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start of them, as they had arrived nearly at the same time in England. Emulation was powerfully exerted. Dallans joined Smith, but died in 1672; and Renatus Harris, son of the elder Harris, made great improvements. The contest became still warmer. The citizens of London, profiting by the rivalship of these excellent artists, erected organs in their churches; and the city, the court, and even the lawyers, were divided in judgment as to the superiority. In order to decide the matter, the famous contest tock place in the Temple Church, upon their respective organs, played by eminent performers, before eminent judges, one of whom was the too celebrated Chancellor Jefferies. Blow and Purcell played for Smith, and Lully, organist to queen Catherine, for Harris. In the course of the contest, Harris challenged Father Smith to make, by a given time, the additional stops of the vox humana; the cremona, or viol stop; the double courtel, or bass flute, &c.; which was accepted, and each exerted his abilities to the utmost. Jefferies at length decided in favor of Smith, and Harris's organ was withdrawn. Father Smith maintained his reputation, and was appointed organ. builder to queen Ann. His nephews worked in the country, rather as repairers thau builders of organs, and Harris went to Bristol. Christopher Schrider, one of Father Smith's workmen, married his daughter, and succeeded to his business; as Renatus Harris's son, John, did to his. But Swarbrick and Turner, of Cambridge, had part of the Harris's trade, till Jordan, a distiller, and selftaught organ-builder, whose advertisement concerning the organ at St. Magnus's church appears above, rivalled these men. Abraham, the son of old Jordan, exceeded his father in execution, and had the greater part of the business. It was afterwards shared by Byfield and Bridge.

A CHARACTER. JOHN CHAPPEL,

*

Church Clerk of Morley, Yorkshire. Extracted from the "History of Morley, in the parish of Batley, and West Riding of Yorkshire; &c., By Norrisson Scatcherd, Esq., Leeds, 1830." Octavo.

Old John Chappel lived in a house near the vestry chamber, where his mother,

• Hawkins's History of Music; cited in Noble's Continuation to Granger.

an old school-mistress, taught me my alphabet. John was the village carrier to Leeds, a remarkably honest, sober man, but quite an original of his kind. Music, to him, was every thing; especially if it belonged to Handel, Boyce, Green, or Kent. He was an old bachelor; and, seated in his arm chair, with a number of fine fat tabby cats, his music books, and violoncello, a king might have envied him his happiness. At a very early age John had got so well drilled in the science of "sol-fa-ing," that he could catch up his distances very correctly, when singing in parts and attempting a new piece, and he was outrageously violent with those who possessed not the same talent. Being "cock of the walk," in the gallery of the old chapel, he, unfortunately, intimidated so many of his pupils, that they sought harmony, less intermingled with discords, at the Calvinistic chapel, and we lost an excellent singer (Ananiah Illingworth) from that cause alone. But old John repaid, by his zeal and fidelity, the injury which he did us by his petulence-year after year, and Sabbath after Sabbath, morning and afternoon, in the coldest and most inclement weather, yea, up to the knees in snow, would old "Cheetham" trudge with his beloved violoncello, carrying it with all the care and tenderness that a woman does her babe. But, oh! to see him with his bantling between his knees, the music books elevated, his spectacles mounted on a fine bowing nose (between the Roman and the Aquiline), surrounded by John Bilbrough, with his left-handed fiddle (a man who played a wretched flute), and a set of young lads yelping about him, was a sight for a painter. On the other hand, to have heard him, on his return from Leeds, with his heavy cart and old black horse, singing one of Dr. Boyce's airs-" softly rise, O southern breeze" with a voice between a tenor and a counter-tenor, would have delighted even the doctor himself. Ah! those days when modest worth, rural innocence, and unostentatious piety, were seen in the village, in many a living example, I can scarcely think on without a tear. First, on a Sunday morning, came the excellent "Natty," as humble, pious, and moral a man as I ever knew; then followed old John, with his regiment; and, next, the venerable pastor, in his clerical hat and large cauliflower, or fullbottomed, wig-tall, erect, dignified, and serious, with an appearance which would

:

have suited the cathedral at York, and a countenance which might have stood in the place of a sermon. But I must not indulge myself upon this subject.*

THE SEASON.

tion, and gained many adherents, they assumed a character to which they had no pretension. Unlike the Vendéans, who could not bear nocturnal fighting, the chouans made all their attacks by night. It was never their aim, by taking towns or hazarding a battle, to strike any decisive blow. They never deserved the name of soldiers; they were smugglers transformed into banditti.*

The owl may sometimes be heard to hoot about this day.

