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OUR CONSERVATORY.

A NEW FEATURE OF THE ATOMIC THEORY. -The last Number, 220, section 2 of the present edition of the Catalogue [of the Exhibition], mentions the models of some Lucifer-matches made with amorphous phosphorus. The uninformed reader would hardly guess that this simple statement involves the solution of one of the most curious problems of Vulcanic chemistry, and indicates results of equal importance to commerce and philanthropy. The production and commercial uses of this mysterious body have been hitherto checked by the fearful disease its subtle absorption into the system produces, and by the dangers attending its transport or, storage, as it ignites at the temperature of a warm summer day. The conversion of phosphorus from a crystallized into an amorphous form, strips this dangerous substance of its highly inflammable and poisonous qualities; but in doing so deprives it of none of its useful properties. At the same time the fact of this being wrought by a simple change in the arrangement of its constituent atoms, gives us an insight into a series of phenomena equally new and important. Whilst looking at the dull brown amorphous mass, of which a piece now lies before us, and comparing it with the strawcoloured crystallized form, we are no longer surprised at the succession of changes in the internal structure of carbon from soot to graphite or the diamond. Concerning the entire identity of the amorphous and crystallized phosphorus, there can be no room for doubt, as we can at will reproduce either from the other, without the addition of any new matter what

rejected in the first scene; and to add insult to injury, the tenor, in the pride of his superiority, is very apt to hasten his departure by some such phrase as "Tyrant, begone!" which being very high, and delivered with the chest voice, is extremely likely to get a round of applause. There is a limit to all human endurance, and if moral men with bass vcices do turn out villains after the first scene, I can't wonder at it. Having once vowed vengeance against the tenor, by touching the hilt of his sword, the poor bass must now give up the last claim to sentiment. Ile is usually to be seen surrounded by a num ber of suspicious-looking gentlemen, who are extremely partial to drink, and who, in a grand chorus, declare their determination to stick to him to the last. He now generally appears en veloped in a cloak; and-although he has for feited all hope of the friendship of respectable people-for the sake of his voice in the concerted music, he is allowed to sneak in at the back, where he often creates much effect by imaginary stabs at the tenor, after the manner of the warriors at the fairs, who never thrust at each other save upon the accented portions of the bar. I have thought much upon this subject, and cannot be made to see that gentlemen with dark whiskers and bass voices should be thus discouraged in their amours. It is true that the stage is but a mimic representation of life; but, if such things are allowed to be continually placed before a public audience, who knows but they may prove extremely prejudicial to the rising generation? The notion may eventually so take possession of the people, that the claims of suitors shall be estimated by the compass of their voices, and a good tenor ut de poitrine be equivalent to a round sum at the banker's. Happy tenors may marry and rear up families, whilst despised basses may go to their graves A PLEA FOR THE BASSES.-I have observed that a bass voice is necessary in an opera, and unpitied and forlorn. Many persons may say lately with much regret, that the principal tenor that those who happen to possess one are sure of an opera is almost invariably the successful of receiving a good salary in an establishment lover; he it is who basks in the sunny smiles of devoted to music. This is true; but it is my the prima donna; whilst the bass is too often wish that all principal singers should be placed made painfully to feel his situation as the rejected lover, and compelled to groan out his gradation to which basses are continually subon an equality; and, in consideration of the dehopeless passion in rocky passes or dreary ca-jected, I would suggest that the scale of salary verns. During the whole progress of the opera, the happy tenor has little to do but to make love and enjoy himself. Sometimes he is rowing in a gondola, and sometimes serenading in a garden; sometimes transported by unknown hands to a fairy palace, and sometimes banqueting in a moonlit grove. In every situation he is the favoured individual; and, whilst many of the characters are buffeted about by fortune, he generally contrives between singing, flirting, and feasting on the good things of this life, to spend a very pleasant time of it. Meanwhile, however, the poor bass leads the life of any dog. If he be a lover, he is generally

ever.

Baron Liebig has already ventured to suggest that many of the minerals composing the crust of the earth may be different crystallizations of one and the same body.-Edinburgh Review.

should be regulated by the pitch of the voice, and that tenors should consequently be contented to receive less money, on account of their enviable situation amongst other vocalists. It is true that this might sometimes occasion ab surd attempts to alter the pitch of voices; for whilst a sentimental bass would endeavour to force his voice upwards, in order to make love successfully, a grovelling, money-grubbing tenor might try to pass for a bass, for the sake of the superior salary.-Henry C. Lunn.

