plan, however, in 1842, with what success we are not acquainted. In the second group we may rank a process by M. Jobard, which he invented in 1833, and laid before the Royal Academy of Brussels, who reported favorably on it in the beginning of 1834. It appears to have consisted in the production of gases from water, which were simply passed through liquid naphtha, so as to take up a portion of its vapor. In 1845 Mr. J. Constable obtained a patent for producing gas by throwing steam upon anthracite coal at a red heat, and afterwards passing the mixed gas, with a certain portion of common air, through turpentine, to improve its luminosity. The same process, we believe, or a very similar one, was reproduced very lately in America, and had for a short time a considerable notoriety in the public prints. In all these cases the gases sought to be improved can only obtain a mechanical mixture of the vapors which increase their light; and as even the best coal or oil gases soon deteriorate when kept, it is not to be expected that such condensible vapors as those of naphtha or turpentine should remain with the gases which have imbibed with them, especially if the temperature is lowered. The third group includes a process patented by Mr. Cobold in 1838, in which he produced gas fit for illumination by distilling peat saturated with coal-tar; and a patent process by J. C. Robertson in 1848, in which he proposes to distill a mixture of resin, sawdust, and some alkaline matters, passes the vapors over red-hot surfaces, and thereby produces, among other products, a gas fit for illumination. In the last group we include a second process by M. Jobard, which he appears to have invented soon after his experiments in 1833. He caused the gases formed by passing steam upon red-hot coke to come in contact with the vapors arising from resinous substances in a heated cylinder; his invention was sold by him for 10,000 francs to an individual in Paris, who passed it off as his own, and not only received for it gold medals from the Society of Encouragement and the Academy of Industry, but was in 1839 about to obtain the cross of the Legion of Honor, when the fraud was discovered. In 1839 a patent was granted in England to M. de val Marino, for a process essentially if not actually, the same as Jobard's. The apparatus of this patent consisted in three upright cylinders filled with coke in small pieces, and brought to a bright red heat; water was allowed to drop into one of them, coal-tar into another, and the products from both were brought into contact in the third, from which the gas was led off in pipes. The quantity of water introduced, compared with the tar, was made a matter of calculation, but in practice it was regulated by the workman superintending the process, who had a small burner as a test of the quality of his product, and could increase or diminish the quantity of either ingredient according to its indications. Practically and economically this method has proved a failure owing to carbonic acid in the water gases, and sulphurous vapors given out by the coke-which greatly injured the illuminating power-and more especially from the tar in the second retort producing so rapid an incrustation around the coke, as speedily to destroy its decomposing power, and prevent all egress of gas through it. In 1845 a patent was taken by Mr. J. Murdoch for a method of bringing the gases from water decomposed by coke in contact with the products distilling from coal and coal-tar, and thereby producing an improved gas; and another very ingenious process, for a similar end, was patented by Mr. Croll in 1848. In 1847 Mr. Stephen White of Manchester took a patent for what he calls hydro-carbon gas; and in 1849, secured by another patent various improvements in the manufacture of this and other gases for illuminating and heating purposes. His process differs from that, of Jobard and Valde-Marino principally in his substituting wood-charcoal and iron turnings for coke, and in a very improved form of apparatus. Mr. White decomposes the carbonic acid in the water gases by causing them to pass through red-hot iron turnings, previous to their contact with the resin vapors. Water is made to drop into the top of a red-hot upright cylinder, the upper part of which is filled with wood-charcoal, and the lower part with scrap iron or iron turnings; the water is decomposed by the charcoal before it meets the iron through which the newlyformed gases must also pass to arrive at the exit-pipe; they are then conveyed into a horizontal cylinder, also at a red heat, in which they meet with the carboniferous va pors arising from the decomposition of a small stream of melted resin or coal-tar, and (it is asserted) combine with them so as to form a permanent and highly-luminous gas. We have not ourselves seen or examined this gas, but we know it to be the opinion of individuals who have done so, and are apparently competent to decide the question, that an actual union is effected, and its applicability to all purposes of illumination in which coal-gas could be used is no longer a matter of speculation or opinion, but of fact. The towns of Southport in Lancashire, and Ruthin in Wales, are lighted up by it; and it has been for some time in use in a large factory in Manchester, and in several private establishments in different places. ONE had need to be cautious in saying any thing about Mr. George Borrow-for if his be the pen of a ready writer, so also