monly just, that what he thought, he thought rightly, and that his remarks were recommended by coolness and candour. He lived in intimacy, however, with distinguished persons, and his common-place book was enriched with many entries of uncommon interAs Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, and as the intimate friend of Pope, Lowth, Young, Warton, &c. he must have been a man both of talent and worth. He died in 1768, in the 70th year of his age. est. We copy, without regard to order, from the volume before us, what appears to be the most striking, and least, if at all known passages. Like the work itself, they may form an amusing Cento. 'Each of the four columns that support the dome of St. Peter's at Rome, takes up as much ground as a little chapel and convent, in which one of the architects employed in that work lived: and yet they do not appear big to the eye, because every thing is great about them. They were designed by Michael Angelo, and he insisted earnestly that nothing should be added or altered in his design. Bernini afterwards undertook to make a staircase within each of these columus; just as they had hollowed and prepared the inside of one of them, the whole building gave a crash; (and the Italian tradition says it was as loud as thunder). They put up the stairs in that, but would not at tempt any more of them.-R. nal signifies a token; and in the Hebrew, to set a token upon any thing,and to preserve it, are equivalent expressions.-Dr. L. The same word in Hebrew signifies blessing and cursing; as they say in Italian: " tu è benedetto;" you are a cursed rascal.-Where we make Job's wife advise him to curse God and die ; it should be, Bless God and die, bless him for the good you have hitherto received; and die, to avoid the evils that are now come upon you.—Dr. L. To call by their names was an expression among the Hebrews, equivalent to the being master. or having dominion over any thing. Thus God is said to call the stars by their names ; and Adam to have given names to all animals.-Dr. L. No one will ever shine in conversation, who thinks of saying fine things: to please, one must say many things indifferent,and many very bad.—Dr.L. This large statue of Pompey,was probably the very same, at the feet of which Cæsar fell; for it was found on the very spot where the senate was held, on the fatal Ides of March. They discovered it in clearing away the ground to make some cellars, for a house that now stands there. The greatest part of the statue lay under that house, but the head of it reached under the ground belonging to their next neighbours. This occasioned a dispute between the two proprietors, which was at last decided by Cardinal Spada. He ordered There is scarce a genteel family at the head to be broken off, and given to Avignon but has the pictures of Pe- the latter; and the body to the former : trarch and Laura in their houses. A you may now see the mark where they lady of that country, who piques herself were joined again. This decision was much on being descended from Laura, not made out of a whim, but very prutook it very ill of Mr. R. that he should dentially. From the first, that cardinal say, "Petrarch's love for Laura was had a great desire to get the statue into only Platonic." Ramsay was obliged his own possession, and by this means, to recant the heresy; and write a fable he got it much cheaper than he could against Platonic love.-R. otherwise have done: for after this division of it, the whole cost him but five hundred crowns. Dr. Swift lies a-bed till eleven o'clock, and thinks of wit for the day. Dr. Lockier. Where we translate it, "the Lord has set his mark upon Cain," the origi There was originally a well for a staircase, and Bernimi only put up stairs in it.-Mr. L. from one of the workmen at St. Peter's in 1751. I ATHENEUM VOL. 7. In the coffee-house yesterday I received a letter, in which there was one word which consisted of but one syllable of but one letter, and yet the fellow had contrived to have three fake spellings in it.-Dr. L. Mareschal Turenne was not only one of the greatest generals, but one of the best-natured men too, that ever was in the world.-Among several other little domestic examples he gave the following. The general used to have a new pair of stockings every week; his gentleman, whose fee the old ones were, had taken them away in the evening, and had forgot to put any new ones in their place. The next morning the Marshal was to ride out to reconnoitre the enemy, and rose earlier than usual. The servant whose business it was to dress him, was in a great deal of confusion at not finding any stockings. "It's very odd," says the Marshal, "that I should be allowed no stockings; but 'tis very lucky that I am obliged to ride out! Here, give me my boots, they'll do as well, nobody will see whether I have any on or not."