The spirits of all time Are but the swelling waves of one vast ocean. Like all true poets, Patrick Scott has a lively faith in "the good time coming." There is an eloquent apostrophe descriptive of this world in the future,— defecated of its prolific sources of misery and woe, and trodden by a new and holier race of men and women, from which we are tempted to select a brief sentence or two, and shall then close our notice of this poem. I see the sunless earth lit up with rays From the light-crownéd heads of million things And now I view cast down from his old throne The unholy god of gold; upon his neck Poverty that lacks nothing plants its foot, And raising its clear forehead from the earth, Looks in the world's broad face without a blush. The lowly cottage Becomes a palace of the kingly soul; Its vital links around, and binds together The other principal poem, Hervor, Mr. Scott informs us, is based upon an ancient Scandinavian tale, in Keightley's "Fairy Mythology," but that he has erected his own superstructure thereon, and he has certainly, in that case, made very free with his model, for this poem is written in a serio-comic vein, somewhat after the fashion of the " Ingoldsby Legends." It is largely made up of political references, and as such things are unsuited to our columns, we pass this poem by with the remark, that it furnishes an illustration of the fertile powers of our author, and is well written. The minor poems at the end of the volume must not be passed over in silence. "The Soul and its Dwelling," "Life and Death," and "Phases of Being," are all of them full of esoteric meaning and beauty; each of them might serve as the theme of a long discourse, and would yield a profitable return for the thought so consumed. We, however, can only point them out, and direct the thoughtful reader, anxious to cultivate a further acquaintance with the author, to the volume itself. A poem, headed England," also claims to be, at all events, men 66 tioned for its merit. We take our leave then, for the present, of Patrick Scott, with the hope that we may soon meet him again. His volume entitles him to be ranked among the worthiest candidates for the Valhalla of England, when that institution is erected. A little more experience in the active world of life will entitle him to the fuller honours of his high calling. We urge him to continue his labours, for in his poems we recognize a heart brim-full of beauty and truth; he has an earnest spirit, of which in the volume before us we trace results here and there; and we would entreat him to give these impulses ample scope, -scorning what poor Thomas Hood called the "rust of antiquity;" we would have him identify himself with the wants and necessities, the hopes and aspirations, which move within the breasts of the men of the present generation. Here is a large field for the most useful exercise of the poet's powers, and Patrick Scott is certainly a poet. POOR GENTEEL WOMEN. A VOICE on behalf of the genteel poor has issued from the Scottish metropolis, which is well worthy of being listened to.* It pleads for the large and perhaps increasing class of single women, brought up in genteel habits, accustomed in their youth to comfort, and perhaps affluence, but who are left in their mature years to poverty and want. The number of such women, in proportion to the rest of the population, is perhaps greater in Scotland than in England, and for this reason-that a large number of the well-educated young men, belonging to the middle classes of that country, emigrate to other lands in pursuit of fortune, leaving their sisters and female relatives at home. Some go to the States, some to Australia, and many enter the East-Indian Service as soldiers, as surgeons, and in other capaci ties. But the young women cannot emigrate as their brothers do; and thus it happens that you often find in large families there, the sons have gone abroad, and the daughters are left at home.t Some of these may be chosen as wives; but many remain "Old maids," or as this writer expresses it, "Poor Scotch old maids." As things go now, women are educated into the notion that marriage is their destiny, their "mission;" and certain it is, that except in the cases of women of stronger character than the average, one who has not succeeded in drawing the prize of a husband (sad blanks some of them turn out in the end), is regarded as a sort of failure in life, and she cannot help regarding herself in something of the same light. We have not yet got into the way of looking on woman as a self-dependent being, created to stand, and act, and live alone, with powers of self-help and of independent life and progress within herself; but regard her as a kind of appendage of man,-an accessory, an ornament,subject to man, contingent upon him, living for and through him, and dependent on his good pleasure for the means of comfort, happiness, and well-being. Doubtless, this arises in a great measure from the exceedingly imperfect