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THE OLD MAN'S COMFORTS, AND HOW He gained
THEM.

You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.

In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
I remember'd that youth would fly fast,
And abused not my health and my vigour at first,
That I never might need them at last.

You are old, Father William, the young man criea,
And pleasures with youth pass away,
And yet you lament not the days that are gone,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.

In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
I remember'd that youth could not last;

I thought of the future, whatever I did,

That I never might grieve for the past.

You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
And life must be hastening away;

You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death!
Now tell me the reason, I pray.

I am cheerful, young man, Father William replied,
Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remember'd my God!
And He hath not forgotten my age.

The above Stanzas are ascribed to Mr. Southey.

Encouragement to Persons of mature Age to cultivate the Mind.Instances have frequently occurred of individuals, in whom the power of imagination has at an advanced period of life been found susceptible of culture to a wonderful degree. In such men what an accession is gained to their most refined pleasures! What enchantments are added to their most ordinary perceptions! The mind awakening, as if from a trance to a new existence, becomes habituated to the most interesting aspects of life and of nature; the intellectual eye is "purged of its film;" and things, the most familiar and unnoticed, disclose charms invisible before. The same objects and events, which were lately beheld with indifference, occupy now all the powers and capacities of the soul; the contrast between the present and the past serving only to enhance and to endear so unlooked-for an acquisition. What Gray has so finely said of the pleasures of vicissitude, conveys but a faint image of what is experienced by the man who, after having lost in vulgar occupations and vulgar amusements his earliest and most precious years, is thus introduced at last to a new heaven and a new earth: "The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are op'ning Paradise."

Dugald Stewart's Essay on the Cultivation of

Intellectual Habits.

Cure of Drunkenness.—A man in Maryland, notoriously addicted to this vice, hearing an uproar in his kitchen one evening, had the curiosity to step without noise to the door, to know what was the matter, when he beheld his servants indulging in the most unbounded roar of laughter at a couple of his negro boys, who were mimicking himself in his drunken fits; showing how he reeled and staggered,-how he looked and nodded, and hiccupped and tumbled. The picture which these children of nature drew of him, and which had filled the rest with so much merriment, struck him so forcibly, that he became a perfectly sober man, to the unspeakable joy of his wife and children.-Anatomy of

Drunkenness.

best method of prolonging life, and of making life happy." said a wise Mandarin to one of these infatuated princes, "is to control your appetites, subdue your passions, and practise virtue! Most of your predecessors, O Emperor! would have lived to a good old age had they followed the advice which I give you!"

A wise man's kingdom is his own breast; or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of giving him solid and substantial advice.

Time tries the characters of men, as the furnace assays the quality of metals, by disengaging the impurities, dissipating the superficial glitter, and leaving the sterling gold bright and pure.

It was said, with truth, by Charles the Twelfth, of Sweden, that he who was ignorant of the arithmetical art was but half a man. With how much greater force may a similar expression be applied to him who carries to his grave the neglected and unprofitable seeds of faculties, which it depended on himself to have reared to maturity, and of which the fruits bring accessions to human happiness-more precious than all the gratifications which power or wealth can command.-Dugald Stewart.

A Ship of War.-It is a mighty and comprehensive problem to contemplate all the essential elements connected with the construction of so massy and stupendous a fabric as a ship destined for the terrible purposes of war, which, in the magnificent voyages it undertakes, has to cross wide and immeasurable seas, agitated at times by the unbridled fury of the winds, subjecting it to strains of the most formidable kind;-which shall possess mechanical strength to resist these, and at the same time be adapted for stowage and velocity,-which is expected in all cases to overtake the enemy, and yet must contain within itself the materiel of a six months' cruise. These and many other complicated inquiries which the naval architect has to contemplate, must all be involved in the general conditions of his problem, the elements of which he must estimate while he is rearing his mighty fabric in the dock, and be prepared to anticipate their effects before he launches his vessel on the turbulent bosom of the deep.-Review of Hervey's Article, Shipbuilding, Edinburgh Encyclopædia.

