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fashionable novel would deen a graceful or admissible expedient for filling up his plot. One cannot close such a review of our fine writers without melancholy reflections. That cause which will raise all its zealous friends to a sublime eminence on the last and most solemn day the world has to behold, and will make them great for ever, presented its claims full in sight of each of these authors in his time. The very lowest of those claims could not be less than a conscientious solicitude to beware of every thing that could in any point injure the sacred cause. This claim has been slighted by so many as have lent attraction to an order of moral sentiments greatly discordant with its principles. And so many are gone into eternity under the charge of having employed their genius, as the magicians their enchantments against Moses, to counteract the Saviour of the world.

Under what restrictions, then, ought the study of polite literature to be conducted? I cannot but have foreseen that this question must return at the end of these observations; and I am sorry to have no better answer to give than before, when the question came in the way, inconveniently enough, to perplex the conclusion to be drawn from the considerations on the tendency of the classical literature. Polite literature will necessarily continue to be a large department of the grand school of intellectual and moral cultivation. The evils, therefore, which it may contain, will as certainly affect in some degree the minds of the successive pupils, and teachers also, as the hurtful influence of the climate, or of the seasons, will affect their bodies. To be thus affected is a part of the destiny under which they are born in a civilized country. It is indispensable to acquire the advantage; it is inevitable to incur the evil. The means of counteraction will amount, it is to be feared, to o more than palliatives. Nor can these be proposed in any specific method. All that I can do is, to urge on the reader of taste the very serious duty of continually recalling to his mind, and, if he be a parent or preceptor, of cogently representing to those he instructs, the real character of religion as exhibited in the Christian revelation, and the reasons which command an inviolable adherence to it.

DESCRIPTION OF MOUNT ÆTNA

AND ITS ERUPTIONS.

matter made quite a different sound, a circumstance which led him to conclude that the bottom was solid. Reidsdel observes, that no sound at all was produced by throwing stones into the gulph, but he heard a roaring like the sea. The crater stood to the east, with one opening, which no longer exists. Ma D'Orville tells us that he and his companion, having fastened themselves by ropes, held by men at the top, went down the shelving sides to the very mouth of the gulph. They beheld a conic mass of matter in the middle, to the height of about sixty feet, the base, as far as they could trace it, nearly 800 feet, from which small lambent flames and smoke issued in every direction. While they were there, the north side of the mountain began to throw out flames and ashes, accompanied by a bellowing noise, on which they retired. Strabo describes the top of the mountain as a level plain, with a smoking hill in the centre. Spalanzani as bifurcated, for he saw another eminence a quarter of a mile distant, with another crater, though not of equal dimension. M. Houel speaks of three eminences, 1782, like an isosceles triangle, only two of which could be perceived from any distance, in the midst of which is the principal crater, in diameter about sixty feet. According to Fazello, there was a hill produced in 1444, which fell into the crater after an eruption, and mingled with the melted mass. Borelli writes that the summit of the mountain rose up like a tower, and, during the eruption of 1669, fell into the crater. The whole structure and appearance of the mountain is thus evidently subject to great changes.

The stones ejected from Etna are granitic, or calcareous, surrounded with columns of basalt, which M. Dolomieu terms “prismatic lava." Spalanzani supposes the shore to be volcanic for twenty-three miles. The same writer observes that there is on Ætna a great scarcity of water, owing, as he imagines, to the rain's falling on scoriæ, in which it sinks for want of those various argillaceous strata which retain it in other nountains. Others affirm that the mountain is well watered, that there are intermitting springs which flow during the day only, and stop in the night, a fact which may arise from the melting of the snow, which ceases as the night comes on; that there are streams always pouring from the side of the mountain, unquestionably originating in some permanent source; that there are poisonous springs, fine salt springs, &c.

