79 Life of William Hulton. [VOL. 2. ing the religion of that potentate. In reduced to the sad necessity of humbly this instance, however, they were igno- begging a draught of water at a cottage! rantly right; for I consider myself a What a reverse of situation! How thin true friend to the Roman Catholics, and the barriers between affluence and povto every peaceable profession, but not to erty! By the smiles of the inhabitants the spiritual power of any; for this, in- of Birmingham I acquired a fortune; stead of humanizing the mind, and draw- by an astonishing defect in our police I ing the affections of one man towards an- lost it. In the morning of the 15th I other, has bound the world in fetters,and was a rich man; in the evening I was set at variance those who were friends. ruined. At ten at night, on the 17th, I I saw the ruins yet burning of that might have been found leaning on a once happy spot, which had, for many mie-stone upon Sutton Coldfield, withyears, been my calm retreat; the scene out food, without a home, without moof contemplation, of domestic felicity; ney, and, what is the last resort of the the source of health and contentment. wretched, without hope. What had I Here I had consulted the dead, and at- done to merit this severe calamity? tempted to amuse the living. Here I had Why did not I stay at home, oppose the exchanged the world for my little family. villains at my own door, and sell my life Perhaps fifty people were enjoying at the dearest rate! I could have desthemselves upon those rains where I had troyed several before I had fallen myself. possessed an exclusive right; but I was This may be counted rush; but unmernow viewed as an intruder. The pre- ited distress, like mine, could operate but judiced vulgar, who never inquire into two ways: a man must either sink uncauses and effects, or the true state of der it, or become desperate. things, fix the idea of criminality upon While surrounded by the gloom of the man who is borne down by the night, and the still greater gloom which crowd, and every foot is elevated to oppressed the mind, a person seemed to kick him. My premises, laid open by hover about me who had evidently some ferocious authority, were free to every design. Whether an honest man or a trespasser, and I was the only person knave gave me no concern; for I had who did not rejoice in the ruins. It nothing to lose but life, which I esteemwas not possible to retreat from that fa- ed of little value. He approached nearvourite place without a gloom upon the er with seeming diffidence. "Sir, is not mind, which was the result of ill-treat- your name Hutton ?" "Yes." "I ment, by power without right. This have good news. The light-horse, some excited a contempt of the world. time ago, passed through Sutton, in their Returning to Castle Bromwich, the way to Birmingham." As I had been same rioters were at the door of the inn, treated with nine falsehoods for one and I durst not enter. Thus the man, truth, I asked his authority. He replied, who, for misconduct, merited the halter," I saw them." This arrival I knew could face the world; and I, who had would put a period to plunder. The innot offended, was obliged to skulk be- habitants of Birmingham received them hind hedges. Night came on. The with open arms, with illuminations, and inhabitants of the village surrounded me, viewed them as their deliverers. and seemed alarmed. They told me it We left the mob towards evening on was dangerous to stay among them, and Sunday the 17th, returning from King's advised me for my own safety to retreat Norton. They cast a glance upon the to Stonnal. Thus I found it as difficult well-stored cellar and valuable plunder to procure an asylum for myself, as, two of Edgbaston Hall, the residence of Dr. days before, I had done for my goods. Withering, who perhaps never heard a I was avoided as a pestilence; the waves presbyterian sermon, and yet is as amiaof sorrow rolled over me, and beat me ble a character as he who has. Before down with multiplied force; every one their work was completed, the words came heavier than the last. My chil- light-horse sounded in their ears; when dren were distressed. My wife through this formidable banditti mouldered away, long affliction, ready to quit my own no soul knew how, and not a shadow of arms for those of death; and I myself it could be found. VOL. 2.] Poetry. 77 Exclusive of the devastations above- parted except myself. Upon whatever mentioned, the rabble did numberless family I cast a distant eye, I remark in mischiefs. The lower class among us, that family a generation is sprung into long inured to fire, had now treated life, passed through the bloom of the day, themselves with a full regale of their fa- and sunk into the night. My old friends vourite element. Iftheir teachers are faith- have slipped off the stage, and I am as ful to their trust, they will present to their unfit to unite with the new, as new cloth idea another powerful flame in reversion. with old. Thus I am become a stranger . Next morning, Monday the 18th, I to the world which I have long known. returned to Birmingham, to be treated As age increases sleep decreases; with the sad spectacle of another house in when a child in health enters upon life, ruins. Every part of the mutilated it can sleep twenty-two out of the twenbuilding declared that the hand of violence had been there, HIS OBSERVATIONS AT FOURSCORE. · Having arrived at fourscore, allow me to state some of the feelings attendant upon that advanced age. I am strongly attached to old habits and old fashions, even though absurd. Instead of longing for a new coat, I part with an old one as with an old friend. ty-four hours. Its sleep will diminish about three hours upon the average every year during the next three, when activity will enable it to nurse