[Footnote 66: In Engelhardszell, for instance, the Austrian custom-house officers unb.u.t.ton paunches to see whether they be fat--or cloth.]

[Footnote 67: We have all read in the newspapers that at the Vienna b.a.l.l.s a paper lantern is carried through the rooms, with the inscription "Supper ready." This may be called Vienna lanterning.]

[Footnote 68: Alas! that the English word "friend" is such a poor representative of the German original. Yet I cannot hit upon any other.--_Tr_.]

[Footnote 69: Death sends sleep, Heaven the dream.]

[Footnote 70: In all this discussion what we are talking of is not that _practical_ love of our fellow men, and of our enemies, which expresses itself in action, and in refraining from revenge (and which must be easy to every properly const.i.tuted person), but that _feeling_ of misanthropy, or of philanthropy (as the case may be), over which the moral sense has but little power--of inward love, as distinct from actions; of secret indignation with sinners and fools. It is easier to sacrifice one's self for people than to love them--easier to do good to our enemies than to forgive them. The longing of love, as well as its seldomness, have had but one painter--F. Jakobi: we do not need a second.]

[Footnote 71: A paper, printed with symbols, &c., in which the present for a G.o.dchild is wrapped.]

[Footnote 72: Part which a player selects as a specimen of his powers.]

[Footnote 73: A Frenchman vowed he could not abide the English: "_Parce qu'ils versent du beurre fondu sur leur veau roti_."]

[Footnote 74: 'Pomp. Mel. de S. O.' i. 18.]

[Footnote 75: Switzerland and Holland.]

[Footnote 76: Which was so altered in appearance after his death by innumerable wounds, that they masked it as effectually us the iron one had done.]

[Footnote 77: There is a kind of sea-bird which sleeps on the wing, or floats up and down; and the motion of the sea is often what awakes it.]

[Footnote 78: This vetch has some of its flowers and fruit above ground, but most of them _under_ it; though the latter are white.--Linnaeus.]

[Footnote 79: At page 163 of the 'Pocket-Book for Watering Places, and Visitors to them,' it is stated that while the ladies are lying bolted into their baths, young gentlemen sit on the covers and entertain them while they are under water. Against which arrangement _Reason_ certainly can urge no valid objection, for the wood of the baths is quite as thick as silk; and when all is said, Everybody is, if covered at all, always in some covering _inside_ of which he or she is altogether _devoid_ of covering--though perhaps _Fancy_, and _Imagination_ may urge this objection, that a bed-quilt a quarter of a yard thick would not be quite so becoming, or close-fitting a ball-dress as a gauze. If once the Innocence of the imagination be offended, there is no other to spare; the senses cut neither be innocent nor the contrary.]