Society mentioned to the writer, afterwards translated the process, that, amongst scientific men, it is a | by resolving the problem with such question whether the weighing- simple machinery, that you might machine of Mr. Cotton is not the say he had done it wholly unaided finest thing in mechanics; and that there is only one other inventionthe envelope-machine of De la Rue -to be named with it.-(Francis's History of the Bank of England.)

POETICAL PREDICTION OF RAILWAYS

AND STEAMBOATS.

In Dr. Darwin's Botanic Garden, first published in 1789, but written, it is well-known, at least twenty years before the date of its publication, occurs the following prediction respecting steam :—

"Soon shall thy arm, unconquer'd steam, afar

Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid

car;

Or, on wide-waving wings expanded bear

The flying chariot through the fields of

air,

Fair crews triumphant leaning from above,

Shall wave their fluttering 'kerchiefs as they move;

Or warrior bands alarm the gaping

crowd,

And armies shrink beneath the shadowy

cloud:

So mighty Hercules o'er many a clime Waved his huge mace in virtue's cause sublime;

Unmeasured strength with early art combined,

Awed, served, protected, and amazed

mankind."

by apparatus. The experiments by which the identity of lightning and electricity was demonstrated, were made with a sheet of brown paper, a bit of twine or silk thread, and an iron key!-(Lord Brougham.)

Cotton, after contributing to the manufacturing prosperity of the nation, promised a few years ago to form a very important part of its munitions of war. Professor Schönbein, of Basle, discovered that by combining cotton with nitric acid, an explosive compound was formed, capable of being substituted for gunpowder. Its power in blasting and mining, and its projectile force in fire-arms, were satisfactorily tested; but gunpowder still maintains its supremacy. Gun-cotton is remarkable for the low temperaOf all this great man's scientific ture at which it explodes. Hence, excellencies, the most remarkable when pure, it may be burnt on the is the smallness, the simplicity, the palm of the hand, without inconapparent inadequacy of the means venience, on the application of a which he employed in his experi- moderately-heated wire. Professor mental researches. His discoveries Schönbein attended the meeting were all made with hardly any of the British Association for the apparatus at all; and if, at any Advancement of Science, held at time, he had been led to employ Southampton, in 1846, when the instruments of a somewhat less or- operation of this new power was dinary description, he never rested explained and experimented with. satisfied until he had, as it were, | Subsequently, the professor attended

FRANKLIN'S DISCOVERIES.

singeing that he leaped up with a cry of pain. A hearty laugh was all the commiseration he received. After this, Professor Schönbein loaded a fowling-piece with cotton in the place of powder, and the prince fired both ball and shot from it with the usual effect. Dissolved in ether, gun-cotton forms the collodion now extensively employed in photography. Collodion is also

at Osborne House, to exhibit the properties of his gun-cotton to Prince Albert, when Schönbein offered to explode a portion on the hand of Colonel B- ; who would, however, have nothing to do with the novel power. Prince Albert himself submitted to the test, and off went the cotton, without smoke, stain, or burning of the skin. Thus encouraged, the colonel took his turn; but whether the material used by surgeons, as affording a was changed or not for the coarser ready and efficacious plaster for preparation, it gave him such a cuts and flesh wounds.

LAW AND LAWYERS.

LUBRICATING BUSINESS.

One day, when some one objected to the practice of having dinners for parish or public purposes, "Sir," said Lord Stowell, “I approve of the dining system: it puts people in a good humour, and makes them agree when they otherwise might not: a dinner lubricates business."

RELIGION AND LAW.

some humour, once took advantage to say, when asked by his friend what that mass of papers might be, pointing to the huge bundle of the Acts of a single session-" Mere novelties, Sir William-mere novelties !"-(Lord Brougham.)

Sir William Scott, however, possessed much pungent wit. A celebrated physician having said, somewhat more flippantly than beseemed the gravity of his cloth, "Oh, you When Sir E. Coke was made know, Sir William, after forty a Solicitor-General, Whitgift, the man is always either a fool or a Archbishop of Canterbury, sent physician!" "Mayn't he be both, him a Greek Testament, with a Doctor?" was the arch rejoinder, message, that “he had studied the with a most arch leer and an incommon law long enough, and that sinuating voice, half drawled out. he ought hereafter to study the law of God."

LORD ELDON.