intellectual culture of our women, whom we sedulously educate into weakness because it is "interesting," and cram with all manner of useless accomplishments, because they are showy and "attractive." But whatever the cause, certain it is, that there is a larger amount of struggling poverty among the genteel classes, as they are called, in this country, than most people dream of, or perhaps than they would like to encounter. Look around your own circle. You know of many cases such as this: A seemingly prosperous man is engaged in the full tide of successful business; he drives a large trade, and counts his gains by thousands. He has a family of sons and daughters, whom he educates at boarding-schools, in all the current knowledge and trifling of the day. They are carefully tended and kept. They know no want. They are thoroughly genteel, and have a large visiting acquaintance. Their characters, such as they are, become fashioned and formed after the most approved notions. But suddenly a reverse occurs an unfortunate speculation, a bad season; great losses fall suddenly upon the merchant, and he finds himself a ruined man. You have a genteel family reduced at once to a state of the most galling Poor Old Scotch Maids, and how to avoid becoming one Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter. †Thus the last census of Edinburgh shows, that there is an excess of females over males in the New Town of Edinburgh (the genteel quarter), of 28 per cent, while the excess in the Old Town (the poor quarter), is only 7. poverty; not merely the poverty of the poor, but the poverty of the genteel, an infinitely sadder and more intolerable thing. Or, a professional man dies suddenly, and when his affairs are wound up, it is found that he had lived fully up to his income; that those gay parties of his had absorbed all his spare gains; and that he had not insured his life, or if so, then for a very inconsiderable amount. His widow and daughters fall at once into the ranks of the poor genteel. As for the sons, in such cases they can usually shift for themselves; but how long is it before they can do anything towards helping their poor female relatives. By the time they reach manhood they have contracted ties of their own, most probably got married, and can do very little to relieve the straits of their poor sisters, who quietly subside into the state of threadbare poor gentlewomen. You perhaps suggest that they might bestir themselves, and make a living by entering upon some business pursuit. Not they, indeed! You must remember that they were genteelly educated and brought up, and genteel notions never cease to cling to them, often the more closely the smaller their means of living. They are disposed to be most industrious, too; they are ready to work their fingers off at plain sewing, crochet, netting, or needlework of any kind, but to keep a shop! Goodness gracious! how could you ever dream of anything so horribly ungenteel! This reluctance to enter upon any of the pursuits of trade, by persons suffering the keenest pangs of distress, may seem ludicrous; but it is strictly true, as the experience of most persons will confirm. Here is the kind of retreat of the decayed gentle woman "We could enter with you their little room, with its too-often fireless fire-place, its bare floor, or at best worn carpet, its old table, and two or three chairs. We find all scrupulously clean, but somewhat bare and comfortless. We perceive an old lady, perhaps fifty or sixty, or even seventy years of age, quite alone. Possibly she seems rather startled as we enter, not being accustomed to visitors. Her minister looks in upon her now and then, and save he, no one ever troubles her. For days she sits in her little room, without seeing a human being, or having addressed to her a human voice, never going out, except occasionally in the evening, to purchase her marvellously few necessaries, or to her employer with her bit of work. She has neither relatives nor friends who do provide for her, whatever they ought to do. It is wonderful how the Scotch mist hangs midway on the hill, at the bottom of which dwell poor relations. They cannot from their altitude see through it. She works on with quietness there, and eats her own bread, having been often made to feel, by bitter experience, the wisdom of the warning, Neither go thou in thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity, for better is a neighbour that is near than a brother that is far off.' "Perhaps we have called about term time; this may well account for her looking somewhat scared. The rent that great and terrible thought of the virtuous poor is never out of her mind, and she may not have got it scraped together. Well does she know that disappointed landlords' emissaries are somewhat unpolished, and that house agents are in noways obsequious to such as she; and wonderful to say, spite of all she has undergone in her rough passage through the world, as the daughter of a gentleman, she