-R. There are ten thousand six hundred pieces of ancient sculpture of one sort or other now in Rome (relievos, statues and busts). And six thousand three hundred antient columns of marble. What multitudes of the latter sort have been sawed up for tables, or wainscoating chapels, or mixed up with walls, and otherwise destroyed! And what multitudes may there yet lie undiscovered under ground! When we think of this altogether, it may give us some faint idea of the vast magnificence of Rome in all its glory.-F. I wonder how they came not to find out printing sooner? (We had been just speaking of the manner in which the emperors of Rome impressed their names with seals or stamps on their grants and letters.) This method was so common that their very shepherds impressed theirs on their sheep and cattle. It was in fact a sort of printing, and it would have been as easy to impress a whole line as two words, and a page as a whole line. Had they gone but these two easy steps farther, it would have been just what the Chinese printing is now. Stosch. At the Count of Toulouse's gallery, the officer said, " My lord is the best of masters; but, alas he grows very old, and, I fear, can't last long; I would with all my heart, give ten years out of my own life to prolong his, if it could be done."-Upon seeing us affected by what he had said; be added: "that this was no great merit in him; that most of his fellow servants would be willing to do the same; that the goodness of their master to them, and the greatness of their affection for him, was so remarkable and so well known, that a friend of the Count's once said to him: I don't know what it is you do to charm all the people about you; but though you have two hundred servants, I believe there is scarce any one of them that would not die to save your life." That may be, (replied the Count), but I would not have any one of them die, to save it.' - There was a god called Pennus, much worshipped, on the great St. Bernard, some remains of his temple, and I think of his statue, are still to be seen there.-Count Richa. [Pen signified high or chief. Hence the Alpes Pennine and the Apennines in Italy. And with us the Pen ap pen, near High Wycomb, in Buckinghamshire: the old Pennocrusium, or Penkridge in Staffordshire: Pendennis in Cornwall: Penmaenmawr, and many others in North Wales.-Spence. If There was a Lord Russell who, by living too luxuriously, had quite spoiled his constitution. He did not love sport, but used to go out with his dogs every day, only to hunt for an appetite. he felt any thing of that, he would cry out, "Oh, I have found it!" turn short round, and ride home again, though they were in the midst of a fine chace.-It was this Lord, who, when he met a beggar, and was entreated by him to give him something, because he was almost famished with hunger, called him "a happy dog!" and envied him too much to relieve.-Pope. er in that vision, and finds that it is exactly as he had been told,recovers the estate mentioned,and enjoys it at this day. Sir Isaac Newton's house at Coldsworth is a handsome structure.-His Sir Isaac Newton, though he scarce ever spoke ill of any man, could hardly avoid showing his contempt for virtuoso collectors and antiquarians.-Speak- study boarded round, and all jutting ing of Lord Pembroke once, he said, "let him bave but a stone doll and he is satisfied. I can't imagine the utility of such studies: all their pursuits are below nature."-Fr. Chute. "How could the Duke of York make my mother a papist?" said the Princess Mary to Dr. Burnet." The Duke caught a man a-bed with her, (said the Doctor,) and then had power to make her do any thing."-The Prince, who sat by the fire, said, "Pray, madam, ask the Doctor a few more questions."-Dean of Winton. Mr. Pope said one day to Mr. Saville: "If I was to begin the world again, and knew just what I do now, I would never write a verse.' Reynolds of Exeter, when at Eton, dreamed that his father was dead, and that he was walking in the meadows very melancholy; when a strange woman came up to him, who told him that she was his mother, who died soon after he was born. She said to him, "Yes, your father is dead, and your mother-in-law has had too much influence over bim: he has left all his property to the younger sons: but there is an estate which he had no right to leave away from you: the writings are in Mr. 's hands, go to him, and you may recover it."