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gressions of our youth, the more crafty, calm, and speculative sins of mature life, and the cold off-fallings of decaying nature, each period writes its own characters upon the heart's pages, and even the grave fails to outwear the impression. How little do we reck of this, as day after day, and year after year, we inscribe in letters of fire our own condemnation! Sweeter, gentler, are the records of tenderness, friendship, and affection, written as by the petals of a passion flower; every soft feeling has its niche in the temple of the heart; every beloved one is an idol raised on the pedestal within that niche; and who could coldly bear the casting down of but one of this cherished row of the heart's statuary? Yet, by how frail a tenure do we seem to hold our best blessings how many are the ways by which the friend we have cherished in our spirit's core may escape us! Even when we are smiling at our fancied security in the heart which we have won to ourselves, it may be wrenched from us by one perhaps unworthy to receive it in the rebound; and then comes a train of life's most bitter trials; the cold smile the averted eye-the soulless laugh—the pas. sionless look-and the icebolt of isclation, fall heavily on the blossoms of the spirit. But how much more dark does this withering of the heart become, when we are torn by the chances and the changes of existence, from among those who have been the sharers of our weal and woe for a long period; first, there is the dread of approaching separation, the ingenous selftorture of anticipating regrets; then the actual pang of parting words, and looks, and enfoldings of affection-that lip quivering, whose smile we had been used to watch for, as the wearied mariner looks for the light of morning-that eye clouded, which we had so often seen laugh out in lustre! Those who have not experienced such a separation, have never known the heart's midnight—and almost worse than this (for even the moment of parting has its excitement to counterbalance its misery), is the dreary void which succeeds departure; the feeling of solitude among crowds, the new scenes, new faces, and new pursuits which demand no token of our sympathy and interest, and which, at such a moment, fail in their turn to yield any. Dark and cheerless as is this spirit-void, the evil will yet bear augmentation; there still remains another link to wrench away, another bond to burst asunder, the tie of country. Alone upon the ocean, we have time to think upon our bereavements; the friendships we had fostered, the feelings we had indulged, the affections we had encouraged, until they had over-run our

heart-we feel that the skein of social life is unravelled, and that the end of it has escaped us. As the stately ship speeds majestically on her way, those who linger on the shore to wave their farewell, become a confused and undistinguishable mass; we know not the friend of our bosom watching our departure in agony of spirit, from the stranger to whom our progress is but a pastime; the breeze fills our sails, and like a sea-bird the vessel spreads her wings to the wind, and hurries on her way. The loved shores of our country become but as a thread of mist stretched along the edge of the vast ocean over which we journey; we look into our own hearts, and we are alone! Then every past enjoyment is enhanced to us by memory; every friend dearer to us when we are about to part for a time, perhaps for ever, as the marine glow-worm on the coast near Chioggia is ever most resplendent before a storm. We have to form new friendships, to cement new ties, to nurse new hopes; but these grow slowly on a mind of sensibility; friends must be proved ere they can be valued ; ties must be tightened by vicissitude, or their tension is unfelt; hopes must be engendered in awakening spirit, or they will fail to interest.

To the isolated heart, the world is an unexplored country; and for awhile it is a wilderness; it may contain fertility and pleasaunce, but for a time they are unexperienced and unenjoyed; it may be a land of flowers and sunshine, but the dark season comes ere the blossoms expand, or the rays of summer brighten the heart's creation-all is but a chance, for it has its rocks and its quicksands, as well as its bowers and its valleys; it may prove a future of evil, or it may prove one of good; we are voyagers cast forth on the ocean without sail or rudder, we know not what wind may impel, what tide may drift us onward. The very feelings which in bygone days have endeared us to fond hearts and gentle spirits, may be perhaps those most calculated to estrange the affections of others; the animal spirits whose flow may have gladdened a fond circle, fail, or become enfeebled beneath a sense of isolation, and lose at once their elasticity and their effervescence; the character is formed by circumstances; they act as a thermometer to inhabit its several changes and gradations; sickness and sorrow warp the natural impulses, but nothing so effectually lowers the tone of the mind, and damps the energy of the spirit, as the severing of fond ties and kindly affections. Had I an enemy, I could scarcely from my heart's centre wish him such a fate; and for a friend, I

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Arts and Sciences.

EFFICACY OF THE CHLORURET OF

LIME AS A DISINFECTING AGENT.

