within our community, who "bow before the same altars," minister to our many wants, and are immediately thrown on our bounty by Divine Providence. This is no appeal to vanity-no imposition on credu lity but a claim upon an unquestionable duty, an incitement to unequivocal beneficence-a channel opened to our hearts for the tears of the destitute widow, the cries of the famishing orphan, the groans of honest industry, wholly abortive in its attempts, or piteously deficient in its gains. Assistance is invoked against the unusual inclemency of the season, for which no humble labourer could be fully prepared; in behalf of wretchedness that does not stalk abroad or raise an importunate lament, but shrinks forlorn in the hovel or the chamber, from the public glance; cowers in sad silence over the last embers on the hearth; and hails succour, when it comes, with the blush of decent pride, and the gratitude of diffident merit. There is much of this species of truly compassionable and severe distress, which may be discovered without extraordinary pains, and assuaged without heavy disbursements; and the mitigation of which will open-as the poet says of charity in general"a little heaven" in the breast of each reliever and each sufferer relieved. We recognise a special efficiency, and a special dignity, in the concert of many sympathetic hearts, and open hands, pouring as it were a tide of comparative happiness within their own proximate and proper sphere of action. Its generous enthusiasm is not vainly romantic; its operation is palpably sure; it is an exercise of the social obligations and affections which is followed by an immediate harvest, which, while it refines and strengthens the municipal or local spirit, contributes to the good of the whole country or world, upon the principle that if each community or each individual were to perform duly the task allotted by Providence to each, the aggregate of prosperity or blessings, the sum of success, would be the greater, or at the maximum. The application of charity has been well compared to the division of labour in a large and complicated system. The severity of the season is the visitation of God; and it seems to be a part of the ordination of the human world, as he has constituted things in his wisdom and goodness, that those whom he has blessed with abundant means should heal in part the evils which he allows to fall on others;-should serve as auxiliaries and ministers of his ultimate mercies. He has endowed our race with the principle of benevolence, so that the gratification of it reacts most pleasurably, and its exercise seems indispensable for the excellence and felicity of our nature. One great purpose of society is to furnish opportunities of mutual aid and support: to improve those opportunities is to strengthen all the social bonds, to employ and heighten a salutary, genial instinct, to conform to the original temperament of the moral frame. We do not dwell alone upon the clear and positive injunctions of revealed religion, and the lessons of Divine example in this respect;-charity is a tenet likewise of natural theology, as it is of the more general philosophy of man ;-the movements and relations of liberal and grateful sympathy, are primary properties, which refine and expand with the progress of reason and civilization. The philosophical poet, Akenside, in the second book of the Pleasures of the Imagination, has splendidly discussed the pain and pleasure incident to compassion. Malevolence too often mars the bounties of Heaven and the intentions of human wisdom: Divine dispen sations of good are frustrated or abridged by man's folly and passion. This would seem to be the history of all human affairs. Let us think, now, only of alleviating the effects of a sad vicissitude-of tempering for ourselves what may be relatively dark and precarious. The truly Christian and pious can have no difficulty in this work. With regard to themselves, their content and security are uniform : Religion! Providence! an after-state ! Here is firm footing! here is solid rock! This can support us! all is sea besides, Sinks under us, bestorms, and then devours. His hand the good man fastens on the skies, And bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl. Young, one of the great moral instructors this; none which the possessors of rank, power, or among the poets, has given no truer lesson than He has wealth, have had more occasion to feel. expressed also, the peculiar inspirations of this season mutual good-will-preference of mild and generous -or what should be such-charitable sympathyemotions to the gratification of any of the impulses of selfish cupidity and fear. The Gospel breathes or enjoins that humanity be made the minister of merciful Providence; that wealth in the gross, and hoarded, life-when well-dispersed, "incense to the skies." is disgrace and death-but when diffused, honour and To be Christians, the creditor must now be doubly liberal with his debtor; the friend, more free in his aid; the charitable, more ready and