Moving Plant.-The hedysarum gyrans has a spontaneous motion in its leaves, independent of any external stimulus, even of light; and only requires a very warm, still atmosphere to be seen in perfection. Each leaf is ternate, and the side leaves are frequently seen moving up and down, evenly or by jerks, without any uniformity among themselves.

Flint in Plants.-The epidermis or scarf-skin of the rattan cane, contains sufficient flint to give light when struck with a steel; and flint generally exists in the epidermis of hollow plants.

The Chemistry of Mortar.-When limestone is burned, the carbonic acid gas is expelled from it, and there remains nothing but a pure alkaline earth. Then, if water be mixed with it, as in making mortar, the lime re-absorbs carbonic acid, acquires hardness, and again becomes limestone.

Powerful Medicine.-One of the most potent of the new remedies is Strychnine, obtained in the greatest purity from the Upas Tiente. Its power is almost confined to the spinal marrow and the nerves which spring from it; and affects the head, if at all, only in a secondary manner. An over-dose produces tetanus, (locked jaw) and death; a medicinal one (one-ninth of a grain three times a day, for example,) restores the sensation of paralytic limbs. The sulphate of strychnine produces marked effects in doses of one-twelfth of a grain. One of Dr. Bardesley's patients, in Lancashire, who was experiencing the return of sensation in his paralysed limbs under the use of strychnine, asked if there was not something quick in the pills; quick for alive being still in use in that part of England.

Eating Gold. There are four salts of gold employed in medicine; but the doses of these preparations are almost infinitesimal, so that eating gold by way of physic is not so expensive as might be expected. Thus, when the chloride of gold and soda is taken in the form of a pill, from one-sixtieth to one-tenth of a grain is the quantity swallowed daily.

Sleep from Lettuce.--Some persons who are unable to digest other salad herbs, feel no uneasiness when they have eaten lettuce; but, on the contrary, are inclined to sleep. This effect arises from the narcotic property of the lettuce; its extract having been used, for some time, as one of the milder

narcotics.

Expansion of Gunpowder.-It has been found that gunpowder when fired alone, having no weight to move, expands with the greatest velocity, viz. 7000 feet in one second.

VARIETIES.

Roman Pottery.-We were gratified the other day with the fac-simile of a Roman jug, found at Caistor, in Lincolnshire; the ground colour was red, with a fern-like figure in deeper red; it was manufactured at Brameld's Rockingham works. The Russian Winter has been extraordinarily mild. On December 13, there was gathered in a garden at St. Petersburgh, a bouquet of daisies, primroses, auriculas, and various other flowers; and the Neva was as free of ice as in the month of May. Professors of Languages.-A pleasant illustration of the rage by which Parisian teachers are bitten, even more than those of London, to pass for gens de lettres, which they usually are about as much as a copying-clerk is a Chancery barrister, is afforded by a countryman of ours rejoicing in the mellifluous name of "Duckett," who, smitten with the irresistible contagion of high-sounding names around him, in a country where every porter is a "commissionaire," and every policeman an "agent de la force publique," advertises a commonplace schoolbook as "le Dictionnaire Vniversal de Conversation," and puffs himself off in huge fat type as its "Rédacteur en chef!" Bravo, Crapaud-Bull!

"A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.”—Times. Quakers were first so called at Derby. "Justice Bennet of Derby," says George Fox, in his journal," was the first that called us Quakers, because I bid him tremble at the word of the Lord."

Rapid Manufacture.-A few years ago, the late Sir John Throgmorton sat down to dinner, dressed in a coat which, the same morning, had been wool on the back of the sheep! The animals were sheared; the wool washed, carded, spun, and woven; the cloth was scoured, fulled, sheared, dyed, and dressed; and then, by the tailor's aid, made into a coat, between sun-rise and the hour of seven, when the party sat down to dinner, with their chairman dressed in the product of his active day.

Nelson Monument.-The pedestal of this national testimonial is nearly completed. The monument will be mostly of granite from the bottom of the Morley quarries in Prince Town, Dartmoor, obtained at a depth beyond the influence of decom position. Mr. Railton's design for laying out Trafalgar Square is engraved on the Stationers' Almanack, 1842.

Englishwomen. The majority of the women of the midland counties are highly beautiful: nowhere are seen such fair complexions, elegant forms, fine features, and vivacious countenances, as generally prevail in the above district, especially in Leicestershire and Derbyshire.

