General Durando. Thanks to his com- Sublime Porte. Thence Djemil Bey was pliant and moderate temper, the perils of called to occupy the position of second the situation were avoided, and the crisis secretary to the Sultan. This post of passed over without any fresh disagree- great confidence was the stepping-stone ment. This delicate task accomplished, to the Paris embassy. M. de Villa Marina returned to take up his post at Paris, where he acquired great credit during the sitting of the first Congress. We have full belief that he will watch the interests of his country with equal jealousy, now that he is intrusted with a more independent position, and deprived of the able assistance of Count Cavour.

Various rumors have been spread relative to the minister whom the Porte would honor with the flattering post of envoy to the second Congress. For a time it was supposed that Aali Pacha would return, but the latest telegraphic dispatches have decided the question in favor of MEHEMET DJEMIL BEY, the present Turkish envoy to Paris. He is the son of Reschid Pacha, and has accompanied that distinguished statesman on his numerous European missions. We should, therefore, not feel any surprise at finding that Djemil Bey grew conversant at an early date with that European civilization which has so much influence at present on the destiny of Turkey. He was attached to the embassy of Reschid Pacha in 1841, when that diplomatist came, for the second time, to Paris as ambassador. In 1845, when Reschid was appointed Grand Vizier, he placed his son in the office of Foreign Affairs of the

Mehemet Djemil Bey is scarcely thirty years of age. He combines distinguished manners with great affability of character. The residence he has enjoyed at the various courts of Europe has inspired him with a marked sympathy for European manners and customs.

Having thus briefly sketched the past career of the diplomatists who will so speedily assemble and do their best to check once for all the pretentious demands of Russia, let us wish them success in their task, and trust that the festivities of Christmas may have their peculiar effect. And even supposing that Russia prove obstinate at first, let them not forget that the Russian Christmas is carried over into our new year, and that a few days more or less are of little importance if these questions, apparently so trival, are prevented from embroiling the future peace of Europe. The last Christmas season was passed in England with despondency, for none could say whether the war might not be protracted; and as for the residence in the Crimea, we did not pass that on a bed of roses. Let us, therefore, join in one hearty wish, that the efforts of the diplomatists may meet with the anticipated success, and that we have heard for the last time the ominous name of Bolgrad.

MR. BESSEMER'S INVENTION.-We had the satisfaction of witnessing yesterday, among a crowd of the scientific and the curious, one of this ingenious inventor's experiments on the manufacture of malleable iron. From the tapping of the blast furnace to the production of an ingot of the malleable metal, weighing about a quarter of a ton, half an hour only transpired; whereas, by the old process the same operation would have taken six hours, producing an inferior article, with a large expenditure of fuel. The experiment is highly imposing, and, considered in the mere light of a pyrotechnic exhibition, well worth seeing. The heat produced in the molten mass by the combustion of the carbon chemically combined in

the cast iron is immense, and is accompanied by the discharge of a coruscation of sparks composed of carbonic acid gas along with slag. And towards the termination of the process, a mass of all the impurities of the iron is vomited from the furnace in the shape of slag. We may add that before the performance of the experiment, Mr. Bessemer delivered a lecture, explaining the rationale of his invention, which for unaffected clearness, modesty, and simplicity, reminded us of a lecture of Faraday. It gives us pleasure to state that the privilege of using the invention has been already disposed of to the extent of the annual production of a hundred and sixty thousand tons of iron or steel.—Examiner, Oct. 18.

From Fraser's Magazine.

TUSCAN PROVERBS. *

Se tutti si potessero raccogliere e sotto certi capi ordinare i Proverbi italiani, i Proverbi d'ogni popold, d'ogni età, colle varianti di voci, d'immaginazioni e di concetti; questo dopo la Bibbia sarebbe il libro più gravido di pensieri.-TOMMASÉO.

THIS Collection contains above six thou- | George Herbert, as well as for the fact sand proverbs, either now or recently that the first printed collection of Italian current among the Tuscan people-six proverbs appeared in London twelve thousand pithy utterances of their large years before the close of Elizabeth's reign, experience, of their wisdom, shrewdness, when England had so recently attained and humor, of their imagination and to her plenitude of national nobleness. fancy, their passions and moral sentiment; Thomas Fuller, too, was a student of the of their ways of regarding life and death, Italian proverb-literature, and some of God and the devil. How thoroughly his wittiest sayings seem little but transshould we know a man were we made ac-lations of Tuscan soothsaws. That requainted with six thousand expressions of mark of his, at all events, on the intelhis permanent convictions on these sub- lectual deficiencies of very tall men, "that jects. And though it is doubtless more ofttimes such as are built four stories high difficult to judge of a people than of an are observed to have little in their cockindividual, on the other hand the evi- loft," is strangely like Le case grandi dal dence whereon we form our judgment in mezzo in su non s'abitano. Sir Henry the latter case is seldom, if ever, perfectly Wotton, also, sends young Milton off on reliable; while as regards the former, the his travels with I pensieri stretti ed il viso productions of the brain and heart of a sciolto, (" close thoughts and open face,") people but especially their proverbs another Tuscan proverb, sounding in his are all genuine, all of necessity true to ears. And on the Continent, besides the the spirit of those on whose lips they eminent Italians who like Berni, Pulci, have become faithful sayings; all, there- Ariosto, and Benvenuto Cellini, have fore, worthy of being taken into con- shown in their writings a love for and sideration when forming an opinion of knowledge of their national popular saythe people by whom they were generated ings we find the great Chancellor Oxenor adopted. stjern drawing from a Tuscan source, As to the general merits of these Tus-(Con poco cervello si governa il mondo,) can adages, we are inclined to put them the mot by which he is now chiefly held very high-as high, indeed, except in in remembrance. We of course allude to point of humor, as the Spanish refranes, Videbis, fili mi, quam parvá sapientia doubtless the best proverbs extant. We regitur mundus, (Thou wilt see, my son, traverse Isaac Disraeli's assertion, "that with how little wisdom the world is goevery tenth proverb in an Italian collec- verned.) tion is some cynical or some selfish maxim -a book of the world for worldlings." Were this the case it would be hard to account for the familiarity with them displayed by men like Jeremy Taylor and