expansive in the distribution of their means. The poor are suddenly multiplied, and the pinches of indigence aggravated; -numbers of worthy persons are reduced to severe threatens all others with some serious disadvantage or and unexpected straits ;-every increase of these evils loss. General forbearance, then, on the part of the more prosperous; some voluntary privations or sacrifices; a concert of public-spirited and philanthropic efforts; the renunciation of mere prejudices and party-ties;-these are the true expedients of relief and the duties of this critical juncture. Let self-love be pushed or yielded to social-a considerate mood prevail wherever and in whatever form claims shall be made. When pleas for indulgence or succour are real-when they have been rendered necessary by abrupt embarrassment and misfortune—when lenity or generosity may avert ulterior loss, or final ruinno good and wise man will hesitate to comply with the times. In regard to individual and family comfort, there is an infallible rule :-resolutely to smooth the brow; to reject sombre ideas and anticipations; to allow all amusement and indulgence that is compatible with duty and prudence. It is well, not merely to kindle the fire in the hearth, and defeat the inclemencies and glooms of the external sky, but to make the heart and countenance glow and brighten until the cast of A certain thought loses all paleness and wrinkle. degree of relaxation, in a particular season and for a given time, may be salutary for the whole moral being.-WALSH. VIRTUE is the queen of labourers: opinion the mistress of fools: vanity the pride of nature; and contention the overthrow of families. Virtue is not obtained in seeking strange countries, but mending old errors. Pythagoras compares virtue to the letter Y, which is small at the foot, and broad at the head; meaning, that to attain virtue is very painful, but its possession very pleasant. Real virtue may always continue unarmed: it is its own sufficient guard; for if it be real, it hath such an indomitable awe and reverence in its appearance, as will always effectually daunt the dastard front of vice.?. MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. olt itt a No. II. WIND INSTRUMENTS. MANKIND, by the invention of the trumpet, having discovered the property possessed by a hollow tube of producing a certain sound; would naturally soon. discover, that the note varied according to the length and capacity of that tube. We may suppose that some idea of combining these various notes so as to produce a tune, would soon arise; but, let the number of notes employed be many or few, one performer would be required to produce each distinct sound, which would be a manifest waste of time. A com Fig. 7. Ancient Bagpipes. musical chord, and answered the same purpose as the drone in the modern bagpipes, thus leaving the two hands at liberty to regulate the notes produced by the short pipes. The engraving is after a medal of the time of Nero. The Chinese, who are extremely minute and fanciful in all their systems, have divided all sounds into eight species, each of which, they say, can be produced from a certain substance only, from which substance the kind of sound takes its name,-as the sound of metal, produced by a bell; of stone, from pieces of sonorous rock, struck with a stick; of silk, from strings of that material stretched over a sounding-board, and played on with the fingers like the chords of a lute: of bamboo, used in the same manner as in our pan-pipes; of a calabash, produced by the singular instrument figured below; of baked earthenware, struck like the stone; of the skin of animals, as in the drum; and of wood; a curious instrument to represent this sound is in the form of a great wooden chest, with a crouching tiger on the top; on the back of the tiger are what are intended for twenty-five hairs, but more like the teeth of a saw; these hooks are struck with a small stick to produce the required sound. The Cheng, the instrument that produces the sound of the calabash, displays considerable ingenuity. Formerly a calabash, a species of gourd, was employed to make the cheng; it was dried, and the upper part being cut off, its place was supplied by a flat piece of wood, bored with as many holes as it was intended there should be tubes, the number of these varying, being 24, 19, or 13. The tubes are formed of bamboo, and close to the insertion of each into the calabash there is a small hole. Fig. a, by the side of the instrument, showing the lower part of one of the tubes, explains this better. That portion which is inserted into the calabash is cut smaller, having a shoulder to prevent its entering too far; the lower orifice is plugged up with wood, and a small hole is bored, so as to enter the hollow of the cane at its lower end, above the shoulder; below this, and near the lowest extremity, a tongue of thin metal or hard wood is fixed, with the upper end free. The Fig. c.40 401 21 en 21 30 The Cheng, or Chinese bar Mouth Organolear mouth-piece of the cheng