An approaching eruption of Mount Etna is THE great crater itself may be described as indicated various ways. There is at first an a cup, or hollow at the top of a conical hill, increase of the white smoke issuing from the rising equally on all sides. The hill is com- top of the crater, intermingled with volumes posed chiefly of sand and ashes, thrown up of black smoke in the centre. These are atfrom the mouth at different periods; and attended by slight explosions, and followed by present it is ten miles in circumference, and a red flashes, or rather streams of fire, perpequarter of a mile in height. The crater pre- tually increasing in number, and growing in sents the appearance of an inverted cone, the dimension, till the whole becomes one entire inside of which is covered with salts and sul- black column, highly electrical, illuminated phur of various colours; it is oval in its figure, by frequent lightnings, and attended by ocshelving down from the aperture. Sir W. casional thunder. These phenomena are folHamilton, 1769, calculated the circumference lowed by showers of red hot stones and ashes: at two miles and a half; Mr. Brydone, 1770, the former projected often to a great distance, at three miles and a half; Mr. D'Orville, and the latter wafted sometimes by the winds, 1727, at three or four miles. In 1788, Spa- and carried 100 miles, setting fire to buildlanzani, who visited this phenomenon, de- ings, and destroying the face of vegetation. scribes the inner sides as terminating in a Recupero tells us that he had known rocks plain of half a mile in circuit, in the centre of thrown up to the altitude of 7000 feet. M. which is a circular aperture of five poles in Houel saw one of these stones, which had diameter, contained within the cavity, appa- been projected from the mouth of Etna, rently in a state of ebullition. Several stones whose weight was not less than sixteen tons. that he threw in fell dead as into a thick It is generally three or four months before the paste; but those that did not fall into the lava makes its appearance, boiling over the

top, or bursting through the sides of the mountain; a complete liquid mass of melted mineral matter, running like a river, and destroying the face of nature wherever it comes

The explosions of Etna have been recorded from a very early period. Diodorus Siculus mentions eruptions of it 500 years before the Trojan war, or 1693 years before the Christian æra. This is that which drove, he says, the Sicani from the eastern part of Sicily, which they then inhabited. Thucydides mentions three eruptions, of which the second was the most remarkable. It happened the second year of the seventy-fifth Olympiad, when Phædon was archon of Athens, and when the army of Xerxes was defeated by the Atheni ans, at Platea. Both the victory and eruption. are recorded in an ancient inscription on the Oxford marble. During this eruption, Amphinomus and Anapis, two Sicilian youths, rushed into the midst of the flames, and saved the lives of their aged parents, at the imminent peril of their own, on which account a temple has been consecrated to their memory.

The third eruption mentioned by Thucydides occurred in the year before Christ, 425, in the eighty-eighth Olympiad, and desolated part of the Catanian territory. He mentions it in the third book on the Peloponnesian war, in these words :-"About the spring of the year a torrent of fire overflowed from Mount Etna, in the same manner as formerly, which destroyed part of the lands of the Catanians, who are situated at the foot of that mountain, which is the largest in all Sicily. It is said that fifty years intervened between this flow and the last which preceded; and that, in the whole, the fire has thus issued thrice since Sicily was inhabited by the Grecians."

THE COCOOY, QUEEN BEETLE.

THIS astonishing insect is about one inch and a quarter in length; and, what is wonderful to relate, she carries by her side, just above her waist, two brilliant lamps, which she lights up at pleasure with the solar phosphorus furnished her by nature. These little lamps do not flash and glimmer like that of the fire-fly, but give as steady a light as the gas light, exhibiting two perfect spheres, as large as a minute pearl, which affords light enough in the darkest night to enable one to read print by them. On carrying her into a dark closet in the day time, she immediately illuminates her lamps, and instantly extin guishes them on coming again into the light. But language cannot describe the beauty and sublimity of these lucid orbs in miniature, with which nature has endowed the queen of the insect kingdom.-New York Advertiser.

RAPID FLIGHT.

THE rapidity with which the hawk and many other birds occasionally fly, is probably not less than at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles an hour; the common crow twentyfive miles an hour; a swallow, ninety-two miles an hour; and the swift three times greater. Migratory birds probably about fifty miles an hour.

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neighbouring crags, the veins and general
character of the stone being precisely
similar. It is not, however, in such a
situation as it would occupy had it simply
fallen from those crags; and if there ever

was

AMONG the antiquities of this and other | logists say, a broken fragment from some countries are many remains of art for which after generations find it difficult to account. Their origin is sometimes dependent on long-lost secrets, and they only serve to exercise the wonder and the speculations of posterity. The above engraving represents an instance in which nature has played a similar part. The huge mass called the Bowder Stone is found nearly opposite to Castle Crag, in a most romantic part of Cumberland, It rests on some fragments of rock, and and the difficulty is to guess how it came lies almost hollow; the road winding there. It would seem to be, as the geo-round its eastern side, which projects

a generation of men who could amuse themselves by removing it to its present station, they must have been fellow-tenants of this world with the Mammoth and Leviathan.

about twelve feet over its base. Its shape bears some resemblance to that of a large ship inclined upon its keel; its length is about thirty-one yards; and its weight has been computed at nearly 1800 tons. A little earth on its top affords nourishment to a few small trees.

