situation, have made Southampton a resort for seabathing; and hot, cold, medicated, and vapour-baths, have been constructed. In addition to those previously established, a handsome building has been erected, near the Platform on the beach, and provided with baths of every kind, with a spacious promenaderoom attached, commanding a good view of the water, which, during the summer season, is covered with pleasure boats, and with fine yachts. Numerous respectable lodging-houses are let for the accommodation of visiters. On the beach is a causeway planted with trees, extending above half a mile. On the Platform, which has been much enlarged and improved, is an ancient piece of ordnance, presented by Henry the Eighth, and recently mounted on a handsome cast-iron carriage, the gift of John Fleming, Esq. The barracks, erected here during the late war, and occupying about two acres of land, were, in 1816, converted into a military asylum, as a branch of the institution at Chelsea, under the patronage of the late Duke of York, for the orphan children of soldiers, and of those whose mothers are dead, and their fathers absent on service: the buildings are of brick, and are now appropriated to the reception of female children only.

The environs of Southampton are equally remarkable for the varied beauty of their scenery, and for the number of elegant mansions and villas. In addition to the numerous attractions which the town itself possesses, and the facilities afforded for aquatic excursions, there are, in various directions, extensive rides through a country abounding with objects of extreme interest, and enriched with a great variety of scenery.

wants of the inhabitants and visiters, and is facilitated by the Itchen canal navigation to Winchester, the river itself being navigable as far as Northam; and a 74-gun ship and several frigates were built in the docks here during the late war. A canal to Salisbury, with a view to open a communication between this town and Bristol, was projected about thirty-five years since; but the design was abandoned, the capital having been expended before half of the work was completed. A railway from London to Southampton is now in rapid progress, under an act obtained in the year 1834. The market-days are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; the market on Friday is for corn: the markets are well supplied with fish, eggs, poultry, and provisions of every kind. The fairs are on May 6th and 7th, for cows and pigs, and on Trinity Monday and Tuesday: the latter, a very ancient fair, is proclaimed by the mayor with particular ceremony on the preceding Saturday, and continues till the Wednesday noon following: this fair, which is principally for horses, cattle, and pigs, is held on the eastern side of the town, and during its continuance all persons are free from arrest for debt within the precincts of the borough.

Dr. Watts was a native of Southampton, and the remains of many eminent persons have been deposited in the churches of the town; among others, Captain Carteret, Bryan Edwards, Dr. Mant, and Miss Stanley; to the latter of whom there is an epitaph by the poet Thomson, who has also celebrated her beauty and accomplishments in the Seasons.

[Abridged from LEWIS's Topographical Dictionary.]

ON THE DEATH OF HIS DUCHESS.

The new landing pier, for the convenience of passengers to and from the Isle of Wight, Guernsey, Jersey, and France, was constructed by act of parliament in 1832: it is 900 feet in length, curving at the eastern extremity for the accommodation of steam-packets; the carriage road is twenty feet wide, and on each side of it is a foot-path protected by railing; the pier, which is of timber, is lighted with gas, and forms an interesting and agreeable promenade. Unfortunately, however, the ravages of some marine insects have already rendered very considerable repairs necessary to the foundation.

The harbour is spacious, and affords good anchorage for ships, which may ride at all times in security, being sheltered from all winds. Steam-vessels proceed regularly, all the Summer and Autumn, from this port to France, and to Jersey and Guernsey; and there are sailing packets on the same destination at all other seasons: steam-packets, also, afford a constant communication with the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth in Summer and Autumn, and sailing

vessels at other times.

The trade of the town principally arises from the

"THE following letter," says Mr. Lockhart, was addressed to Scott by the Duke of Buccleuch, before he received that which the Poet penned on landing at Glasgow. 1 present it here, because it will give a more exact notion of what Scott's relations with his noble patron really were, than any other simple document which I could produce. But I am not ashamed to confess, that I embrace with satisfaction the opportunity of thus offering to the readers of the present time a most instructive lesson. They will here see what pure and simple virtues, and humble piety, may be cultivated as the only sources of real comfort in this world, and consolation in the prospect of futurity, among circles which the giddy and envious crowd are apt to regard as intoxicated with the pomps and vanities of wealth and rank; which so many of our popular writers represent systematically as sunk in selfish indulgence, as viewing all below them with apathy and indifference, and last, not least, as upholding where they do uphold, the religious institutions of their country, merely because they have been taught to believe that their own hereditary privileges and possessions derive security from the prevalence of Christian maxims and feelings among the mass of the people."

