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which Mrs. Jardine requested me to accept the loan of her own best psalmbook, and her daughter, Miss Currie, (a very comely young lady,) was so good as to shew me the way to her pew in the church. Such, I presume, is the intense interest attached to this preacher, that a hotel in Glasgow could not pretend to be complete in all its establishment, without having attached to it a spacious and convenient pew in this church, for the accommodation of its visitors. As for trusting, as in other churches, to finding somewhere a seat unappropriated, this is a thing which will by no means do for a stranger who bas set his heart upon hearing a sermon of Dr. Chalmers'.

You have read his Sermons; and therefore I need not say any thing about the subject and style of the one I heard, because it was in all respects very similar to those which have been printed. But, of all human compositions, there is none surely which loses so much as a sermon does, when it is made to address itself to the eye of a solitary student in his closet and not to the thrilling ears of a mighty mingled congregation, through the very voice which Nature has enriched with notes more expressive than words can ever be, of the meanings and feelings of its author. Neither, perhaps, did the world ever possess any orator, whose minutest peculiarities of gesture and voice have more power in increasing the effect of what he says whose delivery, in other words, is the first, and the second, and the third, excellence of his oratory, more truly than

is that of Dr. Chalmers.

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ludicrous and offensive in a singular degree. But of a truth, these are things no listener can attend to while this great preacher stands before him, armed with all the weapons of the most commanding eloquence, and swaying all around him with its imperial rule. At first, indeed, there is nothing to make one suspect what riches are in store. He commences in a low, drawling key, which has not even the merit of being solemn, and advances from sentence to sentence, and from paragraph to paragraph, while you seek in vain to catch a single echo, that gives promise of that which is to come. There is, on the contrary, an appearance of constraint about him, that affects and distresses you you are afraid that his breast is weak, and that even the slight exertion he makes, may be too much for it. But then, with what tenfold richness does this dim preliminary curtain make the glories of his eloquence to shine forth, when the heated spirit at length shakes from its chill confining fetters, and bursts out, elate and rejoicing, in the full splendour of its disimprisoned wings!

VISIT TO WALTER SCOTT. I did not see Mr. S-, however, immediately on my arrival; he had the abbey of Melrose to the Count von gone out, with all his family, to shew B and some other visitors. I was somewhat dusty in my apparel, (for the shandrydan had moved in clouds half the journey,) so I took the opportunity of making my toilet, and had not quite completed it, when I heard the And yet, the window. But in a short time, havtrampling of their horses' feet beneath ing finished my adozination, I descended, and was conducted to Mr. S' -, whom I found by himself in his library. Nothing could be kinder than his reception of me; and so simple and unassuming are his manners, that I was quite surprised, after a few minutes had elapsed, to find myself already almost at home in the company of one whose presence I had approached with feelings a man of my age and experience is acso very different from those with which castomed to meet ordinary stranger.

were the spirit of the man less gifted than it is, there is no question these, his lesser peculiarities, would never have been numbered among his points of excellence. His voice is neither strong nor melodious. His gestures are neither easy nor graceful; but on the contrary, extremely rude and awkward: his pronunciation is not only broadly national, but broadly provincial-distorting almost every word he utters into some barbarous novelty, which, had his hearer leisure to think of such things, might be productive of an effect at once F ATHENEUM VOL. 6.

There was a large party at dinner, for the house was full of company, and much very amusing and delightful conversation passed on every side around me; but you will not wonder that I found comparatively little leisure either to hear or see much of anything besides my host. And as to his person, in the first place, that was almost perfectly new to me, although I must have seen, I should suppose, some_dozens of engravings of him before I ever came to Scotland. Never was any physiognomy treated with more scanty justice by the portrait-painters; and yet, after all, I must confess that the physiognomy is of a kind that scarcely falls within the limits of their art. I have never seen any face which disappointed me less than this, after I had become acquainted with it fully; yet, at the first glance, I certainly saw less than, but for the vile prints, I should have looked for; and I can easily believe that the feelings of the uninitiated, the uncranioscopical observer, might be little different from those of pure disappointment. It is not that there is deficiency of expression in any part of Mr. Scott's face, but the expression which is most prominent is not of the kind which one who had known his works, and had heard nothing about his appearance, would be inclined to expect. The common language of his features expresses all manner of discernment and acuteness of intellect, and the utmost nerve and decision of character. He smiles frequently; and I never saw any smile which tells so eloquently the union of broad good-humour with the keenest perception of the ridiculous but all this would scarcely be enough to satisfy one in the physiognomy of Walter Scott.

