"Nor is there any part in all this land,
But is a little isle; for thousand brooks
In azure channels glide on silver sand;
Their serpent windings and deceiving crooks,
Circling about and watering all the plain,
Empty themselves into the all-drinking main,

And creeping forward slide, but ne'er return again.” Nobody imagined that there was any circulation of the blood, till Harvey demonstrated that the same blood which the veins brought to the heart the arteries immediately carried away again from it. Harvey lived for many years to enjoy the glory of this discovery; dying at Hampstead, in Essex, on the 3d of June, 1658, in the eighty-first year of his age.

the most able men of the city to attempt the solution. I rical poem, descriptive of the body and mind of man, Not repulsed, however, by the tone and manner of the which he entitles The Purple Island,' written (although learned Professor, Des Cartes requested to be favoured not published) before Harvey announced his discovery, with a translation of the placard, which he had no gives the following account of the manner in which the sooner received than he calmly remarked that he body is watered and fertilized by the different channels thought he should be able to answer the challenge. that pervade it:Accordingly next day he presented himself again before Beckman (that was the name of the Professor) with a complete solution of the problem, greatly to the astonishment of that distinguished person." At last Des Cartes left the army, and travelled through a great part of Europe, visiting England among other countries. He then fixed his residence in Holland, where he wrote the greater number of his works. They relate to metaphysics, geometry, and various departments of natural philosophy. He is now principally remembered for the impulse which his works gave to the study of metaphysics in Germany, and for his ideas being now, m a great degree, the foundation of what is called the Ideal School of Philosophy, as opposed to the His celebrated axiom was Sensual, or Material. Cogito, ergo sum," (I think, therefore, I exist). His astronomical speculations were very singular and extravagant. He explained the constitution of the heavens by means of a multitude of vortices, or elementary whirlpools, of which the sun and every other fixed star, according to him, had one, forming as it were its system, and supporting and keeping in motion the other lighter bodies that circle round it. Notwithstanding these fancies, Des Cartes was a most profound and ingenious mathematician; and the science of optics is also greatly indebted to him. Having been invited by Christina, Queen of Sweden, to take up his residence in Stockholm, he repaired to that capital in 1648; but died there of an inflammation of the lungs on the 11th of February, 1650, in the fifty-fourth year of his age.

April 1.-All-Fools'-Day, like many other days that were once observed by most people, has no honours now but in the gaiety of school-boys. The old custom of sending individuals on this day on a fool's errand is not peculiar to England. Scotland has her April gowk, and France her Poisson d'Avril (April fish). It is probable that the custom is a relic of a high and general Pagan festival, in which the wildest spirit of frolic expressed the universal gladness. It is to be remembered that the year anciently began about the time of the vernal equinox, when the awakening of all the powers of nature from their wintry sleep-the leafing of trees, the budding of flowers, and the singing of birds-made men look forward with joy to a season of long days and sunny skies. In simple ages rough jokes, given and taken without feelings of unkindness, form one of the most usual expressions of hilarity. There is a festival amongst the Hindoos, called the Huli, which is held in March, in honour of the new year, in the observance of which the practice of sending persons on errands which are to end in disappointment, forms a prominent feature. This circumstance would show that the custom, which still remains with us, is one which has its origin in remote ages, and is derived from a common source, accessible alike to the Hindoo and the Briton.

EXCELLENCE NOT LIMITED BY STATION. THERE is not a more common error of self-deception than a habit of considering our stations in life so illsuited to our powers, as to be unworthy of calling out a full and proper exercise of our virtues and talents.

