15 66 striking, that the character and feelings of the “ By degrees the flame of the fire became extin- The attitudes of his figures are natural and a dim mystic sort of light around. The Shaman threw melancholy wail, the sound of which was as if it came from different voices. The fire was again kindled, and His portrait, in England, is said to be that shot up into a high fame. The Shaman then sprang up, of the Earl of Strafford, at Wentworth House. placed one end of the bow on the ground, rested his Though Vandyck is generally considered as a forehead on the other, and still holding the bow in his portrait painter, yet he has nearly approached his hand, he began to whirl round it, first slowly, and then great master, Rubens, in some of his historical rapidly. This whirling continued until the very sight pictures. He had, it is true, less genius and spirit, of it made me giddy, when suddenly he stood still, and but he excelled Rubens in the delicacy of his tints, commenced making all manner of figures in the air and the vivacity of his colours. This was acknow with his hand without exhibiting the slightest sympledged even by his enemies, on the occasion of the tom of giddiness. He then seized his drum, and, in a exhibition of the picture which he painted for the sort of inspiration, played, what seemed to me, a sort of church at Antwerp, in which is represented our melody, while he quickened or slackened his pace, and Saviour lying dead on the knees of his mother, and moved and contracted his body with inconceivable surrounded by angels. rapidity. The motion of the head was especially striking; However it must be admitted that he was it whirled round with a velocity resembling a ball on a string. generally inferior to Rubens in historical subjects, During these operations the Shaman took, now and though he surpassed him in his portraits, which, then, a mouthful of brandy and a whiff of tobacco, says De Piles," have a softness and freedom of which, at a sign given by him, was handed to him by some penciling beyond anything else in that way." one of the bystanders. This and the other operations The most capital works of Vandyck are in must at length have stupified him, for he fell suddenly down, and remained rigid and seemingly lifeless. Two their hands, which they began to whet on each other DESCRIPTION OF A SIBERIAN SHAMAN. close to his head. This seemed to bring him again to himself; he renewed his strange wailings, and moved The writer from whom we transcribe the following his body slowly and convulsively. The persons who description of a Shaman, is treating of somnambulous had the knives in their hands raised him up, and placed ecstasy, and quotes, as instances of it, the conjurers or him in an erect posture. His countenance was horrid wizards of Lapland and of Samoyede, and the Sha to look at; the eyes were as if starting from their sockmans of Siberia, who bring themselves into this singular face was crimson all over. He appeared perfectly un ets, and seemed to project out from the head, while his state by artificial means, such as whirling round of the conscious, and except a slight tremor of the body, he body, especially of the head, accompanied by stunning remained for some minutes without a sign of life. cries, songs, and music. “ The condition," says our “ He then awoke from his stupor apparently, and author, “ into which the Shaman brings himself is supported himself by his right hand on his bow, while, much more extraordinary than that of the Lapland seer with the left, he swung the drum rapidly round his or the Samoyede enchanter: it resembles more what head with a whirring noise, and then suddenly let it fall, we might imagine the state of an ancient Pythoness, fully inspired, and ready to be questioned. I approached which, I was informed, was the sign that he was now being a kind of convulsive delirium, during which him, as he stood motionless before me, without token he utters dark and oracular sentences, and remarkable of life either in eye or countenance, while neither my clear seeing, or prophetic sight, takes place." An in- questions, nor his answers (which were given instantly, teresting account of these Shamans is given by a com- without one moment's reflection) changed in the slightpanion of Wrangel, in his expedition to the North Pole, est degree the immobility of his features. Several of contained in a letter written by Mr. Matinschkin to a his answers were very remarkable ; others so obscure, I friend at Petersburgh, dated December, 1829. that none of the interpreters were able to give me them This gentleman, after wandering all day by the banks in Russian, When the curiosity of all had been satisfied, of the Siberian river, Tabalog, sought shelter from the the Shaman again fell into convulsions, accompanied 3710w (which was beginning to fall, though only the with internal spasms, lying thus on the ground for month of August) in a place, where he found assembled about a quarter of an hour.” The demons, it would a great many persons around a Shaman, who was just appear, took a much shorter time to effect their exit on the point of commencing his incantations. than their entrance; as, for the latter, four hours had