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THE ARCHIMEDEAN BALLOON.-We had to record

A PRETENDER TO THE DUTCH MONARCHY.-For The Professor says:-"Take a branch of the some time past, a story has been circulating at the common barberry and put it under a drinking glass, Hague, more or less privately, and with certain va- with a small quantity of ether, for a minute at most riations of detail, which has quite an interesting if in the sun, and three minutes at most if in the aspect for the lovers of gossip, and is said to be re- shade, but at a temperature of not less than 59 of garded with no little anxiety by the Court. The sub- Fahrenheit, and when it is withdrawn, it will be ject is the claim set up by a personage who, accord- found on touching the stamina at their base, that ing to the account of persons professing to be well they have lost all their irritability, which will not informed, is no less than the heir of the Duke of return, in the first instance, until after a consideraBrunswick and the Princess Louisa, sister of the ble time; the influence of the ether having been late King William I. It seems that no effort is much stronger. In the second case, on the contrary, spared by authority to silence the story, but it is talk- the primitive irritability is recovered in half an hour. ed of in private, and allusions to it, guarded of course The plant may be etherized a second time, and this but sufficiently intelligible, are not wanting in gene- second etherization must not be any longer than the ral society. Without going into all the versions first, and after half an hour the plant resumes all its that circulate, the facts on which the various ac- vigor. To etherize a sensitive plant (mimosa counts mainly agree, appear to be as follows:-The pudica) the process must be continued for eight or party referred to was transferred in infancy to a re- ten minutes, and a proportionably longer time in spectable family in Holland, and brought up as their the shade. The acetic, chlorohydric and nitric ethers When quite young he was placed in the army, act in the same manner, but the sulphuric and where he saw service in the war of the Belgian re-acetic ethers are the most effective." volution. Afterwards he passed some years in France and Italy, moving in elevated circles. It was not until the death of King William I., whose successor on the throne appears to be influenced by a very different spirit in regard to the personage in question from that of his father, that the pretensions of the said personage began to take a definite form, although attention had been excited by the interest evidently taken in him by the late Sovereign. Those pretensions being repelled by the powers that be, after a protracted negotiation, the party has gone to America, where he is believed to be maturing new projects for the establishment of his claims. These, as already intimated, have reference to the marriage of the Princess Louisa, which was notoriously an unhappy union, but of which the issue, if issue there was, as appears to be now alleged, must be the rightful heritor of the title, with all the advantages belonging thereto, whatever may have been the state of conjugal relations between the Princess and her husband, if, as is asserted, he was born in wedlock. That his claim, however legal, will be resisted by the Court of Holland, may be inferred from the nature of the circumstances hinted at as attending his birth, and for some reasons of perhaps still greater cogency. The individual in question is said to be a man of about thirty-five, of prepossessing appearance and manners, and bearing a strong resemblance to the Royal family; a man of great energy, and endowed with a degree of firmness bordering on obstinacy-which, by the way, is a trait of the royal family also. If in some particulars his characteristics are less favorable, he appears to enjoy the esteem of many influential persons, and it is even alleged that his claims are sustained, though not openly, by many of high standing as well in as out of Holland.-Times.

THE EFFECTS OF ETHER ON VEGETABLES.-We have been much interested by an account, in the London Athenæum, of some curious experiments recently made by M. Clemens, Professor of Natural Sciences in the College of Vevay, Switzerland. The Professor's object was, to test the effects of ether on vegetable life and sensitiveness. The results of his experiments he has communicated in a memorial to the Academy of Sciences of the canton of Vaud, and these go to prove that vegetables are as susceptible to the effects of ether as are animals,