is in the form of a goose's neck, and arises from the body of the calabash 9 through this the breath is forced, and the sounds are produced by stopping with the fingers any of the small holes at the foot of each tube. Most of our modern wind-instruments are but improvements on the ancient inventions; but we cannot well close this paper without a short account of the progress of the most splendid of all instruments of this kind, namely, the Church Organ. The earliest notice we have of an instrument called an Organ is in a very ancient Greek author, Athenæus, who says it was invented in the time of the second Ptolemy Euergetes, by Ctesibius, a native of Alexandria, and by profession a barber, or rather that it was improved by him; for "Plato gave the first idea, by inventing a water-clock, clepsydra, which played upon flutes the hours of the night, at a time when they could not be seen on the index.” In the collection of antiquities bequeathed by Christina, Queen of Sweden, to the Vatican, there is a large and beautiful medallion of Valentinian, on the reverse of which is represented an Hydraulic Organ, with two men, one on the right and one on the left, who seem to pump the water which plays it, and to listen to its sounds. It has only eight pipes, placed on a round pedestal, and as no keys or performers are visible, it is probable it was played on by mechanism. The first Organ that was seen in Europe is believed to have been sent to France from Constantinople in 757, as a present from the Emperor to King Pepin. It is uncertain at what date Organs were first used in churches, but it seems certain, that they were common in Europe in the tenth century. As daily experience makes it evident, that misfortunes are unavoidably incident to human life, that calamity will neither be repelled by fortitude, nor escaped by flight; neither awed by greatness, nor eluded by obscurity; philosophers have endeavoured to reconcile us to that condition which they cannot teach us to merit, by persuading us that most of our evils are made afflictive only by ignorance or perverseness, and that nature has annexed to every vicissitude of external circumstances some advantage sufficient to over-balance all its inconveniences.-Rambler. How can any person have faith to believe that all the wonderful things of this world were made by chance,-and yet stagger at so plain, and easy a proposition, as that they must be made by some intelligent being!-Gilpin. SUCH facetiousness is not unreasonable or unlawful, which ministereth harmless_divertisement and delight to conversation; harmless, I say, that is, not intrenching upon piety, nor infringing charity or justice, nor disturbing peace. For Christianity is not so tetrical, so harsh, so envious, as to bar us continually from innocent, much less from wholesome and useful pleasure, such as human life doth need or require. And if jocular discourse may serve to good purposes of this kind; if it may be apt to raise our drooping spirits, to allay our irksome cares, to whet our blunted industry, to recreate our minds, being tired and cloyed with graver occupations; if it may breed alacrity, or maintain good humour among us; if it may conduce to sweeten conversation and endear society, then it is not inconvenient or unprofitable. If for these ends we may use other recreations, employing on them our ears and eyes, our hands and feet, our other instruments of sense and motion, why may we not so well accommodate our organs of speech and interior sense? Why should those games which excite our wit and fancies be less reasonable, since they are performed in a manly way, and have in them a smack of reason; seeing, also, they may be so managed as not only to divert and please, but to improve and profit the mind, rousing and quickening it, yea, sometimes enlightening and instructing it, by good sense, conveyed in jocular expression, BARROW. A CHARADE.JADIEM PRONOUNCED as one letter, and written with three, Two letters there are, and two only in me I am double, am single, am black, blue, and gray, I am read from both ends, and the same either way1 AM I am watery and moist, I am fiery and dry, I am scornful and scowling, compassionate, meek, I am spoken of sometimes as if I were glass, IF you should happen to meet with an accident at table, endeavour to preserve your composure, and do not add to the discomfort you have created, by making an unnecessary fuss about it. The easier such things are passed over, the better. I remember hearing it told of a very accomplished gentleman, that when carving a tough goose, he had the misfortune to send it entirely out of the dish, and into the lap of the lady next to him; on which he very coolly looked her full in the face, and with admirable gravity and calmness, said, "Ma'am, I will thank you for that goose." In a case like this, a person must necessarily suffer so much, and be such an object of compassion to the company, that the kindest thing he could do, was to appear as unmoved as possible. This manner of bearing such a mortifying accident gained him more credit, than he lost by his awkward carving.