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is not so much the order of the authorities, will have succeeded to the offices and adminbut is due to the existence of a strong feeling istration of the German States, that country against them amongst the majority of the must, by internal necessity, give way to the present German academicians. The tradi- demands for liberty. It is sincerely to be tional Burschen-Comment, with all its rude wished that Heaven may grant to Germany and ludicrous appendages, begins to fall into a peaceful and steady solution of her internal utter disrespect, and is looked upon as anti- difficulties, and that her Universities may quated, useless rubbish, or as toys for insipid unite moderation with firmness, in the open freshmen. The actual generation of Burschen and untiring pursuit of free institutions. is a more refined class of men; they have In conclusion, it may be useful to recapityexchanged the gauntlet for a pair of kids, the late the main outlines of the picture, so as to cap of the corps (or association) for a common leave a more distinct impression of them as chapeau, the sword or rapier for a riding-whip a whole. The German Universities, which or a walking-stick; and it has almost ceased have many defects among much that is good, to be considered as a merit to provoke duels, bear distinct traces and marks of the soil on to besot oneself with beer, wine, and tobacco; which they are planted. They stand under or to go swaggering along the street with a the control of more or less arbitrary governprofessed view to annoy each Philistine, beadle, ments, and are to them the instruments for or night-guard, who may come in their way. educating a supply of officers and professional The old customs are only practised on the sly, employes, which those bureaucratical States and are carefully hidden from the eyes of the require in order to be governed. But the world, instead of parading in public as formerly; Universities fulfil their task not in a little or even the old slang is hardly ever used or re- slavish manner. As pre-eminently national ferred to, without provoking a smile on every institutions, they uphold the principle of unicountenance. Nor is it likely that the sober, versal admissibility, and exclude no doctrine, reflecting, and assiduous nature of the German no creed or nationality from teaching or students should make no reaction against the learning among them. They pursue an indecrude and boisterous tone of some of their pendent system of instruction which scorns comrades. It is in general but the smaller any but scientific authority; they omit all Universities which take delight in them, in mercenary means of stimulation, and expect order to bring some change into the uniformity their adepts to cultivate science purely for its of continual study in their rural towns. In own sake. They have sacrificed all the Berlin and Vienna little of the old students' practical business of education, because superhabits is to be met with.

intendence is thought at once contrary to The predominating spirit of the larger their constitution, and unsuitable to their stuGerman Universities bears of late reference dents, who are expected to educate themselves. rather to the political struggles of the country. Assiduity and enthusiasm form the leading It is certainly not the business of young men, features of the youth who frequent them, and nor of learned schools, to fight the battles of which, in spite of some habitual excrescences, their fatherland, nor to discuss what laws and are still found amongst them; they yield to constitution they will establish. But it was to Germany and to Europe a number of profound be expected that the Universities, which hold scholars, divines and philosophers, who unite in Germany such a pre-eminent rank, should a close-looking, microscopic understanding have also taken a leading part in the present with a wide and gigantic grasp of intellect. aspirations of Germany after constitutional Situated in the heart and centre of Europe, liberty. The academicians of Vienna and visited by strangers from all quarters of the Berlin have made themselves the avowed globe, the German Universities have acquired champions of popular reform; and if freedom a far-spreading influence on the world of has yet hardly begun to shed her beneficent letters, both by their position, and by the lustre over the middle of Europe, it is certain- nature of their intellectual stores. They ly not owing to a lack of patriotism and stand as the strongholds of modern European enthusiasm among the youth of the German intelligence, and form the safest and firmest high schools. The force and generality of the liberal sympathies among them is the most evident proof that, in the following decennium, when the generation of young men who frequented those schools in 1848 and 1849,

anchors of general civilization and knowledge. May they remain true to their trust, may they prosper and flourish, and never cease to infuse wisdom and learning into the generations that annually gather around them!

From Chambers's Journal.

ARTIFICER-SOLDIERS.

and eccentricities of the English language as Beal; and his mental endowments rendered him capable af grasping any subject, however deep, and turning it to profit both in his duties and in his daily intercourse with men. Late in his service, he attained proficiency as a draughtsman; and later still, an enterprising engineer in London submitted a plan for a system of sewers in the metropolis, which was accompanied by a report drawn up by this sergeant. He left the corps in April, 1849, with a pension of two shillings; and the knowledge and experience he acquired by application and travel, are now being employed, with advantage to his interests, in one of the settlements on the Rideau Canal, in Canada."

