inferior officers were heard to exclaim, "Why not rather old George? he would be fitter for a protector than Dick Cromwell." With such backers he might have commanded a powerful party. But he was not to be tempted: he saw the tide of popular opinion beginning to run strongly in favour of the restoration of royalty, and rejoiced at it. "Little impressed with the rights or exigencies of liberty, and much disgusted with the inconveniences of anarchy, he looked but little at the nature of power, so long as he either exercised or acknowledged it. He thought a country sufficiently happy when it was tranquil and controlled; and knew well, with regard to his own interest, that on the power of the master depends the fortune of his servants. He had the means of becoming the most useful and best requited servant of Charles Stuart; and it therefore suited him to treat singly and directly with the king, with the sole purpose of settling satisfactorily his own personal position, and leaving others to contend for the interests of the country. In secret, his sagacity had at all times led him to spare the royalists, and, from the moment that they could apply to him with a hope of success, they must have met with a willing reception. Monk never treated frankly but with them; and, throughout his progress towards the restoration, one single sentiment is conspicuous and predominant,—namely, the desire to withdraw it from every influence but his own, that he might be enabled to commit it wholly and freely to the prince from whom he was to receive its value."

Such is the judgment of M. Guizot upon the character and motives of Monk, who now prepared for active interference in the affairs of the state. Having waited until the breach between the English army, under Lambert, and the parliament, which he foresaw, had taken place, he prepared his army by cashiering or confining all officers who were not ready to support him; and proclaiming his intention to support the civil government and restore the Parliament, he marched towards England, and reached Coldstream, a village on the banks of the Tweed. Here he halted, and employed his time so skilfully in negotiations, that Lambert, who had marched his army to Newcastle, to oppose his progrèss, was baffled and outwitted, and his army melting away, was obliged to take flight without striking a blow.

Meantime the Rump had re-assembled, and once more gained possession of the executive part of the government. Monk, who had preserved their existence as a body, was yet regarded by them with some jealousy, although they had no suspicion of his royalist tendency; and when he announced his intention of marching to London, and demanded that all the troops who had mutinied against the parliament, remaining in London, should be removed to make way for his men, they dared not disobey. By slow marches he approached London, meeting in every town he passed through with an enthusiastic reception, and loud petitions for a free parliament. Meanwhile, he was full of protestations of fidelity and zeal to the Rump, and completely cajoled their commissioners. Arrived in London, welcomed by the Rump, and trusted in by the citizens, he was immediately put upon a service excessively displeasing to these latter, but which tended to fill up the cup of obloquy which the Rump had long been preparing for themselves, and materially assisted Monk in the furtherance of his design. A fray between some of the disorganised soldiery of Lambert and the apprentices of the city, who made an outbreak, clamouring for a free parliament, led to an order to Monk to break down the city posts and chains; and he led his men to this duty, as displeasing to them as to the citizens, in whose desires they fully participated. His own opinion of the action he performed, he scarcely sought to conceal; and the next day, returning to the city, he openly declared his abhorrence of the body who could put such an indignity on the city, and summoning a common council-an assembly prohibited by the Rump-he stated his determination that a free and full parliament should be summoned, and that the present body must be immediately dissolved. His declaration was received with shouts of joy, and that night Rumps were roasting from Temple Bar to Billingsgate; and proper means being used at the post-office, such news only as was expedient found their way into the country, and the Rump-roasting became universal.

The time was now come for him to drop the mask altogether, yet he did so still gradually; but our limits preclude us from particularity on a point of history so well known. Suffice it to say, that the necessity of the step was so well understood, that Monk's messenger only just forestalled another sent by the presbyterian party, who offered Charles the terms submitted to his father in the Isle of Wight. The Rump was dissolved, and a new parliament assembled, who, on the 8th of May, proclaimed Charles II. king.

Monk has been much blamed for countenancing the restoration, without insisting on terms; but it is difficult to conceive how such could have been satisfactorily arranged, without losing all the advantages obtained, and in all probability involving the country once more in war. Weary of anarchy, all were ready to receive back the old constitution with joy, but there was neither leisure nor community of feeling sufficient for the construction of a new Monk was not so over-zealous for the royal cause as to have omitted this, if it had been practicable. What he desired was a stable government, and seeing the necessity of seizing the favourable moment, he would not risk the hazard of debate.

one.

