Read Ebook: The Mirror of Literature Amusement and Instruction. Volume 13 No. 354 January 31 1829 by Various

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Some gigantic bones have been exhibited at New Orleans, but the place where they were found is not mentioned in the communication. They consist of one of the bones of the cranium, fifteen or twenty vertebras, two entire ribs, and part of a third, one thigh bone, two bones of the leg, &c. The cranial bone was upwards of twenty feet in its greatest length, about four in extreme width, and it weighed 1,200 lbs. The ribs measured nine feet along the curve, and about three inches in thickness. It had been conjectured that the animal to which these bones belonged was amphibious, and perhaps of the crocodile family. It was also supposed that the animal when alive, must have measured twenty-five feet round the body, and about 130 feet in length.

Our readers are doubtless aware that cochineal, so extensively used in this country for dying, is a beautiful insect abundantly found in various parts of Mexico and Peru. Some of these insects have lately been sent over to Old Spain, and are doing remarkably well on the prickly pear of that country; indeed, they are said to rival even those of Mexico in the quality and brilliancy of their dye.

Their naturalization may doubtless be extended along the shores of the Mediterranean, Sicily, and the different states of Greece. The prickly pear is indigenous in those places, and by little cultivation will afford sufficient nourishment for the cochineal insects. We are also assured, that these precious insects were introduced last year on the island of Malta, by Dr. Gorman, on account of the government, and that they are likely to do well on that island.

The gardener at Cambridge could not inform Dr. Gorman how long the insects had been there, or from whence they came, but they went there by the appellation of "amelca bug." The gardener found these insects very destructive to plants upon which they fostered, and although he tried every means short of injuring the plants to remove them, he found it impossible, as they adhere to the leaves and parts of the stem with such tenacity, and are so prolific, that the young ones are often found spreading themselves over the neighbouring plants. On this account, it would be worth while to attempt the cultivation of the prickly pear in the open air in this country, and place the insects upon them, for in all probability the insects would, by good management, do well.

It is computed that there have been imported into Europe no less a quantity than 880,000 lbs. weight of cochineal in one year!

The following are the writers whose opinions have obtained the greatest celebrity, as advocates for particular systems accounting for the formation and subsequent alteration of the earth:--

Burnet's theory supposes this crust to have been broken for the production of the deluge.

Leibnitz and Buffon believed the earth to have been liquefied by fire; in fact, that it is an extinguished sun or vitrified globe, whose surface has been operated upon by a deluge. The latter assumes that the earth was 75,000 years in cooling to its present temperature, and that, in 98,000 years more, productive nature must be finally extinguished.

Woodward considered there was a temporary dissolution of the elements of the globe, during which period the extraneous fossils became incorporated with the general mass.

De Luc, Dolomieu, and, finally Baron Cuvier, unite in the opinion, that the phenomena exhibited by the earth, particularly the alternate deposits of terrestrial and marine productions, can only be satisfactorily accounted for by a series of revolutions similar to the deluge.

Among the singular views entertained by men of genius, in the infancy of the science, are those of Whiston, "who fancied that the earth was created from the atmosphere of one comet, and deluged by the tail of another;" and that, for their sins, the antediluvian population were drowned; "except the fishes, whose passions were less violent."

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE CLIFFORDS OF CRAVEN.

