yet with what vehemence and entireness! There is a piercing wail in his sorrow, the purest rapture in his joy; he burns with the sternest ire, or laughs with the loudest or slyest mirth; and yet he is sweet and soft, sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, and soft as their parting tear! If we farther take into account the immense variety of his subjects; how, from the loud flowing revel in Willie brewed a peck o' Maut, to the still, rapt enthusiasm of sadness for Mary in Heaven; from the glad kind greeting of Auld Langsyne, or the comic archness of Duncan Gray, to the fire-eyed fury of Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, he has found a tone and words for every mood of man's heart,-it will seem a small praise, if we rank him as the first of all our songwriters; for we know not where to find one worthy of being second to him." He would not have been a forenoon's work to Captain Cochrane. It was all one, too, to him, where he walked. He originally proposed to the Admiralty to travel over the burning sands of Africa, following, as nearly as he could, the track of Mungo Park; but, as the proposal was received unfavourably, he very coolly altered his design, and proposed to sojourn among the eternal snows of Siberia. Off he set, without money, without friends, without any thing, except, as the old song says, “a light heart and a thin pair of breeches ;" and with these he literally went "thorough the world, brave boys." We have a respect for the indomitable spirit of this man. He said to himself," I shall walk round the world; I shall traverse Europe and Asia, cross over to America at Behring's Straits, and proceed down that mighty continent till I get to the vicinity of Cape Horn." kept this object steadily in view, and nothing would divert him from it. Storms raged, but he smiled at them and walked on ;-meridian suns glared down upon him in sultry radiance, but he wiped the perspiration from his brow and walked on ;-robbers attacked and plunderThe only article by Mr Jeffrey, in the present Num-ed him, but as soon as they left him, naked as he was, ber of the Review, is one upon Bishop Heber, and his works on India. It is written with all Mr Jeffrey's usual ability and good feeling.-The chief peculiarity of Blackwood for this month is, that it contains nothing from the pen of Professor Wilson, and is therefore less interesting than we could wish.—One of the best articles in the Foreign Quarterly is a very elaborate one on the Arts and Manufactures in France.-In the New Monthly, Lady Morgan writes the leading Essay, which is of an historico-political kind, on the subject of Irish Lords Lieutenant. These extracts speak for themselves; and it is only necessary to add, that the whole of the article from which we have taken them, is made up of a string of passages equally brilliant. A Pedestrian Journey through Russia and Siberian | Tartary, to the frontiers of China, the Frozen Sea, and Kamtchatka. By Captain John Dundas Cochrane, R. N. Two volumes; being the 36th and 37th volumes of Constable's Miscellany. Edinburgh. 1829. he walked on ;-the luxuries and dissipations of great cities and princely mansions courted him, but he turned his face to the keen blast, coming from the cold north, and walked on ;-human habitations forsook him, snow and wild beasts, silence and solitude, were his only companions, but he walked on and on, till the echoes of fardistant society rung not in his ears, and he passed, as it were, into a new state of existence. That Captain Cochrane did not perambulate the globe, was not his fault. He could not get out of Asia; so, by way of revenge, we suppose, he took to himself a wife in Kamtchatka, and came away home again. To walk back, however, only eight or nine thousand miles, appeared too insignificant, and he therefore made a digression to the frontiers of China, which afforded several thousand miles more of healthy exercise. Our hero was not a learned man, nor a very able man, but he had a good stock of sound common sense; and the consequence is, that his book is by far the best Itinerary of Russia, Siberian Tartary, and Kamtchatka, that exists. If we ever were to walk the length of Okotsk, or pay a visit to our friends the Yakuti and Tongousians, we should never wish for more than a raw sturgeon in one pocket, and the Captain's book in the other; and with these auxiliaries, we should feel perfectly sure of getting on delightfully. CAPTAIN COCHRANE's intention was to walk round the world; and he certainly walked a good part of the way. We know of no man who seems to have made a better hand of his legs. Cockneys account it a great thing to spend a week or two in summer, walking about Loch Ketturin, or climbing that remarkable piece of The "Pedestrian Journey," be it recollected, howrising ground, called Ben-Lomond. At dinner parties, ever, is, on the whole, more a curious than a very intowards the fag end of the shooting season, we some-structive work. We are led on from town to town, and times hear a sportsman, more daring than the rest, boast, that on one occasion he went over forty miles at a stretch, a distance nearly equivalent to that which exists between Edinburgh and Glasgow. These things are set down as feats, and recorded to a man's honour in after life, when he sits toasting his toes by his fireside, surrounded by a gaping circle of grandchildren. But what a