SCIENCE AND ART. The urn was filled with burnt bones, upon which lay an iron buckle bent together after having been exposed to fire, and which had probably belonged to a shield or head ornament; four fragments of a remarkable iron sword thirty inches in length, lay also above the urn; this had evidently been submitted to the action of fire, and then broken or bent together, as if to prevent the weapon being again used. It was generally supposed that the similar fragments of swords in the museum had become broken and injured by the effect of rust and time, but it would now appear that they were intentionally placed in that condition at the time of being deposited in the earth.-Athenæum. NORTHERN ANTIQUARIES.-An obliging corres- | iron articles. pondent has forwarded to us a report of the proceedings of the Society of Northern Antiquaries, which met at Copenhagen on the 27th ult. under the presidency of the Crown Prince. The most important publication of the Society during the past year, is an edition of the ancient Sagas of Iceland, embracing the annals of that island and its inhabitants from the ninth to the fourteenth century. The first volume contains two works by Iceland's earliest historian, Are, surnamed Frode or the Learned (b. 1068, d. 1148). In the latter are related the earliest voyages of discovery from Denmark, the Faroe Islands, and Norway, with the emigration to Iceland caused by the conquests of Harold Haarfager. To the Historical Monuments of Greenland, two supplements have been added by Dr. Pingel, who having resided and travelled for some time in that country, undertook to draw up a general account of the most important expeditions which have been made in modern times from Denmark and Norway, to explore the various localities which have been brought to light by the exertions of the Society. A new edition of Rafn's Memoir on the Discovery of America, being a supplement to his great work, the Antiquitates Americana, was laid before the meeting, together with communications from the American Section, confirmatory of the learned author's views and deductions. The Memoires, 1840-1843, contain a disquisition on the connexion between Sanscrit and Icelandic; a memoir of Einar Sokkason, the Greenlander, translated from the Icelandic; an account of human remains and remarkable antiquities found at Fall River, Massachusetts, &c. Remarks on two Icelandic chairs with ornamental carving and Runic inscriptions; and a description of the frontiers between Norway, Sweden, and Russia, in the Middle Ages, taken from an ancient vellum MS. It was stated that H.R. H. the President had caused several barrows on the Fockr island to be opened and examined during the preceding summer. In one of these was found an urn, surrounded and overlaid with COMBUSTION OF COAL.-The practical recommendations are, that the supply of air should be as free as possible; the entrance into the ashpit should not be less than one-fourth part of the area of the fire grate; the depth of the ashpit should be about two feet and a half, no advantage being found to result from its being deeper: the space between the fire bars should be 7-16th inch, but that depth should be regulated by the kind of coal used; for any kind of coal it should not be less than 3-8th inch, nor more than half inch; the fire bars were recommended to be made as thin as was consistent with their required strength; half inch in width had been found to be a good proportion. The space in the furnace above the fire bars was recommended to be made large, about three cubic feet to each superficial foot of fire grate, when such an amount could be obtained. The proper area of the flue was next considered with reference to the bulk of the products of combustion and their velocity, showing that the area requisite for the quantity chemically required was found to be much too small, and that in practice it should not be less than two square inches for the products of combustion from each pound of coal consumed in the grate per hour. Taking a furnace in which thirteen pounds of coals were burned on each square foot of fire grate per hour (which was stated to be a liquor contained in the young fruits becomes usual rate of combustion in steam boilers), the acid if they are cut from the tree and kept for area of the flue to every superficial foot of the some time. From the kernel the Indians fashion grate would be twenty-six square inches. The the knobs of walking-sticks, the reels of spindles, area of the chimney was recommended to be and little toys, which are whiter than ivory, and three-fourths of that of the flue. The mode of as hard, if they are not put under water; and if conducting the flue to the chimney, and the they are, they become white and hard again angles formed in its passage, were also consider-when dried. Bears devour the young fruit with ed. The time occupied by the gases in passing avidity." According to the Gardeners' Chronithrough the flues of a boiler, from the instant of cle, from which we derive the substance of our their generation to that of their reaching the information, the part of the kernel which is simichimney, was shown not to be of importance, lar to ivory is of the same nature as the meat of provided that the incandescent gases were to be the cocoa-nut; this kernel becoming very hard in subdivided, that all the particles were brought into several palm-trees, snch as the date, but not of contact with the boiler, and were made to part sufficient size to be of value to the turner. The with their caloric, as was the object in the con- noum, or forking-palm of Thebes, the fruits of struction of locomotive and other tubular boilers. which are called ginger-bread nuts at Alexandria, The amount of heating surface recommended was has a similar albumen, which is turned into in the proportion of eighteen square feet to each beads for rosaries; and that of the double cocoafoot of fire grate where the combustion was car-nut, or coco-de-mer, is also susceptible of a fine ried on at the rate of 13 lb. per square foot per polish.