A COMMERCIAL LOVE-LETTER.-In France, women take an active part in the business of

life, which, however, does not prevent their being objects of love and adoration, as much as

the idlest of their sex. The combination of romance and reality is curiously illustrated by the following letter, found in a railway carriage:

"Paris, 29th June, 1851.

"MADAM :-In reply to yours of the 20th of June last, which duly came to hand, I beg to say that I have forwarded the samples you asked for, together with the price current of the article in question. And now I return to the object of my former letter-indeed I cannot take your answer as a definite one-indeed you will listen to my devoted love. At your age you cannot long remain a widow-you have nothing to fear from so easy a temper and so devoted a love as mine. The house of Chartier and Company has asked for six month's credit; are you disposed to grant it? Answer, by return of post, this question, and the one which concerns the happiness of my life. You are the realization of all my dreams. The affection, respect, and esteem I feel for you, are sincere and profound. The union of our two houses would give an extension to business on both sides, which would be incalculable. I have accepted your paper upon the house of Bernard and Co. Colza oil is at twenty-one francs.

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Hoping for a reply by return of post, I close this letter with a beating heart.

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ance;

If you set up a dunce on the very North pole,
All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul,
He'd manage to get betwixt somebody's shins,
And pitch him down bodily, all in his sius,
To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice,
All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice;
Why one of his legs would just trip up the other,
Or if he found nobody else there to pother,
For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions,
Like a well-meaning dunce with the best of inten

tions.

Ibid.

THE SUB-MARINE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. -The advantages of transmitting communica tions by electricity increase, of course, in pro portion to the distance-for this agent annihilates both time and space. Were it extended to India, instead of waiting months between the posting of a letter and the receiving of an answer, there might be more intercommunications in one hour than can now be obtained in the progres "M." of a year. When that extended ramification of "The house of Fritz has stopped. How telegraphic wires shall have been accomplished my heart beats as I write to you. Oils are decidedly -as there seems every reason to suppose it will increasing in price."-American Newspaper. some day be-the influence on society will be incalculable. Then, if the transmitting wire can NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, (An American-be extended under water from England to France, author of "The Scarlet Letter;" The House why not to America? It is in shallow seas and of the Seven Gables," &c. &c.)

"Yours, respectfully,

66

There is Hawthorne, with genius so striking and rare
That you hardly at first see the strength that is

there;

A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
So carnest, so graceful, so solid, so fleet,
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet;
'Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood,
With his guarled bony branches like ribs of the wood,
Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe,
With a single anemone trembly and wrathe;
His-trength is so tender, his wildness so meek,
That a suitable parallel sets one to seek-
He's a John Bunyan Fouqué, a Puritan Tieck;
When Nature was shaping him, clay was
granted

not

For making so full-sized a man as she wanted;
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared
From some finer-grained stuff for a woman pre-
pared,

And she could not have hit a more excellent plan
For making him fully and perfectly man.
The success of her scheme gave her so much delight,
That she tried it again shortly after, in Dwight;

Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay,
She sang to her work in her sweet childish way;
And found, when she'd put the last touch to his

soul,
That the music had somehow got mixed with the

whole.

A Fable for the Critics.

on rocky shores that the difficulty of protecting the wire exists. Under the deep waters of the Atlantic it would rest undisturbed by anchors or shifting currents, and out of danger from the attacks of living creatures. In depths where light and life cannot penetrate, it might in darkness and in safety carry on intercourse between the remotest parts of the world.There seems nothing really impracticable in such an undertaking. We have been assured that the same two gentlemen who first suggested and commenced this enterprise have expressed to some of our eminent engineers and capitalists their conviction of the feasibility of establishing a single line of communication between this country and America for a less sum than was paid for making a single mile of the expensive portion of the Great Western Railway. It was proposed in this instance to have only a single wire covered with gutta percha, similar to that used last year to prove the practicability of passing an electric current across the Channel posed to add an additional protection of hempen from England to France:—to which it was proplat--the hemp having been passed through a chemical solution, to render it indestructible in salt water. Such a line, it was said, of gutta percha and prepared hemp would, although only about three-quarters of an inch in diameter, be

of nearly double the strength of the experimental line laid down between England and France last year in a strong sea and running tide. The proposition was, first to extend it to Ireland, thence to the south-west coast, the nearest point for the American continent, and where the bold rocky coast offers depths that secure its safety from anchors-and thence to the nearest point on the American coast: considerably under 2,000 miles. Choosing the months of summer, and an experienced American and English captain accustomed to the track, such a line, it was averred, might with very simple machinery be paid out night and day with perfect safety, at

the ordinary speed of the steamer. The vast importance of such an object is not to be weighed against a sum of £100,000; which, we are assured, would more than accomplish it if a single wire only were employed. The successful com pletion of one line would of course be speedily followed by that of others. This once accom plished, the extension of the line across the American continent to the Pacific would follow certainly; and we should have the astounding fact of a communication from the shores of the Pacific, crossing America and the Atlantic, and touching our shores in an instant of time!The Athenæum.