As society is constituted, there cannot be many employments which demand very brilliant talents, or great delicacy of taste, for their proper discharge. The great bulk of society is composed of plain, plodding men, who move "right onwards" to the sober duties of their calling. At the same time the universal good demands that those whom nature has greatly endowed should be called from the ordinary track to take up higher and more ennobling duties. England, happily for us, is full of bright examples of the greatest men raised from the meanest situations; and the education which England is now beginning to bestow upon her children will multiply these examples. But a partial and incomplete diffusion of knowledge will also multiply the victims of that evil principle which postpones the discharge of present and immediate duties, for the anticipations of some destiny above the labours of a handicraftsman, or the calculations of a shopkeeper. Years and experience, which afford us the opportunity of comparing our own powers with those of others, will, it is true, correct the inconsistent expectations which arise from a want of capacity to set the right value on ourselves. But the wisdom thus gained may come too late. The object of desire may be found decidedly unattainable, and existence is then wasted in a sluggish contempt of present duties; the spirit is broken; the temper is soured; habits of misanthropy and personal neglect creep on; and life eventually becomes a tedious and miserable pilgrimage of never-satisfied desires. Youth, however, is happily not without its guide, if it will take a warning from example. Of the highlygifted men whose abandonment of their humble calling has been the apparent beginning of a distinguished career, we do not recollect an instance of one who did not pursue that humble calling with credit and success until the occasion presented itself for exhibiting those superior powers which nature occasionally bestows. Benjamin Franklin April 2.-On this day, in the year 1578, was born was as valuable to his master, as a printer's apprentice, at Folkstone, in Kent, Dr. William Harvey, the disco- as he was to his country as a statesman and a negotiator, verer of the circulation of the blood. Harvey published or to the world as a philosopher. Had he not been so, this important discovery in 1620. Before this time it indeed, it may be doubted whether he ever would have was universally believed that the arteries, or vessels taken his rank among the first statesmen and philosophers through which the blood flows from the heart, did not of his time. One of the great secrets of advancing in contain blood at all, but only air; and, indeed, the life is to be ready to take advantage of those opportu word artery was originally used to signify the wind-nities which, if a man really possesses superior abilities, pipe, and an air-tube. The body, it was thought, are sure to present themselves some time or other. As was fed with blood entirely through the veins, which the poet expresses it, There is a tide in the affairs of carried it at last to the heart, where it was in some men," an ebbing and flowing of the unstable element way or other absorbed or drunk up. Thus, one of on which they are borne, and if this be only our old poets, Phineas Fletcher in a curious allego-at the flood," the "full sea" is gained on which " the

"taken

(in a hollow tree which stood by the road side) from the | 11,000; the population of the whole thirteen being word M.A.L.T. He then began, "Beloved, let me crave your attention. I am a little man-come at a short notice to preach a short sermon-from a short text-to a thin congregation-in an unworthy pulpit. Beloved, my text is Malt. I cannot divide it into sentences, there being none; nor into words, there being but one; I must therefore, of necessity, divide it into letters, which I find in my text to be these four-M.A.L.T.

M-is Moral.
A-is Allegorical.
L-is Literal.

T-is Theological.

"The Moral, is to teach you rusticks good_manners: therefore M-my Masters, A-All of you, L-Leave off, T-Tippling

"The Allegorical is, when one thing is spoken of, and another meant. The thing spoken of is Malt. The thing meant is the spirit of Malt, which you rusticks make, M--your Meat, A-your Apparel, L-your Liberty, and T-your Trust.

equalled by the aggregate population of three or four of the Lancashire or Yorkshire towns. The maps contain a multitude of names of miserable wooden villages, inha bited merely by the peasant cultivators of the soil, and by a few shop-keeping Jews. Of the 451 towns of the kingdom, 353 are more than half, and 83 wholly, of wood; and but a very few towns contain a supply of the ordinary articles of consumption by persons in easy circumstances. The common articles of ladies' wearing apparel are obliged to be procured either from Warsaw or Vienna, and it is common, in great families, to keep memorandum books, in which the inmates of the family enter their wants, from time to time, which are supplied altogether at intervals of some months. In respect of all those comforts and conveniences of life which denote the progress of refinement, Poland is, perhaps, behind all other nations of Christian Europe.

The Literal is, according to the letters, M-Much, A-1815, has been stated at 100,000 individuals annually, The rate of increase of the Polish population, since Ale, L-Little, T-Trust. "The Theological is, according to the effects it works or about two and a half in some, M-Murder-in others, A-Adultery-in all, L-Looseness of life; and, in many, T-Treachery.

"I shall conclude the subject, First, by way of Exhortation. M-my Masters, A-All of you, L-Listen, T-To my Text. Second, by way of Caution. A-All of you, L-Look for, T-the Truth. Third, by way M-my Masters, of Communicating the Truth, which is this:-A Drunkard is the annoyance of modesty; the spoil of civility; the destruction of reason; the robber's agent; the alehouse's benefactor; his wife's sorrow; his children's trouble; his own shame; his neighbour's scoff; a walking swill-bowl; the picture of a beast; the monster of a man!"

DESCRIPTION OF POLAND.

THE kingdom of Poland, which has lately been the theatre of so disastrous a war, was established in 1815, by the treaty of Vienna, and was composed of four territories placed respectively under the following sovereignties, viz.:

1. Gallicia; assigned to Austria.

2. The Grand Duchy of Posen, including the Western Palatinates bordering on Silesia; surrendered to Prussia. 3. The city and district of Cracow; constituted a free republic; and

4. The remainder of ancient Poland, comprising the bulk of what was before the Grand Duchy of Warsaw;

made to revert to Russia.

