FOR THE IRIS.

VOLCANOES.

THE opinion of the Philosophical part of the world respecting the cause of these awful phenomena could never be reconciled, yet, it is generally acknowledged that, though their effects may be prejudicial to some parts of the world, they tend to the well-being, if not the preservation, of the whole. Were it not for these vent holes of the earth, as we may justly call them, the accumulation of the internal fire, and consequent dilatation of subterranean bodies, would certainly produce earthquakes very frequently, which all must allow are (to the world in general) of much worse consequences than volcanoes. Thus, were it possible to fill up Etna, Vesuvius, and all mountains of the like nature, we should undoubtedly subject ourselves to earthquakes, which would in time break up the shell of our world, and destroy it, at least as a habitable globe.

Sonie have endeavoured to account for the

immensity of flame and heat which are given out during an eruption, by the decomposition of water and consequent production of inflammable air.

are caused by the expansive force of steam,
aided by fire; but from what has been before
said respecting the decomposition of water,
steam can have little or no power, as the water
duced into air, therefore steam can have little
instead of being converted into vapour is re-
agency in these cases. A more modern, and
perhaps a more reasonable theory, supposes
that eruptions are caused by the central fire
coming in contact with large quantities of
sulphur, nitre, and other substances, which
have the property of detonating when mixed.
That these exist in the earth, combined with
other bodies, none can doubt; and it is clear
from the examples which gunpowder, &c. give us,
that the combination of these bodies with heat,
is fully sufficient to produce the effects recorded
of the eruptions of Etna. In answer to this
explanation, however, it may be asked, why do
not eruptions happen more frequently, for we
may suppose the fire, sulphurous, and bitu-
minous rocks to be stationary, and why do
not the eruptions continue until the whole in-

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beyond a doubt, by the extraordinary interest which his pictures excite, not only among t graphically untutored, but the most cultivate tastes. They are not only crowded about in of charmed recollection and discourse. Like the Exhibition-room, but are the after-subjects impressions of friendship, they exist in the mind, after the objects which first produced them are withdrawn from the sight; for without the aid of the Engraver and Painter, we carry away beautiful impressions of them upon our imaginations. They at once become interwoven in the finely-wrought texture of sensibility and thought. The fire of genius burns them at once into our memories. But the pure pictorial ore is not without alloy. Mr. MARTIN has a correct and elegant eye for the arrangement of his architecture, landscape, and figures, (of a mixture of which his works generally consist,) and a strong and imaginative conception of his subject; but he wants a proportionate power of proper execution, to give that conception all its force. In the language of his art, he is inferior to his invention. In the latter, From this short view of the theories which he rises above common nature into the poetical; have been raised to explain these wonders of in the first, he is below it. His execution is nature, we see that none of them are satisfac- indeed vigorous; but it is a mannered vigor. tory, they are all liable to objection, and pro- It has too little identification with the things bably will be so until our knowledge of elec- represented, for it wants that true exterior of for let the true cause be what it may, electricity ture, which, whether the subject be elevated or tricity (which is yet in its infancy), advances, objects, that similitude to their surface in naseems to bear a considerable part, as in a late common, ought to characterise every picture, eruption of Vesuvius the air was so strongly whatever some esteemed critics, with REYwhen held out of the window. Thus as the--such a truth of surface as represented the electrified that it would charge a Leyden phial NOLD's at their head, may say to the contrary; science of electricity becomes better under-mist, the vegetation, &c. in CLAUDE's pictures; stood, we shall be more able to judge of the and the flesh, &c. in TITIAN'S, as Nature's own. agent which keeps these extraordinary and awful phenomena in a state of activity during so many centuries, until then we can only exwhich must, like their predecessors in every ercise our imaginations in forming theories, science, sink into nothing, as experiment and observation establish more certain grounds on which we may reason.

flammable matter is spent.

This true appearance never derogates from the dignity of Nature, but imitates a portion of her rich and beautiful variety.

