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orator of modern times has it) projected the huge cake of ice, which had fastened itself to the shores of Greenland, into the Atlantic Ocean; that the whale-fishers were engaged to cooperate, with the aid of gunpowder or steam, in this movement; and that the vessels of war were fraught with subsidies, and are instructed to concert ulterior measures. Now it was long ago foreseen, that such an operation, if it could be brought about, would increase prodigiously the degree of heat in this country; and we all know that the quality of every national constitution depends almost exclusively upon climate, the genius of liberty being utterly incapable to reside or breathe in any country where the thermometer ordinarily stands above a certain point. What better plan, then, could be devised to extinguish the last spark of freedom in this once happy' land, and to prepare our minds and bodies for absolute slavery, than to spread over this island the climate of Spain? or Otaheite? of Constantinople? or China? or Terra Australis? or of the Terra del Fuego?-May such a scheme be finally defeated! May the clouds of to-day be the harbingers of a biting winter and a soaking spring! -I am becoming warm, Mr Editor a sensation I am weary of a truce for a moment to politics, and now to my principal object in addressing you at the present moment, and to which, I trust, the remarks I have already made will be considered an appropriate prelude.

In a word then, it is my intention (excuse me if I feel a kind of delicate embarrassment in making this communication)—it is my intention, I say, to come out in the course of the winter in two handsome quartos, with a view, statistical, philosophical, and economieal, of the pernicious effects of the hot summer of 1818 upon domestic trade, commerce, and the different ranks of society in London; and an ingenious and feasible project for the prevention of all those evils which may be expect ed to flow from the recurrence of equally high degrees of temperature. I request leave, through the medium of your invaluable Miscellany, to put the public in possession of the heads and ends of my intended treatise; not doubting, at the same time, that when the work itself shall appear, you will find it worthy of favourable notice in

some one of the columns of your Magazine usually devoted to critical analysis.

We have heard so much of the effects of the season upon turnips and cabbages, that I shall not meddle with any thing so low and trite. What I purpose laying before the public are,

1st, An account of the number of quarts of soda water and ginger beer taken off during the late season, with a statement of its excess in amount, over and above the average consumption for the three preceding summers; an aerostatic computation of the cubic feet of fixed air disengaged, and an inquiry into its necessary effects upon the atmosphere. From which data, I doubt not to shew that an augmentation of heat was created to the extent of at least one degree Fahrenheit. In this calculation I shall have the friendly assistance of a gentleman connected with the Edinburgh Review, whose profound skill in mathematics has enabled him to expose many commonly received errors which have crept into that science. When I mention, that we owe to this gentleman's article on the Pauperism Report in the number for February last, our present knowledge of the fact that the proportion of 900,000 to 10,000,000 is as 9 to 10, the public will know how to appreciate the accuracy of the arithmetical results to be found in my intended treatise. 2dly, An account of all the fares received during the present season by watermen and hackney-coachmen respectively, shewing the just balance of profit to the former, and of loss to the latter; with a view of probable consequences. 3dly, A statement of the Sunday receipts at the Cumberland, Flora, and other tea-gardens, Kilburne Wells, Mother Redcaps, the Elephant and Castle, and other houses off the stones, to be compared with those of the Metropolitan Republicans. 4thly, Ditto, ditto, number of pounds of ice consumed at all the confectioners, fishmongers, and tavern - keepers throughout the bills of mortality; with a dissertation on the physical properties of currant and pine-apple ices. In short, I should tire you (if I have not done so already) with all the details of my embryo volumes. Suffice it to say, that they will contain the precise increase during the summer of the number of street minstrels; a critical discourse on the individual pro

fessions of that art; schedules of the Sabbath tolls at Hyde Park corner, Marshgate, Whitechapel, and Tyburn turnpikes; tables for ascertaining, upon the new principle, the depth in the earth at which the state of atmospheric temperature, for any given distance of time past, may be dug out;-in the year, when Henry VIII. retired to a monastery, for instance;-and many other particulars too numerous to mention. From the whole body of evidence thus collected, I shall draw irrefragable inferences, and acute prognostications, which will be to the full as surprising, just, and satisfactory, as half the political speculations and prophecies which have been delivered by a certain class of augurs for many years past. But as details are not worth a fig, unless they furnish a sage and profound theory, I shall touch upon a few general principles.