shrinks somewhat still from vulgar abuse. "The old lady, we observe, is neat even to pre ciseness, though her garments are somewhat threadbare. She is probably dressed in mourning, for black looks long respectable. We have known a black shawl last such a one for ten years, and be thereafter re-dyed nearly as many times. As for a black gown, why it turns with them so often, one gets giddy to think of it. She has the manners and speech of a lady; and no wonder, for her father was probably an officer in the army or navy, mayhap a clergyman, and she was reared and educated as the daughter of a gentleman. She is very old, you see, and apparently half-blind, but, still she has work in her hands. Her needle has long stitched her body and soul together, as it has done to many a poor sufferer; and its monotonous stitch, stitch, is often the only sound that breaks on her ear for days. She can't, of course, afford to be idle while we remain so; as we converse with her, her old fingers tremble on at their task. She lives by her labour. Little as she can earn, she would starve if she could not earn it. She is busy while we stay, having learnt the poor's lesson, to talk and work together. 'Does she bore us with a story of her sufferings, telling us that, like Gideon's fleece, she is left dry, while the fertilizing dew falls on all around her? No; you are a stranger to her (though she knows us of old), and you may leave her little room and say, as we attempt to shut her clattering old door, which will not sneck, What a nice old lady, so cheerful and contented!' and you may conclude that the nice old lady is not in very straitened circumstances, even though she is in such an inaccessible crow's-nest. You were quite right in saying she was contented, but grievously wrong as to her circumstances. She pays £4 a year for her little room, and in the depth of winter she has a bit of fire to maintain in her tiny grate, and she requires gas or candle light; and, proh pudor! must pay her taxes. And all this she does out of about 4s. a week, which she earns by sewing or knitting from seven o'clock in the morning till eleven o'clock at night. And after meeting all demands, she has, really we cannot tell what, to keep soul and body together. Bread and water, you suggest? Why, she may get sufficient of the latter, but of the former, alas! cheap as is the loaf, we fear her quota exceeds not that of the gross knight's proportion to his pottles of sack." An over-coloured picture, does the reader exclaim? Not at all. There are thousands of such in all great towns, and especially in the older and more aristocratic ones; some of these poor ladies literally starving, because they are too proud to beg. Our author states it as a fact, that not fewer than 600 applications for aid had been made to one charitable institution in three years, by ladies, most of whose incomes were positively and literally under £10 per annum. That there are multitudes of young women in a similarly poor condition, let the hosts of applications for every advertised situation of governess-no matter how miserable the remuneration offered-be the answer. In one case mentioned by our author, a Home Missionary discovers two ladies, both governesses, competent to teach French, drawing, &c., who had sold every disposable article of furniture, and were actually without food, having passed one entire day without a morsel to eat! Another old single lady, the daughter of a major in the army, who had served with distinction in the American wars and on the continent, was found among the starving and destitute applicants to a benevolent society. She had been destitute since the death of the last of her brothers, who was an admiral. Another was a squire's daughter, brought up a lady, but reduced to destitution, yet managing somehow to maintain herself and an imbecile brother. Here is another case, described by the sufferer herself, in her application to the benevolent institution : "I am above fifty years of age; my father was Esq., a West Indian planter, whose income, at one time, amounted to £3,000 a year; but who, in consequence of sad reverses of fortune, died insolvent. I was a governess for a period of sixteen years, teaching the usual plain branches of education, with French, music, drawing, and the elements of Latin. For seven years past I have been afflicted with an incurable illness, which renders me utterly unable to contribute to my own support; and for the last four years I have been constantly confined to bed. I live with a sister, whose income, barely sufficing to meet her own wants, is dependent on a very precarious source, viz., on private teaching. To no other relative can I look for help in my straitened circumstances, the few relatives I have being unable to render me any assistance. I have no annuity or income of any kind from any source whatever." Her minister testifies of this applicant, that "all the statements made by her are true: she is quite a lady in education and