in our columns a few months since, how Mr. Gale
had succeeded in furnishing that purblind, deaf, and
giddy creature, the old balloon, with a pair of excel-
lent eyes and ears. We have now to state that Mr.
Joseph Pitter, of Hastings, has explained his plan for
constructing a new aerial machine on perfectly ship-
shape principles, having little or no affinity to the
aërial ship of nearly forgotten notoriety. The Ar-
chimedean Balloon is to be worked by paddles, and
steered with a screw; it is to have a handsome deck,
and above it, a long cylindrically-shaped silken
bag or sail, inflated with gas, and below the deck a
number of bags of gas are to be fastened, to add to
the buoyancy of the whole machine. Mr. Pitter
proposes to procure a motion at any angle with the
horizon, by the revolution of four paddle-wheels,
which have their float-boards broadways during any
required half of their revolution, and edgeways
while passing through the other half. A motion to
any point of the compass is procured by means of an
apparatus at the stern similar to the Archimedean
screw, and being made to revolve in a vertical plane
on an axis at right angles to the course of the ma-
chine, it brings the stern round to the right or left,
according to the direction in which the screw re-
volves, and the head of the machine is pointed in
the right direction. The probability is, however,
not very small, that the Archimedean Balloon,
when its powers are absolutely tested, will be found
an "airy nothing."--Jerrold's Newspaper.

among the visitors present at the Cambridge Instal-
M. LE VERRIER.-An English paper states that
lation was a gentleman whose advent occasioned
some interest. On the arm of the cheerful-looking
old Bishop of Norwich appeared a tall, fresh-color-
ed young man, dressed somewhat à la Françai
to wit, narrow coat collar, full skirts, and trousers
slightly plaited at the waist. You would not take
that jolly-looking young gentleman for a profound
mathematician and astronomer; on the contrary, he
appears just one of the lions you would expect to
find playing a match at billiards in a gilded café
on the Boulevards, or, with deference be it spoken,
clasping the waist of "La Reine Pomare" at the
Chateau Rouge. There goes M. le Verrier, the
discoverer of the new planet-the owner, if priority
of claim gives ownership, to all the lands, titles, and
domains of "Neptune."

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The following portrait of one of the most eminent men of THOMAS CHALMERS was born at Anthe age, whose recent decease has made an irreparable breach in the world of letters as well as in the sphere to which he more particularly belonged, will strike the reader as an ex

ceedingly brilliant and beautiful literary production. It is probably from the pen of Rev. Dr. Hanna, of Sterling, the editor of the North British Review, and son-in-law to the sub

ject of the article.

A lively but rambling article on Dr. Chalmers appears also in Fraser's Magazine, embracing much of the same ground more splendidly occupied by this article. It contains, how.

ever, a few anecdotes characteristic of the man, which are

new; we have added them to the article from the Review. ED.]

struther, in Fife, on the 17th of March, 1780,
and was early sent to study at St. Andrew's
University. From traditions still plentiful
in the North, his college career must have
been distinguished by some of his subse-
quent peculiarities-energy, good humor,
companionableness, and ascendency over
others. And it was then that his passion
for the physical sciences was first developed.
He studied mathematics, chemistry, and
some branches of natural history with more
than youthful enthusiasm, and with such
success that besides assisting his own pro-
fessor he made a narrow escape from the
mathematical chair in Edinburgh.
these early pursuits he never lost a linger-
ing taste, and in the summer holidays of
his mellow age it was his delight to give
lectures to youthful audiences on electricity
and the laws of chemical combination. His
attainments in these fields of knowledge
were not those of a mere amateur; but in
earlier life had all the system and security

To these powerful and affectionate tributes
we would gladly refer our readers, and our-
selves keep silence. By and by the grief
and panic so lately felt in our Northern Cap-
ital will subside into historic veneration, and
legitimate Biography will bring to light the
details of Dr. Chalmers's interior and most
instructive life. And then it may be possi-
ble for most admiring and indebted friends
to sketch his character with a pen that does
not falter and an eye that does not fill. He of an accomplished philosopher.
was too closely connected with this Review,
and it owes him too much to permit his de-
cease to pass without the earliest record;
but so close was that connexion and so great
were these obligations that our readers will
not wonder if the earliest notice is but
short.
10

VOL. XII. No. II.

