less unaccountable. Thunder and lightning are often greatly dreaded. Augustus was so much alarmed at these meteors, that he carried about him the skin of a calf-then thought to be an excellent guard against lightning; and during a thunder-storm he sought refuge underground, in vaults or cellars. According to Suetonius, Caligula, who laboured under similar fears, whenever it thundered wrapped his head up in some covering-or, if he was in bed, leaped out of bed, and hid himself under it. A bishop of Langras, Charles d'Escars, always fainted at the beginning of a lunar eclipse, and remained insensible as long as it lasted. This weakness proved eventually fatal to him-for, when old and infirm, having fainted as usual at the time of an eclipse, he was not able to recover, and expired.

INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE.-The opinion is as old as Plato (vide Repub. lib. iv.) that climate exercises an influence over human dispositions. He gives as examples the inhabitants of Thrace, Scythia, and similar elevated regions, who are extremely irascible and quarrelsome. The climate of Phoenicia and Egypt, he judged, on the same principles, to produce a love of riches; and that of Attica a love of wisdom. How much these must have changed in character, supposing Plato's opinion to have been correct!

SUPERIORITY OF MIND NOT NECESSARY TO ATTAIN EMINENCE. There are few persons much in the habit of associating with those who fill the first places in human affairs, who have not, upon intimacy, found occasion to remark some particular in which they were beneath the station they have attained. In politics, more especially, it has again and again been noticed that the smallest degree of intellect will suffice for the composition of a statesman. Scarcely once in an age has there appeared, in this class, a man of comprehensive philosophy; and the great geniuses that accident has conducted to the helm of a nation have been far from the most successful in their calling. Of the men who, in our times, have made for themselves a place in history by their connexion with striking events, what astounding deficiencies have been recorded! What extravagant blunders have they not often committed! What surprising weakness have they not discovered! Burke, Pitt, and Sheridan, the pole-stars of our early youth, were no philosophers; and in so far were beneath the position they filled. More recently, Perceval, Liverpool, and Castlereagh have shown that very ordinary faculties indeed, when aided by place and pertinacity, may produce most influential changes in the destinies of nations. Nelson, when on shore, appears to have been a pauvre sire;

and Murat was nothing when off his horse, but a fat and a dandy. Nay, even Napoleon himself, who with his single name has filled an entire age, and whose memory will fail only with the extinction of historic record, has been pronounced but "the half of a great man." The Emperor of Austria, one of the weakest and most ignorant of sovereigns, was enabled, by his single national virtue of a patient perseverance, to out-manœuvre, at the game of Machiavelism, this colossus of military and political skill, and to overturn his gigantic empire! In the department of money-making, nothing is more common than for the weakest intellects to take the most extraordinary strides; or for the greatest merchants to be the most completely incapable of forming a conception of the principles by which commerce is developed. Every day produces its trading Croesus, a model of low vulgar inefficiency; and the City abounds in men who have accumulated more than one plum, whose comprehension would not suffice for the making of a plum-pudding. The law, likewise, boasts in profusion of its illustrious obscure ;— persons who, by their skill in noting a brief, in cross-examining a witness, or applying precedents, have arrived at the top of fortune, and have filled the highest judicial stations, without more extent of intellect than might have served them to count their fees, and to keep their fingers out of the fire. Excellence in the arts has at no time been deemed in necessary connexion with great powers of mind. Claude Loraine, before he commenced painter, had proved himself unable to become a decent pastry-cook, and was consigned as an imbecile to the church. Great actors, with the exception of Garrick, have rarely shown ability beyond their art; and it is demonstrated, that to win all hearts by embodying the conception of others on the stage does not require the possession of an enlarged mind. Musicians, obliged to devote their entire time to the attainment of practical skill, ought not to be taxed for the want of other acquirements; it is, therefore, the less to reproach them that their claim to the admiration of their species should so often be closely confined to the sphere of their professional activity. That the most eminent physicians have not always been the most intellectual or the most learned of their class, and that many have arrived at extensive reputation on the very slenderest qualifications, is the less to be admired, because, in this department the purchaser is no judge of the commodity he demands; but it is equally true that considerable skill and much real knowledge in the medical art do every now and then fall to the share of individuals whose intellectual calibre is singularly circumscribed; while minds of the highest or

der sometimes fail, simply because their nature is too fine for the more mechanical parts of the profession. What, then, is to be inferred?-that there is no merit in the world?that nothing but counterfeits are abroad? Far from it. Few, if any, find their way to notoriety without excellence of some kind; but of all merits, that of an enlarged and comprehensive mind is the rarest, and the wants of society raise to distinction infinitely more persons than nature has blessed with this qualification. The error to be avoided is that silly deference for great names, which gives such undue weight to mere authority, and restrains men, without a reputation, from the fair exercise of an independent judgment. John, Lord Eldon, may be a profound equity lawyer, and Col. Wilson, of York, the greatest orator of his age; but it does not follow that they must either of them be heavenly born judges of moral and political philosophy, or that they must necessarily know more of dancing on a rope than Diavolo Antonio.