feeling." Lamentable issue of £3,000 a year! How is this state of things to be remedied? The author of this pithy little brochure submits a scheme for the public consideration, and it is well worthy of attention. He proposes the adoption of a system of annuities for single women on an extensive scale, by which the survivors at fifty years of age shall be placed beyond the reach of want. He insists that parents should, from the birth of every female child, provide against their being abandoned to destitution in their old age. He argues, and with some force, that Life Assurance does not meet the difficulties of the case; for it is out of the power of most parents whose incomes range from £150 to £300 a year to pay the heavy premiums of insurance, necessary to provide even a trifle, at their death, for each member of their family; and even where they do this, at the sacrifice possibly of the education of the children, the provision for old age of the daughters would not be thereby secured. He proposes, therefore, that parents should enter their female children, at birth, in the books of a Female Mutual Aid Society, where the payment of less than a penny a day for each child would secure a provision of £225 on reaching the age of fifty years; and for less than 2d. a day, £450, thus quadrupling the sum paid. By increasing the payment, of course the provision would be proportionably increased. Should the nominee die before the age of fifty, all interest in the fund, so far as that member was concerned, would be lost; but then all who survived beyond fifty, would secure the benefits intended. There are certain details in the scheme which it would take too much space to describe here. We merely give the outline idea of the author's plan. If it could be carried into effect, and our impression is that the plan is one that will work, it would certainly prove an infinite source of comfort, both to parents and female children. It would cultivate the habit of providence and forethought, and tend to elevate the moral and social condition of men, not less than of women, cheer many lonely hours now dark and troubled, and rob old age of one of its greatest terrors; and by directing the thoughts of parents to the future of their female children, such a scheme as this would ultimately encourage them to improve the culture of their minds, in whose neglected or perverted education, much of the so-called "Woman's weakness" has its real origin. POSSESSIONS. What are possessions? To an individual, the stores of his own heart and mind pre-eminently. His truth and valour are amongst the first; his contentedness, or his resignation may be put next. Then his sense of beauty, surely a possession of great moment to him. Then all those mixed possessions which result from the social affections,-great possessions, unspeakable delights, much greater than the gift last mentioned in the former class, but held on more uncertain tenure. Lastly, what are generally called possessions. However often we have heard of the vanity, uncertainty, and vexation that beset these last, we must not let this repetition deaden our minds to the fact. Now, national possessions must be estimated by the same gradation that we have applied to individual possessions. If we consider national luxury, we shall see how small a part it may add to national happiness. Men of deserved renown and peerless women lived upon what we should now call the coarsest fare, and paced the rushes in their rooms with as high or as contented thoughts as their better-fed and betterclothed descendants can boast of. Man is limited in this direction, I mean in the things that concern his personal gratification; but when you come to the higher enjoyments, the expansive power both in him and them is greater. As Keats says, A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. What then are a nation's possessions? The great words that have been said in it; the great deeds that have been done in it; the great buildings and the great works of art that have been made in it. A man says a noble saying,-it is a possession, first to his own race, then to mankind. A people get a noble building built for them; it is an honour to them, also a daily delight and instruction; it perishes, the remembrance of it is still a possession. If it was indeed pre-eminent, there will be more pleasure in thinking of it than in being with others of inferior order and design. On the other hand, a thing of ugliness is potent for evil; it deforms the taste of the thoughtless, it frets the man who knows how bad it is, it is a disgrace to the nation who raised it, an example and an occasion for more monstrosities. If it is a great building in a great city, thousands of people pass it daily, and are the worse for it, or at least not the better: it must be done away with. Next to the folly of doing a bad thing is that of fearing to undo it: we must not look at what it has cost, but at what it is. Millions may be spent upon some foolish