The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 329, August 30, 1828Various
History
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 329, August 30, 1828
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
_Phys._--In Austria, the art of carrying and keeping fish is better
understood than in England. Every inn has a box containing grayling, trout,
carp, or char, into which water from a spring runs; and no one thinks of
carrying or sending _dead_ fish for a dinner. A fish-barrel full of cool
water, which is replenished at every fresh source amongst these mountains,
is carried on the shoulders of the fisherman. And the fish, when confined
in wells, are fed with bullock's liver, cut into fine pieces, so that they
are often in better season in the tank or stew than when they were taken.
I have seen trout, grayling, and char even, feed voraciously, and take
their food almost from the hand. These methods of carrying and preserving
fish have, I believe, been adopted from the monastic establishments. At
Admondt, in Styria, attached to the magnificent monastery of that name,
are abundant ponds and reservoirs for every species of fresh water fish;
and the char, grayling, and trout are preserved in different waters--
covered, enclosed, and under lock and key.
* * * * *
SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.
* * * * *
PAROCHIAL HISTORIES.
We wonder why clergymen do not oftener write accounts of their parishes;
not mere statistical accounts, though these are most valuable, as witness
the contributions of the Scottish Clergy to the truly patriotic Sir John
Sinclair's work; but accounts comprehending every thing interesting to all
human beings, whatever be their political or religious creed. A
description of a church that has principally ceased to exist, is in
general very, very, very dry; inscriptions on tombstones, without comment,
or moral, are hard reading; an old pan dug up among rubbish proves a sore
affliction in the hands of the antiquary, and twenty pages quarto, with
plates, about a rusty spur without a rowel, is, in our humble opinion, an
abuse of the art of printing. But how easy--how pleasant, to mix up
together all sorts of information in due proportions into one whole, in
the shape of an octavo--epitomizing every kind of history belonging to the
parish, from peer's palace to peasant's hut! What are clergymen
perpetually about? Not always preaching and praying; or marrying,
christening, and burying people. They ought to tell us all about it; to
moralize, to poetize, to philosophize; to paint the manners living as they
rise, or dead as they fall; to take Time by the forelock, and measure the
marks of his footsteps; to show us the smoke curling up from embowered
chimneys; or, since woods must go down, to record the conquests of the
biting axe; to celebrate the raising of every considerable roof-tree, to
lament all dilapidations and crumbling away of ivied walls; to inform us
how many fathoms deep is the lake with its abbeyed island--why the pool
below the aged bridge gets shallower and shallower every year, so that it
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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