BEFORE the year 1772, the sole trade of the English army was fighting; and when handicraft industry came to be in requisition in the course of the service, civil mechanics were employed. During the progress of the works at Gibraltar, this arrangement was found to be highly inconvenient; for men who felt their services to be indispensable, and who were not amenable to military discipline, took the law into their own hands. It was in consequence determined to organize a company of soldier-artificers, to consist of stone-cutters, masons, miners, lime-burners, carpenters, smiths, and gardeners. This was accordingly done; the whole body mustering As a fellow to this, we present another secondsixty-eight men, officered by the engineers. corporal: "Greenhill was an intelligent man, This number was slightly augmented, and did pleasantly eccentric, and fond of antiquities. such good service in the works at Gibraltar, that, While with the expedition, he made a collection in 1787, a corps of six companies, of one hundred of silver coins of remote times, which, with laudmen each, was added to the army, but not with- able feelings of attachment to his native place, out violent opposition both in and out of parlia- he presented to the Perth Museum. His hair ment, and not without much clever sarcasm was as white as silver; but his beard, full and from Mr. Sheridan, directed at the ludicrous flowing, was as black as ebony. To the Arabs, idea of depriving artificers of their liberty, and putting them under martial law. In six years after, four companies were added for service abroad; in 1811, another addition was made, which brought up the strength of the corps to 2,861; and in 1813, the name was changed, and the artificers became the Royal Sappers and Miners of to-day.

he was quite a phenomenon ; but the singularity which made him so, did not save him on one occasion from being rudely seized by a horde of banditti and plundered, with almost fabulous dexterity, of the gilt buttons on his frock-coat. They had nearly finished their work, when Greenhill tore himself from their grasp; but finding a button still remained on the cuff, he, with auA quarter-master-sergeant presents the public dacious daring, pulled off the frock and threw it with a regular history of this corps, in two at them. Suspecting that their work was ingoodly octavo volumes, with numerous engrav-complete, the Arabs pounced on the coat, and ings, and written in a style that will pass the or- tearing off the remaining button, scampered deal of a corps of critics. But this is not sur-away to the hills again. When, some years prising; for the duties of these soldier-workmen later, the Niger Expedition was forming, Greennecessarily lead the higher spirits among them into science, and open out a boundless field for ambition. Still, while in the corps, they are sergeants at the best, being officered by the engineers; and after the most distinguished career of civil and military service, extending over a space of twenty years and more, they may think themselves well off if they are discharged with a pension of two shillings a day.

hill volunteered to accompany it. He had a notion that the service would be one of suffering and vicissitude; and the better to inure himself to its contemplated hardships, he submitted his body to rigorous experiments of exposure and self-denial, which, inducing erysipelas, caused his premature decease in October, 1840.""

Another singular character, who may yet be heard of in the world, is "Color-sergeant, John Hear this history of Second-corporal William Ross, a very ingenious mechanic, who, after his Beal: "He was educated for a Baptist minis-discharge in April, 1848, was appointed engineer ter; but an introduction to Dr. Olinthus Gregory at Runcorn, to attend to a small steam-fleet in failing to realize his hopes, he enlisted in the the canal, under the Bridgewater Trust. He incorps in 1828. His intelligence caused him to vented the drawbridge at the entrance of Fort be chosen for the two surveys of Ascension. He Albert, Bermuda, the largest of its class in any afterwards served at Bermuda, and at Halifax, military fortification, and which can be easily Nova Scotia. At the former station, he was worked by two men, either in throwing it across wounded by the accidental firing of a mine whilst the ditch, or pulling it in. Many years of his blasting rock, and submitted to the amputation life had been spent in perfecting a new system of portions of his fingers with stoical composure. of locomotion for ships. His great idea was the Wherever he went, he took with him a small construction of a vessel which should ride above but valuable library, and was well read in the the control of the waves, resting upon an arlatest issues from the press. Byron, Carlyle, rangement of large cylinders, to serve, like the and some abstruse German writers, were his piers of a bridge, as the natural supports of the favorite authors. No man in his condition of ship, and within which should be placed his relife was, perhaps, as conversant with the roots volving paddle-wheels, to be moved by steam appliances. By a very ingenious contrivance he provided that the sea, which should come in contact with the paddles, should not only be deprived of its resistance, but made to assist in the

