The not think it possible it should give | an unexpected difficulty, in making offence. I think psalms, written successful experiments, in reference with great and noble simplicity, to the rotation of the earth, on and sung in the same manner, Bunker Hill Monument. friendly to devotion; and it is almost an offence to call in the aid of insensible and inanimate things to praise the Giver of life and reason. A psalm, decently sung by the congregation, always excites my devotion more than the organ. I would employ musical instruments in a pagan temple, but only the voice of man in a Christian church. (Lady M. W. Montagu to Dr. Beattie.) difficulty, not insuperable, is found in the influences of sun light and heat, in changing the centre of gravity in the monument. The stones in the structure follow the universal law of expansion under the influence of the sun, and hence the Monument, during a bright day, is based northward to about three-fourths of an inch, so changing the centre of gravity and the point of oscillation that distance. This natural and curious fact compels PROFESSOR HORSFORD'S MONUMENT the Professor to change the point EXPERIMENT. from which the long pendulum is suspended once or twice each day, more or less according to the length and intenseness of the heat of the day." TOBACCO. It is wonderful (says an American journal) to think that the Bunker Hill Monument is bending like a bow backward and forward every day by the influence of the sun! As the sun during mid-day shines on the south side of it, that side A tobacco-seller is the only man expands, becomes longer than the that finds good in it, which others north side, and the consequence is brag of, but do not; for it is meat, that it bends over towards the drink, and clothes to him. No man north. The same must be true of opens his ware with greater seriall other tall monuments, and also ousness, or challenges your judgof tall chimneys-for some of the ment more in the approbation. latter are 500 feet high. This His shop is the rendezvous of spitmovement is not simply from the ting, where men dialogue with their south towards the north as at mid-noses, and their communication is day, but in the morning it must be westerly at noon northerly, and in the evening easterly. These results have been unexpectedly ascertained by Professor Horsford with his pendulum. And thus it has ever been in scientific pursuits, while searching carefully after one object, another is unexpectedly found. Herschel, for instance, in trying to find the parallax of the fixed stars was astonished to find them whirling by twos, threes, and fours, around each other. The Boston Cabinet thus informs us:"We learn from good authority that Professor Horsford meets with smoke. It is the place only where Spain is commended, and preferred before England itself. He should be well experienced in the world, for he has daily trial of men's nostrils, and none is better acquainted with humours. He is the piecing commonly of some other trade, which is bad to his tobacco, and that to his wife, which is the flame that follows his smoke.— (Bishop Earle.) RESOLUTION OF A DISAPPOINTED If I be destined to make any progress in the world, it will be by my own individual exertions. As rageous when you seize him, but I elbow my way through the crowded vale of life, I will never in any emergency call on my selfish neighbour for assistance. If my strength give way beneath the pressure of calamity, I shall sink without his whine of hypocritical condolence; and if I do sink, let him kick me into the ditch, and go about his business. I asked not his assistance while living; it will be of no service to me when dead. (Henry Kirke White.) you must clap on a strait waist- A FAITHFUL SCRIBE IN THE FIELD IBRAHIM PASHA'S AUTOGRAPH. I now dismounted from my During Ibrahim Pasha's visit to horse, and asked (without much England, in the summer of 1846, hope) if any one had pen and pahis autograph was requested for per? "Sahib !" replied a wellthe royal album. He was obliged known voice behind me; and, turnto confess that he was unable to ing, I observed Suddah Sookh, the write. Yet how could he refuse moonshee of my office, pulling out a request from such a quarter? a Cachmere pen-box and paper Various expedients were succes-from his girdle, just as quickly as sively proposed and rejected for if he had been in cutcherry. He compromising matters. At length, however, it was suggested that he should learn to write his name for the occasion. A copy was marked for him, as for a school-boy, and after one or two unsuccessful attempts, he managed to produce a tolerable resemblance of his name; and the royal album can boast the first and last autograph of the great Egyptian warrior. "We have this anecdote," says Frazer's Magazine, "from one who witnessed the whole proceeding." A MADMAN'S ART. A madman was conveyed from Rye to Bedlam. They slept in the Borough, and he suspected whether they were taking him. He rose before sunrise, went to Bedlam, and told there that the next day he should bring them a patient, "but that, in order to lead him willingly, he had been persuaded that I am mad; accordingly I shall come as the madman. He will be very out had no sword, or other implements of war, but merely the writing materials with which it was his duty to be furnished; and, though he looked serious and grave, he was perfectly calm amid the roar of hostile cannon, and men's heads occasionally going off before his eyes. "What are you doing here, Suddah Sookh?" I asked in astonishment. He put up his hands respectfully, and answered, "My place is with my master! I live by his service; and when he dies, I die!" A more striking instance of the quiet endurance of the Hindoo character I never saw.