odi, puer, apparatus," has a very close
application in the "Persian stuff" with which British journalism has
lately been flooded.

How various his employments whom the world
Calls idle!

says Cowper. To describe the holiday amusement provided for the shah
in England as having been a grand "variety entertainment" would feebly
represent the mixture actually furnished him. One day, for example
(a Monday), His Majesty began by reviewing the Fire Brigade; and then
Captain Shaw was presented to the shah--likewise Colonel Hogg; and
then, according to the _Morning Advertiser_, "Joe Goss, Ned Donelly,
Alex. Lawson, and young Horn had the honor of appearing and boxing
before the shah and a small company, at which His Majesty seemed
highly delighted;" and next came deputations successively from
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Society for the
Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the Bible Society, the Church
Missionary Society, and the Evangelical Alliance; then a deputation
from the Mohammedans residing in London was presented, and Sir Moses
Montefiore had a private interview with His Majesty; and finally, to
wind up the day's programme, the shah, attended by many princes and
princesses, and an audience of 34,000 people, witnessed a performance
at the Crystal Palace expressly selected to suit his taste--namely,
gymnastic feats by Germans and Japanese, followed by "Signor Romah"
on the trapeze. All this was done before dinner; and the curious
combination of piety and pugilism, missionaries and acrobats, may be
supposed to have had the effect of duly "impressing" the illustrious
guest.

A French writer some time since informed his countrymen that in
America wooden hams were a regular article of manufacture. This is a
fact not generally known; but at any rate, according to Pierre Veron,
we have not yet quite outdone the Old World in the arts of commercial
fraud. Worthy Johnny Crapaud used to flatter himself that he outwitted
the grocers in buying his coffee unground, but now rogues make
artificial coffee-kernels in a mould, and the Paris police court
(which does not appreciate ingenuity of that sort) lately gave
six months in prison to some makers of sham coffee-grains, thus
interfering with a business which was earning twenty thousand dollars
a year. Some of the Paris pastry-cooks make balls for _vol-au-vent_
with a hash of rags allowed to soak in gravy; sham larks and
partridges for pates are constructed ou