phibious fopling without a name, whose ways of life are as various and uncertain, as the changeful features and hues of Proteus and the Cameleon; and from the front of brass of lost woman on the pavé of London, up to the haughty Duchess, who, from her barouche or opera box, takes the measure of you, as if you were unworthy to be placed "betwixt the wind and (her) nobility." In our parks, our gardens and our streets, nay, also in our churches, theatres, and drawing-rooms, the starers are daily increasing, and annoying modesty, decency, timidity, the stranger, the supposed inferior, and the softer sex. Amongst men, (who ought to have more sense than to possess such a defect) we have legions of them, blocking up passages at the opera and other dramatic houses, levelling their glasses, like pointed cannon, at every coming face, if new. The stare of impertinent curiosity is painful to meet, seeming as if it would say, "Damme, who have we here ?" If it be as hackneyed as their own, it is brass meeting brass; yet the thing is still shocking, where the glass does not act as a shield to the offending eye, the offensive weapon is used in a barefaced act of unmanly want of feeling, and the pupil of a fool is bent in divers directions over the person of a lady, or a stranger ill accustomed to such barbarity; sometimes the fashionable gazer or glass-cocker scrutinizes the dress of his fellow man, or monkey, to detect any anomalies in the science of the toilet, and pronounces his victim a vul-gar fel-low, (thus syllabled) or a quiz, (a word evidently derived from unbecoming, contemptuous inquiry-quis? Who have we got here? as already stated.) In our other sex, proud females toss aloft their light heads, taking a bird's eye view of all around them, and shooting the darts of malice at those whom sympathy and identity of sex ought to make objects of protection and sensibility. Here we have a living doll dissecting the dress of a retiring female,-using her organs of distinctiveness to count a thread in a veil, a wrinkle in a stocking, a wind

ing curl on an ivory forehead, and to envy or censure the multiplied flounces, feathers, or other external ornaments; I say external, for real mind has no share in these operations: the same perfect sex has trenched upon the usurpations of the male children of pride, by eye-ing the minor classes with that putting down glance which sins against Christian charity, but which, for the time, serves the purpose of imposing,

"And fills up all the mighty void of sense."

Happily there are men and women who have hearts and heads above this common fault and trespass on humanity; but the number of delinquents is still very great indeed, and they are likely to augment, from thus triumphing in error, and annoying with impunity. The starers out of countenance of manly appearance (to seem and to be are not the same) so seldom meet with the punishment which they deserve, or are so cowardly, in selecting meek, mild, and bashful persons to act against, that very little hopes of their amendment can reasonably be entertained; and the bold gentlewomen, or rather, the bold women, who ought to be gentle, have been so long tolerated in this breach of decorum, that their conversions seem also a little doubtful; but if seeing themselves in print can prove beneficial, by inducing them to selfcorrection, I shall feel amply paid for the regrets which I have entertained on their account, and for the time thus dedicated to their reformation. Let them be persuaded, that one of the most amiable qualities of their sex is the yielding to the voice of advice, and that the triumph over self is the brightest of their conquests. The amiable woman who can own her errors and feebleness, has a direct claim to protection, and to added affection, but the enterprizing woman, (whatever be her rank) who turns round to stare one of her own sex out of countenance, or measures her man, as if for single combat, assumes all the hardihood of the other sex, and loses all that is dearest in her ownunsullied purity of mind and conduct. The maniken who wears a glass, with

innocent, and who would blight the blossom of immaculacy by their gross oglings and pestiferous breath. All those who thus transgress, and

"Give virtue scandal-innocence a fear,
Or from the sot-eyed virgin steal a tear,"

whether it be done by the breath of
detraction, or the eye's approach in a
guilty form, ought to meet personal
chastisement from their own sex, and
be consigned to the contempt of the
other.
PHILO-SPECTATOR.