—(Edwardes' Year on the Punjab Frontier.) LONG SOUNDING LINE. The United States Government has in process of construction at Plymouth, a line ten thousand yards long. The object is to sound the Atlantic Ocean, and ascertain its depth and the exact shape of its bottom in every part. This is an POMPEIAN DRAWING-ROOM. 365 important point among scientific | been peopled by many colonies sucmen. The deepest spot reached as cessively leaving the continent of yet, is off the west coast of the Europe, from the epoch of the midCape of Good Hope. Capt. Ross, dle tertiary formation up to our of the British navy, found the depth own. When a vast continent exa little more than five miles. At tended from the Mediterranean reother places no bottom has been gions to the British islands, the touched at that depth. The line plants of the Asturias, and those of now in construction will probably Armorica, peopled the south of be too short-5 miles and 120 yards. England and Ireland. To this period The highest mountains reach up- succeeded the glacial epoch, during wards of five miles, and thus we which the lands were immerged to know the inequality of the surface the depth of about thirteen hundred of the earth-the distance between or fourteen hundred feet. This is its depths and loftiest heights-to the period of the migration of the be ten miles. Geologists are trying Arctic plants, which still inhabit to learn what has caused these ele- the tops of the Scottish mountains. vations and depressions. When these lands emerged anew, England was united to France, the temperature being such as it is at present. At this time, the great German floral invasion took place, absorbing, so to speak, all the rest, and leaving very slight remains of them. Thus, while the Asturian plants, those of the south, are reduced to a small number of species confined to the southwest of Ireland, the hardy vegetables of the north completed their conquest. The colonization being completed, England became separated from the Continent.- (Professor Balfour's Manual of Botany.) A ridge in the bottom of the Atlantic extends eastwardly from the island of Newfoundland, forming the great fishing banks. It is thought to reach all the way across to Ireland, which is in its due direction, for the Gulf Stream is there deflected to the east and south. If such a range exists, it may be available for laying telegraph wires upon it. Behring's Straits are quite shallow, and so are the Straits of Gibraltar. Between Pernambuco, in South America, and Liberia, in Africa, is the narrowest part of the Atlantic south of Greenland. At the rate of the fastest steamers it may be crossed in about three days; and probably it is also shoal for forming future telegraph lines. BRITISH PLANTS. The observations of Watson and Forbes lead to the conclusion, that with the exception of Eriocaulon septangulare Jointed Pipewort), the British islands do not contain a single plant which is not found on the continent of Europe. These islands, therefore, cannot be considered as a centre of vegetation, but as having been colonized by successive vegetable migrations. Their opinion as to the origin of British plants is, that these islands have BULWER'S POMPEIAN DRAWING-ROOM. In 1841, the author of Pelham lived in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, in a small house, which he fitted up after his own taste; and an odd melée of the classic and the baronial certain of the rooms presented. One of the drawing-rooms, we remember, was in the Elizabethan style, with an imitative oak ceiling, bristled with pendants; and this room opened into another apartment, a fac-simile of a chamber which Bulwer had visited at Pompeii, with vases, candelabra, and other furniture to correspond. James Smith has left a few notes of his visit here :-" Our host,” he 66 says, "lighted a perfumed pastille, der cloud of hot ashes chides thy modelled from Vesuvius. As soon as the cone of the mountain began to blaze, I found myself an inhabitant of the devoted city; and, as Pliny the elder, thus addressed Bulwer, my supposed nephew:'Our fate is accomplished, nephew! Hand me yonder volume. I shall die as a student in my vocation. Do thou hasten to take refuge on board the fleet at Misenum. Yon longer delay. Feel no alarm for me; I shall live in story. The author of Pelham will rescue my name from oblivion.' Pliny the younger made me a low bow, &c." We strongly suspect James of quizzing our host." He noted, by the way, that in the chamber were the busts of Hebe, Laura, Petrarch, Dante, and other worthies; Laura like our Queen. 