Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

may be observed a party of martial-looking Hungarians, toasting their constitution in defiance of Metternich and his spies, or the well-padded breasts of a coterie of Prussian officers-perhaps discussing the relative merits of Jomini and their favourite Bülow, or illustrating with their knives and forks some evolution of tactics. The Prussians are the military pedants of Germany; their very phraseology is tactical, while their demeanour is vain, conceited, and arrogant to a degree, forming, a peculiar contrast with the quiet gravity of manner, and gentlemanly deportment of the Austrian officers. The military of these two nations cordially hate each other, and their rivalry is often the source of serious brawls. Nothing can convey a stronger idea of the intensity of this feeling than the question of a Prussian Colonel to the Mareschal Suchet, on the field of Jena, as a column of Prussian prisoners defiled before him ;-" Did we fight to-day as well as the Austrians at Austerlitz?" To have been surpassed in military prowess by the detested Austrians, would have mortified more the vanity of this "Sabreur" than than the loss of his country's independence.

Both the wines and the viands were of the most costly descriptions; the various tongues of the companythe gorgeous uniforms of the chaseurs of the Russian noblesse-the rich deep melody of the Bohemian band; but above all the blaze of female loveliness that graced the hall, presented an ensemble of high bred fascination and attraction which we would look for in vain at any of the watering places in our own island. After dinner the company lounged in the park, or drove to some of the beautiful villages in the environs. A ball or a concert, (the ladies en demie toilette) with the more exciting pleasures of roulette and rouge et noir, were the amusements of the evening. There were several Polish ladies at the baths, of surprising loveliness. The Polish woman of rank combines all the feminine softness and delicacy of mind of the high-bred English female, with that fascinating polish of exterior and amiable vivacity that so distinguishes the dames of France; in fact, their personal charms are au negreau" with the gallantry of their countrymen. Alas! poor Poland! Many of those gallant spirits who, in the summer of 1829, by their elaborate cultivation of mind and manner, shed such charms over the society of Toplitz, have

[ocr errors]

perished in the late glorious struggle, while others are dragging their exiled steps towards the dreary wilds of Siberia. To use the language of the ruthless autocrat, "Poland has ceased to exist;" but the memory of her sublime efforts to recover her wonted independence, will descend in the brightest hues to future generations, when the name of the barbarian ruler shall only be acknowledged in the page of history as their destroyer!

While lounging in the park on the third evening of our arrival at the baths, my attention was arrested by a coterie of ladies and gentlemen in the adjoining walk. Their calm dignity of deportment, and their distinguished air, announced them as belonging to the highest walks of society.

On one of the party my eye rested with a kind of fascination; the ensemble of his exterior was strikingly graceful, a high broad forehead, a Grecian nose, clear blue eyes that bespoke frankness and sincerity; a beautiful mouth, round which played a heavenly smile; a slender figure, graceful in all its movements, and eminently calculated to impress the spectator favourably; such was the man that arrested my gaze; a man universally execrated from Archangel to the Mediterranean, from the Bosphorus to the Channel, Freedom's most determined foe, the archdiplomatist, I had almost said, the enemy, of Europe the Austrian Prince Metternich!

"Qui cuncta ferit dum cuncta timet."Mon. Mag.

SATIRICAL MEDALS.

FOR THE OLIO.

THE earliest satirical medal is supposed to be that which was struck by Frederick, King of Sicily, in the year 1501, against his rival, Ferdinand, the Spanish King. It has on the obverse the head of Ferdinand, and bears the reverse of a wolf carrying off a sheep, with the legend "jugum meum suave est et onus meum leve." Another, struck on the wars of Charles V. and Francis I., has an eagle with the imperial crown, tearing a cock crowned with a royal diadem. The reverse bears the figure of a fox in a monk's habit, regarding a cock, and has the legend fuciliter credere pessima vulpes," alluding to the intrigues of the Pope, at whose instigation Francis invaded Naples.

earth was carefully covered over with a hand-glass, to prevent the possibility of any other seeds being deposited upon it; yet in a short time, plants vegetated from it. If quick lime be put upon land, which from time immemorial has produced nothing but heather, the hea

Henaut quotes a medal struck in ridicule of Charles III. of Spain, who was assisted by the English, with the legend "Gratia hereticorum rex catholicus." The satiric medals of the Dutch have procured them many enemies. Charles II. of England, in a manifesto published in 1672, complains ofther will be killed, and white clover their abusive medals.