LITERATURE.

names and caricatures. Ignorance suffers when a child is taught through its affections.

We should like to quote a clever passage on Tolerance and Self-respect, as resulting from education, which immediately follows this; bat we must pass on. Our next extract describes the gates of the Castle of Ignorance, kept at a white heat by the furnace of religious zeal.

Delicious is the fire of theo

A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. By the author of "How to make Home Unhealthy."(Chapman and Hall.)-This is a sensible, witty, and clever little book, to which "sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy"-Shakspere's beau ideal of conversation might be fairly and unflatteringly applied. Its How I enjoy this heat! O that I could wriggle author, as in the case of his former work, has myself like a Salamander through the glowing coals, brought irony to bear upon his subject; and, and nestle in the hottest corner of the furnace! It undertaking "The Defence of Ignorance," has is so beautiful to think that Christians should have proved himself its unflinching antagonist. Not settled from the beginning, that love to God and only does he attack indifference to the subject man, faith, hope, and charity, are the mere superof education, but even ventures to expose and fluity and fat of their religion-that which gives condemn the system of our present educators in roundness and beauty to the outline, while the flesh schools and universities. Indeed, it is at the and bone consist in a scientific knowledge of the ignorance which assumes the right to teach that nature and attributes of God. How very bony, too, his hardest blows are dealt. Practically, as well some of us are; all bone and fibre, with but little as theoretically, acquainted with his subject, he fat to hamper us, and be a clog on our extreme a deals broadside after broadside upon the weather-logic zeal, which wants the latitude and longitude beaten hull, which has floated up from the dark of heaven, takes the measurement of Satan's tail, ages of monastic supremacy into the troubled sets brothers quarreling about a pinch of mint, waters of enlightened and light-seeking days, but and, not unmindful of the sermon on the Mount, which seems at last about to make way for a endeavours to make all men blessed, by taking care trimmer and more sea-worthy substitute. The that they shall all be reviled and persecuted, and dust on antique time" seems little likely to "lie have all manner of evil said against them falsely for long unswept," while wits like this our author the sake of the religion which their hearts adopt. are at hand to purge it. "The Select Com- 9, Methodist, revile the Church! O, Church, mittee, which appointed itself to inquire into revile the Methodist! O, Catholic, revile them the State of Education in this country, and into So keep this furnace hot, and let no mortal hand O, both of ye, revile the Catholic! any measures which may be required for "The push at this gate. Ignorance of the poor! be thot Defence of Ignorance,' publishes its report in the pages of this little volume. The first division of the subject is devoted to the Ignorance of the Middle Classes; and in it we have a con trast between the author's ideal of a school for children and the present almost universal reality. The following passage is pregnant with suggestion:

66

That impotence of anger is, in my mind, the great object of the flogging. Mere physical pain now and then does a child good, and is soon forgotten it will propagate no ignorance. What I like is to see a storm of anger raised in a child's heart against his teacher, all its winds tied up in a bag within him, without any hope of getting vent, except among his companions, in spiteful nick

tivity.

both!

a barrier for ever.

As for the Pope's coals, our enemies, the Educationists, would like to have a pair of long tongs, wherewith quietly to take them off again before they throw out heat: bat it is the custom in this country, I rejoice to say, all such cases to employ the poker! We have stirred the coals in, and got up a rousing blaze. * **** The machinations of the Pope are ship-worms, eating into your heart of oak. These screw their way into the vessel of the church whenever it is submerged in the stormy waters of debate. The lower timbers of that vessel are not, and must not on any account be, sheathed with the base copper of a hu

man education.

O, all ye good Christians, disagree and split among yourselves! O, Churchmen, let me not ask what else besides a right opinion on the surplice

question, Christian views of the wax-candle diffi-, culty, a holy reverence for wood as the material for altars-what else but a right understanding of discussions upon wood and stone, and wax and calico, can be intended by the narrow way to heaven? Ask of your intellect. Can there be anything more narrow?"

