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his office. He was interred in St. Nicholas' | neering genius; but the discovery of an churchyard, Aberdeen; and a Latin epitaph upon his tombstone still records how, by his conversation and his walk, he upheld declining religion, reformed the degenerate manners of the world, and was a flaming Boanerges and a loving Barnabas! From the prominent part which he played in his time, his name was used to denote the peculiar quality for which Andrew Cant was, through life, so pre-eminently distinguished.

FORGOTTEN DISCOVERIES.

There is reason to believe that many of .the things which are daily coming to light, through the modern progress of physical science, were known to the highly-civilized peoples of former times; and that what Solomon said was true-" Behold, there is no new thing under the sun!" The natives of the earth, like the earth itself, travel in a perpetual circle,—from the dark into the light, and from the light into the dark again. What is has been; and what has been shall be again. We are but emerging from a buried antiquity, and reviving the discoveries which had for a time been lost and forgotten. How little do we know of the civilization which prevailed on the earth at the time of the Pyramids! Modern civilza tion takes date from the birth of Christ; but the civilization of Egypt was in its glory two thousand years before then! How little do we know of the civilization of the mighty people who built the huge, sculptured temples and palaces of Central America. We know absolutely nothing; the race seems to be utterly lost; and these grand ruins are all the record that remains of buried empires! When they were great, opulent, and civilized communities, the British people were painted savages, burrowing in holes of the earth, or under the shelter of thick woods. They have gone down into the dark, and we have emerged into the light. We are reviving their arts, one by one; but we may not rediscover all that they knew. All record of their knowledge has passed away for ever. Even since the age of modern language, written and printed, has come in, we are frequently falling on the traces of old discoveries, which had been neglected or forgotten. The Thames Tunnel was thought to be an entirely new manifestation of engi

ancient tunnel under the wide mouth of the harbor at Marseilles, a few years ago, showed that the ancients were beforehand with us. The other day, a manuscript of Papin, the inventor of the " Digester," came to light, showing that he had discovered methods of deadening pain, and that chloroform is no new thing: the name of the newly-discovered treatise is "Traité des Opérations sans douleur." In like manner, at a sale of a library in Paris, the other day, there turned up a dusty old manuscript, entitled, "A treatise on Electricity applied to the transmission of news," and bearing the date of 1765. The author's name was Lesage; he was a physician, the son of a Frenchman settled in Switzerland. It is said that in 1774, an electric telegraph was actually established in Geneva. This telegraph was composed of twenty-four separate wires, answering to the twentyfour letters of the alphabet. This apparatus, all imperfect as it was, is averred to have contained and illustrated the principle of that which is now in such general use. There is also every reason to believe, from the following extract from the works of Friar Bacon, who flourished in the thirteenth century, long before the invention of printing, that the application of steam to mechanical purposes was quite well known to him. But whether he derived his knowledge of such a power from tradition, handed down from those who had lost or forgotten the practical uses of stean, or arrived at it through original investigations of his own, it is impossible for us now to know. The modern inventions of the steamship, the railway locomotive, the hydraulic machine, and the diving-bell, seem to be quite distinctly referred to in the following passage, which is of very curious interest. "I will now," he says, " mention some of the wonderful works of art and nature, in which there is nothing of magic, and which magic could not perform. Instruments may be made, by which the largest ships, with only only one man guiding them, will be carried with greater velocity than if they were full of sailors. Chariots may be constructed, that will move with incredible rapidity, without the help of animals. Instruments of flying may be formed, in which a man, sitting at his ease, and meditating on any

subject, may beat the air with his artificial | words of Buffon's Maxims. Southey speaks

wings, after the manner of birds. A small instrument may be made to raise or depress the greatest weights. An instrument may be fabricated, by which one man may draw a thousand men to him by force and against their will; as also, machines which will en able men to walk at the bottom of seas or rivers, without danger." We have certainly discovered, or revived it may be, the steamship, the locomotive, the hydraulic machine, the atmospheric railway, and the divingbell; but one old patent we cannot get up, -for we cannot yet fly.

STYLE.

"To write well is at once to think well, to feel rightly, and to render properly: it is to have, at the same time, mind, soul, taste style supposes the reunion and the exercise of all the intellectual faculties. The style is the man." Such are the last

of the same subject in the following passage, from one of his familiar letters :-" A man with a clear head, a good heart, and an honest understanding, will always write well: it is owing either to a muddy head, an evil heart, or a sophisticated intellect that men write badly, and sin either against reason, or goodness, or sincerity. There may be secrets in painting, but there are none in style. When I have been asked the foolish question, what a young man should do who wishes to acquire a good style! my answer has been, that he should never think about it, but say what he has to say as perspicuously as he can, and as briefly as he can, and then the style will take care of itself.”