-Chambers's Journal. hour, though a larger amount might be employed in land boilers, where there was no objection against cooling down the products of combustion in a greater degree. The principles were stated to be applicable to all kinds of boilers, used either for land or for marine purposes.-Ibid. ARCHEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES.-M. Le Bas, a Member of the Academy, lately arrived at Athens from Caria, where he is said to have made important archæological discoveries. He was about to depart for Phocis; and intended to follow up the discoveries amid the ruins of Delphi, Ottfried Muller. M. Le Bas has caused to be fatally interrupted by the melancholy accident to modelled, at Athens (see ante, p. 527), for the School of the Fine Arts in Paris, all its finest reexpired, to supply that institution with the commains of sculpture; and hoped ere his term plete order of the four finest temples of antiquity. -Athenæum. ANTIQUITIES.—“To the north of Texas," says a traveller, "in the country situated between Santa Fé and the Pacific Ocean, are found immense ruins of buildings-temples or housesespecially in the neighborhood of the Rio-Puerco, and on the Colorado, in the west. On one of the branches of the Rio Puerco, at a short distance from Santa Fé, there are ruins belonging apparently to an ancient temple, remarkable for its extent. Portions of the walls are still standing. They are composed of enormous hewn stones, ce mented together. The temple must have occupied about an acre of ground, and had three stories. The roof is gone, but several chambers, all square in form, are still in a state of preservation. From the shores of the Colorado to the Gulf of Califor-cent. would give an amount of 10,000,000f. to nia, a country little frequented by Europeans, the traveller meets with imposing ruins at every step."-Ibid. Presse estimates at 2,500,000f. the expenses of the STATISTICS OF THE PARIS EXPOSITION.-The manufacturers in depositing their specimens at the Exposition. On the other hand, the amount of business transacted there is estimated at 100,000,000f. which at an average profit of ten per two months. This demonstrates the advantage which these expositions procure for the city of Paris every five years.—Times. 3,900 persons who have sent specimens there. visited the capital expend 15f. a day, that would Supposing that the 300,000 strangers who have produce a sum of 90,000,000f. which, added to 100,000,000 of purchases, would produce a circuTHE TAGUA NUT, OR VEGETABLE IVORY.-lation of capital to the amount of 200,000,000f. in This article, which is coming into pretty general use for ornamental purposes, is the produce of the palm found on the banks of the Magdalena, in the republic of Colombia, South America. The Colombians call it Tagua, or Cabeza de Negro EARL OF DURHAM.-A monument to the late (Negro's head,) in allusion, we presume, to the Earl is proposed for erection on Pensher-hill, near figure of the nut; and the term vegetable ivory the base of which runs the great Northern line of is given to it by Europeans, from the close resem-railway. "The design," says the Durham Adblance it bears, when polished, to the animal vertiser, "is an approximation to the Temple of ivory of the elephant's tooth. Almost all we Theseus, and is to consist of a rectangular base of know about it is contained in the following mem-solid masonry 97 feet long, and 54 in width, risorandum by the Spanish botanists Ruiz and Pa-ing 10 feet above the platform of the hill, and von, who give it the generic name of phytelephas surmounted by 18 lofty, open, equidistant color elephant plant, distinguishing two species, the umns, supporting at each end a magnificent pedimarcrocarpa, or large fruited, and the microcarpament, and on each side a broad, deep entablature, or small fruited. "The Indians cover their cottages with the leaves of this most beautiful palm. The fruit at first contains a clear insipid fluid, by which travellers allay their thirst; afterwards the same liquid becomes milky and sweet, and changes its taste by degrees as it acquires solidity, till at last it is almost as hard as ivory. The laid.”—Athenæum. which will serve as a promenade. The edifice will be at least 70 feet in height, and will be visible from a great portion of the surrounding country. The trench for the foundation has been dug down to the limestone rock, and in a short time the foundation stone may be expected to be DEATH OF DR. HOPE, LATE PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY.-We regret to announce the death of this learned gentleman, who for nearly half a century has filled the chair of Chemistry in Edinburgh University, which event occurred at his house in Moray-place, at about a quarter past one o'clock in the morning of Thursday last. The doctor's health has been failing considerably during the last few months, and on Friday, the 7th inst., we understand he was struck by paralysis, from the severity of which he never rallied. He had very nearly completed the 77th year of his age. At the close of the winter session before last he felt himself compelled, by increasing years to resign the professorship which he had so long and so ably filled.