Читать книгу: «Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430», страница 6

This is but a small part of what promises more and more to become a great question—that of navigation. It is felt that, in these go-ahead days, we must be paying not less attention to our maritime than to our inland arm of commerce; and this has brought the question of wood versus iron ships again into prominent notice. The advocates of iron shew that the dry-rot, so destructive to wood, cannot enter metal; that lightness and speed, those prime essentials, are insured by the use of iron; that iron ships are safer, more easily repaired, and cheaper than vessels built of wood; and that they are more lasting. The chief objection hitherto has been the liability of iron to become foul in tropical climates; but this now appears to be in a measure overcome. According to Mr Lindsay: 'An admixture has been applied, termed "Anti-Sargassian Paint," which has been found to answer the purpose better than any yet discovered. From the experience of its properties, we cannot say that in itself it is yet sufficient; but it appears a fair substitute till some other preparation is discovered. A gentleman at Glasgow,' he adds, 'has already discovered a compound, which, being mixed in a fluid state with the iron, is expected to answer the desired purpose. There is another disadvantage which will soon be overcome—the greater liability to error in the compasses of iron ships; an error which, however, also occurs, though perhaps to a less extent, in every wooden ship. By a most ingenious invention, which will shortly be made public, such errors in any ships, under any circumstances, can at all times be at once detected.'

An important patented process for producing tapered iron, has been explained before the Franklin Institute at Philadelphia—one by which every variety of taper may be produced, or combinations of taper, with flat or other forms; and seeing how much tapered iron is used on railways, in many kinds of machinery, in ships and steamers, the subject may be considered worthy of more than a mere passing notice. Tapered iron is a form to which machinery has been thought inapplicable, and only to be produced by hand-labour. The new method, however, which has been successfully carried into practice at the Phœnixville Ironworks, is thus described: 'The principle on which it acts is that of hydrostatic pressure, or, more properly, hydrostatic resistance. A small chamber, similar to that of the common hydrostatic press, is set on the top of each housing; the closed end of the press being uppermost, and a plunger entering from below; but instead of water being forced into the press, the chamber is at first filled with water, and the pressure of the iron in passing between the rollers, tends to lift the top one, which is held down by the plunger. An escape-pipe, provided with a valve, is inserted into the top of the chamber. When any upward pressure acts on the top roller, it is communicated by the plunger to the water, which escapes through the valve, and the roller rises.

'When the valve is partially closed, the water escapes more slowly; and the rise of the roller, and consequently the taper of the iron, are more gradual.

'Any rate of taper may thus be had by regulating the rise of the opening of the escape-valve. If the water is all driven out before the bar is entirely through the rollers, the top roller ceases to rise, and the iron becomes parallel from that point. Then, if the ends of the bar be reversed, and it be again passed between the rollers, the parallel portion will become tapered; thus we can get a bar.'

At the same time, a 'Thermometrical Ventilator' was exhibited, which is described as circular in form, with a well-balanced movable plate. 'Upon the side of the valve is an inverted syphon, with a bulb at one end, the other being open; the lower part of the tube contains mercury; the bulb, atmospheric air. An increase of temperature expands the air in the bulb, drives the mercury down one side and up the other, thereby destroying the balance, and causing the valve to open by turning on its axis. A diminution of temperature contracts the air in the bulb, causes the mercury to rise in the side of the tube, and closes the valve.' Besides this, there was 'an improved magneto-electric machine, for medical use, with a new arrangement, by which the shock is graduated by means of a glass tube, in which a wire is made to communicate with water, so as to produce at first a slight shock; by gradually pressing down the wire attached to a spiral spring, the shock is received in its full force.'

It now appears that Mr Robertson of Brighton claims priority of discovery touching the boring power of Pholades. His statements are founded on daily observation of the creatures at work for three months. 'The Pholas dactylus' he says, 'makes its hole by grating the chalk with its rasp-like valves, licking it up, when pulverised, with its foot, forcing it up through its principal or bronchial syphon, and squirting it out in oblong nodules. The crypt protects the Pholas from confervæ, which, when they get at it, grow not merely outside, but even within the lips of the valves, preventing the action of the syphons. In the foot there is a gelatinous spring or style, which, even when taken out, has great elasticity, and which seems the mainspring of the motions of the Pholas dactylus.'

