upon wayward and perverse fate! he maintained that their tendency was intrinsically right, when they intimated such things as were never verified; and that they were only wrong, as the hand of a clock, made by a skilful workman, when it is moved forward or backward by any external and superior force. He assumed the character of a learned and cunning man, but was no otherwise cunning than as he knew how to overreach those credulous mortals who were as willing to be cheated as he was to cheat them; and who relied implicitly upon his art. In the original print from which our engraving is taken, Jack Adams is thus designated : The walls, FURETIERE has given a description of a very curious summer house, invented for the King of Siam, and which is in one of his country palaces. The tables, the chairs, closets, &c., are all composed of crystals. the ceiling, and the floors, are formed of pieces of ice, of about an inch thick, and six feet square, so nicely united by a cement, which is as transparent as glass itself, that the most subtile water cannot penetrate. There is but one door, which shuts so closely, that it is as impenetrable to the water as the rest of this singular building. A Chinese engineer has constructed it thus, as a certain remedy against the insupportable heat of the climate. This pavilion is twenty-eight breadth; it is placed in the midst feet in length, and seventeen in of a great basin, paved and ornamented with marble of various water in about a quarter of an colours. They fill this basin with hour, and it is emptied as quickly. When you enter the pavilion, the door is immediately closed, and cemented with mastich, to hinder the water from entering; it is then they open the sluices ; and this great basin is filled, so that the pavilion is entirely under water, except the top of the dome, which is left untouched, for the' benefit of respiration. Nothing is more charming than the agreeable coolness of this delicious? place, while the extreme fervour of the sun boils on the surface of the freshest fountains THE HEROIC MOTHER. In the month of June, 1818, a pedlar and his wife presented themselves at nightfall at the door of a little farm house, near the village of the Brie, in France, and requested of the farmer permission to sleep there; his wife was still confined to her bed, having lately lain-in. A small room was assigned to them, where they passed the night quietly. The next day being Sunday, the farmer and his servants went to mass to a neighbouring village. The pedlar also expressed a wish to go, and there remained in the house only the wife of the farmer, the pedlar's wife, who complained that she was not well, and a child of six years of age.. ! genuously he was going to seek his father, as an attempt was made to rob them. The pedlar took the child by the hand, and said it would be unnecessary, and that he would himself go and protect his mother. They returned to the farm where the farmer's wife was shut up; they knocked at the door, but this woman not recognising the voice of her husband, obstinately refused to open it; the pedlar made vain efforts to induce her to it, and being unable to attain his end, threatened to cut her child's throat, if she did not instantly decide upon it. Furious at not being able to prevail upon her, he executed his horrible threat, and killed the child, almost under the eyes of its mother, who heard without being able to give succour, the cries and last sighs of her son. After having committed this useless crime, he endeavoured to penetrate into the house to save his Scarcely had the people gone out, when the pedlar's wife, armed with a knife, presented herself at the bed of the lying-in woman, and demanded her money, threatening to kill her in case of refusal. The latter, sick and weak, did not oppose the slightest resistance, and delivered up the keys of her drawers, at the same time desiring the little boy to conduct the woman who had to look for something in them. She rose softly from her bed, followed the pedlar's wife without being heard, and having beckoned the child out of the room, locked the robber up in the chamber. She then desired the child to run to the village, to apprize his father, and desire him to bring assisting all her force, drew by sudden ance. The child did not lose an instant; but by an inconceivable fatality met on the road the pedlar, who had left the church, no doubt, to join his wife. Having asked the child where he was going, the latter answered in wife; time pressed, they might each moment return from mase, and he could not succeed in getting admission but by mounting on the roof and descending down the chimney. During all this time he exhausted his rage in menaces and impreeations against the farmer's wife, who, almost fainting, saw nothing to deliver her from her certain death. This wretch had already got into the chimney, and was about to enter into the chamber, when the farmer's wife, collect inspiration, the paillasse of her bed to the edge of the hearth, and there set it on fire. The smoke in a few minutes enveloped the assassin, who not being able to reascend, very soon fell into the fire, half suffocated. The farmer's courageous wife lost not her presence of mind, but struck him several blows with the poker, which put him beyond the chance of recovering his senses. Finally, exhausted with fatigue and mental agony, she fell senseless on the carpet of her chamber, and remained in this situation till the moment when the farmer and his servants returned from church to be witnesses of this horrible occurrence. The dead body of the child, at the gate of the farm house, was the first spectacle that struck the eyes of this unhappy father. They forced open the gate, and after having recalled to life the farmer's wife, they seized the two culprits, who were delivered up to justice. The pedlar survived his wounds, and both received the punishment due to their crimes JOHN MACKAY THE FATALIST, THE subject of the following melancholy tale has long ceased to exist, and there is not in the place of his nativity a being who bears his name. The recital will, therefore, wound the feelings of no one; nor will it disturb the ashes of the dead, to give to the world the story of his madness, rather than his crime. The name of John Mackay appears on the criminal records of the town of Belfast, in the north of Ireland. He was the mur derer of his own child. It is unnecessary to dwell on the character of this unhappy man; suffice it that, from early education, and deeply-rooted habits, he was a fatalist. An enthu siastic turn of mind had been warped into a superstitious dread; and the fabric that might have been great and beautiful, became a ruin that betokened only death and gloom. Yet in his breast the Creator had infused much of the milk of human kindness, and his disposition peculiarly fitted him to be at peace with all men. The poison had lain dormant in his bosom, but it rankled there. Domestic sorrows contributed to strengthen his gloomy creed; and its effects were darker as it took a deeper root. Life soon lost all its pleasures for him;' his usual employments were neglected; his dress and appearance altered; his once animated countenance bore the traces of shame or guilt; and a sort of suspicious eagerness was in every look and action. He had an only child ; one of the loveliest infants that ever blessed a father's heart. It was the melancholy legacy of the woman he had loved; and never did a parent doat with more affection on an earthly hope. This little infant, all purity and innocence, was destined to be the victim of his madness. One morning his friend entered his apartment, and what was his horror at beholding the child stretched on the floor, and the father standing over it, his hands reeking with the blood of his babe. "God of heaven!" exclaimed his friend, "what is here?" Mackay approached, and calmly welcomed him, bidding him behold what he had done! His friend beat his bosom, and sunk on a chair, covering his face with his hands. "Why do you grieve?" asked the maniac ;' "why are you unhappy? I was the father of that breathless. corpse, and I do not weep; I am even joyful when I gaze on it. Listen, my friend, listen; I knew I was predestined to murder, and who was so fit to be my victim as that little innocent, to whom I gave life, and from whom I |