benefactor's tomb, which he had caused to be built during his life. Mass was to begin early in the morning, at the altar called Our Lady's altar, in the middle aisle, where the said poor beadsmen, before the beginning of mass, "one of them standing right over against the other, and encompassing the tomb of Sir John Milburn," were, two and two of them together, to say the Psalm De profundis, (cxxx.) and a Pater-noster, Ave, and Creed, with a collect thereto belonging; and such of them as could not repeat the Psalm where to say the Pater-noster, Ave, and Creed only, for the prosperous state of the said Sir John, his wife, and children, &c., while living, and afterwards for the repose of their souls when dead, under the erroneous idea that the intercession of survivors could prevail for the peace of departed souls! M. VISIT TO A SALT MINE. THE following account of a visit to the Salt Mine at Ischl is extracted from a lively and agreeable little volume by Dr. Tobin, who accompanied the late Sir Humphry Davy on his visit to the continent, from which that great philosopher did not live to return. “I went with a very large party, consisting of almost all the strangers in Ischl, to visit the Salzberg, the salt mountain, or rather mine, which was to be illuminated for the visitors. We set out at about one o'clock, a long string of carriages, and after an hour's drive through a very pleasant valley, we arrived at the foot of the mountain which contains the mine. Here a number of miners were waiting with sedan chairs for the ladies, many of whom however preferred walking up the mountain, and in about three quarters of an hour we arrived at the of entrance of the mine. We were now to be attired, as is usual on entering the mines, in a long white mantle or frock, and a large wide broad brim, the latter to hinder us from knocking our brains out, and the former to keep our clothes clean. Here was confusion dire; this frock was too small, this too long; this lady had no brimmer, this gentleman could find no stick. I laid hold of the first frock and hut I met with, but up came a lady and begged I would exchange with her, as her frock was so long she could not walk in it, and mine so short that it did not reach to my knees. Dressing at length finished, the ladies were placed in their carriages, that is two in each wheel-barrow, face to face, with a miner before to pull, who carried a lamp in his hand,! and another to push behind, and between every two barrows went another miner bearing a paper lan thorn. The gentlemen were of course on foot, with the exception of one or two gouty invalids. "In this guise, with half-a-dozen miners going before carrying lamps, the whole train entered the passage. and in a few seconds lost sight daylight. After a long, wet, and (m spite of our many lamps) dark journey through this narrow and low passage, where my head w continually coming in contact with the roof, we came to the Rutsch, et slide, which leads down into the salt-chamber. The Rutsch is formed of the trunks of two large fir-tree laid close together, rounded and polished, and placed in an obliqs direction, in an angle of about forty degrees. “A miner, with a lamp'in one hand, places himself astride these trees, and holds with his other hand a cord which is fixed to the rock of the sides. The person who wishes to descend seats himself behind the miner, and holds him by the shoul ders. The miner then lets the cord slip through his hands, and down they go like lightning into what seems an abyss of darkness: safe at the bottom, he gives a shout that the next couple may follow. When the slide is very long, as in the mines at Hallein, near Salzberg, the miner always sits upon a thick leather apron, and when alone makes no use of the cord, but rushes down with fearful speed into the salt-cave below. When we arrived at the slide, and the ladies had all got out of their barrows, after much discussion and many fears and doubts, they consented thus to descend, as the miners assured them it was more dangerous to do so by the steps cut in the rock, at the side, which were exceedingly steep and very wet. Having reached the bottom of the slide, which ends in a slight curve, to break the impetus of the descent, we found ourselves in an immense cavern or room, excavated in the rock, about twelve feet high, and from ten to twelve thousand in circumference, supported in the middle by a massive pillar of rock, and lighted up by some hundred lamps, which, however only served to give the scene a more awful and gloomy appearance. The visitors, whose number was considerable, in their long white mantles and hats, looked like spectres wandering in the shades of the nether world. The roof and walls of this cavern were covered with minute crystals of salt, not, however, sufficiently large to give it the glittering appearance which I had expected. The mountain contains a great many of these saltchambers, which at different periods are filled with fresh water, conducted into them by wooden pipes. When this has dissolved a sufficient quantity of salt, which operation occupies some months, it is drained off through a deep shaft, near the middle of the cave, and is then conducted through wooden pipes, often for a very great distance, to the boiling-houses, where it undergoes the process of evaporation. Having wandered through these gloomy abodes of silence and night for some time, we ascended the stairs, the ladies resumed their seats in the barrows, and the procession returned as it had entered. Το save my head from additional thumps to the many it had received on entering, I took the place of one of the pushers, and after a merry drive of about twenty minutes we