MESSRS. Orfiler, Lesuer, Gerdy, and Hennelle, having been requested by the Procureur du Roi to examine the body of an individual who was suspected to have been poisoned, (in Paris,) and who had been dead nearly a month, found the smell so insupportable, that they were induced to try the application of the chloruret of lime, as recommended by Monsieur Labarraque. A solution of this substance was frequently sprinkled over the body, and produced quite a marvellous effect, for in a very short time after the unpleasant odour was completely destroyed, and the surgeons were enabled to proceed in comparative comfort. The individual had taken poison.-Archives Générale de Médécin.

H. W. DEWHURST.

MARKING INK.

MOISTEN the linen to be marked with one ounce and a half of prepared soda, and the same quantity of gum arabic dissolved in four ounces of water; and when dry, write the characters with fifty grains of lunar caustic, one dram of gum arabic, and fifty grains of lamp black dissolved in half an ounce of water. The above composition will resist every effort to remove it.

IMPROVED CHRONOMETERS.

In the public exhibition of the objects of national industry, which has just closed at Neufchatel, a chronometer was produced, the work of M. Houriet, of Lorbe, in which steel was employed only for the main spring and for the axes of the movers; all the other parts were of brass, alloyed gold, gold of eighteen carats, and of platinum, and amounted in number to sixty-two; all the pivots turn on jewels, and the movements of the free escape ment are performed by means of palettes of precious stones. Some artists having observed to M. Hourict that the escape

ment and the spiral spring not being of steel, the inconvenience of a less degree of elasticity would be the result; numerous and successful experiments supplied a decisive answer to the objection; and it appears evident that gold, when hardened, is more elastic than hardened steel when untempered. During six days, this machine was exposed to an artificial magnet, of the strength of from twenty-five to thirty pounds, without its performance being in the least deranged. This new method of constructing chronometers may be of the highest importance to those intrepid navi gators who may explore the northern re gions, in which the magnetic influence frequently produces a very sensible effect upon the chronometers constructed in the usual way.

COMPRESSION OF WATER.

THE following are the results obtained by Mr. Parkins, from experiments on the progressive compression of water, with high degrees of force, and communicated to the Royal Society. The column of water is 190 inches in height, and the pressure of one atmosphere is, of course, estimated at fourteen pounds :

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THE interest with which everything connected with the more striking incidents of Sir Walter Scott's historical novels is regarded, will perhaps be received as an apology for presenting our readers with the following account of the murder of Archbishop Sharpe, from a manuscript in the British Museum, which was drawn up a few weeks after the commission of the horrid deed. Dr. Sharpe was born May 13, 1613, and arrived at the dignity of Archbishop of St. Andrews on December 15, 1661. It appears that the assassination of this amiable and distinguished prelate was directly recommended, some time previous to its perpetration, by the execrable authors of those horrid publications, Napthali, and Jus Populi; who distinctly declared, that "no more acceptable gift could be made to Jesus Christ, than the sending the head of the venerable Archbishop Sharpe, in a silver box, to the king." This doctrine, it appears, prevailed so far with a wretched fanatic, one James Mitchell, that he made an attempt to assassinate the bishop at noon-day, in the principal street at Edinburgh; but having failed in his adventure, was tried and executed for his offence. On the 3rd of May following, eleven wretches, as bigoted and bloodthirsty as their archetype, but deficient in the courage he had displayed, with Balfour, of Burley, at their head, resolved upon the murder of this venerable prelate, which they accomplished in the following

manner :

After his Grace had gone from the secret council, where, to aggravate their crime, he had been pleading most fervently for favours to them, having lodged at a village called Kennoway, in Fiffe, upon Friday night, the 2nd of May, he took his journey next morning, at ten o'clock, towards St. Andrews; and his coachman having discovered some horsemen near to Magus (a place near two miles distant from St. Andrews), advertised the Archbishop thereof, asking if he should drive faster; which his Grace discharged, because, he said, he feared no harm. They drawing nearer, his daughter seeing pistols in their hands, and them riding at a great rate, she persuaded her father to look out, and he therefore desired his coachman to drive on; who had certainly outdriven them, if one Balfour, of Kimloch, being mounted on a very fleet

