was not in danger, and that his sufferings not wish to draw upon herself such a were merely casual. Nothing remained prohibition, bad accustomed herself to of her uneasiness but a constant atten- write as it were flying; so that seeing tion, remarkable in a person of such vi- her always standing or leaning on a corvacity, to the cares necessary for his ner of the mantle-piece, her father could preservation. All her great intellect never suppose that he was interrupting was employed to serve him. But who her in any serious employment. To can express what she suffered in critical such a degree did she respect this little moments ? At Pisa, where he was foible of M. Necker, that she had not near dying, she compared herself to the slightest accommodation for writing Marshal Ney, who was then expecting in her apartment till long after she had his sentence every hour. Endmed with lost him. At last, when Corinna had talents, that preserved her from no sor- made a great noise in foreign countries, row, and augmented all she felt, she has she said to me, I have a great desire to since said, that she would write a book, have a large table; I think I have a the title of which should be, One sole right to one now.' unhappiness in life, the loss of a beloved object.' "This unhappiness was destined to be that of the young and unfortunate Rocca. That life so threatened, that frail reed, which had served for a moment as a support to an existence apparently so strong, was still less frail than that existence itself. However, he did not long survive her. Sorrow and carelessness of life, soon put an end to his short existence. He repaired to the fine climate of Provence, to breathe his last, and expired in the arms of a brother." "One of Bonaparte's ininisters having desired her to be told, that the emperor would reward her if she would attach herself to him, she answered, 'I was aware that a certificate of being alive is necessary to the receipt of an annuity, but I did not know that it required a declaration of love.'* "From her earliest youth she had acquired a habit of suffering interruption cheerfully. As M. Necker had forbidden his wife to write, lest he should be embarrassed by the idea of incommoding her on entering her apart ment, Mademoiselle Necker, who did * Our readers need not be told that there are always two sides of a story; that even angels have their de tractors, and devils their admirers. It is but fair, therefore, from the excess of our stores respecting Madame de Stael, to draw out a little sketch on the contra page of the ledger, which her biographer, of course, has not noticed." The following particulars are related at Paris by the Buon partists. During the first campaigns in Italy, where Napoleon established his reputation, Madaine de Stael often wrote long letters to him, and was not sparing in praises; her expressions breathed the most glowing enthusiasm. In the high flight of her mind she assured the General, with a bold and delicate turn, that they were created for each other. She even once touched upon matrimony; and hinted that she thought that the night oe ens in which a union accidentally formed, might be dissolved. Buonaparte never re * There were few moments of her life when she totally gave up labour. Her faculties most commonly predominated over her grief: and, as what she wrote always bore some relation to her sorrows, she could still write, when reading was insufficient to call off her thoughts from them. 'I comprehend nothing of what I read,' she said, and so I am obliged to write.' "But if her mind loved to form literary schemes, on the other hand it very quickly lost sight of her old productions. "When a work is once printed,' said she, I trouble myself about it no farther; it makes its own way as well as it can.' Except Delphine, which she reviewed carefully, because she had been censured on the score of the moral effect of this novel, I do not think that she ever read over one of her own books,she even thought of them so little that she forgot them all in succession. When an expression in them was quoted to her, she was astonished and said: "Did I indeed write that? I am quite charmed with it; it is excellently well expressed." Two of her friends, in concert, once remodelled her chapter on love, in The turned any answer to these letters. After his return from the Italian campaigns, at the great fetes which the government gave to him, Madame de Staci was unwearied in her attendance on Buonaparte. He al ways treated her with great coolness. Once she turned to him and said: It is reported that you don't love women? Pardon me,' replied he, I love my wife tenderly.' "Another time she asked him, What wonan, from the most ancient times to the present, he considered as the greatest?" That woman,' replied he, who has d had the most children.' Upon this she quietly tur away from him, but even in the sequel, did not give over her exertions to ingratiate herself in his fav t She endeavoured to obtain the situation of Dame du Palais to the Empress Maria Louisa, but without suc ces 9."Ed. * * * * Influence of the Passions, substituting and when it was, it said frankly, 'Here divine in the room of terrestrial, love. I am.'" When they read this piece to her she listened to the end with the utmost attention, quite enchanted, and eager to learn the name of the author." This is a very natural statement. We believe that most persons who have written much will recognize its truth. The almost absolute oblivion of ideas, consigned from the mind to paper, and the forgetfulness of important transactions in other relations of life united therewith, would form a curious subject of philosophical inquiry to any literary man. But to return to Mad. de Staël. "She was very patient under the seizure of her work on