The owl is vulgarly called the "Scotch nightingale." In June, 1656, Mr. Evelyn enters in his diary-"came to visit the

h. m.

old marquess of Argyle (since executed), February 8. Day breaks

5 20

Lord Lothian, and some other Scotch

Sun rises

7 15

noblemen, all strangers to me. Note.

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The marquess took the turtle doves in the

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viary for owls."

The long flowers of the hazel begin to

be seen hanging in the hedges.

Owls hoot

CHOUANS.

This denomination of a band of insurgents, during the first French revolution, is not in general better understood than the dstinction made between the "Chouans" and the "Vendéans." Under the gabel law of the old government, there was much smuggling and a great contraband trade in salt. The salt smugglers used to go about in parties at night, when they made use of a noise imitating the scream of the chouette, or little owl, as a signal to each other to escape the revenue officers if the party was not strong, or to assemble if they felt themselves in sufficient force for resistance. Among the insurgents in the departments of the Morbihan, of Ille et Vilaine, and of the Lower Loire, there was a great number of these smugglers, who, going about as formerly on marauding parties at night, made use of the same signal to call each other together. This occasioned the republicans to give them the name of chouettes, as an appellation of contempt; which, by a transition, familiar to the French language, afterwards changed to chouans. For example, in proper names, Anne is called Nannette, or Nannon; Jeanne is called Jeannette, or Jeanneton; Marie, Miette, or Myon. The easy transition, therefore, of chouettes to chouans is obvious.

The chouans were the refuse of the Vendéans, who united with troops of marauders; and, having no principle of their own, but seeing that the attachment evinced by the Vendéans to the cause of royalty had acquired them much reputa

* Scatcherd's History of Morley, p. 138.

February 9.

COLD WEATHER.

Animalculæ in Frozen Grass.

-The extreme clearness and tranquillity of the morning had carried me out on my accustomed walk somewhat earlier than usual. The grass was spangled with ten thousand frozen dew drops, which, as the sun-beams slanted against them, reflected all the colors of the rainbow, and represented a pavement covered with brilliants.

At a sheltered corner of a frozen pond there appeared a pleasing regularity in the rime upon the surface of the ice. I carefully packed a portion of this ice, with the rime upon it, between two parcels of the frozen grass, and hastened home to examine it.

What I had intended as the business of the inquiry was, whether the beautifully ramose figures into which the rime had concreted were similar to any of the known figures in flakes of snow. To ascertain this, I cut off a small portion of the ice, with its ramifications on it, and laid it on a plate of glass before a power ful microscope. My purpose was frus trated. I had the caution to make the observation in a room without a fire; but the air was so warm, that the delicate fibres of the icy efflorescence melted to water before I could adapt the glasses for the observation: the more solid ice that had been their base soon thawed, and the whole became a half-round drop of clear fluid on the plate.

I was withdrawing my eye, when I

* Miss Plumtre's Travels in France.

accidentally discovered motion in the water, and could discern some opaque and moveable spots in it. I adapted magnifiers of greater power, and could then distinctly observe that the water, which had become a sea for my observations, swarmed with living inhabitants. The extreine minuteness and delicate frame of these tender animalculæ, one would imagine, must have rendered them liable to destruction from the slightest injuries; but, on the contrary, that they were hardy beyond imagination, has been proved. The heat of boiling water will not destroy the tender frames of those minute eels found in the blight of corn; and here I had proof that animalculæ of vastly minuter structure, and finer, are not to be hurt by being frozen up and embodied in solid ice for whole nights, and probably for whole weeks together.

I put on yet more powerful glasses, which, at the same time that they discovered to the eye the amazing structure of the first-mentioned animalculæ, produced to view myriads of smaller ones of different forms and kinds, which had been invisible under the former magnifiers, but which were now seen sporting and wheeling in a thousand intricate meanders.

