In the cool of the evening, Dr. Riccabocca walked home across the fields. Mr. and Mrs. Dale had accompanied him half way; and as they now turned back to the Parsonage, they looked behind, to catch a glimpse of the tall, outlandish figure, winding slowly through the path amidst the waves of the green corn.
“Poor man!” said Mrs. Dale, feelingly; “and the button was off his wristband! What a pity he has nobody to take care of him! He seems very domestic. Don't you think, Charles, it would be a great blessing if we could get him a good wife?”
“Um,” said the Parson; “I doubt if he values the married state as he ought.”
“What do you mean, Charles? I never saw a man more polite to ladies in my life.”
“Yes, but—”
“But what? You are always so mysterious, Charles dear.”
“Mysterious! No, Carry; but if you could hear what the Doctor says of the ladies sometimes.”
“Ay, when you men get together, my dear. I know what that means—pretty things you say of us. But you are all alike; you know you are, love!”
“I am sure,” said the Parson, simply, “that I have good cause to speak well of the sex—when I think of you, and my poor mother.”
Mrs. Dale, who, with all her “tempers,” was an excellent woman, and loved her husband with the whole of her quick little heart, was touched. She pressed his hand, and did not call him dear all the way home.
Meanwhile the Italian passed the fields, and came upon the high-road about two miles from Hazeldean. On one side stood an old-fashioned solitary inn, such as English inns used to be before they became railway hotels—square, solid, old-fashioned, looking so hospitable and comfortable, with their great signs swinging from some elm tree in front, and the long row of stables standing a little back, with a chaise or two in the yard, and the jolly landlord talking of the crops to some stout farmer, who has stopped his rough pony at the well-known door. Opposite this inn, on the other side the road, stood the habitation of Dr. Riccabocca.
A few years before the date of these annals, the stage-coach, on its way to London, from a seaport town, stopped at the inn, as was its wont, for a good hour, that its passengers might dine like Christian Englishmen—not gulp down a basin of scalding soup, like everlasting heathen Yankees, with that cursed railway whistle shrieking like a fiend in their ears! It was the best dining-place on the whole road, for the trout in the neighboring rill were famous, and so was the mutton which came from Hazeldean Park.
From the outside of the coach had descended two passengers who, alone, insensible to the attractions of mutton and trout, refused to dine—two melancholy-looking foreigners, of whom one was Signor Riccabocca, much the same as we see him now, only that the black suit, was less threadbare, the tall form less meagre, and he did not then wear spectacles; and the other was his servant. They would walk about while the coach stopped. Now the Italian's eye had been caught by a mouldering dismantled house on the other side the road, which nevertheless was well situated; half-way up a green hill, with its aspect due south, a little cascade falling down artificial rock-work, and a terrace with a balustrade, and a few broken urns and statues before its Ionic portico; while on the roadside stood a board, with characters already half effaced, implying that the house [pg 670] was to be “Let unfurnished, with or without land.”
The abode that looked so cheerless, and which had so evidently hung long on hand, was the property of Squire Hazeldean. It had been built by his grandfather on the female side—a country gentleman who had actually been in Italy (a journey rare enough to boast of in those days), and who, on his return home, had attempted a miniature imitation of an Italian villa. He left an only daughter and sole heiress, who married Squire Hazeldean's father; and since that time, the house, abandoned by its proprietors for the larger residence of the Hazeldeans, had been uninhabited and neglected. Several tenants, indeed, had offered themselves: but your Squire is slow in admitting upon his own property a rival neighbor. Some wanted shooting. “That,” said the Hazeldeans, who were great sportsmen and strict preservers, “was quite out of the question.” Others were fine folks from London. “London servants,” said the Hazeldeans, who were moral and prudent people, “would corrupt their own, and bring London prices.” Others, again, were retired manufacturers, at whom the Hazeldeans turned up their agricultural noses. In short, some were too grand, and others too vulgar. Some were refused because they were known so well: “Friends are best at a distance,” said the Hazeldeans. Others because they were not known at all: “No good comes of strangers,” said the Hazeldeans. And finally, as the house fell more and more into decay, no one would take it unless it was put into thorough repair: “As if one was made of money!” said the Hazeldeans. In short, there stood the house unoccupied and ruinous; and there, on its terrace, stood the two forlorn Italians, surveying it with a smile at each other, as, for the first time since they set foot in England, they recognized, in dilapidated pilasters and broken statues, in a weed-grown terrace and the remains of an orangery, something that reminded them of the land they had left behind.
On returning to the inn, Dr. Riccabocca took the occasion of learning from the innkeeper (who was indeed a tenant of the Squire's) such particulars as he could collect; and a few days afterward Mr. Hazeldean received a letter from a solicitor of repute in London, stating that a very respectable foreign gentleman had commissioned him to treat for Clump Lodge, otherwise called the “Casino;” that the said gentleman did not shoot—lived in great seclusion—and, having no family, did not care about the repairs of the place, provided only it were made weather-proof—if the omission of more expensive reparations could render the rent suitable to his finances, which were very limited. The offer came at a fortunate moment—when the steward had just been representing to the Squire the necessity of doing something to keep the Casino from falling into positive ruin, and the Squire was cursing the fates which had put the Casino into an entail—so that he could not pull it down for the building materials. Mr. Hazeldean therefore caught at the proposal even as a fair lady, who has refused the best offers in the kingdom, catches at last at some battered old captain on half-pay, and replied that, as for rent, if the solicitor's client was a quiet respectable man, he did not care for that. But that the gentleman might have it for the first year rent free, on condition of paying the taxes and putting the place a little in order. If they suited each other, they could then come to terms. Ten days subsequently to this gracious reply, Signor Riccabocca and his servant arrived; and, before the year's end, the Squire was so contented with his tenant that he gave him a running lease of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, at a rent nearly nominal, on condition that Signor Riccabocca would put and maintain the place in repair, barring the roof and fences, which the Squire generously renewed at his own expense. It was astonishing, by little and little, what a pretty place the Italian had made of it, and what is more astonishing, how little it had cost him. He had indeed painted the walls of the hall, staircase, and the rooms appropriated to himself, with his own hands. His servant had done the greater part of the upholstery. The two between them had got the garden into order. The Italians seemed to have taken a joint love to the place, and to deck it as they would have done some favorite chapel to their Madonna.
It was long before the natives reconciled themselves to the odd ways of the foreign settlers—the first thing that offended them was the exceeding smallness of the household bills. Three days out of the seven, indeed, both man and master dined on nothing else but the vegetables in the garden, and the fishes in the neighboring rill; when no trout could be caught they fried the minnows (and certainly, even in the best streams, minnows are more frequently caught than trouts). The next thing which angered the natives quite as much, especially the female part of the neighborhood, was the very sparing employment the two he creatures gave to the sex usually deemed so indispensable in household matters. At first indeed, they had no woman servant at all. But this created such horror that Parson Dale ventured a hint upon the matter, which Riccabocca took in very good part, and an old woman was forthwith engaged, after some bargaining—at three shillings a week—to wash and scrub as much as she liked during the daytime. She always returned to her own cottage to sleep. The man-servant, who was styled in the neighborhood “Jackeymo,” did all else for his master—smoothed his [pg 671] room, dusted his papers, prepared his coffee, cooked his dinner, brushed his clothes, and cleaned his pipes, of which Riccabocca had a large collection. But, however close a man's character, it generally creeps out in driblets; and on many little occasions the Italian had shown acts of kindness, and, on some more rare occasions, even of generosity, which had served to silence his calumniators, and by degrees he had established a very fair reputation—suspected, it is true, of being a little inclined to the Black Art, and of a strange inclination to starve Jackeymo and himself—in other respects harmless enough.
Signor Riccabocca had become very intimate, as we have seen, at the Parsonage. But not so at the Hall. For though the Squire was inclined to be very friendly to all his neighbors—he was, like most country gentlemen, rather easily huffed. Riccabocca had, if with great politeness, still with great obstinacy, refused Mr. Hazeldean's earlier invitations to dinner, and when the Squire found, that the Italian rarely declined to dine at the Parsonage, he was offended in one of his weak points, viz., his regard for the honor of the hospitality of Hazeldean Hall—and he ceased altogether invitations so churlishly rejected. Nevertheless, as it was impossible for the Squire, however huffed, to bear malice, he now and then reminded Riccabocca of his existence by presents of game, and would have called on him more often than he did, but that Riccabocca received him with such excessive politeness that the blunt country gentleman felt shy and put out, and used to say that “to call on Riccabocca was as bad as going to court.”
But I left Dr. Riccabocca on the high-road. By this time he has ascended a narrow path that winds by the side of the cascade, he has passed a trellis-work covered with vines, from the which Jackeymo has positively succeeded in making what he calls wine—a liquid, indeed, that, if the cholera had been popularly known in those days, would have soured the mildest member of the Board of Health; for Squire Hazeldean, though a robust man who daily carried off his bottle of port with impunity, having once rashly tasted it, did not recover the effect till he had had a bill from the apothecary as long as his own arm. Passing this trellis, Dr. Riccabocca entered upon the terrace, with its stone pavement smoothed and trim as hands could make it. Here, on neat stands, all his favorite flowers were arranged. Here four orange trees were in full blossom; here a kind of summer-house or Belvidere, built by Jackeymo and himself, made his chosen morning room from May till October; and from this Belvidere there was as beautiful an expanse of prospect as if our English Nature had hospitably spread on her green board all that she had to offer as a banquet to the exile.
A man without his coat, which was thrown over the balustrade, was employed in watering the flowers; a man with movements so mechanical—with a face so rigidly grave in its tawny hues—that he seemed like an automaton made out of mahogany.
“Giacomo,” said Dr. Riccabocca, softly.
The automaton stopped its hand, and turned its head.
“Put by the watering-pot, and come here,” continued Riccabocca in Italian; and, moving toward the balustrade, he leaned over it. Mr. Mitford, the historian, calls Jean Jacques “John James.” Following that illustrious example, Giacomo shall be Anglified into Jackeymo. Jackeymo came to the balustrade also, and stood a little behind his master.
“Friend,” said Riccabocca, “enterprises have not always succeeded with us. Don't you think, after all, it is tempting our evil star to rent those fields from the landlord?” Jackeymo crossed himself, and made some strange movement with a little coral charm which he wore set in a ring on his finger.
“If the Madonna send us luck, and we could hire a lad cheap?” said Jackeymo, doubtfully.
“Piu vale un presente che due futuri,” said Riccabocca. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
“Chi non fa quondo puÒ, non puÒ fare quondo vuole”—(“He who will not when he may, when he will it shall have nay”)—answered Jackeymo, as sententiously as his master. “And the Padrone should think in time that he must lay by for the dower of the poor signorina”—(young lady).
Riccabocca sighed, and made no reply.
“She must be that high now!” said Jackeymo, putting his hand on some imaginary line a little above the balustrade. Riccabocca's eyes, raised over the spectacles, followed the hand.
“If the Padrone could but see her here—”
“I thought I did!” muttered the Italian.
“He would never let her go from his side till she went to a husband's,” continued Jackeymo.
“But this climate—she could never stand it,” said Riccabocca, drawing his cloak round him, as a north wind took him in the rear.
“The orange trees blossom even here with care,” said Jackeymo, turning back to draw down an awning where the orange trees faced the north. “See!” he added, as he returned with a sprig in full bud.
Dr. Riccabocca bent over the blossom, and then placed it in his bosom.
“The other one should be there, too,” said Jackeymo.
“To die—as this does already!” answered Riccabocca. “Say no more.”
Jackeymo shrugged his shoulders; and then, glancing at his master, drew his hand over his eyes.
[pg 672]
There was a pause. Jackeymo was the first to break it.
“But, whether here or there, beauty without money is the orange tree without shelter. If a lad could be got cheap, I would hire the land, and trust for the crop to the Madonna.”
“I think I know of such a lad,” said Riccabocca, recovering himself, and with his sardonic smile once more lurking about the corner of his mouth—“a lad made for us!”
“Diavolo!”
“No, not the Diavolo! Friend, I have this day seen a boy who—refused sixpence!”
“Cosa stupenda!”—(Stupendous thing!) exclaimed Jackeymo, opening his eyes, and letting fall the water-pot.
“It is true, my friend.”
“Take him, Padrone, in Heaven's name, and the fields will grow gold.”
“I will think of it, for it must require management to catch such a boy,” said Riccabocca. “Meanwhile, light a candle in the parlor, and bring from my bedroom—that great folio of Machiavelli.”
A spirit near me said, “Look forth upon the Land of Life. What do you see?”
“Steep mountains, covered by a mighty plain, a table-land of many-colored beauty. Beauty, nay, it seems all beautiful at first, but now I see that there are some parts barren.”
“Are they quite barren?—look more closely still!”
“No, in the wildest deserts, now, I see some gum-dropping acacias, and the crimson blossom of the cactus. But there are regions that rejoice abundantly in flower and fruit; and now, O Spirit, I see men and women moving to and fro.”
“Observe them, mortal.”
“I behold a world of love; the men have women's arms entwined about them; some upon the verge of precipices—friends are running to the rescue. There are many wandering like strangers, who know not their road, and they look upward. Spirit, how many, many eyes are looking up as if to God! Ah, now I see some strike their neighbors down into the dust; I see some wallowing like swine; I see that there are men and women brutal.”
“Are they quite brutal—look more closely still.”
“No, I see prickly sorrow growing out of crime, and penitence awakened by a look of love. I see good gifts bestowed out of the hand of murder, and see truth issue out of lying lips. But in this plain, O Spirit, I see regions—wide, bright regions—yielding fruit and flower, while others seem perpetually vailed with fogs, and in them no fruit ripens. I see pleasant regions where the rock is full of clefts, and people fall into them. The men who dwell beneath the fog deal lovingly, and yet they have small enjoyment in the world around them, which they scarcely see. But whither are these women going?”
“Follow them.”
“I have followed down the mountains to a haven in the vale below. All that is lovely in the world of flowers makes a fragrant bed for the dear children; birds singing, they breathe upon the pleasant air; the butterflies play with them. Their limbs shine white among the blossoms, and their mothers come down full of joy to share their innocent delight. They pelt each other with the lilies of the valley. They call up at will fantastic masks, grim giants play to make them merry, a thousand grotesque loving phantoms kiss them; to each the mother is the one thing real, the highest bliss—the next bliss is the dream of all the world beside. Some that are motherless, all mother's love. Every gesture, every look, every odor, every song, adds to the charm of love which fills the valley. Some little figures fall and die, and on the valley's soil they crumble into violets and lilies, with love-tears to hang in them like dew.
“Who dares to come down with a frown into this happy valley? A severe man seizes an unhappy, shrieking child, and leads it to the roughest ascent of the mountain. He will lead it over steep rocks to the plain of the mature. On ugly needle-points he makes the child sit down, and teaches it its duty in the world above.”
“Its duty, mortal! Do you listen to the teacher?”
“Spirit, I hear now. The child is informed about two languages spoken by nations extinct centuries ago, and something also, O Spirit, about the base of an hypothenuse.”
“Does the child attend?”
“Not much; but it is beaten silly, and its knees are bruised against the rocks, till it is hauled up, woe-begone and weary, to the upper plain. It looks about bewildered; all is strange—it knows not how to act. Fogs crown the barren mountain paths. Spirit, I am unhappy; there are many children thus hauled up, and as young men upon the plain; they walk in fog, or among brambles; some fall into pits; and many, getting into flower-paths, lie down and learn. Some become active, seeking right, but ignorant of what right is; they wander among men out of their fog-land, preaching folly. Let me go back among the children.”
“Have they no better guide?”
“Yes, now there comes one with a smiling face, and rolls upon the flowers with the little ones, and they are drawn to him. And he has magic spells to conjure up glorious spectacles of fairy land. He frolics with them, and might be first cousin to the butterflies. He wreathes their little heads with flower garlands, and with his fairy land upon his lips he walks toward the mountains; eagerly they follow. He seeks the smoothest upward path, and that is but a [pg 673] rough one, yet they run up merrily, guide and children, butterflies pursuing still the flowers as they nod over a host of laughing faces. They talk of the delightful fairy world, and resting in the shady places learn of the yet more delightful world of God. They learn to love the Maker of the Flowers, to know how great the Father of the Stars must be, how good must be the Father of the Beetle. They listen to the story of the race they go to labor with upon the plain, and love it for the labor it has done. They learn old languages of men, to understand the past—more eagerly they learn the voices of the men of their own day, that they may take part with the present. And in their study when they flag, they fall back upon thoughts of the Child Valley they are leaving. Sports and fancies are the rod and spur that bring them with new vigor to the lessons. When they reach the plain they cry, ‘We know you, men and women; we know to what you have aspired for centuries; we know the love there is in you; we know the love there is in God; we come prepared to labor with you, dear, good friends. We will not call you clumsy when we see you tumble, we will try to pick you up; when we fall, you shall pick us up. We have been trained to love, and therefore we can aid you heartily, for love is labor!’ ”
The Spirit whispered, “You have seen and you have heard. Go now, and speak unto your fellow-men: ask justice for the child.”
To-day should love To-morrow, for it is a thing of hope; let the young Future not be nursed by Care. God gave not fancy to the child that men should stamp its blossoms down into the loose soil of intellect. The child's heart was not made full to the brim of love, that men should pour its love away, and bruise instead of kiss the trusting innocent. Love and fancy are the stems on which we may graft knowledge readily. What is called by some dry folks a solid foundation may be a thing not desirable. To cut down all the trees, and root up all the flowers in a garden, to cover walks and flower-beds alike with a hard crust of well-rolled gravel, that would be to lay down your solid foundation after a plan which some think good in a child's mind, though not quite worth adopting in a garden. O, teacher, love the child and learn of it; so let it love and learn of you.
The Laboratory In The Chest. (From Dickens's Household Words.)
The mind of Mr. Bagges was decidedly affected—beneficially—by the lecture on the Chemistry of a Candle, which, as set forth in a previous number of this journal, had been delivered to him by his youthful nephew. That learned discourse inspired him with a new feeling; an interest in matters of science. He began to frequent the Polytechnic Institution, nearly as much as his club. He also took to lounging at the British Museum; where he was often to be seen, with his left arm under his coat-tails, examining the wonderful works of nature and antiquity, through his eye-glass. Moreover, he procured himself to be elected a member of the Royal Institution, which became a regular house of call to him, so that in a short time he grew to be one of the ordinary phenomena of the place.
Mr. Bagges likewise adopted a custom of giving conversaziones, which, however, were always very private and select—generally confined to his sister's family. Three courses were first discussed; then dessert; after which, surrounded by an apparatus of glasses and decanters, Master Harry Wilkinson was called upon, as a sort of juvenile Davy, to amuse his uncle by the elucidation of some chemical or other physical mystery. Master Wilkinson had now attained to the ability of making experiments; most of which, involving combustion, were strongly deprecated by the young gentleman's mamma; but her opposition was overruled by Mr. Bagges, who argued that it was much better that a young dog should burn phosphorus before your face than let off gunpowder behind your back, to say nothing of occasionally pinning a cracker to your skirts. He maintained that playing with fire and water, throwing stones, and such like boys' tricks, as they are commonly called, are the first expressions of a scientific tendency—endeavors and efforts of the infant mind to acquaint itself with the powers of Nature.
His own favorite toys, he remembered, were squibs, suckers, squirts, and slings; and he was persuaded that, by his having been denied them at school, a natural philosopher had been nipped in the bud.
Blowing bubbles was an example—by-the-by, a rather notable one—by which Mr. Bagges, on one of his scientific evenings, was instancing the affinity of child's play to philosophical experiments, when he bethought him Harry had said on a former occasion that the human breath consists chiefly of carbonic acid, which is heavier than common air. How then, it occurred to his inquiring, though elderly mind, was it that soap-bladders, blown from a tobacco-pipe, rose instead of sinking? He asked his nephew this.
“Oh, uncle!” answered Harry, “in the first place, the air you blow bubbles with mostly comes in at the nose and goes out at the mouth, without having been breathed at all. Then it is warmed by the mouth, and warmth, you know, makes a measure of air get larger, and so lighter in proportion. A soap-bubble rises for the same reason that a fire-balloon rises—that is, because the air inside of it has been heated, and weighs less than the same sized bubbleful of cold air.”
“What, hot breath does!” said Mr. Bagges. “Well, now, it's a curious thing, when you come to think of it, that the breath should be hot—indeed, the warmth of the body generally seems a puzzle. It is wonderful, too, how the bodily heat can be kept up so long as it is. [pg 674] Here, now, is this tumbler of hot grog—a mixture of boiling water, and what d'ye call it, you scientific geniuses?”
“Alcohol, uncle.”
“Alcohol—well—or, as we used to say, brandy. Now, if I leave this tumbler of brandy-and-water alone—”
“If you do, uncle,” interposed his nephew, archly.
“Get along, you idle rogue! If I let that tumbler stand there, in a few minutes the brandy-and-water—eh?—I beg pardon—the alcohol-and-water—gets cold. Now, why—why the deuce—if the brand—the alcohol-and-water cools; why—how—how is it we don't cool in the same way, I want to know? eh?” demanded Mr. Bagges, with the air of a man who feels satisfied that he has propounded a “regular poser.”
“Why,” replied Harry, “for the same reason that the room keeps warm so long as there is a fire in the grate.”
“You don't mean to say that I have a fire in my body?”
“I do, though.”
“Eh, now? That's good,” said Mr. Bagges. “That reminds me of the man in love crying, ‘Fire! fire!’ and the lady said, ‘Where, where?’ And he called out, ‘Here! here!’ with his hand upon his heart. Eh?—but now I think of it—you said, the other day, that breathing was a sort of burning. Do you mean to tell me that I—eh?—have fire, fire, as the lover said, here, here—in short, that my chest is a grate or an Arnott's stove?”
“Not exactly so, uncle. But I do mean to tell you that you have a sort of fire burning partly in your chest; but also, more or less, throughout your whole body.”
“Oh, Henry!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson, “How can you say such horrid things!”
“Because they're quite true, mamma—but you needn't be frightened. The fire of one's body is not hotter than from ninety degrees to one hundred and four degrees or so. Still it is fire, and will burn some things, as you would find, uncle, if, in using phosphorus, you were to let a little bit of it get under your nail.”
“I'll take your word for the fact, my boy,” said Mr. Bagges. “But, if I have a fire burning throughout my person—which I was not aware of, the only inflammation I am ever troubled with being in the great toe—I say, if my body is burning continually—how is it I don't smoke—eh? Come, now?”
“Perhaps you consume your own smoke,” suggested Mr. Wilkinson, senior, “like every well-regulated furnace.”
“You smoke nothing but your pipe, uncle, because you burn all your carbon,” said Harry. “But, if your body doesn't smoke, it steams. Breathe against a looking-glass, or look at your breath on a cold morning. Observe how a horse reeks when it perspires. Besides—as you just now said you recollected my telling you the other day—you breathe out carbonic acid, and that, and the steam of the breath together, are exactly the same things, you know, that a candle turns into in burning.”
“But if I burn like a candle—why don't I burn out like a candle?” demanded Mr. Bagges. “How do you get over that?”
“Because,” replied Harry, “your fuel is renewed as fast as burnt. So perhaps you resemble a lamp rather than a candle. A lamp requires to be fed; so does the body—as, possibly, uncle, you may be aware.”
“Eh?—well—I have always entertained an idea of that sort,” answered Mr. Bagges, helping himself to some biscuits. “But the lamp feeds on train-oil.”
“So does the Laplander. And you couldn't feed the lamp on turtle or mulligatawny, of course, uncle. But mulligatawny or turtle can be changed into fat—they are so, sometimes, I think—when they are eaten in large quantities, and fat will burn fast enough. And most of what you eat turns into something which burns at last, and is consumed in the fire that warms you all over.”
“Wonderful, to be sure,” exclaimed Mr. Bagges. “Well, now, and how does this extraordinary process take place?”
“First, you know, uncle, your food is digested—”
“Not always, I am sorry to say, my boy,” Mr. Bagges observed, “but go on.”
“Well; when it is digested, it becomes a sort of fluid, and mixes gradually with the blood, and turns into blood, and so goes over the whole body, to nourish it. Now, if the body is always being nourished, why doesn't it keep getting bigger and bigger, like the ghost in the Castle of Otranto?”
“Eh? Why, because it loses as well as gains, I suppose. By perspiration—eh—for instance?”
“Yes, and by breathing; in short, by the burning I mentioned just now. Respiration, or breathing, uncle, is a perpetual combustion.”
“But if my system,” said Mr. Bagges, “is burning throughout, what keeps up the fire in my little finger—putting gout out of the question?”
“You burn all over, because you breathe all over, to the very tips of your fingers' ends,” replied Harry.
“Oh, don't talk nonsense to your uncle!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson.
“It isn't nonsense,” said Harry. “The air that you draw into the lungs goes more or less over all the body, and penetrates into every fibre of it, which is breathing. Perhaps you would like to hear a little more about the chemistry of breathing, or respiration, uncle?”
“I should, certainly.”
“Well, then; first you ought to have some idea of the breathing apparatus. The laboratory that contains this is the chest, you know. The chest, you also know, has in it the heart and lungs, which, with other things in it, fill it quite out, so as to leave no hollow space between [pg 675] themselves and it. The lungs are a sort of air-sponges, and when you enlarge your chest to draw breath, they swell out with it, and suck the air in. On the other hand, you narrow your chest, and squeeze the lungs, and press the air from them;—that is breathing out. The lungs are made up of a lot of little cells. A small pipe—a little branch of the windpipe—opens into each cell. Two blood-vessels, a little tiny artery, and a vein to match, run into it also. The arteries bring into the little cells dark-colored blood, which has been all over the body. The veins carry out of the little cells bright scarlet-colored blood, which is to go all over the body. So all the blood passes through the lungs, and in so doing, is changed from dark to bright scarlet.”
“Black blood, didn't you say, in the arteries, and scarlet in the veins? I thought it was just the reverse,” interrupted Mr. Bagges.
“So it is,” replied Harry, “with all the other arteries and veins, except those that circulate the blood through the lung-cells. The heart has two sides, with a partition between them that keeps the blood on the right side separate from the blood on the left; both sides being hollow, mind. The blood on the right side of the heart comes there from all over the body, by a couple of large veins, dark, before it goes to the lungs. From the right side of the heart, it goes on to the lungs, dark still, through an artery. It comes back to the left side of the heart from the lungs, bright scarlet, through four veins. Then it goes all over the rest of the body from the left side of the heart, through an artery that branches into smaller arteries, all carrying bright scarlet blood. So the arteries and veins of the lungs on one hand, and of the rest of the body on the other, do exactly opposite work, you understand.”
“I hope so.”
“Now,” continued Harry, “it requires a strong magnifying glass to see the lung-cells plainly, they are so small. But you can fancy them as big as you please. Picture any one of them to yourself of the size of an orange, say, for convenience in thinking about it; that one cell, with whatever takes place in it, will be a specimen of the rest. Then you have to imagine an artery carrying blood of one color into it, and a vein taking away blood of another color from it, and the blood changing its color in the cell.”
“Ay, but what makes the blood change its color?”
“Recollect, uncle, you have a little branch from the windpipe opening into the cell which lets in the air. Then the blood and the air are brought together, and the blood alters in color. The reason, I suppose you would guess, is that it is somehow altered by the air.”
“No very unreasonable conjecture, I should think,” said Mr. Bagges.
“Well; if the air alters the blood, most likely, we should think, it gives something to the blood. So first let us see what is the difference between the air we breathe in, and the air we breathe out. You know that neither we nor animals can keep breathing the same air over and over again. You don't want me to remind you of the Black Hole of Calcutta, to convince you of that; and I dare say you will believe what I tell you, without waiting till I can catch a mouse and shut it up in an air-tight jar, and show you how soon the unlucky creature will get uncomfortable, and began to gasp, and that it will by-and-by die. But if we were to try this experiment—not having the fear of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, nor the fear of doing wrong, before our eyes—we should find that the poor mouse, before he died, had changed the air of his prison considerably. But it would be just as satisfactory, and much more humane, if you or I were to breathe in and out of a silk bag or a bladder till we could stand it no longer, and then collect the air which we had been breathing in and out. We should find that a jar of such air would put out a candle. If we shook some lime-water up with it, the lime-water would turn milky. In short, uncle, we should find that a great part of the air was carbonic acid, and the rest mostly nitrogen. The air we inhale is nitrogen and oxygen; the air we exhale has lost most of its oxygen, and consists of little more than nitrogen and carbonic acid. Together with this, we breathe out the vapor of water, as I said before. Therefore in breathing, we give off exactly what a candle does in burning, only not so fast, after the rate. The carbonic acid we breathe out, shows that carbon is consumed within our bodies. The watery vapor of the breath is a proof that hydrogen is so, too. We take in oxygen with the air, and the oxygen unites with carbon, and makes carbonic acid, and with hydrogen, forms water.”