NOVEL METAPHYSICAL THEORY.-The cells in the brain may be compared to galvanic troughs, and as from these troughs electricity is excited by an acid, so, in the cells of the brain, we have an acid in the fluid that fills them, supplied by each breath we inspire from the oxygen of the atmosphere, capable of exciting the electric fluid, and acting on the nerves, as its conductors to the muscles, like the wires from the galvanic battery. That this fluid, while the body is in health and perfect organization, is always in abundance, and ready to produce whatever motions in the muscles an intelligent agent may will and direct, the power of the agent differing only in degree with the power of the torpedo over the same fluid in repelling the attacks of its enemies. That this intelligent agent in man, wills and thinks, and embraces, in what is called imagination, the motions of the spheres and the immortality of his existence, and appears to be a portion of the great immortal intelligence which pervades all space, but with a limited and confined power over the matter with which he is connected, and a progressively increasing command over nature, in proportion to the exertion and cultivation of his faculties.-Dillon's Popular Premises Examined.

THE DUKE OF MANCHESTER'S Loss OF BRAINS.-The present Duke of Manchester is reported, in a recent number of the Mechanic's Magazine, to have met with an accident by which a piece of his skull was kicked away by a horse, and, at the same time, a portion of the brain was lost; yet his Grace, it is added, has, notwithstanding, made a very excellent colonial governor. It is said by physiologists, indeed, that the outer, or what is called the cortical portion of

the brain, is, so long as it is in a natural and healthy state, entirely devoid of feeling; and it is inferred that any part of it may be lost by accident, as in the preceding instance of his Grace of Manchester, without affecting the intellect of the individual,—it being only when the medullary or innermost portion of the brain is compressed or injured, that life and intellect are affected.

WARM CLOTHING.-Our ancestors wore garments formed of materials much better calculated to exclude the effects of cold and damp than we do in modern times. The attire of females in particular consisted principally of woollens, worsted stuffs, and quilted and brocaded silks,—a difference totally opposed to the light and thin draperies of our own fashions. Nor was the clothing of the male part of the community of former years less adapted for protection from the vicissitudes of the weather. On this subject, Dr. Southey, in his excellent work on Consumption, remarks, that in many parts of Scotland, where consumption is now prevalent, the old people affirm that it was unknown before the warm Scottish plaiding was exchanged for the thin, fine, cold English cloth, and woollen for cotton.

MOVING OF THE EARS.-It is recorded of M. Metz, surgeon of the Hôtel Dieu, Paris, that he had the power of moving his ears as animals do. A similar power has many times been observed in others, and may be accounted for by the accidental strength of the small muscles of the ear, which in most individuals only serve the purpose of rendering the shell of the ear more tense.

ADVANTAGES OF Two LEGS.-It is a shrewd remark of the distinguished French philosopher, Cabanis, that few animals are better fitted for speed than man. Savages can, in many cases, run down the animals which they make their prey; and in Europe professed pedestrians will outstrip the fleetest horse, who only succeeds by reducing his four legs to two in the act of galloping. The hare, the stag, and the greyhound follow the same principle; and the ostrich, the cassowary, and the bustard, with only two legs, will, in most cases, outstrip the best blood-horse.

REALITY OF APPARITIONS IN DREAMS.-Imagination operates upon our physiognomies, and assimilates them in some measure to the objects of our love or hatred. But its most extraordinary power is in transporting us over seas and worlds, and making us appear in our present situation to those we think of, although they are not bestowing a thought upon us. I confess that the how is inexplicable, but the facts are evident. Perhaps it may be the transportive ima

gination of the dead which makes them appear in dreams to the living!

POSITIVENESS.-It was a shrewd maxim of Wesley, the founder of methodism, not to be positive in things of doubt

and uncertainty. "When I was a young man," "said he,

"I was sure of every thing; but in a few years, finding myself mistaken in a thousand instances, I became not half so sure of most things as before."

WOMEN.-When sacrifices were offered to Juno, who presided over marriages, the gall of the victim was thrown behind the altar, to shew that no such thing ought to be among married persons. Women should be acquainted that no beauty hath any charms but the inward one of the mind, and that a gracefulness in their manners is much more engaging than that of their persons; that meekness and modesty are the true and lasting ornaments; for she that hath these is qualified, as she ought to be, for the management of a family, for the education of children, for an affection to her husband, and submitting to a prudent way of living. These only are the charms that render wives amiable, and give the best title to our respect.—Epictetus.

TO MY ABSENT HUSBAND.

SLOW move the hours, my only love,
When distant-parted from my side;

For thou, all others priz'd above,

Can'st make them more serenely glide;
'Tis thine to chase each anxious care,
And all my joys, my sorrows share.

Without thee Pleasure hath no charms,

Her radiant form is dim and pale;

For Fancy oft my soul alarms,

Shaping some wild and fearful tale :

O may it ever idle prove,

And vanish at thy voice, my love!

What though the sky be clear and bright,
No sunshine to my heart it brings;
But that I know thou shar'st its light
In all thy toilsome wanderings;
And it were joy enough for me,
If health and peace attended thee.

But haste the back, our infant calls,

She lisps her Father's name, and listens,
Wondering no well-known footstep falls;
Expectance in her bright eye glistens :
Then haste thee to thy home again,
That "hallow'd nest" for weary men.