Average Duration of Life.-Nothing is more proverbially uncertain than the duration of human life, where the maxim is applied to an individual; yet there are few things less subject to fluctuation than the average duration of a multitude of individuals. The number of deaths happening amongst persons of our own acquaintance is frequently very different in different years; and it is not an uncommon event that this number shall be double, treble, or even many times larger in one year than in the next succeeding. If we consider larger societies of individuals, as the inhabitants of a village or small town, the number of deaths is more uniform; and in still larger bodies, as among the inhabitants of a kingdom, the uniformity is such, that the excess of deaths in any year above the average number, seldom exceeds a small fractional part of the whole. In the two periods, each of fifteen years, beginning at 1780, the number of deaths occurring in England and Wales in any year did not fall short of, or exceed, the average number one-thirteenth part of the whole; nor did the number dying in any year differ from the number of those dying in the next by a tenth part.-Babbage on the Assurance of Lives.

How many minds-almost all the great ones-were formed in secrecy and solitude, without knowing whether they should ever make a figure or not! All they knew was, that they liked what they were about, and gave their

Lesson to Rulers.-The Chinese Emperor Tchou set out on a journey to visit the vast provinces of his empire, accompanied by his eldest son. One day he stopped his car in the midst of some fields where the people were hard at work. “I took you with me," said he to his son, "that you might be an eye-witness of the painful toils of the poor husband-whole souls to it. men, and that the feeling their laborious station should excite in your heart, might prevent your burdening them with taxes!"

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LONDON:-CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST. Shopkeepers and Hawkers may be supplied Wholesale by the following Booksellers:London, GROOMBRIDGE, Panyer Alley, Liverpool, WILLMER and SMITH. Paternoster-Row. Manchester, ROBINSON, and WEBB and SIMMS.

Bath, SIMMS.

Birmingham, DRAKE,
Bristol, WESTLEY and Co.
Derby, WILKINS and SON.
Falmouth, PHILP.

Hull, STEPHENSON.
Leeds, BAINES and Co.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, CHARNLEY. Nottingham, WRIGHT.

Dublin, WAKEMAN.

Edinburgh, OLIVER and BOYD.
Glasgow, ATKINSON and Co.

Printed by WILLIAM CLOWZs, Stamford Street.

THE PENNY MAGAZINE

OF THE

Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

April 30 to May 31, 1832.

10.]

HIGHGATE CHURCH.

brown bread while he can get white, unless he like the brown the best; nor drink small beer while he can get strong, unless he like the small the best. These are mummeries of a past age, when boisterous merriment was mistaken for happiness. The more the understanding is cultivated the more do we acquire a taste for quiet and unexpensive pleasures ;-and whilst we have fields and green lanes, such as Highgate offers, to wander through, and can know how to derive pleasure and instruction from the contemplation of " the meanest floweret of the vale," we may well forego the unmeaning shouts which once attended the general practice of being "sworn at Highgate," happy to have escaped the expense and the headaches which waited upon those fooleries, kept up by interested hosts and their idle and drunken hangers-on.

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Higngate Churcn.)

THOSE of our readers who take their "holiday walks " in the northern environs of London-and more delightful walks cannot be presented by the suburbs of any city in the world-will have observed, that in the course of last autumn, a tall Gothic spire had sprung up on the summit of Highgate-hill. This is the spire of Highgate church, which has been just completed*, and which is an honourable monument of the taste of Mr. L. Vulliamy, its architect. It is impossible to imagine a more beautiful site than that chosen for the church, or a style of building better adapted to the situation. The interior is extremely neat and commodious. The old Chapel of Ease, which stands near the Gate-house, was a very small and inconvenient place of worship.