There undoubtedly is in the interior of the earth, a large space filled with fire and water, the former of which, by the assistance of iron, charcoal, &c. resolves the latter into its constituent elements, viz. oxygen or vital air, and hydrogen orinflammable air; whenever this decomposition takes place it must be in large quantities, and a considerable volume of both these gases must be disengaged: oxygen is absorbed by all bodies during combustion, but hydrogen is itself a combustible body, the oxygen is consequently absorbed as soon as it is produced, and the hydrogen is united with the subterranean fire, but from its natural lightness and being now combined with a considerable quantity of heat, it has a strong tendency to ascend, and at the first vent rushes out in the state of flame, with an inconceivable force, bearing with it stones, earth, and whatever oppose its passage, which it sometimes melts, forming lava. This theory, however, is liable PICTURE OF THE DESTRUCTION OF an unconstrained air in this Painter's figures,

to some objections, for the force which is manifested at Etna and Vesuvius in throwing stones 40 and 60 miles, cannot well be engendered in the mere tendency of the air to ascend; and as we are not to suppose a partition between the fire and the water, why does not this admixture oftener take place?

It has been the opinion of others, that eruptions and all the phenomena attendant thereon,

FINE ARTS.

LAPIS.

POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM.

"What thought can reach,

What language can express, the agonies,
The horrors of that hour!"

E. ATHERSTONE's Last Days of Herculaneum.

Whatever variety of opinion exists as to the kind and degree of Mr. MARTIN's genius, the fact of its being of a very high order is placed

observation, is in no small degree an excepThe picture, however, immediately under our tion to this animadversion; for its requisite volcanic luminousness is there not inappropriately represented by that clear and brittly look, which is mainly the erroneous surface we have been complaining of in this Artist's works. There has been also a want of more science and.

together with some of that deep but not externally agitated look of grief and despair, which Poussin, with so observant and various a knowledge of the human figure, physiognomy, and heart, intermixed among others of a strenuous character. With a diminished, and indeed a comparatively small portion of these defects, including also the size of the picture, which seems to limit the magnificent

and awful nature of the subject, the work is more complete than any previously painted by this Artist. The lines and groups are all beautifully arranged; and the light, from its central energy on Vesuvius, is gradually carried off with exquisite judgment to the darkened extremities of the picture, after blazing over the fate-emitting volcano, glaring on its contiguous objects, and decreasingly gleaming to the foreground. The mother, with her death-smitten offspring at her side, exposing herself with open and inviting arms to the fiery deluge, and the wife, fallen on the bosom of her expired husband, are well chosen, because natural and pathetic groups. In the elevated foreground, are a family stretched on the ground dead; Roman centurions protecting their families under their shields; Pliny embracing his friend Pomponianus; the soldiers and slaves in attendance on him and Pliny; parts of the town of Stabia falling by earthquake. A little beyond these, are the mutitude of people crowding towards the shipping for safety. In the mid-distance, is the sea with ships, agitated by the earthquake; the town of Pompeii; the bridge of the Serna falling by earthquake; the Stabian way crowded with fugitives, &c.; Retina, the Villa Suburbina, &c. Remotely, are Oplontis, Herculaneum, the sloping and hilly approaches to Vesuvius; and, above all, the stupendous Vesuvius, from whose summit rises a huge and bright column of fiery matter, lava, &c. while down its sides is the rapid flow of the boiling and destroying lava upon the illfated towns and country below. An immense black and dreadful cloud,' in which flash the forked lightnings,' overhangs the whole, and pours down hot ashes, stones, and torrents of stony mud, which converted the cities and blooming fields into igneous sepulchres for their numerous and terrified people. In the fiery horror, before inconceivable, Nature appears as if forsaken of her conservative power and her guardian God, and that the great Principle of Evil was pouring out his phial of wrath upon inert but beauteous Nature, and upon

*

look like the Tartarean regions of punishment
anguish and horror. Some persons have ob-
jected to this; but a gentleman who has wit-
nessed the eruption very many times, says that
the fiery effect cannot be exaggerated. The
Painter has made us see as well as feel the
vivid essence of his art in these nobly painted
novelties-now novelties, though their originals
have been, and in part are occasionally repeat-
ed from those great steam engines of the
world--the nitrous Vesuvius and Etna.†

It is thought that the eruption of the volcanic
matter from the crater is occasioned by the operation
of steam in the cavity below.