By means of one of the company, to whom Mr. M. | been necessary. Besides their usual mode of departing had lately shown a trifling kindness, and by the promise -by the chimney-the traveller saw the door opened of some brandy and tobacco, our traveller was permitted by the spectators to let them out that way if they preio remain and witness the proceedings. ferred it. “ In the centre of the place a bright fire blazed, “At length, all was finished; the Shaman arose with around which a circle was marked out by black sheep- marks of astonishment in his countenance, like a man skins, on which, in slow and measured steps, the Sha- awakened out of a deep sleep, finding himself in the man moved round, repeating, at the same time, half midst of a large assembly. He looked at all the people aloud, the forms of his incantation. His long, black, around him, and particularly at Mr. M., whom he seemed bristly hair, covered almost completely his red and now to see for the first time. Mr. M. asked him to swollen face, while from under the shaggy eyebrows explain some of his dark sayings, but the Shaman only gleamed a pair of blood-shot eyes. His dress was a long looked at him with a questioning expression of counteTalar, composed of the skins of animals, and hung from nance, as if he knew nothing of what had happened, and top to bottom with amulets, rhymes, chains, shells, and shook his head at each interrogatory, being utterly pieces of iron and copper. In his right hand he held a oblivious of what had passed, or of what he had said.” charm-drum in the shape of a tambourin, likewise or- Our author is of opinion that the religious ceremonies manented with shells. In his left hand was an unbent of the dervishes of the present day had, in their origin, low. the same end in view as the demon-conjurations of the Siberian Shaman, namely, that of inducing a somnam- roofless, owing to the intensity of the frost having exbulous cataleptic state; but that now, the former nottracted the nails by which the shingles were fastened to carrying out their whirling and other stupifying opera- the rafters. Provisions are brought into St. John's frozen tions to the same extent as was once done, these cere- hard, and they will keep perfectly well so long as the front monies have become mere senseless and unmeaning lasts; it is ludicrous enough to see pigs, hares, and rites; the Dervishes themselves being now ignorant of large codfish frozen stiff, and carried by a leg or tail the purpose meant to be accomplished by their singular over a man's shoulder, like a musket. One evening a religious services. Three, however, out of the thirty-two discussion as to the degree of cold led to a bet, and the orders into which the Dervishes are divided, the Mel commanding officer's orderly was sent to ascertain what deve, the Bedive, and the Rufai, still practise the whirl the thermometer stood at outside the window. The ing to a much greater extent than any of the others; major's servant ingenuously brought the thermometer their movements, accompanied by a barbarous kind of into the room, and looked at it by the light of the fire ; music, and various other ceremonies, while they call the mercury thus suddenly astonished, naturally ran up out in a voice of increasing loudness, “ Allah ! Hu!” a tremendous pace. In the conversation which took until, breathless and exhausted, like the Shaman, they palce between him and the orderly, he was overheard fall into a state of utter insensibility. After a few more exclaiming, “Wait till it stops, Bob! Now tell the absurd practices, they are then blessed by their chief, major it is at 45 notches above Nero.”—Echoes from te: “Sheik Ulislam," as he is sometimes called, (meaning Backwoods. Chief of the True Believers,) and speedily recover. A. R. L. ANECDOTE OF LORD ERSKINE. witness, Erskine divested it of asperity by a tone of jesi Poetry. and good humour. In a cause at Guildhall, brought to recover the value of a quantity of whalebone, a witness In Original Poetry, the Name, real or assumed, of the Author, is was called of impenetrable stupidity. There are two printed in Small Capitals under the title; in Selections, it is descriptions of whalebone, of different value, the long printed in Italics at the end. and the thick. The defence turned on the quality delivered ; that an inferior article had been charged at the price of the best. A witness for the defence battled THE THREE VOICES. every attempt at explanation by his dulness. He can founded thick whalebone with long in such a manner that Erskine was forced to give it up. Why, man, What saith the Past to thee? Weep! you don't seem to know the difference between what is Truth is departed; thick and what is long. Now, I'll tell you the differBeauty hath died like the dream of a sleep, ence. Now, I'll tell you the difference. You are a Love is faint-hearted; thick-headed fellow, and you are not a long-headed one!" Trifles of sense, the profoundly unreal, - Townsends Lives of Eminent Judges. THERE is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season to give a mark of enmity and ill-will; a word—a look, which at one time would make no imHow speaks the Present hour ? Act! pression-at another time wounds the heart; and, like Walk, upward glancing; à shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with So shall thy footsteps in glory be track’d, Slow, but advancing. its own natural force, would scarcely have reached the Scorn not the smallness of daily endeavour; object aimed at.