On the king's return, Monk met with suitable reward for his great services. He was already possessed of considerable property, (chiefly estates in Ireland, granted by Cromwell,) and he was now invested with the order of the Garter, nominated a member of the privy council, made lieutenant-general of the armies of the three kingdoms, appointed master of the horse, and created duke of Albemarle. Pensions to the amount of 70001. per annum were annexed to his patent, and he was appointed gentleman of the bedchamber. He was always esteemed, and frequently confidentially consulted by the king; and his popularity with the people, especially the Londoners, was never lessened. He performed several not unimportant services after the king's restoration. When the plague desolated London, the government of the city being entrusted to him, he performed the onerous and dangerous duties so admirably as to render himself not less loved by the citizens than formerly by his soldiery; so much so, indeed, that after the great fire, at which time he was absent, the exclamation-"Ah! if old George had been here, the city would not have been burnt," was commonly heard. He was at this time at sea, having, in conjunction with Prince Rupert, been despatched against the Dutch, with whom a furious but indecisive fight was maintained for three successive days. His last service was to lead some companies of troops against the Dutch, on the occasion of their burning the ships at Chatham. The Dutch re-embarked; but not so soon but that the Duke of Albemarle, who had proceeded to the advanced posts, heard the balls whistle by his ears. One of his officers urged him to retreat a little. "Sir," replied Monk, "if I had been afraid of bullets, I should have quitted this trade of a soldier long ago."

Monk's health had long been failing: he suffered from asthma and dropsy, and, after combating both with patience and fortitude, at length sunk under them, dying at London on the 3d January, 1670. He was buried at Westminster, in the chapel of Henry VII., but no monument points out his tomb.

"He was," says M. Guizot, "a man capable of great things, though he had no greatness of soul; and who deserved a better name than he has left in history, although it has been reproached, not wholly without justice."

By his wife, who was a woman of vulgar manners, though probably not, as has been generally supposed, of low origin, but who was certainly his concubine before she became his wife, he had one son, Christopher, who died childless in 1688.

ST. FRANCIS XAVIER.

FRANCIS XAVIER was a very extraordinary man. Persuasive and commanding eloquence, an ascendant over the minds of men, unconquerable patience in suffering, intrepid courage amidst the most dreadful dangers, and a life devoted with inflexible constancy to a purely disinterested purpose, form a combination which varies its exterior and its direction according to the opinions and manners of various ages and nations. In one age it produces a Xavier; in another, a Howard. It may sometimes take a direction which we may think pernicious, and a form not agreeable to our moral taste; but the qualities themselves are always admirable, and by the philosophical observer, whose eye penetrates through the disguise of a local and temporary fashion, and recognises the principles on which depends the superiority of one mind over another, they will always be revered. The truth of many opinions for which Xavier contended, it is not very easy to maintain; but he taught to slaves the moral dignity of their nature; he preached humility to tyrants, and benevolence to savages. He must have told the outcast Hindu, that, in the grandest point of view, he was the equal of his rajah; and the ferocious Malay, that his enemy was his brother. He therefore diffused the fruits of the bes philosophy, and laboured to improve and ennoble human nature. I am sorry to find miraculous tales related of him; but I hope they are only proofs of the divine reverence which his virtues left behind them, and that he did not sully his great character by any pretensions which might approach to imposture.-Life of Sir J. Mackintosh.

CANE SUGAR AND BEET SUGAR.*

NO. II.-ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE BEET SUGAR
MANUFACTURE.

Ir is now nearly a hundred years since Margraff, a Prussian chemist, residing at Berlin, made the discovery that the beet contained a good crystallisable sugar. His attention was first drawn to this subject by the saccharine taste of the beet, and the crystalline appearance of its flesh, when examined with a microscope. Having cut the beet into thin slices, he dried perfectly, and then pulverised them. To eight ounces of the powder he added twelve of highly rectified spirits of wine, and exposed the mixture to a gentle heat in a sand-bath. As soon as the liquid reached the boiling point, he removed it from the fire, and filtered it into a flask, which he corked up, and left to itself. In a few weeks he perceived that crystals were formed, which exhibited all the physical and chemical properties of the sugar-cane's. The alcohol still contained sugar in solution, and a resinous matter, which he disengaged by evaporation. Having submitted several other vegetable substances (as parsneps, skerret, and dried grapes) to the same treatment, he obtained sugar from each. In 1747, he addressed to the Academy of Berlin a memoir, entitled "Chemical Experiments, made with a view to extract genuine Sugar from several Plants which grow in these Countries."

