between the nostrils and the eyes, covered with hair. Her neck is furnished with a short black mane, and her neck, body, and sides of her head are covered with large brown spots on a white ground. Her tail is small, and has black hair at the end some inches long. Her feet are large and cleft, and resemble those of the ox, and when she walks the two feet on the same side move together. The giraffe seems to have been especially formed for browzing on the twigs and leaves of trees. That in the Garden of Plants has been fed on maize, beans, and barley; she is fond of carrots, but her great passion for roses is remarkable; she eats them with the greatest avidity, licks the hands for more, and when the stock is exhausted looks after those who brought them with evident disappointment. She now lives in a large round building, in the middle of the menagerie of the Garden of Plants, to which is attached a little park, in which she remains all day when the weather is warm. She is exercised by her keepers every fine morning before the public are admitted, and directly the weather becomes cold she is covered day and night with a thick woollen hood and a body cloth. The only one of the original attendants of the giraffe, retained in her service, is Atie the Darfour negro, a droll, lively, and intelligent person. He sleeps in a little gallery at the top of the stable of his mistress, and being open, she frequently wakes him directly the sun appears, by putting her head over the railings and pushing him with her nose. Heedless at the ambushed brink [Head of the Giraffe, showing the manner of using its tongue in gathering food.] We may add to this account a little poem by Mr. Pringle, descriptive of a notion which prevails amongst some of the tribes of South Africa, who state that the lion occasionally surprises the giraffe, when the latter comes to drink at the pools or fountains; and that, owing to the amazing power of that magnificent animal, the "great destroyer" is sometimes borne away a considerable distance on the back of his victim before it sinks under him. Mr. Pringle says, " anecdotes of this sort have, I believe, been formerly mentioned by travellers, and have been usually considered incredible; but the evidence of my informant, old Teysho, one of the most intelligent chiefs of the Bechuanas, will probably be admitted as at least sufficient authority for the following poetical sketch".. [Papyrus.] THE first manufactured paper of which we have any record, is the celebrated papyrus, made of a species of reed growing in Egypt on the banks of the Nile. According to a passage in Lucan, which is likewise corroborated by other authorities, this paper was first manufactured at Memphis, but it has been a matter of much controversy to fix the precise period of its invention. The papyrus formed, without doubt, at a very early period, an important branch of commerce to the Egyptians, and was one of the manufactures carried on by that people at Alexandria. It obtained an increasing importance among the Romans as literature became more valued and diffused; in the Augustan age it grew into most extensive demand. We are told in the reign of Tiberius, of a popular commotion which arose in consequence of a scarcity of this valuable material. The commerce in papyrus continued to flourish during a long period, the supply being always less than the demand. Its value was so great towards the end of the third century, that when Firmus, a rich and ambitious merchant, striving at empire, conquered for a brief period the city of Alexandria, he boasted that he had seized as much paper and size as would support his whole army. ness. Sufficient evidence of the abundant use of the papyrus is to be found in the fact that nearly eighteen hundred manuscripts written on paper of this description have been discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum. Papyrus was much used in the time of St. Jerome, I was still farther smoothed and flattened. Paper thus who wrote at the latter end of the fourth century. An made was esteemed according to its strength and whitearticle of so much importance in commerce was made largely to contribute to the revenue of the Roman empire, and fresh imposts were laid on it under successive rulers, until the duty on its importation at length became oppressive. This was abolished by Theodoric, the first king of the Goths in Italy, at the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century. Cassidorus records the gracious act in the thirty-eighth letter of his eleventh book, in which he takes occasion to congratulate "the whole world on the repeal of an impost upon an article so essentially necessary to the human race," the general use of which, as Pliny has remarked, "polishes and immortalizes man." The precise period when this description of paper went into disuse has, equally with the time of its first introduction, been made a subject of interest and controversy among antiquaries; some fixing the period at the fifth, others extending it to the eleventh century. It is, however, most probable that when, in the middle of the seventh century, the Saracens became masters of Egypt, the intercourse between that country and Rome was so interrupted, that the supply of papyrus became scanty and precarious. Previously to that event all public records had been executed on papyrus, while it is found that at a date immediately subsequent parchment was substituted. A minute and