too feebly disguised his ambition to deceive any of the company.

"Ducis made a second visit to Malmaison when the first Consul spared neither praises nor promises; but these fine words, so sweet in the mouth of the great, were powerless and tasteless for Ducis. During dinner, he was distinguished and flattered; and after the coffee, Bonaparte took him into the park, where the following dialogue occurred ;

"How did you come, Papa Ducis ?" 'In a good hackney coach, which waits for me at your door, and will take me back to mine." What! in a hackney coach, at your age- it is not suitable—" 'General, I have never had any other carriage, when the distance has been too great for my legs.'-"No, I tell you, it is not proper; it must not be. A man of your talents, and at your age, ought to have his own carriage-as plain as you please, but easy and convenient. Leave it to me; I will arrange that matter." 'General, (replied Ducis, looking up at a flock of wild ducks that flew over his head;) you are a sportsman; you see those birds that cut the cloud yonder: There is not one that does not smell at a distance the odour of your powder, and sniff the gunEh bien! I am one of those birds-I am a wild duck.'

"After this short and singular explanation there was no hope of negotiating, and the conversation languished-dropped. Napoleon, who was not accustomed to such refusals, spoke of Ducis to his favourites in terms of contempt, and treated him as an old fool."

Never have we had more balls at Paris than this winter. The Chevalier Wilmot's was nothing to Marshal Soult's; and since, Marshal Suchet has given a most splendid fete. M. de Chateaubriand will shortly give one, to which only 3000 persons are invited; and Mr. Rothschild, the banker, is preparing another: it will cost more than 100,000 francs.

TRAGICAL EVENT AT BOURDEAUX.
Feb. 13.

Bourdeaux has been agitated by an event of another kind, a real tragedy. A merchant of that city writes as follows: "M. *** had a son and daugh

ter. Anxious to ensure his son a considerable fortune, he desired his daughter should enter a convent; and though she had a horror for such a life, she consented to become a novice in a house of Carmelites. After a year's trial she found her situation insupportable, and returned to her father's house. She was received; and she then avowed an attachment to a young friend, who was altogether eligible as a lover, and who aspired to be her husband. Her father refused to listen to the proposition; she was treated with severity, and home became intolerable. She asked permission of her father to return to the convent, and her father was delighted. She was received by the Carmelites with transport, and was promised, as a boon, that the ceremony of the vows should take place as soon as possible— at farthest a month. The day arrived. She rose early, dressed herself, and added the cover of a long white veil. She walked out as if to take the air, and in a moment precipitated herself into a well. Natural instinct struggled with despair, and she cried for deliverance. The neighbours heard her cries; the gate was fast; the nuns, instead of opening it, deliberated on the rules and orders of the house; and at length when help arrived, it was too late-she was no more! The father is overwhelmed; and the brother has shown symptoms of derangement produced by excessive grief."

to pass

in his last voyage, and, without approaching too near the American coast, proceed at no great distance from it. Such is said to be part of the plan of the new Expedition, from the circumstance that Captain Franklin is again to be sent out, on an overland expedition, to Mackenzie and the Copper-mine rivers; and from the union of the North-West and Hudson-Bay Companies, every facility for so arduous an undertak. ing may be expected. Could guides and attendants be procured, possessing the same moral energies as our enterprising countrymen, we should entertain no doubt of Captain Franklin making the most important discoveries; but we have almost invariably seen, that natives bear with less resolution the rigours of climate, the pains of hunger, and the numerous privations to which such an expedition is exposed, than our sailors, who climb mountains, ford rivers, sleep on beds of snow, and feed on tripe de roche, without a murmur. The period is not fixed when the two expeditions shall set out; but it is expected that that of Captain Franklin will be ready to start early in the spring. Captain Parry has been appointed hydrographer to the Admiralty.

EGGS.

The Preserving of Eggs, fresh and good, through many months, may be effected by merely altering their position daily to a fresh side downwards, in order to prevent the yolk settling, and coming in contact with the shell. It is the practice of farmers' wives in several of the midland and northern counties of England, to closely pack with interposed straw, their increasing stock of eggs, daily, into a beebive, or a similarly-shaped basket; laying straw upon them, and stretching three or four pointed sticks across, tight upon the straw, so as to enable the bee-hive to be tilted on its side, or even turned upside down, into a new position, each day, in their dairy or beer-cellar; and this daily turning is continued until, on the approach of Lent, the eggs are removed from the hives, and carefully packed in the flats or boxes which convey them to market. Lime-water, suet, and other external ap plications to the shells, have been recommended for preserving of eggs; but all these must assuredly fail, when long rest in one position is allowed to them; and with frequent moving, and avoiding extremes of temperature, none others are necessary. It is often pleasing to a weary and hungry traveller, on entering a small ina or pot-house, in Derbyshire and its vicinity, to see strong cabbage-nets full of eggs, suspended by hooks from the ceiling, in a fresh and good state; and this the Jandlady effects, through very considerable periods, by her precaution of every day booking up the net on a fresh mesh, so as to turn the eggs, tightly tied up therein. When eggs are left to accumulate in a hen's nest, or during her sitting, instinct directs her to tarn daily each egg.

