NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



43 



GEN. LA FAYETTE. 

 The foUnwiii": anecdotes and notices of La tay- 

 ettc;', we have collected from various papers. 



[Mass. Yeuinan. 



His love of Aine rial.— Very few Americans 

 h;ive visiteil France for the last forty yeiirs 

 without calling upon him. He is always ac- 

 cessible to them— his eye kindles whenever he 

 talk'* of America :— " VVhy," said an American 

 •rcniieinan. "can you not come to live among 



,is to l.iy your hones among a |ipo|ile, who 



owe you so mnch — and whose latest descendants 

 will venerate your ashes?" La Fayette point- 

 »d (0 his grandchildren around him— he made 

 no other reply. They were the ties which 

 hound liim to France. 



" You are now in America," said he to an in- 

 telligent \'irgininn, who was on a visit to his 

 hoii-p. " America ?"' — " Yes, this room is 

 what 1 call .Xmeric.')." His guest looked around 

 him, and heheld scattered every where the to- 

 kens of \m country — maps of the differennt 

 Stales — the portraits of our distinguished men; 

 of Washington, Franklin. Henry, &c. : Ameri- 

 can books — the Electrical machine with which 

 the great Franklin had made so many experi- 

 ments, and which he had given as a mark of re- 

 spect to this noble Frenchman. 



His Sword. — La Fayette preserves with the 

 utmost care the sword which was presented to 

 Jiira hy the American Congress. When the 

 allied troops were recently in the neighbour- 

 hood of Paris, fearful that it might be snatched 

 from his possession, he deposited it in the safe 

 keeping of Mr Jackson, the American Charge 

 des Affaires, in Paris. This sword bore upon 

 it, the emblems of our nation. Upon the de- 

 struction of the Bastile, the first key of this tre- 

 men<lous edifice wa= sent, at the instance of 

 La Fayette, a? a present to Washington. It 

 now hangs in the hall of Mount Vernon. The 

 second key was melted into this sivord, thus 

 uniting in the same object the memorials of the 

 struggles of two great countries, the one com- 

 mencing its Revolution, the other having 

 achieved it. 



His personal appearance. — La Fayette is now 

 about 68 years of age ; with a fresh and vigor- 

 ous constitution for one of his years — though it 

 was severely tried in the dungeon of Olmutz. — 

 He lost all his hair during his severe confine- 

 ment, and now wears a wig. 



His domestic character. — In his domestic char- 

 actf r, and in his style of living, the General re- 

 sembles one of the old patriarchs. 



His two daughters and his two sons and their 

 respective families, live with this illustrious 

 man, at his Castle of La Grange. A gentle- 

 man who spent a week at his house, a few 

 years since, says, they had thirteen children, 

 corresponding in number to that of the old 

 United States — and most of them marked, in 

 their names, with something American. His 

 two daughters are named Virginia and Caroli- 

 na. La Fayette is their head — their protector 

 — the being of all others on earth, endeared to 

 them by a thousand ties. He has only been 

 once married. At the age of nineteen, he left 

 the arms of his wife, and the sweets of home, 

 to fight for a people to whom he was not known, 

 and who had no claims upon him ; but he felt 



tor their wrongs, and he was determined, in op- 

 positi<in to the wishes of his friends, to battle 

 for liberty, in the new woilil, notwithstanding 

 the sliongosi adcction bound him to hi? wife. — 

 She shared his dungeon with him ; sacriliceil 

 her life, in fact, for her ufl'ectionale husband — 

 and to this <lay, he makes it a sacred and inva- 

 riable rule to abandon the pleasures of society 

 on the anniversary week of his wife's dissolu- 

 tion. '■• You must not go this week, to La 

 Grange, (said the American consul to his friend) 

 it is the week devoted to the memory of his 

 lamented wife." 



Whenever he walks into the fields, lie gen- 

 erally lakes some of his grandchildren with 

 him. He amuses himself with their pratlling, 

 joins in their little sports, and contributes to 

 their happiness. Such is the man whose name 

 fills the whole of Europe with his fame — the 

 man, who has contributed to establish the liber- 

 ties of the new world. 



Fram Griscom^s " Year in Europe.^'' 



BARCLAY'S BREWERY. 

 The director of this establishment, to whom 

 I was introduced by a letter from one of the 

 Barclays, put me in a way of seeing its various 

 parts, and communicated such information as 1 

 wished respecting its extent and operations. If 

 any private. concern in England, or in the world, 

 is entitled to the epithet of vaslness, this is one. 

 it covers about eight acres of ground, Rnd man- 

 ut'aclured last year 340,000 barrels of 36 gallons 

 each. The building which contains the vats, & 

 the \ats themselves, are enormous, The largest 

 of the latter contain each 4000 barrels. The 

 average number of vats is nearly one hundred. 