E will now take a slight glance at those parts of chemistry which come more especially under the consideration of the mineralogist. First

let us examine the metals. These

are now considered as consisting of forty-two. We will enumerate them, and slightly touch upon those which are not so generally known.

of metals, or oxides.-Potassium when put into water abstracts the oxygen so rapidly from the water, that it takes fire and is converted into potash.

The class of bodies called metals may generally be distinguished by the peculiar lustre which such of their particles as have not been exposed to the atmosphere exhibit upon fracture. Thus, potassium, if cut, will exhibit in its interior this peculiar metallic lustre. This metal then, as we said above, becomes, by uniting with oxygen, potash, one of the alkalis, a class of bodies which has been treated of before. Thus, by a curious alternation of opinion, the metals are shown to be the originals of the earths. instead of the earths the originals of the metals. From this consideration of the vast quantity of oxygen, which naturally arises a curious examination in one state or another is distributed through the universe. The generality of the earths are metallic oxides, or oxygen united with a metallic base. To enumerate a few. The vast chalk hills which appear so frequently in all parts of our island, are masses of lime united with carbonic acid. In each of these two bodies oxygen exists in a great quantity. Lime is the oxide of a metal called calcium and carbonic acid, as we have noticed above, is the union of carbon and oxygen; thus the greatest part of the compound must be oxygen. Again, in the vast beds of clay oxygen forms a great portion. Alumine (or pure clay) is an oxide of a metal called aluminum;

A

TASK of greater weight than the systematic reading of these four ponderous and closely printed volumes, has not fallen to our lot since our editorial functions were so good-naturedly undertaken by us for the public benefit. The American Boy would be lost in calculating the number of pages, sentences, words, syllables and letters, of which they are composed. For our selves we are at a dead stand still on the single question, "Is it really possible to peruse them from beginning to end ?" At any rate we can but dip for our friends this week; and shall endeavour to muster more courage for future exertions.

Our worthy Doctor is wonderfully playful and sprightly, considering his unwieldy bulk. The mountain is not solid-it is a hill of whipt syllabub: drollery, fun, and the most portentous efforts of humour pervade these mighty tomes. At hazard we take the account of Dollar as a specimen :

"It is (the Doctor tells us after a digression) for the purpose of pointing out the true road hither, that I have thus far encroached on my limits; and chiefly for the sake of Castle Campbell; scarcely known, though known to exist; named, but named as if it was an every-day sight, and passed every day, by hundreds who are satisfied with knowing that they are near it, and with hearing a few wretched puns upon its name.

"But I ought to be silent about the puns for the Dea of puns, if there is such a one in Varro's list, seemed to have pronounced a judgment on me for my contempt. Certainly Dollar was a cause of dolour to me; as I was condemned to lie still for a week, and wonder at what particular hour I should be choked with a squinancy. The throat is an awkward contrivance; because, as legislators know, it is easily stopped up. Fortunately, Dollar, or Dolour contained no doctor. The landlady, however, was the howdie of the village, and came to tender her services, producing Dr. Young's

I assured her that my case was not in her line; but by dint of the Napoleon practice, I was rescued from this tedious substitute for a halter; and, in a week, was able to receive the congratulations of all the auld wives, and young ones too, of the neighburhood. I must agree with you, Sir Walter, that it is an odd sex in our hours of ease and the rest follows. Half of the whole sex of Dollar, kind creatures, came out of their houses when they saw the stranger gentleman crawling up the hill, like a spectre from the vaults of Castle Campbell, to offer him seats, and milk, and what not; and when I returned many years afterwards, to see and again to thank my obstetric hosts, I was received, not as one who had been a source of trouble, but as an old friend. Certainly, when I can choose the inn in which I am to have a fever, it shall be at Dollar.