The History of the Corps of Royal Sappers and Miners. By T. W. J. Connolly. In Two Volumes. London: Longman. 1855.

propulsion of the vessel. The speed he calculat-courage. Soldering the loading-hole of the ed to obtain by his system was almost incredible. cylinder was also a dangerous service. The neck Personal trials of an imperfect model, in the wa- and loading-hole were of brass soldered to the ters at Bermuda, convinced him of the practica- ironwork. As the hole was to have a disk of bility of his bold scheme. After quitting Run-metal soldered over it, after the cylinder was corn, ambitious of higher employment, he emi- filled with powder, with a plug and some clay grated to Canada, where he is pursuing the study between the powder and the disk, Mr. Taplin, and development of his novel notions of ship-a foreman in Portsmouth Dockyard, was building and locomotion. He received a gratuityquested to send one of his artificers to do it who and medal for his services in the corps, and was accustomed to that sort of soldering; but might have been promoted to the rank of ser- the man sent to do it was horror-struck at the geant-major, but, restless and speculative, he pre-idea of the thing, and declared he would not atferred to try what his mechanical genius would yield him in civil life."

In addition to these, we may mention Corporal John M'Laren, who, after a service of twentythree years, was discharged upon a pension of 1s. 7d. a day. He emigrated to South Australia, and became one of the pioneer-surveyors of the colony, where he still flourishes in the office of deputy-surveyor-general, at an income of £700 a year.

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tempt it for a thousand pounds! The hole was eventually soldered by one of the sappers, though unused to the work." This poor man was a person of varied acquirements, and assisted in executing the wood-engravings in Colonel Pasley's "Practical Operations of a Siege; " but he was given to habits of irregularity, and was pensioned a few years ago on one shilling a day.

In 1842, the diving operations against the same were resumed; and the following scene will give a further insight into the varied duties and dangers of the Sappers and Miners: "A dangerous but curious incident occurred this summer between Corporal Jones and Private Girvan-two rival divers, who, in a moment of irritation, engaged in a conflict at the bottom of the sea, having both got hold of the same floortimber of the wreck, which neither would yield

The adventures of the artificer-soldiers are sometimes very curious, their duties leading them into novel and interesting situations. When Sir Ralph Abercromby was devising measures for reducing Porto Rico, it was thought that if the lagoon bounding the eastern side of the island was fordable, it might be possible by its means to force the troops into the town. To ascertain the practicability of the passage, it was necessary to the other. Jones, at length, fearful of a colto make the survey in the middle of the night; and a private of the corps, David Sinclair, volunteered to accompany an officer of Sir Ralph's staff on this service. At the appointed hour, these adventurous men entered the lagoon together, and with the aid of a long staff, pushed their way across to the opposite slope, where they heard the sentries conversing as they walked their rounds. They returned in the same way; then coolly throwing away their staves, repeated the feat; and having returned in safety, reported the ford to be practicable. It is recorded that Sir Ralph praised our private for his gallantry, and presented him with a johannes-a piece of eight dollars.

lision with Girvan, he being a powerful man, made his bull-rope fast, and attempted to escape by it; but before he could do so, Girvan seized him by the legs, and tried to draw him down. A scuffle ensued, and Jones succeeding in extricating his legs from the grasp of his antagonist, took a firmer hold of the bull-rope, and kicked at Girvan several times with all the strength his suspended position permitted. One of the kicks broke an eye or lens of Girvan's helmet, and as water instantly rushed into his dress, he was likely to have been drowned, had he not at once been hauled on board. Two or three days in Haslar Hospital, however, completely cured him of the injuries he thus sustained, and these two submarine combatants ever afterwards carried on their duties with the greatest cordiality."