contemptible figure their grandpapa would cut in their eyes were they just to take a slight glance at the pedestrian journey performed by Captain Cochrane! Their grandpapa, when a young man, walked forty miles; Captain Cochrane walked twenty thousand miles. He walked from London to Okotsk, on the Frozen Sea, passing through France, Germany, Prussia, Russia, Tartary, and Siberia. He then crossed to Kamtchatka, and walked through that Peninsula; and not being able to walk any farther north, because there was no more land to walk upon, he with great good humour turned round again, and walked the whole way back. There are a few who have walked the length of Johnny Groat's House, the farthest north point of Scotland, and when they returned, they looked amazingly big, with an expression which seemed to imply " All that man dare, I dare." Heaven forgive them! their whole excursion village to village innumerable, of whose very existence nobody had ever dreamt before; and then, at length, we come into the immense wilderness of Siberia," whose inhabitants are so scattered, that five or six hundred miles are passed by travellers without seeing an individual, much less any cultivation, or any works of man, at all worthy of description." As Captain Cochrane therefore frankly confesses, the matter of interest is to be compressed in a small space; for in these remote regions, the manners, customs, and dress of most of the inhabitants are the same, and the severity of the climate is in general productive of the same results. We confess, however, that, though here and there the details are a little tedious, we have, on the whole, derived very considerable gratification from these volumes. We subjoin one or two detached extracts, not with the view of giving any correct notion of the general features of the work, but as passages which may interest and amuse. Of the advantages to be derived from sending out Missionaries to Siberia, our author writes sceptically, and, we suspect, judiciously: SIBERIAN MISSIONARIES. "I passed a couple of days in a most agreeable man ner with these secluded and self-devoted people, who have, indeed, undertaken an arduous task. They have been established in the present place more than three years; during which time they have erected two neat and homely dwellings, with out-houses, small gardens, &c. It is, however, to the generosity of the Emperor of Russia that these very comfortable residences are to be attributed, he having generously paid all the expenses, and given the society a grant of land, free of actual rent or public service. "Many journeys have been made into the interior of the country, with a view to form acquaintances with the chiefs and principal people, as also with the lamas or priests. As yet, however, it is a matter of regret, that these very indefatigable ministers have not been the instrument of converting one single individual. Nor is it probable they will; for it is only very lately that the Buriats brought their religious books, thirty waggon loads, from Thibet, at an expense of twelve thousand head of cattle. Their tracts have been received, but have never, save in a solitary instance, been looked in to. Even their Buriat servants secretly laugh at the folly of their masters, and only remain with them for the sake of getting better food, with less work. It appears to me, that the religion of the Buriats is of too old a date, and they are of too obstinate a disposition, to receive any change. Nor is it much to be wondered at: their own religious books point out the course they pursue; and when the religion of a people, who have been, from time immemorial, acquainted with the art of reading and writing, is attacked, and attempted to be changed, by three strangers, it is almost preposterous to expect any favourable result. For my own part, so small are my hopes of their success, that I do not expect any one Buriat will be really and truly converted: for the sake of profit, several may so pretend; but, as long as they have their own priests and religious instruction, so long the Missionary Society will do no more good than simply translating their works, and acquiring the knowledge of a language useless to England. I must, however, humbly add, that what is impossible with man, is possible with God! The field chosen, on the banks of the Selenga, is, no doubt, the very worst; and this is known even to the missionaries; but, I presume, it is too comfortable a birth to be given up. I have every respect for them personally, but really I cannot think justice is done to the people of England, to say nothing of the poverty and ignorance of a large portion of the people of Ireland, in squandering money in every part of the world, while there are so many poor and religiously ignorant in our own empire. When we shall have all become good and steady and wealthy Christians, then will be the time to assist others; and thus, in a few words, I bid adieu to the subject."