Margraff solved the important problem, that genuine sugar was not confined to the cane. After this, he enlarged and varied his experiments, but did not invent means of making sugar from the new material on a scale sufficiently large to render it an object of interest to capitalists. Yet he seems to have had a prescience that his discovery would one day assume importance. He commended it to the attention of the Prussian cultivators, and particularly the small farmers, as offering a new and beneficial branch of agriculture.

Margraff died in 1782. He was a member of the Academy of Berlin, director of the class of natural philosophy, and fellow of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. His works were collected and published in two volumes 8vo, in French, 1767. A German translation was published at Leipsic, the following year.

It was Achard, also a chemist of Berlin, who discovered the method of extracting sugar from the beet on a large scale, and at a

moderate expense. He first announced this result in 1797. In

1799, a letter from him was inserted in the "Annales de Chimie,"

in which he detailed his method. The high price to which sugar had risen in France, in consequence of the capture of nearly all her colonial possessions, gave something more than a speculative and passing interest to the ideas of Achard. The National Institute appointed a commission to examine the subject. The result of their investigation was, that the cost of raw sugar of the beet would be 8d. sterling a pound. The price of sugar was such, that even at that rate a very large profit might have been cleared; but this consideration was not sufficient to induce many persons to take the risk of a peace with England, supposed at that time to be approaching. Only two establishments were formed; one at St. Ouen, and the other at Chelles, in the environs of Paris. Both of them were failures, partly from the bad quality of their beets, and partly from the ignorance and inexperience of the conductors and workmen. With them went down the high hopes which had arisen of this new branch of industry in France.

It was

It is difficult to say whether these hopes would ever have been resuscitated, if political events of an over-ruling nature had not supervened. By the Berlin and Milan decrees, all colonial articles were prohibited, and that famous "continental system,' so wide and wild in its design, but so important and permanent in its effects, was established. From that time (1806), chemists and economists applied themselves with renewed zeal to the search after an indigenous source for the supply of sugar. thought, at one time, that the desideratum had been attained in the production of grape sugar, or syrup; of which, in the course of two years, many million pounds were made. This sugar, although very abundant in some varieties of the grape, raised in a southern latitude, possesses only two-fifths of the sweetening power of the cane and beet sugar. Nevertheless, sugar being at about 4s. sterling a pound, a great number of manufactories were erected, and science and industry were tasked to the utmost to improve the process, and to bring it to perfect sugar.

In this state of things it was announced, that beet-sugar manu

* Abridged from the North American Review, for April, 1839

Other

factories had been all along carried on successfully in Prussia. It was declared, that from four to six per cent. of sugar was obtained from the beet, besides several other valuable matters. German chemists had instituted experiments, and published results substantially the same as Achard's. At length, in 1809-10, experiments were recommenced in France, particularly by M. Deyeux of the Institute, who had reported upon the subject in 1800. The experiments resulted in the production of a considerable quantity of sugar, both clayed and refined, which, as specimens, served to revive and increase the confidence of France in this source of supply. No more than one to two per cent. was obtained; the beets being of a bad sort, and raised in the neighbourhood of Paris, where a vast deal of ammoniacal manure, hostile to the production of saccharine, is used.

In 1811, M. Drappier, of Lille, worked about fifteen tons of beets, from which he obtained two and a half per cent. of sugar. In the winter of the same year, an experimenter at Paris succeeded in obtaining four and a half per cent. from white beets, raised at a considerable distance from Paris, and without any manure. This was the first essay in France which approximated to the results of Achard. It was made by M. Charles Durosne, and was detailed in the Moniteur. It demonstrated how faulty had been their selection of sorts, and the mode of culture. At this time Achard had published in German an extensive work, in which he had treated with minuteness every department of the business, from the raising of the seed to the refining of the sugar. This treatise contained not only Achard's experience of thirteen years, but also accounts of the manufacture of beet sugar, on a grand scale, by other persons in Prussia.

In January, 1812, Napoleon issued a decree, establishing five chemical schools for teaching the processes of beet-sugar making, directing one hundred students from the schools of medicine, pharmacy, and chemistry, to be instructed in those establishments, and creating four imperial manufactories, capable of making 4,408,000 lbs. of raw sugar annually. Munificent premiums were also decreed to several individuals, who had already distinguished themselves by a successful application to this new branch of industry. A considerable number of manufactories were immediately added to those already existing in France; and, in the season of 1813, a large quantity of sugar, both raw and refined, was de Dombasle, a learned and experienced cultivator and chemist. produced. A notable improvement was introduced by M. Mathieu depuration, appropriately called in France défecation. This was, It consisted in applying to the beet-juice the colonial process of effected in the Oriental method. Achard used sulphuric acid in in fact, very analogous to the improvement which the Arabs this operation, and for the crystallization broad dishes, not unlike those said to be used in China at this day. The colonial process of défecation by lime is now nearly universal in France, as is likewise the substitution of the mould, or conical pot, for the crystallisers of Achard.