The Naturalist.

A. M.

PROTRACTED Vitality of SEEDS.This was shewn in trenching for a plantation in a part of Bushy Park, which had probably been undisturbed by the spade or plough since, and perhaps long before, the reign of Charles I. The ground was turned up in the winter, and in the following summer it was covered with a profusion of the tree mignionette, pansies, and the wild raspberry, plants which are no where found in a wild state in the neighbourhood; and in a plantation recently made in Richmond Park, a great quantity of the fox-glove came up after some deep trenching. I observed a few years ago the same occurrence in a plantation in Devonshire, the surface of which was covered with the dark blue columbine, a flower produced in our gardens by cultivation, and, I believe, not known in this country in its wild state. A field also, which had previously little or no Dutch clover upon it, was covered with it after it had been much trampled upon, and fed down by horses; and it is stated from good authority, that if a pine-forest in America were to be cut down, and the ground cultivated, and afterwards allowed to return to a state of nature, it would produce plants quite different from those by which it had been previously occupied. So completely indeed is the ground impregnated with seeds, that if earth is brought to the surface, from the lowest depth at which it is found, some vegetable matter will spring from it. I have always considered this fact as one of the many surprising instances of the power and bounty of Almighty God, who has thus literally filled the earth with his goodness, storing up a deposit of useful seeds in its depths, where they must have lain through a succession of ages, only requiring the energies of man to bring them into ac tion. In boring for water lately at a spot near Kingston-upon-Thames, some earth was brought up from a depth of three hundred and sixty feet; this

spring up in its place. A curious fact was communicated to me, respecting some land which surrounds an old castle, formerly belonging to the Regent Murray, near Moffatt. On removing the peat, which is about six or eight inches in thickness, a stratum of soil appears, which is supposed to have been a cultivated garden in the time of the Regent, and from which a variety of flowers and plants spring, some of them little known even at this time in Scotland. JESSE.

EAGLES, properly so called, are characterised by a head covered with plumage and flattened above; eyes large, lateral, and deep seated; a bill of great strength, arched, and hooked at its extremity alone, and furnished at its base with a naked membrane, called the "cere," in which the openings of the nostrils are situated; the wings broad and powerful; the tarsus, or that joint of the leg which is immediately above the toes, strong, short, and covered with feathers down to the very, base; the toes, thick and naked, three of them pointing forwards, and the fourth constantly directed backwards; and the talons of great power and strongly carved. The golden eagle is frequently three feet and a half in length, from the extremity of the beak to that of the tail. His general colour is blackish brown, both above and be low, assuming on the legs a greyish, or sometimes a reddish, tint. His beak is blueish black, covered at the base by a yellow cere; and his toes, which are also yellow, terminate in strong black talons, the posterior one of which frequently attains an enormous length. He is met with throughout the Old Continent, and more especially within the limits of the temperate zone, building his aiery, which he shares with a single female, in the clefts of the lof tiest rock, or among the topmost branches of the Alpine forest. From this retreat he towers aloft in search of his prey, which he pursues by sight alone, subsisting principally on other birds, and on the smaller quadrupeds, which he carries off in his powerful clutch. When his hunger is extreme, he sometimes pounces upon the larger

animals; but in such circumstances he is compelled to content himself with sucking their blood upon the spot, and with stripping off portions of their flesh, on which to satiate his appetite at home. Instances have been known of his attaining in captivity to an age of more than a hundred years.

Table Talk.

ECONOMY. Mrs. Hannah Moore says, "a sound economy is a sound understanding brought into action; it is calculation realised; it is the doctrine of proportion reduced to practice; it is foreseeing consequences, and guarding against them; it is expecting contingencies, and being prepared for them."

DRAM DRINKING.-At an incipient temperance society meeting lately held at Owestry, it was said that in England as much gin was drunk in 1829, as would form a river five miles long, sixty feet wide, and three feet deep; that 3,000 glasses of gin have been swallowed before breakfast at Lambeth; and that in Owestry, it has been ascertained that 13,000 gallons of spirits have been sold in that town in one year. Will any man wonder after this, at the increase of crime in the country?