 A steam-engine, of twenty-two horse power, is 

 enijdoyed in driving the machinery, and about 

 two hundred men are employed in the various 

 works of I'lie establishment ; while it is supposed 

 that the number of persons, dependent upon it 

 without, in the sale and transportation of the 

 beer, is three or four thousand. The three 

 coppers in which the beer is boiled, hold each 

 150 barrels. 



Twenty-five gentlemen once dined in one of 

 them, after which fifty of the workmen got in 

 and regaled themselves. One hundred and nine- 

 ty pounds of beef-steaks were thus consumed in 

 one day, in this novel kind of dining room. The 

 tuns in which the beer ferments, hold 1400 bar- 

 rels each. The carbonic acid in one of (hem 

 stood about three and a half feet above the liq- 

 uor, and poured over the side in a continued 

 stream. A candle is instantly extinguished on 

 being placed near the outer edge of this receji- 

 tacle, and on holding one's face near it, a sharp 

 pungent sensation is felt in the mouth & fauces, 

 net unlike that produced by ardent spirits. An 

 immersion of a few moments would be sufficient 

 to occasion a suspension of voluntary motion. 



One hundred end sixty horses are kept on the 

 premises, for the purpose chiefly of transport- 

 ing the materials to and from different parts of 

 the city. A finer collection of animals employ- 

 ed in one concern, I imagine, is no where to be 

 seen. 



This is, upon the whole, I believe, the larg- 

 est brewery in London. It formerly belonged 

 to Thrale, the friend of Dr Johnson, who, as 



executor to the estate, sold the establishment, 

 to its present owners. One of the latter inform- 

 ed a friend of mine, that Iho Doctor, in treating 

 with them for Ihe purchase, remarked in his 

 characteristic manner ; "• Gentlemen, it is not 

 merely these boilers and these vats that 1 am 

 selling you, but the potentialily of acquiring 

 wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." 



WHITE-WASHING. 

 The practice of while-washing apartments 

 eminently conlribulos to the preservation of 

 health ; hence we would recommend the pro- 

 prietors of cottages, to enjoin Iheir tenants reg- 

 ularly to perform this operation, at least once 

 annually. In countries abounding with lime, 

 the expense will be trifling; and, even though 

 the article should be purchased, the whole ccst 

 will not exceed one shilling, it ought to be re- 

 marked, however, that /lo! or quick-lime is pref- 

 erable to any other, and must be employed as 

 soon as possible after it is slacked; for, by at- 

 tending to this circumstance, its etTects, in des- 

 troying vermin, and removing infection, will be 

 considerably increased. — Dameslic Encyclopedia. 



CURE FOR THE SCROFULA. 

 A young man in the neighbourhood of Brech- 

 in, who was many years afflicted in his bead 

 with the scrofula, or king's evil, to remove 

 which, almost the whole materia medica had 

 been tried without any success, was last year 

 advised to have his sores bathed with common 

 spring water three times a day, or oftener, if 

 they got dry, and always bind them up with lin- 

 en dipped in the same. By this simple applica- 

 tion, which has continued about three months, 

 he has obtained at present, and apparently a 

 radical cure ; the hard schirrous tumours are 

 dissolved, and the skin has nearly gained its nat- 

 ural colour. 



To give new rumthe flavour of old spirits. — An 

 ingenious friend assures me, from his own expe- 

 rience, that if new rum be exposed for a night 

 to a severe frost, and then removed to a heated 

 room, and thus alternately for a week or two, it 

 will in that short time have acquired a flavour 

 equal to fine old spirits. — Parke''s ChemH Essays. 



To destroy Mice. — Mr. Walton, having ob- 

 served in your useful paper, something like a 

 year ago, a recommendation to Farmers to 

 gather wild mint, and strew it amongst their 

 grain as they place it in the barn, I observed 

 Ihc caution, and feel authorized to say, that I 

 found great benefit from the experiment. As 

 the season is now arrived, when we are gather- 

 ing our hsrd-earned crops, let us take a little 

 pains to preserve them from those devouring 

 vermin, the mice. A Farmer. 



Cure for Corns. — Mr Cooper, in his Dictiona- 

 ry of Surgery, gives the following receipt as in- 

 fallible for the cure of Corns : — Take 2 ounces 

 of gum ammoniac, 2 ounces of yellow wax, six 

 drachms of verdigris ; melt them together, and 

 spread the composition on a piece of sol't leath- 

 er or linen ; cut away as much of the corn as 

 you can with a knife, before you apply the 

 plaisler, which must be renewed in a forlnight, 

 if the corn is not by that time gone. 