At the removal of the wreck of the Royal George, commencing in 1839, some of the iron cylinders, filled with powder, to be fired against We now exhibit these fearless men in quite the wreck, were damaged; and in this case the the opposite field of adventure: "Private James duty of unloading the cylinder to preserve the Weir was perhaps the most daring sapper in good powder was very hazardous. "Having re-building the stages for the observatories. Like moved part of the outer-casing of lead. Cor- the chamois, he could climb heights almost inacporal David Harris cut a hole through the side cessible, and stand or sit at work on ledges, coof the wood-work, by which, after emptying a pings, pinnacles, vanes, and pieces of timber, part of its contents, he got into the cylinder, and where scarcely any human being would dare to continually kept filling a copper shovel with venture without all the accessories and applianpowder, which he handed out from time to time ces which precaution could command for insurwhen full. At these periods only could any por-ing safety and preventing alarm. At Ely mintion of him be seen. When rising up in his hole, ster, the tower of which is about 200 feet high, he was as black as a sweep. To knock off the and at Norwich cathedral, the spire of which is powder, which had become caked either by wet the most elevated in England, being 327 feet or compression, he was provided with a wooden from the ground, he was as agile and self-pos wedge, and a copper hammer. Every precaution sessed as in an ordinary workshop. At Norwich was taken to prevent accident, such as putting spire, a brace broke under him, and he fell a disout the fires, laying hides on the deck, and wet-tance of nine feet; but in his descent he caught ting them occasionally, as well as working in hold of another brace, and thus saved his life. slippers. The duty was very unpleasant, and re- The accident did not in the least daunt him, for quired in the operation more than ordinary the next moment he was at work again, as cool

goods from him for about £700; and he bids fair in a few years to be a wealthy man."

and as brisk as ever. At Keysoe, in Bedford- to the steeple, and descended amid the cheers shire, the builder who contracted to take down a and wonder of the crowd who witnessed his fearportion of the spire was about to relinquish his ful exploits. The services of this daring man engagement as hopeless, but our adventurous were frequently alluded to with especial particuscaffold-builder was lent for the occasion, and larity by the provincial press, and alike insured the removal was soon accomplished. Weir took the applause of his comrades and the approbaup his ladders and fixed them; but before tion of his officers. He afterwards served on the placing the last one, he climbed the spire, un- exploration survey for a railway in North Ameriaided by scaffolding or supports, and, to crown ca. In May, 1848, he purchased his discharge, his success, took off the vane, and brought it and set himself up in business in Halifax, Nova down with him. He achieved a still bolder feat Scotia. His industry and mechanical ingenuity at Swaffham, in Norfolk. Upon a projecting soon brought him success in his new line of life, joist which he had fixed, and the dimensions and he received the appointment of superintenof which were 4 inches wide by 12 feet long, he dent to the Water Company in that town, which walked steadily forward to its end, at a height of he now fills at a salary, with other emoluments, about 120 feet, and with astounding coolness and of about £200 a year. On receiving this apdexterity performed his hazardous duty. At pointment, the Company purchased his stock of Thaxted, in Essex, he climbed the outside of the spire by the crockets, and at the giddy altitude of about 210 feet from the ground, sat upon the Throughout the volumes are many military creaking vane, and whirled himself round upon anecdotes of the Sappers and Miners, which reits grating pivot. This was on the 11th April, flect equal credit on the corps. In the following 1844. A drawing of the scaffold and stage was we see them not only pioneering an escalade, but given in The Illustrated London News of that acting as the forlorn-hope: "In the surprise of date. At Danbury, in July, 1844, his services Bergen-op-Zoom, on the 8th March, parties of were very distinguished. To take the initiative the company were attached to each of the or first step, in any one of these perilous services, columns appointed for the attack. was always the most important task; but how about forty men in all, who were provided with ever difficult or dangerous it promised to be, axes, saws, and crow-bars, and also a few ladders Weir never shrank from its performance. Climb- to scale the walls of the fortress. At about halfing the inside of the steeple, he reached its top-past ten o'clock the attack was made. The Sapmost sounding aperture, in which he secured a pers cut down the palisades, crossed the ditches, piece of timber. This projected some feet be- planted the ladders, and leading the way in the yond the spire. Upon the end of this joist he escalade, were the first soldiers on the enemy's stood, and after hauling up a ladder, fixed it upon ramparts. They then pushed forward to remove the projecting timber, and then ascended by the any obstacle that opposed the advance of the asshaking ladder to the top of the spire. There sailants, and persevered in their several duties he hauled up the block and tackle, made it fast till the place was captured."