Himself temperate in the extreme, (some late ill health has made it necessary he should be so,) be sent round his claret more speedily than even I could have wished-(you see I am determined to blunt the edge of all your sarcasms)—and I assure you we were all too well employed to think of measuring our bumpers. Do not suppose, however, that there is anything like display or formal leading in Mr. Scott's

conversation. On the contrary, every body seemed to speak the more that he was there to hear; and his pre-sence seemed to be enough to make every body speak delightfully, as if it had been that some princely musician had tuned all the strings, and, even under the sway of more vulgar fingers, they could not choose but discourse excellent music. His conversation, besides, is for the most part of such a kind, that all can take a lively part in it, although indeed none that I ever met with can equal himself. It does not appear as if he ever could be at a loss for a single moment for some new supply of that which constitutes its chief peculiarity and its chief charm; the most keen perception, the most tenacious memory, and the most brilliant imagination,having been at work throughout the whole of his busy life, in filling his mind with a store of individual traits and anecdotes, serious and comic, individual and national, such as it is probable no man ever before possessed; and such, still more certainly as, no man of great original power ever before possessed, in subservience to the purposes of inventive genius. A youth spent in wandering among the hills and valleys of his country, during which he became intensely familiar with all the lore of those grey-haired shepherds, among whom the traditions of warlike as well as of peaceful times find their securest dwelling-place; or, in more equal converse with the relics of that old school of Scottish cavaliers, whose faith had nerved the arms of so many of his own race and kindred: such a boyhood and such a youth laid the foundation, and established the earliest and most lasting sympathies of a mind, which was destined, in after years, to erect upon this foundation, and improve upon these sympathies, in a way of which his young and thirsting spirit could have then contemplated but little. Through his manhood of active and honoured, and now for many years of glorious, exertion, he has always lived in the world, and among the men of the world, partaking in all the pleasures and duties of society as fully as any of those who had nothing but such pleasures

VOL. 6.]

Varieties: Critical, &c.

and such duties to attend to. Uniting, as never before they were united, the habits of an indefatigable student with those of an indefatigable observer, and doing all this with the easy and careless grace of one who is doing so, not to task, but, to gratify his inclination and his nature, is it to be wondered that the riches of his various acquisitions should furnish a never-failing source of admiration even to those who have known him longest, and who know him best?

Next morning I got up pretty early, and walked for at least two hours before breakfast through the extensive young woods with which Mr. Scott has already clothed the banks of the Tweed, in every direction about his mansion. Nothing can be more soft and beautiful than the whole of the surrounding scenery: there is scarcely a single house to be seen; and, excepting on the rich, low lands, close to the river, the country seems to be almost entirely in the hands of the shepherds.

After a breakfast a la fourchette, served up in the true style of old Scottish luxury, which a certain celebrated novelist seems to take a particular pleasure in describing; a breakfast, namely, in which tea, coffee, chocolate, toast, and sweetmeats officiated as little better than ornamental outworks to more solid and imposing fortifications of muttonham, hung beef, and salmon killed overnight in the same spear and torch-light method of which Dandie Dinmont was so accomplished a master, After doing all manner of justice to this interest. ing meal, I spent an hour with Mr. S. in his library, or rather in his closet; for, tho' its walls are quite covered with books, I believe the far more valuable part of his library is in Edinburgh,

way

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most part, be rather beard than seen. Mr. Scott paused at the rustic bridge which led us over the ravine, and told me that I was treading on classical ground; that there was the Huntly Burn, by whose side Thomas the Rhymer of old saw the Queen of Faery riding in her glory; and called to this hour by the shepherds, from that very circumstance, the Bogle or Goblin Burn.