Whatever, by the process of internal traffic, is gained to one class of persons, is ultimately subtracted from another, and a corresponding degree of political influence passes with the profit; for wealth is power. It is easy to see what great political changes may be wrought, when power has thus shifted its channels, and how much strength may be given to a government, by any contrivance which shall transfer a large portion of national wealth from those of whom it feels jealous, to others whom it is interested in favouring; and it will be my business to shew hereafter what reprehensible motives have given birth to that conniving negligence, or those more reprehensible schemes to which we owe the late alarming innovations in our climate-innovations which have sacrificed the interests of the truly British chop-house to those of the fashionable and frenchified confectioner, and by which the blunt hackney charioteer has been made to succumb to the trimming time-and-tide-serving wherryman. Awake to these considerations, I have turned my thoughts to the discovery of some barrier against these frightful inroads, feeling assured, that such a discovery would meet the cordial approbation of our constitutional representatives. With what success, let the public judge, when they shall see in my work (the price of which will be unusually moderate), the particulars of my scheme for the creation of artificial clouds, by means VOL. IV.

of that universal agent of our times,

steam.

The personal of the establishments to be under the joint direction of the founder of the new musical school, and the material under that of Mr D. E. of Knightsbridge, whose flying fish is to be put in requisition, for the purpose of keeping up a communication between the several boilers.

The money required to be borrowed from the trustees of Drury Lane Theatre, and the proprietors of Waterloo Bridge, who have kindly promised your humble servant to advance it out of the profits they have realised, and to be secured by a capitation-tax, from which all brewers, members of gas and water-work companies, soap and sugar boilers are to be exempt, provided that their manufactories are situated to the east of the metropolis. A proportionate allowance to be made to all melting chandlers, masters of steam-boats, and publicans, who permit the use of tobacco in their houses. The author pledges himself not to require more (as his compensation) than 20 per cent. upon the capital stock; and if this plan be approved of by the public (as he doubts not it will) he will be the first fortunate projector whose schemes ended in smoke. L. M. U. B.

INACCURACIES OF POETS IN NATURAL HISTORY.

To determine the specific characters and local manners of animals is not the task either of the poet or the novelist; yet no doubt the pleasure derived from works of imagination may be much lessened in the minds of many by means of incongruous associations.

Thus, in the Lady of the Lake, the solitude and desolation of an ancient field of battle is described as follows: "The knot-grass fettered there the hand, Which once could burst an iron band; Beneath the broad and ample bone That bucklered heart to fear unknown, A feeble and a timorous guest, The field-fare framed her lowly nest.' p. 103.

Now it is well known to every school-boy, that the field-fare only visits this country during the winter season, that it has never been known to breed in the island, and consequentX

ly is never associated with the idea of a nest, or "the leafy month of June." The author of Mandeville has committed a somewhat similar mistake in regard to another of the feathered

tribe.

"It was a small part of the edifice only that was inhabited in my time. Several magnificent galleries, and a number of spacious apartments, were wholly neglected, and suffered to remain in a woful state of dilapidation. Indeed it was one wing only that was now tenanted, and that imperfectly; the centre and the other wing had long been resigned to the owls and the bitterns."

vol. i. p. 48. The last-mentioned bird is one which, more than most others, avoids the dwellings of the human race, and usually chooses, for the purposes of nidification, some lonely spot in the vicinity of fens or marshes.

In the works of Gesner there is an engraving of a whale, in which the lines are so strongly marked, and disposed in such a manner, that the animal appears as if covered with large scales. There is also a vessel near it, with an inscription, expressing that the whale is often mistaken for an island, and that seamen frequently incur great danger by attempting to cast anchor by its side. Shaw is of opinion that Milton was conversant with the writings of Gesner, whose work was then the great depositary of natural knowledge, and that this plate suggested to him the expression of " scaly rind" in the following sublime passage, which has been censured by some hypercritics.

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The term is no doubt inaccurate when applied to the whale tribe, to which the Leviathan of the Scriptures is generally referred. Some authors have been of opinion that the crocodile is mentioned under that name, and in a paper in one of your late Numbers, the great sea-snake is considered as the animal probably alluded to.

The butterfly has always been considered as an emblem of immortality. Deriving its existence from a comparatively shapeless body, in which, had it long been confined in a state of appar

ent torpor and death, and suddenly winging its flight through the air, adorned with life and beauty, its relation to the chrysalis or nymph, has been deemed analagous to that between the soul and the body of man. order of things has, however, been completely reversed in the mind of a modern poet, as evinced in the following passage;

The

"Thus the gay moth by sun and vernal gales Call'd forth to wander o'er the dewy vales, From flower to flower, from sweet to sweet will stray,

Till, tir'd and satiate with her food and play, Deep in the shades she builds her peaceful nest,

In lov'd seclusion pleas'd at length to rest : There folds the wings that erst so widely bore; Becomes a household nymph, and seeks to range no more."