is his the fist of a hard and ready hitter. It would not be pleasant were he seen making his way with a stout blackthorn stick towards the office of this journal, and asking to speak with the editor. A gentleman that can give "Mr. Petulengro," as good as he takes, and can stand up with a stout heart against the flaming tinman" himself, is not to be sneezed at by an unwarlike scribbler. It will, therefore, be our bounden interest, as it is our cordial inclination, to be courteous while in his presence, and to say nothing rashly which a cudgelling from the "tall, dark, gray man" might make us repent at leisure. The main superiority of this kind of gas over that which is produced from coal is its greater cheapness. One hundred weight of resin, which may be bought, including an estimate for carriage, for three or four shillings, is said to produce not less than from 1800 to 2000 feet of gas, yielding at the same time a residual oil equal to half the value of the resin; and the other materials, exclusive of the cost of fuel for heating the apparatus, may be had for a few pence. One individual, who lights up a large hotel in Harrowgate with this gas, states that he fills his gasometer, containing 1100 cubic feet, at a cost of thirteen pence for the gas-yielding materials—a price far below that for which he could get the same amount of gas from coals. In addition to its greater cheapness, this gas is also estimated by competent Is, then, the author of The Bible in Spain judges to be superior to the best coal-gas in so very formidable a person? Well, reader, brilliancy as well as durability; and it pos- if we are to judge by his own report—and sesses several great advantages over coal, we have no manner of desire for more tanwhich will render it especially desirable for gible, palpable proof-we should say that private establishments—namely, the smaller he is. Time may have chastened and melbulk and easier management of the appara-lowed down the combativeness of his young tus, as well as its freedom from the offensive blood, but he is still a warm admirer of the smells so characteristic of a coal-gas manu- ring, and apostrophizes Tom Spring with factory. In conclusion, we may observe that glowing affection. There is less of the we have made particular mention of Mr. suaviter in modo than of the fortiter in re White's apparatus, in connection with what about Mr. Borrow; his motto from childhood appears to be a great improvement in gas- to middle age has seemed to be, nemo me making, because we believe that it exhibits impune lacessit. He will not think disthe principle reduced at last to a simple and courteous a description, for the drawing of an efficient working condition; and we have which his own books furnish such ample the greater pleasure in lending our assistance data. It is his apparent wish to impress to its publicity, for this reason, that while upon all his readers a firm conviction of the we are interested in every invention which sturdy self-sufficingness, the consummate 6 Verily, Mr. Borrow would seem to have grounds for a little arrogance, when one considers his qualifications, mental and physical. His acquaintance with divers tongues, and his easy mastery of new ones, mark him a scholar of peculiar genius-his reputation as a philologist has long been the talk of those whom it concerns, while his daring spirit of enterprise, his unflinching perseverance in the path of difficult duty, his nonchalance amid perils of an outré order, his tact as a controversialist both by word and blow, his colloquial ease and reckless bearing among the outcasts of society at home and abroad independence, the anti-conventional ego- | Tres, Pens, and Pols. tism, the cherished eccentricity, of their author. He is nothing if not original, and perhaps studies to be so till he overshoots his mark, and becomes a second-hand copy of himself. When he condescends to address the public, it must be done abruptly, unconnectedly, half-scoffingly; the beginning of one chapter must have no manner of affinity to the close of its predecessor-must not be born in the ordinary course of nature -but must spring forth a panoplied PallasAthene from the teeming brow of the great Zeus; curiosity must be excited in a certain narrative, not to be gratified, but to be tantalized within an inch of its life, till it dies-London pickpockets or Spanish cutof sheer exhaustion-interest must be arous ed in behalf of this and that character, not to be rewarded and sustained, but to be peremptorily and summarily dismissed. It is a wonder that with such an abhorrence of customary routes in composition, he should have retained a style so generally clear and straight forward. His love for the English of Daniel Defoe may have much to do with this; for to the author of Robinson Crusoe he avows obligations which may almost merit the words of Dante to Virgil: "Tu se' lo mio maestro, e'l mio autore: Tu se' solo colui, da cu' io tolsi Lo belle stelle, che m'ha fatto honore."