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one of the performers at the opera house, was a man singular in his appearance and irritable in his temper. To this unfortunate propension his contemporaries were, charitably, in the almost constant habit of administering food; insomuch that it has been said, that a junto of them, who were fond of tricks and mischief, and who consequently, according to the fashion of those times, were called humorists, actually sent all those vocal and instrumental annoyances that appear in the print, who were characters well known at that period, and that Hogarth took advantage of the assemblage, and drew from nature a scene in which, as far as graphick delineation can convey aërial ideas, the most dissonant grating, abominable and harassing sounds, appear to be operating upon nerves of the most exquisite sensibility, in the moment when the efforts of study had expanded the springs of genius, and wound to the highest pitch of enthusiasm those mental exertions, which a breath will at any time res press, and the rustling of leaves, of silk or any thing, dissipate: in fact, at the very moment when the musician was composing.

ABSENCE.

The celebrated Hogarth was one of the most absent of men. Soon after he had set up his carriage, he had occasion to pay a visit to the lord mayor. When he went the weather was fine; but he was detained by business till a violent shower of rain came on. Being let out of the mansion house by a different door from that at which he entered, he immediately began to call for a hackney coach. Not one could be procured; on which Hogarth sallied forth to brave the storm, and actually reached his house in Leicester fields without bestowing a thought on his own carriage, till Mrs. Hogarth, astonished to see him so wet and fatigued, asked him where he had teft it."

THE BOOKFISH.

The following account of the discovery of a book is very remarkable. It is contained in a letter from Dr. Samuel Ward, then master of Sidney college, Cambridge, to archbishop Usher, dated June 27, 1626. "There was the last week a cod

fish brought from Colchester to our market to be sold, in the cutting up of which, there was found, in the maw of the fish, a thing that was hard, which proved to be a book bound in parchment. The leaves were glewed together with a jelly; and being taken out, it did smell much at first, but after washing it Mr. Mede did look into it. It was

printed, and he formed a table of the contents. The book was intituled, A Preparation to the Cross. Now it is found to have been made by Richard Tracey of whom Boyle makes mention, and says that he flourished in 1550." The book so recovered was published the following year, with this quaint title: "Vox Piscis; or, the Book-fish: containing three treatises which were found in the belly of a cod-fish in Cambridge market, on midsummer-eve last,

1626." 12mo.

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HARK! hark! how sweet yon blackbird sings,

Before my casement on the tree! Ah! rest dear bird! thy jetty wings, And stay, and breakfast here with me! Pluck where thou wilt the chosen fruit, The goosberry, or cherry rare; The owner will attend my suit,

And for my sake the plund'rer spare. Thy tuneful predecessors here

Charmed me, in boyhood's idle days! And now thy mellow numbers dear,

Remind me of their much loved lays. For such companions have I sighed

For shades and solitudes like these, In scenes where tumult, strife, and pride, Have much annoyed my bosom's ease. Thine are the woods, and thine the vales, Where thou mayst range with freedom blest,

When I return where care assails

For I am but a summer guest.
Well have we met-but meet no more!
Then, O! prolong thy little stay-
For soon, the song and visit o'er,

We each, dear bird! must flit away.

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AND LITERAL TRUTHS COMPARED AND APPRECIATED.

Written in the year 1797, upon recovering from a pleurisy, and addressed to a passionate and poetick Lover.

WHILE flames of love employ your songs,
"Tis mine to chant inflamed lungs.
You sing of torments in the breast,
I, in the region of the chest:

They both are near; but which is best?
Deprived of breath, my pangs deny
The consolation of a sigh-

A consolation you enjoy.

Each time I cough, ten thousand smarts
Exceed the keenest of your darts.
Do you lament your freedom fled?
Behold me captive to my bed!
You rapturous hug the chains you love,
What can he hug, who cannot move?
You talk of fevers in the brain,

Of pangs that thrill through every vein:
Come look at me, and then complain.
You boast of tenderness, and mine is such,
I scream with pain upon the slightest
touch.

I grant some anguish you endure,
But how cestatick is your cure !--

Two bleeding hearts, they say, have charms;
"Tis not the case with bleeding arms;
Bliss sympathetick would they know,
If streamlets should for ever flow?
When charming Chloe feels your pain,
You instantly are well again:
You drink in cordials from her eyes;
Your bosom glows with sweet surprise;
Your spirits mount above the skies.
What is the cure the patient knows?
A cure that robs him of repose;

With Spanish flies his bosom glows!
The mildest cordials for his ills
Are nauseous draughts and bitter pills..
Intestine tumults often show

His cure is wretchedness and wo.-
And, when he feels his bowels move,
'Tis not the sympathy of love.
Thus if you grieve, lament, and sigh,
And moan your fate, ah, well may I.

C.

PHILOSOPHICAL AND ECONOMICAL INTELLIGENCE.

EXTRACT OF OPIUM.

M. Parmentier has made publick a new method of preparing the extract of opium, far superiour to any other hitherto known. It takes from that substance the smell by which it is distinguished, and which is always in proportion to its malignant qualities. The manner of preparing twenty four ounces of opium is as follows: Macerate it. in rain-water for five days; then boil it for a quarter of an hour with two pounds of pulverized charcoal; strain and clarify it with white of egg, and by a suitable evaporation you will obtain twelve ounces of ex

tract.

ARTIFICIAL MAGNET.

