Read Ebook: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal No. 438 Volume 17 New Series May 22 1852 by Various Chambers Robert Editor Chambers William Editor

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He left the apartment; was gone perhaps ten minutes; and when he returned, was a thought less nervous than before. I rose to go. 'Give my respects,' he said, 'to the good rector; and as an especial favour,' he added, with strong emphasis, 'let me ask of you not to mention to a living soul that you saw me so unmanned as I was just now; that I swallowed brandy. It would appear so strange, so weak, so ridiculous.'

I promised not to do so, and almost immediately left the house, very painfully affected. His son was, I concluded, either dead or dying, and he was thus bewilderedly casting about for means of keeping the terrible, perhaps fatal tidings from his wife. I afterwards heard that he left Elm Park in a postchaise, about two hours after I came away, unattended by a single servant!

Mrs Danby remained at the Park till the little Robert was weaned, and was then dismissed very munificently rewarded. Year after year rolled away without bringing Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot any additional little ones, and no one, therefore, could feel surprised at the enthusiastic love of the delighted mother for her handsome, nobly-promising boy. But that which did astonish me, though no one else, for it seemed that I alone noticed it, was a strange defect of character which began to develop itself in Mr Arbuthnot. He was positively jealous of his wife's affection for their own child! Many and many a time have I remarked, when he thought himself unobserved, an expression of intense pain flash from his fine, expressive eyes, at any more than usually fervent manifestation of the young mother's gushing love for her first and only born! It was altogether a mystery to me, and I as much as possible forbore to dwell upon the subject.

Nine years passed away without bringing any material change to the parties involved in this narrative, except those which time brings ordinarily in his train. Young Robert Arbuthnot was a healthy, tall, fine-looking lad of his age; and his great-grandpapa, the rector, though not suffering under any actual physical or mental infirmity, had reached a time of life when the announcement that the golden bowl is broken, or the silver cord is loosed, may indeed be quick and sudden, but scarcely unexpected. Things had gone well, too, with the nurse, Mrs Danby, and her husband; well, at least, after a fashion. The speculative miller must have made good use of the gift to his wife for her care of little Arbuthnot, for he had built a genteel house near the mill, always rode a valuable horse, kept, it was said, a capital table; and all this, as it seemed, by his clever speculations in corn and flour, for the ordinary business of the mill was almost entirely neglected. He had no children of his own, but he had apparently taken, with much cordiality, to his step-son, a fine lad, now about eighteen years of age. This greatly grieved the boy's mother, who dreaded above all things that her son should contract the evil, dissolute habits of his father-in-law. Latterly, she had become extremely solicitous to procure the lad a permanent situation abroad, and this Mr Arbuthnot had promised should be effected at the earliest opportunity.

Thus stood affairs on the 16th of October 1846. Mr Arbuthnot was temporarily absent in Ireland, where he possessed large property, and was making personal inquiries as to the extent of the potato-rot, not long before announced. The morning's post had brought a letter to his wife, with the intelligence that he should reach home that very evening; and as the rectory was on the direct road to Elm Park, and her husband would be sure to pull up there, Mrs Arbuthnot came with her son to pass the afternoon there, and in some slight degree anticipate her husband's arrival.

About three o'clock, a chief-clerk of one of the Taunton banks rode up in a gig to the rectory, and asked to see the Rev. Mr Townley, on pressing and important business. He was ushered into the library, where the rector and I were at the moment rather busily engaged. The clerk said he had been to Elm Park, but not finding either Mr Arbuthnot or his lady there, he had thought that perhaps the Rev. Mr Townley might be able to pronounce upon the genuineness of a cheque for L.300, purporting to be drawn on the Taunton Bank by Mr Arbuthnot, and which Danby the miller had obtained cash for at Bath. He further added, that the bank had refused payment, and detained the cheque, believing it to be a forgery.

