the wall. The walls are 22 feet thick, and, as it is now turned into a house of entertainment, several apartments are hewn out of the solid wall. From the top is a beautiful prospect; nothing but an intervening forest prevents you from seeing Wolfenbüttel.

In the market is a fountain, whose waters are caught in an immense brazen basin, at least 16 feet in diameter. It is said that it used to be struck with hammers in case of fire, that the miners under ground in the Rammelsberg might hear it and come. It is reported to have been brought by the Devil, in one night, from Nordhausen, a distance of about 30 English miles. My guide was very firm in the faith, but was able to adduce no better argument, than that it was so related in a written writing.

'It is often, I do not know but commonly, said that it was at Goslar, that gunpowder was invented by Schwarz, the monk ; and that its first application was in the Rammelsberg mine. This, however, is entirely groundless. Gunpowder was not applied to the uses of the Harz mines, till in the fifteenth century, two hundred years after the battle of Cressy.'

To this succeeds a description of the descent into the copper mines at Goslar, of which we extract a portion.

July 4. We celebrated the independence of our native land by descending the mines at Rammelsberg. It was remarkable enough, that we found on a pane of glass in one of the windows of our room written, "Vivat Washington, bread and liberty," such a one from "Baltimore, 1791." It was a German name and a German thought: an American does not think of boasting of bread and liberty, and never knows, till he goes abroad, what a blessing he possesses in them; as no one knows how fresh water tastes, who has not had a fever six months, and drank every thing out of phials. We reached the Rammelsberg, which lies near two miles from the city at seven o'clock, and found no preparation made for our descent, and this cost us some delay. But one had as good complain of going fast before a gale at sea, as of delay in Germany. I heard a very intelligent and amiable man thank God, that the driving times of the French, when every thing moved as on wheels and wings, were past.

The mine at Rammelsberg is said in the popular tradition to have been discovered A. D. 968; but to the details of this tradition little credit is now given. It sets forth, that Ramm was a groom of the Emperor Otto I. and that having tied his horse on the side of a mountain, the horse with his hoof opened a nobler fountain, than that of Hippocrene of old, viz. a bed of silver and lead, of gold and copper. Now, as the mine was named for Ramm, so the city is said to have been named for his wife Gosa; and an old

stone, pretending to be a monument erected to them by Otto, was for some time exhibited. The ores now procured from this mine are sulphuric, as was mentioned under the head of the Oker. I think the descent of a mine must form "an era in any man's feelings," as Mr. Ogilvie says his oration did in Charles Brown's. I regretted that some accidental circumstances prevented our descent into the Rammelsberg from having its full effect on my imagination. The descent into the Biel's hole, a dark, gloomy, horrible cavern, made a sort of preparation, and took off the wire edge of the feelings, which would have been excited by the first entrance into a mine. Then, as we were to make a considerable journey on foot, we did not think it prudent to fatigue ourselves by descending too far. The entrance into this mine, being on the side of a mountain, you march upright into a long, dark, dreary passage, partly cut through rock, firm enough to sustain the superincumbent weight, partly supported by timbers at the sides and across the tops, and partly well arched round with the fragments of stone, broken out in digging it. This passage is just high enough to walk without stooping, and four feet wide. It is floored in the middle with plank, and the sound of the little cars or wheels by which the ore is drawn out, rolling and echoing at a distance like an earthquake in the mountains, was grand and solemn. As the car approached, the lamp of the miners twinkled more and more brightly, and I felt a shudder at their salutation in passing, "Glück auf," well up. This was repeated to us by every miner we passed, and often on passing unobserved the mouth of some cross passage, a hollow voice would issue from it with his ominous salutation, and make a man tremble. After proceeding about twenty five fathoms in this direction, we reached a perpendicular descent with a windlass working, by which ore was brought up, and men like demons gathered round to receive it and carry it off. The Egyptian darkness of the hole, into which the tubs of the windlass descended, the feeble light of the spot where we stood, the struggle and tension of the chords by which the loaded buckets come up, the solitude and remoteness of the scene in the bowels of the earth, where, if the mass above us fell, no human eye would rest again on our remains, united to produce impressions sublime and powerful. We waited a moment, and descended five ladders deep, and followed the pas sages through New Vein. Above us and around us were long green icicles of the sulphate of copper, and the air was filled with mineral vapours. These are said not to be unhealthy, existing probably in a state of great solution. The grandest sight in the mines to me was the water-wheels turned by the water of the mines, and applied to drawing up the ore, and pumping the lower

part of the works. Nothing is finer than the approach to such a great subterraneous wheel. It is first heard. The water, vexed and dashed upon it, roars down into its inferior channel, wearied, as it were, with being broken on this monstrous wheel; and this noise is heard and echoed all along the passages to such a degree, that one thinks, as he comes nearer, that he is approaching a great cataract, into which another step will plunge him. But one not only hears the wheel, one feels it; a strong chilly undulation is communicated to the air of these subterraneous caverns by the revolution of its broad and heavy wings. And when one approaches near enough to see it by the dim light of the lamp, the heavy sway of this great machine, the power with which it moves, and which it propagates, the gloom in which it is wrapt, which prevents one from seeing distinctly how it is hung, so that it seems rather some magical structure, which one dreads approaching; all this works powerfully on the imagination. There is one other spectacle, particularly in these mines, which we were not fortunate enough to see. As the ore is very compact and hard, it is impossible to break it off without some mechanical means of great efficacy. The ordinary process of drilling and blowing is too tedious and expensive for the worth of the ore. They accordingly apply fire. A large ueap of pine wood is piled up under the roof of the excavation, which they wish farther to loosen, and this is set on fire. One can imagine the terror and grandeur which must exist in the aspect of a raging fire, in one of these subterraneous caves, filled with sulphuric and pitchy vapours, and producing an intolerable suffocating heat. We got the miners, who are here obliged to work stark naked, to kindle a torch or two and wave about in the darkness; this, however, afforded but a faint image of the real fire setting, as it is called.