-Sterne. Let the great Meaning ennoble it ever ; Who does not look back with feelings which he would Droop not o'er efforts expended in vain ; in vain attempt to describe, to the delightful rambles Work, as believing that labour is gain. which his native fields and meadows afforded to his What doth the Future say? Hope ! earliest years ? Flowers are among the first objects that Turn thy face sun-ward ! forcibly attract the attention of young children, becomLook where light fringes the far-rising slope- ing to them the source of gratifications which are among Day cometh onward ! the purest of which our nature is capable, and of which Watch! Though so long be the twilight delaying, even the indistinct recollection imparts often a fleeting Let the first sunbeam arise on thee praying ; pleasure to the most cheerless moments of after-lifeFear not, for greater is God by thy side, Kidd. When two friends part, they should lock up one another's secrets, and interchange their keys. The noblest weapon wherewith man can conquer, is Miscellaneous. love and gentlest courtesy. S. M. “I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and N.B.-The Second Volume of this periodical is now ready; covers have brought nothing of my own, but the string that ties for binding, with table of contents, may be ordered of any book sellers. them."-Montaigne. CONTENTS. Page Pare The Death of Keeldar (with The cold during the winter nights is very severe. Biographical Sketchesof Emi Illustration by Frankliu)... 1 nent Painters : Vandyck ... 13 The sentinels are frequently obliged to be relieved every The Privileges of Vienna ..... 3 Description of a Siberias half hour, and the officers, so long as they are beardless, Black Fritz, Chap. I ............4 Shaman Late Hours...... 7 POETRY:may enjoy horizontal refreshment in peace; but when To our Readers ........ 9 The Three Voices they obtain those manly appendages yclept whiskers, Popular Year-Book...... 11 MISCELLANEOUS they find that turning in bed becomes hopeless, and being “ brought up with a round turn,” discover that they are frozen to the sheets. And we are told that London :-Published by T. B. SHARPE, 15, Skinner Street, Snor-bl. families have been awakened by their houses becoming Printed by R. Clay Bread Street Hill. 18 Lear. « KING LEAR AND HIS DAUGHTERS." Why have my sisters husbands, if they say, They love you all ? Haply when I shall wed, The vines of France, and milk of Burgundy, That lord, whose hand must take my plight, shall carry Strive to be interess'd; what can you say, to draw Half my love with him, half my care and duty. A third more opulent than your sisters ? Speak, Sure I shall never marry like my sisters, To love my father all. Lear. But goes this with thy heart? Cor. Ay, good, my lord. Lear. So young, and so untender! Cor. So young, my lord, and true. Lear. Let it be so ;-thy truth then be thy dower: According to my bond ; nor more, nor less. For, Propinquity, and property of blood; And as a stranger to my lieart and me, Hold thee from this for ever. Return those d ties back as are right fit; Shakspeare.-King Lear. Obey yon, love you, and most honour you. ! FARLEIGH GRANGE. So utter is its desolation that even winter lacks the not wrong him, this son-in-law was one better calculated power to make its aspect wilder or more desolate. to excite distrust and dread than love. Fair seeming, Summer leaves, and summer flowers, bright with the smooth spoken, humble almost to abjectness, winding sunshine or glittering with the dew, trailing along the into men's thoughts without developing his own, witl broken walls and shattered coping-stones, hanging a wearing a perpetual smile, a smile so like a sneer that a wandering eye, a hesitating step, thin bloodless lips garland over porches mouldering into dust, over dim it was difficult to determine when he smiled and when discoloured window panes, over wormed and mossy' he sncered,—he was a man whom dogs and children garden seats, over fountains choked with weeds, over would instinctively avoid : direr reproach we will not paths but barely pervious, mock and magnify its deso- stay to cast upon him. Those wandering eyes of his, lation and decay; but in winter all external and sur how truly did they symbolize the narrow restless mind which worked within ! how intelligibly they spoke of rounding objects are in keeping with the void and growing, greedy, unsatisfied desires, of þaneful, penceruined Grange. Titanic trees circling the old house destroying passions usurping absolute dominion over like a body.guard of giants, wierd and awful in their that unquiet stormy mind! The inactive aimless life look as those which frowned upon the Pilgrim's path, he led, subserved to foster those desires by offering no naked and gnarled, and making melancholy music as diversion to the current of his thoughts, which still the wind sighs through the leafless boughs; bare slopes, flowed