The population of the towns is, to that of the country, as one to five. The towns are small and far removed from each other, which has been a main cause of retarding the progress of civilization, commerce, and manufactures. There are only thirteen towns in Poland containing upwards of 10,000 people each: viz., Warsaw, containing about 120,000; Dantzic, about 50,000; Wilna, 30,000; Lemberg, 29.000; Cracow, 28,000; Kiev, 20,000; Posen, 20,000; Brady, 15,000; Witepsk, 13,000; Lublin, 13,000; Mahilev, 12,500; Kalisch, 12,000; Kharkof,

per cent.

The Catholic religion is specially protected by the government, without imposing any disabilities on the members of other faiths. The Catholic establishment consists of an Archbishop of Warsaw, eight Bishops, and 354 Priests. Next to the Roman Catholics, however, 2,740 Clergy. The Greek Catholics have a Bishop, and the Jews are of the most importance, and their numbers are stated to be fast increasing. They have, of late, been very unpopular, and have been charged with many malpractices, in monopolizing trade, and otherwise. The native writers have, for some time past, been in the habit of reproaching them as the ruin of their country, but sometimes, possibly, with more prejudice than reason. The religious statistics are as follows:

:

The class of nobles in Poland is to that of the plebeians as one to thirteen. But this class is composed of persons of such various degrees of wealth, that the poorer nobles are often glad to be employed as stewards by the richer, and their wives and daughters take occupations as humble as nurses and ladies' maids. The peasantry are still in a state of modified slavery, or villeinage, cultivating the land for the benefit of their lords, and not being allowed to remove from it without giving up their tenements. They are assigned a certain portion of the produce of the estate; the whole live and dead stock upon which belongs to the landlord, who lends the use thereof to the peasants, compelling them to take care of, and account for, it. The peasantry in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw have been nominally emancipated; but their condition has hitherto hardly been sensibly ameliorated thereby.

The exports of Poland consist chiefly of corn, cattle, timber, and other articles of raw produce; and the imports are wines, colonial produce, and articles of luxury. The manufactures of woollen cloth, linens, carpets, and leather have increased since 1815, and the breweries and however, by far the largest source of occupation for the distilleries are on a very extensive scale. Agriculture is; people; but suffers, at the present time, from a depression of prices, and has permanently to contend against the effects of a six months' winter of frost and snow. proximity to the cold regions of Russia, and the exposure to the sharp north-east winds from Siberia and the polar regions, render the climate incomparably colder than that of England, though the situation of Poland is not more northward. In the summer the heat is very great, the forests bstructing the free circulation of air

The

POWER OF STEAM.-It is on the rivers, and the boatman | may repose on his oars; it is in highways, and begins to exert itself along the courses of land-conveyance; it is at the bottom of mines, a thousand feet below the earth's surface; it is in the mill, and in the workshops of the trades. It rows, it pumps, it excavates, it carries, it draws, it lifts, it hammers, it spins, it weaves, it prints.-From Webster's Lectures.

A POPULAR ERROR.-It is not at all an uncommon thing for even well-informed people to consider one event the cause of another, because the one has immediately preceded the other in the order of time. A curious instance of this error occurred in the last century. The fish, on which many of the inhabitants of Norway depended for subsistence, suddenly vanished from their coasts; the practice of inoculation for the small-pox had just then been introduced, and was instantly fixed upon as the cause of the calamity; and as the people considered the risk of that disorder a trifle in comparison with starvation, nothing could exceed their righteous indignation against all who undertook to prevent their taking the small-pox.

INSTRUCTION and AMUSEMENT are more blended than the world in general is apt to imagine. Uninstructive amusement may be afforded for a moment by a passing jest or a ludicrous anecdote, by which no knowledge is conveyed to the mind of the hearer or the reader; but the man who would amuse others for an hour, either by his writing or his conversation, must tell his hearers or his readers something that they do not know, or suggest to them some new reflexion upon the knowledge they have previously acquired. The more the knowledge bears upon their pursuits, upon their occupations, or upon their interests, the more attractive it will be, and the more entitled to be called useful.