accurate description of this plant, and of the manner of converting it into paper, are to be found in Pliny's Natural History. Our enterprising traveller, Bruce, also furnishes an account and a delineation of the papyrus made from personal observations, and which are strictly in accordance with the writings of the Roman naturalist upon the subject. The roots of this plant are tortuous, the stem triangular, rising to the height of twenty feet, tapering gradually towards the extremity, which is surmounted by a flowing plume. Paper was prepared from the inner bark of the stem by dividing it with a kind of needle into thin plates or pellicles, each of them as large as the plant would admit. Of these strata the sheets of paper were composed. The pellicles in the centre were considered as the best; and each plate diminished in value according as it receded from that part. After being thus separated from the reed, the pieces, trimmed and cut smooth at the sides that they might the better meet together, were extended close to and touching each other on a table; upon these other pieces were placed at right angles. In this state the whole was moistened with the water of the Nile, and while wet was subjected to pressure, being afterwards exposed to the rays of the sun. It was generally supposed that the muddy waters of the Nile possessed a glutinous property, which caused the adhesion to each other of these strips of papyrus. Bruce, however, affirms that there was no foundation for this supposition, and that the turbid fluid has in reality no adhesive quality. On the contrary, he found that the water of this river was of all others the most improper for the purpose, until, by the subsidence of the fecula, it was entirely divested of the earthy particles it had gathered in its course. This traveller made several pieces of papyrus paper both in Abyssinia and in Egypt, and fully ascertained that the saccharine juice, with which the plant is replete, causes the adhesion of the parts together, the water being only of use to promote the solution of this juice, and its equal diffusion over the whole. When there was not enough juice in the plant, or when the water failed to dissolve it sufficiently, the strips were united with paste made of the finest wheaten flour, mixed with hot water and a small proportion of vinegar: after being dried and pressed, the paper was then beaten with a mallet, by which means it Paper made of cotton entirely superseded the papyrus in the course of time, as being much more durable and better calculated for all the purposes to which paper is ordinarily applied. This new substance was called charta bombycina. It cannot be exactly ascertained when this manufacture was first introduced. Montfauçon fixes the time as being the end of the ninth or beginning of the tenth century, a period when the scarcity of parchment and the failure in the supply of papyrus called forth the powers of invention to supply some adequate substitute. It was about this time that the dearth of writing materials induced the Greeks to pursue the almost sacrilegious practice of erasing the valuable writings of ancient authors, that they might obtain the parchment on which these were inscribed. The more abundant manufacture of cotton-paper, though not before the destruction of much that was excellent, happily prevented a still more extensive devastation. Many proofs are afforded that in the beginning of the twelfth century cotton-paper was commonly used in the eastern empire for books and writings; but it was not deemed sufficiently durable for important documents, for which purpose parchment was still employed. The fabrication of this kind of paper has been a flourishing branch of industry in the Levant for many centuries, and is carried on with great success even to the present time. The paper produced from cotton is very white, strong, and of a fine grain, but not so well adapted for writing upon as the paper which is now used. Much ingenuity must have been exercised, and many previous experiments must have been required, successfully to reduce the cotton to a pulpy substance, and to conduct the subsequent process, so as to render this material suitable to the purposes of writing. After this first great step, the adaptation to a similar use of linen rags and other fibrous materials, called comparatively but for little invention, and it was probably not very long after the general use of cotton for paper, that linen rags were discovered to be a still better material. Ancient Music.-The Egyptian flute was only a cow's horn with three or four holes in it, and their harp or lyre had only three strings; the Grecian lyre had only seven strings, and was very small, being held in one hand; the Jewish trumpets that made the walls of Jericho fall down, were only rams' horns; their flute was the same as the Egyptian; they had no other instrumental music but by percussion, of which the greatest boast made was the psaltery, a small triangular harp or lyre with wire strings and struck with an iron needle or stick; their sacbut was something like a bagpipe; the timbrel was a tambourine, and the dulcimer was a horizontal harp, with wire strings, and struck with a stick like the psaltery. They had no written music; had scarcely a vowel in their language; and yet (according to Josephus) had two hundred thousand Mozart would have died in such a concert in the greatest musicians playing at the dedication of the temple of Solomon. agonies!