again saw daylight, like a distant star, increasing in size till we reached the entrance of the mine. We here took off our spectre-clothes, and returned home in our usual appearance, and a merry party we were." WILBERFORCE FALLS. THOUGH the great geographical question, the existence of a northwest passage to India, has hitherto baffled every attempt at its discovery, yet the enterprises to which it has given birth have not been undertaken in vain. The recent expeditions, undertaken by order of the government of this country, have been attended with very important benefits. They have thrown great light on the geography of the northern regions; and no great enlargement of the bounds of science has ever taken place without being productive of substantial advantages to mankind. Our whale fisheries have already profited by our extended knowledge of the Arctic seas;Captain Parry's plans for securing the health and comfort of his ships' companies will afford the most valuable lessons to every succeeding commander who shall be engaged in exploring remote parts of the globe; and the volumes in which he and others have embodied the results of their labours are among the most delightful and valuable contributions which in our times have been made they surmounted every obstacle, to the literature of England. Among these, none is entitled to a higher place than Captain Franklin's Narrative of his land journey to the shores of the Polar Sea. This expedition took place at the same time with the first voyage of Captain Parry; and it was fitted out by government, in order that it might co-operate with that navigator in exploring the northern coast of America. Captain Franklin, accompanied by Dr. Richardson, and Messrs. Back and Hood, two officers of the Navy, left England in 1819; and, after arriving at York Factory, a station on the western side of Hudson's Bay, set out on a land journey through the deserts and frozen lakes of the northern continent, which they crossed in a westerly direction till they reached the mouth of the Copper Mine River, on the western coast. They then embarked in two canoes, and made their way eastward, along the northern shores of the continent for nearly six hundred miles, till they found it impossible to proceed further; and, their canoes being destroyed, they returned by land to the Copper Mine River, from whence they made their way home, after an absence of three years. Captain Parry, meanwhile, having entered Baffin's Bay, sailed westward along the northern coast, till his progress was stopped at Melville Island, a point at no great distance from that which Franklin reached from the opposite direction. But, though Parry afterwards made attempts, the barrier between these two points was found by him impassable. Captain Franklin's work is not surpassed (if indeed, it is equalled) by any book of voyages or travels whatever. The hardships and dangers which he and his companions underwent excite the deepest interest; while the energy with which and the undaunted courage withs which they braved every danger, raise the warmest admiration. A great lesson of virtue is also cons tained in the patience, and pious) resignation, with which they bar the most frightful calamities. The habitual influence of religion, andi its effects on the mind, are exhibited. with a beautiful simplicity. Wa. cannot resist the pleasure of tra scribing the following passage from Dr. Richardson's narrative, in whic he describes the feelings of his smal party in the most dreadful circum stances that can be conceived :— "Through the extreme kindness and forethought of a lady, the party previous to leaving London, had been furnished with a small collec tion of religious books, of which we still retained two or three of the most portable; and they proved of incalculable benefit to us. We read portions of them to each other as) we lay in bed, in addition to the morning and evening service, and found that they inspired us on each perusal with so strong a sense of the omnipresence of a beneficent God, that our situation, even in these desolate wilds, appeared na longer destitute; and we conversed, not only with calmness, but with cheerfulness, detailing with unre strained confidence the past events of our lives, and dwelling with hope on our future prospects." During the whole of their perils, they were animated by the same spirit; and their example strikingly illustrates the observation, that the most heroic courage is that which is founded on true piety. The Arctic regions abound in grand and sublime scenery. Few objects in nature can be more mag nificent than the falls of Wilberforce, in the Hood River; which are thus described by Captain Franklin. "We pursued our voyage up the river, but the shoals and rapids in | scene of a barbarous murder, in the year 1745. Daniel Clark, with one Richard Houseman, and the infamous Eugene Aram, schoolmaster of Knaresborough, a man of great talents, had joined in a plan of robbing many of their neighbours of plate and other property to a large amount. In this cave they met, either to divide the spoil, or to settle the disposal of it; and, the villains falling out, Clark was murdered by his partners in guilt, and buried in the cave. On his being missed, it was generally supposed that he had fled the country; Aram soon after retired to Lynn in Norfolk, where he lived as usher of a schoolfor a period of thirteen years; but after that long interval, the finger of Providence pointed out authors of the horrid crime in a very remarkable manner. the Foul deeds will rise, men's eyes. his part were so frequent, that we valked along the banks the whole lay, and the crews laboured hard in arrying the canoes