Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Eternal people of the lower world, Ye citizens of Hades' capital,

That by the river of remorseful tears

Sit and despair for ever ;

Ye negro brothers of the deadly winds,

Ye elder souls of night, ye mighty sins,
Sceptred damnations, how may man invoke
Your darling glories? Teach my eager soul
Fit language for your ears. Ye that have power
O'er births and swoons and deaths, the soul's at-
tendants,

(Wont to convey her from her human home
Beyond existence, to the past and future,

To lead her through the starry-blossomed meads Where the young hours of morning by the lark With earthly airs are nourished, through the groves Of silent gloom, beneath whose breathless shades The thousand children of Calamity

Play murtherously with men's hearts :) Oh pause!
Your universal occupations leave!

Lay down awhile the infant miseries,
That to the empty and untenanted clay

Ye carry from the country of the unborn;

And grant the summoned soul one moment more
To linger on the threshold of its flesh;
For I would task you.

Bride's Tragedy, Act 2, Sc. 6.

DETECTION of guilt.

Upon the continent of Germany, where the houses are very large, and the Israelites, from various restrictions, obliged to herd together, it once so happened that a robbery was committed in a dwelling of this description, the discovery of which, as not uncommon with the Jewish people, was not referred to a Magistrate, but to a Rabbi, whose wisdom and supposed knowledge of the cabalistical art had excited a very high opinion of his judgment among all his fellow-citizens. As there were twelve persons, at least, who resided in the house from whence the valuables referred to had been stolen, it was required by the Rabbi, time and place being appointed, that they should attend at his house, undergo the ordeal he proposed, and abide by his decision, what ever that decision night be.

The persons among whom it was rightly judged the offender must be found, attended accordingly; when, after prayers being said, and various portions of scripture selected and read by the Rabbi, and after he had proposed that the lights should be put out, and the whole company be left in complete darkness, this being agreed to, each of the persons implicated were previously furnished with a piece of straw, and particularly desired to see that they were all of one length. This part of the ceremony being adjusted, and the lights extinguished, solemn admonitions, and scriptural repetitions of passages on the enormity of theft and an accusing conscience, were again delivered by the Rabbi, who, in the course of his admonition, took occasion to inform his audience, that notwithstanding the straws delivered to them were exactly of a length, when they were received, the piece of straw

then in possession of the thief, would, upon introducing the light, be found, at least,four inches longer than any of the rest!

After another solemn interval, the lights were introduced, and the straw of each person measured according to agreement ;when, strange to tell, one person's piece was found to be nearly four inches shorter than the rest! This man the Rabbi fixed upon as the thief, and threatening unless he confessed, to deliver him over without delay to the civil power; but this was unnecessary, the robber owned the theft, and restored the property, and the wisdom of the Rabbi was exalted above all precedent among those who heard of this new instance of his knowledge of the human character, and its depraved propensities.

ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN AS ARTISANS, &c.

The scarcity of female employments has always been in England a subject of lamentation. On the Continent it is otherwise : there the women perform all the duties of shopkeepers and bookkeepers; and, in all thriving mercantile establishments, the daughters are as useful and as fully enga ged as the sons. Hence, though there are enough of idle men in France and the Low Countries, there are few idle women.

In England female employments are more circumscribed; and we find men in the shops of linendrapers, haberdashers, hosiers, grocers, booksellers, &c. all the occupations in which, on the Continent, are filled by women. In truth, the English custom, in this respect, is a constant theme of their remark and astonishment. It is enquired what becomes of our women; and it excites no surprise that the degraded part of the sex are ten times more numerous in England than in any other country.

Surely this subject merits special notice; and, amid all our institutions and reformations, it seems to be one, in regard to which, much good might be done, and much happiness substituted for extensive and indescribable miseries.