66 TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSLATORS. LADY BACON. no need of the slightest emendation. The translator received on this occasion a letter from the primate, full of high and just compliments to her talents and erudition. Lady Bacon displayed at an early age her capacity, application, and industry, by translating, from the Italian of Bernardine Octine, twenty-five sermons on the ab- Lady Bacon survived her husstruse doctrines of predestination band, and died about the beginning and election. This performance of the reign of James I., at Gerwas published about the year 1550. hamburg, near St. Albans, in HertA circumstance took place, soon fordshire. She was the mother of after her marriage, which again the wisest, brightest of mankind. called forth her talents and zeal. She appeared as the translator into English, from Latin, of Bishop Jewell's Apology for the Church of England, in which he retorted upon the Romanists the charges previously preferred by them against the reformers; and with fidelity and elegance she accomplished her task. She sent a copy of her work to the primate, whom she considered as most interested in the safety of the church; a second copy she presented to the author, lest, inadvertently, she had in any respect done injustice to his sentiments. Her copy was accompanied by an epistle in Greek, to which the bishop replied in the same language. The translation was carefully examined both by the primate and author, who found it so chastely and correctly given, as to stand in TOWNLEY'S "HUDIBRAS." Horace Walpole says of Hudibras that it was long esteemed an impossibility to give an adequate translation of that singular work, in any language, still more in French, the idiom of which is very remote from the conciseness of the original. To our astonishment, however, Mr. Townley, an English gentleman, has translated Hudibras into French, with the spirit and conciseness of the original. WILLIAM TYNDALE. Tyndale was a disciple of Luther. He was born in the year 1500. About the year 1526, he translated the New Testament into English, of which two editions were sold; but he was obliged to perform his work out of the limits of England. He was, however, at length be ALFIERI AND HIS ASSISTANT. trayed by Henry VIII., tried, and condemned to be first strangled and then burnt at the stake. His last words were, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes?" The first translation of the Scriptures was, however, made by Wickliffe, about the year 1382, or nearly a century and a half before the time of Tyndale. ELIOT AND THE INDIANS. 367 sword I will make a fortune cutting meat." Another, displeased with such blunders, undertook a more correct translation of the great bard. Coming to the following passage— "Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,” he translated the Italicized words to read, "So grief-be off with you." "PARADISE LOST." In the French translation of Paradise Lost," Hail, horrors, hail!” is rendered thus: "Comment vous portez vous, les horreurs, comment vous portez vous!" that is, "How d'ye do, horrors, how d'ye do?" While Eliot was engaged in translating the Bible into the Indian language, he came to this passage: "The mother of Sisera looked out at the window, and cried through the lattice," &c. Not knowing an Indian word to signify lattice, he applied to several of the natives, and endeavoured to describe to EXEGI MONUMENTUM. them what a lattice resembled. At an examination of the senior He described it as a framework, class in a college, a young man connetting, wicker, or whatever else strued the following line in Horace, occurred to him as illustrative;"Exegi monumentum ære perenwhen they gave him a long, barbarous, and unpronounceable word, as are many of the words in their language. Some years after, when he had learned their dialect more correctly, he is said to have laughed outright, upon finding that the Indians had given him the true term for eel-pot-"The mother of Sisera looked out at the window, and cried through the eel-pot." FRENCH BLUNDERS. nius" (which is, in English, “I have finished a monument more lasting than brass)," thus: "I have eaten a monument harder than brass." One of the trustees immediately replied, "Well, sir, I think you had better sit down and digest it.” ALFIERI AND HIS ASSISTANT. Alfieri employed a respectable young man at Florence to assist him in his Greek translations; and the manner in which that instruction was received was not a little The French make awful havoc of eccentric. The latter slowly read John Bull's English, in their at- aloud, and translated, while Alfieri, tempts at translation. They seem with his pencil and his tablets in never to reflect that English words his hand, walked about the room, have often many and remote signi- and put down his version. This fications. Voltaire translated some he did without speaking a word; of Shakspeare's plays. Shakspeare and when he found his preceptor makes one of his characters re- reciting too quickly, or when he nounce all claim to a doubtful in- did not understand the passage, he heritance, with an avowed resolu- held up his pencil. tion to carve for himself a fortune with his sword. Voltaire put it in French, which re-translated reads, "What care I for lands? With my This was the signal for repetition, and the last sentence was slowly recited, or the reading was stopped, until a tap from the poet's pencil |