CURIOUS METEOROLOGICAL FACTS. The increase of temperature in coal mines is a fact familiar to every person who has had occasion to frequent them. The instant a dip-pit is connected with a rise-pit by a mine, a strong circulation of air, like wind, commences. If the air at the surface is at the freezing point, it descends the dip or deepest pit, freezes all the water upon the sides of the pit, and even forms icicles upon the roof of the coal within the mine; but, the same air, in its passage through the mines to the rise pit, which is generally of less depth has its temperature greatly increased, and issues from the pit mouth in the form of a dense misty cloud, formed by the condensation of the natural vapour of the mine in the freezing atmosphere. NEW THEORY OF COMETS. M. Hoyer, a German astronomer, has started a new hypothesis respecting comets. He is of opinion, that these celestial bodies consist entirely of water, and that their tails are merely the collection of the solar rays, pasquantity of impure gasses which float in the sing through their masses. They attract a ether, but which are dispersed as they approach the suu. They create a vast quantity ways to purify the atmosphere of the planets, of oxygen gas, and thus contribute in twe and to promote vegetation. POETRY. From the London Monthly Magazines, Oct. 1819. THE FEMALE CONVICT'S ADDRESS TO HER INFANT. OH sleep not, my babe, for the morn of to-morrow Shall sooth me to slumber more tranquil than thine; The dark grave shall shield me from shame and from sorrow, Though the deeds and the doom of the guilty are mine. Not long shall the arm of affection enfold thee, Not song shalt thou hang on thy mother's fond breast; And who with the eye of delight shall behold thee, And yet doth it grieve me to wake thee, my dearest, And none but the guilty should mourn over me: And yet I must wake thee-for while thou art weeping, To calm thee I stifle my tears for a while; WHE WHEN the hues of delight make brighter But thou smil'st in thy dreams, while thus placidly If grief on our steps advances sleeping, And oh! how it wounds me to gaze on thy smile! Alas! my sweet babe, with what pride had I prest thee To the bosom, that now throbs with terror and shame, If the pure tie of virtuous affection had blest thee, And hailed thee the heir of thy father's high name? But now-with remorse that avails not I mourn thee, Forsaken and friendless, as soon thou wilt be, In a world, if it cannot betray, that will scorn thee--Avenging the guilt of thy mother on thee. To sully the rays that shone, How heavy the vain eye glances To welcome the Last-but One! In Love-when the breast e'en borrows Will quarrel with their relief; In Grief-when remembrance lingers O'er all that she held most dear, VOL. 6.] Original Poetry. 247 And chides the unwelcome fingers Would brush from her lids one tear: When drugged are the dregs of her chalice, And her fountain hath ceased to run, With what self-tormenting malice, Will she drink the Last drop-but One! Hope-when the warm heart beateth At the first light touch of love, And our vision the wizard cheateth With a bliss that seems from above; Through the nightshade of dark denial Our flourishing dreams o'errun, How madly we look to her dial, To seize the Last minute-but One. In Suspense-when the smile that fluttered And each accent the Fair One uttered To a listening heart undone, Is fear with that sweet thought bringing In Distress-when the wild waves whiten As she crushes in cups the sweetness In Autumn-ere frosts quite wither The flower that loves the hill, When the thistle's beard, hither and thither Flies on at its own gay will: When sunbeams are brightest, though fewest, In the magical pages of Byron, But when Hesper began to glisten, To the magic of tones like thine- REQUIEM TO THE MEMORY OF BURNS. Written for the Commemorative Festival, June 5,1819. Harmonized to the ancient Scots' Air of "Lord Gregory." THE Sun is set, the stars are fled Down Evening's gloomy sky; And Cypress twines the narrow bed, And Minstrel pomp, and garlands sweet, Are changed for pall and winding sheet, The Dirge that wails our Poet's doom, The spring-flower wreaths that bind his tomb, Yet thou, loved Spirit! still shalt view The hearts that mourn for Thee; And Scotta's tears will still bedew Her Burns's memory! JAMES THOMSON. Addressed to the Author's Mother, after the Death of a Brother. BY CORNELIUS NEALE. OH, weep not for him, "is unkindness to weep; The weary weak body hath fallen asleep; No more of fatigue or endurance it knows ;Oh, weep not-oh, break not the gentle repose. He sleeps,-oh, how kindly on Jesus's breast! Never more the sick dreamings shall trouble his rest; And her lips, that would healing and comfort reShall burn his cold lips and cold cheeks never more. store, Weep not that so soon he is gone to be blest; But the air was unruffled, the heaven was blue; And the e'onds, the thick clouds, that hung round him at night, Only caught, and more richly reflected his light. We gather the flower when full in its bloom, Then weep not.