-Vol. 2d, p. 99101. The worthy people who live in these northern regions seem to enjoy the most tremendous appetites ever heard of. We earnestly join in the wish of Macbeth, "may good digestion wait on appetite !" The following, we think, may be considered SYMPTOMS OF A GOOD APPETITE. "At Tabalak I had a pretty good specimen of the appetite of a child, whose age (as I understood from the steersman, who spoke some English and less French) did not exceed five years. I had observed the child crawling on the floor, and scraping up with its thumb the tallow-grease which fell from a lighted candle, and I inquired in surprise whether it proceeded from hunger or liking of the fat. I was told from neither, but simply from the habit in both Yakuti and Tongousi of eating whenever there is food, and never permitting any thing that can be eaten to be lost. I gave the child a candle made of the most impure tallow, a second, and a third, and all were devoured with avidity. The steersman then gave him several pounds of sour frozen butter; this also he immediately consumed; lastly, a large piece of yellow soap ;-all went the same road; but as I was convinced that the child would continue to gorge as long as it could receive any thing, I begged my companion to desist as I had done. "As to the statement of what a man can or will eat, either as to quality or quantity, I am afraid it would be quite incredible; in fact, there is nothing in the way of fish or meat, from whatever animal, however putrid or unwholesome, but they will devour with impunity, and the quantity only varies from what they have, to what they can get. I have repeatedly seen a Yakut or a Tongouse devour forty pounds of meat in a day. The effect is very observable upon them, for, from thin and meagre-looking men, they will become perfectly potbellied. Their stomachs must be differently formed from ours, or it would be impossible for them to drink off at a draught, as they really do, their tea and soup scalding hot, (so hot, at least, that an European would have difficulty in even sipping at it,) without the least inconvenience. I have seen three of these gluttons consume a rein-deer at one meal; nor are they nice as to the choice of parts; nothing being lost, not even the contents of the bowels, which, with the aid of fat and blood, are converted into black puddings. "For an instance, in confirmation of this, no doubt, extraordinary statement, I shall refer to the voyages of the Russian admiral, Saritcheff. 'No sooner,' he says, had they stopped to rest or spend the night, than they had their kettle on the fire, which they never left until they pursued their journey, spending the intervals for rest in eating, and, in consequence of no sleep, were drowsy all the next day.' The admiral also says, 'That such extraordinary voracity was never attended with any ill effects, although they made a practice of devouring, at one meal, what would have killed any other person. The labourers,' the admiral says, 'had an allowance of four poods, or one hundred and forty-four English pounds, of fat, and seventy-two pounds of ryeflour; yet in a fortnight they complained of having nothing to eat. Not crediting the fact, the Yakuti said that one of them was accustomed to consume at home, in the space of a day, or twenty-four hours, the hind quarter of a large ox, twenty pounds of fat, and a proportionate quantity of melted butter for his drink. The appearance of the man not justifying the assertion, the admiral had a mind to try his gormandizing powers, and for that purpose he had a thick porridge of rice boiled down with three pounds of butter, weighing together twenty-eight pounds, and although the glutton had already breakfasted, yet did he sit down to it with the greatest eagerness, and consumed the whole without stirring from the spot; and, except that his stomach betrayed more than ordinary fulness, he showed no sign of inconvenience or injury, but would have been ready to renew his gluttony the following day.' So much for the admiral, on the truth of whose account I place perfect reliance."-Vol. 1, p. 193–5. We have room left for only a few anecdotes selected from different parts of the work. "A Siberian Toren. Of all the places I have ever seen, bearing the name of a city or town, this is the most dreary and desolate; my blood froze within me as I beheld and approached the place. All that I have seen in passing rocky or snowy sierras or passes in Spain, in traversing the wastes of Canada, or in crossing the Cordilleras or Andes of North America, the Pyrenees or the Alps, cannot be compared with the desolation of the scene around me! The first considerable halting-place from Yakutsk, the half-way house, is nine hundred or one thousand miles removed from a civilized place. Such a spot gives name to a commissariat, and contains seven habitations of the most miserable kind, inhabited severally by two clergymen, each separate, a non-commissioned officer, and a second in command; a postmaster, a merchant, and an old widow. I have, during my service in the navy, and during a period when seamen were scarce, seen a merchant ship with sixteen guns, and only fifteen men, but I never before saw a town with only seven inhabitants." "A Siberian Luxury.