On the Effect upon Trees from removing Fallen Leaves.We all know that it is an universal practice among gardeners to sweep up and carry away the dead leaves of autumn, which at this season are strewing the ground in all directions. The neatness which must be maintained in a garden seems to render this labour necessary, and the practice of ages sanctions it. In the eyes of nine-tenths of the world, the man who permitted the dead leaves to accumulate among his shrubs would be set down as a sloven. And yet, that man would be a better gardener than he who is eternally exercising the broom and the rake, and treating his garden as a housemaid treats her chambers. When Nature causes the tree to shed its leaves, it is not merely because they are dead and useless to the tree, but because they are required for a further purpose-that of restoring to the soil the principal portion of what had been abstracted from it during the season of growth, and thus of rendering the soil able to maintain the vegetation of a succeeding year. Every particle that is found in a dead leaf is capable, when decayed, of entering into new combinations; and of again rising into a tree for the purpose of contributing to the production of more leaves, and fruit, and flowers. If the dead leaves, which Nature employs, are removed, the soil will doubtless, upon the return of spring, furnish more organizable matter without their assistance; because its fertility is difficult to exhaust, and many years must elapse before it is reduced to sterility. But the less we rob the soil of the perishing members of vegetation which furnish the means of annually renewing its fertility, the more will our trees and bushes thrive; for the dead leaves of autumn are the organic elements out of which the leaves of summer are to be restored in the mysterious laboratory of vegetation. They contain the carbon or humus, and the alkaline substances essential to the support of growing plants: and although such substances can be obtained from the soil, even if leaves are abstracted, yet they can never be so well obtained as through the decay of those organs. The dead leaves of autumn, then, should not be removed from the soil on which they fall. Neatness, no doubt, must be observed; and this, we think, will be sufficiently consulted, if leaves are swept from walks and lawns, where they do no good, and cast upon the borders in heaps, where they will lie and decay till the time for digging has arrived, when they can be spread upon the earth like so much manure.

Or, when planting is going forward, a quantity of them cast into the hole in which the young trees are to be stationed, and mixed with the soil, will be found to have a very beneficial effect.

Fresco. The proposed mode of decorating the New Houses of Parliament may be judged of, by inspecting the large altar-piece at the Catholic chapel in Moorfields, which is one of the few modern frescoes executed in this country.

Chester is the oldest city in England: according to Sir Thomas Eliot, it was built by a great-grandson of Noah! The mayor had formerly the power of respiting executions without previous application to the Crown.

OLD SAINT PAUL'S.

THE present cathedral of Saint Paul, built by Wren, is the third church erected on this commanding site, or nearly so. It is, indeed, a magnificent master-piece of classic architecture" the grandest building in the grandest city in the world;" but the site, and the two preceding churches, are so stored with hallowed associations, that even the triumph of modern art-the glory of the present-is dimmed by the interest of the past. "On the same spot whence are now dispensed the soul-cheering doctrines of the reformed religion, the Pagan has offered his sacrifices at the shrine of his fears and superstitions-the proselytes of the Church of Rome have told their beads and chanted masses for the dead; and in this little spot, too, the scene in which, when living, many of them have striven for power and fame, now rest the bones of men-princes, warriors, and philosophers-who have each played for a few moments, during a period of at least twelve hundred years, a principal part in the grand drama of human life: " "The echoes of its vaults are eloquent!

The stones have voices; and the walls do live:
It is the house of memory."-Maturin.*

It has been often related that a temple, consecrated to Diana, and erected by the Roman colonists of Britain, stood at one time on the present site of St. Paul's; and it is traditionally stated that when digging for the second church, bones of oxen, horns of stags, and other remains of sacrifices were found, with a figure of the goddess herself. Wren, however, asserts that in digging for the present church, he "changed all the foundations of old St. Paul's, and upon that occasion rummaged all the ground thereabouts," without finding any thing to support the story of Diana. But he discovered what proved of far greater interest a cemetery, in which Britons, Romans, and Saxons, had been successively buried; and beneath it, circumstances to prove that the sea had once occupied the site on which St. Paul's now stands.

It appears that when Augustine was sent to England by Pope Gregory, to teach Christianity, he fixed the archiepiscopal seat at Canterbury, created Mellitus the first bishop of London, and put that see under his governance: during the dominion of that prelate, about A.D. 610, Ethelbert, who had been converted to Christianity by Augustine, founded on this spot the cathedral church of St. Paul, endowed it with lands, and obtained various privileges from the Pope. Such was the origin of the first church, which, in the reign of William the Conqueror, was destroyed by fire, as was also much of the city.

Maurice, the then bishop, immediately commenced a most extensive pile, the principal materials for which, according to Dugdale, he procured from the ruins of an old castle, called the Palatine Tower, near the river Fleet. He laboured upon it twenty years, but effected little towards its completion; nor did his successor, although he expended upon the work an equal amount of time and money. He bought and pulled down many houses around the church, added ground to the yard, and commenced a strong wall of enclosure, the completion of which was ordered by Edward II. some time afterwards, to prevent the occurrence of robberies and murders, which frequently took place there; a reason which strikingly illustrates the lawless state of those times.

