November 16. EXTRAORDINARY LUNAR HALO. On the night of this day in 1823, about half past nine o'clock, Dr. T. Forster observed a very remarkable and brilliant phenomenon about the moon. It was a coloured discoid halo, consisting of six several concentric circles; the nearest to the moon, or the first disk around her, being dull white, then followed circles of orange, violet, crimson, green, and vermillion; the latter, or outermost, subtending in its diameter an angle of above ten degrees. This phenomenon was evidently produced by a refraction in the white mist of a stratus, which prevailed through the night, but it varied in its colours, as well as in its brilliancy, at different times. NATURALISTS' CALENDAR. Mean Temperature... 43. 00. WHIMS AND ODDITIES. The company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins in the hollow of the wild mountain, were not greater objects of wonder to Rip Van Winkle, than forty original designs by Mr. Hood will be to the reader who looks for the first time at this gentleman's "Whims and Oddities."* All the world knows, or ought to know, that among persons called literary there are a few peculiarly littery; who master an article through confusion of head and materials, and, having achieved the setting of their thoughts and places "to rights," celebrate the important victory by the triumph of a short repose. At such a minute, after my last toilsome adventure in the " Lottery," sitting in my little room before the fire, and looking into it with the comfortable knowledge that the large table behind me was " free from all incumbrances," I yearned for a recreative dip into something new, when Mr. Hood's volume, in a parcel bearing the superscription of a kind hand, was put into mine. It came in the very nick; and, as I amused myself, I resolved to be thenceforth, and therefrom, as agreeable as possible to my readers. On the title-page of Mr. Hood's book is this motto, "O Cicero! Cicero ! if to pun be a crime, 'tis a crime I have learned of thee: O Bias! Bias! if to pun be a crime, by thy example I was biassed!Scriblerus." The first engraving that opened on me was of sleep, inseparably ravelled up, and knotted into Gordian intricacies. For, as the equivocal feature, in the emblem, belongs indifferently to either countenance, but is appropriated by the head that happens to be presently the object of contemplation; so, in a dream, two separate notions will mutually involve some convertible incident, that becomes, by turns, a symptom of both in general, or of either in particular. Thus are begotten the most extravagant associations of thoughts and images, unnatural connections, like those marriages of forbidden relationships, where mothers become cousins to their own sons or daughters, and quite as bewildering as such genealogical embarrassments." As an illustration of this kind of dream, the author relates a dismal one," which originated in the failure of his first and last attempt as a dramatic writer;" and another, wherein the preliminaries were pleasant, and the conclusion was whimsical. "It occurred," says Mr. Hood, "when I was on the eve of marriage; a season, when, if lovers sleep sparingly, they dream profusely. A very brief slumber sufficed to carry me in the nightcoach to Bognor. It had been concerted, between Honoria and myself, that we should pass the honeymoon at some such place upon the coast. The purpose of my solitary journey was to procure an appropriate dwelling, and which, we had agreed, should be a little pleasant house, with an indispensable look out upon the sea. I chose one, accordingly; a pretty villa, with bow-windows, and a prospect delightfully marine. The ocean murmur sounded incessantly from the beach. A decent, elderly body, in decayed sables, undertook, on her part, to promote the comforts of the occupants by every suitable attention, and, as she assured me, at a very reasonable rate. So far, the nocturnal faculty had served me truly. A day-dream could not have proceeded more orderly; but, alas, just here, when the dwelling was selected, the sea view secured, the rent agreed upon, when every thing was plausible, consistent, and rational, the incoherent fancy crept in and confounded all,-by marrying me to the old woman of the house!" Because it never happened that Mr. Hood in his dreams fancied himself deprived of any sense, he was greatly puzzled by this question,— "How does a BLIND man dream ?" "I mean" says Mr. "Ha person with the opaque crystal from his birth. He is defective in that very faculty which, of all others, is most active in those nightpassages, thence emphatically called Visions. He has had no acquaintance with external images; and has, therefore, none of those transparent pictures that, like the slides of a magic-lantern, pass before the mind's eye, and are projected by the inward spiritual light upon the utter blank. His imagination must be like an imperfect kaleidoscope, totally unfurnished with those parti-coloured fragments, whereof the complete instrument makes such interminable combinations. It is difficult to conceive such a man's dream. "Is it, a still