-Ah me! as I say it I weep: Yet murmur not, murmur not: His the decree, God 1 INTELLIGENCE. IOUNT Volney's Researches on Ancient English dress, and are likely to be generally and eagerly read. They are as remarkable for their extensive erudition as for their keen ness of argument and for the conviction on many important points which they leave on the mind. Theologians may profit by their perusal, as well as philosophers; for the author's criticis ns, if free, are not coarse, and he never forgets his character as a gentleman and a scholar. The work was translated under his own eye, for he reads and speaks English, by Colonel Corbin ; and it is embellished with a fine miniature portrait, and by many maps and large tables. We have the pleasure to learn that the impatience of the Subscribers to Dr. REES' Cyclopædia is daily expected to be gratified by the publication of the conclusion of that valuable work, The manufacture of hemp from the outer fibres of the holyhock, is about being tried on a large scale of experiment. Chesnut wood has recently been successfully applied to the purpose of dyeing and tanning, thus forming a substitute for logwood and oak bark. Leather tanned by it, is declared by the gentleman who made the experiments, to be superior to that tanned with oak hark; and in dyeing, its affinity for wool is said, on the same authority, to be greater than that of either galls or sumach, and consequently the colour given more permanent. It also makes admirable ink. His Royal Highness the Prince Regent has, we learn, dispatched a British artist to Rome, with a commission to have copies made of all the small pictures by Raphael:a commission, which displays at once the taste, judgment, and munificence of his Royal Highness, as a lover and patron of the Fine Arts. Characters of the Living British Novelists with specimens of their works; including a Critical Account of Recent Novels,published anonymously, or under fictitious names. M. Monge has discovered thas the pyrolig neous acid obtained from the distillation of wood, has the property of preventing the decomposition and putrefaction of animal substances. It is sufficient to plunge meat for a few moments into this acid, even slightly empyreumatic, to preserve it as long as you please. Cutlets, kidneys, liver, rabbits, which were thus prepared as far back as the month of July last, are now as fresh as if they had been just procured from the market. Carcasses washed three weeks ago with pyroligneous acid, have not yet exhibited any sign of decomposition. Putrefaction not only stops, but it even retrogades. Jakes exhaling infection, cease to do so as soon as you pour upon them the pyroligneous acid. You may judge how many important appli cations may be made of this process: navigation, medicine, unwholesome manufactories, will derive incalculable advantages from it. This explains why meat merely dried in a stove does not keep, while that which is smoked becomes unalterable. We have here an explanation of the theory of hams, of the beef of Hamburgh, of smoked tongues, sausages, red herrings, of wood, smoked to preserve it from worms, &c. &c. Dr. Jorg, professor of Leipsic. has since made many successful experiments of the same nature. He has entirely recovered several anatomical preparations from incipient corruption, by With the oil pouring this acid over them. which is produced from wood by distillation in the dry manner, he has moistened pieces of flesh already advanced in decay; and, noswithstanding the heat of the weather,soon made them as dry and firm as flesh can be rendered by being smoked in the smoking room. All traces of corruption, vanish at once when the vinegar of wood, or the oil of wood, is applied to the meat with a brush. The professor has also began to prepare mummies of animals, and has no doubt of suc cess. He promises great advantages to anatomy, domestic economy, and even to medicine, from this discovery, (for the remedy seems very fit to be applied internally and externally in many disorders ;) and intends to publish the results of his farther experi ments. Robert Southey, Esq. will soon publish in foolsc. 8v), the Fall of Paraguay, a Poem. of Fetter-lane, has received the gold Isis Mr.James Ramshaw, copper-plate printer, medal of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, for an improved plan of copper-plate printing, by the use of steam in the place of charcoal fires, the effluvia of which are so injurious to the health of the workmen, and at the same time subject to many accidents by fire,--as, by the old process, each man works over a charcoal fire, without any chimney to carry off the vapour arising from the burning char coal. Thirteen of those fires he formerly had in his work-shops, and one sea-coal fire or the whole: but, by his new process, the use stove in his drying-room,---fourteen fires in of the thirteen charcoal fires is superseded. Mr. Wm. Amphlett formerly of London, and now resident on the banks of the Ohio, has in the press the Emigrant's Directory to the Western States of North America. The Royal Society of Sciences at Gottingen has proposed for the subject for the sub1820, a critical Synopsis of the most ancient ject of a prize, to be awarded in November Monuments of every description hitherto discovered in America, to be placed in comparimemoirs to be written in Latin. son with those of Asia, Egypt, &c The Value of the prize fifty ducats." An Epistle in Verse, written from America in the year 1810, by Charles Lestley the younger, is printing under the direction of a gentleman of Liverpool. IT CHARACTER AND MANNERS OF THE TYROLESE. T is a common observation, that the character of a people is in a great measure influenced by their local situation, and the nature of the scenery in which they are placed; and it is impossible to visit the Tyrol without being convinced of the truth of the remark. The entrance of the mountain region is marked by as great a diversity in the aspect and manners of the population, as in the external objects with which they are surrounded: nor is the transition, from the level plain of Lombardy to the rugged precipices of the Alps, greater than from the squalid crouching appearance of the Italian peasant to the martial air of the free-boru mountaineer, This transition is so remarkable, that it attracts the attention of the most superficial observer. In travelling over the states of the north of Italy, he meets every where with the symptoms of poverty, meanness, and abject depression. The beautiful slopes which descend from the Alps, clothed with all that