*

'At about 12 we arrived at Clausthal, and after dinner descended one hundred fathoms into the Carolina mine; it is 288 deep, but there were repairs below, which prevented our descending; thus fate seemed to oppose our fulfilling the wish of going to the bottom of the thing. Our guides, who were not regularly posted in that part of the mine, lost their way once, a very comfortable circumstance, a quarter of a mile under ground. We came up another mine, and made our egress into the open air, a quarter of a mile nearly, from the place where we entered. It was the Dorothea we came up, the deepest and richest of the Harz mines. After coming up from the mines we visited the mint, a small establishment of old date. About $11,000, mostly in silver pieces of about half a Spanish dollar in value, are coined weekly, and paid out in wages to the labourers; two hundred of the latter were dismissed the day we were there.'

ART. XV.-1. Construction construed, and Constitutions vindicated. By John Taylor, author of the Enquiry and Arator. Richmond, 1820, 8vo, pp. 344.

2. Observations on Public Principles and Characters, with reference to recent events. November, 1820, pp. 62.

EACH period of history has some topic of predominant interest, which indicates the prevailing spirit of the age. Certain words at different epochs are so frequently repeated that they become quite familiar, and appear in every page of contemporary annals, and then go out of use altogether except in history. Others rise up and mark the precedence of new ideas which are universally entertained in their turn, and give an impulse to all the movements of society. Carrying the banner of the cross against infidels, discovering new continents, and a new rout to India, papal bulls and excommunications had each their period of preeminence. Few in these days think much about excommunications, but when this term carried terror to the boldest minds, no use was made of another word, that is now of constant occurrence, and which is likely to go further and last longer, than any that has hitherto occupied the thoughts of mankind. Constitution is the

watchword of the day; this began to come into use pretty freely about sixty years ago, and has ever since been repeated in various quarters, till it is at length in the mouths of every people, is uttered in all dialects from the harsher ones of the Teutonic nations, to the more flowing tongues of Spain and Italy, and is reechoed from every hill and valley in the civilized parts of the earth.

The present aspect of the world, we mean that part of it possessed by the European race, whether inhabiting the old continent or the new, is deeply interesting to the philosophic observer. Under considerable varieties of feature and complexion, it every where offers a sympathetic expression. If we elevate ourselves to take a bird's eye view of it, we shall discern on all sides the progress of amelioration or at least a struggle for it. We shall hear the same cry for a constitution, even by some who know not precisely what it means; we shall perceive a universal feeling for a representation, sometimes without the understanding how to originate or define it; we shall observe on all this vast theatre a practical demonstration, or a vague yet strong conviction, that men have certain rights, which they are nobler and happier for enjoying, and among

all these various nations and climes, an irksome consciousness of the impolicy, and a determined struggle against the spirit of monopoly, whether it exist in governments, religion, or commerce; the progress of this struggle commonly beginning against the first of these by those who are most enthralled, and terminating with the last, by those who are most enlightened, who of course have already emancipated themselves from tyranny under the two former.

At the same time we shall discover throughout this whole survey, the vain and pernicious efforts of all governments, except those in North America, to counteract the spirit of the age. This opposition of sovereigns exhibits various degrees of alertness and violence in resisting the progress of reform, but all of them resist it; all of them look at innovation on the part of their subjects with aversion, and suffer it with reluctance. Some of these are influenced only by the love of quiet, others are goaded by the thirst of power, whilst others are infatuated with the belief, that they can return to those times, when their subjects, habituated to acquiescence, were satisfied or discontented, as affairs were prosperous or otherwise, but without thinking that they had any responsibility, or any right of interference in either case. As to quiet, it is not the characteristic of an age of improvement, but so long as governments attempt to resist the feelings of the period in which they live, they must govern not only in a state of perpetual irritation, but run the risk of the most dreadful calamities, and eventual destruction. The means of inquiry are too widely diffused, the spirit of improvement is too strong to be stifled. Nulla vestigia retrorsum is the present motto of mankind; their views have all taken one direction; the impulse is more or less strong according to their knowledge, and if those who are at the head attempt to check its onward course, they will be borne down and trampled under foot.

• The famous declaration of a very distinguished member of the Massachusetts Peace Society to the Spanish Cortez, which must have been dictated in a phrenzy of arrogance or of fear, and was afterwards retracted, is one striking instance. A still more remarkable, though more temperate and detailed exposition of the views of the courts of Europe, may be found in the confidential letter of the Austrian Minister, Prince Metternich, to the Minister of the Grand Duke of Baden, and which was probably a circular to the German powers. This document, inserted in some of our papers (among others the Boston Daily Advertiser of Oct. 25, 1820) from the English ones, bears all the marks of authenticity, and develops perfectly the actual views of the sovereigns of Europe.