'A forgery!' exclaimed the rector, after merely glancing at the document. 'No question that it is, and a very clumsily executed one, too. Besides, Mr Arbuthnot is not yet returned from Ireland.'

This was sufficient; and the messenger, with many apologies for his intrusion, withdrew, and hastened back to Taunton. We were still talking over this sad affair, although some hours had elapsed since the clerk's departure--in fact, candles had been brought in, and we were every moment expecting Mr Arbuthnot--when the sound of a horse at a hasty gallop was heard approaching, and presently the pale and haggard face of Danby shot by the window at which the rector and myself were standing. The gate-bell was rung almost immediately afterwards, and but a brief interval passed before 'Mr Danby' was announced to be in waiting. The servant had hardly gained the passage with leave to shew him in, when the impatient visitor rushed rudely into the room in a state of great, and it seemed angry excitement.

'What, sir, is the meaning of this ill-mannered intrusion?' demanded the rector sternly.

'You have pronounced the cheque I paid away at Bath to be a forgery; and the officers are, I am told, already at my heels. Mr Arbuthnot, unfortunately, is not at home, and I am come, therefore, to seek shelter with you.'

'Shelter with me, sir!' exclaimed the indignant rector, moving, as he spoke, towards the bell. 'Out of my house you shall go this instant.'

The fellow placed his hand upon the reverend gentleman's arm, and looked with his bloodshot eyes keenly in his face.

'Yours, fellow! Your wife, whom you have so long held in cruel bondage through her fears for her son, has at last shaken off that chain. James Harper sailed two days ago from Portsmouth for Bombay. I sent her the news two hours since.'

'What! what does he mean?' exclaimed Mrs Arbuthnot bewilderedly, and at the same time clasping her son--who gazed on Danby with kindled eyes, and angry boyish defiance--tightly to her side. Did the man's strange words give form and significance to some dark, shadowy, indistinct doubt that had previously haunted her at times? I judged so. The rector appeared similarly confused and shaken, and had sunk nerveless and terrified upon a sofa.

A wild scream from Mrs Arbuthnot broke the dread silence which had accompanied this frightful revelation, echoed by an agonised cry, half tenderness, half rage, from her husband, who had entered the room unobserved, and now clasped her passionately in his arms. The carriage-wheels we had heard were his. It was long before I could recall with calmness the tumult, terror, and confusion of that scene. Mr Arbuthnot strove to bear his wife from the apartment, but she would not be forced away, and kept imploring with frenzied vehemence that Robert--that her boy should not be taken from her.

'Give him anything, anything!' broke in the unhappy lady. 'O Robert! Robert!' she added with a renewed burst of hysterical grief, 'how could you deceive me so?'

'I have been punished, Agnes,' he answered in a husky, broken voice, 'for my well-intending but criminal weakness; cruelly punished by the ever-present consciousness that this discovery must one day or other be surely made. What do you want?' he after awhile added with recovering firmness, addressing Danby.

'The acknowledgment of the little bit of paper in dispute, of course; and say a genuine one to the same amount.'

'Yes, yes,' exclaimed Mrs Arbuthnot, still wildly sobbing, and holding the terrified boy strained in her embrace, as if she feared he might be wrenched from her by force. 'Anything--pay him anything!'

At this moment, chancing to look towards the door of the apartment, I saw that it was partially opened, and that Danby's wife was listening there. What might that mean? But what of helpful meaning in such a case could it have?

'Be it so, love,' said Mr Arbuthnot soothingly. 'Danby, call to-morrow at the Park. And now, begone at once.'

'That your son, dearest lady,' she answered, throwing herself at Mrs Arbuthnot's feet, 'is as truly your own child as ever son born of woman!'

All this was uttered by the repentant woman, but at the time it was almost wholly unheard by those most interested in the statement. They only comprehended that they were saved--that the child was theirs in very truth. Great, abundant, but for the moment, bewildering joy! Mr Arbuthnot--his beautiful young wife--her own true boy --the aged and half-stunned rector, whilst yet Mrs Danby was speaking, were exclaiming, sobbing in each other's arms, ay, and praising God too, with broken voices and incoherent words it may be, but certainly with fervent, pious, grateful hearts.

