fort, happiness, and safety, are confined to a few countries, and the rest of mankind as completely debarred of their advantages, as they are of the fanciful art of the alchymists. Sir John Sinclair, shortly after the termination of the American revolution, proposed a grand plan for the formation of societies in different nations, who should correspond with each other, and communicate respectively their useful inventions. It is to be lamented that so benevolent a project totally failed.

In Barcelona, there was in 1785, an academy for "the noble arts," open to every person, and in which all who attended were taught gratis, drawing, architecture, and sculpture. For this purpose they had seven spacious halls, furnished at the king's expense, with tables, benches, lights, paper, pencils, drawings, models, clay, and living subjects. Townsend counted one night "upwards of five hundred boys, many of whom were finishing designs, which showed either superior genius, or more than common application."

But the part of this institution most deserving of imitation in a country so devotedly attached to commerce as America, remains to be stated. One of the halls was fitted up as a nautical school, and was provided with every thing needful to teach the art of navigation. Since the first establishment of this useful seminary, more than five hundred pilots were educated in it, qualified to navigate a vessel to any quarter of the globe.Idem, p. 324.

A CORRECT STYLE-AND A JUDICIOUS CRITICISM.-In the dedication to Harris's Hermes, which is but fourteen lines long, Dr. Johnson said there were six grammatical errors.— Ibid.

NEWSPAPER SCURRILITY.-Cummyns, a most respectable quaker, in London, declared to Dr. Johnson, on his death-bed, that the pain he felt from an anonymous letter, in one of the common newspapers, fastened on his heart, and threw him into a slow fever, of which he was dying. Mrs. Piozzi, who relates this interesting anecdote, adds that "Hawkesworth, the pious, the virtuous, and the wise, fell, for want of fortitude, a lamented sacrifice to wanton malice and cruelty" of the same kind.Ibid.

A CURIOUS QUESTION.-Doctor Johnson, after having declared how few books there were of which a person could possibly arrive at the last page, asks," was there ever yet any thing written by mortal man, which was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?" To this question, to which the doctor undoubtedly expected an answer in the negative, we may confidently say "Yes-there have been hundreds." Without going into minute detail, I think it is safe to assert that few readers of taste have ever read the Iliad, Horace's writings, the Sentimental Journey, Vicar of Wakefield, Thomson's Seasons, the Economy of Human Life, &c. &c., without a sincere regret that they were so soon finished.-Idem, p. 325.

IDIOCY. In the year 1785, in an hospital in Barcelona, containing 1460 paupers, there were no less than the astonishing number of three hundred idiots!-Ibid.

A MOUNTAIN OF SALT.-Townsend, whom I have freely quoted already, gives an account of a most remarkable and interesting phenomenon. It is "a stupendous mountain in the vicinity of Montserrat, of three miles in circumference, near the village of Cardana, which is one mass of salt, and equal in height to those of the Pyrenees, on which it borders. In a climate like England," he adds, "such a mass had long since been dissolved: but in Spain they employ this rock salt, as in Derbyshire they do the fluor spar, to make snuff boxes and vases, with other ornaments and trinkets." He carried a little fragment with him all through Spain without the least sign of deliquescence-but when he arrived in England, he soon found it surrounded with a pool of water.-Ibid.

LEPROSY.-It has been believed that the leprosy was totally extirpated out of Europe, and that there were no traces of it remaining but in the records to be found of its horrible ravages. Unfortunately this is far from true. In one province of Spain, the Asturias, there are no less than twenty hospitals for this frightful disorder. Some patients are covered over with a

!

white dry scurf, and look like millers. In others the skin is almost black, very thick, full of wrinkles, unctuous, and covered with a loathsome crust. Others have one leg and thigh enormously swelled, and full of varices, pustules, and ulcers, sending forth a most abominable smell.—Ibid.

UNPARALLELED MODESTY.-Paracelsus, the prince of quacks and impostors, carried the art of arrogant puffing to its ne plus ultra. It is hardly credible, but is nevertheless indubitably true, that he prefaced one of his principal works with the following pompous encomium on his own talents and skill: "Ye must give way to me, and not I to you. Ye must give way to me, Avicenna, Rhases, Galen, Maseu. Ye must give way to me, ye of Paris, of Montpelier, ye of Swabia, ye of Misnia, ye of Cologne, ye of Vienna, and whatever places lie on the Danube and the Rhine. Ye islands in the sea; thou Italian, thou Dalmatian, thou Athenian, thou Greek, thou Arabian, thou Israelite; ye must give way to me, and not I to you. The monarchy is mine." This barefaced puff direct exceeds even the utmost impudence of the most brazen-fronted puffer of modern times. Idem, p. 326.