The whole scene is vast, wild, and precipitous. Its chief features are sub lime hills and crags, so irregularly situ ated that the emission of any loud sound occasions the most tumultuous reverberations. "It is utterly impossible," says a popular writer, "for a lively imagina

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And traced the lofty barrier with my eye
From base to summit: such delight I found
To note in shrub and tree, in stone and flower,
That intermixture of delicious hues
Along so vast a surface, all at once,
In one impression, by connecting force
Of their own beauty, imaged in the heart.
-When I had gazed, perhaps, two minutes space,
Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld

*

That ravishment of mine, and laugh'd aloud.
The rock, like something starting from a sleep,
Took up the lady's voice, and laugh'd again :
That ancient woman, seated on Helm-crag,
Was ready with her cavern; Hammar-scar,
And the tall steep of Silver-how, sent forth
A noise of laughter; southern Loughrigg heard,
And Fairfied answer'd with a mountain tone :
Helvellyn far into the clear blue sky
Carried the lady's voice; old Skiddaw blew
His speaking-trumpet; back out of the clouds
Of Glamarara southward came the voice;
And Kirkstone tossed it from his misty head.
Now whether (said I to our cordial friend,
Who, in the hey-dey of astonishment,
Smil'd in my face) this were, in simple truth,
A work accomplish'd by the brotherhood
Of ancient mountains, or my ear were touch'd
With dreams and visionary impulses,
Is not for me to tell; but sure I am,
That there was a loud uproar in the hills;
And while we both were listening, to my side
The fair Joanna drew, as if she wish'd
To shelter from some object of her fear."

SKETCH OF DR. PALEY.

"He never seemed to know," says his son, "that he deserved the name of a politician, and would probably have been equally amused at the grave attempts made to draw him into, or withdraw him from, any political bias." He would employ himself in his Natural Theology, and then gather his peas for dinner, very likely gathering some hint for his work at the same time, He would converse with his classical neighbour, Mr. Yates, or he would reply to his invitation that he could not come, for that he was busy knitting. He would station himself at his garden wall, which overhung the river, and watch the progress of a cast-iron bridge in building, asking questions of the architect, and carefully examining every pin and screw with which it was put together. He would loiter along a river, with his angle-rod, musing upon what he supposed to pass in the mind of a pike when he bit, and when he refused to bite; or he would stand by the sea-side, and speculate upon what a young shrimp could "With the mean by jumping in the sun.

* On Helm-crag, that impressive single mountain, at the head of the Vale of Grassmere, is a rock which, from most points of view, bears a striking resemblance to an old woman cowering.

handle of his stick in his mouth, he would move about his garden in a short hurried step, now stopping to contemplate a butterfly, a flower, or a snail, and now earnestly engaged in some new arrangement of his flower-pots." He would take from his own table to his study the back-bone of a hare or a fish's head; and he would pull out of his pocket, after a walk, a plant or stone to be made tributary to an argument. His manuscripts were as motley as his occupations; the workshop of a mind ever on the alert: evidences mixed up with memorandums for his will; an interesting discussion brought to an untimely end by the hiring of servants, the letting of fields, sending his boys to school, reproving the refractory there one of his children's exercises—in anomembers of an hospital; here a dedication, ther place a receipt for cheap soup. He would amuse his fireside by family anecdotes-how one of his ancestors (and he was praised as a pattern of perseverance) separated two pounds of white and black pepper which had been accidentally mixed-" patiens pulveris," he might truly have added; and how, when the Paley arms were wanted, recourse was had to a family tankard which was supposed to bear them, but which he always took a malicious pleasure in insisting had been bought at a

sale

"Hæc est

Vita solutorum miserâ ambitione gravique ;" the life of a man far more happily employed than in the composition of political pamphlets, or in the nurture of political discontent. Nay, when his friend Mr. Carlyle is about going out with Lord Elgin to Constantinople, the very head-quarters of despotism, we do not perceive, amongst the multitude of most characteristic hints and queries which Paley addresses to him, a single fling at the Turk, or a single hope expressed that the day was not very far distant when the Cossacks would be permitted to erect the standard of liberty in his capital.