-Scottish Record. MR. THOMAS CAMPBELL.-This distinguished man-the most classical of our recent poets-died at] Boulogne on Saturday last. Time was, when such an announcement would not have been made without its prelude of lamentation; but as years advance, we feel that such bereavements have a solemnity too deep for the oft-repeated language of regret. Mr. Campbell, the tenth and youngest child of his parents, was born at Glasgow on the 27th of July, 1777 His father was a retired merchant; as the name imports, of old Highland family; and, according to testimony, an intelligent and cultivated man. The son of his age (for Thomas was born when he was sixty-seven) seems to have been early "laid out" for honors. An excellent education was given to him at the college of Glasgow, but the poet, like the rest of the fraternity, was but an idle schoolboy. His superiority, however, flashed out once or twice. He carried off a bursary when only thirteen, from al competitor twice his age; and won a prize for a translation of The Clouds' of Aristophanes, which was pronounced as unique among college exercises. When still a young man, Mr. Campbell removed to Edinburgh, and there made himself honorably known among the choice spirits of the place: devoting himself to private tuition. He published The Pleasures of Hope' in 1799, that is, in the twenty-second year of his age. So familiar has every line of that work become, that to dwell on it were absurd, to value it aright has now become difficult. Some aid to the adjustment of its place, however may be given, by comparing it, not only with the didactic and descriptive poems which had preceded it (Cowper's not forgotten), but also with the usual quality of attempts issued by youths at the years of discretion. · Now-a-days a reputation is claimed on the score of fragments and fugitive verses. were The Pleasures of Hope' was profitable to its author in more ways than one: since its success enabled Mr. Campbell to take the German tour, the earlier and later fruits of which the noblest lyrics of modern time, 'I'chenlinden,'-'Ye Mariners of England,' written at Hamburg with a Danish war in prospect,-"The Exile of Erin,' a gentler breathing of the affections, but also referable to the poet's casual encounter with some of the banished Irish rebels,may be all dated from this tour. How they ran from lip to lip, and from heart to heart, wherever the British tongue was spoken, is now "a dream of the days of other years." They live, and will live, so long as wood grows and water runs,-sacred as a cherished part of our thoughts, our language, and ourselves! Returning from the continent, Mr. Campbell again sojourned for a while in Edinburgh, and there wrote other of his celebrated ballads and poems. In 1803, he was drawn southward by the attractions of London. He married his cousin, Miss Matilda Sinclair, in the autumn of the same year; and at once commenced a course of literary activity of which few traces remain. A history of England (probably a continuation of Hume and Smollett's work) is mentioned by himself in a memorandum, to which we have had access. His conversational powers drew round him many friends: and to these probably, as much as to the liberal principles which he unflinchingly maintained from first to last, may be ascribed the interest taken in him by Charles Fox, who placed him on the pension list. After six years of anxiety, drudgery for the press, &c., and the other trials which await the working author, yet destroy no energy capable of better things, Mr. Campbell gave a proof that his poetry was not merely an affair of youthful enthusiasm, or of -retired leisure, That in trim gardens takes his pleasure, by publishing Gertrude,' and 'Lord Ullin's Daughter,' and 'The Battle of the Baltic-adding to a subsequent edition that most haunting, perhaps, of all his ballads, 'O'Connor's Child.' He was now in the zenith of his popularity: known as one who could discourse upon-as well as write poetry. In this capacity, he was engaged to deliver a course of lectures, at the Royal Institution: the success of these led Mr. Murray to engage him in the well-known Critical Essays and Specimens,' which established him on our library shelves as a prose-writer, and is the best of his unrhymed-not unpoetical-works. JAMES STUART.-April 11. Aged 116, James Subsequent publications may be charged with Stuart, commonly known by the name of Jemmy carelessness in collection of materials, and an un-Strength. certainty of style, incompatible with lasting rep utation. He was born on Dec. 25,1728, at Charleston, in South Carolina, United States. His father GeneIn the year 1820, Mr. Campbell entered upon ral John Stuart was a near relative of the Pretenthe editorship of The New Monthly Magazine, der Prince Charles. He left America when sevwhich was conducted by him with a spirit and a en years of age, and was a spectator at the battle resource worthy of his reputation, and of the then of Preston Pans, and witnessed the death of Col. palmy estate of periodical literature. If not prac- Gardiner and the flight of Johnny Cope. He betical and patient as a man of business, as an edi-held the triumphal entry of Prince Charles into tor he was brilliant. But he was busy with other Edinburgh, and was a spectator at the battle of things, during the ten years of his critical rule; Culloden. When about 20 years of age he enlisthe published his Theodric-the feeblest of his ed in the 42nd Highlanders, in which