Such was the prosperous condition of this manufacture, when the disasters of Moscow brought upon it an uncertain political future, that bane of all great industrial enterprises. Confidence and energy gradually yielded to fear and discouragement. A faint and fitful struggle was maintained during another year, until the Cossacks, quartered in the sugar-mills, and the allied artillery, seizing upon the beasts that moved them, gave the manufacturers the coup de grace. The officers billeted at their houses became, brilliancy and purity of this unexpected product. After the final from curiosity, their principal customers, being struck with the overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo, the prices of sugar fell. Still, to the surprise of all, two beet-sugar manufactories did survive the shock of this tremendous reverse.

After the retirement of the allied troops, in 1818, the government began to turn its attention to the encouragement of an industry, which had struggled meritoriously and successfully to preserve a boon to the French nation. Many eminent and publicspirited citizens raised up establishments, more perhaps to give the benefit of experiments to their countrymen, than with a view to profitable investment. Men of genius and profound research occupied themselves with elaborate experiments, and published their results. Among the most important were the Count Chaptal, who detailed, in memoirs on the subject, and in his "Agricultural Chemistry," the experience of many years as a cultivator of beets and manufacturer of sugar; and M. Dombasle, who did the same, with admirable clearness and precision, in his work entitled "Facts and Observations relating to the Manufac

obtained his result in the laboratory, he communicated it to distinguished capitalists in Baden, who thereupon formed a company; not with a view, in the first instance, of erecting a manufactory upon the new system, but merely of proving its pretensions. To this end they advanced a considerable sum for setting up experimental works so large, that the thing could be tried on a manufacturing scale. Having done this at Ettingen, near Carlsruhe, they appointed a scientific and practical commission, to follow closely the experiments which Mr. Schuzenbach should make. Commissioners from the governments of Wurtemberg and Bavaria likewise attended. The experiments were carried on during five or six weeks, in which time several thousand pounds of sugar, of superior grain and purity, were produced.

The Baden company were so well satisfied with the report of the commission, that they immediately determined to erect an immense establishment, at an expense of more than 40,000. sterling for fixtures only. A like sum was devoted to the current expenses of the works. Factories were simultaneously erected at or near Munich, Stuttgard, and Berlin. The arrangements were made with remarkable intelligence and caution; and we cannot doubt that the new method will prove of immense importance to the prosperity, comfort, and improvement of the northern nations and colonies of the Old World and the New.

PIERRE-LOUIS DULONG.

PIERRE-LOUIS DULONG was born at Paris, 1785: he became an orphan at the age of four years; and, though hardly possessing the most ordinary advantages of domestic instruction or public education, his premature talents and industry gained him admission, at the age of sixteen, to the Polytechnic School, which has been so fertile in the production of great men ; of which he became afterwards successively examiner, professor, and director. He first followed the profession of medicine, which he abandoned on being appointed Professor of Chemistry to the Faculty of Sciences. He became a member of the Institute in 1823, in the section of the physical sciences. On the death of the elder Cuvier he was appointed Secrétaire Perpétuel to the Institute, a situation from which he was afterwards compelled to retire by the pressure of those infirmities which terminated in his death in the fifty-fourth year of his age.

M. Dulong was almost equally distinguished for his profound knowledge of chemistry and physical philosophy. His "Researches on the Mutual Decomposition of the Soluble and Insoluble Salts," form a most important contribution to our knowledge of chemical statics. He was the discoverer of the hydrophosphorous acid, and also of the chlorure of azote, the most dangerous of chemical compounds, and his experiments upon it were prosecuted with a courage nearly allied to rashness, which twice exposed his life to serious danger; and his memoirs on the "Combinations of Phosphorus with Oxygen," on the "Hyponitric Acid," on the oxalic acid, and other subjects, are sufficient to establish his character as a most ingenious and accurate experimenter, and as a chemical philosopher of the highest order.