Germany; and when she was told that General Savary had sent the edition to the mill, in order to be converted converted into pasteboard, ◄ I wish, at least,' she answered, that be would send me the paste-board for my bonnets.' "She was conscious of her superiority, and has sometimes said of an author mentioned to her, 'He is not my equal; and if ever we enter into a contest, he will come out of it limping.' When yet very young, and at a time when she had rather a presentiment than any proof of her strength, I have heard her carry her hopes so high that I have much doubted her ever realizing them. Her auditors might sometimes be astonished at certain phrases, not often used, which she uttered with the greatest simplicity: With all the understanding I possess, with my talents, my reputation,' &c. She frequently repeated to her friends the praises she received in letters, but there was an extreme good nature in her self-love. It was not always present; Sir, "Once she was asked what book she would choose, if she were confined to the possession of one. After excepting the Bible, and the Course of Religious Moruls of her father, she said, that for the sake of thought she would take Bacon, as the author who seemed to her most inexhaustible. "Works of imagination transported her beyond conception. In this respect she had impressions of extraordinary vivacity; and when she made any discovery of this kind, she spoke of it in-cessantly. She could not avoid giving her friends the passages to read that had struck her, and joy was quite an event in her circle. René, the episode of Velleda, in the Martyrs; the scene of the burial, in the Antiquary; and the first poems of Lord Byron; gave her inexpressible emotion, and for a time renewed her existence." "Death, morally considered, gave her no alarm. She preserved so much tranquillity, as to wish to dictate to Mr. Schlegel the description of what she felt. Her thoughts were always turned with hope towards her father, and towards immortality. My father waits for me on the other shore,' she said. She beheld her father with God, and in God himself could see nothing but a father. These two ideas were confounded in her heart; and that of a protecting goodness was inseparable from both. One day, rousing from a state of reverie, she said: I think I know what the transition from life to death is ; and I am sure, that the goodness of God softens it to us. Our ideas become confused, and the pain is not very acute.' POWER OF ICE. From the European Magazine, January 1820. A FEW days ago, by mere accident, I met with the following very curious account of the force of ice. Huyghens, in order to try the force with which ice would expand itself when confined, filled a cannon, the sides of which were an inch thick with water, and then closed the mouth and touch-hole, so that none could escape. The instrument thus filled, was exposed to a strong freezing air. In less than twelve hours the ice within was frozen, and began to dilate itself with such force, that it actually burst the piece in two different places. Mathematicians brilliancy almost equal to its own. To have calculated the force of the ice increase the wonder, six cannons of upon this occasion: such a force, they ice, two bombs and mortars, all of the say, would raise a weight of 27,720 same materials, were planted before this pounds. From hence, therefore, we extraordinary edifice. The cannon were need not be surprised at the effects of three pounders; they were charged ice destroying the substance of vege- with gun-powder, and fired off; the tables, trees, and even splitting rocks, ball of one of them pierced an oak when the frost is carried to excess. plank at sixty paces distance, and two inches thick, nor did the piece burst with the explosion. Freezing is carried on much more expeditiously when the water is at rest, than when in motion. It is easy to assign the cause of this; as the ice is carried from one surface to another by filaments, the current is still destroying them as soon as formed; and it would be as difficult for a spider's web to be formed while the wind was breaking and blowing the threads that formed it, as it is for the frost to send forth its filaments in the proper order for the general congelation of a river. In very great frosts, however, rivers themselves are frozen. I have seen the Rhine frozen at one of its most precipitate cataracts, and the ice standing in glassy columns like a forest of large trees the branches of which have been newly lopped away. In general, the ice of northern regions is much harder than that of the more southern climates, and, though it contains more air, yet its contexture is much stronger by reason of the greater degree of cold by which it is congealed. The ice of Spitsbergen, and the Greenland seas, is so hard, that it is very difficult to break it with a hammer. In our own climate, we may in general form a very just conjecture concerning the duration of frost by the hardness of the ice. If in the beginning of the frost the ice is more hard and resisting than it usually is, the frost will continue long in proportion. A machine might, with a little ingenuity, be made, that would discover this hardness with sufficient precision. During the hard frost of 1740, a palace of ice was built, at Petersburg after the most elegant model, and the justest proportions of Augustan architecture. It was fifty-two feet long, sixteen broad, and twenty feet high. The materials were quarried from the surface of the river Neva, and the whole stood glistening against the sun with a However strange and unaccountable the building a palace with ice may appear, yet on reference to Guthrie's Geographical Grammar, I there find it recorded, that this edifice of ice was built on the bank of the river