[5] It is a remarkable proof of the amount of improvement effected in some of the Cornish steam engines, that the result obtained from a given quantity of coal, estimated in the manner alluded to above, is nearly three times as great now as it was twenty years ago. Nor will the spectator find more cause for astonishment in the magnitude of these engines, than in the order, or even beauty, of every minute part pertaining to them. The furniture of a drawing-room is not more scrupulously arranged, or preserved in a state of higher polish, than are those huge representatives of human power.
Fashion dominates in this, as in other things. Of late its dictation has been to cradle children in French; often, even to prohibit English in the nursery and school-room; and, frequently, at a later time, to detach our youth from their own country, for the sake of forwarding the same object in foreign _pensions_, or schools. We have seen this fashion extending itself to more mature life; and serious and discreet men, senators and judges, toiling painfully through elements, vocabularies, and rules of pronunciation, to acquire an amount of speech sufficient to attract ridicule, and produce inconvenience, but very inadequate to any useful or ornamental purpose.--_Ibid._
Is a term applied to the remains of a shoulder of mutton, which, after it has done its regular duty as a roast at dinner, makes its appearance as a broiled bone at supper, or upon the next day.
The late Earl of B., popularly known by the name of _Old Rag_, being indisposed in a hotel in London, the landlord came to enumerate the good things he had in his larder, to prevail on his guest to eat something. The earl at length, starting suddenly from his couch, and throwing back a tartan night-gown which had covered his singularly grim and ghastly face, replied to his host's courtesy; "Landlord, I think I _could_ eat a morsel of a _poor man_." Boniface, surprised alike at the extreme ugliness of Lord B.'s countenance, and the nature of the proposal, retreated from the room, and tumbled down stairs precipitately; having no doubt that this barbaric chief, when at home, was in the habit of eating a joint of a tenant or vassal when his appetite was dainty.--_Jamieson's Diet_.