-On the 3d of December I quitted the town of Zashiversk, not ungrateful for the hospitality of its poor inhabitants, who had supplied me with plenty of fish, here eaten in a raw state, and which to this hour I remember as the greatest delicacy I have ever tasted. Spite of our prejudices, there is nothing to be compared to the melting of raw fish in the mouth; oysters, clotted cream, or the finest jelly in the world, is nothing to it; nor is it only a small quantity that may be eaten of this precious commodity. I myself have finished a whole fish, which, in its frozen state, might have weighed two or three pounds, and, with black bis. cuit, and a glass of rye-brandy, have defied either nature or art to prepare a better meal. It is cut up or shaved into slices with a sharp knife, from head to tail, and thence derives the name of stroganĭna; to complete the luxury only salt and pepper were wanting." MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE. TRADITIONARY NOTICES OF THE COUNTESS By the Author of the "Histories of the Scottish Re- Of this venerable lady, who presided over the fashionable world of Edinburgh during the earlier half of the last century, some curious traditionary anecdotes are preserved, which may perhaps amuse the people of an age so different from that in which she flourished. She was the youngest daughter of James, second Earl that stern old Earl, who acted so important a part in the of Loudoun, and consequently was grand-daughter to affairs of the Covenant, and who was Lord Chancellor of Scotland during the troublous times of the Civil War. While very young, (about the beginning of the eighteenth century,) she was married to James, first Viscount P, a nobleman of very dissolute character, and, ladyship, who had a great deal of her grandfather in her, what was worse, of an extremely unhappy temper. Her could have managed most men with great ease, by dint "French Patriotism.-At Ustkamenogorsk I again of superior intellect and force of character; but the partook of the hospitality of the commandant, a French- cruelty of Lord P was too much for her. He treatman; his name is Delancourt, and he has been thirty-ed her so barbarously, that she had even occasion to apfive years in Siberia, doing any thing or nothing; being prehend that he would some day put an end to her life. one of those feeble but respectable individuals, of whom One morning, during the time when she was labouring there are several, that are supported by the liberality of under this dreadful anticipation, she was dressing herthe Russian government. In him I saw the first instance self in her chamber, near an open window, when his of a Frenchman's forgetting his own country; he seemed lordship entered the room behind her, with a drawn entirely divested of the patriotic affection which that sword in his hand. He had opened the door softly, and, fickle nation are supposed to possess, but which, perhaps, although his face indicated a resolution of the most horgenerally exists more in appearance than reality, as rible nature, he still had the presence of mind to approach wherever a Frenchman can do best, there he will settle. her with the utmost caution. Had she not caught a I asked him if he ever intended to return to France? glimpse of his face and figure in her glass, he would, in His reply was, that France was nothing to him.' I all probability, have approached near enough to execute asked him why? He looked at his wife and large fa- his bloody purpose, before she was aware, or could have mily of marriageable daughters, shrugged up his shoul- taken any measures to save herself. Fortunately, she ders, and said, Que voulez vous que j'y fasse ?' and, perceived him in time to leap out of the open window heaving a sigh, left the room. Yet, in spite of his into the street. Half-dressed as she was, she immeteeth, he was still a Frenchman, for the first words upon diately, by a very laudable exertion of her natural good his return were, Ma pauvre France!' I had touched sense, went to the house of Lord P's mother, where a tender string, and, although he is now resigned to his she told her story, and demanded protection. That profate, he says that he has been a bête' for marrying, tection was at once extended; and, it being now thought and begetting an entail which he cannot quit. His so- vain to attempt a reconciliation, they never afterwards ciety, during the few hours that I enjoyed it, was very lived together. agreeable." "Russian Civility.-Among other proofs of their civility, or rather of the interest which Russians take in foreigners, as well as the means they have of making themselves understood, one very strong one occurred to me in a small village. I had learned so much of the language as to know that kchorosho is the Russian word for well, but not that kchudo was the translation for bad. My host, being a good sort of a blunt fellow, was discoursing upon the impropriety of travelling as I did. As I could not comprehend him, I was impatient to go; but he persisted in detaining me till he had made me understand the meaning of kchudo. My extreme stupidity offered a powerful barrier to his design; but a smart slap on one cheek and a kiss on the other, followed by the words kchudo and hchorosho, soon cured my dulness, and I laughed heartily in spite of this mode of instruction." We are sorry poor Cochrane is dead. If disembodied spirits carry their earthly propensities with them into other spheres, he is at this moment walking at the rate of four and a half miles an hour through some of the comets or fixed stars. Lord P. soon afterwards went abroad. During his absence, a foreign conjuror, or fortune-teller, came to Edinburgh, professing, among many other wonderful accomplishments, to be able to inform any person of the present condition or situation of any other person, at whatever distance, in whom the applicant might be interested. Lady P, who had lost all trace of her husband, was incited, by curiosity, to go with a female