Such was the origin of the second church, which Stow says was so wonderful for size, that men judged it never would be finished: it was erected upon arches, or vaults of stone, a manner of building said to have been, until then,

* Godwin's "Churches of London,” p. 4.

but little known in England. The stone, with the excep tion of the old materials, is stated to have been brought from Caen, in Normandy. Henry I. commanded that all vessels which entered the river Fleet, bearing materials for the erection of the new cathedral, should be free from toll and custom. The building was gradually advanced; the choir, not being thought sufficiently splendid for the other parts of the edifice, was pulled down, and rebuilt with a spire about the year 1240, and solemnly consecrated immediately afterwards.

The prefixed Engraving represents this building from the south-east, before the fire in 1666, from a print by Hollar. The dimensions seem to justify the surprise manifested by contemporaries. The principal measure

Wooden spire covered with lead.... 274

but, as in the two hundred and sixty feet, the height of the battlements which rose above the base of the wooden spire was included, the whole elevation did not exceed five hundred and twenty feet. This cathedral was, until the erection of St. Peter's, at Rome, the largest church in the Christian world. The spire was the first built in England, and the loftiest in Europe: it was one hundred and sixteen feet higher than the spire of Salisbury cathedral; sixtyfour feet loftier than that of Vienna; fifty feet higher than that of Strasburg; and surpassing the height of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. Old St. Paul's spire was, moreover, the height of the Monument placed upon the cross of the present cathedral.

The ground plan of the cathedral assumed the form of the Latin cross, ie., the transepts were much shorter than the nave and choir: the interior was divided by two ranges of clustered columns throughout the church; each aisle was about two-fifths the width of the nave. Above the aisles was a triforium, (open-arched gallery) and a clere-story. In the naves the same circular arch prevailed, excepting in the clere-story; the ceiling was simply groined, and the windows mostly plain; in the choir, however, which was in the pointed style, the columns were light and slender, and the openings of the triforia and the windows were adorned with tracery. The choir was approached from the nave by a flight of twelve steps, and was separated from it by a richly ornamented screen, with canopied doorways leading to the aisles: the eastern end presented a rosewindow of great size and beauty, and the floor of the church was mostly of marble. From the great length of the cathedral, its appearance must have been exceedingly imposing: the chroniclers are lavish in their praises of it; but, with the exception of the choir-with its flying buttresses, pinnacles ornamented by crockets and finials, perforated battlements, and a series of eleven windows on each side in the clere-story, and ten below, it appears to have been devoid of the usual beauties of the English

cathedrals.

At one time, on special saints' days, it was customary for the choristers to ascend the spire to a great height, and thence to chant solemn prayers and anthems: the last observance of this custom was in the reign of Queen Mary, when it is recorded, that "after even-song the quere of Paules began to go about the steple singing with lightes after the olde custome." Centuries ago, the origin of this proceeding could not be traced. A similar custom is observed to this day at Oxford, where, on the morning of the 1st of May, at five o'clock, the choristers ascend the tower of Magdalen College, and execute certain pieces of

choir music; for which harmonious service the rector of Slymbridge, in Gloucestershire, pays the yearly sum of £10. Previously to the Reformation, a mass was performed on the above day and hour, on the top of Magdalen tower, for the repose of the soul of Henry VII., who had honoured the College with a visit in 1488; and the custom at Old St. Paul's spire may have had a similar origin. Camden describes another custom peculiar to Old St. Paul's, and of which he was an eye-witness. On the anniversary of the conversion of St. Paul, January 25th, held in the cathedral, a fat buck was received with great formality at the entrance of the choir, by the canons in their sacerdotal vestments, and with chaplets of flowers on their heads; whilst the antlers of the buck were carried on a pike in procession round the church, with horns blowing, &c. On the buck being offered at the high altar, one shilling was paid by the dean and chapter as a fee to the keepers who brought it; and thus concluded the ceremony. This custom originated in the reign of Edward I., by grant from Sir William le Baud, in 1274.