-Reynolds having no news from home of this kind, soon forgot his dream. About a year after, he goes down to his friends, and finds his father very well: but he had been, at the very time of Reynolds's dream, extremely ill, and recovered beyond expectation. The friends, to whom he related his dream, when he described to them the person of the woman who appeared to him, said, they who had been well acquainted with her, could not have described his mother's person more exactly. About a year after, his father fell ill again, died, and left all to his younger children.Upon this Reynolds's dream came again into his mind: He goes to the gentleman named to him by his moth out. We were in the room where he was born. Both of as melancholy and dismal an air as ever I saw. Mr. Percival, his tenant, who still lives there, says he was a man of very few words; that he would sometimes be silent and . thoughtful for above a quarter of an hour together, and look all the while almost as if he was saying his prayers: but that when he did speak, it was always very much to the purpose.--May 14, 1755.-Spence. The Duchess of Portsmouth, when she was in England in 1699, told Lord Chancellor Cowper, that Charles II. was poisoned at her house, by one of her footmen, in a dish of chocolate. Mr.Pope was withSirGodfrey Kneller one day, when his nephew,a Guinea trader came in. "Nephew, (said Sir Godfrey) you have the honour of seeing the two greatest men in the world."" [ don't know how great you may be(said the Guineaman), but I don't like your looks: I have often bought a man better than both of you together,all muscle and bones, for ten guineas."-Dr. W. Ambrose Philips was a neat dresser, and very vain. In a conversation between him, Congreve, Swift, and others, the discourse ran a good while on Julius Cæsar. After many things had been said to the purpose, Ambrose asked what sort of person they supposed Julius Cæsar was? He was answered, that from medals, &c., it appeared that he was a small man, and thin-faced.— 66 Now, for my part," said Ambrose, "I should take him to have been of a lean make, pale complexion, extremely neat in his dress; and five feet seven inches high: an exact description of Philips himself. Swift, who understood good breeding perfectly well, and would not interrupt any body while speaking, let him go on, and when he had quite done, said; "And I, Mr. Philips, should take him to have been a plump man, just five feet five inches high: not very neatly dressed, in a black gown with pudding-sleeves."-Dr. Young. POISONING OF FOOD, &c. From the Literary Gazette. A TREATISE ON ADULTERATIONS OF FOOD, AND CULINARY POISONS; EXHIBITING THE FRAUDULENT SOPHISTICATIONS OF BREAD, BEER, WINE, SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS, TEA, COFFEE, CHEESE, PEPPER, MUSTARD, &c. &c. &c. BY FREDERICK ACCUM. London 1820. WE BREAD. E have already given a taste of this subject, but the adulteration of so important a necessary, demands further notice. This is one of the sophistications of the articles of food most commonly practised in this metropolis, where the goodness of bread is estimated entirely by its whiteness. It is therefore usual to add a certain quantity of alum to the dough; this improves the look of the bread very much, and renders it whiter and firmer. Good, white, and porous bread, may certainly be manufactured from good wheaten flour alone; but to produce the degree of whiteness rendered indispensable by the caprice of the consumers in London, it is necessary (unless the very best flour is employed), that the dough should be bleached; and no substance has hitherto been found to answer this purpose better than alum. Without this salt it is impossible to make bread, from the kind of flour usually employed by the London bakers, so white, as that which is commonly sold in the metropolis. The best flour is mostly used by the biscuit bakers and pastry-cooks, and the inferior sorts in the making of bread. The bakers' flour is very often made of the worst kinds of damaged foreign wheat, and other cereal grains mixed with them in grinding the wheat into flower. In this capital, no fewer than six distinct kinds of wheaten flour are brought into market. They are called fine flour, seconds, middlings, fine middlings, coarse middlings, and twenty-penny flour. Common garden beans, and peas, are also frequently ground up among the London bread flour. * * * * From experiments, (continues the author, after describing the process of baking at length) in which I have been employed, with the assistance of skilful bakers, I am authorised to state, that without the addition of alum, it does not appear possible to make white, light, and porous bread, such as is used in this metropolis, unless the flour be of the very best quality. With Another substance employed by fraudulent bakers, is subcarbonate of ammonia. this