DESCRIPTION OF POLAND.

The kingdom of Poland, which has lately been the theatre of so disastrous a war, was established in 1815, by the treaty of Vienna, and was composed of four territories placed respectively under the following sovereignties, viz.:—

1. Gallicia; assigned to Austria.

2. The Grand Duchy of Posen, including the Western Palatinates bordering on Silesia; surrendered to Prussia.

3. The city and district of Cracow; constituted a free republic; and

4. The remainder of ancient Poland, comprising the bulk of what was before the Grand Duchy of Warsaw; made to revert to Russia.

The kingdom was divided into eight Palatinates: viz., Masovia, Cracow, Sandomir, Kalisz, Lublin, Plotsk, and Augustowa. The population, according to the last census of 1829, was, exclusive of the army, 4,088,290, which have been thus classed:—

Employed in agriculture (householders) 1,871,259

Their families and servants 2,221,188

In manufactures 140,377

Their families 358,035

Tradesmen 49,888

Their families 131,331

Landed Proprietors 4,205

Copyholders 1,886

Freeholders in towns 41,654

Employed under government 8,414

Patients in the 592 public hospitals 5,376

Prisoners in the 76 prisons 7,926

The population of the towns is, to that of the country, as one to five. The towns are small and far removed from each other, which has been a main cause of retarding the progress of civilization, commerce, and manufactures. There are only thirteen towns in Poland containing upwards of 10,000 people each: viz., Warsaw, containing about 120,000; Dantzic, about 50,000; Wilna, 30,000; Lemberg, 29,000; Cracow, 28,000; Kiev, 20,000; Posen, 20,000; Brady, 15,000; Witepsk, 13,000; Lublin, 13,000, Mahilev, 12,500; Kalisch, 12,000; Kharkof, 1211,000; the population of the whole thirteen being equalled by the aggregate population of three or four of the Lancashire or Yorkshire towns. The maps contain a multitude of names of miserable wooden villages, inhabited merely by the peasant cultivators of the soil, and by a few shop-keeping Jews. Of the 451 towns of the kingdom, 353 are more than half, and 83 wholly, of wood; and but a very few towns contain a supply of the ordinary articles of consumption by persons in easy circumstances. The common articles of ladies’ wearing apparel are obliged to be procured either from Warsaw or Vienna, and it is common, in great families, to keep memorandum-books, in which the inmates of the family enter their wants, from time to time, which are supplied altogether at intervals of some months. In respect of all those comforts and conveniences of life which denote the progress of refinement, Poland is, perhaps, behind all other nations of Christian Europe.

The rate of increase of the Polish population, since 1815, has been stated at 100,000 individuals annually, or about two and a half per cent.

The Catholic religion is specially protected by the government, without imposing any disabilities on the members of other faiths. The Catholic establishment consists of an archbishop of Warsaw, eight bishops, and 2,740 clergy. The Greek Catholics have a bishop, and 354 priests. Next to the Roman Catholics, however, the Jews are of the most importance, and their numbers are stated to be fast increasing. They have of late been very unpopular, and have been charged with many malpractices, in monopolizing trade, and otherwise. The native writers have, for some time past, been in the habit of reproaching them as the ruin of their country, but sometimes, possibly, with more prejudice than reason. The religious statistics are as follows:—

Roman Catholics 3,400,000

Greek Church 100,000

Lutherans 150,000

Calvinists 5,000

Jews 400,000

Other Sects 5,000

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4,060,000

The class of nobles in Poland is to that of the plebeians as one to thirteen. But this class is composed of persons of such various degrees of wealth, that the poorer nobles are often glad to be employed as stewards by the richer, and their wives and daughters take occupations as humble as nurses and ladies’ maids. The peasantry are still in a state of modified slavery, or villeinage, cultivating the land for the benefit of their lords, and not being allowed to remove from it without giving up their tenements. They are assigned a certain portion of the produce of the estate; the whole live and dead stock upon which belongs to the landlord, who lends the use thereof to the peasants, compelling them to take care of, and account for, it. The peasantry in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw have been nominally emancipated; but their condition has hitherto hardly been sensibly ameliorated thereby.