I was examining the larger first-discovered animalculæ, which appeared colossal to the rest, and were rolling their vast forms about like whales in the ocean, when one of them, expanding the extremity of its tail into six times its former circumference, and thrusting out, all

applied it closely and evenly to the surface of the plate, and by this means attached itself firmly. In an instant the whole mass of the circumjacent fluid, and all within it, was in motion about the head of the creature. The cause was evident: the animal had thrust out, as it were, two heads in the place of one, and each of these was furnished with a wonderful apparatus, which, by an incessant rotary motion, made a current, and brought the water in successive quantities, full of the lesser animals, under a inouth which was between the two seeming heads,

so that it took in what it liked of the maller creatures for its food. The motion and the current continued till the insect had satisfied its hunger, when the whole became quiet; the head-like protuberances were then drawn back, and disappeared, the real head assumed its wonted form, the tail loosened from the

plate, and recovered its pointed shape; and the animal rolled about as wantonly as the rest of its brethren.

While my eye was upon this object, other animalculæ of the same species performed the same wonderful operation, which seemed like that of a pair of wheels, such as those of a water-mill, forming a successive current by continual motion: a strict examination explained the apparatus, and showed that it consisted of six pairs of arms, capable of expansion and contraction in their breadth, and of very swift movement, which, being kept in continual motion, like that of opening and shutting the human hand, naturally described a part of a circle; and, as the creature always expanded them to their full breadth, so, as it shut and contracted them to their utmost narrowness again, this contraction drove the water forcibly before them, and they were brought back to their open state without much disturbance to the current.

This wonderful apparatus was for the service of a creature, a thousand of which would not together be equal to a grain of sand in bigness! It is erroneously called the wheel-animal.*

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In February, 1786, died, at the extreme age of 110 years, eight months, and fourteen days, in the full enjoyment of every faculty, except strength and quickness of hearing, Cardinal de Salis, Archbishop of Seville. He was of a noble house in the province of Andalusia, and the last surviving son of Don Antonio de Salis, historiographer to Philip IV. and author of the Conquest of Mexico. The Cardinal used to tell his friends, when asked what regimen he observed, "By being old when I was young, I find myself young now I am old. I led a sober, studious, but not a lazy or sedentary life. My diet was sparing, though delicate; my liquors the best wines of Xeres and La Manche

Sir John Hill.

of which I never exceeded a pint at any meal, except in cold weather, when I allowed myself a third more. or walked every day, except in I rode ther, when I exercised for a couple of rainy weahours. So far I took care of the body; and, as to the mind, I endeavoured to preserve it in due temper by a scrupulous obedience to the divine commands, and keeping, as the apostle directs, a conscience void of offence towards God and man. By these innocent means I have arrived at the age of a patriarch with less injury to my health and constitution than many experience at forty. I am now, like the ripe corn, ready for the sickle of death, and, by the mercy of my Redeemer, have strong hopes of being translated into his garner.*

Age.

The greatest vice the sages observe in us is, " that our desires incessantly grow young again; we are always beginning again to live." Our studies and desires should sometimes be sensible of old age; we have one foot in the grave, and yet our appetites and pursuits spring up every day. If we must study, let us follow that study which is suitable to our present condition, that we may be able to answer as he did, who, being asked to what end he studied in his decrepid age, answered, "That I may go the better off the stage, at greater ease."-Montaigne.

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February 11.

1763. February 11. William Shenstone, the poet of "the Leasowes" in Warwickshire, and author of "the Schoolmistress," died, aged 19, broken-spirited, and, perhaps, broken-hearted. He wrote pastoral poetry for fame, which was not awarded to him by his contemporaries, received promises of political patronage, which were not fulfilled, omitted, from prudential motives, to marry a lady whom he loved, was seduced into a passion for andscape gardening-and ruined his do

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mestic affairs. He retired into the country, and could not bear solitude, -expended his means on planting his grounds,-lareceive " polite friends," were they dismented that his house was not fit to posed to visit him, and courted, as he despise you for the want of a good set of tells us, the society of " persons who will chairs, or an uncouth fire-shovel, at the lence in a mind that overlooks those same time that they cannot taste any excelthings." He forgot that a mind which overlooks those things must also afford to overlook such persons, or its prospect himself an irrefutable truth :-"One loses of happiness is a dream. He writes of much of one's acquisitions in virtue by an hour's converse with such as judge of merit by money;" and, he adds, " I am now and then impelled by the social passion to sit half-an-hour in my own probably occasioned by his anxieties. He kitchen." Johnson says, "his death was was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing."