far short of my wishes. In most things too, I am an admirer of brevity; I cannot endure long dinners. All the delicate viands that sea and land, with all the points "on the shipman's card," produce, are not so irresistible a temptation to gluttony, as the ennui of a needless half-hour at table: certain motions of the jaws are undoubtedly infectious; such are laughing, yawning, and eating. Should the night-mare, "and her nine fold," descend visibly upon the dishes; should indigestion, after the old fashion, assume the shape of Abernethey to admonish and gout appear in the yet more formidable likeness of a racking toe, the mere dead weight of time would turn the balance of my resolves. I am partial to short ladies. Here

me,

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS UPON BREVITY. I shall be told, perhaps, that the Greeks in

"Brevity," says Polonius, "is the soul of
wit," and twenty men as wise as he have said
"Truth," says Mr. Stephen
so after him.
Jones, the worthy compiler of various Bio-
graphical, Geographical, and Lexicographical
Duodecimos, "is the soul of my work, and
brevity is its body." Strange quality, that
can at once be body and soul! Rare coinci-
dence, that the soul of wit should be the body
of a pocket dictionary.

I

I

clude size in their ideal of beauty; that all Homer's fair ones are "large and comely," and that Lord Byron has expressed his detestation of "dumpy women." All this is very true, but what is it all to me? Women are not ideals, nor do we love or admire them as such; Homer makes his heroes tall as well as his heroines; there cannot, as Falstaff says be better sympathy. And as for his Lordship, when am the Grand Turk, he shall choose for me. revere the sex as much as any man, but I do not like to look up to them. I had rather be Many excellent things, good reader of six consorted "with the youngest wren of nine," feet high, partake of the property which thou than with any daughter of Eve whose morning dost look down upon, or else overlook, so stature was taller than my evening shadow. To take a few casual instances, Whatever such an amazon might condescend scornfully. such as life, pleasure, a good style, and good to say to me, it would sound of "nothing but resolutions, all which are notoriously, nay, low and little." Those pretty diminutives, proverbially brief would scantily raise the which in all languages are the terms of affecmatter to the altitude of the apprehension. tion, from her lips would seem like perGo then, and learn by experience; read law-sonalities; she could have but one set of yers' briefs without a fee; study the Statutes phrases for fondness and for scorn. If I at Large; regale thyself with Viner's Abridge- would" whisper soft nonsense in her ear,” I ment: if thou beest a tradesman, give long must get on my legs, as if I were going to credit; if thou dost set a value on the momove a resolution; if in walking I would ments, bind thine ears to seven hours' ap- keep step with her, I must stride as if I were prenticeship to the British Senate, or the Bri- measuring the ground for two duellists, one tish Forum: or, if thou canst, recal the days of whom was my very good friend, and the of Auld Lang Syne, of long sermons, and the other a very good shot. Should I dance with long Parliament; when the long-winded her (alas, I am past my dancing days) I Some very novel features of representation preachers were accustomed to hold forth over should seem like a cock-boat to sing in a are seen in the perpendicular descent of the untheir glasses, to the long-ear'd and long suf- storm, at the stern of a three decker. And wonted and ruthless sleet; the voluminous as-fering multitude: over their glasses, I say, should I wed her (proh dolor! I am declared. cent of the smoky and pitchy cloud; the floods by signs infallible an old bachelor elect; cats, of streaming lava; the shields of the military the coyest of the breed, leap on my knees held up against the sky-descending contents of that saucy knave,* called the old bachelor, Nature's artillery; the awful concavity above falls eternally to my share, and no soft look of combustious cloud, impenetrable to the sun's of contradiction averts the omen; candles light, and vaulting and overwhelming an imshrink self-extinguished when I would snuff mense and populous country (where till now them, and no sweet voice will chide my awkNature and Art reposed in undisturbed glory) wardness): but should I wed her, I must and an expanse of sea that moved with the "stand the push of every beardless vain comgentle breathings of Nature, the breezes of parative." The young Etonian jackanapes health and commerce; the reddened fever with would call us Elegiacks (carmen lugubre!); which she is all over flushed, except where the Cantab pedants would talk of their duplivaried with ashy grey and partial darkness from cate ratios; yea, unbreached urchins, old alethe nubilous covering, and where the blue wives, and coblers in their stalls, would cry electricity varies her crimson complexion preand prudential punsters would wish the match out after us "There goes eighteen pence; viously to her deep moans in thunder, the resounding Vesuvius, and her loud panting resmight prove happy, but it was certainly very pirations of air. The whole scene has a red unequal. and yellow reflex of fiery light, that, terrible in its glory, makes the spreading ocean, the winding shore, the stately edifices, the vegetative plains, the gradually rising hills and mountain, with the astounded population

sentient Man..