The author then traces the steps taken for the education of the poor, abroad and at home, from 1798 to the present day. Tempting as this portion of the work is from its interesting statistics and keen satire, we must pass on to the next division, "Ignorance at the Universities," in which we find some smart hits and highly interesting information.

studies.

At the University of Oxford, as is well known, nothing is taught but theology and antiquities. Of theology only a part, and of antiquities only the languages of Greece and Rome, with so much Greek and Roman history as illustrates the author's Whatever knowledge is required of mathematics is less than any schoolboy carries home with him, who has been reasonably taught. What ever lectures are delivered upon sciences are few in number, and are the rags confided almost literally to dead walls. The disciple of Oxford, who has taken the highest honours of the university, unless he should get himself corrupted with knowledge from some other source, might be the warden of your House of Ignorance, and keep you all in safety. He is useless upon earth, would be mere ballast in a balloon, and one too many in a diving-bell. He becomes, according to his opportunities, perhaps a legislator, and his training has unfitted him for grappling with great public questions. He applauds his brother, who quotes Virgil in a speech, and can say "Hear, hear" like a gentleman. Or he becomes a scholar, reads much Greek and Latin, and abstains from operating on his fellow-creatures, as a surgeon conscious of his inability to use the knife. Or he becomes a ➖➖; well, I don't know anything else that he is fit to be. He becomes a clergyman, for which office his training has not been the best. Or he becomes a schoolmaster, and teaches others to nurse one idea. Or, having wealth sufficient, he ubsides into a country gentleman, for which he is extremely fit.

After touching on the misappropriation of their funds by colleges and grammar-schools, our author passes on to the subject of Ferale Education, from which portion of the volume we select a passage worth pondering. The author is also very severe on the subject of ornamental work, so much so, as to render his study, we suspect, destitute for ever of those little ladies' gifts which young gentlemen are usually so fond of obtaining.

Ladies learn drawing as they learn crochet-to give mechanical employment to their fingers which shall not engage their brains. If they sketch from nature, it is very well; for gentlemen can hold their pencils, while they receive, without awkwardness, the flattery for which of course all women were created. *** It is not intended that the eye shall perceive more than the lines and colours to be imi tated; and the landscape is worked upon paper, with different tools, indeed, but with the same feel ing as if it were a watch-pocket or a kettle-holder. Paintings from nature, however, are in less request than large chalk heads and little album drawings,

famous for the careful delicacy of the finger-work, and the complete absence of thought."

Lastly, as an amende for this, an eulogy of the natural female character :

• A bit of

Brisk or steady, young or old, and whether in a state of natural simplicity, ignorant, or sophisticated, there is something in every woman at which no true man can laugh. In the sweet honied flow of youth, there is a charm, some part of which is induce acetous fermentation, as they often do. In not lost, although time and careless keeping should the most vinegary woman there is still a flavour of the warm sun on the fruit. The man who blames our friends upstairs as frivolous, acknowledges that every one of them has that within her which can make her stronger than a strong man in the spirit of endurance and self-sacrifice. pure air sticks about a woman, let her go where she may, and be she who she may: the girl most deeply sunk in misery and vice retains it, and can rise by it A little creature when opportunity shall come. lives far out at sea upon the gulf-weed-Litiopa is its name-often there comes a wave that sweeps it from its hold, and forces it into the deep. It carries down with it an air-bubble, and glues to this a thread, which, as the bubble rises to the surface, it extends. The little bit of air, before it breaks out of its film, floats on the water, and is soon attracted by the gulf-weed, towards which it runs and fastens alongside; up comes the Litiopa by her thread then, and regains the seat for which she was created.

A bit of pure air sticks like this about all women, from the Queen on her throne, down to the world-abandoned creature on the pavement."

With this exquisite passage we take our leave of this delightful volume, hoping that our extracts may have the effect of sending many of our readers to the work itself. C. H. H.