The exports of Poland consist chiefly of corn, cattle, timber, and other articles of raw produce; and the imports are wines, colonial produce, and articles of luxury. The manufactures of woollen cloth, linens, carpets, and leather have increased since 1815, and the breweries and distilleries are on a very extensive scale. Agriculture is, however, by far the largest source of occupation for the people; but suffers, at the present time, from a depression of prices, and has permanently to contend against the effects of a six months’ winter of frost and snow. The proximity to the cold regions of Russia, and the exposure to the sharp north-east winds from Siberia and the polar regions, render the climate incomparably colder than that of England, though the situation of Poland is not more northward. In the summer the heat is very great, the forests obstructing the free circulation of air.

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Power of Steam.—It is on the rivers, and the boatman may repose on his oars, it is in highways, and begins to exert itself along the courses of land-conveyance; it is at the bottom of mines, a thousand feet below the earth’s surface; it is in the mill, and in the workshops of the trades. It rows, it pumps, it excavates, it carries, it draws, it lifts, it hammers, it spins, it weaves, it prints.—From Webster’s Lectures.

A Popular Error.—It is not at all an uncommon thing for even well-informed people to consider one event the cause of another, because the one has immediately preceded the other in the order of time. A curious instance of this error occurred in the last century. The fish, on which many of the inhabitants of Norway depended for subsistence, suddenly vanished from their coasts; the practice of inoculation for the small-pox had just then been introduced, and was instantly fixed upon as the cause of the calamity; and as the people considered the risk of that disorder a trifle in comparison with starvation, nothing could exceed their righteous indignation against all who undertook to prevent their taking the small-pox.

Instruction and Amusement are more blended than the world in general is apt to imagine. Uninstructive amusement may be afforded for a moment by a passing jest or a ludicrous anecdote, by which no knowledge is conveyed to the mind of the hearer or the reader; but the man who would amuse others for an hour, either by his writing or his conversation, must tell his hearers or his readers something that they do not know, or suggest to them some new reflection upon the knowledge they have previously acquired. The more the knowledge bears upon their pursuits, upon their occupations, or upon their interests, the more attractive it will be, and the more entitled to be called useful.

The Secret of great Workers.—M. Dumont, in his ‘Recollections of Mirabeau,’ the leading orator of the French Revolution, thus describes the persevering industry of our illustrious countryman, Sir Samuel Romilly:—“Romilly, always tranquil and orderly, has an incessant activity. He never loses a minute: he applies all his mind to what he is about. Like the hand of a watch, he never stops, although his equal movements in the same way almost escape observation.”

Devotion of a great Mind to its Duties.—Milton, the poet of Paradise Lost, who, during an active life in the most troublesome times, was unceasing in the cultivation of his understanding, thus describes his own habits:—“Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home; not sleeping or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring; in winter, often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labour or devotion; in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary, or memory have its full fraught; then with useful and generous labours preserving the body’s health and hardiness, to render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to the mind, to the cause of religion and our country’s liberty.”

An era is fast approaching, when no writer will be read by the great majority, save and except those who can effect that for bales of manuscript, that the hydrostatic screw performs for bales of cotton, by condensing that matter into a period that before occupied a page.—Colton.

Two painters undertook a portrait of Hannibal; one of them painted a full likeness of him, and gave him two eyes, whereas disease had deprived him of one. The other painted him in profile, but with his blind side from the spectators. He severely reprimanded the first, but handsomely rewarded the second.

The petty sovereign of an insignificant tribe in North America every morning stalks out of his hovel, bids the sun good morrow, and points out to him with his finger the course he is to take for the day.

When the air-balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it? The doctor answered this question by asking another: “What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man.”

The Chinese affect to despise European ingenuity, but they cannot mend a common watch; when it is out of order they say it is dead, and barter it away for a living one.

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A friend called on Michael Angelo, who was finishing a statue. Some time afterwards he called again; the sculptor was still at his work. His friend, looking at the figure, exclaimed, You have been idle since I saw you last. By no means, replied the sculptor, I have retouched this part, and polished that; I have softened this feature, and brought out this muscle; I have given more expression to this lip, and more energy to this limb. Well, well, said his friend, but all these are trifles. It maybe so, replied Angelo, but recollect that trifles make perfection, and that perfection is no trifle.