In the year 1694 the stones reached Benevento, nearly 30 miles off; and in 1717, the boiling stream of lava was half a mile broad and 5 miles long.

but not such glasses as were wont to inspire
the tragic sublimity of Eschylus, the blis-
tering humour of Aristophanes, and the blus-
tering humour of Old Ben; not such glasses
as whetted the legal acuinen of Blackstone,
and assisted the incomparable Brinsley to weep
for the calamities of India. No, my jovial
friends, the Gospel trumpeters were as dry as
they were lengthy. Their glasses were such as
that which old Time is represented as running
away with, though in sober truth they run, or
rather creep away with him; such glasses as
we naturally associate with a death's head, a
college fag, or a lawyer's office. Should a
the hour-glass, I am inclined to think he would
modern pulpit orator undertake to preach by
be building his hopes of preferment on a sandy
foundation, and would most probably see his
congregation run out before his sand. At all
events, he would make the world (meaning
thereby the parish clerk, and charity children,
who were compelled to a final perseverance)
as much in love with brevity, as if they had
each inherited a chancery suit, or had their
several properties charged with long annuities.
I am brief myself; brief in stature, brief in
discourse, short of memory and money, and

But of all long things, there are three which I hold in special abhorence; a long bill, a long coach, and a long debate. Bills, it must be observed, are apt to grow long in

*It is needless to mention that this alludes to a

Christmas gambol, wherein a particular knave in the pack is called the old bachelor, and the person drawing it is set down as a confirmed Calebs.

proportion as the means of paying them are children; confinement and the want of fresh
short; and tradesmen do not, like "honorable air are themselves sufficiently painful to them,
gentlemen," move for leave to bring them in. and they seldom possess the faculty of deriv-
But it is not the appalling sum total that I ing amusement from inconveniencies. But
regard. It is the mizzling insignificant items, all the troubles of our progress were nothing
the heart-breaking fractions, the endless sub-to the intolerable stopping. All conversation,
divisions of misery, that provoke me. It is as
if one were condemned to be blown up with a
mass of gunpowder, and at the same time to
feel the separate explosion of every grain.

MATHEMATICS.

Solution of No. 4, by Agnes,

14y3

3

The first equation, by transposition, will become
x3 + x12 x2y
<=0
This, with the addition of 125y3 is evidently the

cube of x

x

--

27

. If, therefore, we add to both sides 125y3 we shall obtain, by evolution,

27

= 5; and, hence, x =

even that of the politicians, ceased instantly.
Sigh answered sigh, and groans were heard in
all the notes of the gamut. The very horses
seemed to sympathize with the feelings of the
passengers, by various inarticulate sounds ex-
pressing, not, indeed, impatience to be gone, of this equation
but uneasiness at staying. It was a hopeless
condition. Every face was a glass, in which
one might see the lengthening of one's own.
For the last stage, a dozing silence prevailed,
which made me almost wish for noise again.
Any thing to drown the rumble of the
wheels, and the perpetual and unavailing
crack of the whip, which was applied unmer-
cifully, and, as it were, mechanically, with-
out the smallest acceleration.

2y.

Let this value of x be substituted in the second

given equation, and we shall have,

ary-2ay23y 3 :0;

and by transposition, and division, a2 2ay = 3y;

If to both sides of this equation we add y2, and then extract the square root, we shall find a-y= 2y.

Wherefore, y = , and x =

2a.

።።

3

A solution was received from Amicus.

Solution of No. 5, by Mathematicus.

Let d be the diameter of the sphere, a = = 3.1416, and h height of the segment; then, da will repre

I am not sure whether these machines have not been put down by the legislature. Would that the same august body would exercise their authority upon long speeches as well as on long coaches, and be as careful of the national time as of the bones of his Majesty's locomotive subjects. Oh! that the value of brevity were understood within the walls of St. Stephen's! I never cast an eye on the close-sent the circumference of the sphere. Now, by menprinted colums of a paper, without being trans- suration, the convex superfices of the segment, whose ported by imagination into the Speaker's chair. height is h, will be da h; again, by a well known I had rather be transported to Botany Bay.) property of the circle, (d-h) ×h× 4 × 2=dah How anxiously must that model of enforced patience keep watch for some irregularity, and with what joy must he seize the opportunity of crying Order. How sweet to his ears must be the sound of his own voice, thus coupled with the sense of authority.