“Then don't the hydrogen and carbon combine with the oxygen—that is, burn—in the lungs, and isn't the chest the fire-place, after all?” asked Mr. Bagges.
“Not altogether, according to those who are supposed to know better. They are of opinion, that some of the oxygen unites with the carbon and hydrogen of the blood in the lungs: but that most of it is merely absorbed by the blood, and dissolved in it in the first instance.”
“Oxygen, absorbed by the blood? That seems odd,” remarked Mr. Bagges. “How can that be?”
“We only know the fact that there are some things that will absorb gases—suck them in—make them disappear. Charcoal will, for instance. It is thought that the iron which the blood contains gives it the curious property of absorbing oxygen. Well; the oxygen going into the blood makes it change from dark to bright scarlet; and then this blood containing oxygen is conveyed all over the system by the arteries, and yields up the oxygen to combine with hydrogen and carbon as it goes along. The carbon and hydrogen are part of the substance of the body. The bright scarlet blood mixes oxygen with them, which burns them, in [pg 676] fact; that is, makes them into carbonic acid and water. Of course, the body would soon be consumed if this were all that the blood does. But while it mixes oxygen with the old substance of the body, to burn it up, it lays down fresh material to replace the loss. So our bodies are continually changing throughout, though they seem to us always the same; but then, you know, a river appears the same from year's end to year's end, although the water in it is different every day.”
“Eh, then,” said Mr. Bagges, “if the body is always on the change in this way, we must have had several bodies in the course of our lives, by the time we are old.”
“Yes, uncle; therefore, how foolish it is to spend money upon funerals. What becomes of all the bodies we use up during our life-times? If we are none the worse for their flying away in carbonic acid and other things without ceremony, what good can we expect from having a fuss made about the body we leave behind us, which is put into the earth? However, you are wanting to know what becomes of the water and carbonic acid which have been made by the oxygen of the blood burning up the old materials of our frame. The dark blood of the veins absorbs this carbonic acid and water, as the blood of the arteries does oxygen—only, they say, it does so by means of a salt in it, called phosphate of soda. Then the dark blood goes back to the lungs, and in them it parts with its carbonic acid and water, which escapes as breath. As fast as we breathe out, carbonic acid and water leave the blood; as fast as we breathe in, oxygen enters it. The oxygen is sent out in the arteries to make the rubbish of the body into gas and vapor, so that the veins may bring it back and get rid of it. The burning of rubbish by oxygen throughout our frames is the fire by which our animal heat, is kept up. At least this is what most philosophers think; though doctors differ a little on this point, as on most others, I hear. Professor Liebig says, that our carbon is mostly prepared for burning by being first extracted from the blood sent to it—(which contains much of the rubbish of the system dissolved)—in the form of bile, and is then re-absorbed into the blood, and burnt. He reckons that a grown-up man consumes about fourteen ounces of carbon a day. Fourteen ounces of charcoal a day, or eight pounds two ounces a week, would keep up a tolerable fire.”
“I had no idea we were such extensive charcoal-burners,” said Mr. Bagges. “They say we each eat our peck of dirt before we die—but we must burn bushels of charcoal.”
“And so,” continued Harry, “the professor calculates that we burn quite enough fuel to account for our heat. I should rather think, myself, it had something to do with it—shouldn't you?”
“Eh?” said Mr. Bagges; “it makes one rather nervous to think that one is burning all over—throughout one's very blood—in this kind of way.”
“It is very awful!” said Mrs. Wilkinson.
“If true. But in that case, shouldn't we be liable to inflame occasionally?” objected her husband.
“It is said,” answered Harry, “that spontaneous combustion does happen sometimes; particularly in great spirit drinkers. I don't see why it should not, if the system were to become too inflammable. Drinking alcohol would be likely to load the constitution with carbon, which would be fuel for the fire, at any rate.”
“The deuce!” exclaimed Mr. Bagges, pushing his brandy-and-water from him. “We had better take care how we indulge in combustibles.”
“At all events,” said Harry, “it must be bad to have too much fuel in us. It must choke the fire, I should think, if it did not cause inflammation; which Dr. Truepenny says it does, meaning, by inflammation, gout, and so on, you know, uncle.”
“Ahem!” coughed Mr. Bagges.
“Taking in too much fuel, I dare say, you know, uncle, means eating and drinking to excess,” continued Harry. “The best remedy, the doctor says, for overstuffing is exercise. A person who uses great bodily exertion, can eat and drink more without suffering from it than one who leads an inactive life; a fox-hunter, for instance, in comparison with an alderman. Want of exercise and too much nourishment must make a man either fat or ill. If the extra hydrogen and carbon are not burnt out, or otherwise got rid of, they turn to blubber, or cause some disturbance in the system, intended by Nature to throw them off, which is called a disease. Walking, riding, running, increase the breathing—as well as the perspiration—and make us burn away our carbon and hydrogen in proportion. Dr. Truepenny declares that if people would only take in as much fuel as is requisite to keep up a good fire, his profession would be ruined.”
“The good old advice—Baillie's, eh?—or Abernethy's—live upon sixpence a day, and earn it,” Mr. Bagges observed.
“Well, and then, uncle, in hot weather the appetite is naturally weaker than it is in cold—less heat is required, and therefore less food. So in hot climates; and the chief reason, says the doctor, why people ruin their health in India is their spurring and goading their stomachs to crave what is not good for them, by spices and the like. Fruits and vegetables are the proper things to eat in such countries, because they contain little carbon compared to flesh, and they are the diet of the natives of those parts of the world. Whereas food with much carbon in it, meat, or even mere fat or oil, which is hardly any thing else than carbon and hydrogen, are proper in very cold regions, where heat from within is required to supply the want of it without. That is why the Laplander is able, as I said he does, to devour train-oil. And Dr. Truepenny says that it may be all very well for Mr. M'Gregor to drink raw whisky at deer-stalking [pg 677] in the Highlands, but if Major Campbell combines that beverage with the diversion of tiger-hunting in the East Indies, habitually, the chances are that the major will come home with a diseased liver.”
“Upon my word, sir, the whole art of preserving health appears to consist in keeping up a moderate fire within us,” observed Mr. Bagges.
“Just so, uncle, according to my friend the doctor. ‘Adjust the fuel,’ he says, ‘to the draught’—he means the oxygen; ‘keep the bellows properly at work, by exercise, and your fire will seldom want poking.’ The doctor's pokers, you know, are pills, mixtures, leeches, blisters, lancets, and things of that sort.”
“Indeed? Well, then, my heart-burn, I suppose, depends upon bad management of my fire?” surmised Mr. Bagges.
“I should say that was more than probable, uncle. Well, now, I think you see that animal heat can be accounted for, in very great part at least, by the combustion of the body. And then there are several facts that—as I remember Shakspeare says—
“ ‘Help to thicken other proofs,
That do demonstrate thinly.”
“Birds that breathe a great deal are very hot creatures; snakes and lizards, and frogs and fishes, that breathe but little, are so cold that they are called cold-blooded animals. Bears and dormice, that sleep all the winter, are cold during their sleep, while their breathing and circulation almost entirely stop. We increase our heat by walking fast, running, jumping, or working hard; which sets us breathing faster, and then we get warmer. By these means, we blow up our own fire, if we have no other, to warm ourselves on a cold day. And how is it that we don't go on continually getting hotter and hotter?”
“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Bagges, “I suppose that is one of Nature's mysteries.”
“Why, what happens, uncle, when we take violent exercise? We break out into a perspiration; as you complain you always do, if you only run a few yards. Perspiration is mostly water, and the extra heat of the body goes into the water, and flies away with it in steam. Just for the same reason, you can't boil water so as to make it hotter than two hundred and twelve degrees; because all the heat that passes into it beyond that, unites with some of it and becomes steam, and so escapes. Hot weather causes you to perspire even when you sit still; and so your heat is cooled in summer. If you were to heat a man in an oven, the heat of his body generally wouldn't increase very much till he became exhausted and died. Stories are told of mountebanks sitting in ovens, and meat being cooked by the side of them. Philosophers have done much the same thing—Dr. Fordyce and others, who found they could bear a heat of two hundred and sixty degrees. Perspiration is our animal fire-escape. Heat goes out from the lungs, as well as the skin, in water; so the lungs are concerned in cooling us as well as heating us, like a sort of regulating furnace. Ah, uncle, the body is a wonderful factory, and I wish I were man enough to take you over it. I have only tried to show you something of the contrivances for warming it, and I hope you understand a little about that!”
“Well,” said Mr. Bagges, “breathing, I understand you to say, is the chief source of animal heat, by occasioning the combination of carbon and hydrogen with oxygen, in a sort of gentle combustion, throughout our frame. The lungs and heart are an apparatus for generating heat, and distributing it over the body by means of a kind of warming pipes, called blood-vessels. Eh?—and the carbon and hydrogen we have in our systems we get from our food. Now, you see, here is a slice of cake, and there is a glass of wine—Eh?—now see whether you can get any carbon and oxygen out of that.”
The young philosopher, having finished his lecture, applied himself immediately to the performance of the proposed experiment, which he performed with cleverness and dispatch.
The Steel Pen. An Illustration Of Cheapness. (From Dickens's Household Words.)
We remember (early remembrances are more durable than recent) an epithet employed by Mary Wolstonecroft, which then seemed as happy as it was original—“The iron pen of Time.” Had the vindicatress of the “Rights of Women” lived in these days (fifty years later), when the iron pen is the almost universal instrument of writing, she would have bestowed upon Time a less common material for recording his doings.
While we are remembering, let us look back for a moment upon our earliest school-days—the days of large text and round hand. Twenty urchins sit at a long desk, each intent upon making his copy. A nicely mended pen has been given to each. Our own labor goes on successfully, till, in school-boy phrase, the pen begins to splutter. A bold effort must be made. We leave the form, and timidly address the writing-master with—“Please, sir, mend my pen.” A slight frown subsides as he sees that the quill is very bad—too soft or too hard—used to the stump. He dashes it away, and snatching a feather from a bundle—a poor thin feather, such as green geese drop on a common—shapes it into a pen. This mending and making process occupies all his leisure—occupies, indeed, many of the minutes that ought to be devoted to instruction. He has a perpetual battle to wage with his bad quills. They are the meanest produce of the plucked goose.
And is this process still going on in the many thousand schools of our land, where with all drawbacks of imperfect education, both as to numbers educated and gifts imparted, there are about two millions and a half of children under daily instruction? In remote rural districts [pg 678] probably; in the towns certainly not. The steam-engine is now the pen-maker. Hecatombs of geese are consumed at Michaelmas and Christmas; but not all the geese in the world would meet the demand of England for pens. The supply of patÉs de foie gras will be kept up—that of quills, whether known as primes, seconds, or pinions, must be wholly inadequate to the wants of a writing people. Wherever geese are bred in these islands, so assuredly, in each succeeding March, will every full-fledged victim be robbed of his quills; and then turned forth on the common, a very waddling and impotent goose, quite unworthy of the name of bird. The country schoolmaster, at the same spring-time, will continue to buy the smallest quills, at a low price, clarify them after his own rude fashion, make them into pens, and sorely spite the boy who splits them up too rapidly. The better quills will still be collected, and find their way to the quill dealer, who will exercise his empirical arts before they pass to the stationer. He will plunge them into heated sand, to make the external skin peel off, and the external membrane shrivel up; or he will saturate them with water, and alternately contract and swell them before a charcoal fire; or he will dip them in nitric acid, and make them of a gaudy brilliancy but a treacherous endurance. They will be sorted according to the quality of the barrels, with the utmost nicety. The experienced buyer will know their value by looking at their feathery ends, tapering to a point; the uninitiated will regard only the quill portion. There is no article of commerce in which the market value is so difficult to be determined with exactness. For the finest and largest quills no price seems unreasonable; for those of the second quality too exorbitant a charge is often made. The foreign supply is large, and probably exceeds the home supply of the superior article. What the exact amount is we know not. There is no duty now on quills. The tariff of 1845—one of the most lasting monuments of the wisdom of our great commercial minister—abolished the duty of half-a-crown a thousand. In 1832 the duty amounted to four thousand two hundred pounds, which would show an annual importation of thirty-three millions one hundred thousand quills; enough, perhaps, for the commercial clerks of England, together with the quills of home growth—but how to serve a letter-writing population?
The ancient reign of the quill-pen was first seriously disturbed about twenty-five years ago. An abortive imitation of the form of a pen was produced before that time; a clumsy, inelastic, metal tube fastened in a bone or ivory handle, and sold for half-a-crown. A man might make his mark with one—but as to writing, it was a mere delusion. In due course came more carefully finished inventions for the luxurious, under the tempting names of ruby pen, or diamond pen—with the plain gold pen, and the rhodium pen, for those who were skeptical as to the jewelry of the inkstand. The economical use of the quill received also the attention of science. A machine was invented to divide the barrel lengthwise into two halves; and, by the same mechanical means, these halves were subdivided into small pieces, cut pen-shape, slit, and nibbed. But the pressure upon the quill supply grew more and more intense. A new power had risen up in our world—a new seed sown—the source of all good, or the dragon's teeth of Cadmus. In 1818 there were only one hundred and sixty-five thousand scholars in the monitorial schools—the new schools, which were being established under the auspices of the National Society, and the British and Foreign School Society. Fifteen years afterward, in 1833, there were three hundred and ninety thousand. Ten years later, the numbers exceeded a million. Even a quarter of a century ago two-thirds of the male population of England, and one-half of the female, were learning to write; for in the Report of the Registrar-General for 1846, we find this passage—“Persons when they are married are required to sign the marriage register; if they can not write their names, they sign with a mark: the result has hitherto been, that nearly one man in three, and one woman in two, married, sign with marks.” This remark applies to the period between 1839 and 1845. Taking the average age of men at marriage as twenty-seven years, and the average age of boys during their education as ten years, the marriage-register is an educational test of male instruction for the years 1824-28. But the gross number of the population of England and Wales was rapidly advancing. In 1821 it was twelve millions; in 1831, fourteen millions; in 1841, sixteen millions; in 1851, taking the rate of increase at fourteen per cent., it will be eighteen millions and a half. The extension of education was proceeding in a much quicker ratio; and we may therefore fairly assume that the proportion of those who make their marks in the marriage-register has greatly diminished since 1844.
But, during the last ten years, the natural desire to learn to write, of that part of the youthful population which education can reach, has received a great moral impulse by a wondrous development of the most useful and pleasurable exercise of that power. The uniform penny postage has been established. In the year 1838, the whole number of letters delivered in the United Kingdom was seventy-six millions; in this year that annual delivery has reached the prodigious number of three hundred and thirty-seven millions. In 1838, a Committee of the House of Commons thus denounced, among the great commercial evils of the high rates of postage, their injurious effects upon the great bulk of the people. They either act as a grievous tax on the poor, causing them to sacrifice their little earnings to the pleasure and advantage of corresponding with their distant friends, or compel them to forego such intercourse altogether; thus subtracting from the small amount of their enjoyments, and obstructing [pg 679] the growth and maintenance of their best affections. Honored be the man who broke down these barriers! Praised be the Government that, for once, stepping out of its fiscal tram-way, dared boldly to legislate for the domestic happiness, the educational progress, and the moral elevation of the masses! The steel pen, sold at the rate of a penny a dozen, is the creation, in a considerable degree, of the Penny Postage stamp; as the Penny Postage stamp was a representative, if not a creation, of the new educational power. Without the steel pen, it may reasonably be doubted whether there were mechanical means within the reach of the great bulk of the population for writing the three hundred and thirty-seven millions of letters that now annually pass through the Post Office.
Othello's sword had “the ice-brook's temper;” but not all the real or imaginary virtues of the stream that gave its value to the true Spanish blade could create the elasticity of a steel pen. Flexible, indeed, is the Toledo. If thrust against a wall, it will bend into an arc that describes three-fourths of a circle. The problem to be solved in the steel-pen, is to convert the iron of Dannemora into a substance as thin as the quill of a dove's pinion, but as strong as the proudest feather of an eagle's wing. The furnaces and hammers of the old armorers could never have solved this problem. The steel pen belongs to our age of mighty machinery. It could not have existed in any other age. The demand for the instrument, and the means of supplying it, came together.
The commercial importance of the steel pen was first manifested to our senses a year or two ago at Sheffield. We had witnessed all the curious processes of converting iron into steel, by saturating it with carbon in the converting furnace; of tilting the bars so converted into a harder substance, under the thousand hammers that shake the waters of the Sheaf and the Don: of casting the steel thus converted and tilted into ingots of higher purity; and, finally, of milling, by which the most perfect development of the material is acquired, under enormous rollers. About two miles from the metropolis of steel, over whose head hangs a canopy of smoke through which the broad moors of the distance sometimes reveal themselves, there is a solitary mill where the tilting and rolling processes are carried to great perfection. The din of the large tilts is heard half a mile off. Our ears tingle, our legs tremble, when we stand close to their operation of beating bars of steel into the greatest possible density; for the whole building vibrates as the workmen swing before them in suspended baskets, and shift the bar at every movement of these hammers of the Titans. We pass onward to the more quiet rolling department. The bar that has been tilted into the most perfect compactness, has now to acquire the utmost possible tenuity. A large area is occupied by furnaces and rollers. The bar of steel is dragged out of the furnace at almost a white heat. There are two men at each roller. It is passed through the first pair, and its squareness is instantly elongated and widened into flatness; rapidly through a second pair, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. The bar is becoming a sheet of steel. Thinner and thinner it becomes, until it would seem that the workmen can scarcely manage the fragile substance. It has spread out like a morsel of gold under the beater's hammer, into an enormous leaf. The least attenuated sheet is only the hundredth part of an inch in thickness; some sheets are made as thin as the two-hundredth part of an inch. And for what purpose is this result of the labors of so many workmen, of such vast and complicated machinery, destined?—what the final application of a material employing so much capital in every step, from the Swedish mine to its transport by railroad to some other seat of British industry? The whole is prepared for one steel-pen manufactory at Birmingham.
There is nothing very remarkable in a steel-pen manufactory, as regards ingenuity of contrivance or factory organization. Upon a large scale of production, the extent of labor engaged in producing so minute an article, is necessarily striking. But the process is just as curious and interesting, if conducted in a small shop as in a large. The pure steel, as it comes from the rolling-mill, is cut up into strips about two inches and a half in width. These are further cut into the proper size for the pen. The pieces are then annealed and cleansed. The maker's name is neatly impressed on the metal; and a cutting-tool forms the slit, although imperfectly in this stage. The pen shape is given by a convex punch pressing the plate into a concave die. The pen is formed when the slit is perfected. It has now to be hardened, and, finally, cleansed and polished, by the simple agency of friction in a cylinder. All the varieties of form of the steel pen are produced by the punch; all the contrivances of slits and apertures above the nib, by the cutting-tool. Every improvement has had for its object to overcome the rigidity of the steel—to imitate the elasticity of the quill, while bestowing upon the pen a superior durability.
The perfection that may reasonably be demanded in a steel pen has yet to be reached. But the improvement in the manufacture is most decided. Twenty years ago, to one who might choose, regardless of expense, between the quill pen and the steel, the best Birmingham and London production was an abomination. But we can trace the gradual acquiescence of most men in the writing implement of the multitude. Few of us, in an age when the small economies are carefully observed, and even paraded, desire to use quill pens at ten or twelve shillings a hundred, as Treasury Clerks once luxuriated in their use—an hour's work, and then a new one. To mend a pen, is troublesome to the old, and even the middle-aged man who once acquired the art; the young, for [pg 680] the most part, have not learned it. The most painstaking and penurious author would never dream of imitating the wondrous man who translated Pliny with “one gray goose quill.” Steel pens are so cheap, that if one scratches or splutters, it may be thrown away, and another may be tried. But when a really good one is found, we cling to it, as worldly men cling to their friends: we use it till it breaks down, or grows rusty. We can do no more; we handle it as Izaak Walton handled the frog upon his hook, “as if we loved him.” We could almost fancy some analogy between the gradual and decided improvement of the steel pen—one of the new instruments of education—and the effects of education itself upon the mass of the people. An instructed nation ought to present the same gradually perfecting combination of strength with elasticity. The favorites of fortune are like the quill, ready made for social purposes, with a little scraping and polishing. The bulk of the community have to be formed out of ruder and tougher materials—to be converted, welded, and tempered into pliancy. The manners of the great British family have decidedly improved under culture—“emollit mores:” may the sturdy self-respect of the race never be impaired!
At the present time there are at the London Zoological Gardens two Arabs, who are eminently skilled in what is termed “Snake-Charming.” In this country, happily for ourselves, we have but little practical acquaintance with venomous serpents, and there is no scope for the development of native skill in the art referred to; the visit, therefore, of these strangers is interesting, as affording an opportunity of beholding feats which have hitherto been known to us only by description. We propose, therefore, to give some account of their proceedings.
Visitors to the Zoological Gardens will remark, on the right hand side, after they have passed through the tunnel, and ascended the slope beyond, a neat wooden building in the Swiss style. This is the reptile-house, and while our readers are bending their steps toward it, we will describe the performance of the Serpent Charmers.
The names of these are Jubar-Abou-Haijab, and Mohammed-Abou-Merwan. The former is an old man, much distinguished in his native country for his skill. When the French occupied Egypt, he collected serpents for their naturalists, and was sent for to Cairo to perform before General Bonaparte. He described to us the general, as a middle-sized man, very pale, with handsome features, and a most keen eye. Napoleon watched his proceedings with great interest, made many inquiries, and dismissed him with a handsome “backsheesh.” Jubar is usually dressed in a coarse loose bernoose of brown serge, with a red cap on his head.
The gift, or craft, of serpent-charming, descends in certain families from generation to generation; and Mohammed, a smart active lad, is the old man's son-in-law, although not numbering sixteen years. He is quite an Adonis as to dress, wearing a smart, richly embroidered dark-green jacket, carried—hussar fashion—over his right shoulder, a white loose vest, full white trowsers, tied at the knee, scarlet stockings and slippers, and a fez or red cap, with a blue tassel of extra proportions on his head. In his right ear is a ring, so large that it might pass for a curtain ring.
Precisely as the clock strikes four, one of the keepers places on a platform a wooden box containing the serpents, and the lad Mohammed proceeds to tuck his ample sleeves as far up as possible, to leave the arms bare. He then takes off his cloth jacket, and, opening the box, draws out a large Cobra de Capello, of a dark copper color: this he holds at arm's length by the tail, and after allowing it to writhe about in the air for some time, he places the serpent on the floor, still holding it as described. By this time the cobra had raised his hood, very indignant at the treatment he is receiving. Mohammed then pinches and teases him in every way; at each pinch the cobra strikes at him, but, with great activity, the blow is avoided. Having thus teased the snake for some time, Mohammed rises, and placing his foot upon the tail, irritates him with a stick. The cobra writhes, and strikes sometimes at the stick, sometimes at his tormentor's legs, and again at his hands, all which is avoided with the utmost nonchalance. After the lapse of about ten minutes, Mohammed coils the cobra on the floor, and leaves him while he goes to the box, and draws out another far fiercer cobra. While holding this by the tail, Mohammed buffets him on the head with his open hand, and the serpent, quite furious, frequently seizes him by the forearm. The lad merely wipes the spot, and proceeds to tie the serpent like a necklace around his neck. Then the tail is tied into a knot around the reptile's head, and again head and tail into a double knot. After amusing himself in this way for some time, the serpent is told to lie quiet, and stretched on his back, the neck and chin being gently stroked. Whether any sort of mesmeric influence is produced we know not, but the snake remains on its back, perfectly still, as if dead. During this time the first cobra has remained coiled up, with head erect, apparently watching the proceedings of the Arab. After a pause, the lad takes up the second cobra, and carrying it to the first, pinches and irritates both, to make them fight; the fiercer snake seizes the other by the throat, and coiling round him, they roll struggling across the stage. Mohammed then leaves these serpents in charge of Jubar and draws a third snake out of the box. This he first ties in a variety of apparently impossible knots, and then holding him at a little distance from his face, allows the snake to strike at it, just dodging back each time sufficiently [pg 681] far to avoid the blow. The serpent is then placed in his bosom next his skin, and left there, but it is not so easy after a time to draw it out of its warm resting-place. The tail is pulled; but, no! the serpent is round the lad's body, and will not come. After several unsuccessful efforts, Mohammed rubs the tail briskly between his two hands, a process which—judging from the writhings of the serpent, which are plainly visible—is the reverse of agreeable. At last Mohammed pulls him hand-over-hand—as the sailors say—and, just, as the head flies out, the cobra makes a parting snap at his tormentor's face, for which he receives a smart cuff on the head, and is then with the others replaced in the box.
Dr. John Davy, in his valuable work on Ceylon, denies that the fangs are extracted from the serpents which are thus exhibited; and says that the only charm employed is that of courage and confidence—the natives avoiding the stroke of the serpent with wonderful agility; adding, that they will play their tricks with any hooded snake, but with no other poisonous serpent.
In order that we might get at the truth, we sought it from the fountain-head, and our questions were thus most freely answered by Jubar-Abou-Haijab, Hamet acting as interpreter:
Q. How are the serpents caught in the first instance?
A. I take this adze (holding up a sort of geological hammer mounted on a long handle) and as soon as I have found a hole containing a cobra, I knock away the earth till he comes out or can be got at; I then take a stick in my right hand, and seizing the snake by the tail with the left, hold it at arm's length. He keeps trying to bite, but I push his head away with the stick. After doing this some time I throw him straight on the ground, still holding him by the tail; I allow him to raise his head and try to bite, for some time, in order that he may learn how to attack, still keeping him off with the stick. When this has been done long enough, I slide the stick up to his head and fix it firmly on the ground; then taking the adze, and forcing open the mouth, I break off the fangs with it, carefully removing every portion, and especially squeezing out all the poison and blood, which I wipe away as long as it continues to flow; when this is done the snake is harmless and ready for use.
Q. Do the ordinary jugglers, or only the hereditary snake charmers catch the cobras?
A. We are the only persons who dare to catch them, and when the jugglers want snakes they come to us for them; with that adze (pointing to the hammer) I have caught and taken out the fangs of many thousands.
Q. Do you use any other snakes besides the cobras for your exhibitions?
A. No; because the cobra is the only one that will fight well. The cobra is always ready to give battle, but the other snakes are sluggish, only bite, and can't be taught for our exhibitions.
Q. What do the Arabs do if they happen to be bitten by a poisonous snake?
A. They immediately tie a cord tight round the arm above the wound, and cut out the bitten part as soon as possible—some burn it; they then squeeze the arm downward, so as to press out the poison, but they don't suck it, because it is bad for the mouth; however, in spite of all this, they sometimes die.
Q. Do you think it possible that cobras could be exhibited without the fangs being removed?
A. Certainly not, for the least scratch of their deadly teeth would cause death, and there is not a day that we exhibit that we are not bitten and no skill in the world would prevent it.
Such were the particulars given us by a most distinguished professor in the art of snake-charming, and, therefore, they may be relied on as correct; the matter-of-fact way in which he acted, as well as related the snake-catching, bore the impress of truth, and there certainly would appear to be far less mystery about the craft than has generally been supposed. The way in which vipers are caught in this country is much less artistic than the Arab mode. The viper-catcher provides himself with a cleftstick, and stealing up to the reptile when basking, pins his head to the ground with the cleft, and seizing the tail, throws the reptile into a bag. As they do not destroy the fangs, these men are frequently bitten in the pursuit of their business, but their remedy is either the fat of vipers, or salad oil, which they take inwardly, and apply externally, after squeezing the wound. We are not aware of any well-authenticated fatal case in man from a viper bite, but it fell to our lot some years ago to see a valuable pointer killed by one. We were beating for game in a dry, stony district, when suddenly the dog, who was running beneath a hedgerow, gave a yelp and bound, and immediately came limping up to us with a countenance most expressive of pain; a large adder was seen to glide into the hedgerow. Two small spots of blood on the inner side of the left foreleg, close to the body of the dog marked the seat of the wound; and we did our best to squeeze out the poison. The limb speedily began to swell, and the dog laid down, moaning and unable to walk. With some difficulty we managed to carry the poor animal to the nearest cottage, but it was too late. In spite of oil and other remedies the body swelled more and more, and he died in convulsions some two hours after the receipt of the injury.