From this we passed right up the hill, the ponies here being as perfectly independent as our own of turnpikeways, and as scornful of perpendicular ascents. I was not a little surprised, however, with Mr. Scott's horsemanship; for, in spite of the lameness in one of his legs, he manages his steed with the most complete mastery, and seems to be as much at home in the saddle as any of his own rough-riding Deloraines or Lochinvars could have been. He is indeed a very strong man in all the rest of his frame; the breadth and massiness of his iron muscles being evidently cast in the same mould with those of the old "Wats of Harden" and "bauld Rutherfuirds that were fow stout."

From the Monthly Magazine, PAINE'S ESCAPES FROM THE GUILLOTINE.*

I was one of the nine members that composed the first Committee of Constitution. Six of them have been destroyed; Sieyes and myself have survived. He, by bending with the times, and I, by nowending. The other survivor joined Robespierre, and signed After the fall of Robespierre, he was with him the warrant for my arrestation. seized and imprisoned in his turn, and sentenced to transportation. He has since apologized to me for having signed the warrant, by saying, he felt himself in danger, and was obliged to do it. behind Herault Sechelles, an acquaintance of Mr. Jefferson's, and a good patriot, was my suppléant as a member of the Committee of Constitution; that is, he was to supply my place, if I had not accepted or had resigned, being next in number of votes to me. He was imThomas Clio Rickman, just published.) * Written by himself. (From Life of Thos. Paine,by

We then mounted our horses, a numerous cavalcade, and rode to one of the three summits of Eildon-hill, which rises out of the plain a little Ad, and forms, in almost every point of view, a glorious back-ground to its towers and rising woods. We passed, before leaving Mr. Scott's territories, a deep dingle, quite covered with all manner of wild bushes, thro' which a little streamlet far below could,for the

prisoned in the Luxembourg with me, was taken to the tribunal, and to the guillotine; and I, his principal, was left. There were but two foreigners in the Convention, Anacharsis Cloots and myself. We were both put out of the convention by the same vote, arrested by the same order, and carried to prison together the same night. He was taken to the guillotine, and I was again left. Joel Barlow was with us when we went to prison.

Joseph Lebon, one of the vilest characters that ever existed, and who made the streets of Arras run with blood, was my suppléant member of the convention for the department of the Pays de Calais. When I was put out of the convention, he came and took my place. When I was liberated from prison, and voted again into the convention, he was sent to the same prison, and took my place there; and he went to the guillotine instead of me. He supplied my place all the way through. One hundred and sixty-eight per sons were taken out of the Luxembourg in one night, and a hundred and sixty of them guillotined the next day, of which I know I was to have been one; and the manner I escaped that fate is curious, and has all the appearance of accident. The room in which I was lodged was on the ground-floor, and one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened outward and flat against the wall; so that, when it was open, the inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary, when it was slat. I had three comrades fellow-prisoners with me: Joseph Vanhuile, of Bruges, since president-of the municipality of that town, Michael Robins, and Bastini, of Louvain. When persons by scores and by hundreds were to be taken out of prison for the guillotine, it was always done in the night, and those who performed that office had a private mark or signal, by which they knew what rooms to go to, and what number to take.

We, as I said, were four, and the door of our room was marked, unobserved by us, with that number in chalk;

but it happened, if happening is a proper word, that the mark was put on the door when it was open and flat against the wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night,—and the destroying angel passed it by. A few days after this Robespierre fell; and the American ambassador arrived and reclaimed me, and invited me to bis house.

During the whole of my imprisonment prior to the fall of Robespierre, there was no time when I could think my life worth twenty-four hours: and my mind was made up to meet its fate.

PEDESTRIANISM.

The Cambridge Chronicle says: "We inserted some time ago an account of an extra-· ordinary number of miles performed by Joseph Meads, a mail-guard. We have now further to state, that the same individual has completed five years, viz. from Monday July 1, 1814, to Sunday July 11, 1819, betwixt Northampton and London, performing the halting one night; which, including the bisdistance of 66 miles every night, without sextile, amounts to 120,516 miles; being above forty times the computed length of with mail-coaches, as guard, 547,742 miles ; Europe. The same individual has travelled which is above two-and-twenty times the computed circumference of the globe.”

