CHINESE PROVERBS.

Chinese proverbs which were in the Great Exhibition of 1851

Let every man sweep the snow from before his own door, and not busy himself about the frost on his neighbour's tiles.

Great wealth comes by destiny; moderate wealth by industry.

The ripest fruit will not fall into your mouth.

The pleasure of doing good is the only one which does not wear out.

Dig a well before you are thirsty.

Water does not remain on the mountain, nor vengeance in a great mind.

GLASS IN WINDOWS.

It is impossible to determine at what period the use of glass utensils for domestic purposes was first introduced into this country; but being manufactured by the Egyptians and Phoenicians, we may very probably owe the introduction of it to them. Window glass appears to have been used in the churches of France as early as the sixth century; and, according to Bede, artificers skilled in the art of glass-making were invited into England by Abbot Benedict in the seventh century; and the churches or monasteries of Wearmouth and Garrow were glazed and adorned by his care. Wilfrid, Bishop of Worcester, about the same time took similar steps for substituting glass in lieu of the heavy shutters which were then in use; and great astonishment was excited, and supernatural agency suspected, when the moon and stars were seen through a material which excluded the inclemency of the weather. York Cathedral was glazed about the same time; and in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when a great stimulus was given to the erection of religious edifices, glass was generally employed in the windows. It appears to have been used in domestic architecture but very sparingly, till a much later period, when it came to be gradually adopted in the residences of the wealthy.

As late as the middle of the sixteenth century it was recommended, in a survey of the Duke of Northumberland's estates, that the glass in the windows should be taken down, and laid by in safety during the absence of the Duke and his family, and be replaced on his return; as this would be attended with smaller cost than the repair rendered necessary by damage or decay. In Brooke's Abridgment, tit. "Chatteles," it appears that in the 21st Hen. VII., A.D. 1505, it was held that though the framework of the windows belonged to the heir, the glass was the property of the executors, and might therefore be removed by them, “quar le meason est perfite sauns le glasse.” In A.D. 1599 Lord Coke informs us it was in the Common Pleas " resolved per totam curiam, that glass annexed to windows by nails, or in any other manner, could not be removed; for without glass it is no perfect house."

In Ray's Itinerary it is mentioned that in Scotland, even in 1661, the windows of ordinary houses were not glazed, and those only of the principal chambers of the King's palaces had glass; the lower ones being supplied with shutters, to admit light and air at pleasure.

Plate glass for mirrors and coach windows was introduced into England by the second Duke of Buckingham, who brought over workmen from Venice, and established a manufactory at Lambeth, where the works were carried on successfully according to the process in use at Venice.

The first manufactory for cast plate glass, according to the process invented by Abraham Thevart, was established in 1773, at Prescot in Lancashire, by a society of gentlemen, to whom a royal charter was granted under the name of the "British Plate Glass Company."

17*

WAGERS.

The celebrated epistolographer, James Howell, after dilating, in a letter to a friend, upon the wondrous medicinal and other properties of the then novelty, tobacco, observes :

If one would try a petty conclusion how much smoke there is in a pound of tobacco, the ashes will tell him; for let a pound be exactly weighed, and the ashes kept charily and weighed afterwards, what wants of a pound weight in the ashes, cannot be denyed to have been smoke which evaporated into air. I have been told that Sir W. Rawleigh won a wager of Queen Elizabeth upon this nicety.-Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, 9th ed. p. 418.

The learned Menage appears to have been not unfriendly to this mode of deciding a dispute :—

Nous sommes (says he) de grands parieurs à Angers. Je dis souvent, Il faut parier ou se taire, et c'est une façon de parler commune parmi nous. Je disais un jour à M. le premier Président de Lamoignon, ces paroles de Marc Aurèle, &c.

He then proceeds to narrate how he made and won a wager with the President as to the correctness of his quotation. (Menagiana, tom. ii. p. 362.)