salt, they realise the important consideration of producing light and porous bread, from spoiled, or what is technically called sour flour. This salt, which becomes wholly converted into a gaseous state during the operation of baking, causes the dough to swell up into air bubbles, which carry before them the stiff-dough, and thus it renders the dough porous; the salt itself is at the same time, totally volatilised during the operation of baking. Thus not a vestige of carbonate of ammonia remains in the bread. This salt is also largely employed by the biscuit and ginger-bread bakers. Potatoes are likewise largely, and perhaps The constantly, used by fraudulent bakers, as a cheap ingredient, to enhance their profit. The potatoes being boiled, are triturated, passed through a sieve, and incorporated with the dough by kneading. This adulteration does not materially injure the bread. four renders the addition of potatoes advanbakers assert, that the bad quality of the tageous as well to the baker as to the purthe manufacture of bread, it would be impossible to carry on the trade of a baker. taken for a potatoe loaf, as for a loaf of genBut the grievance is, that the same price is uine bread, though it must cost the baker less. chaser, and that without this adm xture in three ounces of alum, six pounds of salt, one I have witnessed, that five bushels of flour, bushel of potatoes boiled into a stiff paste, and three quarts of yeast, with the requisite quantity of water, produce a white, light, and highly palatable bread. Such are the artifices practised in the preparation of bread. + of those commodities, which are the objects WINE. It is sufficiently obvious, that few of commerce, are adulterated to a greater extent than wine. All persons moderately conversant with the subject, are aware, that a portion of alum is added to young and meatheir colour; that Brazil wood, or the husks gre red wines, for the purpose of brightening of elderberries and bilberries, are employed of a pale, faint colour; that gypsum is used to impart a deep rich purple tint to red Port to render cloudy whiteness transparent; that an additional astringency is imparted to immature red wines by means of oak wood saw-dust*, and the husks of filberts; and that a mixture of spoiled foreign and home-made wines is converted into the wretched compound frequently sold in the town by the name of genuine old Port. Various expedients are resorted to for the purpose of communicating particular flavours Thus a nutty flavour is to insipid wines. produced by bitter almonds; factitious Port wine is flavoured with a tincture drawn from the seeds of raisins; and the ingredients employed to form the bouquet of high-flavoured wines, are sweet-brier, oris-root, clary, cherry laurel water, and elder-flowers. The flavouring ingredients used by manufacturers, may all be purchased by those teries of the trade; and even a manuscript dealers in wine who are initiated in the mys + There are instances of convictions on record, of bakers having used gypsum, chalk, and pipe clay, in the manufacture of bread. § Dried bilberries are imported from Germany, under the fallacious name of berry-dye. * Sawdust for this purpose is chiefly supplied by the ship-builders, and forms a regular article of com merce of the brewers' druggist. VOL.7.] Adulterations of the Necessaries of Life- Genuine Old Port.' 69 receipt book for preparing them, and the whole mystery of managing all sorts of wines, may be obtained on payments of a considerable fee. The sophistications of wine with substances not absolutely noxious to health, is carried to an enormous extent in this metropolis. Many thousand pipes of spoiled cyder are annually brought hither from the country, for the purpose of being converted into factitious Port wine. The art of manufacturing spurious wine is a regular trade of great extent in this metropolis. + * The particular and separate department in this factitious wine trade, called crusting, consists in lining the interior surface of empty wine bottles, in part, with a red crust of super-tartrate of potash, by suffering a saturated hot solution of this salt, coloured with a decoction of Brazil-wood, to crystalize within them; and after this simulation of maturity is perfected, they are filled with the compound called Port wine. Other artisans are regularly employed in staining the lower extremities of bottle-corks with a fine red colour, to appear, on being drawn, as if they had been long in contact with the wine. The preparation of an astringent extract, to produce, from spoiled home-made and foreign wines, a "genuine old Port" by mere admixture; or to impart to a weak wine a rough austere taste, a fine colour, and a