It must be unnecessary to enlarge on the <res created in families by the dependence of girls, and the want of suitable employments; while to describe the complicated sufferings of the abandoned and deserted part of that sex, so interesting in a state of virtue, would fill hundreds of pathetic volumes, and afford everlasting themes for the tragic muse. Even the situation of the virtuous old maid is one of merited sympathy, outliving at once the attractions of her sex, and all the connexions of her youth; she exists unprotected, and dies contemning and often contemned.

In truth, though woman is said in England to be a Queen, yet it is only in loveliness and in powers of fascination, not in condition. Subordinate in power and authority to her husband, dependent on his resources of mind and industry, and bound down to his fortunes and misfortunes,

hose who prosper and obtain happiness ae comparatively few in number! But, in seeking a companion for life, on whom their prosperity depends, all the usages of society operate against the sex. They are restrained from making overtures, and must wait to be sought. If they have a preference, they must practice self-denial; and, if they refuse offers made, they are charged with pride. In short, not one woman in fifty (bound even as the sex are to the fortunes of their husbands,) marries the man of her choice; while the man chosen is forbidden, by our laws of decorum, from know. ing that he is a favoured object. It would be impossible to legislate on such subjects; but it would be useful to consider them, to examine them as we would topics in pkilosophy and reason upon them as very important to half, and the best half, of our species. The object, however, of this paper is to point out some means of rendering the sex more independent; and, by giving them employment, to render them, in that important respect, more happy.

The first plan that offers grows out of the peculiar constitution of women, and suggests that, to a considerable extent, they might be their own physicians. Delicacy forbids women from freely communicating with male doctors; and it is well known that thousands of valuable lives are constantly lost from reserves in this respect.If a college, for educating females in the knowledge of physiology, anatomy, and materia medica, were instituted, 10,000 of the strongest-minded of the sex might de rive independence from advising and prescribing in female disorders, and particularly in regard to diseases of children.

Another 5000 might subsist as accoucheurs.

50,000 shops, now served by men, ought to afford employment for 100,000 women. The employments of 50,000 men,now employed as tailors,staymakers,shoemakers,&c might be advantageously filled by women.

There is no employment better fitted for the sedentary habits of women than that of compositors in printing-offices and these would employ another 5000.

Bookbinding in all its branches might also be performed by women.

Watch and clockmaking is also admirably adapted to the sex, and might employ 5000. We have many female engravers and workers in various arts, and these might be increased another 5000.

As accountants and bookkeepers, they are on the Continent unrivalled, and in Britain these employments night occupy 10,000.

Thus I have pointed out with little energy of invention, means of employing near: ly 200,000 of the sex ; but, if attention were drawn to the subject by a society for the purpose, and the object were specially promoted, I haye no doubt it might be extended to 300,000; the sex, in consequence, be raised in social utility, importance, independence, and happiness; and the 100,000

now living in degradation might be reduced to 10,000.

It is usual to treat this subject jestingly and sneeringly, and hence nothing is done. But, in making these obscrvations, I am serious and in earnest. At present great evils exist, and much unhappiness prevails. Is it not our duty to endeavour to remove them? Can it be done, if it is not attempted? And can it be attempted, if not considered with a solemnity and sobriety befitting its great importance?

I have always considered women, in regard to virtue and social qualities, as the best portion of the human race; yet the laws of custom have rendered all their fine endowments unavailing, and made them slaves, dependants, and subordinates. There seems no good or just reason why they should not be allowed to play the entire part in society for which nature has fitted them; at least, let us inquire on the subject, and be governed in our policy by the ascertained result. Monthly Mag. June.

THE HUMAN LUNGS.