When we had time to look about us, it was found that the felon had disappeared--escaped. It was well, perhaps, that he had; better, that he has not been heard of since.

THE TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE.

To all appearance, the abolition of the taxes on the spread of knowledge through the press is only a matter of time. The principal of these taxes is the Excise-duty on paper, which, as we have repeatedly urged, acts most detrimentally on the issue of a cheap class of publications. The duty next in importance is that which is charged on advertisements. Our belief is, that a relief from this taxation would be a prodigious advantage to all departments of trade and commerce, as well as to various social interests. That the sum of eighteenpence should be exacted by the state from every person--a poor housemaid, for example--on advertising for a situation, is, to say the least of it, inexpressibly shabby. The stamp-duty of one penny on each newspaper is reckoned to be the third of these taxes on knowledge. There can be no doubt that this duty is a tax, as applied to those newspapers which circulate in a locality without going through the post-office; but, as matters stand, we are inclined to think that much the larger proportion of newspapers, metropolitan and provincial, actually are posted, either by the publishers, or by parties sending their copies to be read at second-hand. It is not quite clear that the remission of the stamp-duty would be an entire gain; for a postage of a penny in sending to second, third, and fourth readers--each fresh hand requiring to adhibit a fresh postage label--might come to a very much more severe tax than the existing stamp. Much, however, can be said on both sides; and we desire to let each party state its own case.

Such is a fair statement of certain advantages to be derived from the abolition of the penny stamp, and the substitution of the penny label. The advocates of the stamp-duty allege that, while the foregoing line of argument may be perfectly valid, something, on the contrary, is due to the advantage of having well-supported metropolitan newspapers as centres of intelligence. These newspapers, say some of their publishers, are put to vast expense for early news, foreign and domestic; such news they at present permit every one freely to copy; but, if a host of small country papers are to spring up, piracy of this kind will no longer be tolerated. As newspapers go pretty much on the principle of giving and taking in the way of intelligence, any tendency to prosecute on the ground of piracy would, in all probability, soon cure itself; and, therefore, we would not greatly rely on this as a reason for maintaining an exclusiveness in the business of newspaper publication. A more serious argument against the creation of a host of cheap local papers, is the probable dissemination of much petty scandal, and matter of a partially libellous or offensive character; at the least, much bad writing. Supposing, however, that there is a chance of literature being thus to a certain extent deteriorated, it will not do to oppose an improvement, if it be such, from fears of this nature. Should the matter treated of in small local papers be sometimes of an objectionable character, the public taste will surely go far towards its correction; and why should not each provincial town have an opportunity of educating writers up to the proper degree of literary accomplishment? It is undeniable, that small towns stand in pressing need of local channels for advertisements, and here, we think, is their strongest ground. How much more important, in a town of 5000 inhabitants, that the principal mercer should have his fresh arrival of goods advertised in a paper which circulates 500 copies in that town, than in some county-town journal which sends to it only some thirty or forty copies! A sale of growing crops must, in like manner, be much more effectually advertised in a paper which circulates largely in a small district, than in one which is diffused sparsely over a large one. All this, indeed, is amply proved by the tendency which has been shewn of late years, in Scotland at least, to set up unstamped monthly local papers containing advertisements, and by the comparative success which these journals have met with.

THE VEGETATION OF EUROPE.

It becomes necessary, first of all, to study the influences--whether general or special--which affect the distribution of vegetation; to inquire into those freaks or aberrations of nature which favour in one place the production of plants that will not grow in another, under apparently similar circumstances; and why similar plants are found in places widely separated. Oranges will ripen on one side the Alps, but not on the other; grapes scarcely come to perfection out of doors in England, while on the other side of the Channel they ripen by thousands of acres; and several fruits which fail in our northern counties, are grown without difficulty in Denmark in the open air. Investigation soon shewed that temperature alone, mere heat and cold, was insufficient to account for the phenomena; but that moisture and dryness, the prevalence of certain winds, the chemical and physical conditions of soil, and the constitution of the plants themselves, would have to be considered in a proper inquiry into the subject.

