sary to blush, or to hang down her head, or to look archly, or to play with the ring finger. Neither was she a widow; for then she would have sighed, and looked as interesting as she could. Nor had she a bad husband: else she would have looked grave, and probably have begun a chapter of grievances. She replied, that she was married, that she had a small family, and that her husband was struggling with the world, and opposing industry to hard times. I immediately felt an interest in their mutual welfare, and paid, with tenfold pleasure, the stipulated price of my apartments.

A man may proudly enter an Inn, command about him, treat all with indifference, from mine host, or fat hostess, down to the flippant waiter and John the hostler, He may be so absent or self-important, as not to know the man of the house from boots, or boots from the bull dog: but in a lodging it is otherwise. The objects are fewer; they are more immediately proximate, and assume a more important form. The rattling of fresh post horses, the mail horn, or Dolly the chambermaid, does not perpetually ring in your ears, so as to make you wish to be off, giving you at the same time an inimical feeling towards the maker-out of the bill. There one coup de chapeau at parting does for host, hostess, family, and all the tribe of charges; but in a lodging you have to pass the landlady daily, and bows and inclinations of courtesy may be exchanged very frequently in the course of each week between you; so that a man must be void of all sensibility, if he be wholly uninterested about the family in which he lodges.

The common race of lodging-letters it is true, are guided by self interest, and are callous to delicacy and scrupulous feeling towards their lodger:

but yet there are many exceptions to the rule. How may widows of clergymen, of officers of the army and navy,--how many reduced gentlewomen are forced to let lodgings? How many half-provided females, or unmerited unfortunates, derive benefit from this resource? How many wives of men of talent and genius, struggling to establish the fame they well deserve, cheerfully endeavour to assist their husband by this means, during the season of obscurity and hardship?— Such characters know how to act towards the inmate of their roof; can feel for his wants, take an interest in his welfare, and respect his situation, whether retired, studious, sick, or solitary. Can a true gentleman, then, be too delicate towards such as these, too correct in payment, too nice in blending good breeding with his conduct in every respect.

The man who makes an Inn of the humble roof of genteel poverty, is an ignorant ruffian. Nay indeed I could never enter an Inn without a feeling of interest for my fellow-men there; and if good treatment and fair charges accompanied my fare, I considered that I owed a subordinate debt of gratitude to my landlord, for the remote species of hospitality, namely civil and kindly accommodation.

A fellow traveller once asked a surly cynic whether he did not observe that the Inn-keeper at which they had rested, had a remarkably open countenance? The latter replied, that he observed nothing open in the house, except an open door and open hands. One who could thus close his heart and his accounts with his fellow creatures, should travel through life alone. To the child of sensibility, there is no class, no situation, no abode which excludes the movements of the heart, which forbids kindly intercourse, or prevents his sympathies from coming

into action, whether in a lodging-house | penny tracts. We have literally "beat the sword into the ploughshire." We slay whales with Congreve rockets, and we conduct the powerful gas through the bowels of the deadly musket.

an Inn, a stage coach, or a passageboat, for the journey is always that of life; man is our companion, and humanity is the first and most pleasurable duty.

PERAMBULATORY
LITERATURE.

Made to engage all hearts, and charm all eyes;
Though meek, magnanimous, though witty, wise.
Lyttle ton.