"What a piece of work is man! He certainly is, master Shakspeare. Because his pulse takes a fancy to beat 82 instead of 72, he is unable, in twelve hours, to sit up in his bed: and when he gets out of it at length to enjoy the fresh air he must hold fast by the wall he could have jumped over a few days before. If the pulse continues rebellious, the carpenter comes and nails him up in a box, and all his half finished schemes are at an end. Some one says, that if a watchmaker's productions did not go better, he would get very little practice. However that may be, the sun never shines so warm, the flies never hum such sweet music, the mossy bank never looks so green, and never does the air breathe such perfume, as when he first returns from the edge of the grave to smell the breeze that blows from the wallflowers of Castle Campbell; or of any other castle."

Having got well, the Doctor's next and bolder attempt was to climb Ben Ledi, and he thus facetiously goes on to the result.

"It was not for want of making the

attempt, that I did not see whatever there is to be seen from the summit of Ben Ledi. I reached it, but in vain; and I need not conjecture and describe, like Brydone on Etna, what I did not see. Did I choose thus to deceive you, I should at any rate do it with comparative truth, or rather falsehood; since I sat myself down on its topmost stone, whereas that personage, like Eustace in other cases, only ascended with the pen, and in his closet. Heaven knows, it is difficult enough to describe what we have seen, without troubling ourselves by attempting to look through clouds as dense as a millstone, and by stringing together epithets with a map before us. Yet the views ought to be fine, since Ben Ledi commands a very interresting variety of country. That they are so in the direction of Stirling, I can vouch; as they also are over Loch Lubnaig to the north but, to me, it was like the vanishing of images in a magic lantern like the glance of the lightning in dark night; gone before I could say, it is here. I thought that I had known Highland rain in all its forms and mixtures and varieties; in Sky, in Mull, in Shetland, at Fort William, at Killin, on the summit of Ben Lawers, and in the depths of Glenco. But nothing like the rain on Ben Ledi did I ever behold, before or since. In an instant, and without warning or preparation, the showers descended in one broad stream, like a cascade, from the clouds, and in an instant they ceased again. We have heard, in an ode to Molly, of counting the drops of rain : but there were no drops here to be counted; it was one solid sheet of

water.

"There is a peculiarity in these summer showers of the Highlands, which a Lowlander knows not, but will not easily forget when he has experienced it. If he carries an umbrella, it will be useful for him to be told, that, like his fowling piece when the dogs have scent, he must keep it ready cocked. If there is but a button to undo, or a ring to slip off, he will often be wet through before he can get either effected. There is an interval of fair weather: even the cloud

which is to produce the rain is not very obvious; when in an instant, and without a sprinkling, or even a harbinger drop, the whole is let go on your head as if a bucket had been emptied on it.

"Perhaps the clouds and rain of this cloudy and rainy region are the reason that sun dials are so common in this country; not only at Kilmahiog, where there are a dozen, but whereever you go. So it is in almost all the villages; and even the solitary house, that has not a stone step to its door, or any pretence to geometry in its walls, carries the evidence of its mathematical knowledge on its front, in the shape of a rusty gnomon. These incessant dials in this land of clouds, offer some apology for the celebrated question respecting the use of the sun to the dial. The policy is, however, profound: because, if he should miss it at Inverness, he may hit it at Callander, or elsewhere, some time between the vernal and the autumnal equinoxes. But nothing equals the ingenuity of the artist at Glamis, who seems to have been determined that if time escaped him on one quarter, he would catch it on some other. It would be hard indeed, if, in the revolution of a year, the sun did not light one of the hundred faces of this most ingenious polyedron: for he can scarcely peep through a pin hole, without being caught in the act by the tip of some one of the gnomons, that bristle their north poles like a hedgehog all round it.

"I wish I could speak of the inns at Callander as I have spoken of that at Dollar; but it is a mixed world, inns and all, and we must take it as it comes.

"When you hear Peggy called, as if the first vowel was just about to thaw, like Sir John Mandeville's story, and when you hear Pe-ggy answer co-ming, you must not prepare to be impatient, but recollect that motion cannot be performed without time. If you are wet, the fire will be lighted by the time you are dry; at least if the peat is not wet too. The smoke of wet peat is wholesome: and if you are not used to it, they are: which is the