is beautiful or luxuriant in nature, are inhabited for the most part by an indigent and squalid population, among whom you seek in vain for any share of that bounty with which Providence has blessed their country. The rich plains of Lombardy are cultivated by a peasantry whose condition is hardly superior to that of the Irish cottager; and while the effeminate proprietors of the soil 2H ATHENEUM VOL. 6. waste their days in inglorious indolence at Milan and Verona, their unfortunate tenantry are exposed to the merciless rapacity of bailiffs and stewards, intent only upon augmenting the fortune of their absent superiors. In the town the symptoms of general distress are, if possible, still more apparent. While the opera and the Corso are crowded with splendid equipages,the lower classes of the people are involved in hopeless indigence:-The churches and public streets are crowded with beggars, whose wretched appearance marks but too truly the reality of the distress of which they complain-while their abject and crouching manner indicates the entire political degradation to which they have so long been subjected. At Venice in particular, the total stagnation of em ployment, and the misery of the people, strikes a stranger the more forcibly from the contrast which they afford to the unrivalled splendour of her edifices, and the glorious recollections with which her history is filled. As he admires the gorgeous magnificence of the piazza St. Marco, or winds through the noble palaces that still rise with undecaying beauty from the waters of the Adriatic, he no longer wonders at the astonishment with which the stern crusaders of the north gazed at her marble piles, and feels the rapture of the Roman emperor, when he approached, "where Venice sat in state throned on her hundred isles;" but in the mean and fastened in front by a large buckle of pusillanimous race by which they are now inhaled, he looks in vain for the descendants of those great men who leapt from their gallies on the towers of Constantinople, and stood forth as the bulwark of Christendom against the Ottoman power; and still less, when he surveys the miserable population with which he is surrounded, can he go back in imagination to those days of liberty and valour, when “Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, From such a scene of national distress, and from the melancholy spectacle of despotic power ruling in the abode of ancient freedom, it is with delight that the traveller enters the fastnesses of the Alps, where liberty has imprinted itself in indelible characters on the character and manners of the people. In every part of the Tyrol the bold and martial air of the peasantry, their athletic form and fearless eye, bespeak the freedom and independence which they have enjoyed. In most instances the people go armed; and during the summer and autumn they wear a musket hung over their shoulders, or some other offensive weapon. Universally they possess arms, and are trained early to the use of them, both by the expeditions in search of game, of which they are passionately fond and by the annual duty of serving in the trained bands, to which every man capable of bearing arms is, without exception, subjected. It was in consequence of this circumstance, in a great measure, that they were able to make so vigorous a resistance, with so little preparation, to the French invasion; and it is to the same cause that is chiefly to be ascribed that intrepid and martial air by which they are distinguished from almost every other peasantry in Europe. Their dress is singularly calculated to add to this impression. That of the men consists, for the most part, of a broad-brimmed hat, ornamented by a feather; a jacket tight to the shape, with a broad girdle, richly ornamented, costly workmanship; black leather breeches and gaiters, supported over the shoulders by two broad bands, ge nerally of scarlet or blue, which are joined in front by a cross belt of the same colour. They frequently wear pistols in their girdles, and have either a rifle or cloak slung over their shoulders. The colours of the dresses vary in the different parts of the country, as they do in the cantons of Switzerland; but they are always of brilliant colours, and ornamented, particularly round the breast, with a degree of richness which appears extraordinary in the labouring classes of the community. Their girdles and clasps, with the other more costly parts of their clothing, are handed down from generation to generation, and worn, on Sundays and festivals, with scrupulous care, by the great-grandsons of those by whom they were originally purchased. The dress of the women is grotesque and singular in the extreme. Generally speaking, the waists are worn long, and the petticoats exceedingly short; and the colour of their clothes are as bright and various as those of the men. To persons habituated however to the easy and flowing attire of our own country. women, the form and style of this dress appears particularly unbecoming; nor can we altogether divest ourselves of those ideas of ridicule which we are accustomed to attach to such antiquated forms, both on the stage and in the pictures of the last generation. Among the peasant girls, you often meet with much beauty; but, for the most part, the women of the Tyrol are not nearly so striking as the men; an observation which seems applicable to most mountainous countries, and to none more than to the West Highlands of Scotland. It is of more importance to observe that the Tyrolese peasantry are every where courteous and pleasing in their demeanour, both towards strangers and their own countrymen. In this respect, their manners have sometimes been misrepresented. If a traveller addresses them in the style of insolence or re proach, which is generally used towards |
