Though soulless men may wonder why A myriad sorrowing voices come, When many an eye with rapture gleaming, And dim with gloom that parting hour, These are the eras of existence, So much of life we feel is past, Whene'er we murmur forth" the last;" Where time and things of time are o'er- Miscellaneous. R. M. Milnes. "I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own, but the string that ties them."-Montaigne. AN INCIDENT FOR A NAUTICAL DRAMA. A DUTCH Seaman being condemned to death for mutiny, his punishment was changed, and he was ordered to be left ashore at St. Helena, at that period uninhabited. This unhappy person, representing to himself the horror of that solitude, fell upon a resolution to attempt the strangest action that ever was recorded. There had been that day interred in the island an officer of the ship. The Dutch seaman opened the grave and took the body up out of the coffin, and having made a kind of rudder and paddles of the upper board, ventured himself to sea in it. It happened fortunately for him to be so profound a calm, that the ship lay immovable within a league and a half of the island. The tide ebbing, he was gradually floated towards the ship, when his companions, seeing so strange a boat, imagined they beheld a spectre; but when he came alongside, they were not a little startled at the resolution of the man, who durst hazard himself in that element in so frail a vessel, though he had no mercy to expect, or hope to be received aboard by those who had so lately sentenced him to death. The incident was touching-there floated the poor wretch in a coffin. It was put to the question whether he should be received or not. Some would have the sentence put into execution; but at last the captain, taking into consideration the strangeness of the event, allowed mercy to prevail in his breast, and the man was taken aboard and was brought to Holland. This seaman lived for a number of years in the town of Horn, and related to many how miraculously he had been delivered by Providence. SCREW PROPELLERS. THOSE who are watching events cannot but observe what a change is silently taking place in our navies, both royal and mercantile. It is all now Steam-Steam --Steam. We hear of a line of merchant vessels established to run from England to Constantinople, each with a screw propeller. The Liverpool papers also announce the first of a series of packets from America with screw propellers :--and as the Massachusetts is said to be fitted out with several novelties, we shall quote the account:"The passage of the screw-auxiliary vessel Massachusets, from New York to Liverpool, from whari to wharf, may be put down at 17 days 11 hours. She had, the whole way, head winds and calms,-and her run may therefore be considered excellent. She is 800 tons burden, American measurement, 155 feet on deck, 178 feet from billet-head to taffrail, 33 feet beam, has engines of 280 horse-power, and is ship-rigged with a few exceptions,-the most striking being that her topmasts are fixed abaft the mast. The lower masts are also unusually tall, and the funnel of unusual lowness, even in screw steamers. Her cabins are capacious, and ventilated in a new and effective manner; and she can accommodate 40 passengers. Her screw is of a novel construction: it can be drawn out of the water at pleasure, by a simple process, and placed in a perpendicular position against the stern; and in such circum- ! stances the Massachusetts is to all intents and purposes a sailing vessel. The screw works most powerfully, and insures a speed, with sail, of twelve knots an hour. The sails and rigging abound in curious contrivances to ease the labour of reefing, shortening sail, &c.,--perhaps the first instance in which modern machinery has been carried aloft. All sail has been repeatedly set in 25 minutes. She has four life-boats; every bench, every scat, stool, &c. is a life-boat, made of iron, with air-tight compartments, and adapted to swim, even with the weight of a man. So many contrivances for safety were never before brought together."-Liverpool Journal. IT is too common an opinion that change of scene is the best restorative of an unhappy mind. With some temperaments it may succeed, but, surely, not with all: and yet, how universally is the remedy suggested for almost every species of mental ailment, notwithstanding its being so seldom productive of the effects attributed to it. What lasting amelioration of our condition can be rationally expected from yielding to what is but the mere impulse of the moment-a sensation of restlessness, arising from our own ill-regulated feelings, and a vain desire to escape from ourselves and our own thoughts, which is mistaken for an aversion to the places and ob jects that have been the unconscious witnesses of our sufferings. From whatever source our uncomfortable feelings may arise, they would perhaps be alleviated, or subdued, by a little firmness and determination on our part; and this, if we chose, could be easily summoned to our aid at home, instead of setting out on our travels to seek for consolation we know not where. And to the really unhappy, alas! to imagine that a deep and heart felt grief can either be eradicated, or even assuaged, by change of place or scene, is but to mock a sorrow, the intensity of which we are incapable of comprehending -Emily, a novel, by Mrs. Maberley, THE HILLS THAT BRING DOWN THE RAIN. hills. She was sluttish in her dress, and dirty in her SOME years ago, I employed part of a summer vacation in taking, in company with a friend, a walking excursion through part of the Western Highlands of Scotland. We, had neither of us been previously familiar with mountain scenery. A range of blue hills, in the distant horizon, of no remarkable elevation, and whose outline, traced in gentle undulations against the sky, bounded in the land scape like a picture frame, constituted the utmost of our acquaintance with the sublimer features on the face of nature. We were both of us essentially children of the plain. It may be