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of the case --

Mr. Mollien, only 21 or 22 years of age, had last year visited the countries watered by the Gambia and Rio Grande, and had discovered the source of these rivers: he penetrated to Timbo or Tiembo, the capital city.

He believed that he had found the real source of the Senegal, which according to this, would lie more to the south than has before been imagined. After he had endured all the dangers and fatigues which accompany a journey among an uncultivated people, he returned by the Bissagos Islands to the French colony at Senegal, and arrived on the 15th of January at the Island of St. Louis.

VOL. 6.]

Matthews's New Patent Safe Coach.

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INVENTIONS.

PATENT SAFE STAGE COACH.

The Invention of Mr. Henry Matthews, THIS Coach is calculated to ensure safety in an eminent degree: it is scarcely possible for it to turn over; and should it break down accidents cannot happen. It is light, elegant, and quite dissimilar to those in use, the narrowness of which destroy all comfort, besides being very dangerous; and they often appear like baggage-waggons, from the indiscriminate mixture of persons and packages. This new construction admits neither passengers nor parcels on the roof. There are commodious seats provided at about six feet six inches from the ground; the luggage is secured from wet and pilfering, under lock, and is not more than three feet six inches from the ground, instead of eight feet nine inches, thereby lowering the centre of gravity between two and three feet. It cannot lose its balance: it is broader than usual, and allows more room for passengers. The perch, body, and boot, are shorter; so that all the weight is much nearer, and more at the command of the horses.

The present coaches, which carry pass engers on the top, and loaded outside and not within, are as easily turned over as a column of fifteen feet in height, and only four feet eight inches in diameter. Let a thinking person only contemplate an inclining road, with this column going at the rate of seven miles in the hour, they will then give stage-coachmen credit that more acci

of Greeton-place, East, Bushnal-green. dents do not happen, instead of blaming them (though it is a fact which can be proved, that not one in eight of those which do occur ever appears in the public prints.) The SafeCoach will be as difficult to turn over as a column of half this height. The wheel-horses, by this plan, are also relieved from that unequal variation which is occasioned by the weight being placed so high as to vibrate from side to side; sometimes falling to one horse and sometimes the other, they are compelled to an equal pace, with a jerking, unequal draught. This the inventor says he has proved by experiment: and to produce further demonstration of the bad effect of placing the weight much above the level with the line of draught, 84lb. to a line, which, passing over a pulley, moved a stage-coach weighing 17 cwt. Seven half-hundred weights were then placed on the roof, when it required 25lb. more to move it. The seven half-hundred weights were then placed down in the boot, when it required only 141b.: thereby proving, that to place the weight nearer on a level with the line of draught (as in the Safe-Coach,) is a saving of labour to the horses, of 11lb. in every 25 of draught.

If a person were to fix a pound weight at the top of a ten foot rod, and run with it at the rate of seven miles in the hour, this would show how much more labour it required, than if brought down on a level with the hand.

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Passengers four inside, and twelve out.

The wheels to this coach are nearly the same in size as those of the mails, and are fastened on with lock and key, thereby for ever putting to rest all apprehension of wheels flying off.

The iron crutch, with a spring at bottom, which bangs pendant on each side the coach, and forms convenient steps, considered rather as a superabundant caution, than a thing absolutely necessary: it may be omitted without danger, as the wheels on either side will run on a bank more than twice the height other coaches can, and not lose its balance; and should a wheel break down, the end of the arm comes to the ground before the carriage passes the line of gravity.

This proves the impossibility of its turning over. It is true the concussion might shake some of the passengers off: they would then

only have to fall three feet four inches (not between eight and nine feet, as from the present coaches.) With the pendant springs however, there will be no concussion.

In order to prevent that uncomfortable intermixture,now so prevalent on the outside of stage-coaches, the front seat is devoted to those who choose to pay a td. per mile more. The charges to other passengers (both inside and out) will be no more than at present. Improvements like this should be paid for by the public, and not the coach-master.

It exceeds every other carriage both for ease and pleasantness. Passengers in the four horse coach sit without incommoding or even touching each other. The lover of Nature will obtain a better view of the country than from a post-chaise, being higher and having more windows.

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