A German author has lately published a work in which he states a very curious fact. "A person" says he, "having an artificial magnet suspended from the wall of his study, with a piece of iron adhering to it, remarked, for several years, that the flies in the room, though they frequently placed themselves on other iron articles, never settled on the artificial magnet; and even that if any of these insects approached it, they in a moment again removed from it to some distance." "It is worth the trouble," says professor Voigt, who repeats the same circumstance in his journal, "to make further observations on this phenomenon; and, were it confirmed, magnetized iron might be employed to preserve it from being dirtied by flies. Perhaps it might be employed also for other purposes."

PURE AIR.

Dr. Van Marum has discovered a very simple method, proved by repeated experi

ments, of preserving the air pure in large halls, theatres, hospitals, &c. The apparatus for this purpose is nothing but a common lamp, made according to Argand's construction, suspended from the roof of the hall and kept burning under a funnel, the tube of which rises above the roof without, and is furnished with a ventilator. For his first experiment he filled his large laboratory with the smoke of oak shavings. In a few minutes after he lighted his lamp the whole smoke disappeared, and the air was perfectly purified.

THE NUTMEG.

It is a fact which ought to be known to all housewives, that if they begin to grate a nutmeg at the stalk end, it will prove hollow throughout; whereas the same nutmeg, grated from the other end, would have proved sound and solid to the last. The centre of a nutmeg, consists of a number of fibres issuing from the stalk and its continuation, through the centre of the fruit, the other ends of which fibres, though closely surrounded and pressed by the fruit, do not adhere to it. When the stalk is grated away, those fibres having lost their hold, gradually drop out, and the nutmeg appears hollow; and as more of the stalk is grated away, others drop out in succession, and the hollow continues through the whole nut. By beginning at the contrary end, the fibres above mentioned are grated off at their core end, with the surrounding fruit, and do not drop out and cause a hole. Another circumstance worth knowing, is, that in consequence of the great value of the oil of nutmegs, it is often extracted from the nuts that are exposed to sale, by which they are rendered of very little value. To ascertain the quali ty of nutmegs, force a pin into them, and

PHILOSOPHICAL AND ECONOMICAL INTELLIGENCE. 355

if good, however dry they may appear, the oil will be seen oozing out all round the pin, from the compression occasioned in the surrounding parts.

USE OF MOSS IN PACKING TREES. The valuable application of the long, white moss of the marshes, to the packing of young trees for exportation, by Mr. William Curtis, of the Botanick Garden, Brompton, is done by squeezing out part of the moisture from the moss, and laying courses of it about three inches thick, interposed with other courses of the trees (shortened in their branches and roots) stratum above stratum, till the box is filled, when the whole must be trodden down, and the lid properly secured. The trees will want no further care during a voyage of six, seven, or twelve months, as the moss is wonderfully retentive of moisture, whilst its antiseptick quality prevents fermentation or putrefaction. In fact, vegetation proceeds even in this confined state, and blanched and tender shoots are formed, which must be gradually inured to the external light and air. This white moss is very common in most parts of Europe and America, which renders the application more easy, and the discovery more important.

The following recipes are in circulation on the continent, for the destruction of caterpillars, ants, and other insects:Take about two pounds weight of black soap, the same quantity of flower of sulphur, two pounds weight of truffles, and 15 gallons of water; the whole must be well incorporated by the aid of a gentle warmth. Insects on which this water is sprinkled die immediately.Query, is this liquor effectual in destroying that noisome vermin, the bug? If so, its composition cannot be made too extensively known; as we do not perceive that it is likely to damage bed-furniture, &c.

On the Revival of an obsolete Mode of managing Strawberries. By the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. K. B. P. R. S. &c. [From the Transactions of the Horticultu

ral Society, Vol. I. Part I.] THE custom of laying straw under strawberry plants, when their fruit begins to swell, is, probably, very old in this

country. The name of the fruit bears testimony in favour of this conjecture; for the plant has no relation to straw in any other way, and no other European language applies the idea of straw in any shape to the name of the berry, or to the plant that bears it.

When sir Joseph Banks came to Spring Grove, in 1779, he found this practice in the garden. John Smith, the gardener, well known among his brethren as a man of more than ordinary abilities in the profession, had used it there many years. He learned it soon after he came to London from Scotland; probably at the Neat Houses, where he first worked among the market-gardeners. It is, therefore, clearly an old practice, though now almost obsolete. Its use in preserving a crop is very extensive. It shades the roots from the sun; prevents the waste of moisture by evaporation; and consequently, in dry times, when watering is necessary, makes a less quantity of water suffice than would be used if the sun could act immediately on the surface of the mould. Besides, it keeps the leaning fruit from resting on the earth, and gives the whole an air of neat-. ness, as well as an effect of real cleanliness, which should never be wanting in a gentleman's garden. The strawberrybeds in that garden at Spring Grove, which has been measured for the purpose of ascertaining the expense incurred by this method of management, are about seventy five feet long and five feet wide, each containing three rows of plants, and of course requiring four rows of straw to be laid under them. The whole consists of 600 feet of beds, or 1,800 fect of strawberry plants, of different sorts, in rows.

The strawing of these beds consumed this year, 1806, the long straw of twenty six trusses: for the short straw, being as good for litter as the long straw, but less applicable to this use, is taken out. If we allow, then, on the original twenty six trusses, six for the short straw taken out and applied to other uses, twenty trusses will remain, which cost this year 10d. a truss, or 16s. 8d. being one penny for every nine feet of strawberries in rows. From this original expenditure the value of the manure made by the straw when taken from the beds must be deducted; as the whole of it goes undiminished to the dunghill as soon as the crop is over. The cost of this practice, therefore, cannot be considered as heavy. In the present year, not a single shower fell in Spring Grove, from the time the straw was laid down till the crop of scarlets was nearly fmished, at the end of June. The expense

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