At last, steam communication with Australia seems about to become a reality, for the first vessel is announced to start in May for Sydney, to touch at the Cape and other colonies on her way out; and accommodation is promised for two hundred passengers of different classes. There is also a project on foot for a line of steamers from Panama to Australia, and to Valparaiso, which, if brought into operation, will make a voyage round the world little more than a bagman's journey. Apropos of Australia, Mr Clarke, who first predicted that gold would be found in that country, says, 'that just 90 degrees west of the auriferous range in Australia, we find an auriferous band in the Urals; and just 90 degrees west of the Urals, occur the auriferous mountains of California.' A speculation for cosmogonists. In our own country, we are finding metalliferous deposits: vast accumulations of lead-ore have come to light in Wales, which are said to contain six ounces of silver, and fifteen hundredweight of lead to the ton; and in Northamptonshire, an abundant and timely supply of iron-ore has just been met with. We might perhaps turn our metallic treasures to still better account, if some one would only set to work and win the prize offered by Louis Napoleon; namely, 'a reward of 50,000 francs to such person as shall render the voltaic pile applicable, with economy, to manufactures, as a source of heat, or to lighting, or chemistry, or mechanics, or practical medicine.' The offer is to be kept open for five years, to allow full time for experiment, and people of all nations have leave to compete. One of the electric telegraph companies intends to ask parliament to abolish the present monopoly as regards the despatch of messages; in another quarter, an under-sea telegraph to Ostend is talked about, with a view to communicate with Belgium independently of France; and there is no reason why it should not be laid down, for the Dover and Calais line is paying satisfactorily. And, finally, another ship-load of 'marbles' and sculptures has just arrived from Nineveh; and the appointment of Mr Layard as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (though now but temporary) is regarded as a praiseworthy recognition of his merits and services; and now that we have a government which combines a few littérateurs among its members, it is thought that literature will be relieved of some of its trammels.

CHILDREN'S JOYS AND SORROWS

I can endure a melancholy man, but not a melancholy child; the former, in whatever slough he may sink, can raise his eyes either to the kingdom of reason or of hope; but the little child is entirely absorbed and weighed down by one black poison-drop of the present. Think of a child led to the scaffold, think of Cupid in a Dutch coffin; or watch a butterfly, after its four wings have been torn off, creeping like a worm, and you will feel what I mean. But wherefore? The first has been already given; the child, like the beast, only knows purest, though shortest sorrow; one which has no past and no future; one such as the sick man receives from without, the dreamer from himself into his asthenic brain; finally, one with the consciousness not of guilt, but of innocence. Certainly, all the sorrows of children are but shortest nights, as their joys are but hottest days; and indeed both so much so, that in the latter, often clouded and starless time of life, the matured man only longingly remembers his old childhood's pleasures, while he seems altogether to have forgotten his childhood's grief. This weak remembrance is strangely contrasted with the opposing one in dreams and fevers in this respect, that in the two last it is always the cruel sorrows of childhood which return; the dream this mock-sun of childhood—and the fever, its distorting glass—both draw forth from dark corners the fears of defenceless childhood, which press and cut with iron fangs into the prostrate soul. The fair scenes of dreams mostly play on an after-stage, whereas the frightful ones choose for theirs the cradle and the nursery. Moreover, in fever, the ice-hands of the fear of ghosts, the striking one of the teachers and parents, and every claw with which fate has pressed the young heart, stretch themselves out to catch the wandering man. Parents, consider then, that every childhood's Rupert—the name given in Germany to the fictitious being employed to frighten children into obedience—even though it has lain chained for tens of years, yet breaks loose and gains mastery over the man so soon as it finds him on a sick-bed. The first fright is more dangerous the sooner it happens: as the man grows older, he is less and less easily frightened; the little cradle or bed-canopy of the child is more easily quite darkened than the starry heaven of the man.—Jean Paul Richter.

A REJECTED LOVER

 
You 'never loved me,' Ada!—Those slow words
Dropped softly from your gentle woman's tongue,
Out of your true and tender woman's heart,
Dropped—piercing into mine like very swords,
The sharper for their brightness! Yet no wrong
Lies to your charge; nor cruelty, nor art;
Even while you spoke, I saw the ready tear-drop start.
 
 
You 'never loved me?'—No, you never knew—
You, with youth's dews yet glittering on your soul—
What 'tis to love. Slow, drop by drop, to pour
Our life's whole essence, perfumed through and through
With all the best we have, or can control,
For the libation; cast it down before
Your feet—then lift the goblet, dry for evermore!
 