* Except where he launches into a digressive fitful mood, and is lavish of hyphens and asterisks, he discourses in a manly, hearty style that does one good in days of spasms and convulsions. He is a sworn foe to cant, by his own emphatic assurance; and is prouder of old English ways than is now the fashion. If he has his prejudices, he does not hide their glare under a bushel, but bids the world examine and cross-examine them as she will, and expose them if she can. Like his fathers, he hates "papistry" with all his soul, and he loves pugilism with all his strength; on his mother's side he has the Huguenot blood that boiled over at the edict of Nantes, and on his father's side he has the Cornish muscle that makes such doughty wrestlers of the race of * Inferno: Canto I. In Cary's translation Thou he from whom alone I have derived throats-all these are proverbial matters. Nor will the edge of the proverb be dulled by his last publication-Lavengro, i. e., master of languages. Lavengro is an amphibious productiona cross between fact and fiction—a compound of biography and reverie-a debatable ground of doings and dreamings. There are other books of the same indefinite and composite order; but probably in none of them is the veil of separation between real and unreal so provokingly dim. Mr. Borrow appears to wish to puzzle-to do it with malice prepense-or rather to be utterly and sublimely indifferent as to how and for what we poor mortals take him. We like him and his book none the better for this highflying superiority to ordinary rules of art. Nevertheless, it is of more than every-day interest. Many are the characters that flit to and fro on the surface of this "magic mirror;" and although some appear but for a little time, punctum temporis-and then vanish away-all have certain life-like traces about them, enlisting our interest in their brief-timed present, albeit coming we know not whence, and going we know not whither. There is the old Iman with the bag," (who forms a study like Wordsworth's leechgatherer on the lonely moor,) groping amid furze and scrubby bramble-bushes for vipers, the fat of which he uses for unguents, "good for various sore troubles, and especially for the rheumatism;" and who describes in such expressive style his rencounter one sultry day with the king of the vipers, who came upon the old man unawares for presuming to meddle with his people. There is wild Davy Haggart, whom we first see tearing erend Mr. Platitude, done to the life, without being done to death; Peter Williams, the Welch Methodist preacher, and Winifred his winsome cara sposa; Belle, or Isobelle Berners, of the stalwart arm, and fearless temper, and trusty heart; with whom it is time our catalogue should end. How well Mr. Borrow can paint a scene from nature, may be seen in his description of Elvir Hill-suffused as it is with a haze of mysticism-or the Cove of Cork, and circuit of the "Devil's Mountain," where he enjoyed the inspiration of a "first ride' on a gallant Irish cob, or the journey to Stonehenge and its environs. His command of vigorous narrative is exhibited in almost every page; take for examples of his vivacious fluency-colored at times with a deep hue of pensive earnestness not a little affecting-the account of his first acquaint down the Castle-hill of Edinburgh, burning | meant for Sir Richard Philips.) The latter to take a share, or rather the lead, in a section of this autobiography—which is stone-throwing "bicker" between the Auld greatly inferior to the first volume, and Toon and the New; and then seated on the which has a book-making look about it, litextreme verge of the precipice on the south- tle in character with the time that elapsed ern side of that hill, musing on William before its publication, and the eager expecWallace, and meditating how to win a name tancy fostered in the public mind by biblioand a fame like his; and then, alas, writing polic diplomacy-further introduces us to a his strange wild autobiography in the con- money-getting irritable Armenian merchant; demned cell of a Scotch prison! There is the a painter of the heroic, poor ill-starred HayClonmel Orangeman, with his racy flattery don; a psychological phenomenon in the and admiration of the Protestant military. shape of a rich author, whose story is deThere is Murtagh, the restless Papist "ga-tailed with a rare tone of reality; a revsoon," with his love of card-playing, and of Brian Boroo. There is the banished French priest, who teaches "languages" at ladies' schools, who prides himself on his personal superiority over an illustrious exile of former days: "Ma foi, il y a beaucoup de différence entre moi et ce sacré de Dante !" There is Jasper the Petulengro, (horse-shoe master,) the Pharaoh of his gipsy tribea peculiar favorite with our Zincali-loving author. There is the old teacher of German, by whom is apparently meant no less a person than W. Taylor of Norwich, tracing the philosophy of the Germans to their tobacco; and discoursing in so very Germanic a mode upon questions moral and metaphysical, upon the Sorrows of Werther, and suicide, and the Bible, and Gibbon, and Schiller, and truth itself. There is the jolly red-faced magistrate, who, ex officio, has to refuse a site on his estate for a pugilis-ance with De Foe's immortal Crusoe, (“ a tic encounter, while as a man, it goes to his heart to deny any thing to the "bruisers" and the noble art of boxing. There is Mr. Francis Ardry," frank and ardent" as his, name, with his handsome Irish countenance, and his impatience of guardians' control. There is the old applewoman on Londonbridge, who worships De Foe's "blessed Mary Flanders," and initiates Lavengro (a promising catechumen enough!) in pecuniary slang. There is the bookseller and author, who provides our hero with literary employment, at the rate of fifty pounds for six volumes of Newgate lives and trials; each volume to contain one thousand pages at the least, and the writer to