The Curiosities of Old Saint Paul's are too numerous for detail, so that we can only glance at a few of them. On the north side of the church, was a great cloister surrounding Pardon church-yard, on the walls of which was curiously painted the Dance of Death. In this cloister, were buried many persons of note, and the monuments erected to their memory were superior in beauty to any within the church. On the south side of the cathedral, within the space enclosed by a cloister, was a chapter-house in the pointed style, perhaps the only instance in England, of a chapter-house in this situation; it being elsewhere on the outside of the enclosure by the cloisters. Near the east end stood Paul's or Powly's Cross, said to occupy the site of a stone cross, erected there in 870, to induce the passersby to offer prayers for certain monks slain by the Danes. St. Paul's cross consisted of some stone steps, on which was placed a wooden pulpit covered with lead, whence sermons were preached to the people every Sunday morning. From this place also the anathema of the Pope was thundered forth; heresies were recanted, and sins atoned for; and it was here that, in 1483, Jane Shore, with a taper in one hand, and arrayed in her "kertell onelye," was exposed to open penance. This cross was taken down in 1643. At the eastern extremity of the churchyard, stood a clochier, or bell-tower; a square building of stone, containing four bells, and surmounted by a timber spire. The citizens of London held folk-motes in this portion of the yard, and the bells were used to summon the people: they were ultimately pulled down by one Sir Miles Partridge, who won them from Henry VIII., by a cast of the dice. These bells belonged more especially to Jesus' chapel, which formed a part of the parish church of St. Fides in Cryptis; commonly called St. Faith under St. Paul's, from being so situated. This church being demolished about 1256, to enlarge the cathedral, part of the crypt, under the choir, was granted to the parishioners, and there divine service was performed until the Great Fire. Hence the story of there being a church under St. Paul's, and service in it once a year, in our time. The parish of St. Faith is now united to St. Austin's, Watling

street.

In 1314, the cross surmounting the steeple of the cathedral fell, and the steeple of wood, covered with lead, being ruinous, was taken down, and reconstructed with a new gilt ball, in which were deposited relics as preservatives. But, in 1444, it was fired by lightning, and nearly destroyed; and it was not restored until 1462; at which time, by the way, carpenters were paid fourpence, fivepence, and sixpence, per day wages. In 1561, shortly after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, part of the cathe

dral was again destroyed, it is stated, (in a black letter tract of the time,) by lightning; when the Queen set afoot a subscription for its restoration, by contributing 1,000 golden marks, and 1,000 loads of timber, to be cut from the royal forests. The citizens subscribed £3,247. 16s. 2d., and the clergy most liberally; so that by 1566, the roofs were finished and covered with lead; but the spire was never rebuilt, although many models were made, and much money collected for the purpose. Hence, our Engraving shows the cathedral before the fire of 1561, or upwards of a century previous to its final destruction. The scandalous desecration of the cathedral is much complained of by contemporaries: bell-ringers allowed persons, for a certain fee, to ascend the tower, and halloo and-throw stones at the passengers beneath; dunghills were suffered to accumulate within the church, and drunkards and vagabonds slept at all hours on the benches at the choir-door; men walked about the church with their hats on their heads, and butchers and water-carriers made it a common thoroughfare. Outside, about twenty houses were built against the church, and one of them used as a theatre; the owner of another house had contrived a way through one of the windows into the steeple, which he used as a ware-room; while a third baked bread and pies in an oven formed within one of the buttresses. Accordingly, the whole pile became dilapidated; and in 1628, the requisite repairs were estimated at £22,536. 2s. 3d. No money could be raised; and thus the cathedral remained until 1621, when King James, after much_solicitation, visited it, and appointed commissioners, with Inigo Jones, the surveyor of His Majesty's works, at their head, to devise means for the reparation of the structure. A subscription was also opened, but no great progress made until early in the reign of Charles I., when Laud, then Bishop of London, collected £5,416, and in 1633, commenced the repairs, with Inigo Jones as architect; and the sum ultimately collected amounted to £101,330. Jones's additions were in the classic style, and but ill accorded with the old building. At the west end, however, he erected a spacious and well-proportioned Corinthian portico of eight columns, with a balustrade, in panels, around the top, ornamented with statues.* The repairs and alterations were carried on about nine years, and about one-third of the money expended, when in 1642, the works were stopped by the contests between Charles and his people. The balance of the funds in hand was seized to pay the soldiers of the Commonwealth; tombs were desecrated, saw-pits dug in some parts of the church, and others made barracks for the troopers. In this state, the cathedral remained until shortly after the restoration, when nearly £4,000 was raised for the repairs; and under Sir John Denham, as surveyor, some parts of the building were rendered fit for occupation. About this time, "that miracle of a youth," Dr. Christopher Wren, as assistant surveyor-general, made plans for its repair, which were never executed. "On the 3rd of September, 1666, began that appalling conflagration proverbially known as the THE FIRE OF LONDON, which destroyed nearly the whole of the city, and with it so much of that which remained of the cathedral as to render repair useless. An eye-witness, describing the appearance presented by London during this, at the time, direful calamity, says, all the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light was seen above forty miles for many nights. God

any in Europe," with the other portions of the west end of the This portico, described by Evelyn as 66 comparable with cathedral, showing the tower, after the removal of the spire, is engraved as one of the illustrations to Mr. Ainsworth's spirited tale of Old Saint Paul's, vol. ii. p. 94.