* Raccolta di Proverbi Toscani, etc. A Collection of Tuscan Proverbs, with Elucidations. Drawn from the MSS. of Giuseppe Giusti, and now enlarged and arranged. Florence. 1853.

We may first touch on the adages illustrative of the superstitions, mode of life, form of religion, and situation of the Tuscans. The popular superstitions on which some of their proverbs rest, are interesting to the comparative mythologist. That involved in Per un peccatore perisce una nave, (Through one sinner a ship is lost,) seems to have been credited by the

mariners of Joppa in the time of Jonah, the sack"--the applications of all these as well as by the sailors in the Danish are obvious: this is used, we believe, to ballad of Jon Rimaardsöns Skriftemaal. suggest the danger of over-taxation, And the first of the ideas expressed in Il "Whoso milks overmuch draws blood:" piangere puzza a' morti e fa male a' vivi, the Latins said with less delicacy, Qui appears in another old Danish ballad- nimium emungit fortiter, elicit sanguimuch more nobly expressed, howeverwhere the ghost of a dead knight says to her who had been his lady:

pion sleeps under every flat stone;" and "One flea does not spoil your sleep," but thousands do, as many a traveller in Northern Italy has mentally exclaimed on finding his bed effervescent with these industrious but sanguinary insects.

hath a head of wax should not walk in the sun"-consoling themselves, too, by observing that a little wood was enough for a little oven; big ships, they say also, must have deep water; and Chi a molti dà terrore, di molti abbia timore, and rags heal wounds; and they have at all events, as good a chance of getting to heaven as any of the signori, for one doesn't go there in a carriage, and a hammer of gold won't break heaven's gate.

The bitterness of some of the fore going must in great measure have arisen from the social inequalities and unhappy political condition of the country, for a naturally light-hearted and kindly spirit seems to live in the following-" Laughter does good to the blood," so that, as Autolycus sings:

"The merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a."

"Every time you laugh," we are further told, "you take a nail from your coffin ;" "God helps merry fellows," (gente allegra,) as a popular Piedmontese song hath it:

"Cheur gioios il ciel l'agiuta,

L'e'n proverbi ben antich;
Sta rason chi la disputa

Having thus, however slightly, noticed the proverbs illustrative of the surface of things in Tuscany, we may now proceed to consider those that are respectively the outcome of the imagination and fancy, the sense of humor, the practical wisdom, and the moral sentiment of the Tuscan people. Before doing so, however, we are bound to admit the painful suspiciousness and cynicism, the bitter hostility to things as they are, by which some few of their sayings are characterized. For instance "God protect me from my friends; I will protect myself from my enemies;" "Speak to your friend as if he were to become your enemy"-though, grazie a Dio, says the editor, we find this also: "Think that thine enemy may become thy friend."* Note, too, this expression of utter disbelief in the existence of probity-"An honest man hath a hairy palm." More justifiable is the suspiciousness of these: Chi ti loda in presenza ti biasima in assenza, and La lingua unge e il dente punge, (Melle litus gladius.) But how the popular jealousy of wealth speaks out in these "To be rich one must have friends in the devil's house;" 'All With natures so genial, with a country waters go to the sea;" "The poor do so beautiful, and a soil and climate that do penance for the rich man's sins," (Canis not enforce that cruel struggle for life peccatum sus dependit. The pig pays for which, among the peasantry of less favorthe dog's fault ;) "To grow wealthy one ed regions, renders a cultivation of the requires three r's-o redare, o rubare, o imaginative faculty difficult, if not imposredire, (to inherit, to rob, or to repeat like sible, we may well expect to find poetry a spy or informer.) And what distrust in the sayings of these Tuscans. And to of the upper classes lives in these "The some extent our expectation will not be poor murder one another and the lords disappointed. Although that striking one, embrace." "It's bad to eat cherries with "Time is an inaudible file," is not found lords," lest our eyes, in the words of one in the present collection, Signor Giusti of our own proverbs, be sprinted out with gives us the lovely but untranslatable the stones. "Laws," we are also told, proverb on vainglory-La gloria vana are like spiders' webs," the harmless flies fiorisce e non grana. "Which," says are caught, the hornets break through the Dean Trench, speaking of its parallel in meshes. "Who wears a good cape, shall Spanish, "would express this trutheasily 'scape," is another of this class of namely, that vainglory can shoot up into premises, from which the Tuscan Ofelli stalk and ear, but can never attain to the have drawn a pair of sensible conclu- full grain in the ear." And what grace sions, "Who hath not strength should and music are in this, on a special provihave his skin thick," and "He that dence-Non si muove foglia che Dio non voglia, (No leaf moves but God wills it.) How bold is the imagery of these-" Age

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L'è una testa d'arabich!"

