Littell's Living Age/Volume 125/Issue 1612/Miscellany
Some interesting facts about the woodcarving industry of the Bernese Oberland are given in a recent official report from Mr. Jenner. This industry, which does not date further back than 1815, now furnishes employment for upwards of two thousand workmen, and within the last few years the sales have risen to an average of nearly 80,000l. These sums have sufficed to spread ease over districts the inhabitants of which were formerly much pinched by want; the work, too, is of such a nature that it does not interfere with many other avocations. The cowherd and shepherd tending their flocks in the Alpine pasturages, the charcoal-burner watching his fires, and the peasant families sitting round their stoves, during the long winter evenings, can, at the expense of but little physical exertion, add greatly to their store of comforts by means of some little skill in carving. A very large proportion of the cheaper articles are actually produced in this manner. The wages of regular workmen range from one to eight francs a day. Almost every variety of timber may be utilized; fir, lime, walnut, oak, pear, and apple trees have all their special applications, and of late years the most renowned makers have taken to carve "palissandre" or rosewood, mahogany, cedar, &c. Side by side with the wood-carving industry, but greatly surpassing it in pecuniary results, is the manufacture of parquets, which is of still more recent introduction. This trade is carried on in eighteen out of the twenty-two cantons of Switzerland, and is now in the most flourishing condition. As nearly as can be ascertained, the annual production of the twenty odd establishments which carry it on reaches the value of 8,000,000 francs (320,000l.). Scarcely a Swiss house with any pretension to comfort is now built without a parquet in at least one of its rooms.
Here is a singular sketch from Winstanley's "Lives of the Most Famous English Poets; or, the Honor of Parnassus," 1687: "John Milton was one whose natural parts might deservedly give him a place among the principal of our English poets, having written two heroick poems and a tragedy, namely 'Paradise Lost,' 'Paradise Regain'd,' and ' Sampson Agonista.' But his Fame is gone out like a Candle in a Snuff, and his Memory will always stink, which might have ever lived in honourable Repute, had not he been a notorious Traytor, and most impiously and villanously bely'd that Blessed Martyr King Charles the First."