There is no district in England which abounds in more beautiful and romantic scenery than the remote and rarely visited district of Craven, in Yorkshire. Its long ridge of low and irregular hills, terminating at last in the enormous masses of Pennygent and Ingleborough,--its deep and secluded valleys, containing within their hoary ramparts of gray limestone fertile fields and pleasant pasturages,--its wide-spreading moors, covered with the different species of moss and ling, and fern and bent-grass, which variegate the brown livery of the heath, and break its sombre uniformity,--its crystal streams of unwearied rapidity, now winding a silent course "in infant pride" through the willows and sedges which fringe their banks, and now bounding with impetuous rage over the broken ledges of rock, which seek in vain to impede their progress from the mountains,--its indigenous woods of yew, and beech, and ash, and alder, which have waved in the winds of centuries, and which still flourish in green old age on the sides and summits of the smaller declivities,--its projecting crags, which fling additional gloom over the melancholy tarns that repose in dismal grandeur at their feet,--its hamlets, and towns, and ivy-mantled churches, which remind the visiter of their antiquity by the rudeness, and convince him of their durability by the massiveness of their construction,--these are all features in the landscape which require to be seen only once, to be impressed upon the recollection for ever. But it is not merely for the lovers of the wild, and beautiful, and picturesque, that the localities of Craven possess a powerful charm. The antiquarian, the novelist, and the poet, may all find rich store of employment in the traditions which are handed down from father to son respecting the ancient lords and inhabitants of the district. It is indeed the region of romance, and I have often felt surprise, that the interesting materials with which it abounds have so seldom been incorporated into the works of fiction which are now issuing with such thoughtless haste from the press of the metropolis. In Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven--which in spite of his extravagant prejudices in favour of gentle blood, and in derogation of commercial opulence, is still an excellent model for all future writers of local history--there is a ground-work laid for at least a dozen ordinary novels. To say nothing of the legendary tales, which the peasantry relate of the minor families of the district, of the Bracewells, the Tempests, the Lysters, the Romilies, and the Nortons,--whose White Doe, however, has been immortalized by the poetry of Wordsworth,--can any thing be more pregnant with romantic adventure than the fortunes of the successive chieftains of the lordly line of Clifford? Their first introduction to the North, owing to a love-match made by a poor knight of Herefordshire with the wealthy heiress of the Viponts and the Vesys! Their rising greatness, to the merited disgrace and death of Piers de Gavestone and his profligate minions! and their final exaltation to the highest honours of the British peerage, which they have now enjoyed for five hundred years, to the strong hand and unblenching heart with which they have always welcomed the assaults of their most powerful enemies! Of the first ten lords of Skipton castle, four died in the field and one upon the scaffold! The "black-faced Clifford," who sullied the glory which he acquired by his gallantry at the battle of Sandal, by murdering his youthful prisoner the Earl of Rutland, in cold blood, at the termination of it, has gained a passport to an odious immortality from the soaring genius of the bard of Avon. But his real fate is far more striking, both in a moral and in a poetical point of view, than that assigned to him by our great dramatist. On the evening before the battle of Towton Field, and after the termination of the skirmish which preceded it, an unknown archer shot him in the throat, as he was putting off his gorget, and so avenged the wretched victims, whose blood he had shed like water upon Wakefield Bridge. The vengeance of the Yorkists was not, however, satiated by the death of the Butcher, as Leland informs us that they called him:--for they attainted him, in the first year of the reign of Edward the Fourth, and granted his estates, a few years afterwards, to the Duke of Gloucester, who retained them in his iron grasp till he lost them with his crown and life at the battle of Bosworth. The history of his son is a romance ready made. His relations, fearing lest the partisans of the house of York should avenge the death of the young Earl of Rutland on the young Lord Clifford, then a mere infant, concealed him for the next twenty-five years of his life in the Fells of Cumberland, where he grew up as hardy as the heath on which he vegetated, and as ignorant as the rude herds which bounded over it. One of the first acts of Henry the Seventh, after his accession to the throne, was to reverse the attainder which had been passed against his father; and immediately afterwards the young lord emerged from the hiding place, where he had been brought up in ignorance of his rank, and with the manners and education of a mere shepherd. Finding himself more illiterate than was usual even in an illiterate age, he retired to a tower, which he built in the beautiful forest of Barden, and there, under the direction of the monks of Bolton Abbey, gave himself up to the forbidden studies of alchemy and astrology. His son, who was the first Earl of Cumberland, embittered the conclusion of his life, by embarking in a series of adventures, which, in spite of their profligacy, or rather in consequence of it, possess a very strong romantic interest. Finding that his father was either unwilling or unable to furnish him with funds to maintain his inordinate riot and luxury, he became the leader of a band of outlaws, and, by their agency, levied aids and benevolences upon the different travellers on the king's highway. A letter of the old lord, his father, which, by the by, is not the letter of an illiterate man, is still extant, in which he complains in very moving terms of his son's degeneracy and misconduct. The young scapegrace, wishing to make his father know from experience the inconvenience of being scantily supplied with money, enjoined his tenantry in Craven not to pay their rents, and beat one of them, Henry Popely, who ventured to disobey him, so severely with his own hand, that he lay for a long time in peril of death. He spoiled his father's houses, &c. "feloniously took away his proper goods," as the old lord quaintly observes, "apparelling himself and his horse, all the time, in cloth of gold and goldsmith's work, more like a duke than a poor baron's son." He likewise took a particular aversion to the religious orders, "shamefully beating their tenants and servants, in such wise as some whole towns were fain to keep the churches both night and day, and durst not come at their own houses."--Whilst engaged in these ignoble practices, less dissonant, however, to the manners of his age than to those of our's, he wooed, and won, and married, a daughter of the Percy of Northumberland; and it is conjectured, upon very plausible grounds, that his courtship and marriage with a lady of the highest rank under such disadvantages on his part, gave rise to the beautiful old ballad of the Nutbrown Maid. The lady, becoming very unexpectedly the heiress of her family, added to the inheritance of the Cliffords the extensive fee which the Percies held in Yorkshire; and by that transfer of property, and by the grant of Bolton Abbey, which he obtained from Henry the Eighth, on the dissolution of the monasteries, her husband became possessor of nearly all the district which stretches between the castles of Skipton on the south, and of Brougham, or as the Cliffords, to whom it belonged, always wrote it, Bromeham, on the north. The second Earl of Cumberland, who was as fond of alchemy and astrology as his grandfather, was succeeded by his son George, who distinguished himself abroad by the daring intrepidity with which he conducted several buccaneering expeditions in the West Indies against the Spaniards, and at home, by the very extensive scale on which he propagated his own and his Maker's image in the dales of Craven. Among the numerous children of whom he was the father, the most celebrated was the Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, whose long life of virtuous exertion renders her well qualified to figure as the heroine of a tale of chivalry. The anecdotes which are told of this high-spirited lady in the three counties of York, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, are almost innumerable, and relate to circumstances in her life, which, though some are impossible, and others improbable, are still all full of heroic interest and adventure. Her defence of Bromeham Castle against the intrusion of her uncle of Cumberland,--her riding cross-legged to meet the judges of assize, when she acted in person at Appleby as High Sheriff by inheritance of the county of Westmoreland,--her hairbreadth escapes and dangers during the great rebellion, are characteristics of the woman, so striking in themselves, that they would require little adventitious ornament from the writer, who should take them as incidents for poem or romance. Her courage and liberality in public life were only to be equalled by her order, economy, and devotion in private. "She was," says Dr. Whitaker, "the oldest and most independent courtier in the kingdom," at the time of her death.--"She had known and admired queen Elizabeth;-- she had refused what she deemed an iniquitous award of king James," though urged to submit to it by her first husband, the Earl of Dorset;-- "She rebuilt her dismantled castles in defiance of Cromwell, and repelled with disdain the interposition of a profligate minister under Charles the Second." A woman of such dauntless spirit and conduct would be a fitting subject, even for the pencil of the mighty magician of Abbotsford. A journal of her life in her own hand-writing is still in existence at Appleby Castle. I have heard, that it descends to the minutest details about her habits and feelings, and that it is that cause alone, which prevents its publication.