"I will do your visitation for you (Mr. Carlyle was chancellor of the diocese), in case of your absence, with the greatest pleasure it is neither a difficulty nor a favour.

"Observanda-1. Compare every thing with English and Cumberland scenery-e. g., rivers with Eden, groves with Corby, mountains with Skiddaw; your sensations of buildings, streets, persons, &c. &c.; e. g., whether the Mufti be like Dr. -, the Grand Seignior, Mr.

"2. Give us one day at Constantinople minutely from morning to night-what you do, see, eat, and hear.

"3. Let us know what the common people have to dinner; get, if you can, a peasant's actual dinner and bottle: for instance, if you see a man working in the fields, call to him to bring the dinner he has with him, and describe it minutely.

*

*

*

*

*

*

"4. The diversions of the common people; whether they seem to enjoy their amusements, and be happy, and sport, and laugh; farmhouses, or any thing answering to them, and of what kind; same of public-houses, roads.

"5. Their shops; how you get your breeches mended, or things done for you, and how (i. e., well or ill done); whether you see the tailor, converse with him, &c.

"6. Get into the inside of a cottage; describe furniture, utensils, what you find actually doing.

"All the stipulations I make with you for doing your visitation is, that you come over to Wearmouth soon after your return, for you

will be very entertaining between truth and lying. I have a notion you will find books, but in great confusion as to catalogues, classing, &c.

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7. Describe minutely how you pass one day on ship-board; learn to take and apyly lunar, or other observations, and how the midshipmen, &c., do it.

8. What sort of fish you get, and how dressed. I should think your business would be to make yourself master of the middle Greek. My compliments to Buonaparte, if you meet with him, which I think is very likely. Pick up little articles of dress, tools, furniture, especially from low life-as an actual smock, &c.

“9. What they talk about; company.

"10. Describe your impression upon first seeing things; upon catching the first view of Constantinople; the novelties of the first day you pass there.

"In all countries and climates, nations and languages, carry with you the best wishes of, dear Carlyle, "Your affectionate friend,

"W. PALEY."

Such was Paley. A man singularly without guile, and yet often misunderstood or misrepresented; a man who was thought to have no learning, because he had no pedantry, and who was too little of a quack to be reckoned a philosopher; who would have been infallibly praised as a useful writer on the theory of government, if he had been more visionary— and would have been esteemed a deeper divine, if he had not been always so intelligible; who has been suspected of being never serious because he was often jocular, and before those, it should seem, who were not to be trusted with a joke; who did not deal much in protestations of his faith, counting it proof enough of his sincerity (we are ashamed of noticing even thus far insinuations against it) to bring arguments for the truth of Christianity unanswered and unanswerable-to pour forth exhortations to the fulfilment of the duties enjoined by it, the most solemn and intense-and to evince

his own practical sense of its influence, by crowning his labours with a work to the glory and praise of God, at a season when his hand was heaviest upon him-a work which lives, and ever will live, to testify that no pains of body could shake for a moment his firm and settled persuasion, that in every thing, and at every crisis, we are God's creatures, that life is passed in his constant presence, and that death resigns us to his merciful disposal.Quarterly Review.

REVIEWS.

A TREATISE ON ASTRONOMY. By Sir JOHN F. W. HERSCHEL, Knight Guelp., F.R.S., &c. &c. Dr. Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia, Vol. XLIII.