-The Young Lady's Friend THE POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS, LEGENDS, | going out for a walk, or to pay a visit, she will order AND FICTIONS, OF THE MIDDLE AGES. II. MYTHOLOGY OF THE NURSERY. DELUSIONS OF THE NURSERY. - PERNICIOUS CONSEQUENCES OF EXCITING FEAR. TERROR THE CAUSE OF DISTURBED SLEEP, CONVULSIONS, AND DREAMS.STORIES WHICH HAVE THEIR ORIGIN IN POPULAR FICTIONS. OUR mothers' maids, says old Reginald Scott, have so frayed us with bul-beggars, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, Pans, Fauns, sirens, Kit with the canstick, tritons, centaurs, dwarfs, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphs, changelings, incubus, Robin Goodfellows, the spoon, the mare, the man in the oak, the helwain, the fire-drake, the Puckle, Tom Thumb, hobgoblin, Tom Tumbler, Boneless, and other such things, that we are afraid of our own shadows: insomuch that some never fear the devil but in a dark night; and then a polled sheep is a perilous beast, and many times is taken for our father's soul, especially in a churchyard, where a right hardy man heretofore scant durst pass by night, but his hair would stand upright. It was a very common practice in former times, not entirely exploded in the present enlightened age, to induce children to be good and obedient, by operating upon their fears; for in children, from their natural helplessness, fear is the strongest passion. Parents worked upon this by the terrors of discipline, and presented the rod as the argument in favour of implicit submission. But nurses, and the "good woman," as they were called, went another way to work. They were not allowed to chastise children, and therefore they operated upon the fears of the little one by other subjects of a no-less terrific kind. There was either some frightful old man, as "old Poby," or decrepit old woman, "Mother Bunch," for instance, to whom the children would be given, if they did not cease their crying, and do as they were bidden. About bed-time, in particular, when it is well known children are generally refractory, stories were told of spirits, ghosts, hobgoblins, and other terrific non-entities, by means of which, although the little ones would not go to bed without being accompanied by their nurses, they went very quietly with them. This system continued for many years in this country, and still exists to a certain extent; but it was found by experience to be inconsistent with right reason, and productive of bad consequences. It was soon discovered that to frighten was not to convince, and that a continuation of such alarms and fears had an improper and relaxing effect upon the mind of the child. Even grown persons have asserted that they have never so far overcome the effects of this erroncous discipline, as to be able to go much into dark rooms, or sleep without a light. Good sense at length interposed; and the whole agency of ghosts and goblins was pretty generally discharged; and in most families of the present day, servants are expressly interdicted from telling old legendary stories about spirits, spectres, witches, and fairies, in the presence of the children. It would prove a useful task to enumerate the various sorts of deception which it is the custom of ordinary education successively to impose upon its subjects. The practice of such means is one of those vices in teaching "the young idea how to shoot," that is most early introduced into the treatment of youth. If the nurse find a difficulty in persuading her charge to go to sleep, she will pretend to go to sleep along with it. If the parent wish his youngest son to go to bed before his brothers, he will order the elder ones up stairs, with permission to return as soon as they can do it unobserved. If the mother is the child, upon some pretended occasion, to a distant part of the house, till she has made her escape. It is a deception too gross (says a modern author, whose philosophical and sentimental writings have been much admired,) to be insisted on, to threaten children with pretended punishments, that you will cut off their ears; that you will put them into the well; that you will give them to the "old man;" that there is somebody coming down the chimney to take them away. Terror, or the dread of an evil surprising us before we are able to avert it, is of all passions the most destructive, and the most difficult to be avoided, because its operation is unforeseen and instantaneous. To shun, therefore, all occasions that may produce it, either in young or old, is perhaps the only remedy. Persons who are feeble, and possessed of much sensibility, are most subject to terror, and likewise most affected by it. Its effects are,-a sudden and violent contraction of almost every muscle that serves to perform the voluntary motions. It may further occasion disease of the heart, inflammation of the the same time, it may arrest salutary evacuations, external parts of the body, spasms and swoons; at particularly