The Reptile-house is fitted up with much attention to security and elegance of design; arranged along the left side are roomy cages painted to imitate mahogany and fronted with plate-glass. They are ventilated by perforated plates of zinc above, and warmed by hot water pipes below. The bottoms of the cages are strewed with sand and gravel, and in those which contain the larger serpents strong branches of trees are fixed. The advantage of the plate-glass fronts is obvious, for every movement of the reptiles is distinctly seen, while its great [pg 682] strength confines them in perfect safety. Each cage is, moreover, provided with a pan of water.
Except when roused by hunger, the Serpents are generally in a state of torpor during the day, but as night draws on, they, in common with other wild denizens of the forest, are roused into activity. In their native state the Boas then lie in wait, coiled round the branches of trees, ready to spring upon the antelopes and other prey as they pass through the leafy glades; and the smaller serpents silently glide from branch to branch in quest of birds on which to feed. As we have had the opportunity of seeing the Reptile-house by night, we will describe the strange scene.
About ten o'clock one evening during the last spring, in company with two naturalists of eminence, we entered that apartment. A small lantern was our only light, and the faint illumination of this, imparted a ghastly character to the scene before us. The clear plate-glass which faces the cages was invisible, and it was difficult to believe that the monsters were in confinement and the spectators secure. Those who have only seen the Boas and Pythons, the Rattlesnakes and Cobras, lazily hanging in festoons from the forks of the trees in the dens, or sluggishly coiled up, can form no conception of the appearance and actions of the same creatures at night. The huge Boas and Pythons were chasing each other in every direction, whisking about the dens with the rapidity of lightning, sometimes clinging in huge coils round the branches, anon entwining each other in massive folds, then separating they would rush over and under the branches, hissing and lashing their tails in hideous sport. Ever and anon, thirsty with their exertions, they would approach the pans containing water and drink eagerly, lapping it with their forked tongues. As our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, we perceived objects better, and on the uppermost branch of the tree in the den of the biggest serpent, we perceived a pigeon quietly roosting, apparently indifferent alike to the turmoil which was going on around, and the vicinity of the monster whose meal it was soon to form. In the den of one of the smaller serpents was a little mouse, whose panting sides and fast-beating heart showed that it, at least, disliked its company. Misery is said to make us acquainted with strange bed-fellows, but evil must be the star of that mouse or pigeon whose lot it is to be the comrade and prey of a serpent!
A singular circumstance occurred not long since at the Gardens, showing that the mouse at times has the best of it. A litter of rattlesnakes was born in the Gardens—curious little active things without rattles—hiding under stones, or coiling together in complicated knots, with their clustering heads resembling Medusa's locks. It came to pass that a mouse was put into the cage for the breakfast of the mamma, but she not being hungry, took no notice. The poor mouse gradually became accustomed to its strange companions, and would appear to have been pressed by hunger, for it actually nibbled away great part of the jaw of one of the little rattlesnakes, so that it died! perhaps the first instance of such a turning of the tables. An interesting fact was proved by this, namely, that these reptiles when young are quite defenseless, and do not acquire either the power of injuring others, or of using their rattles until their adolescence.
During the time we were looking at these creatures, all sorts of odd noises were heard; a strange scratching against the glass would be audible; 'twas the Carnivorous Lizard endeavoring to inform us that it was a fast-day with him, entirely contrary to his inclination. A sharp hiss would startle us from another quarter, and we stepped back involuntarily as the lantern revealed the inflated hood and threatening action of an angry cobra. Then a rattlesnake would take umbrage, and, sounding an alarm, would make a stroke against the glass, intended for our person. The fixed gaze, too, from the brilliant eyes of the huge Pythons, was more fascinating than pleasant, and the scene, taking it all together, more exciting than agreeable. Each of the spectators involuntarily stooped to make sure that his trowsers were well strapped down; and, as if our nerves were jesting, a strange sensation would every now and then be felt, resembling the twining of a small snake about the legs. Just before leaving the house, a great dor beetle which had flown in, attracted by the light, struck with some force against our right ear; startled indeed we were, for at the moment our impression was that it was some member of the Happy Family around us who had favored us with a mark of his attention.
In feeding the larger serpents, the Boas and Pythons, some care is necessary lest such an accident should occur as that which befell Mr. Cops, of the Lion Office in the Tower, some years ago. Mr. Cops was holding a fowl to the head of the largest of the five snakes which were then there kept; the snake was changing its skin, consequently, being nearly blind (for the skin of the eye is changed with the rest), it darted at the fowl but missed it, and seized the keeper by the left thumb, coiling round his arm and neck in a moment, and fixing itself by its tail to one of the posts of its cage, thus giving itself greater power. Mr. Cops, who was alone, did not lose his presence of mind, and immediately attempted to relieve himself from the powerful constriction by getting at the serpent's head; but the serpent had so knotted itself upon its own head, that Mr. Cops could not reach it, and had thrown himself upon the floor in order to grapple, with greater success, with his formidable opponent, when fortunately, two other keepers came in and rushed to the rescue. The struggle even then was severe, but at length they succeeded in breaking the teeth of the serpent, and relieving Mr. Cops from his perilous situation; two broken teeth were extracted from the thumb; the wounds [pg 683] soon healed, and no further inconvenience followed. Still more severe was the contest which took place between a negro herdsman, belonging to Mr. Abson, for many years Governor at Fort William, on the coast of Africa. This man was seized by a huge Python while passing through a wood. The serpent fixed his fangs in his thigh, but in attempting to throw himself round his body, fortunately became entangled with a tree, and the man being thus preserved from a state of compression which would have instantly rendered him powerless, had presence of mind enough to cut with a large knife which he carried about with him, deep gashes in the neck and throat of his antagonist, thereby killing him, and disengaging himself from his frightful situation. He never afterward, however, recovered the use of the limb, which had sustained considerable injury from the fangs and mere force of the jaws, and for many years limped about the fort, a living example of the prowess of these fearful serpents.
The true Boas, it is to be observed, are restricted to America, the name Python being given to the large serpents of Africa and India. It is related by Pliny that the army of Regulus was alarmed by a huge serpent one hundred and twenty-three feet in length. This account is doubtful; but there is a well-authenticated instance of the destruction of a snake above sixty-two feet long, while in the act of coiling itself round the body of a man. The snakes at the gardens will generally be found coiled and twined together in large clusters, probably for the sake of warmth. Dr. Carpenter knew an instance in which no less than thirteen hundred of our English harmless snakes were found in an old lime kiln! The battÛe which ensued can better be imagined than described.
The cobras, the puff-adders, and some of the other highly-venomous serpents are principally found in rocky and sandy places, and very dangerous they are. Mr. Gould, the eminent ornithologist, had a most narrow escape of his life when in the interior of Australia: there is a serpent found in those arid wastes, whose bite is fatal in an incredibly short time, and it springs at an object with great force. Mr. Gould was a little in advance of his party, when suddenly a native who was with him screamed out, “Oh, massa! dere big snake!” Mr. Gould started, and putting his foot in a hole, nearly fell to the ground. At that instant the snake made its spring, and had it not been for his stumble, would have struck him in the face; as it was, it passed over his head, and was shot before it could do any further mischief. It was a large snake, of the most venomous sort, and the natives gathered round the sportsman anxiously inquiring if it had bitten him? Finding it had not, all said they thought he was “good for dead,” when they saw the reptile spring.
The expression “sting,” used repeatedly by Shakspeare, as applied to snakes, is altogether incorrect; the tongue has nothing to do with the infliction of injury. Serpents bite, and the difference between the harmless and venomous serpents generally is simply this: the mouths of the harmless snakes and the whole tribe of boas are provided with sharp teeth, but no fangs; their bite, therefore, is innocuous; the poisonous serpents on the other hand, have two poison-fangs attached to the upper jaw which lie flat upon the roof of the mouth when not in use, and are concealed by a fold of the skin. In each fang is a tube which opens near the point of the tooth by a fissure; when the creature is irritated the fangs are at once erected. The poison bag is placed beneath the muscles which act on the lower jaw, so that when the fangs are struck into the victim the poison is injected with much force to the very bottom of the wound.
But how do Boa Constrictors swallow goats and antelopes, and other large animals whole? The process is very simple; the lower jaw is not united to the upper, but is hung to a long stalk-shaped bone, on which it is movable, and this bone is only attached to the skull by ligaments, susceptible of extraordinary extension. The process by which these serpents take and swallow their prey has been so graphically described in the second volume of the “Zoological Journal,” by that very able naturalist and graceful writer, W. J. Broderip, Esq., F.R.S., that we shall transcribe it, being able, from frequent ocular demonstrations, to vouch for its correctness. A large buck rabbit was introduced into the cage of a Boa Constrictor of great size: “The snake was down and motionless in a moment. There he lay like a log without one symptom of life, save that which glared in the small bright eye twinkling in his depressed head. The rabbit appeared to take no notice of him, but presently began to walk about the cage. The snake suddenly, but almost imperceptibly, turned his head according to the rabbit's movements, as if to keep the object within the range of his eye. At length the rabbit, totally unconscious of his situation, approached the ambushed head. The snake dashed at him like lightning. There was a blow—a scream—and instantly the victim was locked in the coils of the serpent. This was done almost too rapidly for the eye to follow; at one instant the snake was motionless—the next he was one congeries of coils round his prey. He had seized the rabbit by the neck just under the ear, and was evidently exerting the strongest pressure round the thorax of the quadruped; thereby preventing the expansion of the chest, and at the same time depriving the anterior extremities of motion. The rabbit never cried after the first seizure; he lay with his hind legs stretched out, still breathing with difficulty, as could be seen by the motion of his flanks. Presently he made one desperate struggle with his hind legs; but the snake cautiously applied another coil with such dexterity as completely to manacle the lower extremities, and in about eight minutes the rabbit was quite dead. The snake then gradually and [pg 684] carefully uncoiled himself, and finding that his victim moved not, opened his mouth, let go his hold, and placed his head opposite the fore-part of the rabbit. The boa, generally, I have observed, begins with the head; but in this instance, the serpent having begun with the fore-legs was longer in gorging his prey than usual, and in consequence of the difficulty presented by the awkward position of the rabbit, the dilatation and secretion of lubricating mucus were excessive. The serpent first got the fore-legs into his mouth; he then coiled himself round the rabbit, and appeared to draw out the dead body through his folds; he then began to dilate his jaws, and holding the rabbit firmly in a coil, as a point of resistance, appeared to exercise at intervals the whole of his anterior muscles in protruding his stretched jaws and lubricated mouth and throat, at first against, and soon after gradually upon and over his prey. When the prey was completely engulfed the serpent lay for a few moments with his dislocated jaws still dropping with the mucus which had lubricated the parts, and at this time he looked quite sufficiently disgusting. He then stretched out his neck, and at the same moment the muscles seemed to push the prey further downward. After a few efforts to replace the parts, the jaws appeared much the same as they did previous to the monstrous repast.”
The Magic Maze. (From Colburn's Monthly Magazine.)
The Germans are said to be a philosophical and sagacious people, with a strong penchant for metaphysics and mysticism. They are certainly a leichtglÄubiges Volk, but, notwithstanding, painstaking and persevering in their search after truth. I know not whence it arises—whether from temperament, climate, or association—but it is very evident that a large portion of their studies is recondite and unsatisfactory, and incapable of being turned to any practical or beneficial account. They meditate on things which do not concern them; they attempt to penetrate into mysteries which lie without the pale of human knowledge. It has been ordained, by an inscrutable decree of Providence, that there are things which man shall not know; but they have endeavored to draw aside the vail which He has interposed as a safeguard to those secrets, and have perplexed mankind with a relation of their discoveries and speculations. They have pretended to a knowledge of the invisible world, and have assumed a position scarcely tenable by the weight of argument adduced in its defense. What has puzzled the minds of the most erudite and persevering men, I do not presume to decide. Instances of the re-appearance of persons after their decease, may or may not have occurred; there may, for aught I know, be good grounds for the belief in omens, warnings, wraiths, second-sight, with many other descriptions of supernatural phenomena. I attempt not to dispute the point. The human mind is strongly tinctured with superstition; it is a feeling common to all nations and ages. We find it existing among savages, as well as among people of refinement; we read of it in times of antiquity, as well as in modern and more enlightened periods. This universality betokens the feeling to be instinctive, and is an argument in favor of the phenomena which many accredit, and vouch to have witnessed.
I inherit many of the peculiarities of my countrymen. I, too, have felt that deep and absorbing interest in every thing appertaining to the supernatural. This passion was implanted in my breast at a very early age, by an old woman, who lived with us as nurse. I shall remember her as long as I live, for to her may be attributed a very great portion of my sufferings. She was an excellent story-teller. I do not know whether she invented them herself, but she had always a plentiful supply. My family resided at that time in Berlin, where, indeed, I was born. This old woman, when she took me and my sister to bed of an evening, kept us awake for hours and hours, by relating to us tales which were always interesting, and sometimes very frightful. Our parents were not aware of this, or they never would have suffered her to relate them to us. In the long winter nights, when it grew quite dark at four o'clock, she would draw her chair to the stove, and we would cluster round her, and listen to her marvelous stories. Many a time did my limbs shake, many a time did I turn as pale as death, and cling closely to her from fear, as I sat listening with greedy ear to her narratives. So powerful an effect did they produce, that I dared not remain alone. Even in the broad day-light, and when the sun was brightly shining into every chamber, I was afraid to go upstairs by myself; and so timid did I become, that the least noise instantly alarmed me. That old woman brought misery and desolation into our house; she blasted the fondest hopes, and threw a dark and dismal shadow over the brightest and most cheerful places. Often and often have I wished that she had been sooner removed; but, alas! it was ordered otherwise. She pretended to be very fond of us, and our parents never dreamed of any danger in permitting her to remain under their roof. We were so delighted and captivated with her narratives, that we implicitly obeyed her in every respect; but she laid strong injunctions upon us, that we were not to inform either our father or mother of the nature of them. If we were alarmed at any time, we always attributed it to some other than the true cause; hence the injury she was inflicting upon the family was unperceived. I have sometimes thought that she was actuated by a spirit of revenge, for some supposed injury inflicted upon her, and that she had long contemplated the misfortune into which she eventually plunged my unhappy parents, and which hurried them both to a premature grave.
I will briefly state the cause of the grievous [pg 685] change in our domestic happiness. My sister was a year or two younger than myself, and, at the time of which I speak, about seven years of age. She had always been a gay, romping child, till this old woman was introduced into the family, and then she became grave, timid, and reserved; she lost all that buoyancy of disposition, that joyousness of heart, which were common to her before. Methinks I now see her as she was then—a rosy-cheeked, fair-haired little creature, with soft, blue eyes, that sparkled with animation, a mouth pursed into the pleasantest smile, and a nose and chin exquisitely formed. My sister, as I have already stated, altered much after the old woman had become an inmate of the family. She lost the freshness of her complexion, the bright lustre of her eye, and was often dejected and thoughtful. One night (I shudder even now when I think of it), the wicked old beldame told us, as usual, one of her frightful stories, which had alarmed us exceedingly. It related to our own house, which she declared had at one time been haunted, and that the apparition had been seen by several persons still living. It appeared as a lady, habited in a green silk dress, black velvet bonnet, with black feathers. After she had concluded her narrative, under some pretense or other, she left the room, though we both strenuously implored her to remain; for we were greatly afraid, and trembling in every limb. She, however, did not heed our solicitation, but said she would return in a few minutes. There was a candle upon the table, but it was already in the socket, and fast expiring. Some ten or fifteen minutes elapsed, and the chamber-door was quietly thrown open. My hand shakes, and my flesh seems to creep upon my bones, as I recall that horrid moment of my past existence. The door was opened, and a figure glided into the room. It seemed to move upon the air, for we heard not its footsteps. By the feeble and sickly light of the expiring taper, we closely examined the appearance of our extraordinary visitor. She had on a green dress, black bonnet and feathers, and, in a word, precisely corresponded with the appearance of the apparition described by the wicked old nurse. My sister screamed hysterically, and I fell into a swoon. The household was disturbed, and in a few minutes the servants and our parents were by the bed-side. The old woman was among them. I described, as well as I was able, what had occurred; and my parents, without a moment's hesitation, laid the mysterious visitation to the charge of the old woman; but she stoutly denied it. My belief, however, to this day, is, that she was concerned in it. My beloved sister became a confirmed idiot, and died about two years after that dreadful night.
My subsequent wretchedness may be traced to this female, for she had already instilled into my mind a love for the marvelous and supernatural. I was not satisfied unless I was reading books that treated of these subjects; and I desired, like the astrologers of old, to read the stars, and to be endowed with the power of casting the horoscopes of my fellow-creatures.
When directed by my guardians to select a profession, I chose that of medicine, as being most congenial to my taste. I was accordingly placed with a respectable practitioner, and in due time sent to college, to perfect myself in my profession. I found my studies dry and wearisome, and was glad to relieve myself with books more capable of interesting me than those relating to medical subjects.
I had always attached great importance to dreams, and to the various coincidences which so frequently occur to us in life. I shall mention a circumstance or two which occurred about this time, and which made a very forcible impression upon me. I dreamed one night that an intimate friend of mine, then residing in India, had been killed by being thrown from his horse. Not many weeks elapsed, before I received intelligence of his death, which occurred in the very way I have described. I was so struck with the coincidence, that I instituted further inquiry, and ascertained that he had died on the same night, and about the same hour on which I had dreamed that the unfortunate event took place. I reflected a good deal upon this occurrence. Was it possible, I asked myself, that his disinthralled spirit had the power of communicating with other spirits, though thousands of miles intervened? An event so strange I could not attribute to mere chance. I felt convinced that the information had been conveyed by design, although the manner of its accomplishment I could not comprehend.
A circumstance scarcely less remarkable happened to me only a few days subsequently. I had wandered a few miles into the country, and at length found myself upon a rising eminence, commanding a view of a picturesque little village in the distance. Although I had at no period of my life been in this part of the country, the scene was not novel to me. I had seen it before. Every object was perfectly familiar. The mill, with its revolving wheel—the neat cottages, with small gardens in front—and the little stream of water that gently trickled past.
These matters gave a stronger impulse to my reading, and I devoured, with the greatest voracity, all books appertaining to my favorite subjects. Indeed, I became so engrossed in my employment, that I neglected my proper studies, avoided all society, all exercise, and out-door occupation. For weeks and weeks I shut my self up in my chamber, and refused to see anybody. I would sit for hours of a night, gazing upon the stars, and wondering if they exercised any control over the destinies of mankind. So nervous did this constant study and seclusion render me, that if a door were blown open by a sudden blast of wind, I trembled, and became as pale as death; if a withered bough fell from a neighboring tree, I was agitated, and unable for some seconds to speak; if a sudden footstep was heard on the stairs, I anticipated that my chamber-door would be immediately thrown [pg 686] open, and ere many seconds elapsed to be in the presence of a visitor from the dark and invisible world of shadows. I became pale and feverish, my appetite failed me, and I felt a strong disinclination to perform the ordinary duties of life.
My friends observed, with anxiety and disquietude, my altered appearance; and I was recommended to change my residence, and to withdraw myself entirely from books. A favorable locality, combining the advantages of pure air, magnificent scenery, and retirement, was accordingly chosen for me, in which it was determined I should remain during the winter months. It was now the latter end of September.
My future residence lay at the distance of about ten German miles from Berlin. It was a fine autumnal day, that I proceeded, in the company of a friend, to take possession of my new abode. Toward the close of the day we found ourselves upon an elevated ground, commanding an extensive and beautiful view of the country for miles around. From this spot we beheld the house, or rather castle (for it had once assumed this character, although it was now dismantled, and a portion only of the eastern wing was inhabitable), that I was to occupy. It stood in an extensive valley, through which a broad and deep stream held its devious course—now flowing smoothly and placidly along, amid dark, overhanging trees—now dashing rapidly and furiously over the rocks, foaming and roaring as it fell in the most beautiful cascades. The building stood on the margin of the stream, and in the midst of thick and almost impenetrable woods, that rendered the situation in the highest degree romantic and captivating. The scene presented itself to us under the most favorable aspect. The sun was just setting behind the distant hills, and his rays were tinging with a soft, mellow light, the foliage of the trees, of a thousand variegated colors. Here and there, through the interstices of the trees, they fell upon the surface of the water, thus relieving the dark and sombre appearance of the stream. The road we now traversed led, by a circuitous route, into the valley. As we journeyed on, I was more than ever struck with the beauty of the scene. Dried leaves in many places lay scattered upon the ground; but the trees were still well laden with foliage, although I foresaw they would be entirely stripped in a short time. The evening was soft and mild; but occasionally a gentle breeze would spring up, and cause, for a moment, a slight rustling among the trees, and then gradually die away. The sky above our heads was serene and placid, presenting one vast expanse of blue, relieved, here and there, by a few light fleecy clouds. As we got deeper into the valley, the road became bad and uneven, and it was with much difficulty we prevented our horses from stumbling. In one or two instances we had to dismount and lead them, the road in many places being dangerous and precipitous. At length we gained the bottom of the valley. A rude stone bridge was thrown over the stream above described, over which we led our steeds. Arrived at the other side, we entered a long avenue of trees, sufficient to admit of two horsemen riding abreast. When we had gained the extremity of the avenue, the road diverged to the left, and became tortuous and intricate in its windings. It was in a bad state of repair, for the building had not been inhabited by any body but an old woman for a great number of years. We at length arrived in front of the entrance. As I gazed upon the dilapidated structure, I did not for a moment dream of the suffering and misery I was to undergo beneath its roof. We dismounted and gave our horses into the charge of a man who worked about the grounds during the day-time. We were no sooner admitted into this peculiar-looking place, than a circumstance occurred which plunged me into the greatest distress of mind, and aroused a host of the most painful and agonizing reminiscences. I conceived the event to be ominous of disaster; and so it proved. I recognized, in the woman who admitted us, that execrable being who had already so deeply injured my family, and to whose infernal machinations I unhesitatingly ascribed the idiocy and death of my dearly beloved sister. She gazed earnestly upon me, and seemed to recognize me. This discovery caused me the greatest uneasiness. I hated the sight of the woman; I loathed her; I shuddered when I was in her presence; and a vague, undefinable feeling took possession of me, which seemed to suggest that she was something more than mortal. I know not what evils I anticipated from this discovery. I predicted, however, nothing so awful, nothing so horrible, as what actually befell me.
I took the earliest opportunity of speaking alone with this woman.
“My good woman,” I said to her, “I shall not suffer you to remain here at night.”
“Why not, sir?” she asked.
“There are certain insuperable objections, the nature of which you may probably surmise.”
“Indeed, I do not.”
“Then your memory is short.”
“I do not understand you, sir.”
“It is not of any consequence.”
After some further altercation, she consented to submit to the terms dictated to her.
On the following day, my friend Hoffmeister returned to Berlin, where he had some business to transact, on which depended much of his future happiness. He promised to pay me another visit in the course of a week or ten days.
I spent the first three or four days very comfortably, though I was still very nervous, and in a weak state of health. On the morning of the fifth day, the old woman (who had by some means discovered my profession) asked me if I required a subject for the purpose of dissection. This was what I had long been seeking for, but my efforts to obtain one had hitherto been fruitless. I asked the sex, and she informed [pg 687] me it was a male. I was delighted with the offer, and at once acquiesced in the terms. Toward nightfall it was arranged that the corpse should be conveyed to the castle.
I know not from what cause, but, during the whole of the day, I was in a very abstracted and desponding state of mind, and began to regret that I had agreed to take the body through the mediation of the old woman, whom I almost conceived to be in league with Beelzebub himself.
The day had been exceedingly sultry, and toward evening the sky became overcast with huge masses of dark clouds. The wind, at intervals, moaned fitfully, and as it swept through the long corridors of the building, strongly resembled the mournful and pitiful tones of a human being in distress. The trees that stood in front of the house ever and anon yielded to the intermitting gusts of wind, and bowed their heads as though in submission to a superior power. There was no human being to be seen out of doors, and the cattle, shortly before grazing upon some distant hills, had already been removed. The river flowed sluggishly past, its brawling breaking occasionally upon the ear when the wind was inaudible. Suddenly the wind ceased, and large drops of rain began to fall; presently afterward, it came down in torrents. It was a fearful night. Frequent peals of thunder smote upon the ear; now it seemed to be at a distance, now immediately overhead. Vivid flashes of lightning were at intervals seen in the distant horizon, illumining for a moment, with supernatural brilliancy, the most minute and insignificant objects. In the midst of the tempest, I fancied I heard a rumbling noise at a distance. It grew more distinct; the cause of it was rapidly approaching. I looked earnestly out of the window, and I thought I could discern a moving object between the interstices of the trees. I was not mistaken. It was the vehicle conveying the dead body. It came along at a rapid pace. It was just in the act of turning an angle of the road, when a tree, of gigantic proportions, was struck by the electric fluid to the ground. The horse shied, and the car narrowly escaped being crushed beneath its ponderous weight. The men drove up to the entrance, and speedily took the box containing the body from the car, and placed it in a room which I showed them into. I directed them to take the body out of the box, and place it upon a deal board, which I had laid horizontally upon a couple of trestles. The corpse was accordingly taken out. It was that of a finely-grown young man. I laid my hand upon it; it was still warm, and I fancied I felt a slight pulsation about the region of the heart. Anxious to dismiss the men as soon as possible, and fearing that the old woman might be imposing upon me, I asked the price.
“Siebzig Thaler, mein Herr,” said the man.
“Danke, danke—tausendmal,” said he, as I counted the money into his hand.
At this instant a vivid flash of lightning illumined, for a second or two, the livid and ghastly corpse of the man, rendering the object horrible to gaze upon.
“Gott im Himmel! was fÜr ein schrecklicker StÜrm!” exclaimed the man to whom I had paid the money.
In a few minutes the men departed, and I stood at the window watching them, as they drove furiously away. At length they disappeared altogether from my view.
I was now alone in the house. The storm was as furious as ever. I had never before felt so wretched. I was restless and uneasy, and a thousand dark thoughts flitted across my distracted brain as I wandered from room to room. It was already quite dark, and I was at least a couple of miles distant from any living soul. The frequent flashes of lightning, the loud peals of thunder, the dead body of the man, and my own nervous and superstitious temperament, constituted a multitude of anxieties, fears, and apprehensions, that might have caused the stoutest heart to quail beneath their influence. I seated myself in the sitting-room that had been provided for me, and took up my meerschaum, and endeavored to compose myself. It was, however, in vain. I was exceedingly restless, and I know not what vague and indefinable apprehensions entered my imagination. Whenever I have felt a presentiment of evil, it has invariably been followed by some danger or difficulty. It was so in the present instance. I drew the curtains in front of the windows, for I could not bear to look upon the storm that was raging with unabated vehemence out of doors, and I drew my chair closer to the fire, and sat for a considerable time. At length, between ten and eleven o'clock, I took from a small cabinet a bottle containing some excellent French brandy. I poured a portion of it into a tumbler, and diluted it with warm water. I took two or three copious draughts, which I thought imparted new life to my frame.
I was in this way occupied, when a sudden noise in a corner of the room caused a feeling of horror to thrill through my whole system. I sprang upon my legs in a moment; my eyes stared wildly, and every limb in my body shook as though with convulsions. For a moment, I stood still, steadfastly fixing my eyes upon the place from whence the noise proceeded. All was quiet. I heard nothing save the beating of the rain against the windows, and low peals of distant thunder. I walked across the room, and I discovered that a riding-whip had fallen from the nail from which it had been suspended. Satisfied that there was no occasion for alarm, I resumed my seat, and indulged in fresh draughts of brandy-and-water. A few minutes elapsed, and a noise similar to the last filled me with new apprehensions. I sprang again from my seat. The pulses of my heart beat quickly. I gazed wildly about me. I could see nothing—hear nothing. I walked a few paces, and found an empty powder-flask upon the floor; it had fallen from a shelf upon which I had placed it [pg 688] in the morning. I was much alarmed; I reeled like a drunken man, and my mind was filled with the most horrible forebodings. I drank the diluted spirit more freely than usual, and stood awaiting the issue. Another article in a few minutes fell from the wall. I now knew what to expect. I had frequently read of this species of disturbance before. It was what, is called in Germany the Poltergeist. In a few minutes, the greatest uproar manifested itself. The pictures fell from the walls, the ornaments from the shelves; the jugs, glasses, and bottles leaped from the table; the chairs, &c., by some unseen and infernal agency, were overturned. I ran about like one beside himself; I tore my hair with agony; I groaned with mental affliction; and my heart cursed the devil incarnate that had brought all this misery to pass. It was the woman; I was convinced of it. She, she alone, could conceive and hatch such monstrous and nefarious stratagems. I knew not what to do—whither to fly. The uproar continued. In my distraction, I ran from place to place. I entered the room where the corpse lay. Merciful God! I discovered, by the glimmering light from the other chamber, that it had changed its position. I had laid it upon its back. Its face was now turned downward! My cup was full—my misery complete. I returned to the room I had just quitted. The disturbance had in some measure abated. I was thankful that it was so, and I proceeded to place the tables, chairs, &c., in their usual position. While I was thus engaged, the tumult commenced afresh. No sooner had I placed a chair in an upright direction, than it was immediately overturned; no sooner had I suspended a picture from the wall, than it was again upon the floor. What was I to do? How was I to escape the horrible spells with which the archfiend had encompassed me? I could not leave the place on account of the storm; and even if I had done so, it was not possible that I could gain admittance into any habitation at that late hour of the night. Wretch that I was! What crime had I committed, wherein had I erred, that I should be visited with so unaccountable and terrible a calamity? My presence seemed to arouse the malignity of the Poltergeist, and I deemed it expedient to leave the room. I was afraid to enter that in which the dead (?) man lay, lest I should be exposed to further causes for alarm. There was certainly a room in the higher part of the building in which I had been accustomed to sleep; but I dared not venture there in my present state of mind. I entered an adjourning corridor, and paced up and down for a few minutes, but the air was chilly, and I was in total darkness. The disturbance ceased as soon as I had quitted the room. I could not remain where I was, so I re-entered it, but my return was only the signal for fresh disasters. The uproar was resumed with tenfold energy. However much my heart might revolt from it, there was no other course open than to go into the room where the dead body lay. In the condition of one who is driven to the last stage of desperation, I walked, with as much fortitude as I could command, into that chamber. God of Heaven! I had no sooner reached the threshold than I started back with affright. I will not dwell upon that horrible scene; I will not minutely detail the agony I endured. The corpse sat upright! I drew the chamber-door quickly after me and staggered into the next apartment. Powerless and overcome, I fell to the ground.
When I recovered, it was day. The light was streaming into the chamber, and the storm had subsided. Fresh marvels were to be revealed. I was no longer in the room in which I had been on the preceding night. I was in bed, in the chamber where I had hitherto slept! How came I hither? I knew not. I pressed my hand to my brow, and strove to collect my scattered senses. I was bewildered and confused, and could only account for the marvelous transition to which I had been exposed, by some remarkable agency, altogether intangible to my senses, and utterly beyond the power of my understanding to comprehend.
I descended, as soon as I was dressed, to breakfast, of which I sparingly partook. I was pale and agitated. My sitting-room was in its usual state of order. I did not venture into the other apartment, neither did I speak to the woman touching the spectacles I had witnessed.
Hoffmeister returned in the evening, some days sooner than he expected. He observed my altered appearance, and said—
“Was fehlt dir? Du bist krank, nicht wahr?”
“Nein; ich bin recht wohl, Gott sei dank.”
I could not, however, convince Hoffmeister that nothing had happened. I was not disposed to reveal to him what I had witnessed, for I knew he would treat the matter with unbecoming levity. His opinions were very different from mine upon these subjects.
Hoffmeister appeared much depressed in spirits himself. I inquired the cause, but he evaded the question. I concluded that his journey to Berlin had not been attended with satisfactory results, for I could conjecture no other cause for his unhappiness. We retired to rest early, for Hoffmeister appeared fatigued. I proposed that we should sleep together, which my friend gladly assented to.
I was much surprised, when I awoke on the following morning, to find myself alone. What had become of Hoffmeister? Had he, too, been under the domination of some evil power? I knew he was not an early riser, and his absence, therefore, astonished and agitated me. I dressed myself hastily, and immediately went in search of him. I wandered about the adjacent grounds, but he was not there. I could not rest till I had found him. I had known him for many years, and had always loved and esteemed him. He was, till lately, my constant companion—my bosom-friend—in a word, my alter ego.
I resolved to extend my search. I swiftly [pg 689] passed through the avenue of trees, crossed the bridge, and it was not long before I had gained the summit of the road that led into the valley. I stood for a while gazing around me. I gazed earnestly at the dilapidated and time-worn walls of the old castle, in which I had witnessed so many marvelous and horrible sights. I shuddered when I reflected upon them. I resumed my journey, and at length reached a village a few miles distant from my former abode. I walked quickly forward, and on my way met several persons who saluted me, whom I did not remember to have seen before. What could they mean by taking such unwarrantable liberties with me? They did not appear to be drunk, nor to have any intention of insulting me. It was odd—unaccountable. I hurried on. My head began to swim; my eyes were burning hot, and ready to start from their sockets. I was wild—frantic.
I reached the shop of an apothecary, and stepped in to ask for water, to quench my thirst. The man smirked, and asked me how I was. I told him, I did not know him; but he persisted in saying he had been in my company only a night or two before. I was confounded. I seized the glass of water he held in his hand, and took a hearty draught, and precipitately departed. I traveled on. I was bewildered—in a maze, from which I found it impossible to extricate myself. I made inquiries about my friend, but the people stared and laughed, as though there was something extraordinary about me. I wandered about till nightfall, and at last found shelter in a cottage by the road-side, which was inhabited by an infirm old woman.
The next day I returned to the village. I called upon a gentleman with whom I was intimately acquainted. I thought he might be able to give me some tidings of my friend. When I was ushered into his presence he did not know me. I was incredulous. Was I no longer myself? Had I changed my identity? Whence this mystery? I was unable to fathom it. I handed my card to him; he looked at it, and returned it, saying he did not know Mr. Hoffmeister. The card was that of my friend. How it had come into my possession I knew not. I apologized for the error, and informed him that my name was not Hoffmeister, but Heinrich Gottlieb LangstrÖm. My surprise may be conceived, when he informed me LangstrÖm—in fact, that I myself was dead, and that my body had been found in the stream that flowed past the village the day previously! I was ready to sink through the floor, and could not find language to reply to the monstrous falsehood. I rushed from his presence, feeling assured that some conspiracy was afoot to drive me mad. I must have become so, or I never would have been exposed to the extraordinary delusion to which I afterward became a victim.
I entered a house of public entertainment, and determined to solve this dreadful enigma. I was, unfortunately, acquainted with the doctrines of Pythagoras, and, at the time to which I refer, no doubt insane.
I requested to be shown into a room, where I could arrange my dress. I was conducted into a chamber, in which all things necessary for that purpose were provided. My object, however, was of greater consequence than this. I wished to unravel the strange mystery that surrounded me—to discover, in a word, whether I were really myself, or some other person. There was no way of freeing myself from this horrible suspense and uncertainty than by examining my features in the looking-glass. There was one placed upon a dressing-table, but I shrank from it as though it had been a demon. I dreaded to approach it; I feared to look into it, lest it should confirm all the vague and monstrous misgivings that agitated my mind. I regarded it as the arbiter of my destiny. It possessed the power either to transport me with happiness, or to plunge me into utter, irretrievable misery. In that brief moment I endured an age of agony and suspense. With a faltering step, with a whirling brain, I advanced toward the glass. I stood opposite to it; I looked into it. Distraction! horror of horrors! It was not my own face I beheld! I swooned—fell backward.
When I recovered, I found myself in the arms of a man, who bathed my temples with water. I quickly made my escape from the house. I was pale and haggard, like one stricken with some sudden and grievous calamity. I fancied, as I passed along, that the passengers whom I met stared at me, laughed in my face, and seemed to consider my misfortune a fit subject for their mirth and ridicule. Every hubbub in the street, every screeching voice that assailed my ear, I conceived to be attributable to my horrible transformation. I was afraid to look around; I dared not arrest my progress for a moment, lest any of the mocking fiends should make sport of my unhappy situation, and drive me to some act of desperation. On, on, I hurried. I gained the fields. Thank Heaven! the village lay at a distance behind me. The haunts of men were no place for me. I was something more than mortal. I had undergone a change, of which I had never conceived myself susceptible. I sped forward; naught could impede my course. My only relief was in action. Any thing to dissipate the thoughts that flitted across my distracted brain. Bodily pain might be endured—fatigue, hunger, any corporeal suffering; but to think, was death—destruction. Oh! could I have evaded thought for one moment, what joy, what transport! I fled onward; there was no time to pause—to consider. The sun had already sunk behind the hills, and night was about to spread her mantle o'er the earth, when I threw myself down, exhausted and overpowered. Slumber sealed my eyes, and I lay upon the ground, an outcast of men, an isolated and wretched being, to whom the common lot of humanity had been denied.
[pg 690]
I will hurry this painful narrative to a close. I have but a vague idea of the events that occurred during the next few weeks. I remember being told, as I lay in bed, by a young woman who attended me, that I had been found by some workpeople, on the night above referred to, in the vicinity of my former residence, and conveyed thither, and that I had been attacked by the brain fever, and that my life had been despaired of by my medical attendant.
The body which had been found in the stream, and which was supposed to be mine, was that of my dear friend, Hoffmeister. In his agitation, previously to his committing the dreadful act of suicide, he had inadvertently mistaken my garments for his own.
When I became convalescent, I determined upon leaving, as soon as possible, the scene of my recent suffering. Before doing so, I proceeded to the village which I had previously visited. I called upon the gentleman who had not recognized me on a former occasion; but, strange to say, he now remembered me perfectly, and received me very kindly indeed. I referred to the circumstance of our late interview, but he had no recollection of it. While we were thus conversing, a third person entered the room, the very image of my friend, and who, it appeared was his brother. An explanation at once ensued.
These matters I have thought it necessary to explain. There are, however, occurrences in the narrative, of which I can give no solution, though I may premise, that my conviction is, that those which took place in the village, arose from natural causes, with which I am nevertheless unacquainted. The body of the man, who, I have reason to believe, was not quite dead when he was brought to me, I conveyed with me to Berlin. The old woman I never again beheld.
Of all the links in the stupendous chain of the cosmos, the sun, next to our own planet, is that which we are most concerned in knowing well, while it is precisely that which we know the least. This glorious orb has always been involved in the deepest mystery. All that had been revealed to us concerning it, till very recently, was derived from the observations and deductions of the elder Herschel. His discovery of a double luminous envelopment, at times partially withdrawn from various portions of the sun's surface, afforded, on the whole, a satisfactory explanation of the numerous spots that are always seen on his disk. This glimpse merely of the external changes which happen on his surface made up the sum of our knowledge of that great luminary on which the animation of our planetary system depends! One main cause of this utter ignorance on the subject, besides its own intrinsic difficulty, lay in the comparatively slight attention it had always received from astronomers generally. No individual observer ever thought of devoting himself to the solar phenomena alone, while the public observatories confined themselves to merely observing the sun's culmination at noon, or to ascertaining the exact duration of its eclipses.
We knew, from the observations of Cassini and Herschel, that the spots on the sun's disk are not alike numerous every year; and Kunowsky particularly drew the attention of astronomers to the fact, that while in the years 1818 and 1819 very large and numerous ones appeared, some visible even to the naked eye, very few, on the contrary, and those of but trifling size, were seen in the years 1822-1824. But it was reserved for the indefatigable Schwabe of Dessau, who has devoted himself for a long series of years to this one single object, to establish the fact of these spots observing a certain periodicity. Among the results of his labors—for as yet we have only his brief announcements to the scientific world in the “Astronomical Notices”—are the following: 1. That the recurrence of the solar spots has a period of about ten years; 2. That the number of the single groups of one year varies at the minimum time from twenty-five to thirty, while in the maximum years they sometimes rise to above three hundred; 3. That with their greater abundance is combined also a greater local extension and blackness of the spots; 4. That at the maximum time, the sun, for some years together, is never seen without very considerable spots. The last maximum appears to have been of a peculiarly rich character, as, from February, 1837, till December, 1840, solar spots were visible on every day of observation; while the number of groups in the former of those years amounted to 333.
But if a single individual, by observations continued unbroken for entire decenniums, has thus revealed to us the most important fact hitherto known relating to the sun, there are other questions not less important which can only find their solution in the careful observation of a rarely-occurring interval of perhaps one or two minutes. The splendor of the sun is so amazingly great, as to preclude us entirely from perceiving any object in his immediate proximity unless projected before his disk as a darkening object. At ten, or fifteen degrees even from the sun, when this luminary is above the horizon, all the fixed stars vanish from the most powerful telescopes. We are therefore in utter ignorance whether the space between him and Mercury is occupied or not by some other denizen of the planetary system. To enable us to explore the sun's immediate proximity, we require a body that shall exclude his rays from our atmosphere, and yet leave the space round the sun open to our view. Such an object can of course be neither a cloud nor any terrestrial object, natural or artificial, since parts of the atmosphere will exist behind it which will be impinged on by the sun's rays. Only during a total eclipse can these conditions be fulfilled, and even then but for a very brief [pg 691] interval, which may still be lost to the observer through unfavorable weather or from too low a position of the sun.
Notwithstanding that this rare and precarious opportunity is the only possible one we possess of becoming better acquainted with the physical nature of the great luminary of day, astronomers never availed themselves of it for any other purpose than the admeasurement of the earth, which might have been done as well, if not better, during any planetary eclipse. This error or indifference, whichever it may have been, can not, however, be laid to the charge of our living astronomers. The 8th of July, 1842—the day on which the last total eclipse of the sun took place—witnessed the most distinguished of these assembled for the purpose of making, for the first time, observations calculated to afford us some insight into this greatest mystery of the celestial world. This eclipse was total on a zone which traversed the north of Spain, the south of France, the region of the Alps and Styria, and a portion of Austria, Central Russia and Siberia, terminating in China; so that the observatories of Marseilles, Milan, Venice, Padua, Vienna, and Ofen, all supplied with excellent telescopes, and in full activity, came within its range; while many astronomers, at whose observatories the eclipse was not visible, set out for places situated within the zone just described. Thus Arago and two of his colleagues repaired to Perpignan, Airy to Turin, Schumacker to Vienna, Struve and Sehidloffsky to Lipezk, and Stubendorff to Koerakow. Most of them were favored by the weather. Let us now see what the combined endeavors of these practiced and well-furnished observers have made us acquainted with.
First, as regards the obscurity, it was so great, that five, seven, and in some cases as many as ten stars were visible to the naked eye. A reddish light was seen to proceed from the horizon—that is, from those regions where the darkness was not total—and by this light print of a moderate size could, with a little difficulty, be read. Such plants as usually close their petals at night were seen in most places to close them also during the eclipse. The thermometer fell from 2 to 3 degrees of Reaumur, and in the fields about Perpignan a heavy dew fell. A change in the color of the light, and consequently of the enlightened objects, was noticed by many, although they were not agreed in their description of it. But this diversity may have been caused by the nature of the air at different places being probably different, and the degree of obscurity very unequal. At Lipezk, where the eclipse lasted the longest, being 3 minutes and 3 seconds, a darkness similar to that of night set in, and there the eclipse began exactly at noon.
The effect of the eclipse on the animal creation was similar to what had been observed before in the like circumstances: they ceased eating; draught animals suddenly stood still; domestic birds fled to the stables, or sought other places of shelter; owls and bats flew abroad, as if night had come on. Of three lively linnets, kept in a cage, one dropped down dead. The insect world too was greatly affected; ants stopped in the midst of their labors, and only resumed their course after the reappearance of the sun; and bees retreated suddenly to their hives. A general restlessness pervaded the animal world; and only those places which were situated more on the boundary of the zone, and where the obscurity was consequently less complete, formed an exception.
During the total eclipse, the dark moon which covered the sun's disk appeared surrounded with a brilliant crown of light or halo. This halo consisted of two concentric belts, of which the inner one was the lightest, and the external less brilliant, and gradually fading. In the direction of the line which connected the point of the commencement of the total eclipse with that of its termination, two parabolic pencils of light—some observers say several—appeared on the halo. Within it also light intervolved veins were observable. The breadth of the inner halo was from 2 to 3 minutes; that of the external one from 10 to 15 minutes; the pencils of light, on the other hand, extended as far as from 1 to 1½ degree; by some they were traced even to 3 degrees. The color of the halo was of a silvery white, and exhibited a violent undulating or trembling motion, its general appearance varying in the briefest space. The light of the halo was intensest near the covered solar rim. Its brilliance at Lipezk was so great, that the naked eye could hardly look on it, and some of the observers almost doubted whether the sun had really altogether disappeared. At Vienna, Milan, and Perpignan, on the contrary, the observers found the light of the halo resembling that of the moon toward its full. Bell, at Verona, who found time to estimate its intensity, ascertained it to be one-seventh of that of the full moon. Its first traces were noticed from 3 to 5 seconds before the entrance of the entire eclipse; in like manner, its last vestiges disappeared only some seconds after the eclipse was over. Vivid, however, as its light was, the halo cast but an extremely faint shadow. Some, indeed, who particularly directed their attention to it, could not detect any. But this might have been owing to those places on which the shadows would have fallen being faintly illumined by the reddish light of the horizon before mentioned. In other respects, during the progress of the eclipse, before and after its maximum, not the least change was observable in the uncovered part of the sun's disk. The cusps were as sharp and distinctly-marked as possible, the lunar mountains were projected on the sun's surface with the most beautiful distinctness and precision, and the color and brilliance of his disk, in the proximity of the moon's rim, were in no way diminished or altered. In short, nothing was seen which could be referred in the smallest degree to a lunar atmosphere.
All these phenomena, striking as they were, [pg 692] were such as the assembled observers were prepared for; for they were such as had already been noticed during previous eclipses of the sun. But there was one of quite a different character, as mysterious as it was novel to them. This was the appearance of large reddish projections within the halo on the dark rim. The different observers characterized it by the expressions—“red clouds, volcanoes, flames, fire-sheaves,” &c.; terms intended of course merely to indicate the phenomenon, and not in any way to explain it. The observers differed in their reports both with respect to the number of these “red clouds,” as well as to their apparent heights. Arago stated that he observed two rose-colored projections which seemed to be unchangeable, and a minute high. His two colleagues also saw them, but to them they seemed somewhat larger. A fourth observer saw one of the projections some minutes even after the eclipse was over, while others perceived it with the naked eye. Petit, at Montpellier remarked three protections, and even found time to measure one of them. It was 1-3/4 minute high. Littrow, at Vienna, considered them to be as high again as this; and stated “that the streaks were visible before they became colored, and remained visible also after their color had vanished.” The light of these projections was soft and quiet, the projections themselves sharp, and their form unchanging till the moment of their extinction. Schidloffsky, at Lipezk, thought he perceived a rose-colored border on the moon in places where these red clouds did not reach; but could not be certain of the fact, on account of the shortness of the time.
These projections or red clouds, mysterious and unexpected as they were to men who directed their attention for the first time to the purely physical phenomena concerned, were in fact, after all, nothing altogether new. The descriptions given by astronomers of earlier eclipses of the sun had been forgotten or overlooked. Stannyan, for instance, in his relation of that of the 20th May, 1706, says, “The egress of the sun from the moon's disk was preceded on its left rim, during an interval of six or seven seconds, by the appearance of a bloodred streak;” and Nassenius, during a total eclipse of the sun observed on the 13th of May, 1733, mentions having seen “several red spots, three or four in number, without the periphery of the moon's disk, one of them being larger than the others, and consisting, as it were, of three parallel parts inclining toward the moon's disk.” It is clear, therefore, that earlier observers had witnessed the same phenomenon, although they were unable to offer any explanation of it. It seems, however, no unreasonable conclusion to come to, that these projections or red clouds, as well as the halo with its pencils of light before spoken of, are something without the proper solar photosphere, but not forming, as this does, one connected mass of light. What further can be known concerning this something must be left to future ages to discover.
The Household Jewels. (From Dickens's Household Words.)
A traveler, from journeying
In countries far away,
Repassed his threshold at the close
Of one calm Sabbath day;
A voice of love, a comely face,
A kiss of chaste delight,
Were the first things to welcome him
On that blessed Sabbath night.
He stretched his limbs upon the hearth,
Before its friendly blaze,
And conjured up mixed memories
Of gay and gloomy days;
And felt that none of gentle soul,
However far he roam,
Can e'er forego, can e'er forget,
The quiet joys of home.
“Bring me my children!” cried the sire,
With eager, earnest tone;
“I long to press them, and to mark
How lovely they have grown;
Twelve weary months have passed away
Since I went o'er the sea,
To feel how sad and lone I was
Without my babes and thee.”
“Refresh thee, as 'tis needful,” said
The fair and faithful wife,
The while her pensive features paled,
And stirred with inward strife;
“Refresh thee, husband of my heart,
I ask it as a boon;
Our children are reposing, love;
Thou shalt behold them soon.”
She spread the meal, she filled the cup,
She pressed him to partake;
He sat down blithely at the board,
And all for her sweet sake;
But when the frugal feast was done,
The thankful prayer preferred,
Again affection's fountain flowed;
Again its voice was heard.
“Bring me my children, darling wife
I'm in an ardent mood;
My soul lacks purer aliment,
I long for other food;
Bring forth my children to my gaze,
Or ere I rage or weep,
I yearn to kiss their happy eyes
Before the hour of sleep.”
“I have a question yet to ask;
Be patient, husband dear.
A stranger, one auspicious morn,
Did send some jewels here;
Until to take them from my care,
But yesterday he came,
And I restored them with a sigh:
—Dost thou approve or blame?”
“I marvel much, sweet wife, that thou
Shouldst breathe such words to me;
Restore to man, resign to God,
Whate'er is lent to thee;
[pg 693]
Restore it with a willing heart,
Be grateful for the trust;
Whate'er may tempt or try us, wife,
Let us be ever just.”
She took him by the passive hand.
And up the moonlit stair,
She led him to their bridal bed,
With mute and mournful air;
She turned the cover down, and there,
In grave-like garments dressed,
Lay the twin children of their love,
In death's serenest rest.
“These were the jewels lent to me,
Which God has deigned to own;
The precious caskets still remain,
But, ah, the gems are flown;
But thou didst teach me to resign
What God alone can claim;
He giveth and he takes away,
Blest be His holy name!”
The father gazed upon his babes,
The mother drooped apart,
While all the woman's sorrow gushed
From her o'erburdened heart;
And with the striving of her grief,
Which wrung the tears she shed.
Were mingled low and loving words
To the unconscious dead.
When the sad sire had looked his fill,
He vailed each breathless face,
And down in self-abasement bowed,
For comfort and for grace;
With the deep eloquence of woe,
Poured forth his secret soul,
Rose up, and stood erect and calm,
In spirit healed and whole.
“Restrain thy tears, poor wife,” he said,
“I learn this lesson still,
God gives, and God can take away,
Blest be His holy will!
Blest are my children, for they live
From sin and sorrow free,
And I am not all joyless, wife,
With faith, hope, love, and thee.”
The Tea-Plant. (From Hogg's Instructor.)
Hid behind the monster wall that screens in the land of the Celestials from the prying eye of the “barbarian,” the Tea-plant, in common with many things peculiar to those regions, remained long unknown to Europeans, and the snatches of information brought home by early travelers concerning it, were, in too many cases, of that questionable and contradictory kind, so characteristic, even in the present day, of the writings of those who travel in Eastern lands. Tea has now become a general article of domestic consumption in every household of our country having any pretension to social comfort, as well as in that of every other civilized nation, and, indeed, the tea-table has no mean influence in refining the manners and promoting the social intercourse of a people. Important, however, as this universal beverage has become as an essential requisite to the social and physical comfort of all classes and conditions of civilized society, yet our knowledge of the plant from which it is produced is still very imperfect; and this, notwithstanding the fact that we have had tea-plants growing in our hothouses since the year 1768. Speaking of the introduction of the plant to this country, Hooker says—“It was not till after tea had been used as a beverage for upwards of a century in England, that the shrub which produces it was brought alive to this country. More than one botanist had embarked for the voyage to China—till lately a protracted and formidable undertaking—mainly in the hope of introducing a growing tea-tree to our greenhouses. No passage across the desert, no Waghorn-facilities, no steam-ship assisted the traveler in those days. The distance to and from China, with the necessary time spent in that country, generally consumed nearly three years! Once had the tea-tree been procured by Osbeck, a pupil of LinnÆus, in spite of the jealous care with which the Chinese forbade its exportation; and when near the coast of England, a storm ensued, which destroyed the precious shrubs. Then the plan of obtaining berries was adopted, and frustrated by the heat of the tropics, which spoiled the oily seeds, and prevented their germination. The captain of a Swedish vessel hit upon a good scheme: having secured fresh berries, he sowed these on board ship, and often stinted himself of his daily allowance of water for the sake of the young plants; but, just as the ship entered the English Channel, an unlucky rat attacked his cherished charge and devoured them all!” So much, then, for the early attempts to introduce the tea-shrub to Europe: often, indeed, is the truth exemplified that
“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gee.”
The Chinese tea-plants are neat-growing shrubs, with bright glossy green leaves, not unlike those of the bay; or a more exact similitude will be found in the garden camellia, with the leaves of which, however, many of our readers may not have acquaintance, although the flowers are well known, being extensively used in decorating the female dress for the ball-room in the winter season. The tea-plants are nearly allied to the camellia, and belong to the same natural order: indeed, one species of the latter—the Camellia sasanqua of botanists—is cultivated in the tea-grounds of China, on account of its beautiful flowers, which are said to impart fragrance and flavor to other teas.
Comparatively few scientific naturalists have had sufficient opportunities of studying the tea-producing plants in their native habitats, or even in the cultivated grounds of China, and consequently a great difference of opinion has all along existed, as to whether tea is obtained from one, two, or more distinct species of Thea. This question is getting day by day more involved [pg 694] as new facts come to light; and, indeed, cultivation seems to have altered the original character of some forms of the plant so much, that the subject bids fair to remain an open question among European botanists for ages to come. The two tea-plants which have been long grown in British gardens, and universally supposed, until within the last few years, to be the only kinds in existence, are the Thea bohea and the Thea viridis. The former was, until recently, very generally believed to produce the black tea of commerce, and the latter the green tea; but recent travelers have clearly shown that both black and green tea may be, and are, obtained from the same plant. The difference is caused by the mode of preparation; but it will be afterward seen that very important discrepancies occur between the accounts of this operation given by different observers. Certain it is, that the extreme caution with which the Chinese attempt to conceal a knowledge of their peculiar arts and manufactures from European visitors—and in none is their anxiety to do so more strikingly evinced than in the case of the culture and preparation of tea—tends greatly to frustrate the endeavors of the scientific traveler to acquire accurate information on this point.
In the present state of our knowledge, it is quite impossible to say how many species or varieties of the tea-plant are grown in China. They are now believed to be numerous, although the two kinds to which we have referred are those most extensively cultivated. They have long been allowed to rank as distinct species in botanical books, and grown as such in our greenhouses; but some acute botanists have, at various times, suggested that they might be merely varieties of one plant. Such was the opinion of the editor of the “Botanical Magazine,” when he figured and described the Bohea variety (t. 998). Professor Balfour (“Manual of Botany,” § 793) enumerates three species—the two already mentioned, and one called Thea Assamica, being the one chiefly cultivated at the tea-grounds of Assam. Most of our readers may be aware that the cultivation and manufacture of tea has been successfully introduced to Northern India. A “Report on the Government Tea Plantations in Kumaon and Gurwahl, by W. Jameson, Esq., the superintendent of the Botanical Gardens in the North-Western Provinces,”5 has just reached us. In that report—to which we will have occasion afterward to refer—there are “two species, and two well marked varieties” described. Some of these do not appear to have been at all noticed by other writers, although, from specimens of the plants, which we have examined, from the tea-grounds, they appear sufficiently distinct to warrant their being ranked as separate species; and there are, indeed, some botanists who would at once set them down as such.
Having disposed of the question of species in such manner as the unsatisfactory state of botanical knowledge on this point will admit, we shall now proceed to communicate some information respecting the culture of the tea-plant, and the manner in which its leaves are made available for the production of the beverage of which the female portion of the community, and more particularly old wives (of both sexes), are believed to be so remarkably fond.
The tea-plants are grown in beds conveniently formed for the purpose of irrigating in dry weather, and for plucking the leaves when required. The Chinese sow the seed thus: “Several seeds are dropped into holes four or five inches deep, and three or four feet apart, shortly after they ripen, or in November and December; the plants rise up in a cluster when the rains come on. They are seldom transplanted, but, sometimes, four to six are put quite close, to form a fine bush.” In the government plantations of Kumaon and Gurwahl, more care seems to be bestowed in the raising of the plants, whereby the needless expenditure of seeds in the above method is saved. The seeds ripen in September or October, and in elevated districts, sometimes so late as November. In his report, Mr. Jameson mentions that, when ripe, the seeds are sown in drills, eight to ten inches apart from each other, the ground having been previously prepared by trenching and manuring. If the plants germinate in November, they are protected from the cold by a “chupper,” made of bamboo and grass—a small kind of bamboo, called the ringal, being found in great abundance on the hills, at an elevation of 6000 to 7000 feet, and well adapted for the purpose; these chuppers are removed throughout the day, and replaced at night. In April and May, they are used for protecting the young plants from the heat of the sun, until the rains commence. When the plants have attained a sufficient size they are transplanted with great care, a ball of earth being attached to their roots. They require frequent waterings, if the weather be dry. During the rains grass springs up around them with great rapidity, so as to render it impossible, with the usual number of hands, to keep the grounds clean. The practice, therefore, is merely to make a “golah” or clear space round each plant, these being connected with small water channels, in order to render irrigation easy in times of drought. The plants do not require to be pruned until the fifth year, the plucking of leaves generally tending to make them assume the basket shape, the form most to be desired to procure the greatest quantity of leaves. Irrigation seems absolutely essential for the profitable cultivation of the tea-plant, although, on the other hand, land liable to be flooded during the rains, and upon which water lies for any length of time, is quite unsuitable for its growth. The plant seems to thrive in a great variety of soils, but requires the situation to be at a considerable altitude above the sea level.
According to Mr. Jameson, the season for [pg 695] picking the leaves commences in April and continues until October, the number of gatherings varying, according to the nature of the season, from four to seven. So soon as the new and young leaves have appeared in April, the first plucking takes place. “A certain division of the plantation is marked off, and to each man a small basket is given, with instructions to proceed to a certain point, so that no plant may be passed over. On the small basket being filled, the leaves are emptied into another large one, which is put in some shady place, and in which, when filled, they are conveyed to the manufactory. The leaves are generally plucked with the thumb and forefinger. Sometimes the terminal part, of a branch having four or five young leaves attached, is plucked off.” The old leaves, being too hard to curl, are rejected as of no use; but all new and fresh leaves are indiscriminately collected.
The manufacture of the different varieties of tea has been the subject of much difference of opinion. It has been supposed by some writers, as we have already mentioned, that green tea was solely obtained from the Thea viridis, and black tea from the Thea bohea, while others have asserted, that the different kinds of the manufactured article are equally produced by both plants. Facts seem now to be quite in favor of the latter opinion, and, indeed, Mr. Fortune, while on his first botanical mission on account of the Horticultural Society of London, ascertained, by visiting the different parts of the coast of China, that the Bohea plant was converted into both black and green tea in the south of China, but that in all the northern provinces he found only Thea viridis grown, and equally converted into both kinds of tea. Mr. Ball (the late inspector of teas to the East India Company in China), in a work entitled “An Account of the Cultivation and Manufacture of Tea in China,” fully confirms the fact that both the green and black teas are prepared from the same plant, and that the differences depend entirely on the processes of manufacture. It is, of course, possible that particular varieties of the same plant, grown in certain soils and situations, may be preferred by the Chinese manufacturers for the preparation of the black and green teas, and the various kinds of both known in commerce. It has been stated by some that the young leaves are taken for green tea, and the older ones for the black varieties; this is the popular notion on the subject, but probably it has no foundation.
Although it now seems somewhat generally agreed that both green and black teas are made from the leaves of the same plant, yet the various writers on the subject are at considerable variance as to the mode in which the difference of appearance is brought about. Some assert that the black being the natural colored tea, the beautiful green tinge is given to the green tea by means of substances used for the purpose of dyeing it; while others hold that the green hue depends entirely on the method of roasting.
Among the formers Mr. Fortune, whose account of the “Chinese Method of Coloring Green Tea,” as observed by him, is published in a former number of the Instructor (No. 240, page 91). From that account, it would appear that the coloring substances used are gypsum, indigo, and Prussian blue, and “for every hundred pounds of green tea which are consumed in England or America, the consumer really eats more than half a pound” of these substances. We hope now to present our tea-drinking readers with a more pleasing picture than this; to show that indeed there is not “death in the cup,” nor aught else to be feared. We therefore proceed to explain the modes of manufacture, as detailed by Mr. Ball. And, firstly, the manufacture of black tea. The leaves, on being gathered, are exposed to the air, until they wither and “become soft and flaccid.” In this state they soon begin to emit a slight degree of fragrance, when they are sifted, and then tossed about with the hands in large trays. They are then collected into a heap, and covered with a cloth, being now “watched with the utmost care, until they become spotted and tinged with red, when they also increase in fragrance, and must be instantly roasted, or the tea would be injured.” In the first roasting, the fire, which is prepared with dry wood, is kept exceedingly brisk; but “any heat may suffice which produces the crackling of the leaves described by KÆmpfer.” The roasting is continued till the leaves give out a fragrant smell, and become quite flaccid, when they are in a fit state to be rolled. The roasting and rolling are often a third, and sometimes even a fourth time repeated, and, indeed, the process of rolling is continued until the juices can no longer be freely expressed. The leaves are then finally dried in sieves placed in drying-tubs, over a charcoal fire in a common chafing-dish. The heat dissipates much of the moisture, and the leaves begin to assume their black appearance. Smoke is prevented, and the heat moderated, by the ash of charcoal or burnt “paddy-husk” being thrown on the fire. “The leaves are then twisted, and again undergo the process of drying, twisting, and turning as before; which is repeated once or twice more, until they become quite black, well-twisted, and perfectly dry and crisp.”
According to Dr. Royle, there are only two gatherings of the leaves of green tea in the year; the first beginning about the 20th of April, and the second at the summer solstice. “The green tea factors universally agree that the sooner the leaves of green tea are roasted after gathering the better; and that exposure to the air is unnecessary, and to the sun injurious.” The iron vessel in which the green tea is roasted is called a kuo. It is thin, about sixteen inches in diameter, and set horizontally (that for Twankey obliquely) in a stove of brickwork, so as to have a depth of about fifteen inches. The fire is prepared with dry wood, and kept very brisk; the heat becomes intolerable, and the bottom of the [pg 696] kuo even red-hot, though this is not essential. About half a pound of leaves are put in at one time, a crackling noise is produced, much steam is evolved from the leaves, which are quickly stirred about; at the end of every turn they are raised about six inches above the surface of the stove, and shaken on the palm of the hand, so as to separate them, or to disperse the steam. They are then suddenly collected into a heap, and passed to another man, who stands in readiness with a basket to receive them. The process of rolling is much the same as that employed in the rolling of black tea, the leaves taking the form of a ball. After the balls are shaken to pieces, the leaves are also rolled between the palms of the hands, so that they may be twisted regularly, and in the same direction. They are then spread out in sieves, and placed on stands in a cool room.
For the second roasting the fire is considerably diminished, and charcoal used instead of wood, and the leaves constantly fanned by a boy who stands near. When the leaves have lost so much of their aqueous and viscous qualities as to produce no sensible steam, they no longer adhere together, but, by the simple action of the fire, separate and curl of themselves. When taken from the kuo, they appear of a dark olive color, almost black; and after being sifted, they are placed on stands as before.
For the third roasting, which is in fact the final drying, the heat is not greater than what the hand can bear for some seconds without much inconvenience. “The fanning and the mode of roasting were the same as in the final part of the second roasting. It was now curious to observe the change of color which gradually took place in the leaves, for it was in this roasting that they began to assume that bluish tint, resembling the bloom on fruit, which distinguishes this tea, and renders its appearance so agreeable.”
The foregoing being the general mode of manufacturing green or Hyson tea, it is then separated into different varieties, as Hyson, Hyson-skin, young Hyson, and gunpowder, by sifting, winnowing, and fanning, and some varieties by further roasting.
This account of the preparation of green tea is directly opposed to that given by Mr. Fortune, before referred to, wherein it is mentioned that the coloring of green tea is effected by the admixture of indigo, gypsum, &c. It would appear that both modes are practiced in China; and, with the editor of the “Botanical Gazette,” we may ask, Is it not possible that genuine green tea is free from artificial coloring matter, and that the Chinese, with their usual imitative propensity (exercised, as travelers tell us, in the manufacture of wooden hams, &c, for exportation), may prepare an artificial green tea, since this fetches a higher price than the black? If this be not the case, then we have a difficulty in accounting for the origin of the green teas; “there must have been green teas for the foreigners to become acquainted with and acquire a preference for, or there could not have been a demand for it.” We think Mr. Jameson throws some additional light on the subject when he remarks, in the course of his observations on the manufacture of green tea, “To make the bad or light-colored leaves marketable, they undergo an artificial process of coloring; but this I have prohibited, in compliance with the orders of the Court of Directors, and therefore do not consider this tea at present fit for the market.” In a foot-note he adds, “In China, this process, according to the statement of the tea-manufacturers, is carried on to a great extent.” Whether the process of coloring is confined solely to the light-colored leaves of green tea, or extended to other inferior sorts, we have no means of judging, amid such a variety of discordant statements.
After the tea is thoroughly dried, in the manner above detailed, it is carefully hand-picked, all the old or badly curled, and also light-colored leaves being removed, as well as any leaves of different varieties that may have got intermixed with it. Being now quite dry, it is ready to be packed, which is done in a very careful manner. The woods used for making the boxes in Northern India (according to Mr. Jameson) are toon, walnut, and saul (Shorea robusta), all coniferous (pine) woods being unfit for the purpose, on account of their pitchy odor. The tea is firmly packed in a leaden box, and soldered down, being covered with paper, to prevent the action of air through any unobserved holes that might exist in the lead; this leaden box is contained in the wooden one, which it is made exactly to fit. The tea being now ready to go into the hands of the merchant, we need carry our observations no farther, as every housewife will know better than we can tell her how to manage her own tea-pot. We will, therefore, conclude our remarks by submitting the following statistical note of the imports of tea into the United Kingdom in the year 1846, with the view of showing its commercial importance—
Black tea, about
43,000,000 lbs.
Green tea, about
13,000,000 lbs.
Total
56,000,000 lbs.
Some curious Anecdotes of Dr. Chalmers are given in the new volume of his life, now on the point of publication. Immediately upon his translation to Glasgow a most enthusiastic attachment sprung up between Chalmers, who was then some thirty-five years of age, and Thomas Smith, the son of his publisher, a young man still in his minority. It was more like a first love than friendship. The friends met regularly by appointment, or in case of absence, daily letters were interchanged. The young man died in the course of a few months. A ring containing his hair was given to Chalmers; and it is noted as a singular fact, showing the intense and lasting nature of his attachment, that the ring, after having been long laid aside, was resumed and worn by him a few months before his death, a period of more than thirty years....
[pg 697]
His keen practical talents did not altogether shield him from attempts at imposition. “On one occasion,” he writes, “a porter half-drunk came up to me, and stated that two men were wanting to see me. He carried me to a tavern, where it turned out that there was a wager between these two men whether this said porter was correct in his knowledge of me. I was so revolted at his impertinency, that I made the ears of all who were in the house ring with a reproof well said and strong; and so left them a little astounded, I have no doubt.”.... On another occasion, while busily engaged one forenoon in his study, he was interrupted by the entrance of a visitor. The doctor began to look grave at the interruption; but was propitiated by his visitor telling him that he called under great distress of mind. “Sit down, sir; be good enough to be seated,” said the doctor, looking up eagerly, and turning full of interest from his writing table. The visitor explained to him that he was troubled with doubts about the Divine origin of the Christian religion; and being kindly questioned as to what these were, he gave among others what is said in the Bible about Melchisedec being without father and without mother, &c. Patiently and anxiously Dr. Chalmers sought to clear away each successive difficulty as it was stated. Expressing himself as if greatly relieved in mind, and imagining that he had gained his end—“Doctor,” said the visitor, “I am in great want of a little money at present, and perhaps you could help me in that way” At once the object of his visit was seen. A perfect tornado of indignation burst upon the deceiver, driving him in very quick retreat from the study to the street door, these words escaping among others—“Not a penny, sir! not a penny! It's too bad! it's too bad! and to haul in your hypocrisy upon the shoulders of Melchisedek!....” A discussion arose among the superintendents of his Sabbath-schools whether punishment should ever be resorted to. One of them related an instance of a boy whom he had found so restless, idle, and mischievous, that he was on the point of expelling him, when the thought occurred to him to give the boy an office. The candles used in the school-room were accordingly put under care of the boy; and from that hour he became a diligent scholar. Another superintendent then related his experience. He had been requested to take charge of a school that had become so unruly and unmanageable that it had beaten off every teacher that had gone to it. “I went,” said the teacher, “and told the boys, whom I found all assembled, that I had heard a very bad account of them, that I had come out for the purpose of doing them good, that I must have peace and attention, that I would submit to no disturbance, and that, in the first place, we must begin with prayer. They all stood up, and I commenced, and certainly did not forget the injunction—Watch and pray. I had not proceeded two sentences, when one little fellow gave his neighbor a tremendous dig in the side; I instantly stepped forward and gave him a sound cuff on the side of his head. I never spoke a word, but stepped back, concluded the prayer, taught for a month, and never had a more orderly school.” Dr. Chalmers enjoyed the discussion exceedingly; and decided that the question as to punishment and non-punishment stood just where it was before, “inasmuch as it had been found that the judicious appointment of candle-snuffer-general and a good cuff on the lug had been about equally efficacious.”.... Among the most ardent admirers of the doctor's eloquence, was Mr. Young, professor of Greek. Upon one occasion, he was so electrified that he leaped up from his seat upon the bench near the pulpit, and stood, breathless and motionless, gazing at the preacher till the burst was over, the tears all the while came rolling down his cheeks. Upon another occasion, forgetful of time and place—fancying himself perhaps in the theatre—he rose and made a loud clapping of his hands in an ecstasy of admiration and delight.... He was no exception to the saying that a prophet is not without honor save among his own countrymen. When he preached in London his own brother James never went to hear him. One day, at the coffee-house which he frequented, the brother was asked by some one who was ignorant of the relationship, if he had heard this wonderful countryman and namesake of his, “Yes,” said James, somewhat drily, “I have heard him.”“And what did you think of him?”“Very little indeed,” was the reply. “Dear me,” exclaimed the inquirer, “When did you hear him?”“About half an hour after he was born,” was the cool answer of the brother.... When he preached at his native place, so strong was the feeling of his father against attending any but his own parish church, or so feeble was his desire to hear his son, that, although the churches of the two parishes of Eastern and Western Anstruther stood but a few hundred yards apart, the old man would not cross the separating burn in order to hear him.
The Pleasures Of Illness. (From the People's Journal.)
Every body knows the pleasures of health; but there are very few, if any, who can appreciate those of illness. Doubtless many people will feel inclined to laugh at the suggestion, but we beg that we may not be prejudged. There is positive pleasure to be derived even from every variety—and there is a choice—of sickness, if we would only put faith in the idea, and then strive to realize it. You may smile, but we are very serious, recollecting especially that the subject is rather a painful one, for which reason it behoves us to begin by treating it philosophically.
The best thing that people can do when they are suffering pain, either acute or otherwise, is—if they can not readily overcome it—to endeavor to forget it; simply because the mere effort, earnestly made and persevered in, will materially assist whatever more direct and efficient [pg 698] means may be adopted to get rid of it. Brooding over any bodily suffering only gives it encouragement, inasmuch as the mind is then actively assisting the ailment of the body; but let us make the most of a temporary cessation from the infliction, and there is a probability of its being dispelled altogether. Now the pleasure of getting rid of pain is undeniable, and, having achieved that, the best thing we can do to render the cessation permanent is to enjoy a sound sleep, which, though a very simple and ordinary gratification at other times, then becomes an extreme luxury, such, indeed, as we never should have known except through the instrumentality of the suffering that preceded it. The same may be said of many of the remedies that are used for the alleviation of pain: a hot bath, local applications of an exceedingly cold nature, or a delicious draught for cooling fever and quenching thirst—a draught like that of hock and soda-water—a draught “worthy of Xerxes, the great king,” and not to be equaled by sherbet “sublimed with snow;” but then you must (oh, what a pleasure for a king!) “get very drunk,” says Byron, in order thoroughly to enjoy it. You see our author so highly appreciated the pleasures of illness that he actually advises us to make ourselves ill; and that, too, in a most vulgar and degrading manner, in order that we may unreservedly revel in them. But, perhaps, the poet only meant to satirize the excessive proneness of all human beings—and kings have been noted for this quite as much as any—to bring pain upon themselves by some wanton or provoked indiscretion.
No pleasure can compensate for acute and long-endured suffering; but in all eases of illness unattended by pain, the pleasure to be derived is considerably greater than might be imagined. In fact, no one ever thinks of being able to enjoy an illness, for which reason we shall endeavor to show our readers not only the practicability of the idea, but how they are to set about realizing it. Let us take the most common kind of malady there is unattended by actual pain, a cold; a cold all over you, as violent as you please—such, in fact, as is “not to be sneezed at,” one that will confine you to your bed, compel you to take medicine, and restrict you to broth and barley-water. There you are, then, ill; happy fellow! very ill! you have not the least conception how much you are to be envied. The mere fact of being in such a condition, renders you an object of anxiety and interest. Every body in the house is ready to wait upon you, and all you have to do is to lie still and enjoy your bed, while other people are bustling about the house, or out of doors all day, undergoing the fatigue and irksomeness of their ordinary avocations. You are ill—you are to do nothing—not even to get up to breakfast, but to have it brought to you in bed; a luxury which it is probable you may have often been tempted to enjoy in the winter, though your philosophy enabled you to overcome it. Now you are not only compelled to indulge in it, but are made an object of sympathy on that account; it is so very lamentable to see you propped up with pillows, and cosily encased in flannel around the throat and shoulders. You are not to be hurried over your breakfast, there is no office to go to; nothing to be thought of but the enjoyment of your tea and toast, which you may sip and munch as leisurely as you please, while reading a magazine or newspaper. At length breakfast is over, and you have become tired of reading; down go the pillows to their usual position, and after some gentle hand has smoothed and placed them comfortably, you sink back upon them, overwhelmed by a most delightful sense of mental and bodily indolence. What a blessing it is to have escaped the ordeal of shaving, even for one morning! only think of that; and remember also how the warmth of the bed will encourage the growth of your beard, compelling you of course to send for the barber when you have got well enough to leave your room again. Hark! there's a knock at the door—somebody you don't want to see, probably; “Master's very poorly, and obliged to keep his bed.” Ha! ha! Keep his bed, eh?—no such thing; it's the bed that keeps him—snug and warm, and in a blessed state of exemption from all annoyances, and you must not be subjected to any such infliction; no, you are very ill. You abandon yourself to the idea, nestle your head luxuriously in the pillow, pull the bed clothes over your chin, and fall into a delightful dose. You awake feverish, perhaps, and thirsty. Well, there is some barley-water at your bedside, delicately flavored with a little lemon juice and sugar; a sort of primitive punch, pleasant to the palate, and not at all likely to prove provocative of headache. You raise a tumblerful to your lips, and drink with intense gusto. What a pleasure it is! well worth coming into the world to enjoy, if one was to die the next minute; but you are not going to die yet, don't suppose it—you are only being favored with an opportunity of enjoying the pleasures of illness. But you are so feverish, you say; so much the better. Now, just endeavor to recall to mind the wildest fiction, either in prose or poetry that you have ever read, something very pleasing and highly imaginative—a fairy tale will be as good as any. Go to sleep thinking of it, and you will dream—dream, said we? we were wrong, for the fiction will become a glorious reality; and so it does! but, alas! you awake, once more return to the vulgar commonplaces of mundane existence. A sharp rap at the bedroom door makes you farther conscious that you have only been reveling in what is termed a delusion; but never mind, here comes some one to console you—another corporeality like yourself, intent on feeding you with chicken-broth, and batter-pudding; much more substantial fare than the fairies would have given you, and extremely enjoyable now that you are ill, though at any other time you would have turned up your nose at it. Oh, it's [pg 699] a fine thing is illness for teaching people not to let the palate become irritated by luxurious living! “Very nice,” eh, “but you would have liked a basin of mulligatawny better, and some wine-sauce with the pudding?” Shocking depravity! the pleasures of illness are simple, and you must learn to enjoy them as well as those of health; it's all habit. Many medicines would be found extremely palatable if we were not prejudiced against them. Now, black draughts, you “can't bear them;” and yet they are much nicer than castor-oil. Why, what's the matter? you've upset all the broth over that beautifully white counterpane! Delicate stomach, yours, very. Come, try the pudding; and don't let your imagination combine any medicinal sauce with it. You have eaten it all; that's right. Now, allow us to suggest that a little very ripe fruit will not hurt you—an orange, or some strawberries if in season. But you must not lie there and allow your mind to get either into a wearisome state of vacuity or unpleasant reflection. Send for a book from the library—some novel that you have never read; and if it is too much trouble to read it yourself, get some one to read it to you. It is a capital plan always to endeavor to forget an illness by means of some quiet and absorbing enjoyment. You are fond of music, for instance; and if you hear any good band strike up in the street we recommend you by all means to detain them. You will get up, perhaps, in the evening, and prepare yourself for a refreshing night's rest by having your bed made; should a friend drop in who can give you a game of chess or cribbage be sure to avail yourself of the opportunity, if you feel inclined for such recreation. Do not sit up late, or get into any exciting conversation; but go calmly and quietly to bed, take your basin of gruel, swallow your pills, lay your head on the pillow, and go to sleep. To-morrow it is most probable that you will be well, or only sufficiently indisposed to render it prudent that you should stop at home, when you will indulge in a stronger and more relishing diet; pass the day in a dreamy state of inactivity, or enjoy yourself vivaciously in any reasonable manner you may think proper.
Perhaps, gentle reader, you may have endured prolonged and severe attacks of bodily suffering—perhaps you will tell us that we have not been depicting illness at all, but merely indisposition. You would have had us pick out from the pages of the “Lancet” a thrilling account of torture under the knife, and then made us rack our ingenuity to discover, if possible, some pleasure contingent upon that. You might as well expect us to write an article on the pleasure of being hanged. We will, however, say this much as regards every degree of illness: that there is scarcely any that does not admit of some mitigating gratification. The mere circumstance of being watched and most carefully tended by those we love, the kindness with which they bear our peevishness, and the desire they display to do every thing they can either to alleviate our pain or to conduce to our convalescence, are pleasures such as illness alone can afford, and must ever merit the highest appreciation, not only because we either are or ought to be duly impressed with them at the time, but for the farther and more substantial reason that they become delightful reminiscences and bonds of affection forever after. It is an excellent thing, morally and socially, is illness, and only requires that we endeavor to make the best instead of the worst of it; and therein lies the whole serious purport of this paper, which we have thought fit to write in as light a style as possible, knowing that the subject, though interesting to all, is very far from being generally palatable.
Obstructions To The Use Of The Telescope.
It has been long known, both from theory and in practice, that the imperfect transparency of the earth's atmosphere, and the unequal refraction which arises from differences of temperature, combine to set a limit to the use of high magnifying powers in our telescopes. Hitherto, however, the application of such high powers was checked by the imperfections of the instruments themselves; and it is only since the construction of Lord Rosse's telescope that astronomers have found that, in our damp and variable climate, it is only during a few days of the year that telescopes of such magnitude can use successfully the high magnifying powers which they are capable of bearing. Even in a cloudless sky, when the stars are sparkling in the firmament, the astronomer is baffled by influences which are invisible, and while new planets and new satellites are being discovered by instruments comparatively small, the gigantic Polyphemus lies slumbering in his cave, blinded by thermal currents, more irresistible than the firebrand of Ulysses. As the astronomer, however, can not command a tempest to clear his atmosphere, nor a thunder storm to purify it, his only alternative is to remove his telescope to some southern climate, where no clouds disturb the serenity of the firmament, and no changes of temperature distract the emanations of the stars. A fact has been recently mentioned, which entitles us to anticipate great results from such a measure. The Marquis of Ormonde is said to have seen from Mount Etna, with his naked eye, the satellites of Jupiter. If this be true, what discoveries may we not expect, even in Europe, from a large reflector working above the grosser strata of our atmosphere. This noble experiment of sending a large reflector to a southern climate has been but once made in the history of science. Sir John Herschel transported his telescopes and his family to the south of Africa, and during a voluntary exile of four years' duration he enriched astronomy with many splendid discoveries.—Sir David Brewster.
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The Political Incidents of the past month have been interesting and important. Congress, after spending eight or nine months in most animated discussion of the principles, results, and relations of various subjects growing out of Slavery in the Southern States, has enacted several provisions of very great importance to the whole country. The debates upon these topics, especially in the Senate, have been exceedingly able, and have engrossed public attention to an unusual degree. The excitement which animated the members of Congress gradually extended to those whom they represented, and a state of feeling had arisen which was regarded, by many judicious and experienced men, as full of danger to the harmony and well-being, if not to the permanent existence, of the American Union. The action of Congress during the month just closed, concludes the controversy upon these questions, and for the time, at least, prevents vigorous and effective agitation of the principles which they involved. What that action has been we shall state with as much detail and precision as our readers will desire.
In the last number of the New Monthly Magazine, we chronicled the action of the Senate upon several of the bills now referred to. They were sent of course to the House of Representatives, and that body first took up the bill establishing the boundary of Texas, and giving her ten millions of dollars in payment of her claim to the portion of New Mexico which the bill requires her to relinquish. Mr. Boyd, of Kentucky, moved as an amendment, to attach to it the bills for the government of Utah and New Mexico, substantially as they had passed the Senate, both being without any anti-slavery proviso. He subsequently withdrew that portion of the amendment relating to Utah; and an effort was made by Mr. Ashmun to cut off the remainder of the amendment by the previous question, but the House refused by a vote of 74 ayes to 107 nays. The subject was discussed with a good deal of animation for several days. On the 4th of September, a motion to lay the bill on the table was defeated—ayes 30, nays 169. A motion to refer the bill to the Committee of the Whole, which was considered equivalent to its rejection, was then carried—ayes 109, nays 99;—but a motion to reconsider that vote was immediately passed—ayes 104, nays 98;—and the House then refused to refer the bill to the Committee of the Whole by a vote of 101 ayes and 103 nays. Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina, moved an amendment to divide California, and erect the southern part of it into the territory of Colorado;—but this was rejected—ayes 69, nays 130. The question was then taken on the amendment, organizing a territorial government for New Mexico, and was lost—ayes 98, nays 106. The question then came up on ordering the Texas Boundary bill to a third reading, and the House refused to do so by a vote of 80 ayes and 126 nays. Mr. Boyd immediately moved to reconsider that vote, and on the 5th that motion passed—ayes 131, nays 75. Mr. Grinell, of Massachusetts then moved to reconsider the vote by which Mr. Boyd's amendment had been rejected, and this was carried by a vote of 106 to 99. An amendment, offered by Mr. Featherston, of Virginia, to strike out all after the enacting clause, and to make the Rio Grande, from its mouth to its source, the boundary of Texas, was rejected by a vote of 71 in favor to 128 against it. The amendment of Mr. Boyd was then passed by a vote of 106 ayes and 99 noes; and the question was then taken on ordering the bill, as amended, to a third reading. It was lost by a vote of 99 ayes to 107 noes. Mr. Howard, of Texas, who had voted against the bill, immediately moved a reconsideration of the vote. The Speaker decided that the motion was not in order, inasmuch as a reconsideration had once been had. Mr. Howard appealed from the decision, and contended that the former vote was simply to reconsider the vote on the original bill, whereas this was to reconsider the vote on the bill as amended by Mr. Boyd.—On the fifth, the House reversed the Speaker's decision, 123 to 83,—thus bringing up again the proposition to order the bill to a third reading. Mr. Howard moved the previous question, and his motion was sustained, 103 to 91;—and the bill was then ordered to a third reading by a vote of 108 to 98. The bill was then read a third time, and finally passed by a vote of 108 ayes to 98 nays.—As this bill is one of marked importance, we add, as a matter of record, the following analysis of the vote upon it:—the names of Democrats are in Roman letter, Whigs in italics, and members of the Free Soil party in small capitals:—
Nays.—New York, Alexander, Bennett, Burrows, Clark, Conger, Gott, Holloway, W.T. Jackson, John A. King, Preston King, Matteson, Putnam, Reynolds, Ramsey, Sackett, Schoolcraft, Silvester.—Massachusetts, Allen, Fowler, Horace Mann, Rockwell.—North Carolina, Clingman, Daniel, Venable.—Virginia, Averett, Holiday, Mead, Millson, Powell, Seddon.—Illinois, Baker, Wentworth.—Michigan, Bingham, Sprague.—Alabama, Bowdon, S.W. Harris, Hubbard, Inge.—Mississippi, A.G. Brown, Featherston, McWillie, Jacob Thompson.—South Carolina, Burt, Colcock, Holmes, Orr, Wallace, Woodward, McQueen.—Connecticut, Thomas B. Butler, Waldo, Booth.—Ohio, Cable, Campbell, Cartter, Corwin, Crowell, Nathan Evans, Giddings, Hunter, Morris, Olds, Root, Schenck, Sweetzer, Vinton.—Pennsylvania, Calvin, Dickey, Howe, Moore, Ogle, Reed, Thaddeus Stevens.—Wisconsin, Cole, Doty, Durkee.—Rhode Island, DÌxon.—Georgia, Haralson, Jos. W. Jackson.—Indiana, Harlan, Julian, McGaughey.—Vermont, Hebard, Henry, Meacham, Peck.—Arkansas, Robert W. Johnson.—New Jersey, James G. King, Newell, Van Dyke.—Louisiana, La Sere, Morse.—Maine, Otis, Sawtelle, Stetson.—Missouri, Phelps.—New Hampshire, TUCK.
This analysis shows that there voted
For The Bill: Northern Whigs: 24 Southern Whigs: 25-49 Northern Democrats: 32 Southern Democrats: 27-59 Total: 108.
Against The Bill: Northern Whigs: 44 Southern Whigs: 1-45 Northern Democrats: 13 Southern Democrats: 30-43 Total: 98.
The bill thus passed in the House was sent to the Senate; and on the 9th that body, by a vote of 31 to 10, concurred in the amendment which the House had made to it; and it became, by the signature of the President, the law of the land.
On Saturday the 7th, the House took up the bill from the Senate admitting California into the Union. Mr. Thompson, of Mississippi, moved an amendment, making the parallel of 36° 30' the southern boundary of California, which was rejected—yeas 71, nays 134. The main question was then taken, and the bill, admitting California, passed—yeas 150, nays 56.—On the same day the bill from the Senate organizing a territorial government for Utah was taken up, and Mr. Wentworth, of Illinois, moved to amend it by inserting a clause prohibiting the existence of slavery within the territory. This was lost—ayes 69, nays 78. Mr. Fitch, of Indiana, moved an amendment, declaring that the Mexican law prohibiting slavery, should remain in full force in the territory: after some discussion this was rejected—ayes 51, nays 85. Several other amendments were introduced and lost, and the bill finally passed by a vote of 97 ayes and 85 nays.
The bill to facilitate the recovery of Fugitive slaves was taken up in the Senate on the 20th of August. Mr. Dayton submitted an amendment providing for a trial by jury of the question, whether the person who may be claimed, is or is not a fugitive slave. After some debate, the amendment was rejected by a vote of ayes 11, nays 27, as follows:
Ayes—Messrs. Chase, Davis of Massachusetts, Dayton, Dodge of Wisconsin, Greene, Hamlin, Phelps, Smith, Upham, Walker, Winthrop—11.
Nays.—Messrs. Atchison, Badger, Barnwell, Benton, Berrien, Butler, Cass, Davis of Mississippi, Dawson, Dodge of Iowa, Downs, Houston, Jones, King, Mangum, Mason, Morton, Pratt, Rusk, Sebastian, SoulÉ, Sturgeon, Turney, Underwood, Wales, and Yulee—27.
On the 22d, Mr. Pratt, of Maryland, submitted an amendment, the effect of which would have been to make the United States responsible in damages for fugitive slaves that might not be recovered. This was rejected by a vote of 10 to 27. Mr. Davis, of Massachusetts, offered an amendment extending the right of habeas corpus to free colored citizens arriving in vessels at Southern ports, who may be imprisoned there without any alleged offense against the law. This amendment, after debate, was rejected—ayes 13, nays 25. The original bill was then ordered to a third reading by a vote of 27 ayes to 12 nays, as follows:
Ayes.—Messrs. Atchison, Badger, Barnwell, Bell, Berrien, Butler, Davis of Mississippi, Dawson, Dodge of Iowa, Downs, Foote, Houston, Hunter, Jones, King, Mangum, Mason, Pearce, Rusk, Sebastian, SoulÉ, Spruance, Sturgeon, Turney, Underwood, Wales, and Yulee—27.
Nays.—Messrs. Baldwin, Bradbury, Chase, Cooper, Davis of Massachusetts, Dayton, Dodge of Wisconsin, Greene, Smith, Upham, Walker, and Winthrop—12.
On the 26th the bill had its third reading and was finally passed. On the 12th of September the House of Representatives took up the bill, and after some slight debate, passed it, under the operation of the previous question, by a vote of 109 ayes to 75 nays.
On the 3d of September the Senate proceeded to the consideration of the bill abolishing the Slave-trade in the District of Columbia. Mr Foote of Mississippi offered a substitute placing the control of the whole matter in the hands of the Corporate Authorities of Washington and Georgetown. To this Mr. Pearce of Maryland, in committee of the whole, moved an amendment punishing by fine and imprisonment any person who shall induce or attempt to induce slaves to run away, and giving the corporate authorities power to remove free negroes from the District. The first portion of the amendment was passed, ayes 26, nays 15, and the second ayes 24, nays 18. Mr. Foote then withdrew his substitute.—On the 10th the consideration of the bill was resumed. Mr. Seward moved to substitute a bill abolishing Slavery in the District of Columbia and appropriating $200,000 to indemnify the owners of slaves who might thus be enfranchised—the claims to be audited and adjusted by the Secretary of the Interior: and submitting the law to the people of the District. The amendment [pg 702] gave rise to a warm debate and on the 12th was rejected, ayes 5, nays 46. The amendments offered by Mr. Pearce, and passed in committee of the whole, were non-concurred in by the Senate on the 14th, and the bill on the same day was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, by a vote of 32 to 19. On the 16th it was read a third time and finally passed, ayes 33, nays 19, as follows:
Ayes.—Messrs. Baldwin, Benton, Bright, Cass, Chase, Clarke, Clay, Cooper, Davis of Mass., Dayton, Dickinson, Dodge of Wisconsin, Dodge of Iowa, Douglas, Ewing, Felch, FrÉmont, Greene, Gwin, Hale, Hamlin, Houston, Jones, Norris, Seward, Shields, Spruance, Sturgeon, Underwood, Wales, Walker, Whitcomb, and Winthrop—33.
Nays.—Messrs. Atchison, Badger, Barnwell, Bell, Berrien, Butler, Davis of Mississippi, Dawson, Downs, Hunter, King, Mangum, Mason, Morton, Pratt, Sebastian, SoulÉ, Turney, and Yulee—19.
It was taken up in the House of Representatives on the 15th and passed by a vote of 124 to 47.
By the action of Congress during the past month, therefore, bills have been passed upon all the topics which have agitated the country during the year. The bill in regard to the Texas boundary provides that the northern line shall run on the line of 36° 30' from the meridian of 100° to 103° of west longitude—thence it shall run south to the 32d parallel of latitude, and on that parallel to the Rio del Norte, and in the channel of that river thence to its mouth. The State of Texas is to cede to the United States all claims to the territory north of that line, and to relinquish all claim for liability for her debts, &c., and is to receive from the United States as a consideration the sum of ten millions of dollars. The law will, of course, have no validity unless assented to by the State of Texas. No action upon this subject has been taken by her authorities. Previous to the passage of the bill, the Legislature of the State met in special session called by Governor Bell, and received from him a long and elaborate message in regard to the attempt made, under his direction, to extend the laws and jurisdiction of Texas over the Santa FÉ district of New Mexico, and to the resistance which he had met from the authorities of the Federal Government. After narrating the circumstances of the case, he urges the necessity of asserting, promptly and by force, the claim of Texas to the territory in question. He recommends the enactment of laws authorizing the Executive to raise and maintain two regiments of mounted volunteers for the Expedition. A bill was introduced in conformity with this recommendation; but of its fate no reliable intelligence has yet been received.—A resolution was introduced into the Texas Legislature calling upon the governor for copies of any correspondence he might have had with other states of the Confederacy, but it was not passed. A letter has been published from General Quitman, Governor of Mississippi, stating that in case of a collision between the authorities of Texas and those of the United States, he should deem it his duty to aid the former.—Hon. Thos. J. Rusk, whose term as U.S. Senator expires with the present session, has been re-elected by the Legislature of Texas receiving 56 out of 64 votes. He voted in favor of the bill of adjustment, and his re-election by so large a majority is looked upon as indicating a disposition on the part of the authorities to accept the terms proposed.—Both Houses of Congress have agreed to adjourn on the 30th of September.
Intelligence from the Mexican Boundary Commission has been received to the 31st of August, on which day they were at Indianola, Texas. There was some sickness among the members of the corps, but every thing looked promising.—Hon. William Duer, member of Congress from the Oswego District, New York, has declined a re-election, in a letter in which he vindicates the bills passed by Congress, and earnestly urges his constituents not to encourage or permit any further agitation among them of questions connected with slavery. Hon. E.G. Spaulding, from the Erie District, and Hon. George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, also decline a re-election.—Captain Ammin Bey, of the Turkish Navy, arrived at New York on the 13th, in the United States ship Erie, being sent out by his Government as special Commissioner to collect information and make personal observations of the character, resources, and condition of the United States. He is a gentleman of ability, education, and experience and has been employed by his Government on various confidential missions. He was the secret agent of Turkey on the frontiers of Hungary during the recent struggle of that gallant people with Austria and Russia. He has been warmly received here, and enjoys every facility for prosecuting the objects of his mission. Congress has appropriated $10,000 toward defraying the expenses of his mission.—Hon. A.H.H. Stuart, of Virginia, has been appointed Secretary of the Interior, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mr. M'Kennan. He has accepted the appointment and entered upon the duties of the office. Mr. M'Kennan resigned on finding, from an experience of a day, that his health was not adequate to the performance of the duties of the place. Mr. Stuart has been a member of Congress, where he was universally recognized as a man of ability, assiduity, and character.—Mr. Conrad, of Louisiana, on accepting the office of Secretary of War, addressed a letter to his constituents, explaining and justifying the course he had taken in Congress. He said that opinions on the subject of the extension of slavery might be classified as follows: 1. There are those who seek, through the direct agency of the Federal Government, to introduce slavery into this territory. 2. Those who wish, by the same means, to prevent this introduction. 3. Those who resist any interference with the question by the Federal Government, and would leave to the inhabitants of the country the exclusive right to decide it. He claims to belong to the latter class. The Union, he says, is too [pg 703] great a blessing to be staked upon any game of hazard, and the prolongation of the controversy upon the subject of slavery, he deems in itself a calamity “It alarms the South and agitates the North; it alienates each from the other, and augments the number and influence of those who wage an endless war against slavery, and whom this discussion has raised to a political importance which, without it, they never could have attained.”—Dr. Henry Nes, member of Congress from the Fifteenth District of Pennsylvania, died at his residence in York on the 10th.—Several American citizens residing in Paris, having observed in the London papers an account of a gross insult said to have been offered to Hon. Mr. Barringer, United States Minister at Madrid, by General Narvaez at Naples, wrote to him, assuring him of the cordial response upon which he might count to such measures of redress as he should choose to adopt. Mr. Barringer replied by declaring the whole story to be false in every particular. In all his personal and official intercourse with him, he says, General Narvaez had been most courteous and respectful.—An election for state officers was held in Vermont on the first Tuesday of September, which resulted in the choice of Charles R. Williams (Whig) for Governor, and the re-election of Hon. Messrs. Hebard and Meacham to Congress, from the Second and Third Districts. Thomas Bartlett, jun., Democrat, was elected in the Fourth District, and no choice was effected in the First.—Professor J.W. Webster was executed at Boston on the 30th of August, pursuant to his sentence, for the murder of Dr. Parkman. He died with great firmness and composure, professing and evincing the most heartfelt penitence for his crime.—Intelligence has been received of the death of the Reverend Adoniram Judson, D.D., who is known to all the world as the oldest and one of the most laborious missionaries in foreign lands. He left the United States for Calcutta in 1812, and has devoted the whole of his life since that time to making Christianity known in Burmah. He translated the Bible into the language of the country, besides compiling a Dictionary of it, and performing an immense amount of other literary labor in addition to the regular preaching of the gospel and the discharge of other pastoral duties. He returned to this country in 1847, and married Miss Emily Chubbuck, with whom he soon returned to his field of labor. His health for the past few months has been gradually declining, and during the last spring it had become so seriously impaired that a sea voyage was deemed essential to its restoration. He accordingly embarked on board the French bark, Aristide Marie, for the Isle of Bourbon, on the 3d of April; but his disease made rapid advances, and after several days of intense agony, he died on the 12th, and his body was committed to the deep on the next day. Dr. Judson was attached to the Baptist Church, but his memory will be held in the profoundest veneration, as his labors have been cheered and sustained, by Christians of all denominations. He was a man of ability, of learning, and of intense devotion to the welfare of his fellow-men.—Bishop H.B. Bascom, of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, died at Louisville, Ky., on the 8th of September, after an illness of some months' continuance. He was in many respects one of the most influential and distinguished members of the large denomination to which he belonged. He enjoyed a very wide reputation for eloquence and was universally regarded, by all who ever heard him, as one of the most brilliant and effective of American orators. His person was large and commanding, his voice sonorous and musical, and his manner exceedingly impressive. His style was exceedingly florid, and elaborate, and his discourses abounded in the most adventurous flights of fancy and imagination. He shared the merits and the faults of what is generally and pretty correctly known as the Southern and Western style of eloquence, and always spoke with great effect. His labors in the service of the church have been long, arduous, and successful. He has exerted a wide influence and has exerted it in behalf of the noblest and most important of all interests. His death occasions profound and universal regret.—John Inman, Esq., favorably known to the country as a literary man, and as editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser, died at his residence in New York, on the 30th of August, after a lingering illness of several months. Mr. Inman was educated for the bar, and practiced law for some years in New York; but left the profession for the more congenial labors of literature. He was engaged for some years upon the New York Mirror, and soon after became associated with Colonel Stone, in the editorial conduct of the Commercial. Upon the death of that gentleman in 1847, Mr. Inman became the principal editor, and held that post, discharging its duties with ability, skill, and unwearied assiduity, until failing health compelled him to relinquish it during the last spring. He wrote frequently for the reviews and magazines, and sustained confidential relations, as critic and literary adviser, to the house of Harper and Brothers. He was a man of decided talent, of extensive information, great industry and of unblemished character. He died at the age of 47.
The most exciting event of the month has been the arrival of the celebrated Swedish vocalist, Jenny Lind. She reached New York in the Steamer Atlantic on the 1st of September, and was received by a demonstration of popular enthusiasm which has seldom been equaled in this country. More than twenty thousand people gathered upon the wharf where she landed, and crowded the streets through which she passed. She gave her first concert at Castle Garden, in New York, on the evening of the 12th, and this was rapidly followed by five others at the same place. The number of persons present on each occasion could not have [pg 704] been less then seven thousand. The receipts on the first night were about thirty thousand dollars, and Jenny Lind immediately bestowed ten thousand upon several of the worthiest charities of New York City. The enthusiasm which she excites seems fully justified not more by her superiority as an artist than by her personal qualities and character. Of her life a brief but spirited sketch, from the graceful pen of her distinguished countrywoman, Miss Bremer, will be found in another part of this Magazine. Her charities are already well known and honored wherever there are hearts to glow at deeds of enlightened benevolence. A young woman, who has not yet seen thirty years, she has already bestowed upon benevolent objects half a million of dollars, not inherited or won at a throw, but the fruit of a life of severe and disheartening toil, and has appropriated to the benefit of her native country the profits which she will reap from the willing soil of America. As an artist she has powers which are met with but once or twice in a generation. Her voice is in itself a wonder, and unlike most wonders is beautiful to a degree which causes those who come under its influence to forget surprise in pleasure. It is compared to all things beautiful under the sun by those whose grateful task it is to set its attractions forth in detail: to the flood of melody from the nightingale's throat, to light, to water which flows from a pure and inexhaustible spring. We shall be content to say that it appears to us almost the ideal of a beautiful sound. It would puzzle the nicest epicure of the ear, we think, to say in what respect he would have its glorious quality modified. He might object possibly at first to the slightest shade of huskiness which appears sometimes in its lower tones, or to an equally slight sharpness in the very highest, but if he listened long he would surely forget to object. The purely musical quality of Jenny Lind's voice is its crowning charm and excellence, in comparison with which its great extent, brilliance, and acquired flexibility are of but secondary worth. Its lowest tone can be felt at a distance and above, or rather through, all noisy obstacles and surroundings, whether they be vocal or instrumental. Another of its chief charms is its seeming inexhaustibility. It pours forth in a pellucid flood of sound, and always produces the impression that there is more yet, amply more, to meet all the demands of the singer.
M'lle Lind's vocalization is to the ordinary ear beyond criticism. Her intended effects are so completely attained, and attained with such apparent ease and consciousness of power, that the hearer does not think of questioning whether they could be better in themselves or better performed, but gives himself up to this unalloyed enjoyment. Her intervals are taken with a certainty and firmness which can not be attained by an instrument, so nicely, so rigidly accurate is her ear, and so absolute is her power over her organ. Her abilities have been best displayed in the first aria sung by the Queen of Night in Mozart'sZauberflÖte, and by a taking Swedish Herdsman's Song. In the former she vocalizes freely above the lines for many bars, and in one passage takes the astonishing note F in alt. with perfect intonation. In the latter, which contains some very difficult and unmelodic intervals, her performance is marked with the same ease and accuracy which appear in her simplest ballad, and the effect of echo which she produces is to be equaled only by Nature herself. M'lle Lind's shake is probably the most equal and brilliant ever heard. There are some critics and amateurs who object to her manner of delivering her voice and to her unimpassioned style; but although these objections seem to have no little weight, their consideration would involve a deeper investigation of questions of pure Art than we are at present prepared for, and are content to offer our homage, with that of the rest of the world, to the Genius and Benevolence which are united in her fascinating, though, we must say, not beautiful person.
The Gallery of the American Art-Union was re-opened for the season in New York on the 4th of September, Jenny Lind honoring the occasion by her presence. The collection is unusually large and excellent. It already numbers over 300 pictures, several of which are among the best productions of their authors. The number and variety of works of art to be distributed among the members at the coming anniversary will be greater than ever before. The rapid and wonderful growth of this institution is in the highest degree honorable to the country, and affords marked evidence of the energy and spirit with which its affairs have been conducted. We understand that the subscription list is already larger by some thousands than ever before at the same time.
The Literary Intelligence of the month is devoid of any features of startling interest. G.P.R. James, Esq. has commenced in Boston a series of six Lectures upon the History of Civilization, and will probably repeat them in New York and other American cities. The subject is one with which Mr. James has made himself familiar in the ordinary course of his studies for his historical novels; and he will undoubtedly bring to its methodical discussion a clear and sound judgment, liberal views, and his characteristic felicity and picturesqueness of description and narrative. The lectures are new, and are delivered for the first time in this country.—All who are interested in Classical Education will welcome the appearance of the edition of Freund's Lexicon of the Latin Language, upon which Professor Andrews has been engaged for several years. The original work consists of four octavo volumes, averaging about 1100 pages each, which were eleven years in passing through the press, viz., from 1834 to 1845. By the adoption of various typographical expedients, such as adding another [pg 705] column to the page, and using smaller type, the whole will be comprised in a single volume, an improvement which, while it diminishes the cost, adds greatly to the convenience with which it may be used. This Lexicon is intended to give an account of all the Latin words found in the writings of the Romans from the earliest times to the fall of the Western Empire, as well as those from the Greek and other languages. The grammatical inflexions, both regular and irregular, of each word, are accurately pointed out; and the etymologies are made to embrace the results of modern scholarship in that department as specifically applicable to the Latin language, without invading the proper province of comparative philology. To the definitions, as the most important department of lexicography, particular attention has been given; and the primary, the transferred, the tropical, and the proverbial uses of words are carefully arranged in the order of their development; the shades of difference in the meanings and uses of synonymous terms are pointed out. Special attention has been given to the chronology of words, i.e., to the time when they were in use, and they are designated accordingly as belonging to all periods of the language, or as “ante-classic,”“quite classic,”“Ciceronian,”“Augustan,”“post-Augustan,”“post-classic,” or “late Latin,” as the case may be. The student is also informed whether a word is used in prose or poetry, or in both, whether it is of common or rare occurrence, &c, &c.; and each of its uses is illustrated by a copious selection of examples, with a reference in every instance to the chapter, section, and verse where found. To those familiar with the subject, this brief description of the work will suffice to show its vast superiority over every dictionary of the Latin language at present in use among us, and how much may be expected in aid of the cause of sound learning from its introduction into our seminaries and colleges. It will appear from the press of the Harpers very soon.—“The History of the United States of America, from the adoption of the Federal Constitution to the end of the Sixteenth Congress, in three volumes,” is the title of a new work by Mr. Hildreth, whose three volumes, bringing down the history of the United States to the adoption of the Federal Constitution are already favorably known to the public. The present volumes, the first of which is already in press, are intended to embrace a fully authentic and impartial history of the two great parties of Federalists and Republicans, or Democrats, as they were sometimes called, by which the country was divided and agitated for the first thirty years and upward subsequent to the adoption of the Federal Constitution. The volume now in press is devoted to the administration of Washington, a subject of great interest and importance, since, during that period, not only were all the germs of the subsequent party distinctions fully developed, but because the real character and operation of the Federal Government, from that day to this, was mainly determined by the impress given to it while Washington remained at the head of affairs. This subject, treated with the candor, discrimination, industry, and ability which Mr. Hildreth's volumes already published give us a right to expect, can hardly fail to attract and reward a large share of public attention.—An Astronomical Expedition has been sent out by the United States Government to Santiago, Chili, for the purpose of making astronomical observations. It is under the charge of Lieut. J.M. Gillis, of the Navy, one of the ablest astronomers of his age now living. The Chilian Government has received the expedition with great cordiality, and has availed itself of the liberal offer of the United States Government to admit several young men to instruction in the Observatory, by designating three persons for that object. Letters from Lieut. G. show that he is prosecuting his labors with unwearied zeal and assiduity—having, up to the 1st of June, catalogued nearly five thousand stars. Humboldt, in a letter to a friend, which has been published, expresses a high opinion of Lieut. Gillis, and of the expedition in which he is engaged. In the same letter he speaks in warm terms of the great ability and merit, in their several departments, of Ticknor, Prescott, Fremont, Emory, Gould, and other literary and scientific Americans.
From California our intelligence is to the 15th of August, brought by the steamer Ohio, which reached New York on the 22d ult. The most important item relates to a deplorable collision which has occurred between persons claiming lands under titles derived from Capt. Sutter, and others who had taken possession of them and refused to leave. Capt. Sutter held them under his Spanish grant, the validity of which, so far as the territory in question is concerned, is disputed. Attempts to eject the squatters, in accordance with the decision of the courts, were forcibly resisted at Sacramento City on the 14th of August, and a riot was the result, in which several persons on both sides were killed, and others severely wounded. Several hundred were engaged in the fight. As this occurred just upon the eve of the steamer's departure, the issue of the contest is unknown. There is reason to fear that the difficulties to which it gives rise may not be very soon or very easily settled. Among those killed were Mr. Bigelow, Mayor of Sacramento City, Mr. Woodland, an auctioneer, and Dr. Robinson, the President of the Squatter Association.—The news from the mines continues to be encouraging. In the southern mines the dry season had so far advanced that the Stanislaus and Tuolumne rivers were in good working condition, and yielded good returns. Details are given from the various localities showing that the gold has been by no means exhausted. From the northern mines similar accounts are received.—The total amount received for duties by the Collector at San Francisco from [pg 706] November 12, 1849, to June 30, 1850, was $889,542.—During the passage of the steamer Panama from San Francisco to Panama the cholera broke out, and seventeen of the passengers died. It was induced by excessive indulgence in fruit at Acupulco.—Rev. Horatio Southgate D.D., formerly Missionary Bishop at Constantinople, has been chosen Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church for the Diocese of California.—In Sonora the difficulties which had broken out in consequence of the tax on foreign miners had been obviated, and order was restored.—Mining operations are prosecuted with the greatest vigor and energy, and were yielding a good return. Companies were formed for carrying on operations more thoroughly than has been usual, and new locations have been discovered which promise to be very fertile.
From Oregon there is no news of interest, though our intelligence comes down to the 25th of July. Business was prosperous. Gold is said to have been discovered on Rogue's river, and companies had been formed to profit by the discovery. A treaty of peace has been negotiated with the Indians by Gov. Lane.
From Jamaica we hear of the death of Gen. Herard, ex-President of Hayti, who has been residing in Jamaica for several years. The season has been favorable for the crops, and the harvests of fruit were very abundant. There had been several very severe thunderstorms, and several lives had been lost from lightning. Efforts are made to promote the culture of cotton upon the island.
From New Mexico Major R.H. Weightman arrived at St. Louis, Aug. 22d, having been elected U.S. Senator by the state Legislature. He was on his way to Washington where he has since arrived. His colleague was Hon. F.A. Cunningham. In the popular canvass the friends of a state government carried every county except one, over those who desired a territorial organization. A conflict of authority had occurred between the newly elected state officers and the Civil and Military Governor, the latter refusing to transfer the authority to the former until New Mexico should be admitted as a state. A voluminous correspondence upon the subject between the two governors has been published.—The Indians at the latest dates were still committing the grossest outrages in all parts of the country. The crops were fine and promising.
In England the month has been signalized by no event of special interest or importance. The incident which has attracted most attention grew out of the visit to England of General Haynau, the commander of the Austrian armies during the war with Hungary, who acquired for himself a lasting and infamous notoriety by the horrible cruelty which characterized his campaigns and his treatment of prisoners who fell into his hands. His proclamations, threatening butchery and extermination to every village any of whose inhabitants should furnish aid or countenance to the Hungarians, and the inhuman barbarity with which they were put in execution, must be fresh in the public memory, as it certainly was in that of the people of London. It seems that, during his stay in London, General Haynau visited the great brewery establishment of Messrs. Barclay & Co. On presenting himself, accompanied by two friends, at the door, they were required, as was customary, to register their names. On looking at the books, the clerks discovered the name and rank of their visitor, and his presence and identity were soon known throughout the establishment. The workmen began to shout after him, and finally to follow and assail him with denunciations and dirt; and before he had crossed the yard he found himself completely beset by a mob of coal-heavers, draymen, brewers' men, and others, who shouted “Down with the Austrian butcher!” and hustled him about with a good deal of violence and considerable injury to his person. Fully realizing the peril of his position, he ran from the mob, and took refuge in a hotel, concealing himself in a secluded room from his pursuers, who ransacked the whole house, until the arrival of a strong police force put an end to the mob and the General's peril. The leading papers, especially those in the Tory interest, speak of this event in the most emphatic terms of denunciation. The Liberal journals exult in the popular spirit which it evinced, while they regret the disregard of law and order which attended it.
Parliament was prorogued on the 15th of August by the Queen in person, to the 25th of October. The ceremonial was unusually splendid. The Queen tendered her thanks for the assiduity and care which had marked the business of the session, and expressed her satisfaction with the various measures which had been consummated. In approving of the Colonial Government Act, she said it would always be gratifying to her to extend the advantages of republican institutions to colonies inhabited by men who are capable of exercising, with benefit to themselves, the privileges of freedom: she looks for the most beneficial consequences, also, from the act extending the elective franchise in Ireland.—Previous to the prorogation, Parliament transacted very little business of much interest to our readers. Marlborough House was set apart for the residence of the Prince of Wales when he shall need it, and meantime it is to be used for the exhibition of the Vernon pictures. Lord Brougham created something of a sensation in the House of Lords on the 2d, by complaining that all savings in the Civil List should accrue to the nation, and not to the royal privy purse,—as the spirit of the constitution required the Sovereign to have no private means, but to be dependent wholly on the nation. His movement excited a good deal of feeling, and was very warmly censured by all the Lords who spoke upon it, as betraying an eagerness [pg 707] to pry into the petty details of private expenditures unworthy of the House, and indelicate toward the Sovereign. Lord Brougham resented these censures with bitterness, and reproached the Whigs with having changed their sentiments and their conduct since they had tasted the sweets of office. This course, he said, showed most painfully that absolute prostration of the understanding which takes place, even in the minds of the bravest, when the word “prince” is mentioned in England.—We mentioned in our last number the presentation of a petition concerning the Liverpool waterworks, many of the signatures to which were found to be forgeries. The case was investigated by the Lords, and the presenters of the petition, Mr. C. Cream and Mr. M.A. Gage, were declared to have been guilty of a breach of privilege, and sent to Newgate for a fort-night.—Lord Campbell, on the 14th, expressed the opinion, “as one of the judges of the land,” that the new regulations forbidding the delivery or transit of letters on Sunday, had a tendency, so far as the administration of justice was concerned, to obstruct works of necessity and mercy. The regulations have been essentially modified.—The bill concerning parliamentary voters in Ireland, after passing the House of Lords with the rate requisite for franchise at £15, was amended in the Commons by substituting £12;—the amendment was concurred in by the Lords, and in that form the bill became a law. The effect of it will be to add some two hundred thousand to the number of voters in the kingdom.—Lord John Russell, in reply to a question from Mr. Hume, explained the nature of the British claims on Tuscany for injuries sustained by British subjects after the revolt of Leghorn, and the occupation of that city by an Austrian corps acting as auxiliaries to the Grand Duke. After all resistance was over, it seems, that corps plundered a number of houses, and among them houses belonging to British residents, and conspicuously marked as such by the British consul. The amount claimed was £1530.—Complaint was made in the Commons by Mr. Bernal, of the defective state of the regulations for the immigration of Africans into the West Indies. He said that contracts were now limited to one year, which often caused serious loss to the employer. He thought the evil might be remedied by making the contract for three years. He was told in reply that Lord Grey had already sanctioned contracts for three years in British Guiana and Trinidad, and would, of course, be quite prepared to do so in Jamaica. The immigration of free labor from Africa had proved a failure; but this was not the case with the immigration of Coolies. Many requests had been made to renew it, and arrangements had been made to comply with those requests. Arrangements had also been made, in consequence of communications with Dr. Gutzlaff, for introducing free Chinese immigrants into Trinidad. The Tenant-right conference of Ireland held its session on the 6th in Dublin. The attendance of delegates was large. Resolutions were adopted declaring that a fair valuation of rent between landlord and tenant was indispensable, that the tenant should not be disturbed so long as he pays the rent fixed; that no further rent shall be recoverable by process of law; and that an equitable valuation for rent should divide between landlord and tenant the net profits of cultivation. A tenant league is to be formed.—A dinner was given by the Fishmongers' Company of London to the Ministers on the 1st. Lord Brougham was present, and excited attention and mirth by his way of testing the sentiments of the Company on matters of public reform. If they applauded what he was about to say, they were reformers, as of old: if not, it would show that they had been corrupted. He was made a Fishmonger in 1820, and he hoped the Company were not ashamed of what they did in favor of an oppressed queen against an aggressive king and his minions of ministers. The remark was not applauded, whereupon Lord B. drew his fore gone conclusion:—“Ah, I see;—you are far from having the same feeling you had in 1820. Honors corrupt manners—being in power is a dangerous thing to public virtue.”—The report of the Railway Commissioners for 1849 states that in course of the year the Board had sanctioned the opening of 869 miles of new railway—630 in England, 108 in Scotland, and 131 in Ireland—making the total extent of railway communication at the end of the year, 5996 miles, of which 4656 are in England, 846 in Scotland, and 494 in Ireland.—The Queen left on the 22d for a short visit to the King of the Belgians at Ostend. She was received with great enthusiasm, and returned the next day—Prince Albert completed his thirty-first year on the 26th of August. The Queen left town on the 27th for Scotland.—Sir George Anderson has been appointed Governor of Ceylon, in place of Lord Torrington, who has been recalled.—The American steamer Pacific arrived at New York at half-past six P.M., on Saturday, the 21st ult., having left Liverpool at two P.M. on the 11th. She thus made the passage in ten days, four and a half hours: this is by several hours the quickest voyage ever made between the two ports.
From France the only news of general interest relates to the tour of the President through the provinces. The Assembly had previously broken up, there not being a quorum present on the 9th. It was to re-assemble on the 11th of November. A Committee of Surveillance was to sit during the recess. On the 12th, the President started on his tour. He had given several military banquets, which, from their imperial aspect, and the political spirit manifested by the guests, created a great sensation. On one of these occasions, a dinner was given to the officers of a portion of the garrison of Paris; it is told, that after the company [pg 708] left the table, they adjourned into the garden to smoke their cigars; and there Louis Napoleon seeing a musket, took it up, and went through the manual exercise with great dexterity, to the great delight of the sergeants and corporals, who shouted “Vive le petit Corporal!” (the Emperor's pet-name among the soldiers) with great enthusiasm. During his tour, which was unattended by any very noticeable incident, he made very liberal distribution of crosses of honor, sometimes accompanied by gratuities to old officers and soldiers of the imperial army. He had a most brilliant reception at Lyons, where he spent a day, and was entertained at a grand dinner by the Chamber of Commerce. At BesanÇon he had a less gracious reception: at a ball given to him in the evening a mob broke into the room, shouting “Vive la Republique,” and creating great confusion. The President left the room, which was cleared by General Castellane at the point of the bayonet. At several other places demonstrations were made of a similar character, but much less violent.
Louis Phillipe, late King of France, died on the 26th of August, at Claremont, England, where he has resided since he became an exile. His health had gradually failed since he first left France, but it was not until the 24th, that he became fully sensible of the gravity of his disease. On that day he was carried out into the open air, and was present at dinner with his family, although he ate nothing. During the night he was restless, and was informed by the queen that his medical attendants despaired of his recovery. The next morning, the doctor, on being asked his opinion, hesitated. “I understand,” says the king, “you bring me notice to quit.” To Col. Dumas he dictated a last page of his memoirs, which terminated a recital in which he had been engaged for the last four months. The king then sent for his chaplain, with whom he had a long interview. He repeatedly expressed his readiness for death, which came upon him at eight o'clock on the morning of Monday, the 26th. Louis Phillipe was born in Paris, Oct. 6, 1773, and was the eldest son of Phillipe Joseph, Duke of Orleans, known to the world by the sobriquet of Phillipe EgalitÉ. His education was intrusted to Madame de Genlis, under whose direction he made himself familiar with the English, German, and Italian languages, and with the ordinary branches of scientific knowledge. In 1792, being then Duke de Chartres, he made his first campaign against the Austrians, fighting at Valmy and Jemappes. His father was executed January 21, 1793, and he was summoned with Gen. Dumouriez, before the Committee of Public Safety, seven months after. Both, however, fled, and escaped to Austria. Retiring to private life, and refusing the offer of Austria, he was joined by his sister Adelaide and their former preceptress, and repaired to Zurich, whence, however, he was soon compelled to make his escape. He became greatly straitened for means, and, finally, found protection in the house of M. de Montesquion, at Baumgarten, where he remained until the end of 1794, when he quitted the place, and resolved to go to the United States. He was compelled to abandon this project from lack of funds, and traveled on foot through Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Negotiations were now opened on the part of the Directory, who had in vain attempted to discover the place of his exile, to induce him to go to the United States, promising, in the event of his compliance, that the condition of the Duchess D'Orleans should be ameliorated, and that his younger brothers should be permitted to join him. Through the agency of M. Westford, of Hamburg, this letter was conveyed to the duke, who at once accepted the terms offered, and sailed from the mouth of the Elbe in the American, taking with him his servant Baudoin. He departed on the 24th of September, 1796, and arrived in Philadelphia after a passage of twenty-seven days. In the November following, the young prince was joined by his two brothers, after a stormy passage from Marseilles; and the three brothers remained at Philadelphia during the winter. They afterward visited Mount Vernon, where they became intimate with General Washington; and they soon afterward traveled through the western country, and after a long and fatiguing journey they returned to Philadelphia; proceeding afterward to New Orleans, and, subsequently, by an English ship, to Havanna. The disrespect of the Spanish authorities at the Havanna, soon compelled them to depart, and they proceeded to the Bahama Islands, where they were treated with much kindness by the Duke of Kent, who, however, did not feel authorized to give them a passage to England in a British frigate. They, accordingly, embarked for New York, and thence sailed to England in a private vessel, arriving at Falmouth in February, 1800. After proceeding to London they took up their residence at Twickenham, where for some time they enjoyed comparative quiet, being treated with distinction by all classes of society. Their time was now principally spent in study, and no event of any importance disturbed their retreat, until the death of the Duke de Montpensier, on the 18th of May, 1807. The Count Beaujolais soon afterward proceeded to Malta, where he died in 1808. The Duke of Orleans now quitted Malta, and went to Messina, in Sicily, accepting an invitation from King Ferdinand. During his residence at Palermo he gained the affections of the Princess Amelia, and was married to her in 1809. No event of any material importance marked the life of the young couple until the year 1814, when it was announced in Palermo that Napoleon had abdicated the throne, and that the restoration of the Bourbon family was about to take place. The duke sailed immediately, and arrived in Paris on the 18th of May, where, in a short time, he was in the enjoyment of the honors to which he was so well entitled. The return of Napoleon in 1815, soon disturbed his tranquillity; and, having sent his [pg 709] family to England, he proceeded, in obedience to the command of Louis XVIII., to take the command of the army of the north. He remained in this situation until the 24th of March, 1815, when he resigned his command to the Duke de Treviso and retired to Twickenham. On the return of Louis, after the hundred days—in obedience to the ordinance issued, requiring all the princes of the blood to take their seats in the Chamber of Peers—the duke returned to France in 1815; and, by his liberal sentiments, rendered himself so little agreeable to the administration, that he returned to England, where he remained until 1817. In that year he returned to France, continuing now in a private capacity, as he was not a second time summoned to sit in the Chamber of Peers. For some years after this period the education of his family deeply engaged his attention; and while the Duke of Orleans was thus pursuing a career apart from the court, a new and unexpected scene was opened in the drama of his singularly eventful and changeful life. In 1830 that revolution occurred in France which eventuated in the elevation of the Duke of Orleans to the throne. The cause of the elder branch of the Bourbons having been pronounced hopeless, the king in effect being discrowned, and the throne rendered vacant, the Provisional Government which had risen out of the struggle, and in which Laffitte, Lafayette, Thiers, and other politicians, had taken the lead, turned toward the Duke of Orleans, whom it was proposed, in the first instance, to invite to Paris, to become Lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and afterward, in a more regular manner, to become King. The Duke of Orleans, during the insurrection, had been residing in seclusion at his country seat, and, if watching the course of events, apparently taking no active part in dethroning his kinsman. M. Thiers and M. Scheffer were appointed to conduct the negotiation with the duke, and visited Neuilly for the purpose. The duke, however, was absent, and the interview took place with the duchess and Princess Adelaide, to whom they represented the danger with which the nation was menaced, and that anarchy could only be averted by the prompt decision of the duke to place himself at the head of the new constitutional monarchy. M. Thiers expressed his conviction “that nothing was left the Duke of Orleans but a choice of dangers; and that, in the existing state of things, to recoil from the possible perils of royalty was to run full upon the republic and its inevitable violences.” The substance of the communication having been made known to the duke, on a day's consideration he acceded to the request, and at noon on the 31st came to Paris to accept the office which had been assigned to him. On the 2d of August the abdication of Charles X. and his son was placed in the hands of the Lieutenant-general, the abdication, however, being in favor of the Duke of Bordeaux. On the 7th the Chamber of Deputies declared the throne vacant; and on the 8th the Chamber went in a body to the Duke of Orleans, and offered him the Crown on the terms of a revised charter. His formal acceptance of the offer took place on the 9th. From the accession of Louis Philippe as King of the French, in 1830, his life is universally known. His reign was marked by sagacity and upright intentions. He committed the unpardonable error, however, of leaving the people entirely out of his account, and endeavored to fortify himself by allying his children to the reigning families of Europe. He married his eldest son Ferdinand, Duke of Orleans (born 1810) to the Princess Helen of Mecklenburg-Schwerin; his daughter Louisa (born 1812) to Leopold, King of the Belgians; his son Louis, Duke of Nemours (born 1814) to the Princess Victoria of Saxe Coburg Gotha; his daughter Clementina (born 1817) to Prince Augustus of Saxe Coburg Gotha; his son Francis, Prince of Joinville (born 1818) to the Princess Frances Caroline, of Brazil; his son the Duke of Aumale (born 1822) to the Princess Caroline, of Salerno, and his son Antony, Duke of Montpensier (born 1824) to Louisa, sister and heir presumptive of the reigning Queen of Spain. But these royal alliances served him not in the day of his distress. The fatal 24th of February came, and swept away the throne he had taken so much pains to consolidate, and he signed his act of abdication, accepting the regency of the Duchess of Orleans. His subsequent fate is familiar to all. His flight from Paris to the sea-shore; his escape in disguise to England; his kind reception in that country, are well known. Claremont was given him as an abode, and there, with the exception of occasional visits to Richmond and St. Leonard's, Louis Philippe continued to reside. There, too, he breathed his last on Monday morning, the 26th of August, in the 77th year of his age. His death excited general comment, but was universally regarded as an event of no political importance.—A very imposing review of the French fleet at the harbor of Cherbourg, took place on the 7th inst. A great number of the English nobility and gentlemen were present by special invitation, and a magnificent display was made of British yachts. An immense concourse of people was in attendance, and the President, Prince Louis Napoleon, was received with distinguished honors. The parting salute at sunset, when over two thousand pieces of ordnance crashed forth with a simultaneous roar, was highly effective.—The trade of Paris is said to be unusually brisk this season. Wheat is abundant and all the harvests yield good returns, though fears are entertained that the quality of the vintage may be inferior.—The proceedings of the General Councils of sixty-four of the eighty-five departments of France are now known.—Forty-seven have pronounced in favor of the revision of the actual constitution. Seven have rejected resolutions recommending the revision, and ten have declined the expression of an opinion upon the subject. Only three have declared themselves in favor of an extension and continuance of the power now confided to Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. [pg 710] Nearly all have expressly desired that the revision should be effected in the mode and time prescribed by the constitution itself.
The Literary Intelligence from abroad lacks special interest. The Magazines for September contain nothing worthy of mention, which will not be found in the foregoing pages of this number. Bulwer commences a new novel in Blackwood, the opening chapters of which are here reprinted. It is in continuation of “The Caxtons,” and promises to be exceedingly interesting. It will, of course, be given to our readers as rapidly as it appears. Our opening paper this month is a spirited and eloquent notice of Wordsworth, evidently from the popular and effective pen of Gilfillan, who is a constant contributor to the London Eclectic Review from which it is taken. “David Copperfield” by Dickens, and “Pendennis” by Thackeray, draw toward their end, and our readers may therefore anticipate new productions from their pens ere long.—The question whether an American can hold a copyright in England comes up before the English Courts in a suit brought by Murray for interference with his rights by a publisher who has issued an edition of Washington Irving. It is stated that Irving has received from the Murrays the sum of £9767 for the English copyrights of his various works.—The Gallery of Paintings of the King of Holland has been sold at auction and the returns are stated at $450,000. The Emperor of Russia, and the Marquis of Hertford in England, were extensive purchasers. Two portraits of Vandyke were bought by the latter at 63,000 florins.—Lamartine writes to the Debats from Marseilles, denying, so far as he is concerned, the truth of statements contained in Mr. Croker's article in the London Quarterly upon the flight of Louis Phillipe. He has commenced the publication of a new volume of “Confidences” in the feuilleton of the Presse.—The Household Narrative in its summary of English Literary Intelligence, notices the appearance of an elaborate work on Tubular Bridges by Mr. Edwin Clark, with a striking folio of illustrative drawings and lithographs. Also of an Essay in two goodly octavos on Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs, by Mr. Kenrick, full of learning, yet full of interest, because grafting on the ascertained old history all the modern elucidations of travelers and artists, critics and interpreters. It appears to be but a portion of a contemplated work comprehending a complete history of those countries of the East whose civilization preceded and influenced that of Greece; and to our proper understanding of which, the discovery of the hieroglyphic character, and such researches as those of Mr. Layard, have lately contributed an entire new world of information. Another book remarkable for the precision and completeness of its knowledge, is Doctor Latham's Natural History of the Varieties of Man, a very important contribution to the literature of ethnology; and with this is connected in subject, though not in any other kind of merit, an eccentric fragment on the Races of Man, by Dr. Robert Knox.—Mrs. Jameson has published a second series of her Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art, in a volume of Legends of the Monastic Orders, similarly illustrated; and nothing can be more graceful than this lady's treatment of a subject which has not much that is graceful in itself.—To biography, a new volume of the Life of Chalmers has been the most interesting addition. A Life of Ebenezer Elliott, by his son-in-law, possesses also some interest; and, with a little less of the biographer and more of the biography, would have been yet more successful. In English fiction, a semi-chartist novel called Alton Locke, full of error and earnestness, and evidently by a University man of the so-called Christian Socialist school, is the most noticeable work of the kind that has lately appeared. The other romances of the month have been translations from the German and French. The Two Brothers is somewhat in the school of Miss Bremer; and Stella and Vanessa is a novel by a graceful French writer, very agreeably translated by Lady Duff Gordon, of which the drift is to excuse Swift for his conduct to Mrs. Johnson and Miss Vanhomrigh. The subject is curious, and the treatment (for a Frenchman) not less so. Nothing painful or revolting is dwelt upon, and if it does not satisfy it fails to offend.—The London Morning Chronicle has an extended and elaborate review of Mr. Ticknor's great “History of Spanish Literature,” in which it pays the highest possible compliments to the accomplished author. “The masterly sweep of his general grasp,” it says, “and the elaborated finish of his constituent sketches, silence the caviller at the very outset, and enforce him to respectful study, while the unaffected ease of the style, lively but not flippant, charms the attention, and not seldom disguises the amount of research and indigation which has been bestowed upon each stage of the history.” It closes its review with this emphatic praise: “this History will at once take its position as the standard book of reference upon Spanish literature, but it will not take the cold honors of the shelf usually accorded to such volumes, for it will not only be consulted but read. We cordially congratulate our American friends upon possessing a compatriot who is able to make such a contribution to English literature—we are not aware that we are equally fortunate.”—The third series of Southey's Common-Place Book has just appeared. Unlike the former series, which consisted of selections of rare and striking passages, and so possessed a general and independent value, the present volume consists mainly of brief notes or references to important passages in a great variety of works, bearing upon the subjects of Civil and Ecclesiastical History, Biography, and Literature in general. The references are so brief, and the works referred to so rare, that the book will prove of little service except to [pg 711] those who have access to large public libraries. Probably not one book in ten of those referred to is to be found in any library in this country. The volume, however, furnishes evidence still stronger than the others, of the wonderful extent, variety, and accuracy of Southey's reading; it shows that he was a sort of living library, a walking study; he read almost every thing that appeared, and methodized, and laid up in his mind all that was worth preserving, of what he read, and thus gained a super-eminence of information which has rarely been surpassed. The third volume of his Common-Place Book is not altogether destitute of those quaint and singular selections which gave so rare a charm to those that preceded.—The North British Review for the current quarter, from which we gave some extracts in our September number, has an article upon the disputed claims of Messrs. Stephenson & Fairbairn to the credit of having invented the Tubular bridge. If the facts upon which the reasonings of the reviewer are based, are correctly stated, there can be no doubt that a large, perhaps the larger share of the credit due to this greatest triumph of modern engineering, belongs to William Fairbairn, of Manchester, by whom all the experiments were undertaken that demonstrated the practicability of the undertaking, and proved that a square form was much stronger than the elliptical one, which was originally proposed. Mr. Fairbairn, it is stated, showed conclusively by actual experiment, in opposition to the opinion of Mr. Stephenson, that suspension chains, as an additional means of support, were not needed, thus avoiding an outlay of some £200,000. Successful as the experiment has been in a scientific point of view, the railroad of which this bridge forms a link, has been most unfortunate in a pecuniary aspect. The stock consists of two kinds, the original, and preferential. In July, 1850, the former was selling at a loss of £72 10s., and the latter at a loss of £33 6s. 8d. on every £100, involving a total loss to the stockholders of £1,764,000.—The Barbarigo Gallery at Venice, celebrated for ages for its rich collection, especially of the works of Titian, has been purchased by the court of Russia for 560,000 francs, or £22,400 sterling. A new singer, Madame Fiorentini, has appeared at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, who attracts considerable attention. She is a native of Seville, and married to Mr. Jennings, an English officer. She received her musical education in London, and made her first public appearance at Berlin only twelve months since.—The telegraphic wires between Dover and Calais, or rather Cape Grinez, have been laid and got into operation. Dispatches have been received in this country which were sent from Paris to London by this means. Thirty miles of wire, incased in a strong coating of gutta percha, have been imbedded, as far as this could possibly be done, in the bottom of the channel, by means of leaden weights. It remains now to be seen whether the precautions taken are sufficient to protect the wire from the ravages of the ocean's denizens, the assaults of ships' anchors, and the shifting sands which are known to underlie the Straits of Dover.—A duel took place at Perigueux between MM. Chavoix and Dupont, in which the latter was killed. The latter was editor of a paper called Echo de Vesone, and had offended M. Chavoix, a wealthy proprietor, by severe strictures on his conduct. Both were members of the Assembly. They fought with pistols at twenty-five paces. M. Chavoix won the throw for the choice of position, and M. Dupont for first fire. Dupont fired and missed. Chavoix, declaring that he could not see clearly, waited till the smoke of his adversary's discharge passed, and fired at an interval of some seconds. His ball struck the forehead of Dupont, who fell stark dead upon the plain without uttering a cry or a groan.—The distinguished French Novelist M. Balzac died at Paris on the 18th of August, aged 51. He was in many important respects, the foremost of French writers. He was originally a journeyman printer at Tours, his native place. His earlier works obtained a fair measure of success, but it was not until after many years' apprenticeship, either anonymously or under assumed cognomens, that he ventured to communicate his name to the public. And no sooner was the name given than it became popular—and in a little while famous—famous not in France alone, but all over Europe. His success was almost as brilliant as that of Walter Scott himself. In addition to his romances, Balzac wrote some theatrical pieces, and for a while edited and contributed a good deal to the Revue Parisienne. Since the revolution Balzac published nothing, but was engaged in visiting the battle-fields of Germany and Russia, and in piling up materials for a series of volumes, to be entitled Scenes de la Vie Militaire. He leaves behind several MS. works, partially or wholly completed. His design was to make all his romances form one great work, under the title of the ComedÍe Humaine,—the whole being a minute dissection of the different classes of French society. Only a little while before his death, he stated that, in what he had done, he had but half accomplished his task. Next to his great celebrity, the most remarkable feature in his career is a strong passion which he formed for a Russian countess, and which, after years of patient suffering, he had the satisfaction of having rewarded by the gift of the lady's hand. Shortly after his marriage—which took place some two years ago—he was attacked with a disease of the heart, and that carried him off. He and his wife had only been a few months in Paris when this sad event took place. His funeral was celebrated with a good deal of ceremony, and an eloquent funeral oration was pronounced by M. Victor Hugo.—Sir Martin Archer Shee, President of the Royal Academy, died at Brighton on the 19th, in his 80th year. He was elected to the above office in 1830, on the death of Sir Thomas Lawrence, when he received the honor of knighthood. He [pg 712] retired in 1845 from the active duties of the office, which have been since performed by Mr. Turner.—The late Sir Robert Peel has left directions in his will for the early publication of his political memoirs, and has ordered that the profits arising from the publication shall be given to some public institution for the education of the working classes. He has confided the task of preparing these memoirs to Lord Mahon and Mr. Cardwell.
In the settlement of German affairs little progress has yet been made by the Congress at Frankfort. At a meeting on the 8th of August, at which Count Thun, the Austrian plenipotentiary, presided, it was decided that Austria should formally invite all the members of the Bund to assemble at Frankfort on the 1st of September next. A circular note of the 18th of August, in which the Minister-President reiterates the assurances so solemnly given in the circular of the 19th July, that it is the earnest wish of Austria to make such reforms in the Act of Confederation as may be required by the recent change of circumstances in Germany, and may conduce to the unity of the common fatherland, was accordingly dispatched with the Frankfort summons to the different courts on the 15th. It remains to be seen whether Prussia and the League will accept this proposal.—The third meeting of the General Peace Congress commenced at Frankfort on the 22d of August. There were some two thousand delegates in attendance, mostly from England, France, the United States, and Germany. Gen. Haynau was present for a time. Resolutions were submitted, discussed, and adopted, deprecating a resort to arms, and urging the propriety and expediency of settling all international differences by arbitration. Dr. Jaup presided, and speeches were made by delegates from every nation. Among the most prominent representatives from the United States were Elihu Burritt, Professor Cleaveland, Dr. Hitchcock, and George Copway, an Indian chief; Mr. Cobden, of England, and Cormenin and Girardin, of France were also in attendance. The session lasted three days.
In Piedmont a great sensation has been produced by a collision with the papal power. The Sardinian Minister of Finance, the CavaliÈre Santa Rosa, who had supported the ministry in passing the law which rendered the clergy amenable to the civil courts, being on his death-bed, was refused the sacrament by the monks, under the direction of Franzoni the Archbishop of Turin. At his funeral such excitement was manifested by the people, that to avoid an actual outbreak, the monks were ordered to leave the city, and the possessions of their order were sequestered. In the search through their house, documents were found which inculpated the Archbishop Franzoni himself, and he was consequently arrested and imprisoned in the fortress of Fenestrelles. Both Austria and France, however, have interfered; and, in consequence, the editor of L'Opinione, a liberal journal, has been banished from the Sardinian States. It is stated that Lord Palmerston has addressed to the Court of the Vatican a most energetic note, in which he cautions it against adopting violent measures toward Sardinia, and persevering in the system hitherto pursued by the Pope with regard to that Government.
A letter from Rome, of the 20th, in the Constitutionnel, states that several persons have been arrested there for a supposed conspiracy to assassinate the Pope, on Assumption day, by throwing crystal balls filled with explosive substances into his carriage when on his way to church to pronounce the benediction. The discovery of the plot prevented all danger. There was some agitation on the following Sunday, as it was supposed that there had been a plot against the Austrian Ambassador, on the anniversary of the birth of the Emperor. A strong armed force was placed near his palace to protect it, and in the evening some arrests were made.
A continuance of heavy rain in Belgium on the 15th, 16th, and 17th has produced disastrous inundations in various parts of that country. At Antwerp there was a tremendous storm of rain, wind, and thunder. The lightning struck several buildings; many of the streets were under water, and large trees were uprooted in the neighboring country. At Ghent a large sugar manufactory was destroyed by lightning, and people were killed by it in different places. A great part of the city of Brussels and the neighboring villages were under water for nearly two days; and many houses were so much damaged that they fell, and a number of persons perished. Near Charleroi all the fields were submerged, and the injury done to the crops was immense. At Valenciennes the Scheldt overflowed, inundating the neighboring country, and causing vast devastation. The damage done to the crops has produced a rise in the price of flour. Many bridges have been swept away, and the injury done to the railways has been immense.
From Schleswig Holstein, we learn that the continued rains have prevented all renewal of operations in the field. The Danes have established a permanent camp near Ramstedt, and the marshes in that vicinity have been completely flooded. The Emperor of Russia has created General Krogh, the Danish Commander-in-Chief, Knight of the Order of St. Anne of the first class, for the distinguished bravery and prudence which he displayed in the engagements of the 24th and 25th of July, at Idstedt.
Rural Hours, by A Lady, published by G.P. Putnam, is an admirable volume, the effect of which is like a personal visit to the charming scenes which the writer portrays with such a genuine passion for nature, and so much vivacity and truthfulness of description. Without the faintest trace of affectation, or even the desire to present the favorite surroundings of her daily life in overdone pictures, she quietly jots down the sights and sounds, and odorous blossomings of the seasons as they pass, and by this intellectual honesty and simplicity, has given a peculiar charm to her work, which a more ambitious style of composition would never have been able to command. Her eye for nature is as accurate as her enthusiasm is sincere. She dwells on the minute phenomena of daily occurrence in their season with a just discrimination, content with clothing them in their own beauty, and never seeking to increase their brilliancy by any artificial gloss. Whoever has a love for communing with nature in the “sweet hour of prime,” or in the “still twilight,” for watching the varied glories of the revolving year, will be grateful to the writer of this picturesque volume for such a fragrant record of rural experience. The author is stated to be a daughter of Cooper, the distinguished American novelist, and she certainly exhibits an acuteness of observation, and a vigor of description, not unworthy of her eminent parentage.