regiment long poems-he interested himself eagerly in the he remained about seven years. He was an enfoundation of the London University-he took an sign in General Wolfe's army, and fought at the active part in the cause of Greece (as subse- battle of Quebec; after that war he sold his comquently in that of Poland)-he was also elected mission, but very soon after he again entered the twice Lord Rector to the University of Glas- army, and served during the American war, and gow. In 1830-in which year he had to suffer was at the battle of Bunker's Hill. After this he the loss of his wife-Mr. Campbell resigned entered the Navy, and served under Rodney. the editorship of the magazine, and from that He was also for several years a sailor on board of time to his decease, the decline of health and en- merchant vessels. About sixty years ago he setergy became evident, in sad and steady progress. tled in Berwick-upon-Tweed, or rather in He established, it is true, The Metropolitan Mag- Tweed-mouth, and during that period he has azine; he successively published the The Life travelled the borders as a wandering minstrel, of Mrs. Siddons,' the Letters from the South,' scraping upon a wretched violin. He has had five The Life of Petrarch,' and lent his name edito-wives and 27 children. Ten of his sons were rially to a reprint and a compilation or two-but killed in battle-five in the East Indies, two at the oil was seen to burn lower and lower in the Trafalgar, one at Waterloo, and two at Algiers. lamp, year by year, and the social wit waxed He was short in stature, but of remarkable faint, or moved perplexedly among old recollec-strength; he is said upon one occasion, about tions, where it had formerly struck out bright 30 years ago, to have gone beneath a cart loaded creations. It was a sorrowful thing to see him gliding about like a shadow-to hear that his health compelled him to retreat more and more from the world he had once so adorned. At last he was missed from his accustomed places. It is melancholy, that he should have had to retreat abroad, in the decline of his days, to recruit shattered bodily powers and faded spirits. The end was not long in coming: but his name and fame will not be forgotten" to the third and fourth generation." Application has been made by Mr. Campbell's executors to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, for the purpose of ascertaining whether permission would be granted, on application, for the interment of his remains in the Poet's Corner of the Abbey. The answer, of course, was in the affirmative.-Athenæum. with hay, and carried it on his back for several yards. A fund was raised some time since which enabled the old man to spend the evening of his long and eventful life in comparative ease and comfort. He said a few weeks ago that he "had na been sae weel aff this hunder year." His death was caused by an injury which he received from a fall on Thursday April 4. The remains of this extraordinary man were, on Sunday, April 14, consigned to the tomb in Tweedmouth churchyard.-Gentleman's Magazine. CAPT. R. FAIR, R. N.-Lately.-At the Cape of Good Hope, Robert Fair, Esq. Captain R.N. and K. H. commanding the Conway 26. He was a native of the county Cork. His services were distinguished and eminently meritoMADAME THIERRY.-The Paris papers lament rious. In 1804, when master of the Beaver a touching calamity, which has befallen the his-sloop, with her boats and those of the Scorpion torian M. Augustin Thierry, in the death of his he assisted in cutting out the Dutch brig Atlanta, wife, who has a double literary interest, as a clev- of 16 guns; and while holding the same rank in er writer herself, and the amanuensis of her dis- the Amethyst, he was officially praised for his tinguished husband, in his blindness. Madame gallantry at the captures of the French frigates Thierry, the daughter of the Admiral de Quéran- Thetis, in 1808, and the Niemen, in 1809. Subsegal, smitten with admiration for the works of the quently, when lieutenant, he commanded a gunhistorian, had formed an ardent wish to soothe boat in the Walcheren expedition, and afterwards, the sufferings of his life, and lighten his darkness in command of the Locust gun-brig in 1811, he with the perpetual presence of a friend, and having drove ashore near Calais and caused the destrucbecome his wife, thirteen years have passed away tion of a French brig of war. He was also at the in a devotedness, the details of which it is affect-blockade and siege of Dantzic in 1812. The Loing to read, and her loss to this frail and sightless cust was paid off in July, 1814, and Lieutenant Fair man it is painful to think of. To the outer world appointed to the Tay 24, on the 5th Sept. followof literature Madame Thierry was known by hering. He subsequently commanded the Griper romance of Adélaide and her Scènes de Maurs revenue cruiser, received a handsome sword from aux dix-huitième et dix-neuvième Siècles. She Lloyd's for his humane and meritorious conduct was attended to her grave by the most eminent on some particular occasion, and was promoted to literary men in the capital, with the veteran the rank of Commander from the Royal Sovereign Chateaubriand at their head.-Ibid. yacht, Sept. 6th, 1823.-Ibid. brought to a close. If one individual was more BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. and we do not wonder that its publication should have ceased, when we see the prolixity, inaccuBiographical Dictionary.