1814.] The Portfolio of a Man of Letters. tradition of his having lived there is current among the villagers: one of them showed us a ruinous wall that made part of his chamber; and I was much pleased with another, who had forgotten the name of Milton, but recollected him by the title of The Poet. It must not be omitted, that the groves near this village are famous for nightin gales, which are so elegantly described in the Pensieroso. Most of the cottage windows are overgrown with sweet briars, vines, and honey-suckles; and that Milton's habitation had the same rustic or nament, we may conclude from his description of the lark bidding him good morrow, Thro' the sweet-briar, or the vine, for it is evident, that he meant a sort of honey-suckle by the eglantine; though that word is commonly used for the sweet briar, which he could not mention twice in the same couplet. MAGO THE AGRICULTURIST. There were books among the spoils of Car:hage, which the senate bestowed on the family of Regulus. One of these books was "Mago, on Agriculture, in twenty-eight volumes." GIORGIONE AND TITIAN. Giorgione, the painting disciple of nature and Lionardo da Vinci, arriving (at an early period too) at a high preeminence in his art, and at the same time in the enjoyment of a most beautiful mistress, excited in Titian a desire of being better acquainted. Giorgione, suspecting no very pious intention of Titian toward him, sent him the following -letter : SIR, Your visits appear to me to be apon two accounts, one of stealing my arts, the other of stealing my mistress; aware of your intention, I shall consider your future visits as intrusive, and likely to be attended with very serious consequences. GIORGIONE. Titian took the hint and withdrew. EPITAPH. Sofia Rivers was her name, Only her beauty died; Envy has nothing to proclaim, TOLERANCE-TOLERATION. Dr. Johnson says, that tolerance is a sound word, which signifies the power, or act, of enduring; and that toleration is a sound word, which signifies the allowance given to that which is not approved: In this case the Irish catholics want 527 In the year 1672, when throughout the kingdom only six stage-coaches were con❤ stantly going, a pamphlet was written by one John Cresset, of the Charter-house, for their suppression, and among the many grave reasons given against their continuance is the following:- These stagecoaches make gentlemen come to London upon every small occasion, which otherwise they would not do but upon urgent necessity; nay, the conveniency of the passage makes their wives often come up, who, rather than come such long jour neys on horseback, would stay at home. Here, when they come to town they must presently be in the mode, get fine clothes, go to plays and treats; and by these means get such a habit of idleness, and love to pleasure, that they are uneasy ever after.' PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Bunyan took his work from a previous publication of Simon Patrick; and the bishop took his from a French metrical romance; entitled, Pelerinage de Vie hu maine, FELL. This substantive is in common use, SY 2 and days Unstain'd by Disappointment's sable hue! Hope's golden visions brighten at the gaze Of happier moments shadow'd out by you. Her fairy fabrics busy Fancy rears, By sad reality yet undestroy'd ! Creates a world embitter'd by no tears, Pregnant with pleasures still to be enjoy'd. While o'er the chronicle of wasted hours, Of Life mispent-of Seasons thrown away, Memory her unavailing sorrow pours, And Conscience blames the madness of delay; Let me at least be wise-employ my time; From every low pursuit and Folly flee; May Virtue guide me, and my thoughts sub lime Be rais'd, my God, my Father, all to thee. S. DACRE. ON HEARING THAT GREAT BRITAIN HAD SENT A FORCE TO BLOCKADE THE PORTS OF NORWAY. "TIS done!-Britannia's glories fade, Her trophies in the dust are laid, Her sullied honour mourns the blow, She joins th' oppressor 'gainst th' oppress', That Britain from her neck has broke; By the rich blood of Britons spilt P. T. O ODE TO INNOCENCE, GENTLEST of Heav'n's fair virgins, Loveliness robes thee, and flowers Fadeless adorn thy serene brow. Maiden all beautiful, Heaven's pure light from thine eye beams Innocence, dweller of Eden, Sought'st thou thy native place, Heaven Offring new happiness? O! from the soul-staining evil AN ANSWER TO JACK SHIELD'S "DEFENCE Howe'er enrich'd with wit and sense Unfit for shew or state. Jack! faugh the sound has meanness in'. A Jackanapes he's term'd. Howe'er he may dissemble? Or his Jack-pudding, Kemble! D 1814.] To your true Johns I shall oppose Some Jacks who ne'er to virtue rose: First see approach Jack Cade, Who, like fierce Jacobins of late, Sought to destroy the wise and great, Original Poetry. And Freedom's cause betray'd. Jack Felton with his murd'rous knife; Jack Bradshaw, who in civil strife Adjudg'd his king to die; I place before your eye. Who made his nephew bleed; For diff'ring from his creed ! Or painter Jack, tho' deep in guilt; "Within the house that Jack built." The far renown'd Jack Ketch! Newcastle-upon-Tyne, June 11, 1814. TO SYLVIA. **** 529 To quit my service in despite, Rather than thro' the ling'ring night To read small print by lamp