sion, that they who "abase themselves, shall be exalted." Another refinement I would mention, of unexceptionable tendency, is that of Waltzing; a proper accompaniment, certainly, to our other refinements, and far from suspicious in its nature; for how can any person, of the chastest conceptions suppose, that there is any thing licentious in the movements it displays, or any thing even remotely calculated to inspire voluptuous emotious in that entertwining of the limbs this foreign importation exhibits. Thus the man of fashion spends his days, (which are to be accounted, not like others from sun-rise to sun-set, but from mid-day to about 4 A.M.) between the lounging at Tattersall's and White's in the morning, and the figuring at Almack's in the evening. To follow him through all the minutia of his manners, refined as they are, to a nicety and exactness no one can adequately appreciate, would be endless-the hauteur of his gait, the low Congee approaching to servility to some favoured fair one, and the contemp. tuous nod to some poor tradesman; the hollow professions of friendship, ready on all occasions, but never intended to be realized; and the ease with which appointments and engagements may be violated without a blush -all these I pass by, because they are only the appendages to the character and complete its excellence. I now conclude this too long extended article, but shall, if consonant with your wishes, pursue my remarks at a future period. I am, Sir, your's respectfully, ONE OF THE OLD SCHOOL. London, 9th April, 1818. SEND you the following original anecdotes of the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson, which I believe have never before met the public eye. You have them, Sir, as recounted to me by authorities of unexceptionable veracity. If requisite, these authorities can be referred to; for I am perfectly aware that nothing ought to be fathered upon the fame of Johnson which is not sufficiently authenticated to bear the test of inquiry. I am, Sir, minister of Sky, the Rev. Dr. Macqueen. This good man and excellent pastor invited several of his friends to meet the English lexicographer; and it may naturally be supposed, that the ardent love of literature which peculiarly marks the character of the Scotch, induced all that were invited to aitend. The Doctor had been remarkably communicative at the hospitable board of his reverend host; and from the vein which he appeared to be in, a rich treat seemed to be in reserve for the company that were assembled in the drawing-room, anxious to catch the gla of the Great ManThe disappointment, therefore, must have been very grievous to them, at finding that the Doctor preserved an inflexible, and to them an intolerable, silence; at length, Mrs. Macqueen addressed him in the general phraseology of the teatable, Dr. Johnson, shall I give you any more tea; you have had twelve cups already.”—To any one who knew the Doctor's appetite for tea, and had observed the avidity with which he swallowed cup after cup, this question of the lady's will not appear at all extraordinary; it must also be recollected, that at that time tea-cups were of much less capacity than they are at present.-The reply was made in all the sonorous sententiousness of Johnson, "Yes, Madam, I will have twelve more, to punish you for asking the question."-The astonishment of the company may easily be conceived, when their expectations, which were raised to the highest pitch, were thus met by a speech that might well have been considered, in a party much less civilized and intelligent than that which heard it, as savouring more of uncourtcous self-reference than of brilliant repartee-but it shewed the mind of the man as distinctly as any elaborate argument that he could have taken up, for the display of his intellectual powers. The Doctor, on his return from this tour, stopped a few days at one of the Scotch universities. It happened, that in an evening party formed on purpose to meet him, at the house of one of the professors, a young North Briton, lately returned from America, took upon him to monopolize the conversation rather longer than the Doctor's patience was disposed to allow, more especially as the subject conveyed a very energetic desHebrides, he paid a visit to the worthy cription of the advantages enjoyed by Your obedient servant, F. I. S. DURING the Doctor's tour of the our transatlantic brethren above those which the inhabitants of Great Britain could boast of. The author of "Taxa tion no Tyranny" could not endure this indirect reflection upon his Tory principles, and abruptly interrupted the young traveller with one of his thunder-clap interrogatories-"Pray, Sir, are we to accept your account as a relation of positive fact, or only as the vision of a rebellious hope?