Here we must notice a fact which has proved of essential service in the study of botanical geography--namely, the discovery 'that there is some law presiding over the distribution of plants which causes the appearance of particular species arbitrarily--if we may so say it--in particular places;' from which, the conclusion has been arrived at, 'that countries have become populated with plants partly by the spreading of some special kinds from centres within those countries where they were originally exclusively created; and while these have spread outward into the neighbouring regions, colonists from like centres lying in the surrounding countries have invaded and become intermingled with the indigenous inhabitants.'

Looking at the effect of climate on vegetation, we find that as we proceed from the north towards the south, the number and luxuriance of plants increase in a remarkable degree, and the same result is observable in altitude as in latitude. 'Step by step,' writes Mr Henfrey, 'as the land rises in any mountain region, the vegetation assumes, more and more, a polar character; and in the mountains of the tropics, a succession of stages has been distinguished, corresponding in the general peculiarities of the plants which clothe them, to tracts extending horizontally, in succession, on the sea-level, from the base of these mountains to the frozen regions within the arctic and antarctic circles. Increase of elevation is accompanied by an alteration of climate, bringing with it a set of conditions analogous to those prevailing at certain distances further from the sun. Ascending the Peak of Teneriffe, a series of regions are traversed, one above another, displaying with the approach to the summit a continually closer approximation in character to the polar regions, till the traveller who left the palm, the cactus, and the thousand varied forms of tropical vegetation at the foot, finds himself at last among the stunted shrubs and scaly lichens, the borderers who hold the outposts on the limits of the eternal snow.'

But although these are marked as lines of equal heat, it is only in the average temperature that the equality consists; and it is clear that a country with 80 degrees of summer heat and 20 of winter cold, would have a very different climate from another with 60 and 40 as the highest and lowest degrees of temperature, although the mean of the two would be the same. And herein we have an explanation of what at first sight appear to be anomalies: we know, for instance, 'that plants will flourish perennially in the British isles which are killed by the frosts of winter in places lying considerably to the south upon the continent; thus the laurel, that bears our winters steadily in Ireland and the west of England, and is only affected by very severe frosts in our eastern counties, is killed by the winters of Berlin, equally fatal to the myrtle, the fuchsia, and a host of other shrubs which attain considerable age and size in the western portions of the British isles. Again, Canada, which lies south of Paris, has the climate of Drontheim, in Norway; while at New York, lying in the latitude of Naples, the flowers open simultaneously with those of Upsala, in Sweden. Moreover, those very countries suffering so severe a winter's cold, enjoy a summer's heat far exceeding ours, since the snow lies for months on parts of Germany which yet receive sufficient heat in summer to ripen the grape and Indian corn.'

The principal modifying causes are winds and water. Islands, and countries bordering on the ocean, have a much more equable climate than those which lie in the interior of continents, and will have a greater prevalence of moist south-westerly winds. The average annual quantity of rain in the British islands is from 28 to 30 inches; on the continent, it is less; the fall in Holland is estimated at 26 inches, and in Denmark and North Germany, at 20 inches--the greatest fall occurring in summer and autumn, as in England. Then with respect to winds, we find those from the west most prevalent over what Mr Henfrey distinguishes as the north European plain, as is the case in our country. 'The west wind blows more frequently in England than in Denmark, more there than in Russia. The predominance is most marked in summer; in the winter, the easterly winds are almost as frequent as the westerly upon the continent, which is not true of the British isles.' Sometimes, however, the south-westerly winds, which bring our genial April showers, continue to arrive with their watery burden until late in the summer, to the detriment or destruction of grain-crops; and yet this same wind, losing its excessive moisture as it sweeps onward over the continent, is highly favourable to the husbandman in Southern Russia. The years 1816 and 1817 were cases in point.

