massy oaken stalls, many of them capable of repairs, many of them wanting none: these are replaced by narrow slender deal pews, admirably contrived to cramp the tall, and break down under the bulky. Next the fluted wood work of the roof, with all its carved enrichments, is plastered over. It looked dull and nourished cobwebs! Lastly, the screens and lattices, which, from period antecedent to the Reformation, had spread their light and perforated surfaces from arch to arch, are sawn away; and, in the true spirit of modern equality, one undistinguishing blank is substituted for separations which are yet canonical, and to distinctions which ought to be revered."

In Littondale is the celebrated cave Doukerbottom Hole: the road leading to it is steep and difficult to travel for one unused to hilly countries; but the tourist will receive an ample recompense for the badness of the road, by the splendid views obtained from all parts of it of Whernside and the neighbouring hills. It is some years since I saw Doukerbottom Cave; and at this distance of time I fear to attempt a description of its wonders; but I remember that the entrance is steep and rather dangerous; the first chamber very spacious and lofty, and the roof starred with beautiful stalactites formed by the dripping of the limestone; that then the cavern becomes narrower and lower, so much so, that you have to stoop, and that at the end the ear is stunned by a waterfall, which discharges itself into some still lower cave. I remember, too, that I visited it in company with an amiable dissenting minister, and that we were highly amused at the jokes and tales of our one-eyed guide, Mr. Proctor, of Kilnsay. I have just been inquiring after that worthy and eccentric old fellow, and find that he is dead. I am sorry for it; and if my reverend friend should see this article, I doubt not but he will lament with me, that poor old Proctor is gone. For many years he had been guide to Doukerbottom Cave and Whern

side.

HAGBUSH-LANE

From desire to afford the destroyes! Corrall's cottage time to reflect, and reparation for the injury they bad info on the old man and his wife; and wishz, to abstain from all appearance of strimaking, the topic has remained till De untouched.

on

On the 28th of November Mr. S. the agent of a respectable clergy whose sympathy had been exeted " the statements of the Table Book, ar me to make some inquiries into 2 case, and I invited him to accompany to Corrall's shed. We proceeded by stage to the "Old Mother Red Cip Camden-town, and walked from there along the New Road, leading to Holloway, till we came to the spot at the wester corner of Hagbush-lane, on the left-hand side of the road. We had journeyed fr nothing-the shed had disappeared from the clay swamp whereon it stood. Alos the dreary line of road, and the adja meadows, rendered cheerless by alternate frosts and rains, there was not a bu being within sight; and we were at leas a mile from any place where inquiry cont be made, with a chance of success, respec ing the fugitives. As they might have re tired into the lane for better shelter during the winter, we made our way across the quaggy entrance as well as we could, and I soon recognised the little winding grove, so delightful and lover-like a walk in days of vernal sunshine. Its aspect, now, wa gloomy and forbidding. The disrobed tres looked black, like funeral mutes mourning the death of summer, and wept cold drops upon our faces. As we wound our slippery way we perceived moving figures in the distance of the dim vista, and soon came up to a comfortless man and woman, a poor couple, huddling over a small smeuldering fire of twigs and leaves. us that Corrall and his wife had taken down their shed and moved three weeks before, and were gone to live in some of the new buildings in White-conduit fields. The destitute appearance of our informanis in this lonely place induced inquiry re specting themselves. The man was a Lon don labourer out of employment, and, for two days, they had been seeking it in the country without success. Because they were able to work, parish-officers would not relieve them; and they were without a home and without food. They had walked and sauntered during the two nights, for want of a place to sleep in,

They told

Lie.