EVERY one blames in his neighbor what the world blames in himself.

CHRONICLE OF THE WEEK,

IN A LETTER TO A COUNTRY FRIEND.

WELL-it is the same this week that it was a week ago-bating the hot weather;and the foci of talk now are the same with those of the last week's chat-JENNY LIND and the Great Exhibition.

The Swede, appearing prettier than ever in the light Barèges which make up her May toilet, and under the roses which the budding summer has rounded into bloom, is culminating her triumph with a hecatomb of hearts. Pray excuse me if I lean that way myself, and if the angelic expression which she threw the other night into her rendering of Casta Diva should bewilder my thought, and make my poor pen stagger like a cripple through this record of our week.

Indeed, you should see her; she is no show woman; she would disappoint all the expectations of aplomb, which her public character may have bred in your belief; she would surprise all your anticipations of the lionne air; she would dampen all your hopes of triumphant dignity; she would appear to you-for she could appear no otherwise the sweet, high-toned, devotional woman. And when the burden of

her notes had settled upon your soul, and led all your grosser emotions captive to the delightful and holy symphony of her utterance, you would think of her-if you think in my untaught way-not so much as an artiste, as the pure-hearted being, whose modesty would light a home, and whose goodness would prove sweetly contagious.

I am not going to measure myself with the critics in this careless letter to you, nor say any thing of her adagios; for I should be as unjust to her as unjust to myself.

Not a little of what would hold your eye at a Castle Garden concert would be the motley and enthusiastic listeners. The company is not-as most town concertsmade up of the knowing appreciators of difficult music;-nor of those who count it fashionable to venture the price of a stall, upon the grade which opera pursuit will give. They are a wiser people who hear Jenny; they come for the love of the thing; they are mixed of all orders; they are varied with all colors and ages. Here and there you catch sight of some enthusiastic gray-beard, who with no music but

boyish memories of the village choir, is wakened by the echo of this singer into a new learning of sound, and is startled with smiles and tears into a knowledge of those old Scripture figures which peopled heaven with harps.

Blooming country lasses, too, whose vermilion tells the story of their education and of their home, listen with an earnestness at which they are half ashamed to the exuberance of mirth, and to the coquettish sparkle which lights up Jenny's "coming thro' the rye."

America makes in the palace is not such a one as will stir the pride of the descendants, or the countrymen of a Fulton. It is sadly to be regretted that the commissioners have allotted such space to us as should make our shortcomings even more apparent; and still further to be deplored, that gentlemen of taste were not at hand to make such disposition of our effects, as should show some sense of beauty.

But the truth is-and it must be truth for a long time to come-the study of beauty is a new study with us, and a poor-paying study, While our sculptors find their best market abroad, and our painters live scantily, and our poets thrive on a meal a day, we can make but poor show beside the nations who have been these two centuries topping their growth with luxury.

I hear indeed, that Miss LIND (how awkward to call her Miss!) is disappointed that the people who come to hear her should encore her ballads and leave her Casta Diva's and snatches of lofty oratorios to die in echoes on the bay ;-but she must consider that musical education does not grow fast in a working world, and that the sighs and smiles which follow upon the expression of simple feeling pay her a more honest compliment than the bravest plaudits of the singing-masters. But I weary you with this talk—unless what poor contrast our business men would you have heard her.

Summer weather, the papers will tell you, has come upon us like a grateful thief, and robbed us of our palletots and shiver-" without our special wonder." The trees are green in the parks, and the birds -such few as buffet the din and clatter of the city-are carolling at the first blush of the morning, as they carol in your woods at home. Pleasure-hunters are conning their charts, and laying their courses for the summer. Southern people are wandering hitherward-forgetful in the balm of the opening season-the aggressions of sharptalking anti-slave politicians; and (God be thanked!) will weave a summer the closer, those liens of brotherhood which make our nation ONE. If there were no summer, there would be no content; the memory of chill makes warmth grateful, and the memory of wars is the sweetness of peace.

