120 Notes for the Month. [Auo. 



good one. The size of the measures of ginger beer, soda water, &c. 

 trifling as the original cost of these compositions must be has also been 

 silently lowered by the dealers within the last year. And a correspondent 

 of the Times takes notice with great truth of another little piece of 

 jugglery even the baskets called " pottles," which the gardeners sell 

 their fruit in, have been considerably reduced in capacity during the 

 present summer. There is a semblance (more indeed than a reality) of 

 petty fraud about this system, which is not pleasant. The style of France 

 has more shew of fairness and liberality. Whatever the traveller pays for, 

 he may pay highly for it, but he receives it in proportion. The waiter 

 who pours out your fosse de cajfe fills the saucer half full, as well as the 

 cup: and the glass of liqueur is not merely brimmed to overflowing, but 

 a certain quantity is always, and almost ostentatiously, spilled upon the 

 plate to waste. But the guilt of " short measure," we regret to say, has 

 extended itself in England, even beyond the traders. We have seen 

 Champagne glasses of late and that in the houses of respectable persons 

 that were a shame to be drank out of! That's base! and shews a most 

 pitiful economy in the host that uses it. 



An unlucky Begtnnmg.~ j A. steam carriage upon a " new construction," 

 which has been long in preparation by two engineers, Messrs. Burstall and 

 Hill, was considered a few days since entirely completed, and brought 

 out (to destroy the " occupation" of hackney coach horses for ever), by 

 way of experiment, opposite New Bedlam, in the Westminster Road. 

 Unluckily, almost at the very moment that it was brought into the street, 

 it blew up ; tossed a boy who was riding it (the only passenger) into the 

 air ; wounded the engineer in the thigh ; and slightly scalded an immense 

 crowd of persons who, probably, having nothing better to do, were 

 assembled to look at it. The name of Burstall seems almost ominous 

 for a manufacturer of steam boilers : but the newspaper that notices this 

 accident, adds that the projectors are " still sanguine of success." 



A party of liberal and wealthy individuals have set on foot a subscrip- 

 tion for the relief of Mr. Haydon, the painter, who among other attributes 

 of genius, unfortunately possesses that of being very much too careless and 

 inattentive to his personal and pecuniary affairs. We have never agreed 

 with Mr. Haydon that he has been an ill-used man, because the public 

 did not buy his pictures ; because we thought that the same remedy was 

 open to him which belongs to other people if the public did not like the 

 ware which he produced, it was his business if he wanted the money 

 of the public to produce some article which it should like. There has 

 been a custom, however, and an honourable and a humane one, among 

 those who can afford to themselves the luxury of benevolence, to look 

 with an eye of excuse upon the eccentricities of talent; and Mr. Haydon 

 is confined in a prison, with a numerous and helpless family dependent 

 upon him for support. 



" Doing'' the Mosquitoes. Mr. Cunningham, in his " letters from 

 New South Wales," says 



" The South-Sea islanders clear their cabins of mosquitoes at night in a very 

 simple way. They dim the light of their lamp by holding a calabash over it, and 

 walk two or three times slowly round the room with it in their hand. The mos- 

 quitoes collect quickly about the light, when the bearer thereof slips gently out of 

 doors, puffs out the lamp, and jumps back into the apartment, shutting quickly 

 the door after him, and leaving thus all the troublesome guests on the outside."' 