Those who take a summer ramble to Highgate, to see this new church, need not now apprehend that they shall be compelled to be "sworn on the horns," if they stop for refreshment at any of the inns. The Horns, according to Mr. Hone, in his amusing Every-day Book,' are kept at each of the nineteen places of refreshment which Highgate possesses, and there are persons ready to officiate at this ridiculous ceremony, if the wayfarer desire it. But he sober-minded man is not now constrained to go through the farce of swearing that he will not eat

We gladly take this opportunity to correct an error which inadvertently crept into the Companion for the Almanac for 1832. The building of Highgate church was not suspended for want of funds,

and the cost did not exceed the estimate.

Vol. I.

[GEORGE CANNING.

A MONUMENT to the memory of George Canning has just been erected, by subscription, in Palace-yard. It is a colossal statue of bronze, executed by Mr. Westmacott. The attitude of the figure is, upon the whole, simple and grand; though, in one or two points of view, a little theatrical. The likeness of the orator is excellent. The above wood-cut will furnish a general idea of this fine figure. It is placed on a granite pedestal, bearing the inscriptionGEORGE CANNING."

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M

TRANSIT OF MERCURY.

marked by a straight line, uniting the nodes of Mercury Our readers would be prepared to observe the transit and extending both ways to the earth's orbit. (For sewhich took place on Saturday the 5th of May, by the veral centuries the earth will pass through those points hasty notice contained in our Supplement for April. early in May and November, although owing to an exWe fear, however, that owing to the state of the wea-tremely slow motion of Mercury's nodes round the sun, ther, few can have enjoyed the sight. The writer of this these periods are not absolutely invariable.) Thirdly. rticle watched during the whole time, and although the earth and Mercury must be on the same side of the there were a few short intervals in which the sun was par- sun; if they are on opposite sides, Mercury will pass be tially visible, he was totally unable to obtain a view of hind the sun, causing an occultation. the transit, owing probably in part to the unavoidable When these three circumstances combine, a transit delay in adjusting the telescope. The transit was, how-will take place; and it will be visible from all parts of ever, seen for a short time at Greenwich, Islington, and the earth on which the sun shines during any part of a few other places in the neighbourhood of London. the transit. At Islington a gentleman was able to measure the diameter or thickness of Mercury, an operation which can be performed during a transit with very great accuracy. We promised to explain how it happens, that although Mercury moves round the sun four times in one of our years, and might therefore be expected to pass between us and the sun very frequently, a transit is really an event of rare occurrence. In order to accomplish this, we shall make use of a comparison, the homeliness of which will, we trust, be excused, if it render intelligible that which is certainly difficult of explanation.

We will suppose ourselves to stand by the side of a circular pond of very clear water, and that we place a ball to float in the centre, of such a weight as to be half covered with water. Let this ball represent the sun, and the brink of the pond the orbit of the earth. Then the surface of the water will represent the plane of the earth's orbit, passing, as it does in reality, through the sun's centre.

Let the diameter of the circular pond be sixteen feet, then that of the ball which represents the sun must be rather less than an inch.

Now if there should happen to be a small globular insect, not quite the hundredth part of an inch in diameter, swimming along the brink of the pond in a direction (as we should view it) opposite to that in which the hands of a clock move, this insect would represent the earth.

We must next suppose ourselves to take a fine wire hoop, about six feet in diameter, and to hold it in the middle of the pond, so that one half of the hoop shall dip a little below the surface (about four inches), the other half rising as much above the surface, and the representative sun being in the centre of the hoop as well as in that of the pond. This hoop would represent the orbit of Mercury. For Mercury itself we must imagine a very small insect, of less than half the diameter of the earth's representative, to move round the hoop in the same direction as the other insect moves round the pond, but in a shorter time; so as to make rather more than four revolutions to the other's one. In completing its circuit, it is manifest that Mercury's representative must pass twice through the surface of the water. These points of the insect's orbit represent the nodes of Mercury; namely, the points in which Mercury's orbit cuts the plane of the earth's orbit. At the moment of rising through the surface of the water, the insect would be in the ascending node; when sinking through the surface, it would be in the descending node; and it is manifest that except when in or near one of these points it could not intercept any part of the other insect's view of the representative sun; it might appear to pass a little above or a little below the central ball, according as it happened to be above or below the water's surface, but not across the face of the ball, and, consequently, except as before, there could be no transit. Our ideal orrery will, we hope, make it apparent that a transit can take place only when the following circumstances combine. First, Mercury must be in or near to one of its nodes. Secondly, the earth must be in or near one of the two points in its orbit which would be