or candle-light. And ye have told, tale-telling eyes! How, fill'd with poet's extasies, I made ye pore On phrase uncouth and legendary lore, There is some trivial cause for discontent; And been together In fair and stormy weather, And 'midst the cares of life together smil' We oft have quarrel'd by the way, I thought that we at length were reconcil'd; When time has cover'd my poor head with Ye surely mean to go. And must I then believe the dire presage, Leave me in dismal darkness and distress, And leave me wand'ring in the vale of tears, Though old and quench'd my sight, AMBROSE. TRUE WISDOM. HAPPY the man whose constant feet And, heaven-directed, reach'd the seat Extended years her right hand holds, Secure from Fortune's frowns; Whilst health and wealth her left unfolds, And more than regal crowns. Her riches are more precious far Than India's golden mines; She will her meanest vot'ries bless, Her ways are ways of pleasantness, H. N. PROCEEDINGS PROCEEDINGS OF PUBLIC SOCIETIES. IMPERIAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. the enlargement of the pericarps, and M. FEBURIER, a nurseryman at Versailles, has endeavoured to collect the ascending and descending sap of trees separately, and with this view he made a deep cut in the trunk of a tree, and filled a bladder to the lower aperture, so that nothing should enter but the liquid coming from the parts of the tree situated below: he then made another incision, and placed the bladder at the upper part of it so as to receive nothing but the sap coming from above. M. FEBURIER regards the sap collected in the lower bladder as ascending, and the other as descending juice, and gives numerous observations on the proportions of both under various circumstances. Wishing afterwards to be certain as to the route which each sap takes in the interior of the vegetable, he plunged alternately by the two extre nities, branches of trees into coloured tinctures. In both cases, these tinctures appeared to him to follow the ligneous fibres of the medullary canal, which made him ascribe the same progress to the two saps, in which he is at variance with the result of other experiments made by M. Mustul. He is also of opinion, that the ascending sap contributes chiefly to the development of the branches: the descending sap to that of the roots; but he thinks that the cambium, or that humour which transudes horizontally from the trunk, and which has been regarded as the matter which gives to the tree its growth in thickness, results, as well as the peculiar juices, from the mixture of the two saps. The presence of the leaves necessary for producing the descending sap, is also of consequence for the increase in thick. ness; but the buds, which M. du Petit Thouars makes to play a great part in this operation, have really no share in it according to M. Feburier; for it takes place, he informs us, while the leaves exist, and it ceases immediately when they are removed, whether buds are left ar not, So far as regards the flowers and fruits, M. FEBURIER says he has observed, that the ascending sap, when it predominates, tends to determine the produc. tion of the simple flowers and the complete development of the germs; that the descending sap, on the contrary, where it is superabundant, produces the multiplication of the flowers and the petals, and consequently of the pulpy part of the fruit: principles from which it will be easy to draw many useful hints, and which will also explain several practices already adopted. According to M. Feburier, the soft part of the wood when laid bare, but protected from the contact of the air, is capable of reproducing, by means of the cambium, the liber and the bark necessary for covering it, as the bark produces habitually, and even when it is partly removed from its trunk, liber and soft wood. In this point he has for his antagonist, M. Palisot de Beauvois, who has also directed his attention to these difficult questions respecting the progress of the sap and the formation of the wood. According to this botanist, this oozing out of a glairy matter, which some physiologists suppose to flow from the old wood, and which contributes to the formation of the liber, is not founded upon real experiments. On the contrary, when part of the back of a tree has been removed, and the wound well rubbed, so as to leave no liber nor cambium, neither the soft wood nor the wood itself pro. duces any thing, but the lips of the solution of continuity made in the bark stretch out, cover the wood left bare, and then produce liber and soft wood incontestably emanating from this bark. M. de Beauvois announces, that he will soon explain this proposition fully, which he has merely hinted at in a memoir on the marrow of vegetables. The opinion of physiologists has been hitherto much divided, as to the utility and functions of the pith of vegetables. According to some, this organ is neces sary to the life of the plants during their whole existence; according to others, it is useful to them only during the first year, and only during the whole of the time that it is green and succulent, and when it may be still easily confounded with the cellular texture. M. de BEAUVOIs has made upon this subject some observations which tend to show that the marrow exercises, during the whole life of the plants, functions, if not of an absolute necessity to their existence, at least very important to their progress, and the development of their branches, leaves, and particularly the organs necessary for their reproduction. He has remarked that the medullary canal 1814] Proceedings of Public Societies.' 