thus lightened ver the shoals, or dragging them up e rapids, yet our journey in a rect line was only about seven iles. In the evening we encamped the lower end of the narrow asm or rent in the rocks, through hich the river flows for upwards la mile. The walls of this chasm e upwards of two hundred feet gh, quite perpendicular, and in me places only a few yards apart. he river throws itself into it over rock, forming two magnificent and cturesque falls close to each other. he upper fall is about sixty feet gh, and the lower one at least one andred, but perhaps considerably ore, for the narrowness of the lasm into which it fell prevented from seeing its bottom, and we uld merely discern the top of the ray far beneath our feet. The A labourer, while digging in a wer fall is divided into two by an quarry for stone to supply a limesulated column of rock which kiln, near Knaresborough, struck ses about forty feet above it. The upon a human skeleton. The minds hole descent of the river at this of the people were aroused; many ace probably exceeds two hundred of them who remembered Clark, d fifty feet. The rock is very and could not account for his entire the sandstone. It has a smooth disappearance, fancied the skeleton irface and a light red colour. I might have been his. The coroner tve named these magnificent cas- was called in; and the wife of ides 'Wilberforce Falls,' as a tri- Aram, who had been deserted by ite of my respect to that dis- her husband, and had occasionally nguished philanthropist and Chris- dropped some dark hints upon the subject, was examined. Her evidence led to the apprehension of Houseman, who betrayed great confusion before the magistrate, frequently changing colour; and, taking up one of the bones, he exclaimed, evidently off his guard, "This is no more Dan Clark's bone than it is mine!" This produced a further and closer inquiry, which ended in Houseman's full confession, that Clark had been murdered by Eugene Aram, and that the body was buried ian." T.ROBERT's CAVE, KNARES BOROUGH. ABOUT a mile from the town of Knaresborough, in Yorkshire, is a ave, called St. Robert's Cave, from tradition that a hermit of that name iwelt there formerly. It has for an entrance a small square door, and extends about fifteen feet within. This place is awfully memorable as the in St. Robert's Cave: he added that | with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chal dee, and Arabic; he also inves tigated the Celtic, which, on comparison with the sacred and learned languages, he said he found so much allied to them, that he had begun to form a Comparative Lexicon; when, suddenly, he discovered to his horror, that, like the wealth mentioned by the wise man, the "riches" of human knowledge "profit not in the day of wrath!" In him we see an instance of an excellent head joined with shocking depravity of conduct; of the wisdom of the serpent without the harmlessness of the dove: and, from his fate, many may learn the need there is of guarding all the avenues of the heart against the temptations of UNLAWFUL GAIN. They may bear in mind the indignant, but, (from what followed,) awful and instructive, question of Hazael, which he put to the prophet, when little dreaming of the tremendous inroads of vice upon himself: "What! is thy servant a DOG, that he should do this great thing?"—M. the head lay to the right in the turn at the entrance of the cave; and Clark's skeleton was accordingly found there in exactly the posture described. Aram was seized at Lynn, and, together with Houseman, brought to trial at York Castle, on the 3rd of August, 1759. The latter, having been arraigned and acquitted, became evidence against Aram, who delivered a most ingenious and artful defence, abounding in antiquarian lore and general learning, but still more marked with cunning. This curious production, together with a memoir of the murderer, is to be found in Kippis's Biographia Britannica, where he appears in company much too good for him; although the writer of his life does not endeavour to give a false gloss to the subject, nor, as a modern novel writer has done, to render a vile felon interesting. We are of opinion that much injury is done to morals by making a robber or a murderer the hero of a novel. Young and unstable readers will be apt to sympathize, or even to imitate, when they ought only to abhor. Aram was convicted, and soon after owned the justice of the sentence. His end was horrible, for he attempted to prevent the shame of a public execution by suicide; and succeeded so far in heaping crime upon crime, as to be brought only just alive to the gal-proof of the enterprise and wealth lows. The body was afterwards conveyed to Knaresborough Forest, that the warning might be more impressive and frightful; and he was there hung in chains. It appears that the dreadful act was perpetrated during a course of close and laborious study, which he persevered in after its commission, even up to the time of his detection. He applied himself to poetry, his*ry, botany, and antiquities, in heraldry; became acquainted THE BELL-ROCK LIGHT HOUSE. THE numerous light-houses which have been erected on the dangerous parts of the coasts of Great Britain, and the skilful manner in which they are constructed, are at once a of the country, and of the high state of science and art which it has attained. The difficulties that surround the architect who undertakes to erect, on a solitary rock in the midst of a stormy sea, a building capable of withstanding the terrifie force of the most violent tempests, appear, at first sight, to be insur mountable; but perseverance combined with skill are capable of completing the most arduous undertaking. |