-You think, perhaps, that you have said enough to amuse us, but I think, young man, that you have said a great deal too much, which no one will thank you for, and every one who thinks correctly will despise, either as an evidence of an imbecile judgment, or of m evil heart."-The traveller, manifestly much offended at this speech, instantly withdrew from the company. Mrs. Piozzi took occasion to expostulate with the Doctor upon the cruel severity of his attack." Madam," said the Doctor, cutting her gentle rebuke short," he that has not genius nough to give dignity to fiction, or judgment enough to preserve the probability of truth, deserves to be reproved for those defects by which the treachery of his vanity deceives him." THE REPOSITORY. No. XLVII. A SELECT COLLECTION OF FUGITIVE PIECES. "The mind of man not being capable of having many ideas under view at once, it was necessary to have a REPOSITORY to kay up those ideas."-LOCKE. THE ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. (From the Literary Gazette.) Trebnjunto HE name of Captain William who have taken an interest in the problem, the solution of which is now attempting. His observations on a voyage, wherein he penetrated to a very high northern latitude, may be considered as the foundation for this attempt; and the paper containing his remarks, read to the Wernerian Natural History Society, and contained in the second volume of their Memoirs, cannot fail to be reckoned extremely importaut. The following is its substance, and the only alteration we make, is that of putting Captain Scoresby's information into our own language, instead of copying that of the literary gentleman who prepared it for the Wernerian Society: Greenland is a country where every object is strikingly singular, or highly magnificent. The atmosphere, the land, and the ocean, each exhibit remarkable or sublime appearances. The atmosphere is dark coloured, dense, frequently producing crystallized snow in a wonderful perfection and variety of form and texture, and remarkable for sudden transitions from calm to storm, and from foul to fair. The land is a sublime object; its stupendous mountains rising abruptly from the very margin of the sea, and terminating in ridged, conical, or pyramidal summits; the dark rocks chequered with their burthens of purest snow; and the whole, viewed under the density of a gloomy sky, forming a grand and impressive picture. Its most remarkable inhabitant, the white or Polar bear, which also occurs on the ice, the fero cious, and apparently natural lord of those regions. He preys indiscriminately on quadruped, reptile, fowl, and fish; all behold him with dread, and flee his presence. The seals signify their fear of him by constant watching, and betake themselves precipitately to the water on his approach.* Carrion, therefore, (chiefly the carcass of the whale at a certain season) affords him a passive, sure, and favourite food. His sense of smeiling is peculiarly acute; in his march he frequently faces the breeze, raises his head, and snuffs the passing scent, whereby he discovers the nearest route to his odorous banquet, though the distance be incredibly great. The water affords the bed, and partly the materials for the most prodigious masses of ice. Its colour is peculiar. Its products numerous and important. Here the huge mysticetus, or whalebone sports and astonishes by his vast bulk and proportionate strength; is the object of maritimet adventure and com. mercial wealth. We are assured by a Greenland captain, that he has seen the bear display astonishing proofs of sagacity. When wounded by a musket-shot, they will apply ice to the wound, with their paws, in order to staunch the bleeding. Of this fact our informant has been an eye-witness.-Ed. navigator's life with" moving accidents by + The perils of the whale-fishing fill the flood," and their adventures are truly deserving of the name of romantic, as well as of dangerous and tragical. One lash of the monster of the deep will dash their Of the inanimate productions of Greenland, none excites so much interest and wonder as the ice, in its great abundance and variety, in the iceislands, floating mountains, or ice-bergs, common to Davis' Straits. Yet the fields of ice more peculiar to Greenland are not less astonishing. Their deficiency in elevation is sufficiently compensated by their amazing extent of surface. Some of them have been observed near a hundred miles in length, and more that half that breadth; each consisting of a single sheet of ice, having its surface raised in general four or six feet above the level of the water, and its base depressed to the depth of near twenty feet beneath. We shall now extract