bring forward May flowers"—that "little rain
in January makes the peasant rich"—with
other of the common sayings of France respecting
times, signs, and seasons—curious enough,
no doubt, to strangers, but no more scientifically
valuable than our own doggerels about "rainbows
in the morning being the shepherd's warning;"
or "rainbows at noon sending him home
soon;" or "rainbows at night being the
shepherd's delight?" If this is my French friend's
idea of prophecy, the seer has an easy berth of
it, and will never be stoned for predicting falsely.

There is another thing which I would thank
any one to explain to me, and that is, why do
all almanacs patronise quack medicines? All
sorts of wretched nostrums are recommended
—at the top of the page, at the foot of the page,
and in the middle of the page, at the beginning
and the end, and wherever there is a bit of
"fat" to be filled in, or "printer wants more
copy" written on the proof. What is the
mysterious link between almanacs and
pillboxes? I do not know, but that there is
a link is evident to the meanest understanding.
Then one almanac gives me sage
advice; another teaches me how to wash, and
cook, clean marble, and scour out pans; all give
the ages of the Royal Family and their birthdays
twice repeated; and the eclipses of the coming
year, which are very interesting to know of—only
one, of the moon, pretending to be visible in
England. Wages tables, rates of interest, and
probate duties, all the fairs in the country, the
Golden Number, and when the four seasons
begin, a list of bankers, and how to manage
with foreign bills of exchange, generally occur
as the working staple of all alike. Poor
Richard's Penny Almanack has a very
complicated piece of arithmetical machinery on the
off page, which I venture to believe but few
of Poor Richard's horny-fisted purchasers ever
attempt to use. But then there are heaps of
moral maxims spread about, and they are
pleasanter to read than stupid recommendations of
bad quack medicines. Very funny are some of
the "receipts" to be found in the commoner
kind of almanacs; as this for rheumatism in
the face or gums: "Bake a kidney potato till
it is quite soft, then put it in a flannel bag, or
in the foot of a worsted stocking (let us hope a
clean one), and press it flat: put it to the face
as hot as possible on going to bed." Why a
kidney potato? Why not a fluke, a red, a
William, or a Regent, a champion, or a Jersey blue?
That a hot poultice should cure face-ache is very
likely, but why it should be a poultice of baked
kidney potato I own I do not understand. My
guides do not always agree, even in their oddities.
One gives me a recipe, say for warts: A
strong solution of common washing soda,
according to my friend on the right; my friend
on the left counsels lunar caustic. What would
either of them say if I told them that I had
actually charmed away my little boy's wart with
a notched stick of elder, and a few nonsense
verses, gravely repeated in the conjuror's
underbreath? Whether the charm lay in the elder,
the verses, or my little boy's innocent faith, I
do not know. I speak only of the fact, quite as
positively as my two friends here of their soda
and lunar caustic.

Another friend teaches me that green walnuts
pickled with sugar are excellent substitutes for
rhubarb and castor-oil; another, that love which
has nothing but beauty to live on is short-lived
and subject to shivering fits; another tells me,
what I certainly have a little difficulty in
believing, that Punch and Judy is the relic of an
ancient mystery—"Pontius cum Judæis." It may
be so: I am no antiquary: but, I mingle a
teaspoonful of salt with the information, and swallow
cautiously. Almost all tell me that I must
pay a penny for a letter weighing less than half
an ounce, and twopence for one weighing up to an
ounce; that my child must be registered within
six weeks after it is born, and vaccinated within
three months. I also learn for the hundredth
time when dividends are payable at the bank;
and I have a universal reckoning table, by which
I have never yet been able to calculate my
butcher's book into anything like accordance with
the received rules of arithmetic. Some give
me a table of the kings and queens since the
conquest, generally omitting all mention of the
Commonwealth, or that we ever had so grand a
king as plain Oliver Cromwell, Protector of the
honour and well-being of the realm. One adds to
his stock of information the legal form of a will,
which I hope no reader will be rash enough to
copy: most of them deal largely in advertisements
—generally of the quack kind when even
purely commercial: most, too, have woodcuts
scattered through, not always of the highest
style of art; and all of the ordinary kind are
very cheap, which is a recommendation not to
be despised;— is, indeed, the greatest
recommendation of all.

For, though it is very well to laugh at their
little harmless peculiarities and catchpenny
vulgarisms, yet it is a marvellous thing when we
think of it, how we are able to have such a mass
of information, legibly printed, and, for the most
part, scientifically correct, at such a charge as a
penny. Although the information is of a
stereotyped character which everyone knows and
everyone can calculate, yet does it not show the
wonderful spread and universality of our
knowledge, and the wider sweep of that great
fertilising river of civilisation, when things which
only the wisest in Egypt knew, are now brought
down to the humblest peasant whose little lassie
goes to school? What ages of progressive
science are embodied in those little sheets since
the time when the phases of the moon or
Measurer were noted down on notched sticks, or
daubed in grotesque characters on the living
rock—when the tides were mythic mysteries, and
the course of the planets the conscious going of
gods through the sky; when all unusual natural
phenomena were direct interferences of one or
other of the many divinities always at work to
alter or destroy, and not a grass blade grew by
law, or a morning dawned without the waking
of a god! Truly, the least learned among us