itself. That reduction will afterwards be nearly one hour every ten years, till he arrives at eighty, when four or five will be his hours of sleep. It is curious to contemplate the fluctuations of property. I have seen the man of opulence look with disdain upon a pauper in rags. I have seen that pauper mount the wheel of fortune, and the Other sink to the bottom. I have seen a miserable cooper not worth the shavings he made, place his son to a banker, and I forget some lessons, and cannot his son become a rich banker, a member learn others. One lesson, however, I of parliament, and a baronet. must learn, to eat without teeth. The farther we advance in years, the more we are affected with both heat and cold. In early life our feelings are but little influenced by either. I can better remember the transactions of seventy years, than of yesterday: pour liquor into a full vessel, and the top will run off first. Perhaps I can recollect being in a thousand companies, every person which composed them is now de From the Monthly Magazine HIS WORKS. The History of Birmingham 1781 1764 1787 1788 1788 1789 POETRY. THE POWER OF POETRY: Sacred source of plenteous pleasures, I see! I see! for who but she The strong energetic soul can be To wake a strain, to breathe a vein, Her smile Despair's disease beguiles, Then waves her wand, and calls on all She paused, and swift, obedient to the spell, Despair came latest, wandering wide, Still sad Despair, With frenzied air, And hurried footstep paced the round, And his dark bue The darker grew, The sweeter swelled the sound. How does all Nature honour thee, The hill, the dale, the heath, the grove, [VOL. 2. The following song has, we believe, appeared in one or two London Journals, but we can. not, on that account, withhold it from our readers; there is a gloomy grandeur about some of the thoughts, that reminds one of the best passages of Lord Byron's poetry. THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE Who fell at the Battle of Corunna, in 1808. Nadir cose to the rampart we hurried TOT a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero was b No useless coffin enclosed his breast; Nor in sheets, nor in shroud, we boucd him. But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said: And we bitterly thought of the morrow. And we far away on the billow. Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, When the clock toll'd the hour for retiring, And we heard by the distant and random gun, That the foe was suddenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory, We carved not a line, we raised not a stone, But we left him alone in his glory. Back to their native dust, and ever flows Takes in a thousand years, and deems it brief VOL. 2.] Intelligence: Literary and Philosophical. As the nocturnal watch :--thy fiat gives shoots To full maturity of health and bloom, Obscured with grief, and blotted so with sin, * * * A 79 Health, beauty, opulence, and mental power And friendship fails us in the trying hour! Yet all the troubles that on mortals wait, Find but in God the never-failing friend. From the European Magazine. To the Memory of the late Mr. SAMUEL WEBBE, And composed by LORD BURGHERSH. HANT we the requiem, solemn, sad, and CHAN sweet ;-- And mute awhile, amid the festive throng, Strew we with cypress boughs the Muses' seat; Of pain and sickness long the suffering prey, Silent each liquid note---extinct its sacred fire. Ne'er on th' enraptur'd sense to burst again "When winds breathe soft" + where rests Shall forms unseen "the deathless wreath Soft warbling in the breeze the tributary Jay. INTELLIGENCE. FROM THE LONDON MONTHLY MAGAZINE, AUGUST, 1817. MERICAN literature has not yet enjoyed the advantages of what in London is known by the name of "Magazine-day," on the last day of every month, when all the Magazines, Reviews, and Journals appear; and when, in consequence, a species of Book-Fair is created in the vicinity of Paternoster-row. The fourscore periodical works published on that day cause returns, within a few hours, in ready money, of little short of three thousand pounds, and the whole are distributed over London by booksellers and newsmen ; and over the country, chiefly in coach-parcels, on the same evening. This trade, in periodical works, necessarily produces a simultaneous one in books, of at least equal amount; and thus English literature enjoys an advantage possessed by that of no other nation, in twelve Book- Fairs in the year. In America, on the contrary, the proprietors of periodical works labour under the disadvantage of being their own distributors, and instead of being paid in ready money, in large sums, by whoelsale booksellers, they de pend on precarious returns from individual subscribers scattered over the wide-spread regions of the United States. Thus we see, in these Journals, incessant complaints of the caprice and negligence of subscribers; and thus it is, that, however great the merit of some American literary journals, the proprie 80 Intelligence: Literary and Philosophical. [VOL. 2. tors are inadequately remunerated, and often Sir William Herschell, lately created an overwhelmed by the multitude of small debts Hanoverian knight, has communicated a padue from negligent patrons. The prodigious per to the Royal Society on the system of the number of Newspapers which appear in every scattering of the stars, and on the best mode of State tend, also, to supercede the sober claims dividing them into classes, so as to form a corof science and literature. rect and convenient catalogue. Professor MORICCHINI," of Rome, having discovered the magnetising power of the violet rays of the prismatic spectrum, the MarQUIS RIDOLFI has succeeded in magnetising two needles, the one in thirty, the other in forty-six, minutes; and can now charge with the magnetic