peculiar flavour; forms one branch of the business of particular wine coopers: while the mellowing and restoring of spoiled white wines, is the sole occupation of men who are called refiners of wine. white wines. If, on the contrary, the busks are allowed to remain in the must while the fermentation is going on, the alcohol dissolves the colouring matter of the husks and the wine is coloured: such are called red wines. Hence white wines are often prepared from red grapes, the liquor being drawn off before it has acquired the red colour; for the skin of the grape only gives the colour. All wines (besides brandy, or alcohol,) contain also a free acid; hence they turn blue tincture of cabbage, red. The acid found in the greatest abundance in grape wines, is tartaric acid. Every wine contains likewise a portion of supertartrate of potash, and extractive matter, derived from the juice of the grape. These substances depos it slowly in the vessel in which they are kept. To this is owing the improvement of wine from age. Those wines which effervesce or froth, when poured into a glass, contain carbonic acid, to which their briskness is owing. The peculiar flavour and odour of different kinds of wines probably depend upon the presence of a volatile oil, so small in quantity that it cannot be separated. TEA. This substance has been so fully before the public of late, that we shall not enter into Mr. Accum's details, founded on the examination of Twenty-seven samples of imitation leaves !!! "All the samples of spurious green tea, he tells us, (nineteen in number) which I have examined, were coloured with carbonate of copper (a poisonous substance), and not by means of verdigrise, or copperas.* COFFEE---is counterfeited to an equal ex Casks are crusted as well as bottles; tent, principally by means of pigeon's beans but The most dangerous adulteration of wine is by some preparations of lead which possess the property of stopping the progress of ascescence of wine, and also of rendering white wines, when muddy, transparent. have good reason to state that lead is certainly employed for this purpose. The effect is very rapid; and there appears to be no other method known, of rapidly recovering ropy wines. Wine merchants persuade themselves that the minute quantity of lead employed for that purpose is perfectly harmless, and that no atom of lead remains in the wine. Chemical analysis proves the contrary; and the practice of clarifying spoiled white wines by means of lead, must be pronounced as highly deleterious. Lead, in whatever state it be taken into the stomach, occasions terrible diseases; and wine, adulterated with the minutest quantity of it, becomes a slow poison. The merchant or dealer who practises this dangerous sophistication adds the crime of murder to that of fraud, and deliberately scatters the seeds of disease and death among those consumers who contribute to his emolument. Perhaps the following extract on this subject will convey information to the majority of our readers, though unconnected with the poisoning practice. When the must is separated from the husk of the red grape before it is fermented, the wine bas little or no colour: these are called and peas. Respecting SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS there are some interesting facts. Besides the tricks played on the subject of Proof-- "The mode of judging by the taste of spirituous liquors is deceitful. A false strength is given to a weak liquor, by infus ing in it acrid vegetable substances, or by adding to it a tincture of grains of paradise and Guinea pepper. These substances impart to weak brandy or rum, an extremely hot and pungent taste. "Brandy and rum is also frequently sophisticated with British molasses, or sugarspirit, coloured with burnt sugar. "The flavour which characterises French brandy, and which is owing to a small portion of a peculiar essential oil contained ia it, is imitated by distilling British molasses spirit over wine lees;+ but the spirit, prior to being distilled over wine lees, is previously deprived, in part, of its peculiar disagreeble flavour, by rectification over fresh-burnt charcoal and quick lime. Other brandy merchants employ a spirit obtained from raisin wine, which is suffered to pass into au incipient ascescency. The spirit thus procured partakes strongly of the flavour which is characteristic of foreign brandy. of raisin stones, are likewise used to impart. "Oak saw-dust, and a spirituous tincture Mr. Twining, an eminent tea merchant, asserts, that the leaves of spurious tea are boiled in a copper, with copperas and sheep's dung. + Wine lees are imported in this country for that purpose: they pay the same duty as foreign wines.. |