PLEASANT INFORMATION.-"Did you not tell me this morass was hard at the bottom?" said a young horseman to a countryman, when his horse had sunk up to the saddle girth. "Ees I did, but you are not half way to the bottom yet," said the fellow.

HUNGARY HILL.-More than a cen

SIMPLICITY. At a meeting of the Commissioners of the Watch, &c., at Bristol, one of the extra watchmen was brought before them on a charge of having been asleep on duty. One of the commissioners, on being told this was the second offence, exclaimed, "So, sir, I understand you are a lethargic!" The man, after a pause, replied with some warmth, "No, sir, I am not, I am a protestant."

A WISE FOOL.-Henry the Eight's jester, finding his Royal Master one day transported with unusual joy, asked him the cause of his hilarity; to which the King replied, that the Pope had honoured him with a style more exalted than any of his ancestors-the title of "Defender of the Faith!" to which the fool replied, "O God, Harry, let thou and I defend one another, and let the faith alone to defend itself."

Baine's History of Lancashire.

WHEN John Talbot, newly converted to the Protestant faith, was proposed by Queen Elizabeth to the then Archbishop of Canterbury for a vacant see, his Grace, in horror of a man who had Papist blood still hot in his veins, exclaimed, "Talbot a bishop! an it please your Highness, he is not even a Christian." "An though he be not," replied the Queen merrily, "" he will do well enough for a Irish Bushopp." Something more than a century afterwards, when Queen Anne talked of making Swift a bishop, I hope your Majesty will first make him a Chris

tian,"

[ocr errors]

is said to have stopped his promotion, ," delivered by the then Primate,

FOSSIL FOREST.-In a recent number of the "Edinburgh New Philosotury since some Hungarians visited the phical Journal of the Sciences," there is a notice of an interesting discovery, parish of Stourbridge, and finding the which has been made by a pedestrian clay from which the celebrated fire- tourist (Dr. Wetherall, if we mistake bricks are made, as well as an abund- not), namely, that of a fossil underance of coal, they erected the first glass- ground forest, above forty feet in thickhouse in that town, at a place now call-ness, and extending for several miles ed, in commemmoration of the event, "Hungary Hill.”

SINGULAR ANCESTRAL MEMORIALS. -Becher has shown the possibility of forming a gallery of family effigies, moulded from phosphoric glass, the produce of the identical bones of the originals, in which the likenesses might be preserved as truly as they now are by the liminer. M. Chaptal adds, that a skeleton of ninteeen pounds weight may be made to yield five pounds of this phosphoric glass.

Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia.

along the banks of the Tiber, close to Rome. The petrific matter is a calcsinter, and from the layers of ligneous debris being freely intermixed with volcanic dust, the discoverer of this interesting circumstance thinks there can be little doubt but that this colossal phenomenon was occasioned by an earthquake, of which the memory is lost; probably, long prior to the foundation of Rome. It is singular that so curious a fact in volcanic geology should have escaped observation for so many ages.

FEELINGS IN BATTLE.-During the approach of a cannon-ball, I have observed a general seriousness of countenance, with great silence; in its passing over the vessel, a smile; on its falling short, a laugh. People not employed with something to engage the mind in battle, are very tryingly situated. They have time to fashion their fears in a thousand shapes. Some of them keep together, and talk in a low voice about indifferent matters, and on subjects rather insipid, than either serious or laughable. Others keep alone, and seem indifferent about what may happen. One is ashamed to appear frightened; at the same time he is willing to get, as it were by accident, to the leeward of a mast or capstan, if the firing be to windward. In such situations are found the boys belonging to the vessel, if they can contrive any thing to do there. They seem to be in a great bustle about some little business or other, but they are, in fact, proving to the sympathizing, and, consequently, discerning passenger, that self-preservation is the first law of nature. Others, from sentiment or habit, seem to have this first sensation almost extinguished in them.