NOTES FROM THE QUARTERLY REVIEW--

An old acquaintance of ours, as remarkable for the grotesque queerness of his physiognomy, as for the kindness and gentleness of his disposition, was asked by a friend, where he had been? He replied, he had been seeing the lion, which was at that time an object of curiosity-- "And what," rejoined the querist, "did the lion think of you?" The jest passed as a good one; and yet under it lies something that is serious and true.

ANOTHER UNIVERSITY.

Greater changes have taken place in no single age than are at this time in progress; and the revolutions in which empires, kingdoms, or republics are made and unmade, and political constitutions rise and burst like bubbles upon a standing pool, when its stagnant waters are disturbed by a thunder-shower, are not the most momentous of those changes, neither are they those which most nearly concern us. The effects of the discovery of printing could never be felt in their full extent by any nation, till education, and the diffusion also of a certain kind of knowledge, had become so general, that newspapers should be accessible to every body, and the very lowest of the people should have opportunity to read them, or to hear them read. The maxim that it is politic to keep the people in ignorance, will not be maintained in any country where the rulers are conscious of upright intentions, and confident likewise in the intrinsic worth of the institutions which it is their duty to uphold, knowing those institutions to be founded on the rock of righteous principles. They know, also, that the best means of preserving them from danger is so to promote the increase of general information, as to make the people perceive how intimately their own well-being depends upon the stability of the state, thus making them wise to obedience.

The heart and mind can as little lie barren as the earth whereon we move and have our being, and which, if it produce not herbs and fruit meet for the use of man, will be overrun with weeds and thorns. Muley Ismael, a personage of tyrannical celebrity in his day, always employed his troops in some active and useful work, when they were not engaged in war, "to keep them," he said, "from being devoured by the worm of indolence." In the same spirit one of our Elizabethan poets delivered his wholesome advice:--

"Eschew the idle vein Flee, flee from doing nought! For never was there idle brain But bred an idle thought."

FLOGGING.

Little did king Solomon apprehend, when his unfortunate saying concerning the rod fell from his lips, that it would occasion more havoc among birch-trees than was made among the cedars for the building of his temple, and his house of the forest of Lebanon! Many is the phlebotomist who, with this text in his mouth, has taken the rod in hand, when he himself, for ill teaching, or ill temper, or both, has deserved it far more than the poor boy who, whether slow of comprehension, or stupified by terror, has stood untrussed and trembling before him.

THE SKETCH BOOK.

THE VISION OF VALDEMARO.

