Estimating the population of London and its environs at 1,200,000, its
proportion of paupers would amount to 100,000!

* * * * *

SCOTCH LIVING.

Roast meat was formerly seldom seen among farmers in Scotland; and is
even now rare, compared with its use among the same class in England.
Less than half a century ago, a _mart_ was regularly bought or fattened
by the most respectable farmers, and even by many citizens. This was a
cow or ox killed and salted at Martinmas for winter provision; a custom
which, though not uncommon in England, perhaps, one hundred years ago,
has certainly not been followed, except in remote and sequestered
districts, or by very old-fashioned farmers within that period.

* * * * *

Falstaff's "Buck-Basket" has puzzled the commentators; but Dr. Jamieson
thus explains it:--_Bouk_ is the Scotch word for a lye used to steep
foul linen in, before it is washed in water; the buckbasket, therefore,
is the basket employed to carry clothes, after they have been bouked, to
the washing-place.

* * * * *

PLEASURES OF EGYPT.

Sweet are the songs of Egypt on paper. Who is not ravished with gums,
balms, dates, figs, pomegranates, circassia, and sycamores, without
recollecting that amidst these are dust, hot and fainting winds, bugs,
mosquitos, spiders, flies, leprosy, fevers, and almost universal
blindness.--_Ledyard's Travels._--The same writer also says the people
are poorly clad, the youths naked, and that they rank infinitely below
any savages he ever saw.

* * * * *

There cannot be a more ill-boding sign to a nation, than when the
people, to avoid hardships at home, are forced by heaps to forsake their
native country.--_Milton._

* * * * *

TOBACCO.

As the devil is a deceiver, and hath the knowledge of the virtue of
herbs, so he did show the virtue of this herb, that by the means thereof
they might see their imaginations and visions that he hath represented
unto them.

* * * * *

WHISKY.

From official documents it appears that long previous to 1690, there had
been a distillery of _aqua vitae_, or whisky, on the lands of Farintosh,
belonging to Mr. Forbes, of Culloden.

* * * * *

TRAVELLING INCENTIVES.

If there be a sudden accession of fortune, the earliest use of