From an examination of the causes affecting distribution, Mr Henfrey passes to a survey of the characteristics of the countries of Europe, from north to south--from the peninsula of Scandinavia to those of Spain, Italy, and Greece. The remarkable contrast is pointed out between the climate and cultivation of the east and west sides of the mountains of Sweden and Norway. Barley ripens as far north as the 70th degree, in latitudes whose mean temperature is below the freezing-point; while in Switzerland, corn ceases to ripen at 9 degrees above the same point, and in the plateaux of South America, at 22-1/2 degrees--a fact which goes to shew, 'that the growth of grain is much more dependent on the summer temperature than on the annual mean. The long summer days of the polar regions afford a very brief, but a comparatively exalted summer heat.' It is, however, only the barley which ventures so far north: the limit of rye is 67 degrees, of oats, 65 degrees, of wheat, 64 degrees, on the west side of the peninsula, and from 1 to 2 degrees less on the east. In Southern Norway, the spruce-fir ceases to grow beyond the line of 2900 feet above the sea-level; while in Switzerland, it is commonly met with at the height of 5500 feet, and in some situations, 7000; shewing that the influences which affect the growth of grain do not similarly affect that of trees--proximity of the sea decreases the summer temperature. Again: 'In Scandinavia the tree-limit is indicated by the birch; in the Alps, by firs. The two lower mountain zones of the Alps, the regions of the beech and the chestnut, do not exist in the Scandinavian mountains. Compared with the climate and tree-limits, the cultivation of corn does not go so high in the Alps as it does toward the north; for it ceases about with the beech in the Alps, and grazing is the regular pursuit in the region of firs; while in Scandinavia, the beech only goes to 59 degrees, and corn-culture to 70 degrees--that is, as far as the conifers. Corn succeeds in the latter under a mean temperature below the freezing-point, while in the Alps it ceases at 41 degrees Fahrenheit. The cause of this is the hot though short summer of the north. The Alps have maize and the vine, which will not grow around the Scandinavian mountains; the meadows are throughout richer in the Alps, and grazing is therefore much more extensively pursued.'

The peculiarities and comparisons afforded by other countries, are not less interesting than those we have selected, and we might multiply instances, if space permitted. Enough, however, have been adduced to shew that the mode of accounting for differences of vegetation is so far satisfactory, that it appears to be in perfect accordance with discoverable natural laws; and it is no longer a surprise or mystery to find plants of Southern Russia and of Asia Minor on the high table-lands of Spain; or that the effects of an unvarying temperature, as at Quito, in the table-land of Peru, are to cause the culture of wheat to cease at the mean temperature of Milan, and woods to disappear at the mean of Penzance. A few remarks respecting our own country is all that we can now find room for.

Including snow-falls, the number of rainy days in Dublin in a year is 208, in London, 178, while in Copenhagen it is not more than 134. The number of British plants indigenous or naturalised is from 1400 to 1500, comprising mostly the vegetation of Central Europe, but including specimens from Scandinavia and the Pyrenees. The highest point at which grain has been known to grow, is 1600 feet above the sea-level, at the outlet of Loch Collater, in the Highlands. In Drumochter Pass, an elevation of 1530 feet, potatoes can scarcely be raised; and from 1000 to 1200 feet is the more common limit of the cereal and the esculent. On this point a statement is made, which may be useful to cultivators in the hill districts: it is, that 'the common brake-fern , distributed throughout Britain, is found to be limited by a line running nearly level with the limit of cultivation, and thus affords a test, when cultivation may be absent, where nature does not deny it success. In one sheltered spot in the woods of Loch-na-gar, it was observed at 1900 feet; and in another part of the same woods, at 1700 feet; but on the exposed moors it is very seldom seen beyond 1200 feet, unless in hollows, or on declivities facing the sun.'