A friend called on Michael Angelo, who was finishing a statue. Some time afterwards he called again; the sculptor was still at his work. His friend, looking at the figure, exclaimed, You have been idle since I saw you last. By no means, replied the sculptor, I have retouched this part, and polished that; I have softened this feature, and brought out this muscle; I have given more expression to this lip, and more energy to this limb. Well, well, said his friend, but all these are trifles. It may be so, replied Angelo, but recollect that trifles make perfection, and that perfection is no trifle.

A POSTSCRIPT TO OUR FIRST READERS.

Ir is said that amongst the Mahomedans the following curious custom is observed :--they never destroy any fragment of paper, however small, which chance may place in their way. For this custom, which may appear in its practice to be ridiculous, a remarkable reason is assigned:"It is the duty," say the Mahomedan teach ers, "of every true Believer to throw away no opportunity of communicating to his fellow-creatures a knowledge of the one God and of his Prophet. The few words which express the short and comprehensive article of our Faith may be written on any the smallest fragment of paper. let not true believers lose this opportunity which Allah himself presents to them! neglect not, destroy not that fragment. Let the word of the Prophet be written upon it, and the winds of Heaven will, under the direction of Providence, convey it into the hand of some one whose memory needs to be refreshed from the fountain of Truth, or whose mind's eye hath not seen the light of Heaven."

In the desire, and certainly in the power of enlightening their fellow-creatures, the Christian need fear no comparison with the Mahomedan World; but, in the mode of accomplishing this object, the custom alluded to affords a lesson for study, and an example for imitation. By a Society which has undertaken the task of contri

THE SECRET OF GREAT WORKERS.-M. Dumont, in his 'Recollections of Mirabeau,' the leading orator of the French Revolution, thus describes the persevering industry of our illustrious countryman, Sir Samuel Romilly:-"Romilly, always tranquil and orderly, has an incessant activity. He never loses minute: he applies all his mind to what he is about. Like the hand of a watch, he never stops, although his equal movements in the same way almost escape obser-buting, as far as lies in its power, to the diffusion of use

vation."

DEVOTION OF A GREAT MIND TO ITS DUTIES.-Milton, the poet of Paradise Lost, who, during an active life in the most troublesome times, was unceasing in the cultivation of his understanding, thus describes his own habits:-"Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home; not sleeping or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring; in winter, often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labour or devotion; in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary; or memory have its fuli fraught; then with useful and generous labours preserving the body's health and hardiness, to render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to the mind, to the cause of religion and our country's liberty."

ful knowledge, no means should be neglected by which instructive amusement can be afforded. Timid (although well-meaning) persons might perhaps be inclined to censure such a society, should it set the example of applying the powers of the press to the production of a Penny Periodical Magazine. They might object that the instrument which is intended for good might be used for evil; that publications in form so cheap as to be accessi ble to the lowest class of readers, would soon fall into the hands of the lowest class of writers. We doubt this, although we know it is the opinion of many excellent persons; we have good and substantial reasons to assign for our doubts, but into those reasons we shall not now enter; the time for them is past. The evil (if it be an evil) is already in being. The demand of the public has already called into existence penny periodical publications, of which eight or ten have established a regular sale. It will be cheering intelligence to those who I would have dissuaded from this undertaking, that the Two painters undertook a portrait of Hannibal; one of most noxious of them have been hitherto the least sucthem painted a full likeness of him, and gave him two eyes, cessful. The channel, then, is open. Through its course whereas disease had deprived him of one. The other must flow much of the information conveyed to the minds painted him in profile, but with his blind side from the of a large and increasing class of readers. We are spectators. He severely reprimanded the first, but hand-called upon to pour into it, as far as we are able, clear

An era is fast approaching, when no writer will be read by the great majority, save and except those who can effect that for bales of manuscript, that the hydrostatic screw performs for bales of cotton, by condensing that matter into a period that before occupied a page.-Colton.

somely rewarded the second

The petty sovereign of an insignificant tribe in North America every morning stalks out of his hovel, bids the sun good morrow, and points out to him with his finger the course he is to take for the day.

When the air-balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it? The doctor answered this question by asking another: "What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man.”

The Chinese affect to despise European ingenuity, but they cannot mend a common watch; when it is out of order, they say it is dead, and barter it away for a living one.

waters from the pure and healthy springs of knowledge. That duty we will not neglect: in the attempt to fulfil it we think that we ought not to fail.

The success of our undertaking will be the measure of its utility.

LONDON:-CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST. Shopkeepers and Hawkers may be supplied Wholesale by the following Booksellers:

2.]

OF THE

Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

POMPEII.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY.