conjectured, then, with what impressions of wonder and delight we found ourselves, for the first time, traversing the land of mountain and flood; with what feelings of awe we contemplated, no longer from a distance, those gigantic Titans-the eldest born of Earth-as, canopied in mist, they seemed to withdraw in sullen dignity from our intrusive gaze, or, standing out clear in the bright sunshine, sunlight and shadow alternately chasing each other over the green slopes at their base, they presented no unapt emblem of vigorous old age, with childhood playing at its feet. Our feelings, as we advanced, became strung to the highest pitch of enthusiasm for all that was beautiful and sublime in nature, and we looked with envy upon each bare-legged gillie we passed, who enjoyed the privilege of a constant familiarity with those scenes, to which we could only pay a flying visit for once in our lives; we wished that we too had been born sons of the mountains. person; the little freckled savages by the fire-side looked as if they had never seen water in their lives; and the house, which might have been a comfortable one, (for, if not architecturally beautiful, it was at least pretty substantially built,) and the few articles of furniture it contained, were anything but inviting in their aspect. The poor woman wore a shrewish and anxious expression, as she moved about on some occupation of housewifery, which she had not thought it necessary to intermit on account of our presence, and which certainly did not add to the agrémens of our visit. Finding she spoke some English, we attempted to open a conversation with her. But the reply drawn from her by the very first observation I made, was of a nature to disincline us from perseyering in the attempt. Referring to the cause of our intrusion, I ventured the remark, a very safe one as applied to any part of Scotland, that probably a good deal of rain fell in that valley in the course of the year. Never shall I forget the strong guttural emphasis of discontent and disgust, defying all attempt to indicate it by any peculiar form of orthography, with which she exclaimed in reply, "Ach, yes; this nasty hills brings doon the rain!" There was no denying the fact; the hills did bring down the rain, and plenty of it too, as our short expe rience in the Highlands amply proved. But that this abundance of moisture should extinguish, in a native of the hills, the love and admiration for them, which On one day, in particular, we had passed through a a brief association with them had so largely kindled in district especially marked by the characters of grandeur us; that the canopy of mist, which to us was as a veil and sublimity peculiar to the country. Part of our route of glory shrouding an unseen Divinity, should become, lay through a glen or valley which had been the scene on closer acquaintance, literally a wet blanket, stifling of an event of deep historical interest, and the gloomy every enthusiastic emotion; this we did not expect, and grandeur of whose external features, as the dark crags by it came upon us with all the force of a most unpleasant which it was hemmed in on either side looked down in surprise. We took advantage of the first gleam of sunfrowning majesty upon our path, was strikingly in har- shine to buckle our knapsacks again on our shoulders, mony with the feelings naturally excited by the recollec- and continue our journey, somewhat sobered in our tion of the tragedy of which it remained the undying feelings, and beginning to admit a dim apprehension, memorial. As we passed through it, we were to a more that, although to mere occasional visitors, such as we than usual extent under the influence of the impressions were, that description of country was the most attractive I have already spoken of. The whole country appeared which best filled the eye, and spoke most eloquently to to us invested with a poetic character. Every old man the imagination and feelings, it was yet barely possible we met seemed to be an Ossian, a seannachic or bard, that these might be attended by some serious drawback whose store of traditions and memories of the olden time, in the experience of a permanent resident, who might would, to a certainty, if we could but master enough of perchance find good cause to prefer for a home a country the language he spoke to address him in, overflow upon of more homely features, but of kindlier soil and more us in song. We never doubted that the enthusiasm genial climate; and which, if it was less fitted to attract which had come upon us as a strange and novel feeling, to it the wandering tourist, was also free from an attraekindled up by our sudden admission to the contemplative power of a more uncomfortable character; in which tion of so much beauty of a character so new to us, was, there were no "nasty hills to bring down the rain." to those who were continually living in its presence, an abiding habit of the soul, tinging all their feelings and modes of expression. In this mood of mind we were overtaken, and our poetic musings for a time put to flight, by a rattling shower of rain-one of those peculiar to the mountains, which instead of falling down plump upon your head, like any honest shower in a Christian land, sweep, and whirl, and eddy about you, like cuirassiers galloping round a square of infantry, as if seeking for the unprotected parts of your person, dash The same kind of illusion takes effect also in the into your mouth and eyes, and strike against your ears moral world. The historical events, and the points of with a force which makes your cheeks glow for the national and individual character, which fill the largest remainder of the day. After a quarter of an hour's buf place in the thoughts of men, and gain the greatest feting with this sudden tempest, we found shelter in a share of their admiration and applause, are very far cottage or cabin not far from the way side, whose inmates indeed from being those which it is always most agreewere a woman and two children. We were received, not able to be