device, which will not the more make it into a possession, but only a more noticeable detriment. It must not be supposed that works of art are the only or the chief public improvements needed in any country. Wherever men congregate, the elements become scarce: the supply of air, light, and water is then a matter of the highest public importance; and the magnificent utilitarianism of the Romans should precede the nice sense of beauty of the Greeks, or rather, the former should be worked out in the latter. Sanatory improvements, like most good works, may be made to fulfil many of the best human objects; charity, social order, conveniency of living, and the love of the beautiful, may all be furthered by such improvements. A people is seldom so well employed as when, not suffering their attention to be absorbed by foreign quarrels and domestic broils, they bethink themselves of winning back those blessings of nature which assemblages of men mostly vitiate, exclude, or destroy.-Friends in Council. For Amatus Lusitanus relates the case of a monk who fainted when he beheld a rose, and never quitted his cell while that flower was blooming. Orfila (a less questionable authority) gives the account of the painter Vincent, who was seized with violent vertigo, and swooned, when there were roses in the room. Valtain gives the history of an officer who was thrown into convulsions, and lost his senses, by having pinks in his chamber. Orfila also relates the instance of a lady, forty-six years of age, of a hale constitution, who could never be present when a decoction of linseed was preparing, without being troubled in the course of a few minutes with a general swelling of the face, followed by fainting and a loss of the intellectual faculties, which symptoms continued for four-and-twenty hours. Montaigne remarks, on this subject, that there were men who dreaded an apple more than a cannon-ball. Zimmerman tells us of a lady who could not endure the feeling of silk and satin, and shuddered when touching the velvety skin of a peach other ladies cannot bear the feel of fur. Boyle records the case of a man who experienced a natural abhorrence of honey; a young man invariably fainted when the servant swept his room. Hippocrates mentions one Nicanor who swooned whenever he heard a flute, and Shakspere has alluded to the strange effect of the bagpipe. Boyle fell into a syncope when he heard the splashing of water; Scaliger turned pale at the sight of water-cresses; Erasmus experienced febrile symptoms when smelling fish; the Duke d'Epernon swooned on beholding a leveret, although a hare did not produce the same effect; Tycho Brahe fainted at the sight of a fox; Henry III., of France, at that of a cat; and Marshal d'Albret at a pig. The horror that whole families entertain of cheese is well known.-Dr. Millingen. FLATTERY is like a flail, which, if not adroitly used, will box your own ears instead of tickling those of the corn. EVERY one is at least in one thing, against his will, original;-in his manner of sneezing. WOMAN'S silence, although it is less frequent, signifies much more than man's. REALITY plants a thorny hedge around our dreaming, while the sporting-ground of the possible is ever free and open. THERE is much novelty that is without hope, much antiquity without sacredness. WE should use a book as the bee does a flower. THAT charity is bad which takes from independence its proper pride, from mendicity its salutary shame. POMPOUS fools may be compared to alembics, for in their slowness of speech, and dulness of apprehension, they give you, drop by drop, an extract of the simples they contain. IT is a peculiar felicity to be praised by a person who is himself eminently a subject of praise. NOTHING makes one so indifferent to the pin and mosquito thrusts of life as the consciousness of growing better. THE intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves. WHOLESOME sentiment is rain, which makes the fields of daily life fresh and odorous. THE improbabilities of experience are many, the impossibilities are few. PEOPLE should travel, if for no other reason than to receive every now and then a letter from home; the place of our birth never appears so beautiful as when it is out of sight. ROMANCE is the truth of imagination and boyhood. LITERATURE is a garden, books are particular views of it, and readers are visitors. MEN are made to be eternally shaken about, but women are flowers that lose their beautiful colours in the noise and tumult of life. THE triumphs of truth are the most glorious, chiefly because they are the most bloodless of all victories, deriving their highest lustre from the number of saved, not of the slain. IF we examine the subject, it is not pride that makes us angry, but the want of foundation for pride; and for this reason humility often displeases us as much. LET every one protect himself from a sullen, egotistical spirit, for there can be none worse. BIOGRAPHY is useless which is not true. The weaknesses