Of the opening of the Great Exhibition, which I have posted as the second great hinge of the week's talk-you will have read to your satisfaction, very likely, in the newspapers of the town. And you will have seen, with a twinge of regret, that what I prognosticated a month ago, has proven true, and that the show which

I can easily imagine that the show-cases of the American department should have more the air of shop-boxes, than of the ornamented addenda to a fête, and whoever has seen French arrangement, even in the window of a modiste, can easily imagine

contrive to the elaborate disposition of Paris work. And here I take from an English Journal, (Tait's Magazine,) which possibly may not meet your eye, a bird's-eye glance of what strikes most and earliest in the Crystal Palace :—

"The long and anxiously anticipated 1st of May has arrived. A vast cortège, composed of well-appointed and costly equipages, has suddenly supplanted the unwieldy chain of wagons, trucks, and carts that, for weeks past, have all but rendered impassable the avenues and roads leading to the Park. Tens of thousands of spectators, eager to witness the cavalcade, converge in dusky lines athwart the green plain and to wait for more economic days. On the along the gravel-roads. They are content first day none can be admitted under pay; ment of three guineas, nor on the second and third days is admission to be obtained under a sovereign; while for the three succeeding weeks the charge will be five shillings.

Entering, therefore, with the privileged and aristocratic, as the portals are opened on the above momentous day at the central southern gateway, our readers will, in imagination, behold before them a lofty fountain,

Chasing the sultriness of day,
As, springing high, the silvery dew
In whirls fantastically flew,

And flung luxurious coolness round The air, and freshness o'er the ground.

They may now turn either to the right, and inspect the gorgeous contributions of India, or to the more quaint, curious, but not less ingenious devices from the Celestial Empire, lavishly displayed upon the left. Among the former are included magnificent shawls from Cashmere, Persia, and Nepaul, brilliant in color, intricate in design, yet with every tint so harmoniously arranged and artistically contrasted that they may well long be dwelt upon with admiration and wonder. Here, too, are specimens of goldsmiths' work that would put to shame, for lightness and delicacy of execution, any of the vaunted jewelry of Europe-gems that must excite the astonishment and cupidity of many beholders.

"From China the textile tissues of silk, the embroidery, the elaborate and exquisite carvings in ivory, in wood, and in coral, the natural and artificial productions in infinite variety, have been liberally supplied.

"Farther on, we pause for a while before the shelves and walls adorned with the productions of Greece and, the Levant; and it must certainly be admitted that the subjects of the Sultan, though in some respects avowedly far behind the rest of the world, are in other manufactures infinitely beyond them. Italy, Spain, and Portugal demand no mean share of our attention, next arrested by Belgium as we pass by the precincts of the southern to those of the northern States. Flanders, as Tristram Shandy terms it," the old prize-fighting stage" of Europe, at first sight seems to have presented articles that speak more of the doings of war than of commerce and peace; but her contributions and those of the northern continent of Europe are altogether eclipsed by the magnificence, richness, and variety of our neigh bors the French.

"The most beautiful porcelain of Sevres, the costliest tapestry of the Gobelins, the most marvellous carpets from the looms of Aubusson, Parisian cabinet-work, marqueterie, bronzes, and bijouterie, together with the velvets and silks of Lyons, unsurpassed in the world, are crowded here. Even the very fittings, on which these treasures are displayed, themselves merit more than a passing glance ere we proceed to criticise the more solid productions of Holland. Conspicuous among these we find a silverytoned chime of bells, candelabra, vases, goblets remarkable for the taste with which they have been moulded and adorned; though in this hasty tour we must leave the minute consideration of them to enter the suite of spacious rooms fitted up with furniture from Vienna; sideboards, tables, bookcases, fauteuils covered with a profusion of carving, so exquisitely wrought that it

may be questioned whether Grinling Gibbon himself be not here excelled-trophies of ponderous arms, foliage so light that it seems almost to float upon the air, heaps of autumnal fruit, bouquets of summer flowers, only needing their appropriate color to deceive the most practised eye.

"But stay. In close proximity to the vast octagonal hall inclosing the emblems of the industry of the Zollverein, her Majesty and the illustrious group in attendance upon her are offering the mute though eloquent tribute of their admiration to a colossal lion of bronze, a mighty emanation from the genius and foundry of Munich. Never before was the truculent quadrupedal monarch represented so truthfully as here. Beneath the dusky hide, the giant bones here and there protrude, clothed though they be in other parts with a due proportion of brazen muscle and metallic sinew. The creature's head alone is a study. The half-furtive, half-ferocious expression of the eye and lip-the dauntless brow, with the shaggy mass of mane enveloping the cranium-the tremendous development of chest-the firm protrusion of the mighty limbs-impart to the whole statue an air of reality and life that has rarely been approached before.