brought into close contact with; and it were exactly with the frank "kindly welcome" hospitality we well, perhaps, if we were more frequently reminded, at had anticipated, from what we had heard and read of the how great a sacrifice of individual happiness and comfort Highland mode of exercising this virtue; but we were those things may have been gained, which strike most received, and permitted to warm ourselves and dry our vividly upon the imagination, and are deemed most clothes by a peat fire, which gave out quite as much ornamental to the social edifice. In the utmost fervour smoke as heat. Truth compels me to say, that neither of our admiration, we should not forget that there is the appearance of our hostess herself, nor that of her another point of view, and one which, in the case of children or dwelling, harmonized much with the po- persons particularly situated, may be the only one open etical colouring through which we had been predisposing to them, from which the object we admire may present ourselves to look upon everything nursed among the, a very different appearance from that in which we behold I have often since that day thought of the Highland woman's remark with some feeling of amusement, but also with a strong impression of its substantial truth, and of its applicability to matters of more universal interest than the prevalence of rain in a mountainous ! country. It is not in landscapes only that "Distance lends enchantment to the view, it that beauty may appear to us its leading character, only because we are never brought so close to it as to be within the range of its more direct and abiding influences; and that the very qualities to which it is indebted for the admiration it excites in us who stand afar off, or only occasionally approach it, may be the immediate source of a great deal that is most painful and uncomfortable to those with whom it is a necessity to be always in its near neighbourhood. The military achievements of a nation, for example how ample a space do they not fill in its history! how largely do they not contribute to make up the estimate which we form of its character! The leaders of its armies are celebrated by poets and orators as its greatest men, as, of all others, the most worthy of having their names handed down with praise to posterity, and of being remembered with gratitude to distant ages. And yet, of the millions who constitute the nation, how small is the proportion to whom the most brilliant of these achievements have brought either advantage or enjoyment, or even the fantastic and unsubstantial gratification which arises from the contemplation of national glory! National glory is a ray which gilds only the elevated pinnacles of society; it penetrates not to the lowly region in which the great masses of mankind move. To them the splendours of war are only known in the loss of sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands, and in the added weight of an intolerable taxation, which lays its ruthless hand upon every crust of bread they eat, upon every rag which covers them, upon the roof which shelters them from the winter's cold, upon the fire which warms their shivering limbs, upon the light which struggles through their dim and dusty casements. May not these, with truth, apply to all that can be said of the imposing splendours of war, that it has been to them but as "the nasty hills which bring down the rain!" Or, to take a more familiar illustration. There are men of rare and rich endowment, who seem formed to be the delight of every circle into which they enter who, alike in the courtly saloon or the snug reunion of choice spirits at the club, attract towards themselves, by an irresistible fascination, the most distinguished for wit, intelligence, and accomplishment, causing them to press emulously around them, and leave them with regret and reluctance; for whom the fairest and loveliest hoard their sweetest smiles, and with whose society the greatest in the land are proud to have their tables graced. Who would not look with envy upon those who enjoy the privilege of constant association with such men, of having every, the most minute, incident of daily life illumined, and tinged with all the prismatic hues of grace and beauty, by the bright beams of such a sun? And yet, is it not often the case, that there is just one place where that laugh is never heard? that there is one loving, wistful, anxious countenance, towards which the bright glances of that eye are never turned? that the idol of every circle, the magic spirit who throws his fascination around him wherever he moves, becomes disenchanted as he crosses one threshhold-and that threshhold his own? that there he, who is so full of life and gaiety, witty, eloquent, graceful, tender, becomes silent, fretful, ennuyé-it may be, harsh and unfeeling? With how much justice may not the poor, neglected, broken-hearted wife curse those very attractions which are so delightful to all the world besides, but which, as having created that distaste for home and its quiet enjoyments, the effects of which she feels so deeply, are to her, in literal truth, the nasty hills that bring down the rain-bring it down in many a shower of bitter and unavailing tears! The evil most to be guarded against by those who have it in their power to determine the arrangements of society, is the permitting any one class to feel that the pleasures and advantages of another bring only suffering and discomfort to them. There is no circumstance in our social condition, which can be said, strictly speaking, to be altogether a gain; no good which we can count ourselves to have received without any countervailing sacrifice. Even civilization, which has so greatly multiplied our enjoyments, and enlarged and strengthened our capacity for enjoying; even it, which, next to the knowledge of divine truth, is the greatest boon our nature is capable of receiving, is never unattended by its train of evils, of which uncivilized man has comparatively little experience. It is, therefore, no