of character must be preserved, however insignificant or humbling; they are the errata of genius, and clear up the text. Printed by Cox (Brothers) & WYMAN, 74-75, Great Queen Street, London; and published by CHARLES COOK, at the Office of the Journal, 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street. MACHINES AND MEN. "SHE can do everything but speak!" said an admiring mechanist, pointing to the steam-engine. "She can drive spindles, pump water, plough land, print books, saw timber, impel ships, draw long trains of passengers, excavate docks, beat and weld iron, hammer gold-leaf, draw copper wire, make pins, weave cotton, twine thread, carve wood, mould bricks,-in short, there's nothing she can't do, except speak. There isn't a machine but she can drive. This steam-engine is the wonder of the world!" Look at the machines to which steam is linked as the grand moving power. Their number is endless. Coal and water is all the food the steam-engine requires; and she goes on without ceasing, by night and day, never wearied, never jaded, needing no rest, nor sleep, nor recreation-only a little cleaning now and then, and a little oil. Her bowels are iron, her heart is fire, and her blood water. There is something almost sublime in her movements, reminding one of the wheelings of the world in space-supremely indifferent to all human considerations of weal or woe. She goes on in her majestic course with the power of a giant, and yet a child can control her. But the steam-engine is linked with human destinies,very closely so indeed. Man has invented this wonderful machine, and she works and rests at his bidding. With all her power, the steam-engine is the slave of our race-more devoted and powerful by far than all the slaves that Aladdin could conjure up by the aid of his wonderful lamp. That the age has grown mechanical, has become a trite saying. There are machines now in existence, and almost daily invented, into which man seems to have put his own powers of thinking. We can perform nearly every kind of labour by means of mechanism. The last invention of the American reapingmachine is an illustration of the progress we are making in this respect. We have machines to weave cotton fabrics, to make cloth, to spin thread, to manufacture all sorts of iron and wood; indeed there is scarcely a department of industry to which machinery is not extensively and increasingly applied. It is calculated that the machinery of Great Britain is at this day equal to not fewer than one thousand millions of human beings with only their naked hands to aid them! Machinery has reached every [PRICE 1d. department of labour. We even sweep our streets by its aid. By machines we can fold newspapers and envelopes, and make gloves, shirts, boots, and shoes. The chimney-sweeping machine goes up our chimneys. The calculating machine works our log. arithms for us. So far has this mechanical progress gone, that Carlyle has even proposed to erect castmetal machines to be placed at the corners of our streets, to preach sermons! One of the most extensive and prosperous of our branches of industry now-a-days is that of machinemaking. The raw material of iron goes into the machine-shop, and is there made into machines by other machines,-machines that hammer the iron, weld it into various forms, turn it, bore it, rivet the pieces together, the man acting chiefly as a watcher and a fitter. Thus machines go on infinitely multiplying machines, and capital multiplying capital. The prodigious power of machinery, however, is yet but in its infancy; and the time seems to be fast approaching when nearly the whole labour of the world will be done by machinery,-when iron, coal, and water, will be the great workers or drudges in the production of all the fabrics and commodities required for the sustenance, the clothing, and the housing, of the great family of man. In England, our powers of producing wearing fabrics of cotton, woollen, and flax, are such, that there is no conceivable demand that we could not more than overtake,-the only limit being in the supply of the raw materials. Every now and then we hear of the markets of the world being "glutted" with British goods, the product of our enormous mechanical power. And machinery is in like manner capable of being applied to the operations of agriculture-as the steam-plough, the American reaping-machine, and the steam thrashing machine-only the commencement of mechanical improvements in this wide field, have recently shown. The same power is equally capable of application in all other branches of industry. Among the many interesting articles shown in the late Exhibition, were the "labour-saving machines." Some of these were of the most curious description. There was one for forming hemispherical, or domeshaped, paper shades for lamps! Another for folding pamphlets and newspapers! Another for packing dry substances in paper, printing the labels for such packages, and subsequently pasting the labels thereon; |