We quote the following from Mr. Horace Twiss' Life of LordChancellor Eldon :

"I have seen it remarked," says Lord Eldon, in his Anecdote Book, "that something which in early youth captivates attention, influences future life in all stages. When I left school, in 1766, to go to Oxford, I came up from Newcastle to London in a coach, then denominated, on account of its quick travelling, as travelling was then estimated, a fly; being, as well as I remember, nevertheless, three or

cito, si sat bene. It was the impression of this which made me that deliberative judge-as some have said, too deliberative—and reflection upon all that is past will not authorize me to deny that, whilst I have been thinking, sat cito, si sat bene, I may not have sufficiently recollected whether sat bene, si sat cito has had its due influence."

ROMILLY'S AFFECTION.

Sir Samuel Romilly, when a child, was intrusted to a female domestic, whom he thus tenderly refers to in his Diary :--" The servant whom I have mentioned was to me in the place of a mother.

member, when quite a child, kissing, unperceived by her, the clothes which she wore; and when she once entertained a design of quitting our family, and going to live with her own relations, receiving the news as that of the greatest misfortune that could befall me, and going up into my room in an agony of affliction, and imploring God, upon my knees, to avert so terrible a calamity."

four days and nights on the road. There was no such velocity as to endanger overturning, or other mischief. On the panels of the carriage were painted the words, 'Sat cito, si sat bene,'-words which made a lasting impression on my mind, and have had their influence upon my conduct in all subsequent life. Their effect was heightened by circumstances during and immediately after the journey. Upon the journey, a Quaker, who was a fellowtraveller, stopped the coach at the inn at Tuxford, desired the chambermaid to come to the coach-door, and gave her a sixpence, telling her that he forgot to give it her when he slept there two years before. II loved her to adoration. I rewas a very saucy boy, and said to him, 'Friend, have you seen the motto on this coach?' 'No.' 'Then look at it for I think giving her only sixpence now is neither sat cito nor sat bene. After I got to town, my brother, now Lord Stowell, met me at the White Horse, in Fetter Lane, Holborn, then the great Oxford house, as I was told. He took me to see the play at Drury Lane. Love played Jobson in the farce, and Miss Pope played Nell. When we came out of the house it rained hard. There were then few hackney-coaches, and we got both into one sedan-chair. Turn-caster, we found Dr. Johnson's ing out of Fleet Street into Fetter friend, Jemmy Boswell, lying upon Lane, there was a sort of contest the pavement- inebriated. between our chairmen and some subscribed at supper a guinea for persons who were coming up Fleet him, and half-a-crown for his clerk, Street, whether they should first pass and sent him, when he waked next Fleet Street, or we in our chair first morning, a brief, with instructions get out of Fleet Street into Fetter to move, for what we denominated Lane. In the struggle, the sedan- the writ of 'Quare adhæsit pavichair was overset, with us in it. mento,' with observations duly calThis, thought I, is more than sat culated to induce him to think that cito, and certainly it is not sat bene. it required great learning to exIn short, in all that I have had to plain the necessity of granting it to do in my future life, professional the judge, before whom he was to and judicial, I have always felt the move. Boswell sent all round the effect of this early admonition, on town to attorneys for books, that the panels of the vehicle which might enable him to distinguish conveyed me from school-Sat himself; but in vain. He moved,

JOHNSON'S BOSWELL.

Lord Eldon relates in his Anecdote Book :- "At an assizes at Lan

We

however, for the writ, making the dashed with peculiar emphasis; best use he could of the observations his plan being to throw all his in the brief. The judge was per- strength upon the grand features of fectly astonished, and the audience the case, instead of frittering it amazed. The judge said, 'I never away upon details. heard of such a writ; what can it be that adheres pavimento? Are any of you gentlemen at the bar able to explain this?' The Bar laughed. At last, one of them said, 'My Lord, Mr. Boswell last night adhesit pavimento. There was no moving him for some time. At last, he was carried to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement.'

PARLIAMENTARY REPRIMAND.

In the reign of George II., one Crowle, a counsel of some eminence, made some observation before an election committee, which was considered to reflect on the House itself. He was accordingly summoned to appear at their bar; and, on his knees, he received a reprimand from the Speaker. As he rose from the floor, with the utmost nonchalance, he took out his handkerchief, and wiping his knees, coolly observed, that "it was the dirtiest house he had ever been in in his life."