With this exordium we proceed to the subject we design more immediately to pourtray, viz. the Perambulatory Literature of Glasgow. Whether it was from our lengthened rains, or continued east winds we know not, yet somehow or other this our western climate has been -and by many a southern is still-held We have already had the iron age, ungenial to the growth of the plant of -the golden age, and the dark age, Literature, even under the fostering and we discover no reason why the protection of the hot beds of the Unipresent should not be ycleped the versity and Andersonian Institution. the Literary age. The spread of We grant that from some cause Glaslearning is now amazing. Charle-gow generally calls up to the imaginamagne we are told could not subscribe tion the association of checks and his name, whereas there is now scarce- bandannas with far greater alacrity than ly a felon who cannot "subscribe his disertations, polemical, philosophical, banishment."-Did the benefits of or literary. Lately however, we hail Clergy still exist, the body of laymen a higher stretch in our literary horizon, would be limited indeed, and our tem--the harbinger we trust of a rich harporal courts might be gazetted. Li- vest. We have now our Literary Soterature and Science have now obtain-ciety, where all, without distinction of ed a most imposing eminence, and little indeed seems left to our children. We now bridle the ocean and defy the temp est. We now walk upon the water and skim through the air. Our deaf and dumb are taught the polite arts. Our blind are more favored than those of Palestine for our Pool of Siloam is itinerant. Our hardened felons are reformed by being obliged to grind the air, and indeed it is even projected to banish vice entirely from society, by compelling the poor to live in quad-tical economy, even from the question rangular buildings, and to cultivate kail yards of a certain dimension and form. We are now no longer annoyed with wars, yet (thanks to the Glasgow Courier) disturbed with the "rumours.' In perfect peace ourselves, we are making rapid progress in the extirpation of war, utterly from the world, by means of the circulation of two

class or talent, may for the small honorarium of one shilling, descant on the various important topics announced for debate. We have only, in like manner, to glance at the correspondential columes of the Chronicle to discover innumerable seeds of embryo genius, under the names of Civis, Aliquis, Readers, Constant Readers, and other the like Classical appellatives. There we find our civic literati discuscussing all the grave questions of poli

of the Czar's balance of power, down to Captain Black's system of watering the streets-or cosmographical topics, even from the north-west passage to that from Monteith Row and philosophical subjects, from the principia of Newton to the propriety of the Albion Steamboat sailing precisely at the hour.We have also a vast variety of minor

we have an account of the Coronation, and then of an Air Balloon-this day we read a parliamentary contest-and the next day of a great battle between Turner and Cooper-in the forenoon we have a melancholy shipwreck-in the afternoon a funny marriage, and in the evening a Turkish masacre. These

marriages-sea serpents-piraciesduels shipwrecks--mermaids-prophecies and songs. Now laying jest aside, we ask what a delightful prospect does this afford of the spread of knowledge and the rapid strides of literature.

literary rarities, which, like Colonel Hunter's Skirmishers pounce at our face and then quickly disappear. Thus we must have every Justiciary trial published in a variety of forms and editions. Every parliamentary debate or assembly speech condensed into a pamphlet and these accompanied with statements and answers, and sometimes we have interspersed with frequent branching out into catholic contentions, executions---processions-murdersOban controversies, and Socinian disputes, and all the etceteras of literary hostility. Before introducing our main subject, our readers must learn that until these few years our reading population consisted of the gentlemen subscribers to the coffee room or public newspapers, and it comprehended no part of the great bulk of our manufacturing multitude, save indeed, where some lean weavers joined their penny into a fund and in deep divan read the pages of the Chronicle or Scotsman for their radical advantage. In those days the useful class of literary labourers now to be lauded were almost concentrated in the redoubted "Blue Thumbs" who held an undisturbed monopoly of this branch of Literature. The only productions too which then

When we consider that knowledge is thus conveyed into every alley and hovel; and when we consider too, the character and occupations of those who read with avidity these sweet morsels, we must say indeed is truly THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS

SPECIMEN OF A

here

X. Y. Z.

The North American Luminary, 1st July,

4796.

A celebrated professor of chemistry has discovered a method of composing and decomposing the surrounding atmosphere, so that any farmer can, with the greatest facility, and at a small

issued from the plebeian press were pe- PROSPECTIVE NEWSPAPER riodical "last dying speeches and confessions," with prophetic details of " behaviour on the scaffold.". This dreary waste might betimes be enlivened in the sad months of winter by some "bloody murder" in Yorkshire, or ghostly appearance in Cock Lane of London or Sneddan of Paisley-yet all besides was barrenness, and no en-expense, avert rain, or produce it in livening ray cheered the populace. Now how altered is the theme!"the multitude of Planatory Stationers amount to near a hundred, and two or three presses groan under the diurnal burden of matter to support their erratic demands. Thus all that is acted on the stage of the world is cheaply retailed to the greedy multitude. Now