Ir our readers have never yet interested themselves in astronomy, they have now an opportunity of acquainting themselves with that science, through the medium of a volume which is almost equally suited to the tastes of a literary and a scientific reader. The perspicuity with which this distinguished writer conveys his valuable instructions is such as to clear him entirely from the charge of empi ricism which has in former times marked the students of the more profound physical sciences. He brings down the truths and discoveries which he has elaborated, by means of great

"

research, and great scientific learning, to the level of almost every capacity, and fits them for the reception of such as are but very partially instructed in the subject. A few specimens of these distinguishing traits, as exhibited in the volume before us, will be more satisfactory than any description of ours. The following remarks respecting the moon will be read with interest, considered not merely as speculations, but, in most instances, as facts attested by mathematical proof.

vious phenomena of the heavens, he has the which we can form no conception from any ana-
following most elegant and interesting pas-logy offered by our own system, may be circula-
ting.
sages.
Enormous Distances of the Stars.-In the pro-
portion of 200,000 to 1, then, at least, must the
distance of the nearest fixed star from the sun
exceed that of the sun from the earth. The latter
distance, as we have already seen, exceeds the
earth's radius in the proportion of 24,000 to 1;
and, lastly, to descend to ordinary standards, the
earth's radius is 4000 of our miles. The distance
of the nearest star, then, cannot be so small
as 4,800,000,000 radii of the earth, or
19,200,000,000,000 miles! How much larger
it may be we know not.

Saturn's Rings.-The rings of Saturn must present a magnificent spectacle from those regions of the planet which lie above their enlightened sides, as vast arches spanning the sky from horizon to horizon, and holding an invariable situation among the stars. On the other hand, in the regions beneath the dark side, a solar eclipse of fifteen years in duration, under their shadow, must afford (to our ideas) an inhospitable asylum to animated beings, ill compensated by the faint light of the satellites. But we shall do wrong to judge of the fitness or unfitness of their condition from what we see around us, when, perhaps, the very combinations which convey to our minds only images of horror, may be in reality theatres of the most striking and glorious displays of beneficent contrivance.

The generality of the lunar mountains present a striking uniformity and singularity of aspect. They are wonderfully numerous, occupying by far the larger portion of the surface, and almost universally of an exactly circular or cup-shaped form, foreshortened, however, into ellipses towards the limb; but the larger have, for the most part, flat bottoms within, from which rises centrally a small, steep, conical hill. They offer, in short, in its "The small Planets.-No doubt the most rehighest perfection, the true volcanic character, as markable of their peculiarities must lie in this it may be seen in the crater of Vesuvius, and in condition of their state. A man placed on one of Breislak's map of the volcanic districts of the them would spring with ease sixty feet high, and Campi Phlegræi, or those of the Puy de Dome, sustain no greater shock in his descent than he in Desmarest's of Auvergne. And, in some of does on the earth from leaping a yard. On such the principal ones, decisive marks of volcanic planets giants might exist; and those enormous stratification, arising from successive deposits of animals, which on earth require the buoyant ejected matter, may be clearly traced with power-power of water to counteract their weight, might ful telescopes. What is, moreover, extremely singular in the geology of the moon is, that although nothing having the character of seas can be traced (for the dusky spots which are commonly called seas, when closely examined, present appearances incompatible with the supposition of deep water), yet there are large regions perfectly level, and apparently of a decided alluvial character.

The moon has no clouds, nor any other indications of an atmosphere. Hence its climate must be very extraordinary; the alternation being that of unmitigated and burning sunshine fiercer than an equatorial noon, continued for a whole fortnight, and the keenest severity of frost, far exceeding that of our polar winters, for an equal time. Such a disposition of things must produce a constant transfer of whatever moisture may exist on its surface, from the point beneath the sun to that opposite, by distillation in vacuo after the manner of the little instrument called a cryophorus. The consequence must be absolute aridity below the vertical sun, constant accretion of hoar frost in the opposite region, and, perhaps, a narrower zone of running water at the borders of the enlightened hemisphere. It is possible, then, that evaporation on the one hand, and condensation on the other, may, to a certain extent, preserve an equilibrium of temperature, and mitigate the extreme severity of both climates.

there be denizens of the land. But of such spe-
culation there is no end.

"Enormous Dimensions of Comets.-It remains
to say a few words on the actual dimensions of
comets. The calculation of the diameters of their
heads, and the length and breadths of their tails,
offers not the slightest difficulty when once the
elements of their orbits are known, for by these

we know their real distances from the earth at

"The only mode we have of conceiving such intervals at all is by the time which it would require for light to traverse them. Now light, as we know, travels at the rate of 192,000 miles per second. It would, therefore, occupy 100,000,000 seconds, or upwards of three years, in such a journey, at the very lowest estimate. What, then, are we to allow for the distance of those innumerable stars of the smaller magnitudes, which the telescope discloses. to us? If we admit the light of a star of each magnitude to be half that of the magnitude next above it, it will follow that a star of the first magnitude will require to be removed to 362 times its distance to appear no larger than one of the sixteenth. It follows, therefore, that among the countless multitude of such stars, visible in telescopes, there must be many whose light has taken at least a thousand years to reach us; and that when we observe their places, and note their changes, we are, in fact, reading only their history of a thousand years' date, thus wonderfully recorded.