THURTELL'S TRIAL.

It deserves to be noticed, that of the Obtails of the trial and execution of Thurtell server newspaper which contained the defor the murder of Weare, no less than 137,000 copies of a double paper were sold,

--a number at once astonishing and unprecedented. There were used 274,000 stamps, and 548 reams of paper; the excise-duty upon which, added to the stamp duties,

must have amounted to about 4000l. for this one publication only.

VEGETABLE MILK.

Amongst the many interest ag vegetable productions which are met with in the equinoctial regions, may be reckoned a tree, which abundantly affords a milky juice, similar in its properties to the milk of animals, and is employed for the same purposes, as M. de Humboldt witnessed at the farm of Barbula, where he himself drank of this milky juice. This liquid is derived from the pala de loche or de vacca, a tree which grows somewhat abundantly in the mountains above Periquito, situated on the north-east of Maracay, a village to the west of Caraccas. This milk possesses the same physical qualities as that of the cow, with this only difference-that it is a little viscous: it has the same taste also as cow's milk. With respect to its chemical properties, they sensibly differ from those of ani

mal milk.

The constituent parts of the milk of the Arbre de la Vache are-1st, wax; 2d, fibrine; 3d, a little sugar; 4th, a magnesian salt; and fifth, water. The presence, in vegetable milk, of a product which is not commonly met with, except in the secretions of animals, is a surprising fact, which we should not have announced without much circumspection, had not a celebrated chemist, M. Vauquelin, already found animal fibrine in the milky juice of carica papaya.

It is clearly proved and has been satisfactorily accounted for, that the air is warmer close to the earth than at some distance above it. Hence we find lofty mountains in warm climates constantly covered with snow. During a frost, however, things appear to be reversed. An observation, leading to this consequence, has been made in Hampshire. Mr. White placed a thermometer on the top of a hill at Selbourne, and another in the valley, towards the evening of a very cold day. During the night that in the valley lowered to one degree below zero, that is, to 33 deg. below the freezing point; whereas that on the hill, though 200 feet higher, fell only to 17 deg., or 15 deg. lower than the freezing point. On the following morning, that in the vale was at 10 deg., while the elevated thermometer was at 22 deg.; so that the difference of cold between the two situations was at one time 18 deg. less above than below; and through the whole frost continually 10 deg. or 12 deg. This varia

tion in temperature was confirmed by the total destruction of the forest evergreens in the valley, those on the hill remaining unburt.

PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BLOOD. Sir Everard Home's new theory, respecting the physiology of the blood, purports, that carbonic acid gas forms a large proportion of the blood, and that this fluid is of a tubular texture. It exists in the proportion of two cubic inches to an ounce, and is given out in large quantities, from the blood of a person after a full meal, but very little from the blood of a feverish per

son.

The fact, of the appearance of the tubes passing through every particle of the blood, was discovered by Sir Everard on observing the growth of a grain of wheat, daily, through a microscope. He first saw a blob, and then a tube passing from it; the blob was the juice of the plant, and the tube was formed by the extrication of carbonic acid gas. He then examined a globule of blood, and found it composed of similar tubes, which he injected under the exhausted receiver of an air pump. His discovery will probably lead to important results.

MR. ANGERSTEIN'S PICTURES. It is pretty generally admitted that his present Majesty is a zealous and munificent patron of the Fine Arts. One of his favourite projects is to establish a grand National Depository in this country for the noblest productions of human art that money can procure, on a plan somewhat similar to that of the Louvre, at Paris. The entire collection of pictures of the late John Julius Angerstein, esq. has been purchased of his executors by Lord Liverpool for the country; and this splendid collection will be made the foundation of a National Gallery of the Old Masters. The purchase money is stated to have been only a little short of 60,000. Some idea may he formed of the value of these paintings from the fact that the sum of 16,0001. has been repeatedly offered for one of them---The raising of Lazarus, by Sebas

tian del Piombo.

THE LEAPING FISH.