In accounting for the varieties of plants in Britain, it is assumed that, during the glacial period, when the tops of our mountains were mere islands in a great sea, under which lay the greater part of modern Europe, they were then peopled by the arctic and alpine species, which now inhabit them. Then came an upheaval; a vast tract of land rose above the water, without any break, as at present between England and the continent; and at this period 'there appears to have been a migration of both plants and animals from east to west, the descendants of which still constitute the great body of the flora and fauna of the British lowlands.' Meantime, the elevation of the former islands into mountain summits, placed them in a temperature suited to the perpetuation of their vegetation. Then, to account for the presence of a Spanish flora in the west of Ireland, a bold hypothesis, started by Professor Edward Forbes, is put forward--'that the west of Ireland was geologically united with the north of Spain;' admitting which, there is no difficulty in supposing the plants to have travelled along the intervening land, which has subsequently disappeared, and that, owing to climatic changes, the hardier sort of plants, such as saxifrages and heaths, have alone survived.

FOOTNOTES:

A HALF-PENNYWORTH OF NAVIGATION.

Who's for a cheap ride on what a pleasant writer calls the 'silent highway?'--silent no longer, since the steamers have taken to plying above Bridge at a charge which has made the surface of the Thames, where it runs through the heart of London, populous with life, and noisy with the clash of paddles and the rush of steam, to say nothing of the incessant chorus of captains, engine-boys, and gangway-men--with their 'Ease her,' 'Stop her,' 'Back her,' 'Turn ahead,' 'Turn astarn,' 'Now, marm, with the bundle, be alive,' 'Heave ahead there, will you?' &c., all the day long.

'Tis a motley company, you see, which comes and goes by the half-penny boat. Here is a Temple barrister, with his red-taped brief under his arm, and at his heels follows a plasterer, and a tiler's labourer with a six-foot chimney-pot upon his shoulders. There goes a foreigner--foreigners like to have things cheap--with a bushy black beard and a pale face, moustached and whiskered to the eyes, and puffing a volume of smoke from his invisible mouth; and there is a washer-woman, with a basket of clothes weighing a hundredweight. Yonder young fellow, with the dripping sack on his back, is staggering under a load of oysters from Billingsgate, and he has got to wash them and sell them for three a penny, and see them swallowed one at a time, before his work will be done for the day--and behind him is a comely lassie, with a monster oil-glazed sarcophagus-looking milliner's basket, carrying home a couple of bonnets to a customer. See! there is lame Jack, who sweeps the crossing in the borough, followed by a lady with her 'six years' darling of a pigmy size,' whom she calls 'Little Popps,' both hurrying home to dinner after a morning's shopping. All these, and a hundred others of equally varied description, go off on the landing-stage, whence they will have to pay their obolus to the Charon of the Thames ere they are swallowed up in the living tide that rolls along the Strand from morn to night.

Now, if we mean to go, we had better get on board, for in another minute the deck will be covered, and we shall not find room to stand. That's right; make sure of a seat while you may! How they swarm on board, and what a choice sample they present of the mixed multitude of London! The deck is literally jammed with every variety of the pedestrian population--red-breasted soldiers from the barracks, glazed-hatted policemen from the station, Irish labourers and their wives, errand-boys with notes and packages, orange-girls with empty baskets, working-men out for a mouthful of air, and idle boys out for a 'spree'--men with burdens to carry, and men with hardly a rag to cover them; unctuous Jews, jabbering Frenchmen, and drowsy-looking Germans--on they flock, squeezing through the gangway, or clambering over the bulwarks, while the little vessel rolls and lurches till the water laves the planks on which you stand. In three minutes from her arrival she has discharged her old cargo, and is crammed to overflowing with a new one. 'Back, there: overloaded already!' roars the captain. 'Let go; turn ahead; go on!'--and fiz! away we go, leaving full half of the intending voyagers to wait for the next boat, which, however, will not be long in coming.