on in one direct and unimpeded course, delving with here and there a barer bush creaking as it sways; a deeper channel, expanding into a broader flood, and here and there a heap of faded leaves, that rustle with | gaining might, and volume, and velocity, by the mere a startling unfamiliar rustle as you tread ; dead stems absence of all impediment and check. of flowers, and crackling sapless shrubs, weaving a · He knew that, come what might, all that his bene. tangled network that overspreads the uneven terrace factor had amassed must one day devolve on him ; but and dismantled urns; the stagnant and turbid fishpool, then the certainty was not so proximate as he could the very clouds themselves, heavy and cold and leaden, wish. Years might elapse before the wealth so coveted and creeping sluggishly across the sky; are perfectly in should become his portion. Oh, that the inevitable, but harmony with all the eye discerns and all the imagina- yet remote, event could be accelerated! Oh, that the tion pictures of that old decaying house. wearisome delay, the tedious waiting for the dead man's Did light laughter ever echo underneath that roof? shoes, could be abridged ! And might it not ? Ay, might Did youthful footsteps ever bound along its floors ? Did it not? In this one question all his gloomy reveries the firelight ever gleam in crimson flakes upon its eventuated; beyond it, all was dim, chaotic, undefined. shining walls? Were rosy children ever wakened by the So, brooding over this dark thought; so, day by day, summer sunshine streaming through its cheerful win- tending and nourishing the poison-plant which had dow-panes ? Did the smoke of blazing yule logs ascend struck deep root and thrived apace within his mind, its tunnelled chinney stacks at bygone Christmas until its baneful growth became too mighty for represfestivals? Who were its inmates? what was their his- sion; so, suffering suggestion to assume the form and tory? Why is it tenantless--fallen to decay? pressure of a settled purpose, and listening to the Pass through the vaulted porch, traverse the sounding whispers of a dwarfish fiend, until that fiend, dilating hall, and by the cold deserted hearth sit down, and let with his expanding influence, swelled into giant's shape, us conjure up a history of the past. and wore the mien and gestures of a stern inexorable Once on a time,--for that is, after all, your only taskmaster; the old man's son-in-law became the docile legitimate method of opening a tale, - once on a time, slave of Avarice. Day and night, weekday and holy two centuries since perhaps, a grey-haired man, who day, at mass and meals, visions of wealth, of sole had amassed great wealth by trading ventures to the supreme possession, flitted before his eyes, and minisEast, came hither to reside. An only daughter, her tered unceasing aliment to the master passion of his husband, and their child, shared in the old man's heart mind. But ever there arose one uniform impediment, and home. He had been a poor dependent, this son-in- ever the figure of an old grey-headed man glided between law, whose thrifty zeal had helped to build the fabric him and his desire ; and ever, as that presence troubled of the merchant's fortune, and, growing in his good him, a phantom whispered in his ear suggestions of 3 opinion year by year, gained at the last the rich requital fearful import, which, awful and hideous at first, grew of his daughter's hand. Her hand, we say, for that her less and less repulsive with every repetition, so that a heart accompanied it admits of doubt. If rumour did / murderous thought at length would lose its horrid 19 character, and harbour in his brain as naturally as | memento of earlier and happier times was now no And one was chosen, slow, and subtle, and sure as son, the one a haggard, prematurely grey, and consciencetruth itself; and nightly mingled and administered in stricken man, the other a dull-eyed, gibbering idiot, the stoup of spiced wine which custom had commended abandoned Farleigh Grange within a year of her to the old man's palate. Yea, while he drank, the placid decease, and perished by shipwreck on their voyage murderer stood by and never blanched; heard kindly to a foreign land. The estate reverted to a distant words, thankful acknowledgments of his (the murderer's) relative, but, often as it has been tenanted, the Grange delicate attentions fall from the old man's lips, and yet has never been the permanent abiding place of its felt no compunctious visitings ! And every day he saw inhabitants. Some curse appears annexed to its posthe fitful flame of life which burnt within the victim's session-some fatality attached to its possessors; and, frame flickering with a fainter, feebler light, and knew for half a century past, it has been, as it now is, a how soon it would be quenched for ever; and saw the desolate, deserted, and, in common credence, haunted earnest sorrow of the daughter of that dying man, and house. yet persisted in the desperate crime, unwavering to the last! Grey-headed old man, surrounded on thy deathbed by delusions, close thy dim eyes in peace, happy in SCENERY OF THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY. the