From which it would appear that the chrysalis is derived from the moth, and not the moth from the chrysalis.

I conceive Southey to be the most correct, as well as the most skilful of all the living poets, in adapting the facts of Natural History to the uses of Poetry. According, however, to those skilful and intelligent entomologists, Messrs Kirby and Spence, in some of the most picturesque descriptions in Madoc, he confounds the firefly of St Domingo (Elater noctilucus) with a quite different insect, the lantern-fly (Fulgora laternaria) of Madam

Merian.

"She beckoned, and descended, and drew out
From underneath her vest, a cage, or net
It rather might be called, so fine the twigs,
Which knit it, where, confined, two fire-flies

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A bright blue radiance upon flowers that closed

Their gorgeous colours from the eye of day; Now motionless and dark, eluded search Self-shrouded; and anon, starring the sky, Rose like a shower of fire."

From the days of Solomon until the middle of last century, it was generally affirmed, that the ant "prepared her bread in the summer, and gather

ed her food in the harvest." Whatever may be the case in regard to the species of more southern climes, it appears to have been very generally admitted by every naturalist, from Gould to Huber and Latreille, that the European species of ants are torpid during winter, and consequently do not require a supply of food. The pupa, or intermediate state of these insects, bears a considerable resemblance to a grain of corn, and, as the future population of the colony depends in a great measure upon the welfare of such as exist in that state, they are particularly careful in removing them from danger, and in exposing them occasionally to such a degree of heat as may tend to hasten their extrusion. It is probable that these circumstances alone have occasioned the general idea of their provident habits; so that the many poetical descriptions and sage reflections which have arisen from the impression of their being

"Studious, ere stormy winter frowns, to lay Safe in their cells the treasured prey," have originated in misconception.

Every one must have observed, in the stillness of a fine summer evening, the choral dances of water-flies, for the most part above the stream which gave them birth. What a beautiful picture has been drawn by Wordsworth of that simple image.

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Nor wanting here to entertain the thought,

Creatures that in communities exist,
Less, as might seem, for general guardian-
ship,

Or thro' dependance upon mutual aid,
Than by participation of delight,

And a strict love of fellowship combined.
What other spirit can it be that prompts
The gilded summer flies to mix and weave
Their sports together in the solar beam,
Or in the gloom of twilight hum their joy?"
Dr Darwin, notwithstanding the
frequency of his learned references,
has been guilty of many
inaccuracies
in his poetry. Of these, the following
may be taken as an instance:

66

"So sleeps in silence the curculio, shut In the dark chamber of the cavern'd nut; Erodes with ivory beak the vaulted shell, And quits on filmy wings its narrow cell." Now, although the larva of the curculio "dwells in the hollow nut," the perfect insect is never found there, but undergoes its final transformation under ground.*

The preceding are a few of the many

See the Introduction to Entomology by Kirby and Spence, Vol. ii. p. 416.

examples which might be adduced of the general negligence of poets, in regard to a subject which, if properly attended to, might be rendered one of the most beautiful auxiliaries of their art.

THE COMPLAINT OF CERES.

(From the German of Schiller.)

MR EDITOR,

I SEND you the following translation of one of the smaller poems of Schiller, which do not seem as yet to be so generally known in this country as they deserve to be. It is remarked by Madame de Stael, that one of the distinguishing excellences of the German writers, is the facility with which they identify their own feelings with those of the age and character which they delineate. I know none of these writers to whom this applies with greater truth than to Schiller. His feeling, too, is under the control of a purer taste than belongs in general to the genius of his country; and we are

never offended in his works with that extravagance and affectation on which sentence of excommunication against some of our critics would pronounce the whole body of German literature. The woes of a personage of the heathen mythology would make but a sorry appearance in most hands; but in this author there is an unrivalled power of blending the classic images of antiquity with that depth of passion and sentiment which we consider to belong more peculiarly to the moderns. I think this remark will be found to not, let the want be imputed to the be verified in the following piece. If weakness of the translation, and not to any deficiency in the original.