friend to the lodgings of this person in the Canongate, for the purpose of inquiring regarding his motions. It was at night; and the two ladies went, with the tartan screens or plaids of their servants drawn over their faces, by way of disguise. Lady P- having described the individual in whose fate she was interested, and having expressed a desire to know what he was at present doing, the conjuror led her to a large mirror, in which she distinctly perceived the appearance of the inside of a church, with a marriage-party arranged near the altar. To her infinite astonishment, she recognised in the shadowy bridegroom no other than her husband, Lord Pmagical scene thus so strangely displayed was not exactly like a picture; or, if so, it was rather like the live pictures of the stage, than the dead and immovable delineations of the pencil. It admitted of additions to the persons represented, and of a progress of action. As the The lady gazed on it, the ceremonial of the marriage seemed to proceed. The necessary arrangements had, at last, been all made; the priest seemed to have pronounced the preliminary service; he was just on the point of bidding the bride and bridegroom join hands; when suddenly a gentleman, for whom the rest seemed to have waited a considerable time, and in whom Lady P thought she recognised a brother of her own, then abroad, entered the church, and made hurriedly towards the party. The aspect of this person was at first only that of a friend, who had been invited to attend the ceremony, and who had come too late; but, as he advanced to the party, the expression of his countenance and figure was altered very considerably. He stopped short, his face assumed a wrathful expression, he drew his sword, and he rushed up to the bridegroom, who also drew his weapon. The whole scene then became quite tumultuous and indistinct, and almost immediately after vanished entirely away. When Lady P-got home, she wrote a minute narrative of the whole transaction, taking particular care to note the day and hour when she had seen the mysterious vision. This narrative she sealed up in presence of a witness, and then deposited it in one of her drawers. Soon afterwards, her brother returned from his travels, and came to visit her. She asked if, in the course of his wanderings, he had happened to see or hear any thing of Lord P——. The young man only answered by say ing, that he wished he might never again hear the name of that detested personage mentioned. Lady P, however, questioned him so closely, that he at last confessed having met his lordship, and that under very strange circumstances. Having spent some time at one of the Dutch cities, it was either Amsterdam or Rotterdam, he had become acquainted with a rich merchant, who had a very beautiful daughter, his only child, and the heiress of his enormous fortune. One day his friend, the merchant, informed him that his daughter was about to be married to a Scottish gentleman, who had lately come to reside there. The nuptials were to take place in the course of a few days; and, as he was a countryman of the bridegroom, he was invited to the wedding. He went accordingly, was a little too late for the commencement of the ceremony, but, fortunately, came in time to prevent the union of an amiable young lady to the greatest monster alive in human shape his own brother-in-law, Lord P! Although Lady P had proved her willingness to believe in the magical delineations of the mirror, by writing down an account of them, yet she was so much surprised and confounded by discovering them to be consistent with fact, that she almost fainted away. Something, however, yet remained to be ascertained. Did Lord P's attempted marriage take place exactly at the same time with her visit to the conjuror? To certify this, she asked her brother on what day the circumstance which he related took place. Having been informed, she took out her key, and requested him to go to her chamber, to open a drawer which she described, and to bring her a sealed packet which he would find in that drawer. He did as he was desired, when, the packet being opened, it was discovered that Lady P. had seen the shadowy representation of her husband's abortive nuptials, on the very evening they were transacted in reality. This story, with all its strange and supernatural circumstances, may only excite a smile in the incredulous modern. All that the narrator can say in its favour, is simply this: it fell out in the hands of honourable men and women, who could not be suspected of an intention to impose on the credulity of their friends; it referred to a circumstance which the persons concerned had the least reason in the world for raising a story about; and it was almost universally believed by the contemporaries of the principal personages, and by the generation which succeeded. It was one of the stock traditionary stories of the mother of a distinguished modern novelist; a lady whose rational good sense and strength of mind were only equalled by the irreproachable purity and benevolence of her character. It will also, no doubt, be known to many of our readers, that the author of "Waverley" has wrought up the incident into a beautiful fictitious tale, intitled "My Aunt Margaret's Mirror," which appears in the "Keepsake" for 1829; affording another proof of the slight foundations upon which Sir Walter Scott rears his splendid superstructures