The transits of Venus are regulated by causes exactly similar to these which determine the transits of Mercury.

A DICTIONARY OF COMMERCE AND COMMERCIAL NAVIGATION; ILLUSTRATED WITH MAPS. BY J. R. MACCULLOCH, ESQ. 8vo. London, 1832. THE price of this book is fifty shillings, which may seem at first to be a great deal of money for a single volume. Yet we see here merely one of the wonders of the modern printing-press. With such economical compactness is this volume printed that, while nothing can be desired more beautifully distinct than is every page and every line of it, it actually, as is noticed in the preface, contains more letter-press, that is more words, than Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, in four large volumes quarto, published at eight guineas. Estimated even upon this principle, therefore, the work is really not a dear, but a very cheap one. The matter of which

it consists, if printed in the ordinary style, would have filled two folio volumes; the price of which would probably have been four guineas each. And here we have the whole in a much less bulky, less cumbrous, and in every way more convenient form, for less than a third part of that money.

But the quantity of information which is extracted in this Dictionary from other publications, to say nothing of what appears here for the first time and is to be found nowhere else in print, it would probably cost hundreds of pounds to collect by the purchase of the original works themselves. The most eminent works both in our own and other languages, on commerce, political economy, the arts and manufactures, and the sciences on which they are dependent, together with numberless parliamentary reports and other similar documents, have all been laid under contribution by the able and laborious author, to furnish the materials of this admirable performance. Of several of these scattered publications, indeed, we are presented in the present volume with a careful and complete analysis or summary, embracing everything of any value in their contents, and exhibiting the whole arranged in the most intelligible and convenient form. We may venture to say that there is no important source of information upon the subjects of which he treats which Mr. Macculloch has not consulted, and nearly all that is material in which he has not laid before his readers. The book is for all ordinary purposes really more useful than an entire library of the best works on commerce and commercial topics that existed previous to its appearance.

Although an expensive book, therefore, and consequently not one which a labouring man will think of purchasing, à book society could scarcely perhaps lay out a portion of its funds to better purpose than in procuring a copy of this Dictionary. It is an immense fund of knowledge and that of the most useful as well as the most universally interesting sort. We will abridge from the Preface an enumeration of the different subjects of which it treats. All the various articles which are the subjects of commerce are described under their English names, those which they bear in the other prin

cipal languages of the world being also given. The accounts embrace generally not only a description of the article and its uses, but a notice of its growth or manufacture, of its price, of the tests or marks by which its genuineness or goodness is ascertained, and of the history of the rise, progress, and present state of the trade in it. Accounts are given of all the chief places of trade with which this country has any intercourse; in which are stated what commodities are exported to and imported from them, what are their moneys, weights, and measures, and what are the institutions, customs, and regulations which prevail in them with respect to commerce and navigation. In this department of the work alone, there is collected a larger mass of authentic information respecting the trade and navigation of foreign countries than is to be found in any other English publication. The general principles and laws of commerce and commercial navigation are examined and explained in a series of elaborate articles under the heads of Commerce, Freight, Navigation Laws, Corn Laws, Registry, Salvage, Ships, Wrecks, and many others. The principles and practice of Commercial Arithmetic and Accounts are unfolded in articles on Book-keeping, Discount, Exchange, Interest, Annuities, &c. Besides a general article on Commercial Companies, there are separate accounts of all the principal associations of this description that exist in great Britain, including Banking and Dock Companies, the East-India Company, Water Companies, Mining Companies, Insurance Companies, and others. Every thing pertaining to the Excise and the Customs is elucidated under these heads, and also under the terms Importation, Smuggling, Warehousing, Tariff, &c. And finally, to all these are to be added a host of articles on subjects which it is not easy to classify, including Brokers, Canals, Coins, Colonies, Light-houses, Money, Partnership, Post-office, Rail-roads, Treaties, Apprentice, Auctioneer, Balance of Trade, Bankruptcy, Credit, Patents, Pawnbroking, Piracy, Publicans, Quarantine, and many more which it is unnecessary to enumerate. No subject in short has been omitted which can be properly said to be comprehended under the title of the work, or to belong to either the science or the practice of commerce.