power, by the same process, as many needles as he pleases. The needles thus magnetised (namely, by directing on and passing over them, for a period of not less than thirty minutes, the violent rays of the spectrum, through the medium of a condensing lens,) possess all the energy and the proper Periodical literature must, however, continue at a low ebb in the United States, until the proprietors render it worth the while of the local booksellers to receive the names of subscribers; and until those subscribers are sufficiently numerous to induce the local bookseller to transmit to the Capital periodical orders for Magazines and books. In a free country, supported by public intelligence, it might, however, be supposed, that the Postoffice, as in some countries in Europe, would afford facilities for the conveyance of periodical works at a trifling charge to the subscribers. Mr.ACCUM has in the press, Chemical Amuse-ties of needles magnetised in the common way ments, comprising a series of curious instructive experiments in chemistry, which are easily performed, and unattended with danger. Elements of History and Geography, ancient and modern, exemplified and illustrated by the principles of chronology, by the Rev. J. JOYCE; will soon appear in two octavo volumes, with several maps. The Essay on Public Credit, by DAVID HOME, will shortly be re-published. Memoirs, with a Selection from the Correspondence and other unpublished Writings of the late Mrs. ELIZABETH HAMILTON, are preparing for the press. MISS A. M. PORTER is preparing the Knight of St. John, a Romance. Mr. WM. MACKENZIE, of Edinburgh, has in the press, a poem, called the Swiss Pat riots. M. TESSIER, of the Academy of Sciences, and the Society of Agriculture, has published a notice on the great services of swallows to agriculture, in "destroying caterpillars, and numerous other mischievous insects: he proposes that a law should be made against shooting swallows. BARON LARREY has in the press, the Surgical Campaign of Russia in 1812---13, one volume, octavo, plates. An English edition will appear about the same time. The Archduke CHARLES has published the Principles of the Art of War, elucidated by the campaign of 1796, 3 vols. octavo. An apothecary's shopman at Manich being engaged in beating up, in a mortar of serpentine stone, a mixture of oxymuriate of potash, sulphur, sugar, and cinnabar, for the purpose of making chemical matches, a terrible explosion took place, which killed the person who was making the mixture, wounded the apothecary, who at that instant entered, blew the mortar to pieces, and damaged the stove and furniture of the room. A paper of Dr. Leach, of the British Museum, has been read to the Royal Society, containing some observations on a new genus of marine animals inhabiting the argonaut and nautilus shells. It was observed by Sir Joseph Banks, that the animal found in these shells is not the fabricator of them, but a parasite which has taken up its occasional abode there when it chooses to shield itself from the direct action of the waves. Sir E. Home also presented a paper somewhat similar, detailing his remarks on the mode and period of generation of the animal found in nautilus and argonaut shells. He found them to be oviparous animals, to be nourished nearly like snails. by means of a loadstone. Their homonomous poles repel, while the heteronomous poles attract, each other; and, made to vibrate on a pivot, their point turns constantly to the north, their heads to the south! This adds to the wonders of magnetism, and must be regarded as a very extraordinary discovery. In some observations on the great Comet of 1811, by M. SCHROETER, he states that the real length of the tail of the Comet was 13,185,250 geographic miles. As we consider improvements in the means of communicating knowledge to be of the highest degree of importance, so we have given conspicuous insertion in our current number to the announcement of some novel plans of Joseph Lancaster, and we shall be happy to be one medium of conveying to him any subscriptions to assist him in carrying the same into effect. From similar feelings we have the satisfaction, in like manner, to invite pubhic attention to the pretensions of Mr. Dufief, a gentleman who has recently arrived in London from Philadelphia, for the purpose or introducing into Europe a plan of teaching languages, by means of which ONE MASTER, without assistants, may teach any foreign language to one or two thousand pupils at the same time. This plan he has exemplified, in regard to the French and English; and to the Spanish and English languages, in two works, called “ Nature Displayed in the Mode of teaching Languages to Man;" one adapted to the French and the other to the Spanish languages. His improvements are two-fold---the first consists in teaching words in their combinations in sentences, and the other in public repetitions of those sentences, by all the pupils, after the enunciation of the master. These improvements are of great consequence to patriotic and enlightened governments, as means of enabling them to give uniformity to the languages of the same empire. Thus the Emperor of Russia might, by multiplying masters, teach, after Mr. DUFIEF's system, all the tribes in his vast territories to speak the Russsian language within three or four months; or the British government might, by suitable arrangements, render the English language familiar in the same short space of time to the millions who people the banks of the Ganges, to the Candians, the Hottentots, the Negroes at Sierra Leone, the Maltese, the Charibbs, the Canadians, the Irish, the Scotch, and the Welsh. He is about to publish his plan of tuition for the gratification of public curiosity, and for the information of those who may undertake the office of tutors. |