531 canal, that is, the circular layer of fibres dispositions with the form of the medulwhich immediately surround the mass of lary canal. the pith, has always a form correspond ing to the arrangement and the disposition of the branches, boughs, and leaves; that in the vegetables with verticillated boughs and leaves, for instance, the horizontal section of the medullary tube shows as many angles as there are boughs at each stage and at each verticille. Thus the medullary canal of the red laurel, presents an equilateral triangle if the branch below the verticilles has three boughs and three leaves; but, if we cut it below the lowest verticille, from which a leaf and a bough frequently fall off, there will be two angles only, and the vestige of a third equally abortive. This law is constant, even in the herbaceous plants. M. de Beauvois has begun similar observations on the plants with opposite leaves, those alternating, distich, repeated spiral, and composed of four, five, and a greater number, of boughs and leaves. He thinks it probable that there are the same relations between the form of the medullary canal, and the disposition of the branches, the boughs, and the leaves. For example, the opposite leaves seem to necessitate a round medullary canal, and which becomes oval, having the extremities more and more acute the nearer it approaches the point of insertion of the boughs and leaves. When the leaves are alternate, the circle is less perfect, the extremities are thinned off equally, but alternately, and each on the side on which the bough ought to appear. When the leaves are spiral, the number of the angles of the medullary canal is equal to that of the leaves of which the spirals are composed. It is thus that the medullary canal of the linden tree has only four angles; that of the oak, the chesnut tree, the pear, and almost all fruit trees, &c. has five angles more or less regular, because the spirals are multiplied, and succeed constantly by fives.-Grew and Bonnet seem to have been the first to make these observations. The former had observed very singular forms in the medullary canal, particularly in that of the pivoting roots of pot-herbs; but he has not attended to the relations of these forms with the dispositions of the boughs and leaves. The latter directed his attention to distinguish the vegetables with opposite leaves verticillated, alternated, spiral, but has not made a comparison of these M. de MIRBEL has continued his researches in the structure of the organs of fructification in vegetables, in which he has been most zealously seconded by M. SCHUBERT, who was sent to France by the government of Warsaw to acquire the science of botany preparatory to his publicly teaching it in Poland. These two botanists have examined all the genera of the family of the prickly trees, or the couifera; trees of the first importance, on account of the singu laity of their organization, the magnitude of the species, and the utility of their products. Every person can distinguish at the first glance the cedar, the pine, the yew, the juniper, &c. but although botanists have studied with particular attention the organs of reproduction in these vegetables, they are not agreed as to the characters of their female flower: or rather, most of them agree that the stigma of the pine, the fir-tree, the cedar, and the larch-tree, is still to be found. We may therefore say that these trees are in this respect species of cryptogamia. Messrs. Mirbel and Schubert go still further: they assert that the female flower of the yew, the juniper, the cypress, &c. is no better known, and that, without exception, all the genera of the family of the coniferæ have a common character, which has hitherto deceived observers, and which consists in the existence of a cupule, not like that of the flower of the oak, which covers the basis only of the ovary, but much more hollow, concealing entirely the ovary, and closed like a spout at its orifice. The female flower contained in this envelope has escaped, observation. In the arbor vite, the yew, the juniper, the cypress, &c. the cupule is folded back, and by an error accounted for by the extreme smallness of the or gans, from time immemorial, the orifice of this cupule has been taken for the stigma. In the cedar, the larch, the pine, and fir trees, the cupule is reversed, and the orifice is scarcely discernible. According to M. Mirbel, the female flower of the plants of the family of the cycas has an organization analogous to that of the conifere; which supports the opinion of M. Richard, who places these two families beside each other among the dicotyledons: but M. Mirbel thinks, that while the characters of vegetation will serve as a basis to the two great divisions of vegetables with visible flow ers, the cycadee could not be far re- . moved from the palm trees. The |