The flying fish appears in its aërial excursions, assisted by its long, broad, and thin, gill-fins, perhaps less singular and surpris. ing than the feats of the skipper or leaping fish (Esox saurus,) lately described by Mr. J. Couch, of Cornwall, in the "Linnean Transactions," which, though possessing only very small pectoral fins, is enabled, by the action of its tail and finlets, to spring from the surface of the sea, and pass over she space of thirty or forty feet, before immerging for an instant, and then taking another such leap, and often several of them in succession. Whether this was done in sport, or for escaping a finny pursuer, it has often been difficult to ascertain.

LONGEVITY.

M. Neumark, of Ratisbon, has just published a curious Treatise, on the means of attaining to an advanced age. The examples which he has quoted of persons who have lived to between 90 and 100 years are from

12 to 20 every year in that interval. Those of centenaries, and up to 115 years, are more numerous; but the number diminishes of those who have attained the age of from 116 to 123 years, being not more than from four to nine. The examples of persons of a greater age than 123 years are naturally more rare. M. Neumark has quoted only one of 200, two of 296, and one of 300. The individual who reached the last mentioned age was called Jean de Temporibus: he was equerry to Charlemagne, and died in Germany in 1128. It is remarkable that there are few people of rank, and few physicians, among the centenaries. Hippocrates and Dufournel (the latter of whom died at Paris in 1815, aged 115 years) are almost the only ones. Among monarchs, except Frederick the Second, who lived to the age of 76 years, few have passed 70. Among 300 Popes, only seven have reached the age of 80. Among philosophers who have become old may be reckoned Kepler, Bacon, Newton, Euler, Kant, Fontenelle, &c.

COMETS.

So numerous are comets, that in the last fifty years the elements of the orbits of 125 have been collected by Schumacher, and at least as many more must have escaped accurate observation This averages five in two years. That which appeared in January 1786 is believed to have been seen again in December 1797, Nov. 1805, Jan. 1819, and May 1822. In 1790, 1805, 1811, and 1822, three were observed; and in 1819, no less than four.

The minor theatres have been outraging decency beyond all former example within habit of noticing their performances, we cannot be silent on the present occasion; as we indecencies on the part of the public is a surare quite sure that the tacit suffering of such sion of public taste. The Surrey Theatre, er proof, than any other, of the sad pervernot lectured into wisdom or good feeling by the criticism of the King's Bench Judges, murder of Mr. Weare, the very moment the has returned to its vile representation of the verdict of the jury rendered such a step safe. Before the trial of Thurtell, a drama founded on the harrowing circumstances of the murder, was iniquitous, as tending to poison the sources of justice: but since that though more hidden causes for the suppresobjection has been removed, the stronger sion of such a piece have not been perceived, and the murder has come out, enriched with all that can satiate the savage curiosity of an audience. The real horse and gig are introduced; the table at which Probert and his hideous gang supped,---the very chairs fresh from Gill's Hill cottage.

the last month: and seldom as we are in the

NEW WORKS.

Charlton, or Scenes of the North of Ireland; by John Gamble. 3 vols. 18s. Adventures of Hajji Baba, 3 vols. foolscap 8vo. 11. 1s.

Arthur Seymour 2 vols. 12mo. 12s. First Love, a Tale. 2 vols. 12mo. 10s. 67. Herwald de Wake, a Romance. 3 vols. How to be rid of a Wife. 2 vols. 12mo. Koromantyn Slaves, or West India Sketches. 12mo. 5s. 6d.

The bryde from her chamber descendeth nowe,
And the brydegroome her hand hathe ta'en;
And the guestes are met, and the holye prieste
Precedeth the marriage traine.

The bryde is the faire Maude Winstanlye,
And death her sterne brydegroome;
And her father follows his onlye childe
To her mother's yawning tombe.

An aged man, and a woefull man,

And a heavye moane makes hee:

"Mye childe! mye childe! myne onlye childe! Would God I had dyed for thee!"

Huge, undefined shadows falle
From pillar and from tombe,
And many a grimme old monumente
Lookes ghastlye throw the gloome.

And many a rustye shirte of mail
The eye may scantlye trace,
And crestedde helmet, black and barr'd,
That grinns with stern grimace.

Banner and scutcheon from the walles
Wave in the cold night aire,
Gleames out their gorgeous heraldrye
In the ent'ring torches glare.
For now the mourninge companye,
Beneathe that arched doore,
Beare in the lovelye, lifeless claye,
Shall pass there-out no more.

And up to the sounding aisle, ye stille
Their solemn chaunte may heare,
Till, 'neath that blazon'd catafalque,
They gentlye rest the biere.

Then ceaseth ev'rye sounde of life
So deepe that awfull hushe,
Ye hear from yon freshe open'd vaulte
The hollowe death-winde rushe.
Back from the biere the mourners alle
Retire a little space,

All but that olde bereavedde manne,
Who taketh there his place