EQUIVOCAL ILLUSTRATION. Sir Fletcher Norton was noted for his want of courtesy. When pleading before Lord Mansfield on some question of manorial right, he chanced unfortunately to say :"My Lord, I can illustrate the point in an instance in my own person I myself have two little manors. The judge immediately interposed, with one of his blandest smiles, "We all know it, Sir Fletcher."

LORD KENYON'S LAPSUS. Lord Kenyon, on the trial of a bookseller for publishing Paine's Age of Reason, in his charge to the jury, enumerated many celebrated men who had been sincere Christians; and, after having enforced the example of Locke and Newton, proceeded: "Nor, gentlemen, is this belief confined to men of comparative seclusion, since men, the greatest and most distinguished, both as philosophers and as monarchs, have enforced this belief, and shown its influence by their conduct. Above all, gentlemen, need I name to you the Emperor Julian, who was so celebrated for the practice of every Christian virtue, that he was called Julian the Apostle !"

A MONOMANIAC.

It is very well known that, by the laws of England, the LordChancellor is held to be the guardian of the persons and property of all such individuals as are said to be no longer of sound mind and good disposing memory-in fine, to have lost their senses. Lord-Chancellor Loughborough once ordered to be brought to him a man against whom his heirs wished to take out a statute of lunacy. He examined him very attentively, and put various questions to him, to all of which he made the most pertinent and apposite answers. "This man mad!" thought he; "verily, he is one of the ablest men I ever met with." Towards the end of his A gentleman, who has examined examination, however, a little scrap several of Lord Erskine's briefs, of paper, torn from a letter, was states that the notes and interlinea- put into Lord Loughborough's tions were few, but that particular hands, on which was written "Ezeparts were doubled down, and kiel." This was enough for such

LORD ERSKINE'S POINTS.

"Yes, my lord, I mean to trespass on your lordship's attention for a short time."

"Then," said his lordship, looking the orator significantly in the face, and giving a sudden twitch of

a shrewd and able man as his lordship. He forthwith took his cue. "What fine poetry," said the Chancellor, "is in Isaiah !" "Very fine," replied the man, "especially when read in the original Hebrew." "And how well Jeremiah wrote!" his nose-" then, Mr. A————, you "Surely," said the man. "What a genius, too, was Ezekiel !" "Do you like him?" said the man; "I'll tell you a secret-1 am Ezekiel !"

LORD BROUGHAM'S CHAN

CELLORSHIP.

Lord Brougham had a great horror of hearing the almost interminable speeches which some of the junior counsel were in the habit of making, after he conceived everything had been said which could be said on the real merits of the case before the court by the gentlemen who preceded them. His hints to them to be brief on such occasions were sometimes extremely happy. Once, after listening with thegreatest attention to the speeches of two counsel on one side, from ten o'clock until half-past two, a third rose to address the court on the same side. His lordship was quite unprepared for this additional infliction, and exclaimed, "What! Mr. A- 2 are you really going to speak on the same side ?"

had better cut your speech as short as possible, otherwise you must not be surprised if you see me dozing; for really this is more than human nature can endure."

The young barrister took the hint he kept closely to the point at issue-a thing very rarely done by barristers-and condensed his arguments into a reasonable compass.

NATURAL PORTRAITS.

The Entomological Magazine (vol. i. p. 518) states, that "on the reverse of Hipparchia Janira (a butterfly), may be traced a very tolerably defined profile, and some specimens, no very bad likeness, of Lord Brougham. The Caricature Plant in Kew Gardens has been observed to represent on its fantastically variegated leaves the same remarkable profile; and a more permanent likeness than either is pointed out to visitors to the island of Arran, sculptured by nature on the rugged peaks of Goatfell.

LITERARY DIVERSION.

and tomb-stones, for religious verses and epitaphs; and even flying angels, Grecian temples, and Egyptian pyramids, for patriotic effusions.

About the middle of the seven- | glasses, and frocks, for love songs; teenth century the scribes, or rather wine-glasses, bottles, and flagons, those whose ambition was not of for drinking songs: pulpits, altars, the most soaring order, used to divert themselves, and rack their inventive powers, by torturing and twisting their verses into odd devices and shapes, expressive of the themes they discussed-as might be expected, to the serious detriment of their poetic merit. Many of these fantastic performances were of grotesque or even ludicrous description, such as fans, and toilet

Another species of literary diversion may be noticed in the curious combination of words, mostly in Latin, by some of the early writers, in which, however, their wit is less discernible than their patient inge