perspiration, and the like; to the great detriment of health, and danger of life. tation of the heart, trembling of the limbs, and in a more violent degree, convulsions and epileptic fits, or a general catalepsy, and sudden death, are the subsequent effects of terror, which quickly compels the blood to retreat from the skin to the internal Palpi parts; hence it forcibly checks the circulation of the fluids. Terror has been known suddenly to turn the hair gray; and this inattentive and very reprehensible mode of educating children, often lays the foundation of some infirmity, which it is difficult, if at all, to eradicate in after-years. It is the cause of frightful dreams, and convulsions in children, in whom the nervous system is very easily affected, and consequently their predisposition greater to these attacks, from the considerable capacity of their brain with respect to the rest of the body, in the earlier periods of life. Of a different character from the preceding are those little stories of the nursery with which the rising generation in their infant years are amused. Since our boyish days, however, the literature of the nursery has sustained a mighty alteration. Even nurse herself has become strongly fastidious in her taste, and the books which please her are far different from those over which she used to pore when, with lisp the first letters of the alphabet. Scarcely any spectacles on nose," she taught our infant lips to of the chap-books which were sold to the countrytain their ancient popularity; and we have almost people at fairs and markets, have been able to main witnessed the extinction of this branch of our national literature. Those old stories, however, which have their origin times have a very different tendency to that of the in popular fictions transmitted to us from the earliest trashy modern novels, by which they have, in some respects, been superseded. On this subject a distinguished authority observes that Physiologists investigate the laws of animated life in anifrom mosses and lichens to the oak and palm; the man malcula swimming in the rain-drop; the botanist ascends of letters should not disdain the chap-book, or the nursery story. Humble as these efforts of the human intellect may appear, they show its secret workings, its mode and progress, and human nature must be studied in all its pro ductions; and, in the words of Sir Walter Scott, on this subject. A work of great interest might be compiled upon the rigin of popular fiction and the transmission of similar ales from age to age and from country to country. The mythology of one period would then appear to pass into the romance of the next century, and that into the nursery tale of subsequent ages. By this means would fiction resolve itself into its primitive elements, as by the slow and unceasing action of the rain and wind the solid granite is crumbled into sand. The creations embodied by the vivid imagination of man in the childhood of his race, incorporate themselves in his barbarous mythology; sanctity is given to his day-dreams by the altar of the idol; and they acquire a deceitful force from the genius of the bard. Blended with the mortal hero, the aspect of the god gleams through the vizor of the helmet, or adds a dignity to the regal crown; while poetry borrows its ornaments from the lessons of the priest. The ancient god of strength of the Teutons, throned in his starry chariot, the Northern Wain, invested the emperor of the Franks and the paladins who surrounded him with superhuman might; and the same constellation darting down its rays upon the head of the long-lost Arthur, has given to the monarch of the Britons the veneration which once belonged to the son of "Uthry Bendragon," "Thunder, the supreme leader," and "Eygyr, the generating power. But time rolls on: the power of these rude mysteries dies away; the flocks are led to graze within the rocky circle of the giants; even the bones of the warriors moulder into dust; the lay is no longer heard; and the fable, reduced again to its origual simplicity and nudity, becomes the fitting source of pastime to the untutored peasant and the listening child. Hence we may yet trace no small proportion of mystic and romantic lore in the tales which gladden the cottage fire-side, or, century after century, soothe the infant to its slumbers; and when the nurserymaid looks for her sweetheart in the bottom of the tea-cup, she is little aware that she is pretending to exercise the very same art to which the Egyptians pretended thousands of years ago. We must not now, however, allow ourselves to wander from the realms of popular fiction to the land of popular superstition, till we arrive at its proper place, although there is so much difficulty in ascertaining their exact boundaries, that forgiveness might readily be obtained for the digression. The elves which dance on the wold must be considered as subject to the same laws as the fairies who bless the young prince's christening-cup; and the giant who fills up the portal of the castle, or