"Russia has had assigned to her an extent of space proportionate to her territorial immensity, and the performances of her sons indicate, on their part, indomitable perseverance, patience, and ingenuity. Democratic America, in unnatural proximity to the possessions of the Czar, engages the beholder more from the utilitarian character than from the extraordinary beauty and taste displayed in her supplies, although she scarcely occupies her original superficial allotment.

"It will probably be admitted by all who inspect this unequivocal demonstration of the industry of nations, that the Swiss have evinced the greatest amount of mechanical ingenuity and manual dexterity. In support of this opinion we may instance, from a thousand examples, a pen-holder from Geneva, of no more than ordinary dimensions, yet containing within its minute tubular concavity a train of watchwork, wound up by a little stud at the side, and showing not only the exact minute and hour, but the day of the week and month. A still more complicated piece of machinery is that contained in a musical-box, in which an entire military band, admirably modelled and characterized by the most life-like movements, are seen performing numerous recent and difficult specimens of modern music. A golden pocket-book, adorned with exquisite miniature-paintings and landscapes, incloses, within a very narrow compass, a chronometer and a secret receptacle either for a treasured portrait or a cherished lock. The varieties, however, from the several

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The Magazines for May have all of them their quota to say of the event which is certainly the great event of the age, and the successful prosecution of the design from its beginning to its end has been such as to reflect the highest honor upon the energy and skill of British artisans and British planners.

Our letter-writers from abroad are discussing the matter-as you will readily suppose-according to their political and social tendencies, and before the affair shall have floated by, we shall expect to find new systems of political, social, and industrial action based upon the May observations of

1851.

I dropped a word or two some time since about a certain yacht which was to burrow its way over the ocean and challenge the yacht-men of Yarmouth to a trial of speed. I then ventured the opinion that our yachts -intended as most of them are, for smoother waters than the British Channel, would hardly maintain the supremacy which has been fairly won by our clipper ships. It now appears that the model yacht has fallen below expectation even in a trial at home, and the old intention will doubtless be abandoned.

Of all our water-going craft, nothing would excite such a degree of attention among the continental lookers-on at the fair, as one of our newly-finished river steamers. Their prodigious speed, size, and the elegance of their appointments could not but startle into a stupor those honest burghers who have been taught to admire the meagre, slow-sailing, cramped "Henzog" steamboats of the Rhine.

The truth is, what belongs to us and carries with its belonging more just pride, than any thing else, cannot be shipped over seas, or put on show in any Paxton Palace. We cannot transport our Rochesters and Buffalos-cities made in a day; we cannot show English agricultural commissioners; our league-long corn-fields hewn into the heart of gigantic forests; nor can we ticket and billet and lay on tables our miles of boats heaped high with the abounding produce of waving prairies. We cannot stow in the "machine

corner" of a Crystal Palace that leviathan enginery which mows down trees by miles, and rakes the debris into cities smoking with such labor as makes the poor man rich. Least of all, can we show to their excellencies the purveyors of the Hyde Park show-rooms, the patent of that moral machinery which is making a land-to which all England is a dot-the workshop of nations;-which supplies every craving stomach with food,-every greedy mind with schooling, every ambitious purpose with a career; and which crowns all industrial action with success, and lights upon a million hearths the incense of content; and with this sop for your national palate, I remain, Yours, &c.

THE BOOK WORLD.

Of books, I have this week very little to tell you. The quick-coming heat of summer half indisposes to reading, and the lettered world lies panting upon the working oar of the winter.

Our publishers, too, many of them, have taken a spring vacation for a run to the Fair; and nothing of importance is upon the tapis.

Mr. WALKER, of Fulton street, has recently issued a very beautifully printed book, being a translation of an historical treatise upon the Protestants of France. Its author is well known to the American world as the able correspondent, for a long period of years, of the New York Observer. Many circumstances conspire to give this work great interest at the present moment. Without mentioning the new action and accompanying discussions of the Romish church, there is very much in the existing controversies in the French Protestant Church to give such a history marked importance.

New novels, in diablerie covers, appear from time to time, to add heat and fever to the summer of the season. Their writers and publishers are the Homœopathists of Literature.

The Exhibition has started into life a hundred guides, catalogues, show-books— indeed a distinctive race of literature, some portions of which may hereafter come under our notice. We may now designate only the illustrated catalogue issued in a uniform style with the Art Union of London. Nothing can be neater or more elegant than its

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