The structure and function of the lungs in human subjects, has long been a chief study of Dr. Majendie, of Paris, and by very numerous dissections of this organ, in its ordinary and also in its phthisically diseased state, he has ascertained, that the tis sues or cellular coats of the lungs are almost entirely composed of the minute branchings of blood vessels, of the pulmonary arteries and veins, anastomising or connecting with each other. That the cells of the lungs diminish in number, but increase in size with considerable regularity, from childhood to old age, the increased size being greatest, where a cough has attended the individual. That on the whole, aged people consume much less oxygen, and consequently have less animal heat, and are less able to resist cold, than the young.Dr. Majendie has found, that the beginning of phthisis, or consumption, is owing to the small parieties of the pulmonary bloodvessels secreting a greyish yellow matter, in one or more of the cells of the lungs ;this, in some cases, is moveable, and the patient coughs it up, and recovers; but much too frequently it increases, adheres to the small vessels, gradually obliterates them, and the whole lobe at length becomes tuberculous, or formed of this greyish yellow matter. Considering thus the commencement of consumption as only an alteration in the habitual secretion of the vascular tissue of the lungs, Dr. M. employs sedatives, and particularly the hydro-cyanic acid, in the two first stages of the disease, with the happiest effect.

[blocks in formation]

POMPEII.

(Blackwood's Mag.)

PANORAMAS are among the happiest contrivances for saving time and expense in this age of contrivances.What cost a couple of hundred pounds and half a year half a century ago, now costs a shilling and a quarter of an hour. Throwing out of the old account the innumerable miseries of travel, the insolence of public functionaries, the roguery of innkeepers, the visitations of banditti, charged to the muzzle with sabre, pistol, and scapulary, and the rascality of the custom-house officers, who plunder, passport in hand; the indescribable desagremens of Italian cookery, and the insufferable annoyances of that epitome of abomination, an Italian bed.

Now the affair is settled in a summary manner. The mountain or the sea, the classic vale or the ancient city, is transported to us on the wings of the wind. And their location here is curious. We have seen Vesuvius in full roar and torrent, within a hundred yards of a hackney-coach stand, with all its cattle, human and bestial, unmoved by the phenomenon. Constantinople, with its bearded and turbaned multitudes, quietly pitched beside a Christian thoroughfare, and offering neither persecution nor proselytism. Switzerland, with its lakes covered with sunset, and mountains capped and robed in storms; the adored of sentimentalists, and the refuge of miry meta physics; the Demisolde of all na tions, and German geology-stuck in a corner of a corner in London, and forgotten in the tempting vicinage of a cook-shop;-and now Pompeii, reposing in its slumbers of two thousand years, in the very buzz of the Strand. There is no exaggeration in talking of those things as really existing. Berkley was a metaphysician; and therefore his word goes for nothing but waste of brains, time, and printing-ink; but if we have not the waters of the lake of Geneva, and the bricks and mortar of the little Greek town, tangibly by our hands, we have them tangible by the eye-the fullest impression that could be purchased, by our being parched, pummelled, plundered, starved, and stenched, for 1200 miles, east and by

south, could not be fuller than the work of Messrs Parker's and Burford's brushes. The scene is absolutely alive, vivid, and true; we feel all but the breeze, and hear all but the dashing of the wave. Travellers recognize the spot where they plucked grapes, picked up fragments of tiles, and fell sick of the miasmata; the draughtsman would swear to the very stone on which he stretched himself into an ague; the man of half-pay, the identical casa in which he was fleeced into a perfect knowledge that roguery abroad was as expensive

as taxation at home.

All the world knows the story of Pompeii; that it was a little Greek town of tolerable commerce in its early day; that the sea, which once washed its walls, subsequently left it in the midst of one of those delicious plains made by nature for the dissolution of all industry in the Italian dweller, and for the commonplaces of poetry in all the northern abusers of the pen; that it was ravaged by every barbarian, who in turn was called a conqueror on the Italian soil, and was successively the pillage of Carthaginian and of Roman; until at last the Augustan age saw its little circuit quieted into the centre of a colony, and man, finding nothing more to rob, attempted to rob no more.