[APRIL 7, 1832.

there, was like digging in a quarry of very hard stone. The descent into the places cleared is like the descent into a quarry or mine, and you are always under ground, lighted by torches.

But Pompeii was covered by loose mud, pumice-stone, and ashes, over which, in the course of centuries, there collected vegetable soil. Beneath this shallow soil, the whole is very crumbly and easy to dig, in few spots more difficult than one of our common gravel-pits. The matter excavated is carried off in carts, and thrown outside of the town; and in times when the labour is carried on with activity, as cart after cart withdraws with the earth that covered them, you see houses entire, except their roofs, which have nearly. always fallen in, make their appearance, and, by degrees, a whole street opens to the sun-shine or the shower, just like the streets of any It is curious to observe,

The volume on Pompeii,' lately published in the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, contains every authentic detail of the destruction of that city by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, A.D.79; and the second volume, which will be shortly published, will complete the description of the remains of public and private build-inhabited neighbouring town. ings, and of articles of domestic use, which have been discovered in the ruins. The following observations on this interesting subject are from an intelligent correspondent, who has had the advantage of visiting the spot.

IT is certainly surprising, that this most interesting city should have remained undiscovered until so late a period, and that antiquaries and learned men should have so long and materially erred about its situation. In many places masses of ruins, portions of the buried theatres, temples, and houses were not two feet below the surface of the soil; the country people were continually digging up pieces of worked marble, and other antique objects; in several spots they had even laid open the outer walls of the town; and yet men did not find out what it was, that peculiar, isolated mound of cinders and ashes, earth and pumice-stone, covered. There is another circumstance which increases the wonder of Pompeii remaining so long concealed. A subterranean canal, cut from the river Sarno, traverses the city, and is seen darkly and silently gliding on under the temple of Isis. This is said to have been cut towards the middle of the fifteenth century, to supply the contiguous town of the Torre dell'Annunziata with fresh water; it probably ran anciently in the same channel. But, cutting it, or clearing it, workmen must have crossed under Pompeii from one side to the other.

As you walk round the walls of the city, and see how the volcanic matter is piled upon it in one heap, it looks as though the hand of man had purposely buried it, by carrying and throwing over it the volcanic matter. This matter does not spread in any direction beyond the town, over the fine plain which gently declines towards the bay of Naples. The volcanic eruption was so confined in its course or its fall, as to bury Pompeii, and only Pompeii: for the shower of ashes and pumice-stone which descended in the immediate neighbourhood certainly made but a slight difference in the elevation of the plain.

Where a town has been buried by lava, like Herculaneum, the process is easily traced. You can follow the black, hardened lava from the cone of the mountain to the sea, whose waters it invaded for " many a rood," and those who have seen the lava in its liquid state, when it flows on like a river of molten iron, can conceive at once how it would bury every thing it found in its way. There is often a confusion of ideas, among those who have not had the advantages of visiting these interesting places, as to the matter which covers Pompeii and Herculaneum: they fancy they were both buried by lava. Herculaneum was so, and the work of excavating VOL. 1

as the volcanic matter is removed, that the houses are principally built of lava, the more ancient product of the same Vesuvius, whose later results buried and concealed Pompeii for so many ages.

[Implements of building found at Pompeii.

In the autumn of 1822 I saw Pompeii under very interesting circumstances. It was a few days after an eruption of Vesuvius which I had witnessed, and which was considered by far the grandest eruption of recent times. From Portici, our road was coated with lapilla or pumice-stone, and a fine, impalpable powder, of a palish grey hue, that had been discharged from the mountain, round whose base we were winding. In many places this coating was more than a foot deep, but it was pretty equally spread, not accumulating in any particular spot. As we drove into Pompeii our carriage wheels crushed this matter, which contained the principal components of what had buried the city: it was lodged on the edges of the houses' walls, and on their roofs, (where the Neapolitan government had furnished them with any); it lay inches thick on the tops of the pillars and truncated columns of the ancient temples; it covered all the floors of the houses that had no roofs, and concealed the mosaics. In the amphitheatre, where we sat down to refresh ourselves, we were obliged to make the guides clear it away with shovels-it was every where. Looking from the upper walls of the amphitheatre, we saw the whole country covered with it-trees and all were coated with the pale-grey plaster, vor did it disappear for many months after.

Some ignorant fellows at Naples pretended the fine ashes, or powder, contained gold! Neapolitans began to collect it. They found no gold, but it turned out to be an excellent thing for cleaning and polishing plate!

C