It has been said of Shenstone, that "he should have burnt most of what he wrote, From such a conflagration, Charles Lamb and printed most of what he spoke." and Crabbe, would have snatched Shenstone's "Schoolmistress."

Economy, and Epicurism.

In a letter from lady Luxborough to her friend Shenstone, concerning the poet's money affairs, there is a capital anecdote of king George I. She says, Shakspeare had to gather rents, he would not have said,

"Had

For who co firm that cannot be seduced? since your half day in endeavouring to seduce your tenant into paying you for half-a-year was ineffectual, and as my labors that way are as vain. My success yours; and, if what you say about the in recovering money is very similar to butter-dish and sluice is true, as to you, it is no less so as to me. between us may be carried farther: for The parallel I am as backward as you, at wringing from the hard hands of peasants their vile trash; nor could I ever be forced, even by experience, into a proper veneration for sixpence; or have the foresight to nurse fortune; but, however, to eat one's cake when one is a hungered is most sweet. The late king George was peaches stewed in brandy, in a particular manner, which he had tasted at my father's; and ever after, till his death, my

Gents. Mag.

fond of

mamma furnished him with a sufficient quantity to last the year round-he eating two every night. This little present he took kindly; but one season proved fatal to fruit-trees, and she could present his majesty but with half the usual quantity, desiring him to use economy, for they would barely serve him the year at one each night. Being thus forced by necessity to retrench, he said he would then eat two every other night, and valued himself upon having mortified himself less than if he had yielded to their regulation of one each night; which, I suppose, may be called a compromise between economy and epicurism,"

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As relating to this day, a newspaper of 1793 contains the following paragraph: "Feb. 12, 1775-Fonthill burnt, with a loss, on the lowest computation, of £30,000 sterling. When old Beckford, who was an odd compound of penury and profusion, immediately, - with as little emotion as the duke of Norfolk at Worksop,-ordered it to be rebuilt with magnificence, more expensive than before; and yet the same person, when he had the gout, and though he had studied medicine under Boerhaave, literally suffered his case to fail, through parsimonious self-denial, in mere Madeira wine!

Resolve me which is worse,

Want with a full, or with an empty purse?'

CHEMISTRY.

[For the Year Book.]

The primitive meaning and origin of the word chemistry are not known. Some conjecture it to have been derived from the name of one of the first professors of this interesting science, Cham, an eminent Egyptian. The word, we find from Suidas, was used by the Greeks very soon after the death of our Saviour.

As respects the science, Tubal-cain, who found out the art of working in

brass, must have been an able chemist; for it is impossible to work on this metal without first knowing the art of refining it.

The physicians who were ordered to embalm the body of the patriarch Jacob were skilled in medicinal chemistry.

Cleopatra proved to the royal Anthony her knowledge of the science by dissolving a pearl of great value in his presence.

We are informed by Pliny, that Caius, the emperor, extracted gold from orpiment.

An author of the fourth century speaks of the science of alchemy as understood at that time. The learned "Baron Rothschild" appears to be one of the greatest followers of this delightful employment in our days.

The attempt to make gold was prohibited by pope John XXII. If we may judge from certain episcopal manipulations, it is not in our days considered culpable.

Hippocrates was assiduous in his cultiation of chemistry.

Helen (how I should love the science if it had such followers now!) is introduced by Homer as administering to Telemachus a medical preparation of opium.

Geber in the seventh century wrote several chemical works.

Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century cultivated chemistry with great success. Why does not Hogg follow in the footsteps of his "great ancestor ?"

It is said that the Hottentots know how to melt copper and iron; a curious fact, if true, as it indicates more civilization in science than in manners.

The science was introduced by the Spanish Moors of Spain into Europe. John Becher laid the foundation of the present system.

Miss Benger tells of a professor in a Northern university who, in making a chemical experiment, held a phial which blew into a hundred pieces. "Gentlemen," said the doctor, "I have made this experiment often with this very same phial, and it never broke in this manner before."

A chemical operation serves the turn of Butler in his Hudioras :

Love is a fire that burns and sparkles In men as nat'rally as in charcoals, Which sooty chemists stop in holes When out of woed they extract coals; So lovers should their passions choke, That though they burn they may not smoke. Chemistry received noble compliment from M. Le Sage, who makes the devil upon two sticks inform Don Cleofas

a

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