TO WALTER SCOTT, Esq., Post Office, Greenock. MY DEAR SIR, Bowhill, Sept. 3, 1814.

It is not with the view of distressing you with my griefs, in order to relieve my own feelings, that I address you at this moment. But knowing your attachment to myself, and more particularly the real affection which you would be acceptable, both to explain the state of my mind bore to my poor wife, I thought that a few lines from me

at present, and to mention a few circumstances connected with that melancholy event.

I am calm and resigned. The blow was so severe, that it stunned me, and I did not feel that agony of mind which might have been expected. I now see the full extent of my misfortune; but that extended view of it has come gradually upon me. I am fully aware how imperative it is upon me to exert myself to the utmost on account of my children. I must not depress their spirits by a display of my own melancholy feelings. I have many new duties to perform; or, rather, perhaps, I now feel more pressingly the obligation of duties which the unceasing exertions of my poor wife rendered less necessary, or induced me to attend to with less than sufficient accuracy. I have been taught a severe lesson; it may and ought to be a useful one. I feel that my lot, though a hard one, is accompanied by many alleviations denied to others. I have a numerous family, thank God, in health, and profiting, according to their different ages, by the admirable lessons they have been taught. My daughter Anne, worthy of so excellent a mother, exerts herself to the utmost to supply her place, and has displayed a fortitude and strength of mind beyond her years, and (as I had foolishly thought) beyond her powers. I have most kind friends, willing and ready to afford me every assistance. These are my worldly comforts, and they are numerous and great.

Painful as it may be, I cannot reconcile it to myself to be totally silent as to the last scene of this cruel tragedy. As she had lived, so she died,-an example of every noble feeling, of love, attachment, and the total want of everything selfish. Endeavouring to the last to conceal her suffering, she evinced a fortitude, a resignation, a Christian courage, beyond all power of description. Her last injunction was, to attend to her poor people. It was a dreadful, but instructive moment. I have learned, that the most truly heroic spirit may be lodged in the tenderest and the gentlest breast. Need I tell you, that she expired in full hope and expectation, nay, in the firmest certainty of passing to a better world, through a steadfast reliance on her Saviour. If ever there was a proof of the efficacy of our religion in moments of the deepest affliction, and in the hour of death, it was exemplified by her conduct. But I will no longer dwell upon a subject which must be painful to you. Knowing her sincere friendship for you, I have thought it would give you pleasure, though a melancholy one, to hear from me, that her last moments were such as to be envied by every lover of virtue, piety, and true and genuine religion.

I will endeavour to do in all things what I know she would wish. I have therefore determined to lay myself open to all the comforts my friends can afford me. I shall be most happy to cultivate their society as heretofore. I shall love them more and more, because I know they loved her. Whenever it suits your convenience, I shall be happy to see you here. I feel that it is particularly my duty not to make my house the house of mourning to my children: for I know it was HER decided opinion, that it is most mischievous to give an early impression of gloom to the mind. You will find me tranquil, and capable of going through the common occupations of society. Adieu for the present. Yours, very sincerely,

BUCCLEUCH, &c. The writer of the above admirable letter, died April 20th, 1819, and was succeeded by his son, the present Duke of Buccleuch. [From LOCKHART's Life of Sir Walter Scott.]

THE ARCHITECTURE OF TREES. PERFECTION in any structure must comprise suitableness in the materials of which it is constructed, and skill in the mode in which such materials are applied. The perfection of the material consists in the union of lightness and strength. Strength is evidently a necessary quality. But a material may in itself be very strong, and yet as a material of construction, may, by reason of its weight, be very weak,-so that any structure raised out of it will of necessity be a weak structure. Iron, for instance, is a material of great strength, but it is very heavy, and experience has taught us that a structure of iron is not necessarily one of strength and durability*. The truth is, Maudslays' steam-engine manufactory, and the great Conse:vatory at Brighton, are memorable examples of this.

that although the material be so much stronger, yet unless its parts be proportioned with extraordinary care, it loads itself more than in the proportion of its greater strength, and "as it is the last ounce that breaks the camel's back," so the structure when raised, (if indeed it break not down in the process of construction,) is less able to bear any additional strain than if its material were weaker and lighter. When the architect looks around him for the best material for the purposes of construction, which shall combine the two great elements of strength and lightness, he finds it in that elaborated by the Great Architect for building up the trees of the forest. It is with wood that he can raise his boldest structures †.