Popular tradition has long associated the assumption of the Ulster badge—the bloody hand- by the Holte family of Aston, with a barbarous murder, committed at the commencement of the seventeenth century, by Sir Thomas Holte upon his cook, by splitting open his head with a cleaver. It need not be said that the assumption of the badge has no connection whatever with this circumstance, which may, or may not, have occurred :

"The most probable tradition," says Mr. Atkinson, the historian of the family, "of the cause of the commission of the crime is, that Sir Thomas, when returning from hunting, in the course of conversation, laid a wager to some amount, as to the punctuality of his cook, who, most unfortunately, for once was behind time. Enraged at the jeers of his companions, he hastened

into the kitchen, and seizing the first article at hand, avenged himself on his domestic."--History of the Holtes of Aston, Birmingham, 1854, p. 25.

Wagers to an immense amount were laid at the latter end of last century, as to the sex of that epicene notoriety, the Chevalier D'Eon. One of these became the subject of judicial decision. The cause came on, 1st July, 1777, in the Court of King's Bench, before Lord Mansfield and a special jury at Guildhall. It appeared that the plaintiff had paid the defendant one hundred guineas, for which the defendant had signed a policy of insurance to pay the plaintiff seven hundred guineas whenever he could prove that the Chevalier D'Eon was a female. After hearing the evidence, which was "too indelicate to be mentioned," Lord Mansfield, after expressing his abhorrence of the transaction, and a wish that it had been in his power, in concurrence with the jury, to make both parties lose, stated, that as the wager was laid, and wagers were not expressly prohibited by law, the question before them was, Who had won? His lordship farther observed that the indecency of the proceeding arose more from the unnecessary questions asked, than from the case itself; that the witnesses had declared that they perfectly knew the Chevalier to be a woman; that if she is not so they are certainly perjured; that there was no need of inquiring how, and by what method, they knew it; and finally, that he was of opinion that the jury must find a verdict for the plaintiff. The jury, without going out of court, after consulting about two minutes, gave a verdict for the plaintiff of seven hundred pounds and forty shillings. Besides this, the plaintiff, Mr. Hayes, recovered three thousand pounds on other policies, and it was asserted that immense sums depended on the decision in the suit.

Burnet, speaking of the Peace of Ryswick, says:—

The Military men in France did generally complain of the Peace as dishonourable and base: The Jacobites among us were the more confounded at the News of it, because the Court of France did, to the last minute, assure King

James, that they would never abandon his Interests: And his Queen sent over assurances to their Party here, that England would be left out of the Treaty, and put to maintain the War alone: Of which they were so confident, that they entered into deep Wagers upon it; a practice little known among us before the War, but it was carried on, in the progress of it, to a very extravagant degree; so that they were ruined in their fortunes, as well as sunk in their Expectations by the Peace.-Own Time, Bk. 6, 1697.

By an act of Parliament (stat. 7 Anne, cap. 17) all wagers laid upon a contingency relating to the war with France were declared to be void.

A PAPER OF TOBACCO.

Pipes. It is worthy of remark, that although the common clay pipe is entirely different in material and form from the original American pipe, it was used in nearly its present shape at the first introduction of tobacco, as though before approved for a similar use. Clay pipes, supposed to be of a date anterior to this period, have occasionally been found in the Irish bogs. An engraving of a dudheen, which was dug up at Brannockstown, county Kildare, sticking between the teeth of a human skull, will be found in the Anthologia Hibernica (vol. i. p. 352), together with a paper, which, on the authority of Herodotus (lib. i. sec. 36), Strabo (lib. vii. 296), Pomponius Mela (2), and Solinus (c. 15), would prove that the northern nations of Europe, long before the discovery of America, were acquainted with tobacco, or an herb of similar properties, and that they smoked it through small tubes. (See note to Croker's Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland.)

That the clay pipe was the original smoking apparatus in England is evident from the following lines in Skelton's Eleanor Rummin. After lamenting the knavery of that 'age compared with King Harry's time, he continues: