Part 3

If a tube, or goblet, or other round glass body is to be cut, a line is to be marked with a gun flint having a sharp angle, an agate, a diamond, or a file, exactly on the place where it is to be cut. A long thread covered with sulphur is then to be passed two or three times round the circular line, and to be inflamed and burnt; when the glass is well heated some drops of cold water are to be thrown on it, when the piece will separate in an exact manner, as if cut with scissors. It is by this means that glasses are cut circularly into thin bands, which may either be separated from, or repose upon each other, at pleasure, in the manner of a spring---_From the French_.

_Preservation of Skins_.

A tanner at Tyman, in Hungary, uses with great advantage the pyroligueous acid, in preserving skins from putrefaction, and in recovering them when attacked. They are deprived of none of their useful qualities if covered by means of a brush with the acid, which they absorb very readily.--_Quarterly Journal_.

_Organic Remains in Sussex_.

A short time since, the entire skeleton of a stag, of very large size, was dug up by some labourers, in excavating the bed of the river Ouse, near Lewes, in Sussex. The remains were found imbedded in a layer of sand, beneath the alluvial blue clay, forming the surface of the valley. The horns were in the highest state of preservation, and had seven points, like the American deer. The greater part of the skeleton was destroyed by the carelessness of the workmen; but a portion, including the horns, has been preserved in the collection of Mr. Mantell, near Lewes.

_Stupendous Lizard_.

Mr. Bullock, in his Travels, (just published) relates that he saw near New Orleans, "what are believed to be the remains of a stupendous crocodile, and which are likely to prove so, intimating the former existence of a lizard at least 150 feet long; for I measured the right side of the under jaw, which I found to be 21 feet along the curve; and 4 feet 6 inches wide: the others consisted of numerous vertebrae, ribs, femoral bones, and toes, all corresponding in size to the jaw; there were also some teeth: these, however, were not of proportionate magnitude. These remains were discovered, a short time since, in the swamp, near Fort Philip; and the other parts of the mighty skeleton, are, it is said, in the same part of the swamp."

_Digby's Philosophy_.

Sir Kenelm Digby was a mere quack; but he was the son of an earl, and related to many noble families. His book on the supposed sympathetic powder, which cured wounds at any distance from the sufferer, is the standard of his abilities. This powder was Roman vitriol pounded. From this wild work, we, however learn, that the English routine of agriculture in his time was--1st. year, barley; 2nd. wheat; 3rd. beans; 4th. fallow.--_Pinkerton_.

_Critics_.

Thought, comprising its enumerated constituents and detailed process, is the most perfect and exalted elaboration of the human mind, and when protracted is a painful exertion; indeed, the greater portion of our species reluctantly submit to the toil and lassitude of reflection; but from laziness, or incapacity, and perhaps in some instances from diffidence, they suffer themselves to be directed by the opinions of others. Hence has arisen the swarm of critics and reviewers, those clouds that obscure the fair light that would beam on the mind of man, by his individual reflection, and through his existence degrade him, by a submission to assumed authority;--a voluntary blindness, that excludes him from the observation of nature, and through indolence and credulity render his noblest faculties feeble, assenting, and lethargic; and delude him to barter the inheritance of his intellect for a mess of pottage.--_Dr. Haslam.--Lancet_.

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SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

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MUNCHAUSEN RIDE THROUGH EDINBURGH.

We were sitting rather negligently on an infernal animal, which, up to that day, had seemed quiet as a lamb--kissing our hand to Mrs. Davison, then Miss Duncan, and in the blaze of her fame, when a Highland regiment, no doubt the forty-second, that had been trudging down the Mound, so silently that we never heard them, all at once, and without the slightest warning, burst out, with all their bag-pipes, into one pibroch! The mare--to do her justice--had been bred in England, and ridden, as a charger, by an adjutant to an English regiment. She was even fond of music--and delighted to prance behind the band--unterrified by cymbals or great drum. She never moved in a roar of artillery at reviews--and, had the Castle of Edinburgh--Lord bless it--been self-involved, at that moment, in a storm of thunder and lightning, round its entire circle of cannon, that mare would not so much as have pricked up her ears, whisked her tail, or lifted a hoof. But the pibroch was more than horse-flesh and blood could endure--and off we two went like a whirlwind. Where we went--that is to say, what were the names of the few first streets along which we were borne, is a question which, as a man of veracity, we must positively decline answering. For some short space of time, lines of houses reeled by without a single face at the windows--and these, we have since conjectured, might be North and South Hanover street, and Queen-street. By and by we surely were in something like a square--could it be Charlotte-square?--and round and round it we flew--three, four, five, or six times, as horsemen do at the Caledonian amphitheatre--for the animal had got blind with terror, and kept viciously reasoning in a circle. What a show of faces at all the windows then! A shriek still accompanied us as we clattered, and thundered, and lightened along; and, unless our ears lied, there were occasional fits of stifled laughter, and once or twice a guffaw; for there was now a ringing of lost stirrups--and much holding of the mane. One complete round was executed by us, first on the shoulder beyond the pommel; secondly, on the neck; thirdly, between the ears; fourthly, between the forelegs, in a place called the counter, with our arms round the jugular veins of the flying phenomenon, and our toes in the air. That was, indeed, the crisis of our fever, but we made a wonderful recovery back into the saddle--righting like a boat capsized in a sudden squall at sea--and once more, with accelerated speed, away past the pillared front of St. George's church!

The castle and all its rocks, in peristrephic panorama, then floated cloud-like by--and we saw the whole mile-length of Prince's-street stretched before us, studded with innumerable coaches, chaises, chariots, carts, wagons, drays, gigs, shandrydans, and wheel-barrows, through among which we dashed, as if they had been as much gingerbread--while men on horseback were seen flinging themselves off, and drivers dismounting in all directions, making their escape up flights of steps and common stairs--mothers or nurses with broods of young children flying hither and thither in distraction, or standing on the very crown of the causeway, wringing their hands in despair. The wheel-barrows were easily disposed of--nor was there much greater difficulty with the gigs and shandrydans. But the hackney-coaches stood confoundedly in the way--and a wagon, drawn by four horses, and heaped up to the very sky with beer-barrels, like the Tower of Babel or Babylon, did indeed give us pause--but ere we had leisure to ruminate on the shortness of human life, we broke through between the leaders and the wheels with a crash of leathern breeching, dismounted collars, riven harness, and tumbling of enormous horses that was perilous to hear; when, as Sin and Satan would have it--would you believe it?--there, twenty kilts deep at the least, was the same accursed Highland regiment, the forty-second, with fixed bayonets, and all its pipers in the van, the pibroch yelling, squeaking, squealing, grunting, growling, roaring, as if it had only that very instant broken out--so, suddenly to the right--about went the bag-pipe-haunted mare, and away up the Mound, past the pictures of Irish Giants--Female Dwarfs--Albinos--an Elephant endorsed with towers--Tigers and Lions of all sorts--and a large wooden building, like a pyramid, in which there was the thundering of cannon--for the battle, we rather think, of Camperdown was going on--the Bank of Scotland seemed to sink into the NorLoch--one gleam through the window of the eyes of the Director-General--and to be sure how we did make the street-stalls of the Lawn-market spin! The man in St. Giles's steeple was playing his one o'clock tune on the bells, heedless in that elevation of our career--in less than no time John Knox, preaching from a house half-way down the Canongate, gave us the go-by--and down through one long wide sprawl of men, women, and children we wheeled past the Gothic front, and round the south angle of Holyrood, and across the King's-park, where wan and withered sporting debtors held up their hands and cried, Hurra--hurra--hurra--without stop or stay, up the rocky way that leads to St. Anthony's Well and Chapel--and now it was manifest that we were bound for the summit of Arthur's Seat. We hope that we were sufficiently thankful that a direction was not taken towards Salisbury Crags, where we should have been dashed into many million pieces. Free now from even the slightest suburban impediment, obstacle, or interruption, we began to eye our gradually rising situation in life--and looking over our shoulder, the sight of city and sea was indeed magnificent. There in the distance rose North Berwick Law--but though we have plenty of time now for description, we had scant time then for beholding perhaps the noblest scenery in Scotland. Up with us--up with us into the clouds--and just as St. Giles's bells ceased to jingle, and both girths broke, we crowned the summit, and sat on horseback like king Arthur himself, eight hundred feet above the level of the sea!

_Blackwood's Magazine_.

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Select Biography

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No. LVIII.

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LELAND.

John Leland, the father of the English antiquaries, was born in London, about the end of the reign of Henry VII. He was a pupil to William Lily, the celebrated grammarian--the first head master of St. Paul's school; and by the kindness and liberality of a Mr. Myles, he was sent to Christ's college. Cambridge. From this university he removed to All Souls, Oxford, where he paid particular attention to the Greek language. He afterwards went to Paris, where he cultivated the acquaintance of the principal scholars of the age, and could probably number among his correspondents the illustrious names of Buddoeus, Erasmus, the Stephani, Faber, and Turnebus; in this city he perfected himself in the knowledge of the Latin and Greek tongues, to which he afterwards added that of several modern languages. On his return to England he took orders, and was appointed one of the chaplains to Henry VIII., who gave him the rectory of Popelay, in the marshes of Calais, appointed him his library keeper, and conferred on him the title of Royal Antiquary, which no other person in this kingdom, before, or after possessed. In this character his majesty in 1533 granted him a commission, empowering him to search after England's antiquities, and peruse the libraries of all cathedrals, abbeys, priories, colleges, &c., as also all the places wherein records, writings, and whatever else was lodged that related to antiquity. "Before Leland's time," says Hearne, in his preface to the _Itinerary_, "all the literary monuments of antiquity were totally disregarded; and the students of Germany apprised of this culpable indifference, were suffered to enter our libraries unmolested, and to cut out of the books deposited there whatever passages they thought proper, which they afterwards published as relics of the ancient literature of their own country."

In this research Leland was occupied above six years in travelling through England, and in visiting all the remains of ancient buildings and monuments of every kind. On its completion, he hastened to the metropolis, to lay at the feet of his sovereign the result of his labours, which he presented to Henry, under the title of a "New Year's Gift,"[4] in which he says, "I have so traviled yn your dominions booth by the se costes and the midle partes, sparing nother labor nor costes, by the space of these vi. yeres paste, that there is almoste nother cape, nor bay, haven, creke or peers, river or confluence of rivers, breches, watchies, lakes, meres, fenny waters, montagnes, valleis, mores, hethes, forestes, chases wooddes, cities, burges, castelles, principale manor placis, monasteries, and colleges, but I have seene them; and notid yn so doing a hole worlde of thinges very memorable."

At the dissolution of the monasteries, Leland made application to Secretary Cromwell, to entreat his assistance in getting the MSS. they contained sent to the king's library. In 1542 Henry presented him with the valuable rectory of Hasely, in Oxfordshire; the year following he preferred him to a canonry of King's college, now Christchurch, Oxford, and about the same time collated him to a prebend in the church of Sarum. As his duties in the church did not require much active service, he retired with his collections to his house in London, where he sat about digesting them, and preparing the publication he had promised to the world; but either his intense application, or some other cause, brought upon him a total derangement of mind, and after lingering two years in this state, he died on the 18th of April, 1552.

The writings of Leland are numerous; in his lifetime he published several Latin and Greek poems, and some tracts on antiquarian subjects. His valuable and voluminous MSS., after passing through many hands, came into the Bodleian library, furnishing very valuable materials to Stow, Lambard, Camden, Burton, Dugdale, and many other antiquaries and historians. Polydore Virgil, who had stolen from them pretty freely, had the insolence to abuse Leland's memory--calling him "a vain glorious man." From these collections Hall published, in 1709, "Commentarii de Scriptoribus Brittanicis." "The Itinerary of John Leland, Antiquary," was published by the celebrated Hearne, at Oxford, in nine volumes, 8vo., 1710, of which a second edition was printed in 1745, with considerable improvements and additions. The same editor published "Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii de Rebus Brittanicis Collectanea." in six volumes, Oxon. 1716, 8vo.

BIOS.

[Footnote 4: This was published by Bale in 1549, 8vo.]

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THE SELECTOR AND LITERARY NOTICES OF _NEW WORKS_.

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CORAL ISLANDS.

[In a recent Number of the MIRROR we quoted from Mr. Montgomery's _Pelican Island_ a beautiful description of the formation of coral reefs or rocks; and we are now induced to resume our extracts from this soul stirring poem, with the following description of the process by which these reefs or rocks become beautiful and picturesque islands. Mr. Montgomery's poetical talent is altogether of the highest order, or, to use a familiar phrase, his _Pelican Island_ is "a gem of the first water." How exquisite is the following picture of creation!]

Here was the infancy of life, the age Of gold in that green isle, itself new-born, And all upon it in the prime of being, Love, hope, and promise, 'twas in miniature A world unsoil'd by sin; a Paradise Where Death had not yet enter'd; Bliss had newly Alighted, and shut close his rainbow wings, To rest at ease, nor dread intruding ill. Plants of superior growth now sprang apace, With moon-like blossoms crown'd, or starry glories; Light flexible shrubs among the greenwood play'd Fantastic freaks,--they crept, they climb'd, they budded, And hung their flowers and berries in the sun; As the breeze taught, they danced, they sung, they twined Their sprays in bowers, or spread the ground with net-work. Through the slow lapse of undivided time, Silently rising from their buried germs, Trees lifted to the skies their stately heads, Tufted with verdure, like depending plumage, O'er stems unknotted, waving to the wind: Of these in graceful form, and simple beauty, The fruitful cocoa and the fragrant palm Excell'd the wilding daughters of the wood, That stretch'd unwieldy their enormous arms, Clad with luxuriant foliage, from the trunk, Like the old eagle, feather'd to the heel; While every fibre, from the lowest root To the last leaf upon the topmost twig, Was held by common sympathy, diffusing Through all the complex frame unconscious life. Such was the locust with its hydra boughs, A hundred heads on one stupendous trunk; And such the mangrove, which, at full-moon flood, Appear'd itself a wood upon the waters, But when the tide left bare its upright roots, A wood on piles suspended in the air; Such too the Indian fig, that built itself Into a sylvan temple, arch'd aloof With airy aisles and living colonnades, Where nations might have worshipp'd God in peace. From year to year their fruits ungather'd fell; Not lost, but quickening where they lay, they struck Root downward, and brake forth on every hand, Till the strong saplings, rank and file, stood up, A mighty army, which o'erran the isle, And changed the wilderness into a forest. All this appear'd accomplish'd in the space Between the morning and the evening star: So, in his third day's work, Jehovah spake, And Earth, an infant, naked as she came Out of the womb of chaos, straight put on Her beautiful attire, and deck'd her robe Of verdure with ten thousand glorious flowers, Exhaling incense; crown'd her mountain-heads With cedars, train'd her vines around their girdles, And pour'd spontaneous harvests at their feet. Nor were those woods without inhabitants Besides the ephemera of earth and air; --Where glid the sunbeams through the latticed boughs, And fell like dew-drops on the spangled ground, To light the diamond-beetle on his way; --Where cheerful openings let the sky look down Into the very heart of solitude, On little garden-pots of social flowers, That crowded from the shades to peep at daylight; --Or where unpermeable foliage made Midnight at noon, and chill, damp horror reign'd O'er dead, fall'n leaves and slimy funguses; --Reptiles were quicken'd into various birth. Loathsome, unsightly, swoln to obscene bulk, Lurk'd the dark toad beneath the infected turf; The slow-worm crawl'd, the light cameleon climb'd, And changed his colour as his pace he changed; The nimble lizard ran from bough to bough, Glancing through light, in shadow disappearing; The scorpion, many-eyed, with sting of fire, Bred there,--the legion-fiend of creeping things; Terribly beautiful, the serpent lay, Wreath'd like a coronet of gold and jewels, Fit for a tyrant's brow; anon he flew Straight as an arrow shot from his own rings, And struck his victim, shrieking ere it went Down his strain'd throat, that open sepulchre. Amphibious monsters haunted the lagoon; The hippopotamus, amidst the flood, Flexile and active as the smallest swimmer; But on the bank, ill balanced and infirm, He grazed the herbage, with huge, head declined, Or lean'd to rest against some ancient tree. The crocodile, the dragon of the waters, In iron panoply, fell as the plague, And merciless as famine, cranch'd his prey, While, from his jaws, with dreadful fangs all serried, The life-blood dyed the waves with deadly streams. The seal and the sea-lion, from the gulf Came forth, and couching with their little ones. Slept on the shelving rocks that girt the shores, Securing prompt retreat from sudden danger; The pregnant turtle, stealing out at eve, With anxious eye, and trembling heart, explored The loneliest coves, and in the loose warm sand Deposited her eggs, which the sun hatch'd: Hence the young brood, that never knew a parent, Unburrow'd and by instinct sought the sea; Nature herself, with her own gentle hand, Dropping them one by one into the flood, And laughing to behold their antic joy, When launch'd in their maternal element. The vision of that brooding world went on; Millions of beings yet more admirable Than all that went before them now appear'd; Flocking from every point of heaven, and filling Eye, ear, and mind, with objects, sounds, emotions Akin to livelier sympathy and love Than reptiles, fishes, insects, could inspire; --Birds, the free tenants of land, air, and ocean, Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace; In plumage delicate and beautiful, Thick without burthen, close as fishes' scales, Or loose as full-blown poppies to the breeze; With wings that might have had a soul within them, They bore their owners by such sweet enchantment; --Birds, small and great, of endless shapes and colours, Here flew and perch'd, there swam and dived at pleasure; Watchful and agile, uttering voices wild And harsh, yet in accordance with the waves Upon the beech, the winds in caverns moaning, Or winds and waves abroad upon the water. Some sought their food among the finny shoals, Swift darting from the clouds, emerging soon With slender captives glittering in their beaks; These in recesses of steep crags constructed Their eyries inaccessible, and train'd Their hardy broods to forage in all weathers; Others, more gorgeously apparell'd, dwelt Among the woods, on Nature's dainties feeding, Herbs, seeds, and roots; or, ever on the wing, Pursuing insects through the boundless air: In hollow trees or thickets these conceal'd Their exquisitely woven nests; where lay Their callow offspring, quiet as the down On their own breasts, till from her search the dam With laden bill return'd, and shared the meal Among the clamorous suppliants, all agape; Then, cowering o'er them with expanded wings, She felt how sweet it is to be a mother. Of these, a few, with melody untaught, Turn'd all the air to music within hearing, Themselves unseen; while bolder quiristers On loftier branches strain'd their clarion-pipes, And made the forest echo to their screams Discordant,--yet there was no discord there, But temper'd harmony: all tones combining, In the rich confluence often thousand tongues, To tell of joy and to inspire it. Who Could hear such concert, and not join in chorus? Not I;--sometimes entranced, I seem'd to float Upon a buoyant sea of sounds: again With curious ear I tried to disentangle The maze of voices, and with eye as nice To single out each minstrel, and pursue His little song through all its labyrinth, Till my soul enter'd into him, and felt Every vibration of his thrilling throat, Pulse of his heart, and flutter of his pinions. Often, as one among the multitude, I sang from very fulness of delight; Now like a winged fisher of the sea, Now a recluse among the woods,--enjoying The bliss of all at once, or each in turn.

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RAPIDS OF NIAGARA.