THE LILY AND THE BEE; AN APOLOGUE OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE. By Samuel Warren, F.R.S. (Blackwood.)—Yes; we are now convinced of the fact: the Crystal Palace has done some mischief! What an amount of envy, jealousy, disease, insanity, and suicide, has it not provoked! Its tendency to produce mental aberration was never more prominently exhibited than in the work before us, entitled, "The Lily and the Bee," by Samuel Warren, F.R.S. The mind of the author of "Ten Thousand a Year," "The Diary of a Physician," and "Now and Then," has at last succumbed before the malign influence of the Crystal Palace. It has tempted him to conceive strange utterances of oracular dulness and rhapsodic twaddle, and unfortunately left him the power of printing and circulating these crazy manifestations. The Crystal Palace was a grand idea and a grand realization, but we certainly did not imagine that it was destined to leave behind it such a debris of the ridiculous and the pitiable. The book surely does not belong to our province; its manner would lead us to deem it fitter for the grave apprehensions and considerations of a physician We must than the calm opinion of the critic. therefore seriously caution our readers against wasting their money in the purchase of such a Bedlamite production. Let us, however, be just and confess ourselves indebted to it for some

original information: in the first place, we have |
learned from its pages that the Duke of Wel-
lington is the private property of Her Majesty;
and secondly, that the style is meant to be an
imitation of ancient Saxon poetry, which it re-
sembles about as much as one of Dr. Conolly's
straw-crowned monarchs in Hanwell is like
King Alfred. The following extract is an average
sample of the whole work:-

O, fearful flight, down! down! to the Past-
One of the Present, THERE! Flight-
flight-soul-chilling flight--
On-on-on!

-What's sounding in my ear~~

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Again Away! Away!-Away!--

British Soldier" is a journal devoted to the interests of the United Services, and bids fair to supply a want long felt in the literary world. Not only does it appear to chronicle passing events, but the present number contains several well-written original articles, and a military novel (from the practised pen of the editor we suspect) commences most spiritedly. Profes sional knowledge and literary ability seem to point out Colonel Hort as peculiarly qualified to conduct such a magazine.

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MARIAN WITHERS. By Geraldine E. Jewsbury, author of "Zoe," The Half Sisters," &c. 3 vols.-(Colburn and Co.)-This book, read in the right spirit, will be found to convey more healthful stimulus to wise womanly doing than ninety-nine out of a hundred of professedly moral essays. The scene is laid chiefly in the neighbourhood of Manchester, among millowners and "county people," including the vulgar rich, the honest, high-minded trader, fine ladies and fine gentlemen; the strong in terest of the story gathering round certain indi viduals scarcely to be classed in the above cate gory, but life-like English men and women, not deified impossible heroes, but genuine huma nity. The grand features of this novel, however, are the subtle knowledge of character it evinces, and the bold manner in which the rocks, on which most commonly woman's hap piness is wrecked, are laid bare. Miss Jews. bury calls things by their right names, and shows into what an abyss of misery a virtuos

Am I flying hidden-safe-on an angel's wing woman must plunge, when she links herself for

unseen,

O, me!

-Troubled, this ancient air-my soul is cold with the air is all

awe--with fear

gone red

O, CAIN

Do I look on thee-with creeping blood?-
O, thou First-born Bloody One!
What hast thou done?

In this manner it runs on through 205 pages.
The sanest part of the book is its peculiar and
familiar flattery of our gracious Queen, which
we should fancy would be little acceptable to
that august lady. The author has, however,
gone a step farther: he has undertaken to be
clairvoyant, to penetrate Her Majesty's thoughts
and emotions, and to be-Warrenise them in
language for which we trust he has no authority
more accurate than his own inspiration.

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of

life to a man of lax principles. Women do not
know the wrong they do to themselves when
they tolerate in their drawing-rooms men of de
praved characters, because they are wealthy or
brilliant, or because it has been the custom
"the world" not to take count of their evil
doings; and do not feel, what surely is the
truth, that by this tacit countenance of the role,
they largely share that guilt which yet they visit
so mercilessly in the case of a fallen sister. It
is long since we have seen any work of fiction
which we feel it so strong a duty earnestly to
recommend to our readers, who must not, how-
ever, from our accoun', consider it simply di-
dactic. On the contrary, the story is intensely
interesting, while the work is thickly studded
with gems of truth and wisdom like the fol
lowing:

"If we keep ourselves quiet where our lot has
been cast, and do the duties appointed to us, we shali
find that things seek us in a wonderful manner: it
when we go out of our way to seek them that we miss
what we would most desire to find, or, finding the
letter of our hopes, we miss the spirit."
And again:

"Few things befall men, however dreadful in anticipation, that they cannot cope with when they have to stand up face to face before them. Men frequently commit suicide in a frenzy of desperate anticipation but when they are once engaged in a fair fight with the thing they apprehended, a sense of strength and life is developed to which they are faithful."

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