ground for discontent or murmuring to find that there is nothing so every way good as not to have its unfavourable side. That would appear to be a law of nature against which it is foolish and vain to struggle. But it would seem to be a fair subject of complaint, should the good and the evil resulting from any of the circumstances of our common lot be so distributed, that the former should be poured out unmixed on one side, and the latter on the other. Should that at any time be the case, we cannot wonder that much murmuring and discontent should be the consequence; and if we could conceive a condition of society in which such a distribution was the general order of things, we could have little difficulty in predicting for it a speedy and violent dissolution. No state of society, in which the hostile elements were so distinctly separated from each other, sifted asunder and disconnected as to their parts, but kept in proximity as to their masses, could by possi bility continue to exist: a collision would be inevitable. Like two clouds, of which the one is positively, the other negatively electrified, they would rush against each other with a crash which would shatter both into fragments. The tendency of every social system whatever, when left to its own uncorrected action, is this result. A preponderance of advantage, enjoyed at first by accident, gives superiority of power, and that again draws to its possessor a larger share of the advantage from which it has flowed. So the two, alternately cause and effect, continue acting upon and enlarging each other. The strong tend constantly to become stronger, the weak to become weaker. It is for this reason, and to correct this tendency, that periodical reforms, attended with more or less violence, become a kind of necessity, a sanatory discipline necessary to restore the equilibrium of the system, and prevent its utter dissolution. The more regularly and uniformly we take care to act in counteraction of the morbid tendency, the less occasion will there be for violent and painful remedies. It is only when the tendency is left to itself unchecked for so long that it at last becomes unbearable,-when the equipoise is so entirely disturbed that the motion of the social machine is impeded, and threatens to stop,-that the cure becomes violent and dangerous. When the great men of the world have been heedlessly and selfishly adding gratification to gratification, without casting a thought upon the influence these exercise on the comfort of those beneath them,-then, when at length the good of the former comes in the belief and experience of the latter to be identified with their own evil,-when they feel that all that gives grace, and elegance, and beauty to the upper regions of society, is to them as the "nasty hills which bring down the rain," then, indeed, may we fear for the result of the struggle to bring things right, and apprehend that the throes of nature, in putting forth her vis medicatrix, may be too much for the vitality of the system. On the other hand, let there be a constant shifting of the ballast, as it leans over to one side; a continual care bestowed to mix the good and evil of life to all classes, with as much equality as the differences in their circumstances will admit of: let it be caused to be felt, that what brings good to some brings good to all, and what injures some injures all; and we may safely leave society, with all its machinery of wheels and balances, to take care of itself, secure that it is safe at least from all internal sources of decay. bold and prominent appearance, having deep holREMARKS ON THE CHURCH ARCHITECTURE lows, in which an ornament, called the tooth orna OF ENGLAND. No. II. ment, is frequently inserted. The doorways of this style are very elegant: they usually consist of a single slender shaft on each side, with capitals in the shape of bells reversed; from these spring a few bold mouldings, or a simple line of tooth ornachurches, we meet with doorways divided into two by a single or clustered shaft in the middle, and the two arches thus formed are inclosed within a larger arch, the space between being filled up with sculptured work. Porches become more usual in this style: they are large, and have high-pitched and vaulted roofs. We have now quite left the heavy, massive piers of the Norman style, and, instead of WE now come to speak of the first style of Christian architecture, properly so called, which was used in England. This style has been ap-ment, having a hood-moulding over it. In large propriately called the Early English: it prevailed generally throughout the 13th century, that is to say, from the death of King Richard Cour de Lion, through the reigns of King John, of Henry III., and Edward I. It is distinguished most prominently from the preceding styles, by the round-headed arch and its peculiar mouldings being entirely disused. Henceforward we have, there fore, to do with pointed arches; for the exceptions to this rule are few. There were three kinds of pointed arch used in this style: first, the lancet; secondly, the equilateral; and thirdly, the obtuse. Of these, the lancet and the equilateral were most used for large buildings, (as at Westminster Abbey the lancet prevails, at Salisbury the equilateral;) but in small country churches the obtuse-angle arch is most frequently found. The mouldings assume a (1) "Gothic," a name given in error; it had nothing to do with the Goths. IOINTED TREFOIL ARCH. SQUARE-HEADED TRIFOIL ARCH. them, we have the piers in large buildings composed of one column, surrounded by slender shafts detached, but uniting in one capital above, as at Salisbury; or again, clustered close together, as in the chapel called the Dean's Chapel, in Oxford cathedral, and at Lincoln. In the smaller churches, a plain octagonal or circular pier was used, as at Boxgrove; but, as these piers were used also in later styles, they are only to be distinguished by the mouldings and ornaments of the capitals and bases. As we hinted above, the usual form of early Eng |