Red fir has three-tenths of the strength of castiron, and is thirteen times lighter; white fir is fifteen times lighter than cast-iron, and has about onefourth the strength; and American pine, having onefourth the strength of iron, is seventeen times lighter. Thus a column of pine or fir may be raised to a height, or a beam of it extended to a length, at which a similar column or beam of iron would be crushed and broken by its weight. The height to which trees grow in tropical regions, and the weights which their trunks support, notwithstanding the fierce hurricanes of those regions, are truly wonderful. There are trees in the South American forests, spoken of by Humboldt, which are from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet in height; and he describes one, a species of mimosa, which, from a trunk sixty-four feet in height, threw out a hemispherical head six hundred feet in circumference, and must, therefore, have had branches stretching out one hundred feet horizontally.

Now were wood to unite with this strength and lightness the quality of durability, it would, probably, be the only material of which man would avail himself for the purposes of construction. But vegetable architecture, in order to effect the purposes reserved to it in the economy of creation, was destined to a perpetual renewal, and its material was accordingly subjected to continual decay. The perishableness of wood, therefore, a quality essential to its use in the architecture of nature, is the very quality which constitutes its chief defect as a material in the architecture of man. Claiming for himself a dwelling, which shall in future times be least subject to repair and renewal, and which, outlasting his own span of life, shall shelter his remote descendants, man is led to the use, in part, of a different material from that employed by his Maker in the architecture of the forest. It is not only, however, in the elaboration of the material that the wisdom of the Great Architect is apparent, but in the application of it, so as best, in each part, to minister to the strength of the whole structure. In order that the trunk may be able to sustain equally, on all sides, the pressure of the wind, it must be round, or cylindrical, and, for a like reason, a cylindrical form must be given to the îndividual boughs and branches.

Now if a mathematician considers how a given quantity of material should be disposed in an upright column, so as best to bear a weight at its top, and to sustain the efforts of a force acting there to overthrow it, he finds that the material must be so disposed that more of it shall be at the bottom than at the top of the column....or in other words, that it must be formed into a tapering column....because the leverage of the disturbing force at the top is

The boldest structure, probably, that has ever been erected, is the bridge of wood over the Schuylkill at Philadelphia; it is a single arch, 340 feet in span, which rises in the centre only twenty feet above the level of the springing.

greater on the lower sections than on the higher. If, therefore, the same force, which is insufficient to break the trunk towards the top, be sufficient to break it at the bottom, it is clear that some of the material may be taken from the top without the tree being broken there, and added to the bottom, and the whole column be thereby strengthened, without adding to the quantity of material used. The same reasoning applies to the horizontal branch of a tree as to its upright trunk; indeed, in that case it applies more strikingly, for not only must the bough be continually thicker towards its insertion in the trunk than towards its extremity, in order that its tendency to break may be the same in one place as in another; but because, also, by this arrangement, its centre of gravity, in which all its weight may be supposed to be collected, will be brought nearer to the trunk, producing all that difference in the strain which we may experience, if, after holding a weight in the hand with the arm extended, we place it upon the middle of the arm.

What the precise proportion of this tapering of the upright column and of the horizontal arm should be, is dependent upon the nature of the material, the weight borne, and the probable amount and direction of the disturbing force. But with all the facts that are known, the calculation is, even in the simplest case, far beyond the powers of the most skilful mathematician. There is, indeed, at present, no skill in analysis which approaches the complete solution of a question like this; we merely know the general fact, that this conical form must be given, but the precise amount to which it must be given in each case, so as to be the best, we know not. Yet who can doubt, that in nature, that best form is given in every case, and that these difficult laws of the most perfect arrangement, have been applied with the greatest precision in every tree, plant, and flower, by the Mighty Architect of the universe, so that the trunk of each tree tapers according to the most perfect form from its base to the insertion of its branches....that, for a like reason, each bough grows less in the right proportion from its insertion in the trunk....each branch from its insertion in the bough....each shoot from its insertion in the branch....and the feeble stalk that supports each leaf from its insertion in the shoot....nay, even that the same perfect law obtains in the very fibres of the leaf itself!