6.

any quantity necessary for the perfection of his crops. The professor recently dispelled the clouds over the city of New York and its suburbs for the space of a week, converting the cold, damp weather of our winter into a clear and comparatively warm season. By this useful contrivance, any mariner may allay the violence of a hurricane,

The army of the northern states will take the field against that of the southern provinces early next spring. The principal northern force will consist of 1,490,000 picked troops General Congreve's new mechanical cannon was tried last week at the siege of Georgia. It discharged in one hour 1120 balls, each weighing five hundred weight. The distance of the objects fired at was eleven miles, and so perfect was the engine, that the whole of these balls were lodged in a space of twenty feet square.

According to the census just taken by the order of government, the populalation of New York amounts to 4,892, 568 souls, that of Philadelphia to 4,981,947, and the population of Washington, our capital, exceeds six millions and a half.

Our celebrated travellers Dr. Clarke and Baron Humbold have just arrived

from their researches into two of the countries of ancient Europe. By means of a new invention, Dr. Clarke crossed the Atlantic in seven days. He sailed

poor

ter he had proceeded about thirty miles, the stream became a mere muddy brook. The baron, however, found the inhabitants of the country so inoffensive and communicative that he proceeded to his object by land, protected only by two servants and three American sailors. The people could give the baron no information whatever, but seemed by far more ignorant than the savages of England; making up for this ignorance however, by a cheerfulness of disposition at once admirable and ridiculous. These barbarians appeared foud to excess of decorating their heads and bodies with feathers and skins died in the most gaudy and varied colours. The baron observed numberless groups of these people using the most ridiculous grimaces, and twisting the body into a dozen ridiculous attitudes. They then began to dance, an exercise which they seemed so attached to, that it appeared to be their only recreation. The musical instrument to which these poor creatures were so fond of jumping and dancing, was about two feet long, and consisted of a hollow body, with a solid handle of about the saine

same instrument; and they very ably refute Dr. Camden's conjecture that the violin of ancient Europe was an instrument of parchment and bells, played upon by the knuckles.-Vide Report of the Antiquarian Society of New York, folio, vol 1783, p. 860*.

The late Voyage of Professor Wanderhagen to the moon took up a space of nearly seven months, but the present expedition, it is expected, will take up much less time. The body of the balloon will be filled with the new gas discovered by our chemist Dr. Ætherly, and which is 800 times lighter than the lightest gas known to the ancient Europeans. The body of this balloon will not be circular, but a polygon, of an infinity of angles, and at each angle, a pair of wings, all of which, are worked with the greatest precision and facility, by the most simple but beautiful machinery, These wings at once create a draft, and determine the direction of the air at the will of the aeronaut, whose balloon is easily steered by a newly-constructed air-rudder. The boat of the balloon will contain length, and curved at the extremity. twenty-five persons, and provisions for It had four strings, extending from the a twelvemonth. This boat has two imextremity of the handle, beyond the mense self-acting wings, which, like a middle of the instrument itself, and bird's, condense the air underneath the being held between the chin and the boat so as to assist in supporting the collar-bone by the left hand, was played machine. The boat itself will be covered on by the right with a bent stick, with a paste made of the essence of curved at the two ends, being drawn cork, as a non-conductor of heat; and together with horse-hair. This we Professor Wanderhagen, having sufhave no doubt is some species or de-fered so much from the cold in his scription of that instrument so celebrated previous voyage, will provide himself amongst the Europeans between the with a store of the " condensed essence sixteenth and nineteenth centuries of caloric," a cubic inch of which will under the name of fiddle or violin : * The ancient fiddle, with its cognomen, for the Society of Antiquarians, in or monosyllabic præfixture, was, we fancy, their last report, have given. it as their a low instrument, very generally played decided opinion that the ancient fiddle, upon by the vulgar. Professor Von Helmont conceives it to have been not a stringviola, violin, violoncello, and bass-viol, fed, but a wind instrument; but this is were merely different kinds of the little more than conjecture.