This sketch will enable our readers to form some idea of the varied entertainment as well as instruction to be found in the volume. Whether read through, or used for occasional consultation, it is calculated to impart more information of a useful and interesting kind than probably any other single volume in any language. The labour and multifarious resources which such a work must have demanded are quite extraordinary for one individual to have brought to the task. Although Mr. Macculloch acknowledges, both in his preface and in different passages throughout the body of his book, his obligations to the assistance of several official persons, merchants, and others, we are not surprised to learn that he has been almost incessantly engaged upon it for upwards of three years;" while, as he remarks, "the previous part of his life may be said to have been spent in preparing himself for the undertaking." It is a work the accomplishment of which might indeed fitly crown a life-time of preparatory study.

66

NATIONAL PECULIARITIES.

A WORK has just been published (and it has had a considerable sale), entitled Domestic Manners of the Americans. By Mrs. Trollope.' In our notices of new books we had laid it down as a rule to confine ourselves to such works as we could conscientiously recommend as containing wholesome amusement or useful instruction; but we may properly depart from this rule when any thing appears, not of a useful but an injurious tendency, particularly if the work in question is written with spirit

and talent, and obtains a certain popularity. The dull and the stupid we may safely leave to themselves. Mrs. Trollope, an English gentlewoman, passed four years in the United States of America, so her statements come to us exempt from the suspicion of hasty observation. We are given to understand that she left England dissatisfied with the political and social systems of the Old World, and anxious to try the republicanism of the New. But dissatisfaction with one order of things does not imply the faculty of justly appreciating another; and to say nothing of an irritability of temperament, of a spirit of discontent, which we really do presume must exist to a considerable extent, to make England "with all her faults" so very insupportable, we would only remark that over-expectation is apt to lead to exaggerated disappointment, and that it is very natural that Mrs. Trollope, not finding America and the Americans quite so good as she had fancied them to be, should describe them as much worse than they are.

Besides these natural consequences she shews throughout her work the equally natural error of judging of every thing by a fixed English standard, from which all her liberalism never relieved her for a moment. Than this nothing can be less philosophical or just. Every state of society must have its peculiarities, its advantages. and disadvantages (if, as regards America, we can designate domestic trifles by so important a word) attached to it, and inseparable from it; and we have no more reason to expect certain graces and ornaments, distinguishing the fashionable society of an old country, in the hard-working people of a new country, than we have to look for the finish of a professional dancing-master in the hearty gambols of a peasant. In a new country where every man's hands are full of work, the usefu must predominate over the ornamental. The things after which Mrs. Trollope's heart yearned were dependent on the civilization of centuries,-on the existence of a body wealthy and idle enough to be elegant in all things. These are circumstances which the Americans may be acquainted with in after years, but which they can no more create suddenly, than they could cover their country with ancient seats and still more ancient baronial castles, or than we could convert our cultivated fields and convenient streams into the sublimities of their primeval forests and mighty rivers.