Were the distribution of the material of the tree, however, wholly directed by this principle, that it should be made to minister the greatest possible strength to every part, it would appear that the trunk and all the branches should have been hollow, like the bones of animals. In the breaking of a cylindrical piece of wood, that portion of the fibre which principally resists the fracture, is seen to be situated near the surface, and not about the centre of the cylinder, -the central substance might, indeed, be entirely removed by boring a hole along the cylinder, without materially affecting its strength; and if, when thus taken from the centre, the material could be collected on the surface, the strength might be greatly increased by the transfer. An increase of the strength, by taking the material from the internal parts of the cylinder and collecting it on the outside, might indeed be carried to any extent, were it not for the thinness of the tube at which we should thus ultimately arrive. Mr. Tred: gold calculated that if a solid cylinder be in this way converted into a hollow cylinder whose thickness is three-twentieths of its diameter, its strength will be doubled; and it is worthy of remark that this appears to be pretty nearly the proportion of the thickness of the hollow stems of plants to their diameters.

Doubtless it is for this reason that the bones of

animals are hollow, instead of solid *, and that in those which are specially destined for lightness and speed, deer, for instance, and birds, the matter of the bone is extremely condensed, so as to accumulate it as much as possible on the surface.

Thus, too, it is, we cannot doubt, that, among trees, the palms....which throw out their branches at the top, and grow to a greater height than any other trees, so that more than ordinary strength is required to support them....have hollow trunks, and that bamboos ....which shoot out from the earth like grasses, each raising a slender flexible stem to a great height....are exceedingly hollow cylinders, whose material is so condensed on their surfaces as to have almost the hardness of a metal. For a like reason, perhaps, it is that when the material of the stem of a flower is exceedingly fragile, or the weight it has to carry very great, it is usually hollow, and that when a plant is to lift its stalk to more than the ordinary height, as the sunflower, the thistle, the bulrush, the sugar-cane, it is invariably a hollow cylinder. If, then, we find that the trees of the forest only in some rare instances, follow this law of the greatest strength, we must seek another cause.

To that balance of change which is continually going on in the natural world, the production and the dissolution of large masses of vegetable matter is no doubt necessary. There is no doubt that this vegetable matter, as it exists under the form of wood, might have been wrought in the same quantity, by the same Almighty hand, into yet higher and bolder fabrics than are even the trees of our primæval forests. But in the great sequence of nature there are other and more important elements with which this gigantic scale of vegetable nature might have interfered. Certain we are of this, that if, to increase their dimensions, the trunks and branches of trees had been hollowed, they could not as now have served the purposes of man; planks and beams could not then as now have been cut out of them, and it is difficult to say how much the progress of society might by this single circumstance have been retarded.

Another reason, perhaps, is, that by thus converting the bone from a solid into a hollow cylinder, a much greater surface of at

tachment is obtained for the muscles.

POPULAR ILLUSTRATIONS OF LIFE ASSURANCE.

III.

WE now proceed to explain, in a familiar manner, the common methods of determining the probabilities of existence from the Tables of Mortality. Previous to entering upon this inquiry, it will, however, be necessary to understand the precise sense in which the word PROBABILITY is here used.

If life were secure in every successive stage, and if every man were certain of existing to the end of every year, there would, of course, be no such thing as Probability, as far as human life is concerned; but as our existence is really of uncertain duration, and as our lives may be terminated within au hour, or protracted for many years, we have all of us a certain chance, or probability, (only to be expressed by figures,) of surviving to the end of every year. Mathematically speaking, indeed, every event in nature is open to the possibility of happening or failing. The commonest occurrences, such as the rising and setting of the sun, and the changes of the seasons, which from infancy we have been accustomed to look upon as morally certain, are only, therefore, mathematically probable in a very high degree, and may actually be measured by a figure (always a fraction), expressive of the chance of their happening or not happening,