Now the kindly Spring appears,

The earth exults in youth again-
Each sunny hill his green slope rears,

And bursts each stream its icy chain;
See Jove looks down, and smiles serene
O'er its blue and glassy bosom;
Mild the Zephyr waves his wing,

And spreads to air the op'ning blossom.
In each grove new songs I hear-

Hark! the mountain-nymph replies"Thy flowers return to glad the yearBut not thy child to glad thine eyes." Aye me! I've wandered long and far, And sought through earth each distant place;

O Sol, thine all-revealing star

I've called in vain her steps to trace. No friendly ray of thine hath told Where roams my Child; the searching day Which pours its light on all below;

Hath beamed not on her wand'ring way. Hast thou, O Jove, this evil wrought?

Or thou, fell Monarch of the deadSmit by her charms-to thy dark floods, Hast thou my hapless Child conveyed?

Who will my cheerless message take

Down to that cold and gloomy shore? The boat flits ever o'er the lake,

Yet wafts but airy shadows o'er. These fields are shut from mortal view, Wrapped up in midnight's deepest shroud; Since Styx his mournful current drew,

No living form e'er crossed his flood. A thousand ways to death lead down, But none lead back to light again; Her tears below in silence flow,

And I unweeting here remain.

E'en those whose race from Pyrrha came, -The death-doomed daughters of the earth

Dare follow through the funeral flame
The offspring of a painful birth!
Only she who Heav'n inherits,

May not touch the gloomy strand ;-
Powers of Fate! must heavenly spirits
'Scape alone your mighty hand!
Plunge me from these realms of light
Down to Ruin's deep abyss !
Spare not aught my heav'n-born right-
Ah! comes a mother's woe to this!

Where with her gloomy spouse she sits,
In joyless state, I hie me down,
And mingle with the ghosts that flit

In phantom pomp around her throne.
Her straining eye is dim with tears,

And seeks in vain the golden light,It wanders to the distant spheres,

But cannot meet her mother's sight;
And will not, till our joys shall leap
From heart to heart, with bosoms joined ;
Till the stern Orcus melt, and weep
With tears of sympathetic kind.

Idle wish, and hopeless moan!
See in one unvarying track
The steady oar of day rolls on-

And shall the will of Jove go back?
No! fixed it stands ;-from every woe
He turns his haughty eyes away;
If once thou'st trod the realms below,-
Fare thee well, my Child, for aye!
Till Aurora's beams shall glow

O'er these darkling streams-farewell-
Till Hope shall stretch her radiant bow
Across the gloomy depths of Hell.

And is there nought with me to rest,

No kind remembering pledge to tell; Though distant far, within thy breast

There lives thy Mother's image still? Are there no ties by love entwined

"Twixt Child and Mother? Is there not

Some cov❜nant of mysterious kind

"Twixt those who are, and who are not? Are they all fled ?-they are not goneNo! thou art not for ever reft; A tie there is,-and 'tis but one-→→ The Gods in pity yet have left. When Winter comes to chill the year, To bid the blooms of Spring decay, And lays the shiv'ring forests bare,

And sweeps their leafy pomp away; Then from Vertumnus' flowing horn

The rich and precious gift I take That teems with life,-the golden corn, An off'ring to the shades to make. Mourning, I sink it in the furrow,

-

It lies upon my Daughter's breast,Thus shall my mingled love and sorrow Be in this mystic form expressed.

Anon the hours in circling train

Lead in the renovating Spring; Then that which died shall wake again, -New life the vernal suns shall bring; The seed to all that seemed as dead,

When pent within the earth's cold bosom, Lifts to the light its joyful head,

And thousand colours paint its blossom. The stem ascends to upper sky,

While deep in earth its fibres twine; To nurse the plant, thus Heav'n on high, And earth below their powers combine.

Half in the world of living light,

Half in the realms of darkness hid; To me they're messengers of hope,

Sweet voices warbled from the dead. Tho' Fate have doomed it, and tho' Hell Have bound her with its hundred streams, She may be blessed :-these blossoms tell

In voice soft mingling with my dreams, "That e'en though far from day's bright beams,

Where only shapes of sorrow roam,— There yet are breasts where kindness streams, And hearts where love can hold his home."

Ye flowers that o'er the meadow blow;
To you my blessing here is given,
May your full chalice ever flow

With purest nectared dew of heaven.
I'll dip you in the streams of light;

With colours from the rainbow borne, I'll paint your blooms with hues as bright As glitter on the brow of morn. Thus shall each kindly bosom read

In you my mingled joy and pain,When Autumn's sickly garlands fade, When Spring recalls their bloom again. Y.

FORTUNE.

From the Italian of Guidi.

A Lady, like to Juno in her state,

Upon the air her golden tresses streaming, And with celestial eyes of azure beaming, Entered whilere my gate.

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