literatim Capt. Scoresby's excellent description of the various kinds of ice, which are met with in the Northern Seas. The ice in general is designated by a variety of appellations, distinguishing it according to the size or number of pieces, their form of aggregation, thickness, transparency, &c. I perhaps cannot better explain the terms in common acceptation amongst the whale fishers, than by marking the disruption of a field. The thickest and strongest field cannot resist the power of a heavy swell; indeed, such are much less capable of bending without being dissevered, than the thinner ice which is more pliable. When a field, by the set of the current, drives to the southward, and, being deserted by the loose ice, becomes exposed to the effects of a grown swell, it presently breaks into a great many pieces, few of which will little boat in pieces, and break the limbs of men like the wheel, or crush them together as with an avalanche. When the whale has young, she is particularly fierce, and requires to be approached with caution; and her maternal fondness is so great, that if her offspring is struck with the harpoon, she will not desert it, and the fishers are sure of the parent. It is a strange sight to see these unwieldy creatures with the young laid, as it were, across their tails, sucking their “ mighty mothers." Boats are sometimes carried through the spumy sea at the rate of fourteen miles an hour, by the harpooned whale, and many an instance occurs of their never returning to join their vessels. There is some resemblance to the magnificence of Eastern hunting in these exploits.-Ed. A field is a continued sheet of ice, so large, that its boundary cannot be seen from the summit of a ship's mast, exceed forty or fifty yards in diameter. Now, such a number of these pieces collected together in close contact, so that they cannot, from the top of the ship's mast, be seen over, are termed a pack. When the collection of pieces can be seen across, if it assume a circular or polygonal form, the name of patch is applied, and it is called a stream when its shape is more of an oblong, how narrow soever it may be, provided the continuity of the pieces is preserved. Pieces of very large dimensions, but smaller than fields, are called floes; thus a field may be compared to a pack, and a floe to a patch, as regards their size and external form. Small pieces which break off, and are separated from the larger masses by the effect of attrition, are called brash-ice, aud may be collected into streams or patches. Ice is said to be loose, or open, when the pieces are so far separated, as to allow a ship to sail freely amongst them; this has likewise been called drift-ice. A hummock is a protuberance, raised upon any plane of ice above the common level. It is frequently produced by pressure, where one piece is squeezed upon another, often set upon its edge, and in that position cemented by the frost. Hummocks are likewise formed, by pieces of ice mutually crushing each other, the wreck being coacervated upon one or both of them. To hummocks, the ice is indebted for its va riety of fanciful shapes, and its picturresque appearance. They occur in great numbers in heavy packs, on the edges, and occasionally in the middle of fields and floes. They often attain the height of thirty feet and upwards. A calf, is a portion of ice which has been depressed by the same means as a hummock is elevated. It is kept down by some larger mass: from beneath which it shows itself on one side. I have seen a calf so deep and broad, that the ship sailed over it without touching, when it might be observed on both sides of the vessel at the same time; this, however, is attended with considerable danger, and necessity alone warrants the experiment, as calves have not unfrequently (by a ship's touching, or disturbing the sea near them) been called from their sub-marine situation to the surface, and with such an accele rated velocity as to stave the planks and timbers of the ship, and in some instances to reduce the vessel to a wreck. Any part of the other superficies of a piece of ice, which comes to be immersed beneath the surface of the water, obtains the name of a tongue. A bight signifies a bay or sinuosity, es the border of any large mass or body of ice. It is supposed to be called bight, from the low word bile, or take in, or entrap; because, in this situation, ships are sometimes so caught by a change of wind, that the ice cannot be cleared on either tack; and in some cases, a total loss has been the consequence. When sall-water ice floats in the sea at a freezing temperature, the proportion above to that below the surface, is as 1 to 4 nearly; and in fresh water, at the freezing point, as 10 to 