Walker's Life

WORMS.-"Lands," says the author of the Natural History of Selborne, "that are subject to frequent inunda'tions, are always poor; and, probably, the reason may be because the worms are drowned. The most insignificant insects and reptiles are of much more consequence and have much more influence in the economy of nature, than the inaccurate are aware of; and are mighty in their effect from their minuteness, which renders them less an object of attention; and from their numbers and fecundity. Earthworms, though in appearance a small and despicable link

For

in the chain of nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but slowly without them, by boring, perforating, and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to rains and the fibres of plants, by drawing straws and stalks of leaves into it; and, most of all, by throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth called worm-casts, which being their excrement, is a fine manure for grain and grass." Farmers and horticulturists have a great horror of worms, the first, thinking that they devour the green corn, and the latter because of the unsightly heap which worms make in the garden walks. But, whatever mischief they may do, it is pretty certain that the good which they perform, sufficiently compensates for the evil. So it is with birds; they may destroy a few buds on your fruit trees, but they devour millions of insects. The grubs of the gnat and beetle tribes are extremely injurious to young plants, but the injury which worms do to them is trifling, the benefit very considerable. Worms are most active in the spring months, but are out on the grass in mild winter nights. Their fecundity is very great. They cast most in mild weather, in the months of March and April. On rainy nights they travel about in search of food. When they lie out in the evenings they do not entirely quit their holes, but keep the extremity of their tails just within them, so that, when anything approaches, they suddenly retire into the ground; yet, notwithstanding this precaution, they often fall a prey to the larger sized birds.

Diary and Chronology.

Sunday, June 24.

High Water 27 m. after 1 morn. NATIVITY OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST. In old times the festival of St. John was held on the 29th of August, but our church service celebrates his death and his birth on the 24th of June, by appropriate passages from the Scriptures. St. John in his childhood escaped the persecution of Herod, and lived a solitary life in the desart, whence he was summoned by the divine command A. D. 33, in the eighteenth year of the reign of Tiberius. The manner of his death is emphatically told in Matthew, xiv. 6-11.

Tuesday, June 26.

High Water, 27m. after 2 mórn. Accession of King William the Fourth.

Thursday, June 28.

E. M. A.

Proclamation of King William the Fourth.

Friday, June 29.

St. Peter the Apostle.

Saint Peter was born at Bethsaida in Galilee, and named at his circumcision Simon or Symeon. He toiled as a fisherman at his native place, until called to the apostleship. Our saint suffered in the dreadful persecution of the Christians under Nero, when he was trucified with his head downwards, alleging that he was unworthy to die in the same posture as that in which his great master had suffered.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic]

Ellustrated Article.

OLD STORIES OF THE RHINE CASTLES.

By Roger Calverley.

FOR THE OLIO..

NOTH GOTTES.

A STORY OF THE RHEINGAN.

Theocrine. 'Tis now no time
For me to think of bymeneal joys.
Can he, (and pray you, sir, consider it!)
That gave me life and faculties to love,
Be, as he's now, ready to be devour'd

By ravenous wolves, and, at that instant, I
But entertain a thought of those delights
In which, perhaps, my ardour meets with yours?
Duty and piety forbid it, sir!

Beauf., jun. But this effected, and your father free, What is your answer?

MASSINGER'S Unnatural Combat.

AFTER having descended from the forest of Niederwald, you reach Rudesheim. In approaching it by water, you enjoy one of the most lovely views in the whole range of the Rhine. This pretty town extends its buildings all along the river bank, and at the furVOL. IX.

See page 375.

thest end, the vanes, pinnacles, and turrets of the ancient family castle of the knightly Brömsers add the most picturesque ornament to the landscape. The Rochusburg displays itself on the left; in front is the town of Bingen, immediately opposite to which, on its craggy but vine-covered cliff, appear the remains of the castle of Ehrenfels,while the dismal ruins of the Mausethurm, or Tower of Rats, are seen sullenly mouldering on its traditionary isle. It is on the mountain behind Rudesheim that the vineyards are situated which produce the choice wine to which it gives a name.

The old castle of Rudesheim is of a square form, and its interior has been restored in admirable taste by the present possessor. It is said to have stood at the head of a bridge which connected it with the Drusithor of the Roman fort at Bingen, on the other side of the river. Conrad Brömser, who flourished somewhere about the end of the tenth century, married an heiress of the house of Rudesheim. In the grand saloon of the castle, you find portraits of numerous members of that family, who are

246

« ПредишнаНапред »