Far be it from us to attempt to disparage those amenities on which much of the pleasure of life and society depend, and which the Americans themselves will speedily be more generally possessed of; but still we can conceive, that, among the people she describes, the men who smoked and spat might be honest and industrious; that the women who would not submit to the name of servants, but called themselves helps, might be good servants notwithstanding; that the colonels who kept stores, and the majors who sold spirits, might be brave and efficient officers in the hour of need; that men pursuing such callings might sit in congress with credit; and that the gentlemen and ladies who ate with their knives might be in possession of an education teaching real politeness, without being initiated in all the mysteries of the silver fork.

We regret the talent misapplied in this book. We disapprove of its publication, because it tends to open those breaches, which an improved philosophy and years of peaceful intercourse between us and our trans-atlantic brethren, were fast closing up.

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Such a bridge must be very inconvenient, as the road way is bent like the cables.

[Intended Suspension Bridge over the Avon, at Clifton. SUSPENSION BRIDGES. WE avail ourselves of the permission of Mr. Brunel, iun., to copy his beautiful lithographic engravings of a Suspension Bridge about to be erected over the Avon, at Clifton. The above plate will furnish some idea of the beauty of the situation of this intended bridge; and the following particulars will give a notion of the boldness of the undertaking

Distance from centre to centre of piers
Height of roadway above water

700 feet.
240 feet.

Width of roadway, 20 feet;-two footways of 6 feet, 12 feet.Total, 32 feet.

The road being in the centre, the footpaths are on each side and outside of the chains and suspension rods.

The Egyptian gateways will be on a scale equal to those of some of the largest of the ancient models.

From the roadway to the top of the Sphynx will be about 100 feet. The gateway will be about 40 feet high in the clear. The base on which the south pier stands, will be 120 feet in height. The bridge is to be thrown across the river Avon, joining the high rocks on either side, called the St. Vincent Rocks, about one mile below Bristol; and consequently all the shipping of Bristol, including East and West Indiamen of the largest class, will pass under it.

It is considered by some that the notion of suspension bridges was derived from the rope bridges of South America. A very remarkable bridge of this sort, that of Penipé, is described by Humboldt, in his Vues des Cordillères; and, from a plate in that fine work, we copy the following representation of this bridge.

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There are several ancient suspension bridges in China and in Thibet sufficiently strong to enable a man with a load, and even a beast of burthen, to pass with security. But such structures are manifestly not to be compared to those splendid monuments of science which afford a safe and broad passage to any number of horses and carriages; and the situations of which are never productive of any inconvenience. The principle upon which suspension bridges are constructed is thus described::

supported on strong iron chains or rods, hanging, in "In these the flooring or main body of the bridge is to another. The points of support are the tops of strong the form of an inverted arch, from one point of support pillars or small towers, erected for the purpose. Over these pillars the chain passes, and is attached, at each extremity of the bridge, to rocks or massive frames of iron, firmly secured under ground. The great advantage librium, in consequence of which a smaller amount of of suspension bridges consists in their stability of equimaterials is necessary for their construction than for shaken, or thrown out of equilibrium, it returns by its that of any other bridge. If a suspension bridge be weight to its proper place, whereas the reverse happens in bridges which are built above the level of their supporters*"

The Europeans of the seventeenth century had conceived the principle of suspension bridges, and such a structure is described by Scamozzi, an Italian architect, in his work Del Idea Archi, published in 1615. Eighty years ago, the English threw over the Tees, at Winch, near Durham, a bridge of iron-wire, which served for foot-passengers. In the beginning of the present century, by means of chains placed close to each other, carrying cross-beams and planks laid longitudinally, we constructed bridges, over which workmen might pass with loaded wheelbarrows. Such were the bridges established on iron chains, and thrown from one eminence to another, for the purpose of carrying away the earth to be removed in order to disengage the blocks of stone * Encyclopædia Americana, vol. ii. p. 269.

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