69, or 1 to 7 Bearly. Hence the specific gravity appears to be about 0.873. Of this description is all young ice, as it is called, which forms a considerable proportion of packed and drift ice in general; where it occurs in flat pieces commonly covered with snow, of various dimensions, but seldom exceeding fifty yards in diameter. Fresh-water ice is distinguished by its back appearance when Boating in the sea, and its beautiful green hue and transparency when removed into the air. Large pieces may occasionally be obtained, possessing a degree of purity and transparency equal to that of the finest glass, or most beautiful crystal; but generally, its transparency is interrupted by numerous small globular or pear-shaped air-bubbles: these frequently form continuous lines, intersecting the ice in a direction apparently perpendicular to its plane of formation. Fresh-water ice is fragile, but hard; the edges of a fractured part are frequently so keen, as to inflict a wound like glass. The homogeneous and most transparent pieces are capable of concentrating the rays of the sun, so as to produce a considerable intensity of heat. With a lump of ice of by no means regular convexity, I have frequently burnt wood, fired gunpowder, melted lead, and lit the sailors' pipes to their great astonishment; all of whom who could produce the needful articles, eagerly flocked around me, for the satisfaction of sinoking a pipe, guited by such extraordinary means. Their astonishment was increased, on observing that the ice remained firm and pelluced, whilst the solar rays emerging therefrom were so hot, that the hand could not be kept longer in the focus than for the space of a few seconds. In the formation of these lenses, I roughed them with a small axe, which cut the ice tolerably smooth; I then scraped them with a knife, and polished them merely by the warmth of the hand, supporting them during the operation in a woollen glove. I once procured a piece of the purest ice so large that a lens of sixteen inches diameter was obtained out of it. The most dense kind of ice, which is perfectly transparent, is about one-tenth specifically lighter than sea water at a freezing temperature. Plunged into pure water, of temperature 32°, the proportion floating above, to that below the surface, is as I to 15, and placed in boiling fresh water, it barely floats. Its specific gravity is about 0.937. Fields, bergs, and other large masses, chiefly consist of this kind of ice. Brash ice likewise affords pieces of it, the surfaces of which are always found crowded with conchoidal excavations when taken out of the sea. Captain Scoresby states, that land is not necessary for the formation of ice; even in a rough state the ocean freezes, forming first detached crystals, the sludge of the sailors, and resembling snow when cast into water which is too cold to dissolve it. This smooths the surface of the waters like oil, and the congelation which ensues forms ultimately into pieces called pancakes, of perhaps a foot in thickness, and many yards in circumference. In sheltered situations. what is termed bay ice, forms more regularly and rapidly. Much of this is formed in the bays and islands of Spitzbergen, but even this quantity will not account for the immense fields which abound in the Greenland Seas, and which evidently (says our authority) come from the Northward, and have their origin between Spitzburgen and the Pole. MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. No. XLI. ROYAL INCOMES. HE following is a correct return of all Incomes received by their Koyal Highnesses the Dukes of Clarence, Kent, Cumberland, Sussex, and Cambridge, arising from Military, Naval, or Civil Appointments, Pensious, Note-On the 15th of October, 1813, the sum of 20,000l. was advanced, by way of loan, to his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence, to be repaid by quarterly instalments of 5007. each; of which six instalments have been repaid. On the 14th July, 1806, the sum of 6,000l. was advanced, by way of loan, to his Royal Highness the Duke of Kent; of which two instalments of 5001. each have been repaid. C. ARBUTHNOT. Whitehall Treasury Chambers, 20th April, 1818. ROMAN CEMENT. A sort of plaster so called, which well withstands our moist climate, is made by mixing one bushel of lime slaked with three pounds and a half of green copperas, fifteen gallons of water, and half-a-bushel of fine gravel sand. The copperas should be dissolved in hot water; it must be stirred with a stick, and kept stirring continually while in use. Care should be taken to mix at once as much as may be requisite for one entire front, as it is very difficult to match the colour again; and it ought to be mixed the same day it is used. |
