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enees with the Pope, (I speak of able entertainment to the reader, as persons who bear no public cha- it really was to me, after a long racter,) and the difficulty of obtain- stay in Rome, to take a trip to the ing them, are much the same at most remarkable places in the the court of Rome, as in those of nighbouring country, before we other princes. When a person has made proper application, and obtained leave to be admitted into his Holiness's presence, he is introduced with a great deal of ceremony, and finds the Pope seated to Tivoli, the ancient Tibur,

under a canopy on a throne ascended by three steps, with his right foot resting on a cushion of red velvet. He must kneel three times, once at the entrance of the chamber, again in the middle, and a third time at the Pope's feet, when he kisses his slipper, and receives his blessing.

It would be too tedious to give an account of all the pompous ceremonies at the Pope's coronation, which is performed in the gallery over the portico of St. Peter's church, where he is seated on a very high throne, in order to be seen by the people. Two cardinal-deacons take off his mitre, and place the tiara on his head, a kind of raised cap, encircled with three crowns one above another, and embellished with jewels of prodigious value. Then the Pope rises up, and gives his solemn benediction to a vast crowd of spectators, who fill the great square below, and the streets that lead to it; after which he is carried to his apartment in a grand procession.

take a final leave of this ancient metropolis. Being almost weary and surfeited with such a long feast on the delights of the city, our curiosity led us to pay a visit

whose situation is as beautiful as any in Italy. It stands on the side of a hill covered with olive trees for several miles together.

To be contiued.

To the Editor of the Oxford Entertaining Miscellany.

SIR,

I lately met with the following system of amusement, which a party of my friends, a few evenings ago, put into practice; and, Mr. Editor, it giving such, general satisfaction, I am induced to recommend it to the Public through the medium of your widelycirculated Pamphlet. I also send you a tale composed by one of the party, which I will thank you to insert after the description of the game.

Yours, &c.

J. G. P. High Street, Oct. 7th, 1824.

RATIONAL CARD PLAYING. The Countess of Bassewitz, of the court of Mecklenbergh

Now, perhaps, it will be an agree-Strelitz, in a letter written from

the German Spa, in the year 1768, sometimes enlivens the conversagives the following account of a tion with the most comical sallies. new and amusing sort of game at For people, whose business is wacards, which had been introduced [ter-drinking, I do not think this there by General Isemburg.

a bad amusement; it neither stupifies the mind with the empty sameness of cards, nor fatigues it with the stern reflection of Moor

ish chess and draughts. It stimulates emulation, employs the fan

Apropos of wit: you must expect none in this letter; for I spend it by handsful at a deuce of a game brought here by General Isemberg. Prince Lewis of Wolfenbuttle, is so intoxicated cy agreeably, and relieves the head with it, that he keeps us playing with mirth.” from morning till night. He, in the introductory letter: The following is the tale alluded to old General Deffing, Brigadier Chair, horrible, bell-rope, black, Schlipenbach, Marquis Angelini, snuff, hands, book, wretched. Stemdurg, Our friend, the author of "Fiction," Count Furstenburg, has favoured us with another Novel. Madam Bothmar, Miss SchulemIn one part of it the hero of the piece, berg, and I, commonly make Sir Samuel Wildbrain, details a dream the party. We have about five he had after returning from a gamhundred cards, with different bling house, where he had lost a con-words written on every one: we siderable sum of money. He relates it thus, "Dreams, brother Shuffleton, shuffle, cut, deal; and each rewe seldom can remember correctly, ceiving eight cards, is obliged to but I found myself sitting in a chuir tell immediately a story, or say in a most horrible place: lofty bare something else that has some sense, walls and beside me was a snuff just and contains the eight words on going out, which cast a gloomy aphis cards. I will give you an in-pearance round this antique and illstance: they dealt me last evening fire that burned blue to a degree, and looking place. I was sitting before a the following words: modesty, which brought to my memory all the cream-tart, address, jealous, hus- dreadful adventures through haunted band, ball, sense, beau, beard. mansions, related to me when young, Comes the story. "A beau at a and which now seemed realized. I ball used the utmost address to turned myself round, when my hair make a certain husband jealous ing a pair of hands nailed to the door! stood stiff as porcupine's quills at seebut as the husband had sense, and My candle was just now at last, and his wife modesty, all he got for the fire also was diminishing its rays. his trouble was a beard, well la- I cast my eyes round this black resithered with cream-tart." When dence and espied an old bell-rope. all have told their story, we play which I went to pull, but checked mythe cards round, answering the self, for, alas, thought I, who or what word given with some other kept wretched, being without hope. I feared may come. Now I was completely -back, so as to make sense. This to open the door-every limb trembled