When man had ceased his molestation, nature commenced hers; and this unfortunate little city was, by a curious fate, to be at once extinguished and preserved, to perish from the face of the Roman empire, and to live when Rome was a nest of monks and mummers, and her empire torn into fragments for Turk, Russian, Austrian, Prussian, and the whole host of barba rian names that were once as the dust of their feet. In the year of the Christian era 63, an earthquake showed the city on what tenure her lease was held. Whole streets were thrown down, and the evidences of hasty repair are still to be detected.

From this period, occasional warnings were given in slight shocks ; until, in the year 79, Vesuvius poured out all his old accumulation of terrors once, and on the clearing away of the cloud of fire and ashes which covered Campania for four days, Pompeii, with

at

all its multitude, was gone. The Romans seem to have been as fond of villas as if every soul of them had made fortunes in Cheapside, and the whole southern coast was covered with the summer palaces of those lords of the world. Vesuvius is now a formidable foundation for a house whose inhabitants may not wish to be sucked into a furnace ten thousand fathoms deep; or roasted sub aere aperto; but it was then asleep, and had never flung up spark or stone from time immemorial. To those who look upon it now in its terrors, grim, blasted, and lifting up its sooty forehead among the piles of perpetual smoke that are to be enlightened only by its bursts of fire, the very throne of Pluto and Vulcan together, no force of fancy may picture what it was when the Roman built his palaces and pavilions on its side. A pyramid three thousand feet high, painted over with garden, forest, vineyard, and or chard, ripening under the southern sun, zoned with colonades, and turrets, and golden roofs, and marble porticos, with the eternal azure of the Campanian sky for its canopy, and the Mediterranean at its feet, glittering in the colours of sunrise, noon, and evening, like an infinite Turkey carpet let down from the steps of a throne,-all this was turned into cinders, lava, and hot-water, on, (if we can trust to chronology,) the first day of November, anno Domini 79, in the first year of the emperor Titus. The whole story is told in the younger Pliny's letters; or, if the illustrations of one who thought himself born for a describer, Dio Cassius, be sought, it will be found that this eruption was worthy of the work it had to do, and was a handsome recompense for the long slumber of the volcano. The Continent, throughout its whole southern range, probably felt this vigorous awakening. Rome was covered with the ashes, of which Northern Africa, Egypt, and Asia Minor, had their share; the sun was turned into blood and darkness, and the people thought that the destruction of the world was come. At the close of the eruption, Vesuvius stood forth the naked giant that he is at this hour-the palaces and the gardens were all dust and air-the sky

was stained with that cloud which still sits like a crown of wrath upon his brow-the plain at his foot, where Herculaneum and Pompeii spread their circuses and temples, like children's toys, was covered over with sand, charcoal, and smoke; and the whole was left for a mighty moral against the danger of trusting to the sleep of a volcano.

All was then at an end with the cities below; the population were burnt, and had no more need of houses. The Roman nobles had no passion for combustion, and kept aloof; the winds and rain, robbers, and the malaria, were the sole tenants of the land; and in this way rolled fifteen hundred years over the bones of the vintners, sailors, and snug citizens of the Vesuvian cities. But their time was to come ;and their beds were to be perforated by French and Neapolitan pick-axes, and to be visited by English feet, and sketched and written about, and lithographed, till all the world wished that they had never been disturbed. The first discoveries were accidental, for no Neapolitan ever struck a spade into the ground that he could help, nor harboured a voluntary idea but of macaroni, intrigue, monkery, or the gaming-table. The spade struck upon a key, which, of course, belonged to a door, the door had an inscription, and the names of the buried cities were brought to light, to the boundless perplexity of the learned, the merciless curiosity of the bluestockings of the seventeenth century, and all others to come, and the thankless, reckless, and ridiculous profit of that whole race of rascality, the guides, cicerones, abbes, and antiquarians.