RENOVATION OF THE HUMAN SYSTEM.-The great Bacon advises, as the best method of renovating the exhausted powers of nature, to free the body every two or three years from all the old and corrupted juices, by spare diet and cathartics—and afterwards to replenish the vessels with new juices, by means of refreshing and nourishing food-thus renewing and invigorating the system periodically.-Ibid.

EXTRAORDINARY PHENOMENON.-Fontana made a number of most curious and extraordinary experiments on animal life, which excite the astonishment of every person who reads his accounts of them. He dried wheel insects and hair worms in the scorching sun-and then parched them in an oven. Yet after six months he restored these dried animals to life by pouring over them lukewarm water.-Ibid.

LONGEVITY.-Helen Gray, a woman who died a few years ago, in England, in the 105th year of her age, had new teeth a few years before her death.-Ibid.

BACHELORS, BEWARE.-Hufeland, from whom I have extracted the foregoing fact, states that there is not one instance on record of a bachelor having attained to a great age. This observation, he says, applies with as much force to unmarried females as to males in that insulated state.-Idem, p. 327.

WONDERFUL MEMORY.-In the Gentleman's Magazine for September, 1752, there is a story published, of a most extraordinary memory, which almost sets credulity at defiance. The incident is likewise to be found in Baker's Playhouse Companion, and other works of respectability.

William Lyon, a strolling player, it is there stated, laid a wager one evening when with some of his companions at a tavern, that he would next day at rehearsal, repeat a Daily Advertiser, from beginning to end. Next day his companion reminded him of his wager; on which, Lyon, pulling out the paper, desired him to look at it, and decide himself whether or not he won the wager. "Notwithstanding," says the writer, "the want of connexion between the paragraphs, the variety of advertisements, and the general chaos which enters into the composition of a newspaper, he repeated it from beginning to end, without hesitation or mistake. I know this," adds he, "to be true, and believe its parallel cannot be found in any age or nation."-Ibid.

A NEW COAT OF MAIL AND ELEGANT DECORATIONS.-Symes, in his Embassy to Ava, states that the inhabitants of the Andainan Islands, being much incommoded by insects, their first occupation in the morning, is to plaster their bodies all over with mud, which, hardening in the sun, forms an impenetrable armour. They then, by way of embellishment, paint their woolly heads with red ochre. When thus completely equipped, there is not, he says, a more hideous appearance to be found in human form.-Idem, p. 328.

MISNOMER. Philadelphia exhibits a wonderful instance of a drawbridge of mason's work, which of course, nothing short of supernatural power could draw up. A quizzical lexicographer, in compiling a dictionary for our meridian, might define the word drawbridge, a bridge that is absolutely immoveable.

The pompous title of those Italian assemblies which are called conversationes, is, according to Dr. Moore, as happily applied as our term, drawbridge. They are, he states, remarkably dull and insipid. "A conversatione," he adds, "is a place where there is no conversation."-Port Folio, August, 1810, p. 148.

ROYAL CLEMENCY.-A conquered nation having rebelled. against the Peruvian prince, Tupa Inca Yupanqui, he decimated the people at large, and humanely ordered that the higher orders should have two of their upper and two of their lower teeth drawn; and that the same punishment should be extended to their posterity.—Idem, p. 149.

AN ELEGANT TRANSLATION.-In a small universal history, written in French, there is the following sentence:

"Au commencement, toute la terre etoit inhabitée. Apres quoi, le pays d'Eden sur l'Euphrate fut peuplé le premier. C'etoit la qu' habitoit le premier couple d'hommes. De ce couple descendirent successivement plusieurs couples; et de ceux-ci des milliers d'autres."

This sentence has been rendered into English, by an accomplished translator thus:

"In the beginning all the earth was inhabited; after which the country of Eden, on the Euphrates, was peopled the first. It was there that the first couple of men lived. From this only couple successively descended many couples, and of these millions of others."-Ibid.

"God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb."

FEMALE ENERGY.-Every reader of the Sentimental Journey recollects with pleasure the beautiful comment which Sterne wrote upon this text. Poor Maria occupies a conspicuous. place in that elegant work, and to her interesting case was this