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From the Gentleman's Magazine. sixty years after the discovery of America. Her brow gleamed and her feet were shod with VASCO NUNEZ DE BALBOA. the splendor of romance; for the most prosaic SINKING more and more into hopeless de-occupations of her sons, as they sailed over the crepitude, and proving by her frequent revolu- waters, were then the richest poetry. Her tions, not the power of renewing her vitality, lowest born started into heroes more wonderbut her increasing and incurable weakness and ful than the fictions of genius ever dreamt of; decay, Spain seems to be losing that last inspi- and the career of her obscurest mariner or ration of a dying people, pride in the fecund, soldier, had something of epic grandeur. The the brave, the strong, the majestic of the past. meanest adventurer ceased to be either vulgar She is forgetting her great men and great deeds, or vile from the atmosphere of magnificent marand leaves to foreign pens the celebration of vel which surrounded him. Yet only a few of the former and the record of the latter. Philip the Titanic race can mankind honor among its the Second, by a bigotry pertinacious, indomi- everlasting worthies. The most of them repel table, sublime, if ever bigotry can be sublime, us by their brutal lust, their grasping avarice, saved the Catholic Church, but ruined his or by the sickening stench of blood upon their country. As, in the nineteenth century, Spain garments. In signal contrast to such, the pushattered the stupendous empire of Napoleon; rer renown of him should be fervently cherished. so, in the sixteenth, she arrested the victorious who added the vast expanse of the Pacific to the march of Protestantism. At what a price to conquests already gained by his countrymen. herself, however, did Spain purchase the re- The late attempts to make the two enormous nown of snatching the tottering papacy from oceans one, by vanquishing the impediments ruin? Except through some tragical episodes, which the Isthmus of Darien opposes, give fresh she has been severed from Europe's grandest interest to the achievements of Balboa. M. movements, and in the presence of Europe's Ferdinand Denis, who has done so much to grandest industrialisms she has, rotting, lum- render the French familiar with Spain and Porbered with her sullen loneliness the Atlantic tugal's departed glories, will furnish us with and Mediterranean waves. It would be ab- the chief materials of the account we are about surd and false to deny the civilization which to present, in which the eminent qualities of a grew up by the side of or in the bosom of Ca- man and the astonishing circumstances of his tholicism; it would be equally absurd and false life in an age of the wild, the colossal, the proto deny that Spain, when at the apogee of her digious, dispense with the necessity of embelvigor, and in the full sweep of her conquests, lishment. was the mightiest of Catholic lands. But the Vasco Nunez de Balboa was born in 1475 Reformation-its religious aspects and bearings at Xeres de los Caballeros. His family was altogether apart-introduced new conditions noble but poor, and he had to create a destiny of social, political, scientific, and commercial for himself with his own quick brain and his development and success, which could not be own stalwart arm. But that was not difficult spurned without deadliest peril, and which when new continents and new seas were eveSpain alone had the daring and the madness rywhere summoning the bold to conquer them. scornfully to reject. What, three hundred Balboa was at first in the service of Don Peyears ago, was daring and madness, is now sim-dro Puerto Carrero Lord of Moguer. ply idiotcy and impotence. Spain, by some of her most recent acts, has proclaimed her determination to stand by a condemned, accursed, and exhausted theological cretinism. Abominations long buried she disentombs, and brandishes the bones as her weapons, and holds up the grave-clothes as her banner, in the face of the world. Those of her children who, like Balmez, would flatter her, may call this magnanimity, chivalry, martyrdom if they choose. By far other names would the wise deplore, and the stern denounce it. As an anarchy and helplessness in the very heart of the culture, the ideas, the enterprizes common to all the nations of the West, Spain is destined to become the spoil of the first foe that has the courage to attack her.

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then joined the expedition to the sea of the Antilles, which, partly for mercantile objects and partly for purposes of discovery, Rodrigo de Bastidas fitted out and commanded. The explorations of Bastidas had considerable and interesting geographical results, though that jealousy which seems ineradicable in the Spanish character, and which distinguished especially the Spanish navigators of the period, hampered and at last ruined the enterprize. Balboa settled down for a time as a planter at Salvatierra in the island of St. Domingo. His dissolute youth had not prepared him for such regular occupations as those in which he was now engaged: his ambitious audacities still more unfitted him for them; his affairs did not prosper. The Spanish colonists of Perhaps on no picture could the historian St. Domingo were in general loaded with lavish a more valiant glow, and a more enchant- debt, and the governor had passed a law foring opulence of color, than on what Spain, now bidding any individual who was pursued by a lazy, leprous, imbecile thing, was for fifty or his creditors from being taken on board a

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