"Double Stars.-But it is not with the revoluany time, and the true direction of the tail, which tions of bodies of a planetary or cometary nature we see only foreshortened. Now, calculations round a solar centre that we are now concerned; instituted on these principles lead to the surpris- it is that of sun around sun-each, perhaps, acing facts that the comets are by far the most companied with its train of planets and their satel voluminous bodies in our system. The fol- lites, closely shrouded from our view by the splenlowing are the dimensions of some of those dour of their respective suns, and crowded into a which have been made the subjects of such in- space bearing hardly a greater proportion to the quiry:-The tail of the great comet of 1680, im- enormous interval which separates them, than the mediately after its perihelion passage, was found distances of the satellites of our planets from their by Newton to have been no less than 20,000,000 of primaries bear to their distances from the sun leagues in length, and to have occupied only two itself. A less distinctly characterized subordinadays in its emission from the comet's body; a de- tion would be incompatible with the stability of cisive proof this of its being dashed forth by some their systems, and with the planetary nature of active force, the origin of which to judge, from their orbits. Unless closely nestled under the the direction of the tail, must be sought in the protecting power of their immediate superior, the sun itself. Its greatest length amounted to sweep of their other sun in its perihelion passage 41,000,000 leagues, a length much exceeding the round their own might carry them off, or whirl whole interval between the sun and earth. The them into orbits utterly incompatible with the tail of the comet of 1769 extended 16,000,000 conditions necessary for the existence of their inleagues, and that of the great comet of 1811, habitants. It must be confessed that we have Telescopes must yet be greatly improved be- 36,000,000. The portion of the head of this last fore we can expect to see signs of inhabitants, as comprised within the transparent atmospheric enmanifested by edifices or by changes on the sur-velope, which separated it from the tail, was face of the soil. It should, however, be observed, that, owing to the small density of the materials of the moon, and the comparatively feeble gravitation of bodies on her surface, muscular force would there go six times as far in overcoming the weight of materials as on the earth. Owing to the want of air, however, it seems impossible that any form of life analogous to those on earth can subsist there. No appearance indicating vegeta tion, or the slightest variation of surface which can fairly be ascribed to change of season, can any where be discerned.

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180,000 leagues in diameter. It is hardly con-
ceivable that matter once projected to such enor-
mous distances should ever be collected again by
the feeble attraction of such a body as a comet-
a consideration which accounts for the rapid pro-
gressive diminution of the tails of such as have
been frequently observed.

"The Fixed Stars.-Now, for what are we to
suppose such magnificent bodies scattered through
the abyss of space? Surely not to illuminate our
nights, which an additional moon of the thousandth
part of the size of our own would do much better,
nor to sparkle as a pageant void of meaning and

"If there be inhabitants in the moon, the earth must present to them the extraordinary appear-reality, and bewilder us among vain conjectures. ance of a moon of nearly two degrees in diameter, exhibiting the same phases as we see the moon to do, but immoveably fixed in their sky (or, at least, changing its apparent place only by the small amount of the libration), while the stars must seem to pass slowly beside and behind it. It will appear clouded with variable spots, and belted with equatorial and tropical zones corresponding to our trade-winds; and it may be doubted whether, in their perpetual change, the outlines of our continents and seas can ever be clearly discerned.'

With respect to some other of the most ob

Useful, it is true, they are to man as points of
exact and permanent reference; but he must
have studied astronomy to little purpose who can
suppose man to be the only object of his Creator's
care, or who does not see, in the vast and won-
derful apparatus around us, provision for other
races of animated beings. The planets, as we
have seen, derive their light from the sun; but
that cannot be the case with the stars. These,
doubtless, then, are themselves suns, and may,
perhaps, each in its sphere, be the presiding
centre round which other planets, or bodies of

here a strangely wide and novel field for speculative excursions, and one which it is not easy to avoid luxuriating in.