-Longman & Co. racy, and frivolousness of many of its later artiJust when we supposed that the Society for the cles. These are faults, however, to which much Diffusion of Useful Knowledge had committed of French biography is, to a greater or less extent, suicide, or was in so melancholy a condition exposed. In the English language we have no that it might be expected to do so, it announced dictionaries or cyclopedias that can pretend to its intention of publishing a complete Biographi- completeness in the department of biography, cal Dictionary; and seven half-volumes of this nor have the laborious Germans even attempted, great undertaking have already issued from the as far as we are aware, a work exclusively devopress. The desirableness of such a work, if writ- ted to a complete biography. So that the present ten in the spirit of liberality, and carried on with work must not only be regarded as a labor for uniformity, cannot be doubted, and at the pres-Great Britain, but a labor for Europe. ent time, abundance of material exists for ren- The work is, we find, intrusted to the editordering it much more complete than any hitherto ship of Professor Long, under whose superintendpublished. There are, however, many draw-ence the Penny Cyclopedia was successfully backs on the probable success of such a work; and amongst the most prominent is the want of a definite plan on which the whole may be executed, so as to insure the same amount of labor, not only to each article of like importance, but to each successive volume as it issues from the press; and this arises from the uncertainty connected with the sale of the work, as well as from the multitude of laborers required. In order to secure this necessary uniformity, a society which has no pecuniary profit as its end is more likely to succeed than a private publisher: at the same time the love of diffusing knowledge is a less energetic motive than the love of profits; and undertakings based on the former are more likely to fail than the latter. We hope, however, as the Society has had energy enough to commence this Dictionary, that it will be able to complete it. A great difficulty, and which will require vigilance in the superintendence of a work of this kind, is to secure impartiality. Unfortunately, this desirable end cannot always be accomplished. The writers of lives of others too frequently look at them through the medium of some prejudice, and instead of being supplied with materials for forming the estimate of the man, we have the distorted picture of him which his biographer has been pleased to draw. At the same time, the brevity required in a dictionary must always tend to keep down a one-sided development of character, and confine the writer to a statement of important facts. We have carefully examined the articles which have at present appeared in It must be admitted, that the Society has enterthese volumes, and have no reason to complain of ed on a great work, one that is wanted, and that any want of uniformity. There seems to have will do them great credit if they go on as they been, on the whole, a judicious apportioning of have begun; but still it will be asked with anxispace, according to the importance of the individ-ety, Will this gigantic work-the first seven halfual. In many of the longer articles the tenden-volumes of which have been devoted to the letcies of the writers are evident, and these are ter A-be completed? We hope that the Sociesometimes expressed so strongly as to warrant ty has well considered this question, and that it the supposition that they may not have been alto- has not rashly commenced a work which it is not gether impartial. The names of the writers, prepared to carry through.—Athenæum. however, being appended to each article, make them responsible. With regard to the style, execution, and completeness of the articles, they are, on the whole, superior to those of any biographical dictionary with which we are acquainted. The only one with which, for completeness, it can be compared, is the French Biographie Universelle,' but in this respect it has very greatly the advantage. In fact, we have often been surprised, in looking into the Biographie Universelle,' when we recollected the names of its editors and authors, to find how very generally its articles were erroneous and imperfect. The Supplement to this work is not yet completed, The volumes at present published carry the work to the end of letter A. We shall not attempt here to analyze or criticise any of the articles; some of them may afterwards form subjects for a notice in our pages. As far as the work has at present gone, there is a preponderance of classical articles, which arises from the great number of Greek names in A. Many of these are valuable contributions to our literature, especially those by the editor, Dr. Schmitz, Dr. Platé, and the one on Aristotle, by Professor Becker. In all the articles there are two points in which they are more accurate than any previous work of the kind, and these are the titles, dates, and places of the publication of books, and their editions, and the sources from whence the materials have been derived for the biography. Historic Fancies. By the Hon. George Sydney This book lies quite out of the beaten track. The spirit by which it is inspired is fresh-its style is new-its matter, and its mode of treatment, are equally curious and uncommon. It consists of about fifty different articles in prose and verse upon a great variety of subjects, some historical, some persona!, some literary, some controversial, but all bearing, as a whole, upon that general creed in religion and politics which was recently expounded in a more direct |