of fable, and from what shadowy hints of character he occasionally works out his most noble and most natural portraitures. It will not be amiss here to mention the following amusing traditionary reminiscence of "Beau Forrester, the gentleman to whose shoulders the author of "My Aunt Margaret's Mirror" has chosen to transfer all the guilt of the Viscount P. Beau Forrester, although indulging in the extreme of what is now called dandyism, appears to have been a man of some sense. He evinces considerable gravity, and correctness of thought, in a little tract which he published, and which is now generally attached to the end of the common editions of "Chesterfield's Advice to his Son," intitled, "The Polite Philosopher." That he was, at the time, a despiser, to a certain extent, of the distinction which he acquired as leader of fashions among the young men of his day; and, also, that he held his worshippers in some contempt, seems to be proved by an anecdote which I have heard related by old gentlemen of the last century. In his time, (the reign of George the Second,) gentlemen sometimes wore their natural hair at great length, and nicely dressed; and, at other times, as fashion changed, cut it all away, and assumed prodigious periwigs. Resolving to play a trick upon his herd of imitators, the Beau, one day, suddenly appeared in public with a grand Ramilies, instead of the long-flowing natural ringlets which he had exhibited for a considerable time before. Of course, the barbers were all immediately worried to death for Ramilies wigs; and, in less than a week, there was not a single live hair to be seen in the Parliament Close, the High Street, the Castle-Hill, or any other fashionable promenade about Edinburgh:-from Dan to Beersheba all was barren. Whenever the Beau perceived that the whole crop was fairly cut and carved, in the coolest manner imaginable, he doffed his peruke, and, all at once, to the astonishment and mortification of hundreds, reappeared with his own hair, as fresh and long as ever, it having been concealed all the time under his wig. It is unnecessary to describe or even to hint at the extent of ridicule with which this happy piece of waggery overwhelmed the servum pecus of Beau Forrester. Lord P- ——— died in 1706, leaving a widow who could scarcely be expected to mourn for him. She was still a young and beautiful woman, and might have procured her choice among twenty better matches. Such, however, was the idea she had formed of the married state from her first husband, that she made a resolution never again to become a wife. She kept her resolution for many years, and probably would have done so till the day of her death, but for a very singular circumstance. The celebrated Earl of Stair, who resided in Edinburgh during the greater part of twenty years which he spent in retirement from all official employments, fell deeply in love with her ladyship, and carnestly sued for her hand. If she could have relented in favour of any man, it would have been in favour of one who had acquired so much public honour, and who possessed so much private worth. But she declared also to him her resolution of remaining unmarried. In his desperation, he resolved upon an expedient by which he might obviate her scruples, but which was certainly improper in a moral point of view. By dint of bribes to her domestics, he got himself insinuated, over night, into a small room in her ladyship's house, where she used to say her prayers every morning, and the window of which looked out upon the principal street of the city. At this window, when the morning was a little advanced, he showed himself, en deshabille, to the people passing along the street; an exhibition which threatened to have such a fatal effect upon her ladyship's reputation, that she saw fit to accept of him for a husband. She was more happy as Countess of Stair than she had been as Lady P. Yet her new husband had one failing, which occasioned her much and frequent uneasiness. Like all other gentlemen at that period, he sometimes indulged over much in the bottle. When elevated with liquor, his temper, contrary to the general case, was by no means improved. Thus, on his reaching home, after any little debauch, he generally had a quarrel with his wife, and sometimes even treated her person with violence. On one particular occasion, when quite transported beyond the bounds of reason, he gave her so severe a blow upon the upper part of the face, as to occasion the effusion of blood. He immediately after fell asleep, altogether unconscious of what he had done. Lady Stair was so completely overwhelmed by a tumult of bitter and poignant feeling, that she made no attempt to bind up her little wound. She sat down on a sofa near her torpid husband, and wept and bled till morning. When his lordship awoke, and perceived her dishevelled and bloody figure, he was surprised to the last degree, and eagerly inquired how she came to be in such an unusual condition? She answered by detailing to him the whole history of his conduct on the preceding evening; which stung him so deeply with regret,-for he was a nobleman of the most generous feelings, that he instantly vowed to his wife never afterwards to take any species of drink, except what was first passed through her hands. This vow he kept most scrupulously till the day of his death. He never afterwards sat in any convivial company