But Italian vigour is of all things the most easily exhausted, where it has not the lash or the bribe to feed its waste, and the cities slumbered for twenty years more, till, in 1711, a duke, who was digging for marbles to urn into mortar, found a Hercules, and a whole heap of fractured beauties, a row of Greek columns, and a little temple.Again, the cities slumbered, till, in 1738, a King of Naples, on whom light may the earth rest, commenced digging, and streets, temples, theatres opened out to the sun,to be at rest no more.

So few details of the original catas

trophe are to be found in historians, that we can scarcely estimate the actual human suffering, which is, after all, almost the only thing to be considered as a misfortune. It is probable that the population of, at least, Pompeii had time to make their escape. A pedlar's pack would contain all the valuables left in Pompeii; and the people who had time thus to clear their premises, must have been singularly fond of hazard if they staid lingering within the reach of the eruption. But some melancholy evidences remain that all were not so successful. In one of the last excavations made by the French, four female skeletons were found lying together, with their ornaments, bracelets, and rings, and with their little hoard of coins in gold and silver. They had probably been suffocated by the sul phureous vapour. In a wine-cellar, known by its jars ranged round the wall, a male skeleton, supposed to be that of the master, by his seal-ring, was found as if he had perished in the attempt at forcing the door. In another a male skeleton was found with an axe in his hand, beside a door which he was breaking open. In a prison, the skeletons of men chained to the wall were found. If it were not like affectation to regret agony that has passed away so long, it might be conceived as a palliation of that agony, that it was probably the work of a minute, that the vapour of the eruption extinguished life at once, and that these unfortunates perished, not because they were left behind in the general flight, but were left behind because they had perished.

their remnants of ornamental painting, their corridors, and their tesselated floors, are seen, as they might have been seen the day before the eruption. The surrounding landscape has the grandeur that the eye looks for in a volcanic country. Wild hills, fragments of old lavas, richly broken shores, and in the centre the most picturesque and sublime of all volcanoes, Vesuvius, throwing up its eternal volumes of smoke to the heavens.

MS. LETTER FROM SCIPIO AFRICANUS.

Translation of a Letter of great poetical beauty, from the celebrated Scipio:

"Do I implore the God's protection to thee, my Celonica ?-Does the Sun warm all on this earth? All but Scipio, for thou art the sun to his mind. I pray thou art well.

The day is past, and I am weary: a mournful day for the Carthaginians. The valleys of Numidia are sown, thick as the grains of Egypt, with the mortal remnants of brave men: The warriors' features are fixed in death's eternal quiet. Carthage has fallen under the world's masters. Our legions are the rocks of Rome: They have battled as they always did and always will-to conquer! Carthage is their own, and the wild frenzy of human folly now rushes through her palaces, her mansions, her dwellings! Carthage, thy day of splendour recedes into the West! I rest under the folds of my tent, whilst the dim night waves slowly. My body is quiescent, but my mind is with thee. The vigour of the day, glorious to our Rome, subsides with the present hour. Languor, sinks upon me, and the visions of the mind pass on. Thy eyes watch over me, blessed treasures, which first brought tenderness on earth, concentrated as they are with the power of all Persia's pearls. The curls of thy wandering hair stray upon my broad breast, and the wings of the dove rest upon the rock.

A large portion of Pompeii is now uncovered. This was an easy operation, for its covering was ashes, thernselves covered by vegetable soil, and that again covered by verdure and vineyards. Herculaneum reserves its developement for another generation; its cover is lava, solid as rock; and that again covered with two villages and a royal palace; and the whole under the protection of a still surer guard, Ne- "The Gods are with me, so shall I apolitan stupidity, poverty, and indo- ere long be with thee. Thou, my lence. The Panorama gives a striking heart's own, must abide the course of coup-d'œil of the two great excavations' war. Flutter not thyself with fear: of Pompeii. The Forum, the narrow Live for thy Roman, who knows it streets, the little Greek houses, with not.

SCIPIO."

« AnteriorContinuar »