benighted wandering,-a pitch-dark night progress, made known to him by the consciousness of the remaining senses? Is he still pulled through the universal blank, by an invisible power, as it were, at the nether end of the string! regaled, sometimes, with celestial voluntaries, and unknown mysterious fragrances, answering to our more romantic flights; at other times, with homely voices, and more familiar odours; here, of rank smelling cheeses, there, of pungent pickies or aromatic drugs, hinting his progress through a metropolitan street. Does he over again enjoy the grateful roundness of those substantial droppings from the invisible passenger,-palpable deposits of an abstract benevolence,-or, in his nightmares, suffer anew those painful concus sions and corporeal buffetings, from that (to him) obscure evil principle, the Parish Beadle? "This question I am happily enabled to resolve, through the information of the oldest of those blind Tobits that stand in fresco against Bunhill-wall; the same who made that notable comparison, of scarlet, to the sound of a trumpet. As I understood him, harmony, with the gravelblind, is prismatic as well as chromatic. To use his own illustration, a wall-eyed man has a palette in his ear as well as in his mouth. Some stone-blinds, indeed, dull dogs without any ear for colour, profess to distinguish the different hues and shades by the touch; but that, he said, was a slovenly, uncertain method, and in the chief article, of paintings, not allow ed to be exercised. "On my expressing some natural sur prise at the aptitude of his celebrated com parison, a miraculous close likening, to he told me, the instance was nothing, my mind, of the known to the unkown, for the least discriminative among them could distinguish the scarlet colour of the mail guards' liveries, by the sound of their horns: but there were others, so acute their faculty! that they could tell the very features and complexion of their relatives and familiars, by the mere tone of their voices. I was much gratified with this explanation; for I confess, hitherto, I was always extremely puzzled by that narrative in the Tatler,' of a young gentleman's behaviour after the operation of couching, and especially at the wonderful promptness with which he distinguished his father from his mother, his mistress from her maid. But it appears, that the blind are not so blind as they have been esteemed in the vulgar notion. What they cannot get one way they obtain in another: they, in fact, realize what the author of Hudibras has ridiculed as a fiction, for they set up communities of senses, To chop and charge intelligences, As Rosicrucian Virtuosis Can see with ears-and hear with noses." Never having tried opium, and therefore without experience of "such magnificent visions as are described by its eloquent historian, "I have never," says Mr. Hood, "been buried for ages under pyramids; and yet, methinks, have suffered agonies as intense as his could be, from the common-place inflictions. For example, a night spent in the counting of interminable numbers,-an inquisitorial penance,everlasting tedium, the mind's treadmill." That "the innocent-sleep," is an exceptionable position. What happy man, with a happy wife by his side, and the first, sweet, restless plague and pledge of their happiness by hers, has not been awakened to a sense of his felicity, by a weak, yet shrill and spirit-stirring "la-a, la-a, la-a, la-a, la-a-a, la-a-a-a," of some secret sorrow," for ever telling, yet untold." Happy the man whose only care Gentle reader of the Benedictine order! I presume not to anticipate the pleasure thou wilt derive from contemplating thy self engaged in a domestic exercise, suited to the occasion,-pacing thy bed-room at "the heavy middle of the night," holding the little innocent" Fondly lock'd in duty's arms; its dear eyes provokingly open to the light of the chamber-lantern; thine own closed by drowsiness, yet kept unsealed by affection; thy lips arranged for the piano of carminative sounds-" quivering to the young-eyed cherubim" Oh! slumber my darling Thy sire is a knight,-thy "darling" ceasing its "sweet voice," to offer more decisively by its looks, "I would out-night you." Brother Benedict! there is an engraving of thee, and thine, in the book I speak of, mottoed, "Son of the sleepless!" a portrait of the alarming "hope of the Let me extract another cut, seemingly family," after thou hast for some few years tried, perchance, "the Locke system; which, after all," according to Mr Hood, babe-mind to unnatural levels”— "is but a canal system for raising the At about the age of "My son, sir," boys seek to satisfy their curiosity, and gratify their taste. It is the spelling-time of young experience, and they are extremely diligent. Their senses are fresh and undepraved, and covetous of the simplest pleasures. lage, with inhabitants and wealth sufficient Every town in England, and every vilto consume a hogshead of "brown moist" within a reasonable time, exhibits an empty sugar cask in the open street; it is every little grocer's pride, and every poor boy's delight "Gentle