It was night; and by degrees, that sweet forgetfulness which suspends our faculties insensibly began to steal over me, and I fell asleep. In an instant my soul was transported to an unknown region. I found myself in the centre of a spacious plain, surrounded by groves of mournful cypresses. The whole enclosure was full of superb mausoleums, some assuming the shape of pyramids, whose lofty summits almost touched the clouds; and others the forms of altars, whose magnificence presented the most imposing spectacle. On all were engraved the epitaphs and sculptured insignia of the heroes who had been interred there. In various places I discovered coffins lying on the ground covered with sable palls, and bodies extended on the bare earth, meanly enveloped in miserable garbs.

I was indulging in these reflections, when, on a sudden, a hoarse and fearful blast of wind affrighted me. The earth rocked under my feet, the mausoleum waved to and fro with violence, the cypresses were torn up with tremendous fury, and, from time to time, I heard a sound as of fleshless bones clashing together. In a moment, the heavens were covered with black clouds, and the moon withdrew her splendour. The horror inspired by the darkness of the night, and the dead silence which reigned amidst the tombs, caused my hair to stand on end, and stiffened my limbs until I had scarcely power to move them.

In this dreadful situation, I saw an old man approaching me. His head was bald--his beard white--in his right hand he carried a crooked scythe, and in his left an hour-glass--whilst two immense flapping wings nearly concealed his body. "Thou," said he to me in a terrible voice, "who art still dazzled by the dignities and honours which mankind pursue with such reckless eagerness, see whether you perceive any difference between the dust of the monarch and that of the most wretched slave!" He spoke, and striking the ground a tremendous blow with his scythe, all these proud monuments fell headlong to the earth, and in an instant were reduced to dust. My terror was then redoubled, and my strength almost failed me. I could only perceive that there was no distinction. All was dust, corruption, and ashes. "Go," said he, "seek another road to the temple of immortality! Behold the termination of those titles of grandeur which men so ardently desire! They vainly imagine that, after death, they shall survive in history, or in marbles, which shall leap emulously from their quarries to form such monuments of pride as you have just beheld; but they are miserably deceived; their existence ends at the instant they expire, and their fame, however deeply engraven on brass and marble, cannot have a longer duration than that of a brief moment when compared with eternity! I myself, TIME, consume and utterly annihilate all those structures which have vanity for their base; the works which are founded on virtue are not subject to my jurisdiction. They pass to the boundless regions of another world, and receive the reward of immortality!" With these words he disappeared.

I awoke with a deadly dullness, and found that my sleep had been productive of instruction. Thenceforth I regarded, in a very different point of view, the pompous titles which before had dazzled me, and, by the aid of a little reflection, I soon became thoroughly sensible of their vanity.

K.N.

RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.

ORIGIN OF ISABELLA COLOUR.

HALBERT H.

FAMINE IN ENGLAND.

H.B.A.

OLD ADVERTISEMENTS.

ENGLISH FASHIONS.

Our constant changes of habit were the subject of ridicule at home and abroad, even at an early period. Witness the ancient limner's jest in 1570, who, being employed to decorate the gallery of the Lord Admiral Lincoln with representations of the costumes of the different nations of Europe, when he came to the English, drew a naked man, with cloth of various colours lying by him, and a pair of shears held in his hand, as in rueful suspense and hesitation; or the earlier conceit, to the same effect, of "Andrew Borde of Physicke Doctor," alias "Andreas Perforatus," who, to the first chapter of his "Boke of the Instruction of Knowledge," prefixed a naked figure, with these lines:--

"I am an Englishman, and naked I stande here, Musing in minde what rayment I shal weare: For nowe I wil weare this, and now I will weare that-- And now I will weare I cannot telle whatt."

THE GATHERER.

"A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles."

SHAKSPEARE.

CONNING

THE CHANGES OF TIME.

I dreamt, in Fancy's joyous day, That every passing month was May; But Reason told me to remember, And now, alas! they're all December!

Had we not lov'd so dearly, Had we not lov'd sincerely, Had vows been never plighted, Our hopes had ne'er been blighted, Dearest.

Had we met in younger days, Had we fled each other's gaze, Oh had we never spoken, Our hearts had ne'er been broken, Dearest.

Had you not look'd so kindly, Had I not lov'd so blindly, No pain 'twould be to sever, As now we may for ever, Dearest.

If yet you love sincerely, The one who loves you dearly, Then let the sigh betoken, Love for a heart you've broken, Dearest.

THE TRAGEDY OF DOUGLAS.

It may not be generally known, that the first rehearsal of this tragedy took place in the lodgings in the Canongate, occupied by Mrs. Sarah Ward, one of Digges' company; and that it was rehearsed by, and in presence of, the most distinguished literary characters Scotland ever could boast of. The following was the cast of the piece on that occasion:--

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