the more as the candle spent itself. That ghastly thought would drink up By chance I found a book, and had

all your joy,

light.

just sufficient light to see a line or And quite unparadise the realms of two of its contents, and beheld in the lid of it, the name of my sister-this Safe are you lodged above yon rollsomewhat allayed my fright, when happily I awoke."

A WALK BY MOONLIGHT.

(Continued from Page 184.)

ing spheres:

The baleful influence of whose giddy

'dance,

Shews sad vicissitude of all beneath.

YOUNG.

I now pursued my lonely excursion, Such joys are prepared for the all awful and solitary, with my eye righteous which are unseen by morfixed on the unclouded arch of hea- tal eye, by mortal ear unheard, and ven, where suns unnumbered shine. unconceived by any human imagina. and worlds unnumbered roll; where tion! What a prop is here to support lightnings flash, and thunders awful, the soul under all the afflictions and roar; amazing amphitheatre! what disappointments of the present calamian august, what an admirable conceptous scene! were it not for this hope, tion (if human imagination can conwe should be, of all men, most miseraceive it,) does this give of the works of ble. Ye sons and daughters of sorrow, the great Creator! Thousands of commiserate your sufferings, I pity, thousands of suns, multiplied without I sympathise with you, whose life is end, and ranged all around us, at im- gall and bitterness of soul: but ex*mense distances from each other, attend your views, and a gleam of comtended by ten thousand times ten thou- fort beams on your benighted mind. 'sand worlds, all in rapid motion, Calm, regular, and harmonious; keeping the paths prescribed them; and these worlds peopled with myriads of intelligent beings, formed for endless progression in perfection and felicity!

-ye good distrest! Ye noble few! who here unbending stand

Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up

awhile,

And what your bounded view which only saw

A little part, deem'd evil, is no more; The storms of wintry time will quickly pass

Transporting reflection! when, oh! when will that happy period arrive, when my soul, disengaged from this corporeal prison, this tabernacle of And one unbounded spring encircle

clay, shall spurn this abject sphere, and wing its way to the region of immensity, there to contemplate unconfined the great Creator's works? not for a day, a month, or year, but for ever!

all.

THOMPSON...
J. L-

Varieties.

The Banyan Tree. The tree,

O ye blest scenes of permanent de- which by the English in the west

light,

Full above measure! lasting beyond

bounds!

Could you so rich in rapture, fear an end,

of India is called the Banyan
tree, by the Portuguese Arbor
de raiis, and by the Malays
Jawee jawee, possesses the un-

14

1

common property of dropping that this wire gave musical tones roots or fibres from certain parts sounding exactly an octave, and of its boughs, which, when they he found that an iron wire extend touch the earth, become new ed in a direction parallel to the stems, and go on increasing to meridian, gave this tone every such an extent, that some have time the weather changed. A measured in the circumference of piece of brass wire gave no sound, the branches upwards of a thou- nor did an iron wire extended east sand feet, and have been said to and west. In consequence of these afford shelter to a troop of horse. observations, a musical barometer In the year Near Manjee, twenty miles west was constructed. of Patna, in Bengal, there is a Ban-1787, Capt. Hans, of Basle, made yan tree, the diameter of which is one in the following manner : from 363 to 375 feet, and its thirteen pieces of iron wire, each shadow in circumference at noon 320 feet long, were extended from is 1116 feet. The roots or fibres his summer-house to the outer which the Banyan tree drops, court, crossing a garden. They when they meet with any obstruc- were placed about two inches tion in their descent, conform apart; the largest were two lines themselves to the shape of the re-in diameter, the smallest only on › sisting body, and thus occasion and the others about one and a many curious metamorphoses.