-salt, &c., Aristotle speaks, when he says in Umbria the burnt ashes of rushes and is, boiled in water, yield a great quanof salt. Theophrastus observes the Varro relates of dwellers on the ders of the Rhine, who having neither nor pit salt, supply themselves by ans of the saline cinders of burnt plants. y speaks of ashes as impregnated with s, and in particular of the nitrous ashes burnt oak; adding, that these salts are d in medicine, and that a dose of lixivial ses is an excellent remedy. Hippocrates, Isus, Dioscorides, and especially Galen, en recommend the medical use of sal ali. To the mixture of acids and alcali, ato ascribed fermentation. Solomon ems to have known this effect of them, er he speaks of "vinegar upon nitre." Cleopatra's Pearl.-A convincing proof the ability of the ancients in chemistry the experiment with which Cleopatra tertained Marc Antony, in dissolving bere him, in a kind of vinegar, a pearl of ery great value, (above 45,4501. sterling.) t present we know not of any vinegar" at can produce this effect; but the fact is ell attested. Probably the queen added omething to the vinegar, omitted by the istorian. The aid of Dioscorides, suramed Phacas, who was her physician, aight have enabled her thus to gain her Prager with Marc Antony, that she would xceed him in the splendour and costliness of her entertainment. But Cleopatra herself was a chemical adept, as appears from some of her performances still in the libraries of Paris, Venice, and the Vatican. And Pliny informs us of the emperor Caius, that by means of fire he extracted some gold from orpiment.

46

is more diffuse. He says, that in the time of Tiberius there was an artificer who made vessels of glass, which were in their composition and fabric as strong and durabie as silver or gold; and that being introduced into the presence of the emperor, he presented him with a vase of this kind, such as he thought worthy of his acceptance. Meeting with the praise his invention deserved, and finding his present so favourably received, he threw the vase with such violence upon the floor, that had it been of brass it must have been injured by the blow; he took it up again whole, but dimpled a little, and immediately repaired it with a hammer. While in expectation of ample recompense for his ingenuity, the emperor asked him whether any body else was acquainted with this method of preparing glass, and being assured that no other was, the tyrant ordered his head to be immediately struck off; lest gold and silver, added he, should become as base as dirt. Dion Cassius, on this head, confirms the attestations of Pliny and Petronius. Ibn Abd Alhokim speaks of malleable glass as a thing known in the flourishing times of Egypt. Greaves, in his work on Pyramids, mentions him as a celebrated chronologist among the Arabians, and cites from him that "Saurid built in the western pyramid thirty treasuries, filled with store of riches and utensils, and with signatures made of precious stones, and with instruments of iron and vessels of earth, and with arms which rust not, and with glass which might be bended, and yet not broken, &c." There is, however, a modern chemical composition, formed of silver dissolved in acid spirits, and which is called cornu lunæ, or horned moon, a transparent body, easily put into fusion, and very like horn or glass, and which will bear the hammer. Borrichius, a Danish physician of the seventeenth century, describes an experiment of his own, by which he obtained a pliant and malleable salt: he gives the receipt, and concludes from thence, that as glass for the most part is only a mixture of salt and sand, and as the salt may be rendered ductile, glass may be made malleable: he even imagines that the Roman artificer, spoken of by Pliny and Petronius, may have successfully used antimony as the principal ingredient in the composition of his vase. Descartes supposed it possible to impart malleability to glass, and Morhoff assures us that Boyle was of the same opinion.

Malleability of Glass.-The method of rendering glass ductile, which is to us a secret, was assuredly a process well known to the ancients. Some still doubt of it, as others have of the burning glasses of Archimedes. Because forsooth they do not know how it could be effected, they will not admit the fact, notwithstanding the exact accounts we have of it, till somebody again recovers this lost or neglected secret, as Kircher and Buffon did that of Archimedes's mirrors. Pliny says, the flexibility of glass was discovered in the time of Tiberius; but that the emperor fearing lest gold and silver, those most precious metals, should thereby fall in their value, so as to become contemptible, ordered the residence, workhouse, and tools of the ingenious artisan to be destroyed, and thus strangled the art in its infancy. Petronius

Painting on Glass.--This art, so far as it depends upon chemistry, was carried formerly to high perfection. Of this we have

striking instances in the windows of ancient churches, where paintings present themselves in the most vivid colours, without detracting from the transparency of the glass. Boerhave and others observe, that we have lost the secret to such a degree, that there are scarcely any hopes of recovering it. Late experiments go far towards a successful restoration of this art.