"Nebula.-The nebulæ furnish, in every point of view, an inexhaustible field of speculation and conjecture. That by far the larger share of them consist of stars, there can be little doubt; and in the interminable range of system upon system, and firmament upon firmament, which we thus catch a glimpse of, the imagination is bewildered and lost. On the other hand, if it be true, as, to say the least, it seems extremely probable, that a phosphorescent or self-luminous matter also exists, disseminated through extensive regions of space, in the manner of a cloud or fog-now assuming capricious shapes, like actual clouds drifted by the wind, and now concentrating itself like a cometic atmosphere around particular stars; what we naturally ask is, the nature and destination of this nebulous matter. Is it absorbed by the stars in whose neighbourhood it is found, to furnish, by its condensation, the supply of light and heat?or is it progressively concentrating itself by the effect of its own gravity into masses, and so laying the foundation of new sidereal systems or of insulated stars? It is easier to propound such questions than to offer any probable reply to them. Meanwhile, appeal to fact, by the method of constant and diligent observation, is open to us; and,

as the double stars have yielded to this style of questioning, and disclosed a series of relations of the most intelligible and interesting description, we may reasonably hope that the assiduous study of the nebula will, ere long, lead to some clearer understanding of their intimate nature."

We are sorry to take our leave of this delightful volume. We hope, however, that our readers will not fail to acquaint themselves with its contents, and we wish that they may derive as much pleasure from its perusal as we have done.

THE OUTLINE OF A PLAN FOR THE TOTAL, IMMEDIATE, AND SAFE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY THROUGHOUT THE BRITISH COLonies. By JOSEPH PHILLIPS, late of Antigua. London: J. and A. Arch. 1833.

Ar a time when the ministerial measure of emancipation is occupying so much attention, and exciting so much discussion, it will be interesting to read the outline of a plan for the same purpose sketched by one who has spent a great part of his life in the West Indies. We have only space, however, to extract the essential parts of the plan in the

writers own words. It is as follows:

"I.—That, by an act of the imperial parliament, FREEDOM shall be conferred on all the slaves throughout his Majesty's dominions on and after the first of July, 1834, and that the following regulations be enforced, as necessary and sufficient to secure the welfare of the slave, and the cultivation of the soil:

"1st. Corporal punishments to be entirely abolished, and the liberated slave admitted to an equal participation of all the civil and religious privileges enjoyed by the free-born subject of these realms.

"2nd. Such of the slaves as have been hi

therto engaged in agricultural labours to be indented to their present masters for the term of one year, being previously duly registered, and provision made for the payment of ade quate remuneration. At the end of the first year, it shall be left to the free choice of the labourer either to be indented to the same master, or choose another for a similar period. "3rd. That, to prevent idleness and vagrancy, the magistrates shall have the power to compel all persons found unemployed in towns or elsewhere (who have no obvious mode of living except by manual labour), to engage themselves as agricultural labourers or otherwise, or, on refusal to do so, to send them to the public works.

"4th. That the hours of labour shall be from six in the morning to six in the evening, with an interval of three hours for meals. All agreements between employer and labourer for a specified term to be understood to have relation to the above general regulation, and all labour beyond to be considered extra work,

and paid for accordingly.”

The particulars of this plan are defended by a number of explanatory considerations, the following of which appear to us to deserve at

tention:

"To provide against the danger which might possibly arise to the agricultural interests of the colony, by suddenly investing the slaves with the power of changing their mas ters and places of residence, it is proposed that they should be indented to their present masters for the term of one year, the indenture to be renewable at the end of that period, either to the same or another employer. During

these periods, however, the magistrates alone again. The way in which they meet that is will have the power of enforcing the fulfil- they say, Oh, but where twelve people are ment of the contract, while the labourer will wanted, we put on twenty-four, so that twelve be receiving a just reward. The power thus are always at rest; and that is the fact in one given to the labourer to select, at the end of way, because those women who are attending each year, a new master, would create such a the mill are squirted all over with the cane competition amongst employers, both in re-juice, and are wet through. spect of general treatment and payment of wages, as would be highly conducive to the comfort of those employed, and supply the most powerful and permanent incentives to industry."