half; they were on the side of the house, and made an angle of twen

and

kept tight by wheels for the pur pose. Every time the weather changes these wires make so much noise that it is impossible to con

Musical Barometer.-A gen-ty to thirty degrees, with the horitleman at Burkil, by the name of zon; they were stretched, Ventain, not far from Basle in Switzerland, invented some years ago a sort of musical barometer, which has been called in the German wetter harfe (weather tinue concerts in the parlour, and harp), or reisen harfe, (giant the sound resembles that of a teaharp), which possesses the singular urn when boiling-sometimes that property of indicating changes of of an harmonicon, a distant bell, the weather by musical tones. or an organ. In the opinion of This gentleman was in the habit the celebrated chemist, M. Dobeof amusing himself by shooting at reiner, as stated in the Bulletin a mark from his window, and that Technologique, this is an electrohe might not be obliged to go af magnetical phenomina. ter the mark at every shot, he fixed a piece of iron wire to it, so as

Purchasing a husband.--Susan,

to be able to draw it to him at a country girl, desirous of matripleasure. He frequently remarked mony, received from her mistress

Pp

a present of a five-pound bank where I found the noise, which I note for her marriage portion. soon ascertained proceeded from Her mistress wished to see the the bottom of the vessel, increased object of Susan's favour: and a to a full and uninterrupted chorus. very diminutive fellow, swarthy The perceptions that occurred to as a Moor, and ugly as an ape, me on this occasion were similar made his appearance. "Ah, to those produced by the torpedo, Susan," said her mistress, "what a strange choice you have made!" "La, ma'am," said Susan, “in such hard times as these, when almost all the tall fellows are gone for soldiers, what more of a man than this can you expect for a five-pound note?"

or electrical, which I had before felt; but whether those feelings were caused by the concussions of sound or by actual vibration in the body of the vessel, I could neither then nor since determine. In a few moments the sounds, which had commenced near the stern of the vessel, became general throughout the whole length of the botMusical Fish.-The following tom. Our linguist informed us account of a musical phenomenon, that our admiration was excited said to be produced by fish, may by a fish of a flat oval form, like a not be unacceptable to our readers. flounder, which, by a certain conIt is taken from Lieut. White's formation of the mouth, possesses History of a Voyage to the China the power of adhesion to other Sea, and occurred to him at a spa- objects in a wonderful degree, cious estuary on the Douai river, and that they were peculiar to the

Cochin China:-"Our ears Seven Mouths (the part of the were saluted by a variety of sounds river where we then were): but resembling the deep bass of an whether the noises we heard were organ, accompanied by the hollow produced by any particular congutteral chaunt of the bull frog, struction of the soporific organs, the heavy chime of a bell, and the or by spasmodic vibration of the tones which imagination would body, he was ignorant. Very give to an enormous Jew's-harp. shortly after leaving the basin, This combination produced a thril- and entering the branch through ling sensation on the nerves, and which our course lay, a sensible as we fancied, a tremulous motion diminution was perceived in the to the vessel. The excitement of number of our fellow-travellers, great curiosity was visible on and before we had proceeded a every face on board, and many mile they were no more heard, were the sage speculations of the On the ship's return down the sailors on this occasion. Anxious river, the same submarine sereto discover the cause of this gra-nade again saluted the ears of the tuitous concert, I went below crew at the same place,"

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