Democritus.-This eminent man, who was a native of Abdera in Thrace, flourish ed upwards of four centuries before the Christian æra. For the sake of acquiring wisdom he travelled into Egypt, and abode with the priests of the country. He may be deemed the father of experimental philosophy. It is affirmed that he extracted the juice of every simple, and that there was not a quality belonging to the mineral or vegetable kingdoms that escaped his notice. Seneca says, that he was the inventor of reverberating furnaces, the first who gave a softness to ivory, and imitated nature in her production of precious stones, particularly the emerald.

Gunpowder.-Virgil and his commentator Servius, Hyginus, Eustathius, La Cerda, Valerius Flaccus, and many other authors, speak in such a manner of Salmoneus's attempts to imitate thunder, as suggest to us that he used a composition of the nature of gunpowder. He was so expert in mechanics, that he formed machines which imitated the noise of thunder, and the writers of fable, whose surprise in this respect may be compared to that of the Mexicans when they first beheld the fire-arms of the Spaniards, give out that Jupiter, incensed at the audacity of this prince, slew him with lightning. It is much more natural to suppose that this unfortunate prince, as the inventor of gunpowder, gave rise to these fables, by having accidentally fallen a victim to his own experiments. Dion and Joannes Antiochenus report of the emperor Caligula, that he imitated thunder and lightning by means of machines, which at the same time emitted stones. Themistius relates, that the Brachn.ans encountered one another with thunder and lightning, which they had the art of launching from on high at a considerable distance. Agathias reports of Anthemius Traiensis, that having fallen out with his neighbour, Zeno the rhetorician, he set fire to his house.th thunder and lightning. Philostrates speak ng of the Indian sages, says, that when they were attacked by their enemies they did not leave their walls to fight them, but repelled and put them to flight by thunder and lightning. In another place he alleges

that Hercules and Bacchus atte assail them in a fort where they wer trenched, were so roughly received iterated strokes of thunder and br launched upon them from on high besieged, that they were obliged w The effects ascribed to these engines: scarcely be brought about but by go der. In Julius Africanus there is a for an ingenious composition to be upon an enemy, very nearly reser that of gunpowder. But that the were acquainted with it seems pro yond doubt, by a clear and positive p of an author called Marcus Græcus work in manuscript is in the Royal L at Paris, entitled “Liber Ignium" author, describing several ways of en tering an enemy, by launching fire him, ainong others gives the follow ceipt:-Mix together one pound of sulphur, two of charcoal of willow, six of saltpetre; reduce them to a ve powder in a marble mortar. He de certain quantity of this to be put t long, narrow, and well-compacted and so discharged into the air. He have the description of a rocket cover with which thunder represents as short, thick, but bat and strongly bound with packthread, is exactly the form of a cracker. He s treats of different methods of pre the match, and how one squib may set 2 to another in the air, by having it encue. within it. In short, he speaks as cleary the composition and effects of gunpo as any body in our times could do. Th author is spoken of by Mesue, an Arab physician, who flourished in the begin of the ninth century. There is reason believe that he is the same of whom Gait speaks.

GENERATION.

imitated

There are two theories on this sung among the moderns. Harvey, Stenon, Gra Redi, and other celebrated physicians maintain that all animals are oripan and spring from eggs, which in the an kingdom are what seed is in the vegetace Hartsocker and Lewenhoek are of a dife spring by metamorphosis from little animis ent opinion, and maintain that all animals of extreme minuteness.

The first of these systems is merely revival of that taught by Empedocles, a cited by Plutarch and Galen, and next him Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Macrohus The other system, that of animalcula ef