reader, read the motto! read the motto!" Look at the engraving; "show it to your children, and to your children's children," and ask them what they think. If you desire an immediate living example to illustrate professor Malthus's principle, that "population always comes up to the mean of subsistence," set out a sugar cask, and there will be a swarm of boys about it, from no one knows whither, in ten minutes. The first takes possession of the inside, and is "monarch of all he surveys." Like the throne, it is an envied, and an unquiet possession. From the emulous, on all sides, he receives vain addresses and remonstrances, and against their threatening hands is obliged to keep a sharp look out; but his greatest enemy, and for whom he keeps a sharp look over, is the grocer's man. of that arch-foe" frightens him from his A glimpse impropriety" in a twinkling; unless, indeed, from the nearness of the adversary he fail to escape, when, for certain, his companions leave him "alone in his glory," and then he knows, for a truth, that" after sweet comes sour." The boy, there, straddling like the "Great Harry," has had his wicked will of the barrel to satiety, and therefore vacates his place in vour of him of the hat, on whose nether time hath written strange defeaIt is not so certain, that the fine, fat, little fellow, with his hands on the edge of the tub, and the ends of his toes on the ground, will ascend the side, as that he who stoops in front is enjoying the choicest pickings of the prize. The others are mere common feeders, or gluttons, who go for quantity; he is the epicure of the party He seeks but little here below and, of foretaste, he takes his place at the But seeks that little good; and there revels in particles of the bung-hole, where the sugar crystallizes, finest candies. "I pity the poor child," beta, but ignorant of top and taw"-and says Mr. Hood, "that is learned in alpha I pity every poor child who only knows that a sugar tub is sweet, and is ignorant of the sweetest of its sweets. There are are cuts in a shoulder of mutton, or Mr. as many different pickings in it as there Hood's book. My authority for this information is an acute, pale-faced, sickly, printer's boy, an adapt in lickerish things, who declared the fact the morning after he had been to see Mr. Mathews, by affirming, with enthusiasm, "I've tried it, I've analyzed it, and I know it." "Ah! little think the gay, licentious proud," who spend their money on bulls-eyes and hard-bake, which are modern inventions, of the delicacies within a grocer's plain, upright and downright, good, old, natural, brown sugar tub "O! there's nothing half so sweet in life." Mr. Hood introduces another "sweet pleasure," with another equally apt quotation: "Tell me, my heart, can this be Love?" This figure of "THE POPULAR CUPID," Mr. Hood copied, by permission, from a lady's Valentine;" and he says, "in the romantic mythology it is the image of the divinity of Love." He inquires, "Is this he, that, in the mind's eye of the poetess, drifts adown the Ganges Pillow'd in a lotus flow'r, Gather'd in a summer hour, Which would be a tall ship's grave? --Does Belinda believe that such a substantial Sagittarius lies ambushed in her perilous blue eye?—I can believe in his dwelling alone in the heart-seeing that he must occupy it to repletion: in his constancy-because he looks sedentary, and not apt to roam: that he is given to melt-from his great pinguitude: that he burneth with a flame-for so all fat burneth and hath languishings-like other bodies of his tonnage: that he sighs from his size. I dispute not his kneeling at ladies' feet-since it is the posture of elephants-nor his promise, that the homage shall remain eternal. I doubt not of his dying-being of a corpulent habit, and a short neck: of his blindness -with that inflated pig's cheek. But, for his lodging in Belinda's blue eye, my whole faith is heretic-for she hath never a sty in it." Mr. Hood, doubtless, desires that the world should know his "Whims and Oddities" through his own work; its notice here, therefore, while it affords a winter evening's half hour entertainment, is not to mar his hopes. But it is impossible to close its merry-making leaves without shadowing forth a little more of the volume. It ought to be observed, that the prints just presented are from engravings in Mr. Hood's book, of which there are forty drawn by his own pencil; and, that he attaches a motto to each, so antithetical, as to constitute the volume a pocket portfolio of designs to excite risibility. For example: ly," a lady of enormous bulk, who placed He tells a story of his "Aunt ShakerMr. Hood's baby cousin in the nursingchair while she took in the news, and then, in her eagerness to read the accidents and offences, unthinkingly sat, with aforesaid chair, and thereby unconsciously the gravity of a coroner's inquest, in the suppressed" an article of intelligence"an occurrence which there is little reason to doubt appeared among the "horribles," in the favourite department of her paper, the next morning. The engraving that pictures this is mottoed, "THE SPOILED CHILD!" |