For

And

though for some years they engrossed him too much, they afterwards helped him amazingly. Mathematics especially gave him the power of severe and continuous thinking; and enabled him, unseduced by a salient fancy, to follow each recondite speculation to its curious landing-place, and

each high argument to its topmost strong- though a minister, he was ignorant of eshold. And whilst this stern discipline sential Christianity. There was in nature gave a stability to his judgment and a much that pleased his taste, and he knew steadiness to his intellect, such as few men very well the quickened step and the glisof exuberant imagination have ever enjoyed, tening eye of the eagle collector, as he the facts and laws of the natural sciences pounces on some rare crystal or quaint and furnished that imagination with its appro- novel flower. But as yet no Bible text had priate wealth. They supplied the imagery made his bosom flutter, and he had not hidoften gorgeous and august, sometimes bril- den in his heart sayings which he had deliant and dazzling, by which in after days tected with delight and treasured up like he made familiar truths grander or clearer pearls. And though his nature was genial than they had ever been before; and, linked and benevolent-though he had his chosen together by a genius mighty in analogies, friends and longed to elevate his parishthey formed a rope-ladder by which he ioners to a higher level of intelligence, and scaled pinnacles of dazzling elevation, and domestic comfort, and virtuous enjoymenttold down to wondering listeners the new he had not discovered any Being possessed panorama which stretched around him. of such paramount claims and overwhelmConsecrated and Christianized, his youth-ing attractions as to make it end enough to ful science reappeared and was laid on the live and labor for His sake. But that disaltar of religion in the Astronomical Discovery he made while writing for an Encycourses and Natural Theology. clopædia an article on Christianity. The The first place where he exercised his death of a relation is said to have saddened ministry was Cavers, in the South of Scot- his mind into more than usual thoughtfulland, where he was helper to the aged min-ness, and whilst engaged in the researches ister. It was here that he made the ac- which his task demanded, the scheme of quaintance of Charters of Wilton-a minis-God was manifested to his astonished underter remarkable for this, that he did not preach standing, and the Son of God was revealed anything which he did not understand. to his admiring and adoring affections. The He did not fully understand the Gospel, Godhead embodied in the person and exemand he did not fully preach it; but those plified in the life of the Saviour, the remarkmoral truths and personal duties which he able arrangement for the removal and annidid comprehend, he enforced with a down-hilation of sin, a gratuitous pardon as the rightness, a simplicity and minuteness germ of piety and the secret of spiritual which cannot be sufficiently admired. To peace-these truths flung a brightness over latest existence Dr. Chalmers retained a his field of view, and accumulated in wonprofound respect for the practical wisdom der and endearment around the Redeemer's and lively sense of this Scottish Epictetus; person. He found himself in sudden posand though it is comparing the greater with session of an instrument potent to touch, the less, those who have heard him in his and, in certain circumstances, omnipotent more familiar sermons-discoursing the to transform the hearts of men; and exultmatter with a village audience, or breaking it down to the unlettered hearers of the West Port or the Dean-were just listening to old Charters of Wilton, revived in a more affectionate and evangelical version. In May, 1803, he was settled in the rural parish of Kilmany. This was to his heart's content. It brought him back to his native county. It gave him an abundance of leisure. It brought him near the manse of Flisk, and beside a congenial and distinguished naturalist. It was the country, with the clear stars above and the glorious hills around him; and it allowed him to wander all day long, hammer in hand and botanical box on his shoulders, chipping the rocks, and ransacking the glens, and cultivating a kindly acquaintance with the outlandish peasantry. But all this while,

ed to discover a Friend all-worthy and divine, to whom he might dedicate his every faculty, and in serving whom he would most effectually subserve the widest good of man. And ignorant of their peculiar phraseology, almost ignorant of their history, by the direct door of the Bible itself he landed on the theology of the Reformers and the Puritans; and ere ever he was aware, his quickened and concentrated faculties were intent on reviving and ennobling the old Evangelism.

The heroism with which he avowed his change, and the fervor with which he proclaimed the newly-discovered Gospel, made a mighty stir in the quiet country around Kilmany; and at last the renown of this upland Boanerges began to spread over Scotland, till in 1815 the Town Council of Glas

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