Neva, by order of Anne, Empress of Russia, constructed of huge squares of ice bewn in the manner of freestone; that the walls of the building were three feet thick, and in the several apartments there were tables, chairs, beds, and all kinds of household furniture made with ice. In front of the palace there were also pyramids and statues, which at the illumination of the icepalace at night had an astonishingly grand effect. The late frost produced quite a phenomenon at the back of the ColdBath-fields' prison, where the NewRiver Water Company's leading iron pipes cross the Fleet Ditch. The pipes not having been properly cemented, or the cement having worn away, the water had spouted up high in the air; and when the very severe weather was, it commenced freezing, and continued to freeze, till a large cascade or fountain of ice was actually formed, as white as snow, and about ten feet above the pipe, and reaching in large icicles, concocted together, nearly to the water in the ditch below. The bank was covered with a thick coat of ice from the spray which blew from the waterfall. The circumference of the frozen pile could not be less than eight or ten feet, at half that height from the pipe. At a distance, it was not possible to distinguish it from water spouting and tailing down; and when close to it, the ice looked so clear and beautiful, and the rarity of such an object being considered, made every one behold it with wonder and admiration. standard, where every meal ought to have its counteracting medicine. Had Shakspeare written now, in London, he surely would have altered the exclamation of Jaques,-for to be german to the matter, he should say : "As I do die by food," &c. In short, Mr. Accum acts the part of Dionysius with us; only the horsehair by which he suspends the sword over our heads allows the point gradually to enter the flesh, and we do not escape, like Damocles, with the simple fright yet it is but justice to acknowledge, that in almost every case he furnishes us with tests whereby we can ascertain the nature of our danger; and no man could do more towards enabling us to mitigate or escape from it. Advising our readers to abstain from perusing the annexed synopsis till after they have dined, that they may have one more meal in comfort ere they die, we proceed to the various heads under which the author ranges his dread array. Of all the frauds (says he in his preliminary observations) practised by mercenary dealers, there is none more reprehensible, and at the same time more prevalent, than the sophistication of the various articles of food. This unprincipled and nefarious practice, increasing in degree as it has been found difficult of detection, is now applied to almost every commodity which can be classed among either the necessaries or the luxuries of life, and is carried on to a most aJarming extent in every part of the United Kingdom. It has been pursued by men, who, from the magnitude and apparent respectability of their concerns, would be the least obnoxious to public suspicion; and their successful example has called forth, from among the retail dealers, a multitude of competitors in the same iniquitous course. To such perfection of ingenuity has this system of adulterating food arrived, that spurious articles of various kinds are every where to be found, made up so skilfully as to baffle the discrimination of the most experienced judges. Among the number of substances used in domestic economy which are now very generally found sophisticated, maybe distinguished tea, coffee, bread, beer, wine, spirituous liquors, salad oil, pepper, vinegar, mustard, cream, and other articles of subsistence. Indeed, it would be difficult to mention a single article of food which is not to be met with in an adulterated state; and there are some substances which are scarcely ever to be procured genuine. Some of these spurious compounds are comparatively harmless when used as food; and F ATHENEUM VOL. 7. as in these cases merely substances of inferior value are substituted for more costly and genuine ingredients, the sophistication. though it may affect our purse, does not injure our health. Of this kind are the manufacture of factitious pepper, the adulterations of mustard, vinegar, cream, &c. Others, however, are highly deleterious; and to this class belong the adulterations of beer, wines, spirituous liquors, pickles, salad oil, and many others, There are particular chemists who make it a regular trade to supply drugs or nefarious preparations to the unprincipled brewer of porter or ale; others perform the same office to the wine and spirit merchant; and others again to the grocer and the oilman. The operators carry on their processes chiefs ly in secrecy, and under some delusive firm, with the ostensible denotements of a fairand lawful establishment. These illicit pursuits have assumed all the order and method of a regular trade; they may severally claim to be distinguished as an art and mystery; for the workmen employed in them are often wholly ignorant of their hands, and of the purposes to which the nature of the substance, which pass through they are ultimately applied. To elude the vigilance of the inquisitive, and to ensure the secrecy of these mysteries, to defeat the scrutiny of the revenue officer, the processes are very ingeniously divided and subdivided among individual operators, and the manufacture is purposely carried on in separate establismments. The task of proportioning the ingredients for use is assigned to one individual, while the composition and preparation of them may be said to form a distinct part of the business, and is entrusted to another workman. Most of the articles are transmitted to the consumer in a disguised state, or in such a form that their real nature cannot possibly