pay for whatever books, papers, and manuscripts he may find necessary for the compilation. (This very repulsive personage, who is a vegetarian in diet, a republican in politics, and a coarse tyrant in private life, is said to be book," he says, "which has exerted over the minds of Englishmen an influence certainly greater than any other of modern times :"*) and the interview with the gipsy parents of Jasper (wherein, however, the tame viper plays so melodramatically the rôle of deus ex machina)—and the pugnacious experiences connected with the high school at Edinburgh and the "catching a tartar" raid of honest Sergeant Bagg against turbulent outlawed Jerry Grant-and the dark feeling of mysterious dread, endured by a nerve-shattered invalid, which "the lamp of reason, that the most luxuriant and fertile of our modern * From Robinson Crusoe, Mr. Borrow considers prose writers have drunk inspiration-and to the spirit of strange and romantic enterprise which it tends to awaken, England (in his judgment) owes and land, and no inconsiderable part of her naval many of her astonishing discoveries both by sea glory. See his enthusiastic éloge of Defoe in Lavengro, vol. i, p. 39. though burning bright the while, is unable | feeds his ruling passion, to wit, gipsy life. to dispel," "a dread of he knows not what, and there the horror lies," and the deathbed of a brave old father, described with impressive reality and fine touches of nature-and the transit of Byron's funeral along Tottenham-court-road-and a coup d'ail of Greenwich fair in its palmy primeand a lonely gossip with a quaint shepherd within a Druid's circle at Stonehenge-and an encampment with roving Methodists on the borders of Wales-and a serious game at fisticuffs with the "Flaming Tinman" in a wild recess—and a thunder-storm in the same retreat, known on the roads as Mumper's Dingle. Powerful writing there is in these and other episodes of the work; but we feel as we read on, that the work itself is but a string of episodes, hanging together as best they may. Unity of design is wanting; chapter does not answer to chapter; we seem to be perusing a reprint of clever but isolated magazine sketches, of which each must by its own merits stand or fall. Mr. Borrow's former works prepared the public for something capricious in the longpromised autobiography. By his former works we mean The Zincali, and The Bible in Spain; for of his other writings, announced in Lavengro, such as the translation of Ab Gwillym, contributions to a certain Oxford Review, Memoirs of Newgate Worthies, and Life of Joseph Sell, we are at present, and under those titles, ignorant in the superlative degree. The Zincali appeared ten years ago, and met with an encouraging reception-the spirit of which (interpreted by Mr. Borrow himself) was to this effect; that "Don Jorge" ought not to believe all he heard, nor think that he had accomplished any thing so very extraordinary-a great portion of his work being very sorry trash indeed-gipsy poetry, dry laws, and compilations from dull Spanish authors; but that the book had good points, which showed his capability of something much better; and that it was his duty to try his hand again, avoid his besetting sins, and accomplish something which would really do credit to Albemarle-street.* This first production proved what manner of man he was, and involved the one topic which * See preface to the second edition of The Zincali, (1843.) There he was at home then, and there he lingers still--nothing else inspires him with equal animation-nowhere else is he so dashing, so piquant, so genial. He reached the height of his argument-Rommany--in his first essay: nor has he soared higher since. The Bible in Spain was a memorable keepsake for the Christmas firesides of 1842. It was more sprightly and discursive and eventful than its forerunner, but the staple interest was the same-gipsy life. The Edinburgh Review welcomed "Don Jorge" as something betwixt Le Sage and Bunyan, and the Examiner hailed him as another Gil Blas. O the moving accidents, the most disastrous chances, the hair-breadth escapes, the imprisonments, watchings, fastings, of this indefatigable but nondescript missionary! Surely the Bible Society never had his duplicate on her list of agents. " With respect to my poor labors," he modestly says, "I wish here to observe, that I accomplished very little, and that I lay claim to no brilliant successes and triumphs; indeed I was sent into Spain more to explore the country, and to ascertain how far the minds of the people were prepared to receive the truths of Christianity, than for any other object; I obtained, however, permission from the Spanish government to print an edition of the sacred volume at Madrid, which I subsequently circulated in that capital and in the provinces." How he sped in a task so full of labor and so sure of fierce and subtle opposition in a country like Spain, he relates with a minute gusto and picturesque skill that tickle the taste of nearly all readers, be they coarse or fastidious-novel-devouring misses or pedantic philosophers. To all appearance this work will continue-whatever else he may write the corner-stone of his fame. From "Howitt's Journal." AN INCIDENT OF INDIAN LIFE In the year 1848 I found myself travelling through the Mysorean country of Seringapatam, so familiar to every reader of Indian history, for the rapid rise of that crafty but talented Asiatic, Hyder Ali + Preface to The Bible in Spain. |