where his lady could not attend to sanction his potations with her permission. Whenever he gave any entertainment, she always sat next him and filled his wine, till it was necessary for her to retire; af. ter which, he drank only from a certain quantity which she had first laid aside. to make a few preliminary observations on the nature of heat. Although the sun is the great fountain of light, the heat upon its surface is probably not greater than that of our own globe; for, as caloric is given out when water is poured into acids or alcohol, so the heat of the sun is, in all likelihood, produced by the rays of light mingling with, or passing through, our atmosphere. In proof of this, it will always be found, that as the air increases in rarity, the heat decreases in intensity, and vice versa ;-that beyond the limits of the atmosphere eternal cold exists in the most brilliant sunshine; that the denser the air, the greater the heat; and, finally, that the ocean would be congealed into a solid waste of ice, were there no atmosphere surrounding the world, though the beams of a luminary, a thousand times brighter than our orb of day, shone upon it. Although the coast of Peru is one of the hottest climates in the world, those who gradually ascend the Cordilleras from it, observe that the heat progressively decreases; so that when they have got to the valley of Quito, at the height of about 1400 toises above the level of the sea, the thermometer, in the course of the whole year, scarcely rises 13 or 14 degrees above Zero. If they ascend still higher, this temperature is succeeded by a severe winter; and when they get to the perpendicular height of about 2400 toises, they meet with nothing, even under the equinoctial line, but eternal ice. Some philosophers, it is true, account for the decrease of temperature, by arguing that the warmth which is experienced at the surface of the earth is not merely the direct heat of the sun, but of several causes united; and in particular, that the heat of the plains and valleys is owing to the reflection and absorption of the sun's rays from, and into, the ground. But this solution of the difficulty does not seem so satisfactory as that which refers it to the comparative rarity or density of the air. To illustrate the subject, let us have recourse to one or two simple experiments :-Place a piece of ice under the receiver of an air-pump; exhaust the atmosphere, and transmit the rays of the sun from a burning mirror or convex lens upon the ice, within the receiver-the The Earl of Stair died in the year 1747, (at Queens-brilliant focus will be seen to have no effect upon the berry House, in the Canongate, Edinburgh,) leaving congealed mass. Allow the mirror or lens to remain, her ladyship again a widow. She lived all the rest of and admit the air; the ice will then immediately begin her life, in dotarial state, at Edinburgh; where a close, to melt. Again, place a piece of ice in a transparent or alley, in which she resided, still bears her name. She receiver, and let the air be compressed; the frozen matdied in the year 1759. ter will be observed to dissolve rapidly, without any other assistance than the beams of day passing through the condensed medium. Again, let us suppose a globe of sand-stone to represent the earth; a flagon, the sun, and a quart of alcohol in it, the light of the sun; pour the spirit from the flagon, (or light from the sun,) upon the ball of sand-stone, until it be quite saturated-still there will be no heat; but suppose this sphere were surrounded by (we shall call it) an atmosphere of water, immediately upon the alcohol mingling with the water, heat would be evolved; the globe would absorb the warmth from its atmosphere; and while the stream of spirit, falling from the flagon upon the sphere, was cold as ice, the water around the ball would be of a pleasant, and even hot, temperature." It is exactly so with the sun and its light, the earth and its atmosphere. As oceans of alcohol alone could afford no warmth to the globe of sand-stone, so we might look in vain for heat without air, though oceans of light enveloped the world a thousand times denser than what is now flow. ing from the orb of day. SCIENCE. POPULAR REMARKS ON COMETS, AND OTHER "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy work." PSALMS OF DAVID. . THE modern theory of comets has pretty clearly established, that these apparently flaming bodies, which were so long believed to be immense balls of fire, may, on the contrary, be worlds inhabited by beings in every respect like ourselves, possessing vegetables similar to our own, and suffering no sensible change in temperature, on advancing from the distance of 11,200,000,000 miles from the sun, to within a third part of the semidiameter of that luminary. That the reader may be enabled to form any accurate notion of the weight which ought to be attached to this theory, it will be necessary For a similar cause, the planet Mercury, having a Sulphuric acid has such an affinity for water, that they will unite in any proportion; and the combination takes place with the production of an intense heat. When four parts, by weight, Sir Isaac Newton computed the heat of the comet, seen by of the acid are suddenly mixed with one of water, the temperahim in 1680, to be 2000 times hotter than red-hot iron. ture of the mixture rises, according to Dr Ure, to 300° F. |