* These two are combined in the Greek Aci piheiv in love, winter in flower;" "War begun,

ὥσπερ μισήσοντα, μισεῖν δὲ ὥσπερ φιλήσοντα. Ama tanquam osurus, oderis tanquam amaturus.

Hell unchained;" "Hope is the bread of

the unhappy;" and "Fraud squats (cova) | Italians of clothing any poetical thought under a good bargain," the right word in in harmonious metrical language; possibly the right place, is surely as true in poetry by their sensitiveness to such scoffs as as Mr. Layard's tautologous aphorism is Poeti, pittori, strologi e musici fanno una in politics. What pathos is in these: "To gabbia, di matti, (Poets, painters, astrola shattered ship every wind is foul," and ogers, and musicians, make up a cage of "Summer is the mother of the poor;" madmen.) What quiet humor lurks in the mother of the poor-is there no ten- this, "Does thy neighbor annoy thee, derness in that? What delight in external lend him a zechin"-a saying which may nature is evidenced by this--"Better be recall the lovable simpletonianism of Goldbird of the wood than bird of the cage ;" smith's Vicar, and his artful method of and this so like the celebrated saying of getting rid of a disagreeable visitor. the Douglases" Better hear the nightin- What quaint grotesqueness there is in gale sing than the rat gnaw." And how this-"Pence stand cap in hand," ready vividly this" Under the white ash lives to bid good by to us; and in this, on the the burning coal," brings before us the necessity of assimilating ourselves somefierce Italian, pale with suppressed passion, what to those with whom we have to asand meditating that revenge which, at the sociate: "With awls one must be a bodend of an hundred years, shall still (to use kin." How delicately satirical is this on his own words) have its sucking-teeth," cheap humilities"-" One may go a-foot (lattaiuola.)

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when one has a good horse in one's staAnd here we may note the singular ble ;" and how deserved, unhappily, is the fertility of fancy displayed by the Tuscan sarcasm of the following: "When a tree proverb-makers. For example, by our has fallen, all run to make logs ;"*"At a solitary "One swallow does not make ruined altar no candles are lighted:" summer," they can place not only una"The favor gained, the saint derided;" rondine non fa primavera; but these also, and "He who has property has relations." "One flower does not make a garland;" Showers of satiric arrows are aimed at na"One ear does not make a sheaf;" "One tional peculiarities, the German, be sure, basket of grapes does not make a vintage;" not escaping. We shall only quote this and finally, "One devil does not make good-humored allusion to Teutonic bibulhell." But the point on which these pro- ousness: "To drink wine like a German verbs testify with greatest force to the in the morning, neat; at dinner, withpoetic nature of the Italian, is the frequent use of the concrete (which "smacks of the perennial") in preference to the abstract. Where we, for instance, are contented with the mere statement of a fact in moral or intellectual life, such as, "Well begun is half done," the Tuscans say, "A beard washed is half shaven." Where we use a common-place personification, like "Covetousness brings nothing home," they say, vigorously, Chi troppo abbraccia nullo string, (who embraces too much grasps nothing.) And so, where we are satisfied with saying, "A burnt child dreads the fire," the same thing from which it has suffered, the imaginative Italian, with a deeper insight into the nature of fear, and its tendency to become exaggerated, observes that "A scalded dog dreads cold water," or that "He who has met with snakes fears lizards."

The poetical proverbs of the Tuscans are, however, inferior, both in number and quality, to their humorous and satirical sayings. This may possibly be accounted for by the facilities enjoyed by

out water; at supper, as it comes from the bottle." The Italian cities, also, are, to use a word of Isaac Disraeli's, pelted with sarcastic proverbs. Our readers will remember the Cremaschi brusa-Cristi. At home, the clergy especially come in for hard knocks. Doctors of the law, (whose robes, it is said, are lined with the obstinacy of clients,) physicians, advocates, attorneys, fools, and millers, ("the last to die of famine,") are all lashed with impartial severity. Women, too, are treated with much want of gallantry-these proverbial philosophers availing themselves of the fact, that in their tongue moglie rhymes to doglie, and endeavoring to establish the reasonableness of bringing the two words together. One of the scoffs at females has, however, much truth in it, "Wise on a sudden, fools on reflection," arising, as it does, from one main difference between the sexes in their respective modes of considering a question of right or wrong, a woman being more

* Arbore dejecta quivis ligna colligit.