be detected by the unwary. Thus the extract of coculus indicus, employed by fraudulent manutucturers of malt-liquors to impart an intoxicating quality to porter or ales, is known in the market by the name of black extract, ostensibly destined for the use of tanners and dyers. It is obtained by boiling the berries of the coculus indicus in water, and converting, by a subsequent evaporation, this decoction into a stiff black tenacious mass, possessing, in a high degree, the narcotic and intoxicating quality of the poisonous berry from which it is prepared." Another substance, composed of extract of quassia and liquorice juice, used by fraudulent brewers to economise both malt and hops, is technically called multum. The quantities of coculus indicus berries, as well as of black extract, imported into this country for adulterating malt liquors, are enormous. An extract, said to be innocent, sold in casks, containing from half a cwt. to five cwt. by the brewers' druggists, under the name of bittern, is composed of calcined sulphate of iron (copperas), extract of coculus indicus berries, extract of quassia, and Spanish liquorice. * * During the long period devoted to the practice of my profession, I have had abundant reason to be convinced that a vast number of dealers, of the highest respectability, have vended to their customers articles ab solutely poisonous, which they themselves considered as harmless; and which they would not have offered for sale, had they been apprised of the spurious and pernicious nature of the compounds, and of the purposes to which they were destined. * The baker (he continues) asserts that he does not put alum into bread; but he is well aware that, in purchaing a certain quantity of flour, he must take a sack of sharp whites (a term given to flour contaminated with a quantity of alum,) without which it would be impossible for him to produce light,white,and porous bread, from a half-spoiled material. Other individuals furnish the baker with alum mixed up with salt, under the obscure denomination of stuff. There are wholesale manufacturing chemists whose sole business is to crystallise alum, in such a form as will adapt this salt to the purpose of being mixed GA 66 in a crystalline state with the crystals of common salt, to disguise the character of the compound. The mixture called stuff, is compos ed of one part of alum, in minute crystals, and three of common salt. In many other trades a similar mode of proceding prevails.. The practice of sophisticating the necessa ries of life, being reduced to systematic regularity, is ranked by public opinion among other mercantile pursuits; and is not only regarded with less disgust than formerly, but is almost generally esteemed as a justifiable way to wealth. It is really astonishing that the penal law is not more effectually enforced against practices so inimical to the public welfare. The man who robs a fellow subject of a few shillings on the high-way, is sentenced to death; while he who distributes a slow poison to a whole community, escapes unpunished. Concluded in our next. VARIETIES. From the London Magazines, January and February, 1820. BLACK-EYED SUSAN. YAY wrote his well-known ballad of Black-eyed Susan" upon Mrs. Montford,a celebrated actress,contemporary with Cibber. After her retirement from the stage, love, and the ingratitude of a bosom-friend, deprived her of her senses, and she was placed in a receptacle for lunatics. During a lucid interval, she asked her attendant what play was to be performed that evening? and was told, Hamlet. In this trage dy whilst on the stage, she had ever been received with rapture in Ophelia. The recollection struck her; and, with that cunning which is so often allied to insanity, she eluded the care of the keepers, and got to the Theatre, where she concealed herself until the scene in which Ophelia enters in her insane state; she then pushed on the stage before the lady who had performed the previous part of the character could come on, and exhibited a more perfect representation of madness, than the utmost exertions of the mimic art could effect; she was, in truth, Ophelia herself, to the amazement of the performers, and the astonishment of the audience. Nature having made this last effort, her vital powers failed her. On going off, she exclaimed "It is all over !" She was immediately conveyed back to her late place of security, and a few days after, "Like a lily drooping, she hung her head, and died." PROTESTANT SUPERSTITION. A silly book, called "A Narraive of the Visible Hand of God upon the Papists, by the Downfall in Black Friars, London, Anno Christi 1623," contains the following curious details: "On the Lord's day, October the twentysixth, according to the English account, but November the fifth, according to the Popish account, went far and near, that one Drury, a Romish priest, (a man of parts and eminent gifts,) would preach that day in the afternoon in a fair house in Black-Friers, London, whither all that would might freely come and hear him. Upon this report, very many Protestants, as well as Papists, schollars, as well as others, assembled thither about three a clock in the afternoon. That mansion-house was now inhabited by the French ambassador; and the sermon was to be in a garret, into which there were two passages, one out of the ambassador's withdrawing-room, which was private, the other more common, without the great gate of the said mansion-house. Under this garret was another large chamber, which one Rediate, another Romish priest, had hired for himself, unto whom Papists frequently repaired to hear mass, and make confessions. More came to this place than possibly it could hold; so that many, for want of room returned back again : others went into the aforesaid Redyates cham |