horse, had not cunningly passed the coach (into which they had vainly discharged many shot): and after he found he could not wound the coachman, because the coach-whip did fright the sprightly horse, wounded the postillion, and disabled the foremost coach-horses. Whereupon the rest coming up, one of them, with a blunderbuss, wounded the Lord Primate in the coach; and others of them called to him to "come forth, vile dog! who had betrayed Christ and his church, and to receive what he deserved, for his wickedness against the kirk of Scotland ;" and reproached him with Mr. James Mitchell's death. Whilst he was in the coach, one run him through with a sword, under his shoulder; the rest pulled him violently out of the coach. His daughter came out, and on her knees began to beg mercy to her father; but they beat her, and trampled her down. The Lord Primate, with a very great calmness said, "Gentlemen, I know not that ever I injured any of you; and if I did, I promise I will make what reparation you can propose." "Villain, and Judas!" said they, "and enemy to God and his people, you shall now have the reward of your enmity to God's people!" Which words were followed with many mortal wounds, the first being a deep one above his eye; and though he put them in mind that he was a minister, and pulling off his cap, showed them his grey. hairs, entreating, that if they would not spare his life, they would at least allow him some little time for prayer. They returned him no other answer, but that God would not hear so base a dog as he was; and for quarter, they told him, that the strokes they were then giving were the quarter he was to expect. Notwithstanding of all which, and of a shot which pierced his body above his right pap, and of other strokes, which cut his hands, whilst he was holding them up to heaven, in prayer, he raised himself upon his knees, and uttered, only these words, "God forgive you all!" After which, by many strokes, that cut his skull to pieces, he fell down dead. But some of them, imagining they had heard him groan, returned, saying that he was of the nature of a cat, and so they would go back, and give one stroke more for the glory of God; and having stirred about the brains in the skull with the point of their swords, they took an oath of their servants not to reveal their names; and so desiring to take up their priest, they rode back to Magus, crying aloud, that Judas was killed! and from thence made their escape. But God having, in an unexpected way, furnished probation against all who were present, it cannot but with

a dutiful confidence be expected, that his Divine Majesty, who is so highly offended, will, by the same care, bring the assassinates themselves to suffer for that crime.

This simple but striking narrative will be found to accord entirely with the beautiful picture of this catastrophe, painted by Allan, and engraved by Burnett. We have no right to marvel at the merciless conduct of General Claverhouse, when any members of this bloodthirsty gang of fanatics chanced to fall into his hands. It was right that it should be meted to them, even as they meted it to others. Literary Magnet.

ON THE MUSIC OF NATURE. How a certain disposition of certain sounds should, through the medium of the ear, raise, depress, or tranquillize the spirits, is a problem difficult to be solved; yet, in a greater or less degree, all are convinced of its truth; and, to gratify this universal feeling, Nature seems to have mingled harmony in all her works. Each crowded and tumultuous city may properly be called a temple to discord; but wherever Nature holds undisputed dominion, music is the partner of her empire. The "lonely voice of waters," the hum of bees, the chorus of birds; nay, if these be wanting, the very breeze that rustles through the foliage is music. From this music of Nature, solitude gains all her charms; for dead silence, such as that which precedes thunder-storms, rather terrifies than delights the mind :— "On earth 'twas yet all calm around,

A pulseless silence, dread, profound-
More awful than the tempest's sound!':

Perhaps it is the idea of mortality thereby awakened, that makes absolute stillness so awful. We cannot bear to think that even Nature herself is inani. tion; we love to feel her pulse throbbing beneath us, and listen to her accents amid the still retirements of her deserts. That solitude in truth, which is described by our poets, as expanding the heart, and tranquillizing the passions, though far removed from the inharmonious din of worldly business, is yet varied by such gentle sounds as are most likely to make the heart beat in unison with the serenity of all surrounding objects. Thus Gray "Now fades the glimmering landscape on my sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetie wheels his drouing flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds ! Even when Nature arrays herself in all her terrors, when the thunder roars above our heads, and man, as he listens to the

sound, shrinks at the sense of his own insignificance even this, without at all derogating from its awful character, may be termed a grand chorus in the music of Nature.

Almost every scene in the creation has its peculiar music, by which its character, as cheering, melancholy, awful, or lulling, is marked and defined. This appears in the alternate succession of day and night. When the splendour of day has departed, how consonant with the sombre gloom of night is the hum of the beetle, or the lonely, plaintive voice of the nightingale. But more especially, as the different seasons revolve, a corresponding variation takes place in the music of Nature. As winter approaches, the voice of birds, which cheered the days of summer, ceases; the breeze that was lately singing amʊng the leaves, now shrilly hisses through the naked boughs; and the rill, that but a short time ago murmured softly, as it flowed along, now, swelled by tributary waters, gushes headlong in a deafening

torrent.

It is not, therefore, in vain that, in the full spirit of prophetic song, Isaiah has called upon the mountains to break forth into singing; "the forests, and every tree thereof." Thus we may literally be said to "find tongues in trees-books in the running brooks ;" and, as we look upward to the vault of Heaven, we are inclined to believe that—

"There's not the smallest orb which we behold,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim ;
Such harmony is in immortal souls ;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot bear

The Selector,

AND

Ibid.

LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

BRIGADE OF SAILORS. REGULARLY every day after their mess (for they messed generally on a green in the village of East Zuburg) they would start off to their "hunt," as they called Then they would leap the dykes, which it, in parties headed by a petty officer. their poles enabled them to do, and dash through those which they could not otherwise cross; they were like a set of Newfoundland dogs in the marshes, and when they spied a few riflemen of the French, they ran at them helter-skelter: then pistol, cutlass, and pike, went to work in downright earnest. The French soldiers did not at all relish the tars; and no

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wonder, for the very appearance of them was terrific, and quite out of the usual order of things. Each man seemed a sort of Paul Jones-tarred, belted, and cut. lassed as they were. Had we had occasion to storm Flushing, I have no doubt that they would have carried the breach themselves. The scenes which their eccentricities every hour presented were worthy of the pencil of Hogarth. Among the most humorous of these, were their drills, musters, and marchings, or, as they generally called such proceedings, "playing at soldiers." All that their officers did, had no effect in keeping either silence or regularity; those officers, however, were part and parcel of the same material as the Jacks themselves, and as able to go through the pipeclay regularity of rank and file, as to deliver a sermon on the immortality of the soul. But the fact is, they were not either expected or intended to be regular troops, and their drills were merely adopted to teach them to keep together in line when marching from one place to another; so that they might not go about the country after the manner of a troop of donkeys. These marches and drills afforded the highest degree of amusement, both to soldiers and officers; the disproportion in the sizes of e men--the front rank man, perhaps, four feet one, while the rear rank man was six feet two; the giving of the word from the "middy," always accompanied by a "G— d—;" the gibes and jeers of the men themselves. Heads up, you beggar of a corporal there," a little slanggoing Jack would cry out from the rear rank, well knowing that his size secured him from the observation of the officer. Then perhaps the man immediately before him, to show his sense of decorum, would turn round and remark, "I say, who made you a fugle-man, master Billy? can't ye behave like a sodger afore the commander, eh?" Then from another part of the squad, a stentorian roar would arise, with, I'll not stand this, if I do, me; here's this here Murphy stickin' a sword into my starn." Then perhaps the middy would give the word "Right face," in order to prepare for marching; but some turned right and some left, while others turned right round, and were faced by their opposite rank man. This confusion in a few minutes, however, would be rectified, and the word "March" given. Off they went, some whistling a quick-step, and others imitating the sound of a drum with his voice, and keeping time with the whistler, "row dididow, dididow, row dow, dow"-every sort of antic trick began immediately, particularly treading on each others' heels.

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I once saw a fellow suddenly jump out of the line of march, crying out, "I be d- if Riley hasn't spikes in his toes, an' I won't march afore him any longer,' and then coolly fell in at the rear. "Keep the step," then was bandied about, with a thousand similar expressions, slapping each other's hats down upon their eyes, elbowing, jostling, and joking-away they went to beat the bushes for Frenchmen; and even when under the fire of both the hidden riflemen and the rampart guns, their jollity was unabated. One of these odd fellows was hit in the leg by a rifileball, which broke the bones, and he feil ; it was in a hot pursuit which he and a few others were engaged in after a couple of riflemen, who had ventured a little too far from their position, when, seeing that he could follow no farther, he took off his tarry hat and flung it with all his might after them ; There, you beggars, I wish it was a long eighteen for your sakes." The poor fellow was carried off by his comrades, and taken to the hospital, where he died.

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The Military Sketch Book.

RUSSIAN COACHMEN. THIS is the place to make mention of the Russian coachman, whose address and intrepidity deserve to be recorded. Placed upon his seat, and driving four horses abreast, with cords for reins, which he holds in both hands, a Russian coachman seems to know not what danger is; and, so that the road be not altogether broken up, he dashes along at full gallop, making but a very rare use of his whip, which hangs upon one of his arms, his voice being sufficient to urge forward his indefatigable steeds. During a stage, which is frequently from twenty-five to thirty wersts, (more than eight French leagues,) he never ceases for a moment speaking to his horses, which appear to understand him; and less despotic with them than his lord is towards him, he never gives them an order or recommendation, without stating the motives. I made the servant, who served us as interpreter, translate some of these perpetual monologues, which are seldom interrupted, and then only by a national song. The Russian coachman varies his discourse and the inflexions of his voice according to the age, physical force, or moral qualities of each of his four horses-he addresses himself to the experience of the oldest, and points out to him the necessity of showing a good example to his comrades; he reproaches with idleness one which has remained several days in the stable, and tells him that he should expiate this

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