IMMEDIATE AND ENTIRE EMANCIPATION.

"Q. You are speaking of what yourself knew?

"A. Yes, and what I saw day after day, and night after night.

"Q. If any witness should have stated that those who fed the mill are not wetted with the juice of the sugar cane that spurts out, that is not correct?

"A. No, it is not; I defy any one to feed the mill without being squirted all over with juice. I have done it myself; I have grown canes as thick as my arm; that cane is put in between two large rollers of sixteen to eighteen

We have ever advocated a total and immediate abolition of this atrocious evil; and, in the last page of this periodical, we cannot do inches diameter; the roller is so close you better than bring forward a few additional scarcely can see through it; the cane is, with statements calculated to impress the propriety a little impetus, thrust between the roller, and and necessity of such a course. They are ex- that catches hold of it, and draws it in; and, tracted from a pamphlet just published, con- when the cane is rank and in good order, it is taining selections from the Report of the so full of juice, there is almost a little fountain Committee of the House of Commons, which playing on the people; they are perfectly wet is at once the most authentic source of inform-through, they have nothing on but their little ation, and that which speaks most conclu- Osnaburgh frock, and their lower clothes; sively, in favour of our cause. then if they lie down in that state on the mill bed, which at low ground is raised very high, of course they are before a small fire, exposed to so piercing a draft of cold, although I myself was clothed warmly as Europeans are, and had a Scotch plaid, which I bound round my face, I could not stand it.

"William Taylor, Esq. (13 years a resident of Jamaica, in a Commercial capacity, and as a Manager of Estates.)

"Q. Do you think that an essential improvement is consistent with a state of slavery? "A. I think no essential amelioration can

consist with slavery.

"Q. Will you describe what you mean by amelioration?

"A. For instance, the absence of the whip. I do not see that they can uphold slavery without physical coercion-without corporeal punishment; some motive must be brought to bear on men's minds; where there is no motive you must apply the whip; if you with draw that an instant, relaxation takes place of the whole system, and I do not think that, under any ameliorated slavery, they can be kept together. I think a certain degree of it may be called cruel punishment. Corporeal punishment is necessary to keeping them together, and to keep them in active operation. I do not think that the work of the estate can be carried on without flogging, and flogging considerably sometimes.

"James Beckford Wildman, Esq. (a Planter, and Proprietor of 640 slaves.)

"Q. Did you work the boiling-house in one or two spells on your estate?

"A. The system on one of my estates when I went was a very dreadful one, as I considered, and of which my attorney, although he had been in the island all his life, was igno

rant; for when I told him the negroes worked four-and-twenty hours, he denied it, and said what is called the long spell, that is, in fact, it was not so; and it was not until I called up the people, and asked them the question, that he acknowledged it.

"Q. Explain to the Committee what the long spell is?

"A. In the long spell, the negro goes on at 12 o'clock in the day; he then continues the whole four-and-twenty hours in work; he is then relieved, at shell-blow, for two hours, and he works again from that time till dark, so that it is thirty hours labour with the intermission of two hours; then, at day-light, he turns out

"Q. The crop time is generally in the coldest part of the year in that country?

"A. The mill is generally put about in February, and from February it varies, according to the climate, for three, four, or six months; on some estates it is crop time nearly the year round.

"Q. Those who feed the mill through February and March are subject to suffer extremely from cold?

"A. I consider that as one great reason of the destruction of life. The negro comes out of the field, after working all day under a tropical sun, and comes in to take the night spell, gets wet through in feeding the mill, and lies down on the mill floor to sleep two or three hours under the cutting wind: I consider that to be one great reason for the destruction of life on sugar estates.

"Q. Did the long spell exist on your estate? "A. On one out of the three.

"Q. What may be gained in produce, is in your opinion lost in the life of the slave?

"A. Over, and over again.

"Q. What are the punishments in use in the island of Jamaica now?

"A. They are very cruel ones.
"Q. Will you state what they are?
"A. The general system of flogging is to

give them a certain number of stripes with a long whip, which inflicts a dreadful laceration, or a dreadful contusion; and then they follow

up that by a very severe flogging with ebony switches, the ebony being a very strong wiry plant, with small leaves like a myrtle leaf, and under every leaf a sharp tough thorn; and then after that they rub them with brine."

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