who wields his club upon the roof of the tower, does not differ essentially from the tall black man who carries away the naughty boy, and terrifies the little ruddy-cheeked maiden on the maternal bosom, These man-eaters were generally the great captains of the times. "Beware of the Melendo!" was the threat of the Moorish mother to her babe. The Moors were driven from Andalusia before fear and hatred had distorted the Castilian knight into a monster; but Attila the Hun, the mighty monarch of the book of heroes, degenerated into a blood-thirsty ogre amongst the inhabitants of Gaul who had smarted under his exterminating sword, The Welsh have their Mabonogem, or "juvenile amusements," of undoubted authenticity and antiquity. Some of them are extant in manuscript, others live only in the traditions of the common people *. A translation of the former was prepared for the press by Mr. William Owen, to whom Cymric literature is so greatly indebted, but the manuscript was unfortunately lost before publication. These tales possess extraordinary singularity and interest, and a complete collection of them in the original language is still a desideratum in The popular fiction of the Celts is lively in its poetical imagery. Amongst the nations where the blood of the Teutons yet predominates, popular fiction is equally poetical in its cast. Not so in the happier climes of the south of Europe, where the Italian gives a zest to his popular narratives by buffoonery or ribaldry. A considerable portion of the fairy tales contained in the Italian Entertainment for the Little Ones, together with those from the Nights of Signor Straparola, exhibit the inhabitants of Peristan as their chief characters, though not always retaining their eastern grace and beauty. Of the traditionary tales of Spain little can be said, except that we know that all the beasts used to speak in the days of Maucastana who flourished in the reign of King Bamba, when the slashed petticoat of black velvet which the curate borrowed of the innkeeper's wife was yet a new one. The good dog Scipio who spoke in times nearer to our own, has noticed the stories of the "Horse without a Head," and the "Rod of Virtue" with which the old women were wont to entertain themselves when sitting by the fire-side in the long nights of Winter." In order that the horse without a head may travel to posterity, it may be right to add, that this marvellous monster haunts the Moorish ramparts of the Alhambra, in company with another non-descript beast, yclept the Belludo, on account of his woolly hide: both have a local habitation and a name in the guardroom by the side of the principal portal of the palace, from whence they occasionally sally forth and terrify the sentries. TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. THE most important addition to nursery-literature has been effected in Germany, by the diligence of John and William Grimm, two antiquarian brethren of the highest reputation. Under the title of "Children's Tales," they published a collection of German popular stories, singular in its kind, both for extent and variety, and from which we have acquired much information. In this collection may be recognised a host of English, French, and Italian stories of the same genus and species, and extant in printed books; but the greater part of the German popular or nursery stories are stated by the editors to be traditionary, some local, others more widely known. All those, they assert, that are gathered from oral tradition, with the exception of "Puss in Boots," are pure German, and not borrowed from the stranger. In their annotations, Messrs, Grimm have taken considerable pains, and often with great success, to show the relationship between these Children's Tales, and the venerable Sagas of the north, which, in good sooth, were only intended for children of a larger growth, The real worth of these tales (continues the editors), is, indeed, to be highly estimated, as they give a new and more complete elucidation of our ancient German heroic fictions than could be obtained from any other source. Thomrosa, who is set a-sleeping in consequence of the wounds inflicted by her spindle, is Brynhilda cast into slumber by the sleep-thorn of Odin. The manner in which Loke hangs to the giant eagle is better understood after a perusal of the story of the Golden Goose, to which the lads and lasses who touch, adhere inseparably. In the stories of the Wicked Goldsmith, the Speaking Bird, and the Eating of the Bird's Heart, we recognise the fable of Sigund. In these popular stories is concealed the pure and primitive British literature, The Cymry, however, seem to have little feeling for the productions of their ancestors; and the praiseworthy and patriotic exertions of individuals may cause the Welsh nation at large to blush. When a foreigner asks the names of the nobility and gentry of the principality who published the Myvyrian Archæology at their own expense, the answer is, It was none of them, but Owen Jones, the Thames-street Furrier. |