-Dr. Burney's Hist. of Music, vol. i. p. 249. 66 Value of Character.-Colonel Chartres (who was the most notorious rascal in the world, and who had by all sorts of crimes amassed immense wealth), sensible of the disad vantages of a bad character, was once heard to say, that would give ten thousand pounds for a character, because he although he would not give one farthing for virtue, he should get a hundred thousand pounds by it." Is it possible, then, that an honest man can neglect what a wise rogue would purchase so dear?—Lord Chesterfield, age. THE WEEK. NOVEMBER 10.-The anniversary of the birth of Luther, the illustrious founder of the Reformation. Martin Luther was born in 1483, at Eisleben in the county of Mansfeld, in Upper Saxony, to which town his mother had come to attend the fair from the neighbouring village of Mera, where she resided. His father, his grandfather, and his great grandfather, as he tells us himself, had been farmers; but his father left this occupation for that of a miner. His name was John, and that of his wife Margaret Lindemann. At the usual age Luther was put to school at Eysenach; and while pursuing his studies here, it is said that he obtained his support by singing about the streets and begging from door to door. This was no uncommon shift among the scholars of that When he was eighteen he entered the University of Erfurt; and four years after, having taken his degree of Master of Arts, he proceeded to study the law, when the fate of a companion, who was struck dead at his side by a flash of lightning as they were walking together in the fields, so greatly impressed him, that he resolved to dedicate the remainder of his life to the service of religion. Accordingly, notwithstanding all that his friends could do to shake his determination, he joined the Augustinian friars, who had a monastery at Erfurt, and embraced a life of mortification with such extraordinary ardour that he used frequently to spend several days at a time without either eating or drinking. He continued to pursue his studies, however, with equal zeal; and having for this purpose entered himself a member of the new university which the Elector of Saxony had just founded at Wittenberg, he so greatly distinguished himself that in 1508 he was elected to the place of one of the Professors in that institution. It is to be remarked that this was the sole preferment Luther in the course of his life either obtained or would accept of. For some years the subject of his lectures was the Logic and the Physics of Aristotle. It was not till he had taken his degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1512 that he commenced teaching that science, Before this, however, namely in the year 1510, a visit which he had paid to Rome had brought under his observation many of the abuses by which the church was deformed, and had somewhat abated his zeal in favour of the existing order of ecclesiastical affairs, which till now had been in the highest degree enthusiastic and uncompromising. It seems to have been in the year 1516 that he first began to preach in public; and his addresses to the people already manifested a disposition to assail several of the prevailing errors of the time. Events, however, which occurred the following year blew the spark into a flame. The Pope, Leo X., finding his treasury exhausted, had resorted to an expedient which had been frequently employed by his predecessors in similar circumstances-the sale of indulgences to all who would pay for them. this occasion the price was fixed very low, in the idea that in that way the largest revenue would be obtained. In the district where Luther resided, too, instead of the Augustines being, as usual, employed to dispose of the indulgences, their rivals, the Dominicans, obtained that profitable office. On this Luther was commanded by the superior of his order to undertake the defence of the rights of the Augustines; and upon this task he entered at once with his characteristic fire and determination. His searching, honest, and daring spirit soon carried him far beyond the bounds within which it had been intended that he should confine himself; and on the 31st of October, 1517, he affixed on the gate of the university of Wittenberg ninety-five propositions which directly attacked the whole doctrine of indulgences. This may be considered the commencing movement of the Reformation; from that day the insurrection against the existing order of things continued to grow and to diffuse On itself, till it revolutionized the half of Christendom. We shall note the dates of the most remarkable events which marked its progress, directed as it was, at least in its main course, by the genius, the intrepidity, and the indefatigable exertions of Luther. This very year he began to prepare and to apply the mighty engine to which he chiefly trusted for the accomplishment of his designs, by publishing a translation of the seven penitential Psalms into German, as his first effort in the work of unsealing the Scriptures to the whole body of the people. On the 15th of June, 1520, Leo, alarmed at length by the rapid spread of the new doctrines in all directions, issued a bull condemning them as heretical. On the 15th of December, Luther, surrounded by a crowd of his followers, committed to the flames not only this bull but a collection of the whole papal decrees and decisions in the market-place of Wittenberg. This bold and insulting