A new edition of the Greek and English Lexicon, by Professor Edward Robinson (Harper and Brothers) will be received with lively satisfaction by the large number of Biblical students in this country and in England who are under such deep obligations to the previous labors of Dr. Robinson in this department of philology. The work exhibits abundant evidence of the profound and discriminating research, the even more than German patience of labor, the rigid impartiality, and the rare critical acumen for which the name of the author is proverbial wherever the New-Testament Lexicography is made the object of earnest study. Since the publication of the first edition, fourteen years since, which was speedily followed by three rival editions in Great Britain, and two abridgments, the science of Biblical philology has made great progress; new views have been developed by the learned labors of Wahl, Bretschneider, Winer, and others; the experience of the author in his official duties for the space of ten years, had corrected and enlarged his own knowledge; he had made a personal exploration of many portions of the Holy Land; and under these circumstances, when he came to the revision of the work, he found that a large part of it must be re-written, and the remainder submitted to such alterations, corrections, and improvements, as were almost as laborious as the composition of a new Lexicon. The plan of the work in its present enlarged form, embraces the etymology of each word given—the logical deduction of all its significations, which occur in the New Testament—the various combinations of verbs and adjectives—the different forms and inflections of words—the interpretation of difficult passages—and a reference to every passage of the New Testament in which the word is found. No scholar can examine the volume, without a full conviction of the eminent success with which this comprehensive plan has been executed, and of the value of the memorial here presented to the accuracy and thoroughness of American scholarship. The practical use of the work will be greatly facilitated by the clearness and beauty of the Greek type on which it is printed, being an admirable specimen of the Porson style.
The Berber, or Mountaineer of the Atlas, by William S. Mayo, M.D., published by G.P. Putnam, is toned down to a very considerable degree from the high-colored pictures which produced such a dazzling effect in Kaloolah, the work by which the author first became known to the public. The scene is laid in Morocco, affording the writer an occasion for the use of a great deal of geographical and historical lore, which is introduced to decided advantage as a substantial back-ground to the story, which, in itself, possesses a sustained and powerful interest. Dr. Mayo displays a rare talent in individualizing character: his groups consist of distinct persons, without any confused blundering or repetition; he is not only a painter of manners, but an amateur of passion; and hence his admirable descriptions are combined with rapid and effective touches, which betray no ordinary insight into the subtle philosophy of the heart. The illusion of the story is sometimes impaired by the introduction of the novelist in the first person, a blemish which we should hardly have looked for in a writer who is so obviously well acquainted with the resources of artistic composition as the author of this volume.
Harper and Brothers have issued the Fifth Part of The Life and Correspondence ofRobert Southey, which brings the biography down to the fifty-fifth year of his age, and to the close of the year 1828. The next number will complete the work, which has sustained a uniform interest from the commencement, presenting a charming picture of the domestic habits, literary enterprises, and characteristic moral features of its eminent subject. Mr. Southey's connection with the progress of English literature during the early part of the present century, his strong political predilections, the extent and variety of his productions, and his singular devotion to a purely intellectual life, make his biography one of the most entertaining and instructive records that have recently been published in this department of letters. His son, Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, by whom the work is edited, has acquitted himself of his task [pg 714] with admirable judgment and modesty, never obtruding himself on the notice of the reader, and leaving the correspondence, which, in fact, forms a continuous narrative, to make its natural impression, without weakening its force by superfluous comment. The present number contains several letters to our distinguished countryman, George Ticknor, Esq., of Boston, which will be read with peculiar interest on account of their free remarks on certain American celebrities, and their criticisms on some of the popular productions of American literature.
Among the late valuable theological publications, is The Works of Joseph Bellamy, D.D., with a Memoir of his Life and Character, by Tryon Edwards, issued by the Doctrinal Tract and Book Society, Boston, in two volumes. As models of forcible reasoning, and of ingenious and subtle analysis, the theological disquisitions of Dr. Bellamy have seldom been surpassed, and their reproduction in the present form will be grateful to many readers who have not been seduced by the excitements of the age from their love of profound and acute speculation. The memoir prefixed to these volumes gives an interesting view of the life of a New England clergyman of the olden time.
Adelaide Lindsay, from the prolific and vigorous pen of Mrs. Marsh, the author of “Two Old Men's Tales,”“The Wilmingtons,” &c, forms the one hundred and forty—seventh number of Harper and Brothers' “Library of Select Novels.”
Popular Education; for the Use of Parents and Teachers (Harper and Brothers), is the title of a volume by Ira Mayhew, prepared in accordance with a resolution of the Legislature of Michigan, and discussing the subject, in its multifarious aspects and relations, with a thoroughness, discrimination, and ability, which can not fail to make it a work of standard authority in the department to which it is devoted. The author has been Superintendent of Public Instruction in the State of Michigan; his official position has put him in possession of a great amount of facts and statistics in relation to the subject; he is inspired with a noble zeal in the cause of education; and in the production of this volume, has given a commendable proof of his industry, good sense, and thorough acquaintance with an interest on which he rightly judges that the future prosperity of the American Republic essentially depends.
C.S. Francis and Co. have published The Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in a beautiful edition of two volumes, including “The Seraphim, with other Poems,” as first published in England in 1838, and the contents of the previous American edition. This edition is introduced with a Critical Essay, by H.T. Tuckerman, taken from his “Thoughts on the Poets,” presenting in refined and tasteful language, a discriminating view of Mrs. Browning's position among the living poets of England. Mr. Tuckerman makes use of no extravagant encomium in his estimate of her powers; his remarks are less enthusiastic than critical; and, indeed, the more ardent admirers of Mrs. Browning would deem them of too subdued a tone, and deficient in an adequate appreciation of her peculiar boldness, originality, and beauty. The edition now presented to the public will be thankfully accepted by the wide circle which has learned to venerate Mrs. Browning's genius, and will serve to extend the healthful interest cherished by American readers in the most remarkable poetess of modern times.
The Companion; After Dinner Table Talk, by Chetwood Evelyn, Esq. (New York: G.P. Putnam), is the title of a popular compilation from favorite English authors, prepared with a good deal of tact and discrimination, and forming an appropriate counterpart to The Lift for the Lazy, published some time since by the same house.
George P. Putnam has just issued The Deer Slayer, by J. Fenimore Cooper, being the first volume of the author's revised edition of The Leather Stocking Tales.
Among the swarm of Discourses and Funeral Orations, occasioned by the death of the late President Taylor, we have seen none of a more striking character than The Sermon delivered at the Masonic Hall, Cincinnati, by T.H. Stockton. It presents a series of glowing and impressive pictures of public life in Washington, of the tombs of the departed Presidents, of eminent American statesmen now no more, of the progress of discovery in this country, and of the march of improvement in modern times. The too florid character of some portions of the Discourse is amply redeemed by the spirit of wise patriotism and elevated religion with which it is imbued, while it has the rare merit of being entirely free from the commonplaces of the pulpit. In a note to this discourse, it is stated that the author is desirous of forming a collection of Sermons, Orations, Addresses, &c., on the death of General Taylor, and that editors and speakers will confer a favor on him by forwarding him a copy of their several publications.
The Relations of the American Scholar to his Country and his Times (Baker and Scribner), is the title of an Address delivered by Henry J. Raymond, before the Associate Alumni of the University of Vermont, maintaining the doctrine that educated men, instead of retiring from the active interests and contending passions of the world, to some fancied region of serene contemplation, are bound to share in the struggle, the competition, the warfare of society. This is argued, with a variety of illustrations, from the character of the education of the scholar, as combining theory and practice, and from the peculiar tendencies of American society, now in a state of rapid fermentation and development. Mr. Raymond endeavors to do justice both to the Conservative and Radical elements, which are found in our institutions and national character, and to discuss those difficult problems in a spirit of moderation, and without passion. Of the literary character of this production, the [pg 715] writer of the present notice can speak with more propriety in another place.
The Recent Progress of Astronomy, by Elias Loomis (Harper and Brothers), exhibits the most important astronomical discoveries made within the last ten years, with special reference to the condition of the science in the United States. Among the topics treated in detail, are the discovery of the planet Neptune, the addition to our knowledge of comets, with a full account of Miss Mitchell's comet, the new stars and nebulae, the determination of longitude by the electric telegraph, the manufacture of telescopes in the United States, and others of equal interest both to men of science and the intelligent reader in general. Professor Loomis displays a singularly happy talent in bringing the results of scientific investigation to the level of the common mind, and we predict a hearty welcome to his little volume, as a lucid and delightful compendium of valuable knowledge. The author states in the Preface, that “he has endeavored to award equal and exact justice to all American astronomers; and if any individual should feel that his labors in this department have not been fairly represented, he is requested to furnish in writing a minute account of the same,” and he shall receive amends in a second edition of the work.
Professor Loomis'sMathematical Course has met with signal favor at the hands of the best instructors in our higher institutions of learning. New editions of his Algebra and the Geometry have recently been issued; and a new volume on Analytical Geometry, and the Calculus, completing the course, will soon appear.
Truth and Poetry, from my own Life, or the Autobiography of Goethe, edited by Parke Godwin, is issued in a second edition by George P. Putnam, with a preface, showing the plagiarisms which have been committed on it in a pretended English translation from the original, by one John Oxenford. This enterprising person has made a bold appropriation of the American version, with only such changes as might serve the purpose of concealing the fraud. In addition to this felonious proceeding, he charges the translation to which he has helped himself so freely, with various inaccuracies, not only stealing the property, but giving it a bad name. The work of the American editor has thus found a singular, but effectual guarantee for its value, and is virtually pronounced to be a translation incapable of essential improvement. With the resources possessed by Mr. Godwin, in his own admirable command both of the German and of the English language, and the aid of the rare scholarship in this department of letters of Mr. Charles A. Dana and Mr. John S. Dwight, to whom a portion of the work was intrusted, he could not fail to produce a version which would leave little to be desired by the most fastidious critic. It is unnecessary to speak of the merits of the original, which is familiar to all who have the slightest tincture of German literature. As a history of the progress of literary culture in Germany, as well as of the rich development of Goethe's own mind, it is one of the most instructive, and at the same time, the most entertaining biographies in any language.
Daniel Adee has republished, in a cheap form, the twenty-first part of Braithwaite's Retrospect of Practical Medicine and Surgery, a work richly entitled to a place in every physician's library.
Domestic History of the Revolution, by Mrs. Ellet (Baker and Scribner), follows the thread of the Revolutionary drama, unfolding many agreeable and often touching incidents, which have not been brought to light before, and illustrating the manners and society of that day, in connection with the great struggle for national life. The researches of the author in collecting materials for “The Women of the Revolution,” have put her in possession of a variety of domestic details and anecdotes, illustrative of the state of the country at different intervals, which she has used with excellent effect in the composition of this volume. Without indulging in fanciful embellishment, she has confined herself to the simple facts of history, rejecting all traditional matter, which is not sustained by undoubted authority. The events of the war in the upper districts of South Carolina, are described at length, as, in the opinion of Mrs. Ellet, no history has ever yet done justice to that portion of the country, nor to the chivalrous actors who there signalized themselves in the Revolutionary contest.
D. Appleton and Company have published an interesting volume of American biography, entitled Lives of Eminent Literary and Scientific Men, by James Wynne, M.D., comprising memoirs of Franklin, President Edwards, Fulton, Chief Justice Marshall, Rittenhouse, and Eli Whitney. They are composed in a tone of great discrimination and reserve, and scarcely in a single estimate come up to the popular estimation of the character described. Doctor Franklin and President Edwards, especially, are handled in a manner adapted to chill all enthusiasm which may have been connected with their names. Nor does the scientific fame of Robert Fulton gather any new brightness under the author's hands. This cool dissection of the dead may not be in accordance with the public taste, but in justice to the author, it should be borne in mind that he is a surgeon by profession.
The same house has issued an edition of Cicero's Select Orations, with Notes, by Professor E.A. Johnson, in which liberal use has been made of the most recent views of eminent German philologists. The volume is highly creditable to the industry and critical acumen of the Editor, and will prove a valuable aid to the student of the classics.
Lady Willoughby's Diary is reprinted by A.S. Barnes and Co., New York—the first American edition of a volume unrivaled for its sweetness and genuine pathos.
The Young Woman's Book of Health, by Dr. William A. Alcott, published by Tappan, [pg 716] Whittemore, and Co., Boston, is an original summary of excellent physiological precepts, expressed with the simplicity and distinctness for which the author is celebrated.
Songs of Labor and Other Poems is the title of a new volume by John G. Whittier, published by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, Boston, containing the spirited lyrics which have already gained a large share of favor in the public journals.
Poems of the Heart, by George W. Nicholson, (G. S. Appleton, Philadelphia), is the “last production of the author's boyhood,” and exhibits the most decided marks of its origin.
The Mariner's Vision is the title of a Poem by T.L. Donnelly, Philadelphia, evidently written with little preparation, but showing some traces of poetic talent, which may ripen into excellence at a future day.
A beautiful reprint of Æsop's Fables, edited by Rev. Thomas Garnes, with more than Fifty Illustrations from Tennial's designs has been issued by Robert B. Collins, New York, in a style of superb typography, which can not fail to command the admiration of the amateur.
The volume before us awakens recollections of “by-gone days,” in the Publishers of this Magazine, upon which we love to dwell. Æsop's Fables was among the first books which passed through our press. Some thirty years since, we printed an edition of it for the late Evert Duyckinck, Esq. (father of the present accomplished editors of the Literary World), one of the leading booksellers and publishers of his day, and, in every sense, “a good man and true,” as well as one of our earliest and best friends. His memory to us is precious—his early kindness will ever live in our recollection.
The name of Collins (publisher of the present edition), has been so long and closely associated with the book trade in this country, that we apprehend the public may feel some interest in a short sketch of the rise and progress of this most respectable publishing firm. Isaac Collins, a member of the Society of Friends, was the founder of the house. He originally came from Virginia, and commenced the printing and bookselling business in the city of Trenton, New Jersey, about the close of the Revolutionary War, where he printed the first quarto Bible published in America. This Bible was so highly esteemed for its correctness, that the American Bible Society was at some pains to obtain a copy, from which to print their excellent editions of the Scriptures. It would take too much space to follow the various changes in the firm, under the names of Isaac Collins, Isaac Collins & Son, Collins, Perkins & Co., Collins & Co., down to the establishment of the house of Collins & Hannay, about the close of the last war. This concern was composed of Benjamin S. Collins (the son of Isaac), and Samuel Hannay, who had been educated for the business by the old house of Collins & Co. The enterprise, liberality, and industry of this firm soon placed them at the head of the book trade in the city of New York, where they are still remembered with respect and esteem by the thousands of customers scattered all over our immense country, and with affection and gratitude by many whose fortunes were aided, and whose credit was established, by their generous confidence and timely aid. Mr. Benjamin S. Collins is now living in dignified retirement, on his farm in Westchester County. Several other members of the family, formerly connected with the bookselling business, have also retired with a competency, and are now usefully devoting their time and attention to the promotion of the various charitable institutions of the country. Mr. Hannay died about a year since—and here we may be permitted to record our grateful memory of one of the best men, and one of the most enterprising booksellers ever known in our country. His exceeding modesty prevented his marked and excellent qualities from being much known out of the small circle of his immediate friends—but by them he is remembered with feelings of love and veneration. The house of Collins & Hannay became subsequently B. & S. Collins; Collins, Keese, & Co.; Collins, Brother, & Co.; and Collins & Brother; now at last Robert B. Collins, the publisher of the work under notice. We trust he may pursue the path to fortune with the same honorable purposes, by the same honorable means, and with the same gratifying result, which signalized the efforts of his worthy predecessors. Nor are the names of the printer and stereotyper of the present volume without a fraternal interest. The printer, Mr. Van Norden, one of our early and highly esteemed associates, may now be termed a typographer of the old school. The quality of his work is good evidence that he is entitled to the reputation, which has been long accorded to him, of being one of the best printers in the country. The stereotyper of this work, our old friend Smith, is by no means a novice in his department. We are glad to see that he, too, so ably maintains his long-established reputation. May the publisher, the printer, and the stereotyper of this edition of Æsop, ever rejoice in the sunshine of prosperity, and may their shadows never be less!
Geo. P. Putnam has published a work entitled New Elements of Geometry, by Seba Smith, which can not fail to attract the notice of the curious reader, on account of the good faith and evident ability with which it sustains what must be regarded by all orthodox science as a system of enormous mathematical paradoxes. The treatise is divided into three parts, namely, The Philosophy of Geometry, Demonstrations in Geometry, and Harmonies of Geometry. In opposition to the ancient geometers, by whom the definitions and axioms of the science were fixed, Mr. Smith contends that the usual division of magnitudes into lines, surfaces, and solids is without foundation, that every mathematical line has a breadth, as definite, as measurable, and as clearly demonstrable as its length, and that every mathematical surface has a thickness, as definite, as measurable, and as clearly demonstrable [pg 717] as its length or breadth. The neglect of this fact has hitherto prevented a perfect understanding of the true relation between numbers, magnitudes, and forms. Hence, the barrenness of modern analytical speculation, which has been complained of by high authorities, the mathematical sciences having run into a luxuriant growth of foliage, with comparatively small quantities of fruit. This evil Mr. Smith supposes will be avoided by adopting the principle, that as the measurement of extension is the object of geometry, lines without breadth, and surfaces without thickness, are imaginary things, of which this rigid and exact science can take no cognizance. Every thing which comes within the reach of geometry must have extension, must have magnitude, must occupy a portion of space, and accordingly must have extension in every direction from its centre. Hence, as there is but one kind of quantity in geometry, lines, surfaces, and solids must have identically the same unit of comparison, and must be always perfect measures of each other. The unit may be infinitely varied in size—it being the name or representative of any assumed magnitude to which it is applied—but it always represents a magnitude of a definite form, and hence a magnitude which has an extension in every direction from its centre, and consequently represents not only one in length, but also one in breadth, and one in thickness. One inch, for example, in pure geometry, is always one cubic inch, but when used to measure a line, or extension in one direction, we take only one dimension of the unit, namely, the linear edge of the cube, and thus the operation not demanding either the breadth or the thickness of the unit, geometers have fallen into the error of supposing that a line is length without any breadth. These are the leading principles on which Mr. Smith attempts the audacious task of rearing a new fabric of geometrical science, without regard to the wisdom of antiquity or the universal traditions of the schools. To us outside barbarians in the mysteries of mathematics, we confess that the work has the air of an ingenious paradox; but we must leave it to the professors to decide upon its claims to be a substitute for Euclid, Playfair, and Legendre. Every one who has a fondness for dipping into these recondite subjects will perceive in Mr. Smith's volume the marks of profound research, of acute and subtle powers of reasoning, and of genuine scientific enthusiasm, combined with a noble freedom of thought, and a rare intellectual honesty. For these qualities, it is certainly entitled to a respectful mention among the curiosities of literature, whatever verdict may be pronounced on the scientific claims of the author by a jury of his peers.
Little and Brown, Boston, have issued an interesting work by the Nestor of the New England press, Joseph T. Buckingham, entitled Specimens of Newspaper Literature, with Personal Memoirs, Anecdotes and Reminiscences, which comes with a peculiar propriety from his veteran pen. The personal experience of the author, in connection with the press, extends over a period of more than fifty years, during a very considerable portion of which time he has been at the head of a leading journal in Boston, and in the enjoyment of a wide reputation, both as a bold and vigorous thinker, and a pointed, epigrammatic, and highly effective writer. In this last respect, indeed, few men in any department of literature can boast of a more familiar acquaintance with the idiomatic niceties of our language, or a more skillful mastery of its various resources, than the author of the present volumes. His influence has been sensibly felt, even among the purists of the American Athens, and under the very droppings of the Muses' sanctuary at Cambridge, in preserving the “wells of English undefiled” from the corruptions of rash innovators on the wholesome, recognized canons of language. His sarcastic pen has always been a terror to evil doers in this region of crime. In the work before us, we should have been glad of a larger proportion from the author himself, instead of the copious extracts from the newspapers of old times, which, to be sure, have a curious antiquarian interest, but which are of too remote a date to command the attention of this “fast” generation. The sketches which are given of several New England celebrities of a past age are so natural and spicy, as to make us wish that we had more of them. Materials for a third volume, embracing matters of a more recent date, we are told by the author, are not wanting; we sincerely hope that he will permit them to see the light; and especially that the call for this publication may not be defeated by an event, as he intimates, “to which all are subject—an event which may happen to-morrow, and must happen soon.”
A new edition of Edward Everett'sOrations and Speeches, in two large and elegant octavos, has been published by Little and Brown, including in the first volume the contents of the former edition, and in the second volume, the addresses delivered on various occasions, since the year 1836. In an admirably-written Preface to the present edition, Mr. Everett gives a slight, autobiographical description of the circumstances in which his earlier compositions had their origin, and in almost too deprecatory a tone, apologizes for the exuberance of style and excess of national feeling with which they have sometimes been charged. In our opinion, this appeal is uncalled for, as we can nowhere find productions of this class more distinguished for a virginal purity of expression, and grave dignity of thought. As a graceful, polished, and impressive rhetorician, it would be difficult to name the superior of Mr. Everett, and had he not been too much trammeled by the scruples of a fastidious taste, with his singular powers of fascination, he would have filled a still broader sphere than that which he has nobly won in the literature of his country. We gratefully welcome the announcement with which the preface concludes, and trust that it will be carried into [pg 718] effect at an early date. “It is still my purpose, should my health permit, to offer to the public indulgence a selection from a large number of articles contributed by me to the North American Review, and from the speeches, reports, and official correspondence, prepared in the discharge of the several official stations which I have had the honor to fill at home and abroad. Nor am I wholly without hope that I shall be able to execute the more arduous project to which I have devoted a good deal of time for many years, and toward which I have collected ample materials—that of a systematic treatise on the modern law of nations, more especially in reference to those questions which have been discussed between the governments of the United States and Europe since the peace of 1783.”
Echoes of the Universe is the title of a work by Henry Christmas, reprinted by A. Hart, Philadelphia, containing a curious store of speculation and research in regard to the more mystical aspects of religion, with a strong tendency to pass the line which divides the sphere of legends and fictions from the field of well-established truth. The author is a man of learning and various accomplishments; he writes in a style of unusual sweetness and simplicity; his pages are pervaded with reverence for the wonders of creation; and with a singular freedom from the skeptical, destructive spirit of the day, he is startled by no mystery of revelation, however difficult of comprehension by the understanding. The substance of this volume was originally delivered in the form of letters to an Episcopal Missionary Society in England. It is now published in a greatly enlarged shape, with the intention of presenting the truths of religion in an interesting aspect to minds that are imbued with the spirit of modern cultivation. Among the Echoes that proceed from the world of matter, the author includes those that are uttered by the solar system, the starry heavens, the laws of imponderable fluids, the discoveries of geology, and the natural history of Scripture. To these, he supposes, that parallel Echoes may be found from the world of Spirit, such as the appearance of a Divine Person, recorded in Sacred History, the visitations of angels and spirits of an order now higher than man, the apparitions of the departed spirits of saints, the cases recorded of demoniacal possession, and the manner in which these narratives are supported and explained by reason and experience. The seen and the unseen, the physical and the immaterial, according to the author, will thus be shown to coincide, and the Unity of the Voice proved by the Unity of the Echo. This is the lofty problem of the volume, and if it is not solved to the satisfaction of every reader, it will not be for the want of a genial enthusiasm and an adamantine faith on the part of the author.
The same house has published a neat edition of Miss Benger's popular Memoir of Anne Boleyn.
A new work by W. Gilmore Simms, entitled The Lily and Totem, (Baker and Scribner, New York) consists of the romantic legends connected with the establishment of the Huguenots in Florida, embroidered upon a substantial fabric of historical truth, with great ingenuity and artistic effect. The basis of the work is laid in authentic history; facts are not superseded by the romance; all the vital details of the events in question are embodied in the narrative but when the original record is found to be deficient in interest, the author has introduced such creations of his own as he judged in keeping with the subject, and adapted to picturesque impression. It was his first intention to have made the experiment of Coligny in the colonization of Florida, the subject of a poem; but dreading the want of sympathy in the mass of readers, he decided on the present form, as more adapted to the popular taste, though perhaps less in accordance with the character of the theme. With his power of graphic description, and the mild poetical coloring which he has thrown around the whole narrative, Mr. Simms will delight the imaginative reader, while his faithful adherence to the spirit of the history renders him an instructive guide through the dusky and faded memorials of the past. One of the longest stories in the volume is the “Legend of Guernache,” a record of love and sorrow, scarcely surpassed in sweetness and beauty by any thing in the romance of Indian history.
Reminiscences of Congress, by Charles W. March, (Baker and Scribner, New York), is principally devoted to the personal and political history of Daniel Webster, of whom it relates a variety of piquant anecdotes, and at the same time giving an analysis of his most important speeches on the floor of Congress. The leading statesmen of the United States, without reference to party, are made to sit for their portraits, and are certainly sketched with great boldness of delineation, though, in some cases, the free touches of the artist might be accused of caricature. Among the distinguished public men who are introduced into this gallery are John Q. Adams, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, Jackson, and Van Buren, whose features can not fail to be recognized at sight, however twisted, in some respects, they may be supposed to be by their respective admirers. Mr. March has had ample opportunities for gaining a familiar acquaintance with the subjects he treats; his observing powers are nimble and acute; without any remarkable habits of reflection, he usually rises to the level of his theme; and with a command of fluent and often graceful language, his style, for the most part, is not only readable but eminently attractive.
A new and greatly enlarged edition of Mental Hygeine, by William Sweetser, has been published by Geo. P. Putnam—a volume which discusses the reciprocal influence of the mental and physical conditions, with clearness, animation, and good sense. It is well adapted for popular reading, no less than for professional use.
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Autumn Fashions.
Illustration.
Fig. 1. Evening Costume.
Evening Dresses. White is generally adopted for the evening toilet. Muslin, tulle, and barege form elegant and very beautiful textures for this description of dress. They are decorated with festooned flounces, cut in deep square vandykes; the muslins are richly embroidered. A barege, trimmed with narrow ruches of white silk ribbon, placed upon the edge, has the appearance of being pinked at the edge. Those of white barege covered with bouquets of flowers, are extremely elegant, trimmed with three deep flounces, finished at the edge with a chicoree of green ribbon forming a wave; the same description of chicoree may be placed upon the top of the flounces. Corsage a la Louis XV., trimmed with ruches to match. For dresses of tulle, those with double skirts are most in vogue. Those composed of Brussels tulle with five skirts, each skirt being finished with a broad hem, through which passes a pink ribbon, are extremely pretty. The skirts are all raised at the sides with a large moss rose encircled with its buds, the roses diminishing in size toward the upper part. These skirts are worn over a petticoat of a lively pink silk, so that the color shows through the upper fifth skirt. As to the corsage, they all resemble each other; the Louis XV. and Pompadour being those only at present in fashion.
Illustration.
Fig. 2. Morning Costume.
A very beautiful evening dress is represented by fig. 1, which shows a front and back view. It is a pale lavender dress of striped satin; the body plaited diagonally, both back and front, the plaits meeting [pg 720] in the centre. It has a small jacquette, pointed at the back as well as the front; plain sleeve reaching nearly to the elbow, finished by a lace ruffle, or frill of the same. The skirt is long and full, and has a rich lace flounce at the bottom. The breadths of satin are put together so that the stripes meet in points at the seams. Head dress, with lace lappets.
Fig. 2 represents an elegant style of body, worn over a skirt of light lavender silk, with three flounces, each edged with a double rÛche, trimmed with narrow ribbon. The body is of embroidered muslin, the small skirt of which is trimmed with two rows of lace; the sleeves are wide; they are three-quarter length and are trimmed with three rows of lace and rosettes of pink satin ribbon. This is for a morning costume.
Another elegant style of morning home dress, is composed of Valenciennes cambric; the corsage plaited or fulled, so as to form a series of crossway fullings, which entirely cover the back and front of the bust, the centre of which is ornamented with a petit dÉcollettÉ in the shape of a lengthened heart; the same description of centre-piece is placed at the back, where it is closed by means of buttons and strings, ingeniously hidden by the fullings. The lower part of the body forms but a slight point, and is round and stiffened, from which descends a chÂtelaine, formed by a wreath of plumetis, descending to the edge of the dress, and bordered on each side with a large inlet, gradually widening toward the lower part of the skirt.
Fashionable Colors. It is almost impossible to state which colors most prevail, all are so beautifully blended and intermixed; those, however, which seem most in demand are maroon, sea-green, blue, pensÉe, &c.
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