 
I shall not die, as foolish lovers do:
A man's heart beats beneath this breast of mine;
The breast where—Curse on that fiend's whispering,
'It might have been!'—Ada, I will be true
Unto myself—the self that worshipped thine.
May all life's pain, like those few tears that spring
For me—glance off as rain-drops from my white dove's wing!
 
 
May you live long, some good man's bosom-flower,
And gather children round your matron knees!
Then, when all this is past, and you and I
Remember each our youth but as an hour
Of joy—or torture; one, serene, at ease,
May meet the other's grave yet steadfast eye,
Thinking, 'He loved me well!'—clasp hands, and so pass by.
 

THE TEARS OF OYSTERS

Glancing round this anatomical workshop (the oyster), we find, amongst other things, some preparations shewing the nature of pearls. Examine them, and we find that there are dark and dingy pearls, just as there are handsome and ugly men; the dark pearl being found on the dark shell of the fish, the white brilliant one upon the smooth inside shell. Going further in the search, we find that the smooth, glittering lining, upon which the fish moves, is known as the nacre, and that it is produced by a portion of the animal called the mantle; and, for explanation's sake, we may add that gourmands practically know the mantle as the beard of the oyster. When living in its glossy house, should any foreign substance find its way through the shell to disturb the smoothness so essential to its ease, the fish coats the offending substance with nacre, and a pearl is thus formed. The pearl is, in fact, a little globe of the smooth, glossy substance yielded by the oyster's beard; yielded ordinarily to smooth the narrow home to which his nature binds him, but yielded in round drops, real pearly tears, if he is hurt. When a beauty glides among a throng of her admirers, her hair clustering with pearls, she little thinks that her ornaments are products of pain and diseased action, endured by the most unpoetical of shell-fish.—Leisure Hours.

'ROBESPIERRE.'

In our recent notice of Robespierre, it was mentioned that, at the period of his capture in the Hôtel de Ville, he was shot in the jaw by a pistol fired by one of the gendarmes. Various correspondents point to the discrepancy between this account and that given by Thiers, and some other authorities, who represent that Robespierre fired the pistol himself, in the attempt to commit self-destruction. In our account of the affair, we have preferred holding to Larmartine (History of the Girondists), not only in consequence of his being the latest and most graphic authority on the subject, but because his statement seems to be verified by the appearance of the half-signed document which it was our fortune to see in Paris in 1849.

The following is Lamartine's statement:—'The door soon yielded to the blows given by the soldiers with the but-end of their muskets, amid the cries of "Down with the tyrant!" "Which is he?" inquired the soldiers; but Léonard Bourdon durst not meet the look of his fallen enemy. Standing a little behind the men, and hidden by the body of a gendarme, named Méda; with his right hand he seized the arm of the gendarme who held a pistol, and pointing with his left hand to the person to be aimed at, he directed the muzzle of the weapon towards Robespierre, exclaiming: "That is the man." The man fired, and the head of Robespierre dropped on the table, deluging with blood the proclamation he had not finished signing.' Next morning, adds this authority, Léonard Bourdon 'presented the gendarme who had fired at Robespierre to the notice of the Convention.' Further: on Robespierre being searched while he lay on the table, a brace of loaded pistols were found in his pocket. 'These pistols, shut up in their cases still loaded, abundantly testify that Robespierre did not shoot himself.' Accepting these as the true particulars of the incident, Robespierre cannot properly be charged with an attempt at suicide.

In the article referred to, the name Barras was accidentally substituted for Henriot, in connection with the insurrectionary movement for rescuing Robespierre. Barras led the troops of the Convention.

A correspondent asks us to state what was the actual number of persons slaughtered by the guillotine, and otherwise, during the progress of the Revolution. The question cannot be satisfactorily answered. Alison (vol. iv. p. 289) presents a list, which shews the number to have been 1,027,106; but this enumeration does not comprehend the massacres at Versailles, the prisons of Paris, and some other places. A million and a half would probably be a safe calculation. One thing is certain, that from the 2d of September 1792, to the 25th of October 1795, a space of little more than three years, 18,613 persons perished by the guillotine. Strangely enough, the chief destruction of life was among the humbler classes of society, those who mainly promoted the revolution; and still more strange, the greater number of victims were murdered by the verdicts of juries—a striking example of that general subserviency which has since become the most significant defect in the French character.