Few of those pestilential vehicles called long coaches infest our roads at present; but when I was a young traveller they were frequent, especially on the northern stages. Their external semblance was that of a hearse, and their inward accomodations might vie with those of a slave-ship. An incontinent vestal might have rehearsed her living inhumation in one of them. They carried ten inside! Authors, children, and dandies, were only counted as fractions; and Daniel Lambert himself would only have been considered as an unit. Their pace was intolerably slow; their stages long; their drivers thirsty; and ale-houses innumerable. It is difficult to conceive what a variety of distress they sometimes contained. I remember à journey in one of them, I think it was between Lancaster and Manchester, perhaps the dullest road in England, which beat the miseries of human life hollow. It was during the high fever of trade, and just after the summer holidays. I was then a minim, and counted as nobody. Three youths, returning unwillingly to school," with all their consolatory store of half-eaten apples and gingerbread, and with looks that indicated a woeful neglect of regimen during the vacation, composed one passenger. The landlady of the Swan Inn, in bulk a Falstaff, and clothed like the Grave-digger, ditto (bearing a brandybottle, which, with most importunate civility, A long debate is, to me, like a long story, she proffered to the company, in spite of re- of which I know the conclusion before it is peated and sincere refusals); a consumptive begun. To read or listen to it is as tedigentleman, who supplied his lack of natural ous as to play a game which you are sure dimension by a huge box-coat; a sick lady, of losing, or to fight for your life when you with her son (who by the way was very dis- know that, in case of defeat or victory, it is agreeably affected by the motion of the car- alike forfeited. The catastrophe of every disriage), her sister, and a lap-dog; a strong mi-cussion may be so clearly foreseen, and the very nisterialist of eighteen stone; and an equally arguments, and also the very metaphors of violent, and almost equally bulky, partizan each member, so easily anticipated, that it is of opposition; neither of these worthies were a cruel oppression to force a man to tread perfectly sober, and their vociferation was such the intricate mazes of eloquence, in order to as to drown every other sound, except the arrive at a point to which a hop, step, and complaints of the sick lady, and the occasional jump, may carry him. I proposed to speak yelping of the lap-dog;) a very smart, yet in- briefly of brevity, and lo, I have produced a nocent-looking young woman, who was sadly long discourse upon length. I intended to pestered with the coarse gallantry of a middle- shew that lovely things are brief, and I have aged manufacturer of cotton; there was also a digressed into an exposition of the unlovelivery prim and self-complacent young gentle- ness of lengthiness. Lest I should utterly man, who seemed to value himself much on belie my title, I will even conclude here. his acute sense of the disagreeable, and not less on a peculiar delicate mode of swearing, mincing and clipping his oaths till they were almost softened into nonsense

Such were the intestines: the roof and box were proportionably loaded. There was some little danger of breaking down, and no little fear of it. Every jolt produced a scream from the sick lady, a yelp from the lap-dog, an oath from the young gentleman, and a nauseous jest, or a vulgar proffer of service to the females, from the cotton-manufacturer. Against this chaos of discords we had to balance the momentary interruption of the political jangle, and a shriek in exchange for the customary groans of the landlady's.

Scenes of this kind are very distressing to

TOM' THUMB THE GREAT.

ORIGINAL ANECDOTE.

The popular Song of 'Oh the Roast Beef of Old England' was set to music by a composer of that period, named Leveridge. As he was one day passing a Butcher's Shop, where the owner was employed in scraping his chopping block, he was greeted by the sound of God bless you, Master Leveridge-God bless you, Master Leveridge :-turning to the butcher, his benediction, but said he was wholly ignorant how from whom he perceived it came, he thanked him for he deserved it. God bless you, Master Leveridge,' the man repeated, You have given us a fine song upon the Roast Beef of Old England, it goes off rarely; but, Master Leveridge, could'nt you be so good as give us another upon boil'd beef, for that sticks on hand confoundedly.'