'Bless me, how we roll about from side to side!' says an anxious old lady. 'Is anything the matter with the boat, that it wabbles so?'

'Only a little krank, marm; it's all right,' says the person addressed.

While the old lady, unsatisfied with this genuine specimen of Cockney philosophy, is vowing that if she once gets safe on shore, she will never again set foot in a half-penny boat, we are already at Waterloo Bridge. Duck goes the funnel, and we dart under the noble arch, and catch a passing view of Somerset House. The handsome structure runs away in our rear; the Chinese Junk, with its tawdry flags, scuttles after it; we catch a momentary glimpse of Temple Gardens, lying in the sunlight, where half-a-dozen children are playing on the grass; then comes Whitefriars, the old Alsatia, the sanctuary of blackguard ruffianism in bygone times; then there is a smell of gas, and a vision of enormous gasometers; and then down goes the funnel again, and Blackfriars Bridge jumps over us. On we go, now at the top of our speed, past the dingy brick warehouses that lie under the shadow of St Paul's, whose black dome looks down upon us as we scud along. Then Southwark Bridge, with its Cyclopean masses of gloomy metal, disdains to return the slightest response to the fussy splashing we make, as we shoot impudently through. Then come more wharfs and warehouses, as we glide past, while our pace slackens, and we stop gently within a stone's-throw of London Bridge, at Dyers' Hall, where we are bundled out of the boat with as little ceremony as we were bundled in, and with as little, indeed, as it has ever been the custom to use since ceremony was invented--which, in matters of business, is a very useless thing.

And now, my friend, you have accomplished a half-penny voyage; and without being a conjuror, you can see how it is that this cheap navigation is so much encouraged. In the first place, it is cheaper than shoe-leather, leaving fatigue out of the question; it saves a good two miles of walking, and that is no trifle, especially under a heavy burden, or in slippery weather. In the second place, it may be said to be often cheaper than dirt, seeing that the soil and injury to clothing which it saves by avoiding a two miles' scamper through the muddy ways, would damage the purse of a decent man more than would the cost of several journeys. These are considerations which the humbler classes appreciate, and therefore they flock to the cheap boats, and spend their halfpence to save their pence and their time. This latter consideration of time-saving it is that brings another class of customers to the boats. In order that it may be remunerative to the projectors, every passage must be made with a regular and undeviating rapidity; and this very necessity becomes in its turn a source of profit, because it is a recommendation to a better class of business men and commercial agents, to whom a saving of time is daily a matter of the utmost importance. Hence the motley mixture of all ranks and orders that crowd the deck.

Besides these half-penny boats, there are others which run at double and quadruple fares; but they carry a different class of passengers, and run greater distances, stopping at intermediate stations. They are all remunerative speculations; and they may be said to have created the traffic by which they thrive. They have driven the watermen's wherries off the river almost as effectually as the railways have driven the stage-coaches from the road; but, like them, they have multiplied the passengers by the thousand, and have awakened the public to a new sense of the value of the river as a means of transit from place to place. The demand for safe, cheap, and speedy conveyance to and from all parts of the river between London Bridge and Battersea, and beyond, is becoming daily more urgent; and we hear that it will shortly be met by the launching of a fleet of steam gondolas constructed on an improved principle, combining accommodation for enlarged numbers, with appliances calculated to insure at once security and speed.

A LONDON NEWSPAPER IN 1667.

'The same evening, the court was entertained with a comedy, acted by his Royal Highnesses servants, who attend here for their diversion.'

'Yesterday was acted, by the said servants, another comedy, in the midst whereof Madam and the rest of the ladies were entertained with an excellent banquet.'

In the notice of 5th June, Madam embarked on her return to France. On the 20th, she and the duke arrive at Paris; and on the 25th go to 'St Clou.' The following is the official notice of her death:--

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