But it is to his researches on the "Law of the Conduction of Heat," "On the Specific Heat of the Gases," and "On the Elastic Force of Steam at High Temperatures," that his permanent fame as a philosopher will rest most securely; the first of these inquiries, which were undertaken in conjunction with the late M. Petit, was published in 1817; and presents an admirable example of the combination of well-directed and most laborious and patient experiment with most sagacious and careful induction; these researches terminated, as is well known, in the very important correction of the celebrated law of conduction, which Newton had announced in the Principia, and which Laplace, Poisson, and Fourier had taken as the basis of their beautiful mathematical theories of the propagation of heat. His experiments on the elastic force of steam at high temperatures, and which were full of danger and difficulty, were undertaken at the request of the Institute, and furnish results of the highest practical value; and though the conclusions deduced from his "Researches on the Specific Heat of Gases" have not generally been admitted by chemical and physical philosophers, the memoir which contains them is replete with ingenious and novel speculations, which show a profound knowledge and familiar command of almost every department of physical science. -Farewell Address of the Duke of Sussex.

THE ROSE OF JERICHO;

ANASTATICA HIEROCHUNTINA.

In many parts of Germany a plant under the name of the Rose of Jericho is preserved, and made use of by its avaricious possessors for all sorts of juggling tricks and superstitious practices. The usual appearance of this vegetable body is that of a brown ball as large as a man's fist (formed by the little branches of the plant coiling up when perfectly dry), and is said to open only once a year, at Christmas. The miracle actually takes place, the plant expands and displays singular forms in its branches, which are compared to Turks' heads, and relapses again into its former shape before the eyes of the astonished beholders. Although few persons now-a-days believe that any unusual circumstances attend this appearance, yet the high price at which the balls are sold, (from twenty to twenty-five rix-dollars each), shows that there are still some dupes, and that the true cause of this change is not generally known; a few remarks, therefore, may not be unacceptable.

Peter Belon, who travelled in the East from 1540 to 1546, is the first who mentions this plant, although it appears to have been previously known in Italy; and he found it on the shores of the Red Sea. Leonard Rauwolf, of Augsburg, is said to have first brought it to Germany in 1576. Delisle found it growing in Egypt, in Barbary, and in Palestine.

It is an annual cruciferous plant, with oval leaves. The stem is five or six inches high, branched from the ground; it is soft at first, but afterwards becomes dry and woody. From the axils of the leaves rise small branches of white flowers, which are succeeded by an oval capsule, or seed-vessel, having its persistent style in the middle, and furnished with an ear-shaped appendage at each side, in which a lively imagination finds some resemblance to a turban. These pods have two divisions, each division containing two small oval seeds. The plant is of easy cultivation, the seed only requiring to be sown in a hot-bed in spring, and transplanted into the open ground in May. It flowers in June and ripens its seeds in September, after which the plant withers and apparently dies; but on being planted in moist earth, or being well watered where it originally grew, it assumes its former shape, the roots fix themselves firmly in the earth, the branches expand, and young leaves and flowers are developed.

It is grown in most botanical gardens, but never acquires the perfect form of those specimens which are brought from Egypt. When the seeds are ripe, the leaves fall off, and the ligneous branches bend inwards over each other, in the form of a ball, inclosing the seed-vessels within. In this state great numbers were brought to Europe by pilgrims in former times. When this dried plant is put into water, the branches unroll, and the pods become visible; on being dried again they again close,-an experiment which may be tried at any season of the year, and which is grounded solely on the property possessed by the fibres of the plant of expanding in moisture and contracting in drought,—a property which it is well known is applied to hygrometrical purposes, and which this plant possesses in a higher degree than most others. For this reason, Linnæus named it anastatica, from anastasis, resurrection. The French call it simply, la jerose hygrometrique, without any mystical allusion. As the quantity of moisture which this plant requires for its re-expansion is always the same, it is easily ascertained, by experiments, how long it must remain in water to imbibe a sufficient quantity, and also how much time is required for evaporation before it again closes. This property is very adroitly taken advantage of by impostors. The plant is moistened so as to open exactly at the given time: thus about Christmas they take it out of the water, as it is not absolutely necessary that it should remain in it till the very moment of unfolding, when by degrees the branches open, and again contract on the evaporation of the moisture.

In the East, these balls are rolled by the winds in the sandy deserts until chance throws them near some humid spot, when the branches spread out, the capsules open, and thus, by a beautiful provision of Providence, sow their seeds where they find the moisture necessary for their vegetation. The plant possesses neither beauty nor smell, but being imperishable, it is compared by the Roman Catholic Church to the deep humility of the Virgin. The natives ascribe to it the property of lightening the pains of child-birth, and tradition asserts it to have been the gift of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary; hence its Arabic name, kaf Maryam, Mary's hand. It is believed to have opened spontaneously on the night of the birth of our Saviour, and again closed

as before.