illusory belief that thou hast confided thy daughter's Few chapters in the history of civilization and human happiness to safe and worthy keeping ! He sank so industry are so replete with importance and interest to slowly, wasting away with such a gradual decline, so like the natural decay of life, that, when death did set every grade of readers, as the accounts of the means by his “silent seal" upon the suffering clay, no comments which England has been, within the last score of years, followed the event, and he was laid to sleep within the covered with a net-work of iron, or System of Railways. village church with solemn pomp and simulated grief As a branch of national economy, the subject will have by the husband of his child, the inheritor of his pos- a paramount claim upon the attention of the statist and sessions, and the destroyer of his life. the politician in forming their estimates of the means “ To sleep,” said we? No, not to sleep, but thence by which the internal prosperity and domestic peace of forth to haunt the troubled vision of the assassin by the empire have attained a century of advancement within his perpetual presence. Go where he would, to the murderer’s fancy the very air was full of eyes, dim less than a quarter of that period. At this vast subject aged eyes, glaring upon him with a fearful menace. it is but our intention to glance; and rather to select Through the dim gloom of midnight the angry gleam one of its stupendous examples, and describe its course of those old eyes would seem to penetrate and awe him. and construction, we trust, so as to prove that a RailIn the blazing embers, in the pictures on the walls, in way, instead of cutting up and despoiling the face of the fantastic figures on the fountain, in the white clouds the country, has, like a fertilizing river, enriched and that skimmed athwart the sky, in the very stones upon embellished the district through which it trends, in its his path, he saw the lineaments of the murdered man. In the moaning of the wind, in the shivering rustle of progress stretching out its giant-arms of improvement the leaves, in the murmuring ripple of the water, in on each side of its mighty course. every casual, transient, sound, there were, to his ear, For this purpose we have preferred Tax GREAT WESTintelligible articulations of the old man's voice.. Wine En Railway, in many respects the most important had no power to banish from his brain the frightful work of its class yet completed ; and one of the most images which thronged in thick succession through it; attractive by means of the picturesque and interesting there was a poisonous savour in everything which met country through which it passes. There exists, likehis lips; and the pure element itself smacked of a wise, a peculiar facility for our task, or rather labour of polluting mixture. "Music was torture to his ears, for love, in a work of the highest authority, which has just his wife found melancholy solace in dwelling on the been issued from the press. This is a magnificent folio songs and melodies which her father in his life-time volume, detailing the history and description of the loved ; and by the mere force of association the mur. line, profusely illustrated with views of its great works, derer would shudder as he passed one vacant chair, and the adjacent scenery; and forming, altogether, the and hurry from the room, filled with the fear of seeing most complete specimen of Railway Illustration yet its former occupant glide into his accustomed seat. produced. The work? is, in every respect, worthy of His wife, too, pined and drooped, and seemed to the noble subject : the scenic pages are masterpieces of wither gradually away. As we have hinted, her affection the artists' skill, both draftsman and lithographer; and for the only parent she had ever known, had never been the literature of the volume, both as regards scientific supplanted by the more impassioned love which ordi- treatment and descriptive talent, takes precedence of narily springs up within a woman's heart towards him every labour of its kind. In its vivid details of the skill with whom she forms a new and nearer tie. From a of our own times in Railway construction, and of the sentiment of duty towards her father, rather than of glories of other ages in the antiquities of the country actual attachment to the object of her father's choice, she had originally consented to the union proposed to including its Geology, and the Antiquities of the District through (1) The History and Description of the Great Western Railway, her; and in the society of that father, and in the which it passes; accompanied by a Plan and Section of the Railway, nurture of her infant son, she had subsequently found a Geological Map, and by numerous Views of the principal Viaducts, her greatest happiness; hence the bereavement she had Bridges, Tunnels. Stations, and of the Scenery and Antiquities in sustained was full of bitterness. The one golden link its Vicinity ; from Drawings taken expressly for this work, and executed in Lithography, by John C. Bourne. Folio. (Size, 26 by in the chain of old remembrance was snapped—the living | 14 inches.) D. Bogue, Fleet-street. 1816. |