defiance of the holy see was soon after repeated by his adherents at Leipsic and elsewhere. A second bull of Leo, issued on the 3rd of January, 1521, formally excommunicated Luther. From this sentence its object made his appeal in the face of the Christian world to a general council. Soon after the Emperor Charles V. offered him a safe conduct if he would present himself at the Diet of Worms, and there explain his opinions. Luther's friends, apprehensive of treachery, strenuously advised him to decline this invitation; but he replied that go he assuredly would, were he to meet with as many devils in the diet as there were tiles on the roofs of the houses in the town. His entry into Worms, where thousands thronged around the car in which he was borne through the streets, was like the triumphal procession of a conqueror. Neither the threats nor the persuasions of the Emperor were able to prevail upon him to offer his submission; and an edict of outlawry was issued against him. It was now thought necessary that his friends should interpose to protect his person; and accordingly the Elector Frederic of Saxony, whose subject he was, and who had already become strongly attached to his doctrines, secretly admitted him into his castle of Wartburg, near Eysenach. In this asylum he remained nearly ten months; during which time his chief employment was the translation of the New Testament into his mother tongue. The Emperor having then returned to Spain, Luther came forth from his concealment; and in the year 1522 published his translation-a work which at once gave a greater impulse than anything else could have done to the progress of the Reformation, and established a new era in the history of the German language. The dialect in which it was composed, being that of Luther's native province, has since become the literary language of all Germany, or that in which all books are written-although up to this time another dialect had enjoyed that honour. In 1523 Luther threw off his cowl, which he had hitherto continued to wear; and this year also he, for the first time, dispensed the sacrament of the Lord's Supper at Wittenberg according to the mode used in the reformed churches. In 1524 he published the Pentateuch in German, and in 1525 his translation of the Psalms. This year also, on the 27th of June, he married Catherine de Boren, a lady of noble family, who, with eight of her companions, had some time before run away from the convent of Nimptsch, near Grimuna, of which they were members, having been induced to take that step by the perusal of some of Luther's writings. Luther had six children by his wife, the descendants of some of whom survived in Germany till the latter part of the last century. It was in 1529, at a diet of the empire held at Spire, that the adherents to the Reformation delivered that protest against the proceedings of the meeting from which they became first known by the name of Protestants, now the common designation of al thus describes the perilous situation of Cabeza de Vaca, Force of Instinct.--Mr. Southey, in his History of Brazil, who, sailing towards Brazil, is preserved from shipwreck by a grillo, or ground cricket:-"When they had crossed the line, the state of the water was inquired into; and it was found that of a hundred casks there remained but three to supply four hundred men and thirty horses: upon this the Adelantado gave orders to make the nearest land. Three days they stood towards it. A soldier, who set out in ill from Cadiz, thinking to be amused by the insect's voice; health, had brought a grillo, or ground cricket, with him but it had been silent the whole way, to his no little disappointment. Now on the fourth morning the grillo began to ring its shrill rattle, scenting, as was immediately supposed, the land. Such was the miserable watch which had been kept, that upon looking out at this warning they perceived high rocks within bow-shot; against which, had it not been for the insect, they must inevitably have been lost. They along, the grillo singing every night as if it had been on had just time to drop anchor. From hence they coasted shore, till they reached the island of S. Catalina." the sects of Christians dissenting from the church of] covered with wax. The volume thus disovered, Bell Rome. The following year the celebrated confession, or says, was immediately sent to him-his friend being declaration of their belief, drawn up by Melancthon, afraid to retain it in Germany; and from it his transwas presented to the Emperor at Augsburg, by the Pro-lation was made. If this story were true, it would testant leaders; Luther directing the whole proceeding present an almost singular instance of the entire disfrom his retreat at Cologne, although the sentence of appearance of a work, after being multiplied and scatbanishment under which he lay prevented him from tered abroad by the printing-press. Another instance being present at the ceremony. The remainder of the is that of the first edition of the fragments of Lucilius, great reformer's life was spent in maintaining and ex- published in 1597, with annotations by Francis Dousa, of tending by his preaching and his writings that formidable which no copy was known to exist at the time, when resistance against the pretensions of the Roman see in a second edition of the book was published about a which he had taken the lead; and before his death he had century afterwards, except the one from which that was the satisfaction to see his principles embraced not only printed, and which had been found, partly decayed, in by many of the princes and states of Germany, but by some pit or cellar. The circumstance is related in the the kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden, several of the editor's preface. But Bell's story is evidently a mere Swiss Cantons, and by vast numbers of the inha- fiction invented to enhance the importance of his own bitants, both of England and of France. His transla- publication. A small volume containing a selection tion of the entire Scriptures into German was published from these conversations of Luther, as translated by in 1535. The death of Luther took place at Eisleben, Bell, was published in London within the present year. his native town, after a short illness, on the 18th of February, 1546, in the sixty-third year of his age. He was, beyond all dispute, the master-spirit of the Reformation. All the greater writers in both communions have united in bearing testimony to the towering genius of this extraordinary man, and that wonderful combination of intellectual and moral qualities, which enabled nim so conspicuously to assert his pre-eminence above all his associates. "Pomeranus," says Melancthon," is a grammarian, and explains the force of words; I am a logician, and point out trains of connexion and arguments; Justus Jonas is an orator, and discourses copiously and ornately; but Luther is all and all, and a miracle among men; whatever he utters, whatever he writes, penetrates into the minds of men, and in some wonderful manner leaves, as it were, stings in their hearts." "It is indeed true," says Bossuet," that there was a force in his genius, a vehemence in his discourses, and that he possessed a lively and impetuous eloquence by which the people were drawn along and charmed, and an extraordinary boldness when he found himself supported and applauded, together with an air of authority, which made his disciples tremble in his presence, so that they dared not to contradict him, either in great matters or in small. Nor was it only the people who regarded Luther as a prophet; even the learned men of his own party used to speak of him as endowed with that character." He was the author of many other literary productions besides his translation of the Bible; his works, in the largest edition, filling twenty-three volumes folio, in which, however, are included translations of those which are written in Latin. Some of Luther's writings have been translated into English; and we have also an old translation of the very curious volume entitled his Table Talk, being a collection of his remarks in conversation, which was first published in German by some of his friends, in 1565. The English translation of this book appeared at London in a folio volume, in 1652, bearing to be the performance of a Captain Henry Bell, and to have been sent to press by authority of the parliament. This translator tells us a strange story in his preface, which we do not recollect to have seen noticed. When he was in Germany, he says, many years before, in the service of James I., he heard every where lamentations made over the fate of the original work, of which above eighty thousand copies had been destroyed in 1574, by order of the Emperor Rudolphus II. instigated by Pope Gregory XIII., so that not a single copy was then known to exist. After Bell's return to England, however, the gentleman with whom he had lodged while in Ger-Hull, STEPHENSON. many, and whose name was Casparus Van Spar, having occasion to build a house on an old foundation, found as he was digging under the floors of the former building, a copy wrapped up in a strong linen cloth, and thickly! Effects of Proportion. It is singular that both the outalthough at the first aspect they fill the heart with a sublime side and the inside of this church (St. Peter's at Rome;, sense of majesty, do not appear so vast as they are in reality. Some critics affirm that this is a defect in the structure; others maintain that the gradual development of its grandeur, though it does not immediately convey to the eye an idea of its extraordinary magnitude, is but a consequence of its perfect symmetry; and I believe that these last are in the right. You must frequently have remarked that beauthose of equal size that are not so well formed. I have often tiful human figures, as well male as female, appear less than made the same observation on trees. The finest oak I ever saw did not appear to me so tall or so large as others around it, which were less beautiful, and which in fact were less in size.-Count Stolberg's Travels. The Office of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is at 59, Lincoln's-Inn Fields. LONDON:-CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST. Shopkeepers and Hawkers may be supplied Wholesale by the following Bath, SIMMS. Carlisle, THURNAM; and SCOTT. Exeter, BALLE. Kendal, HUDSON and NICHOLSON. Leeds, BAINES and NEWSOME. Lincoln, BROOKE and SONS. Manchester, ROBINSON; and WEB Newcastle-upon-Tyne, CHARNLEY. Orford, SLATTER, Plymouth, NETTLETON. Portsea, HORSEY, Jun. Sheffield, RIDGE. Staffordshire, Lane End, C. WATTS. Edinburgh, OLIVER and BOYD. Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Stamford-Street, Their flaming crests above the waves they show, And first around the tender boys they wind, Then with their sharpen'd fangs their limbs and bodies grind. 2 S |