salmon) is met with in early summer at a distance from the shore. In the capture and cure of these the Dutch are assiduous and successful; but give them, or any other foreign nation, the privilege of fishing all the season through along the wooded shores of deep Lochfine, or other far-stretching and well-sheltered Highland valley, into the bosom of which the "great sea-water ever works its sinuous way, and it will soon be seen whether the Mynheers and Messieurs prefer the open ocean or the land-locked bays. We think it right to conclude this important subject by stating, that Captain Washington, up to the close of his inquiry, continued unconvinced of the propriety of the Scotch views so well propounded by Mr. Primrose. He expressed a hope that our fishermen would lay aside what he regarded as their prejudices, and that our builders would take the trouble to examine the lines of the most approved English boats, and satisfy themselves whether they might not improve on their present practice, and furnish the fisherman with a boat in which he may have confidence under all circumstances, instead of being anxious himself, and the cause of anxiety to others, lest an on-shore gale should spring up when he is out at sea. Such a feeling, he informs us, is entirely unknown among the Mount's Bay men in Cornwall; although the sea which rolls in RECENT DISCOVERIES IN THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF EGYPT.-On Tuesday evening, 10th June, a lecture was delivered by Dr. Kenneth Mackenzie, F. S. A., before the Syro-Egyptian Society, upon the recent important discoveries on Egyptian Astronomy, together with the results of Professor Lepsius' researches into the landmeasurements of the Egyptians. Dr. Lee, of Hartwell, occupied the chair. It appears that until recently the names of the Egyptian planets were very imperfectly known, but the fortunate discovery of a set of demotic tablets of the Roman period, containing a register of the motions of the planets for some years, has now solved the mystery. These tablets have been translated by M. Bruysch, and commented on by Viscount de Rouge. The results are important for Egyptological science for it is singular to find that on the translation being submitted to astronomical verification by Mr. Ellis, of Greenwich Observatory, the motions were found to be absolutely correct. Dr. Mackenzie illustrated the subject by several diagrams. The unit of the table of land measurements of the ancient Egyptians was likewise unknown, and the lecturer explained the process of induction upon the Land's End is certainly by no means lighter than that on the coast of Caithness; nor is the Scotch fisherman in any way less hardy or courageous than the Cornishman. He attributes the difference to an unconfessed want of confidence among our people in their own boats. The forecastle deck, however, has now been introduced among us. One-half of the Fraserburgh boats have it, and no inconvenience has resulted. A deck of this kind, from 8 to 10 feet in length from the stem, in a boat measuring from 35 to 40 feet, may be made to contain two or three more sleeping-berths, and does not deprive the boat of much fish stowage, as it is but seldom (and the practice is always dangerous) that she is overloaded. Captain Washington has recorded his opinion, that even a forecastle deck would make a boat safer, as, in the case of her shipping a heavy sea, it would throw it aft out of the bows, and thus enable her to rise again to meet the ensuing wave. That a cargo of herrings may be a little more expeditiously landed from an entirely open boat is just possible, but that trifling saving of time should not for a moment be allowed to weigh against the shelter, comfort, and safety to the crew that a forecastle deck would afford." * * Report, p. XXII. by which Professor Lepsius had been enabled to ascertain it. In conclusion, the lecturer enlarged upon the important fact that the union of science with philology had been the sole means by which these results were mathematically demonstrated. "The importance of obtaining the correct Egyptian names for the planets can scarcely be over-estimated, especially when the deductions of philologists are confirmed by the calculations of astronomers. And," said Dr. Mackenzie, "not only is this highly satisfactory in itself but it is part of a grand chain of evidence as to the mutual dependence, of scientific men, which may ultimately lead to a general Scientific Alliance among the societies pursuing different branches of study. Such unanimity between the highest mathematical science, astronomy, and the laborious investigations of philologists, are an indication that philology too may become one day an exact science." Land measurement was equally bound up with mathematical science, as the lecturer showed. After some observations from the chairman, Dr. Lee, and Mr. Bonomi, thanks were voted to Dr. Mackenzie. SALVE! WELCOME, Sir Knight of Kars! whose own brave brand Hath laid on thine own shoulder knightly style; Tread with free foot again the English land, She greets thee for thy gallant labor done; Thou comest not, of captive banners, lord; Thou bringest her no tokens from the fight; None but an English brow and English sword, Both unreproached and bright. 'Tis well; she hails the sword that held the trench And kept the maddened Muscovite at bay; She greets the calm, bold brow that did not blench When famine rose to slay. And praise to blushing every battle scar, Lips that have sung paid Pæans for the peace And hireling hymns for war. Take thou no heed! enough there be who know Enough there be who know what vanquished thee: Not the sworn purpose of the savage North; Famine, and fear, and carnage, not these three But they who sent thee forth. Not thine the shame, the blood and tears it cost; Theirs, theirs, not thine! Welcome, Sir Knight of Kars, Well hast thou won the golden crest and spur; All England bids thee welcome back from wars, Knight of the Right, and her. - The Press. NEIGHBOR NELLY. I'm in love with Neighbor Nelly, Though I know she's only ten, While I am eight-and-forty, And the married-est of men. I've a wife who weighs me double; Who at me turns up his nose. Though a Squaretoes and a Buffer, I can love my Neighbor Nelly She is tall, and growing taller; She has eyes as blue as damsons; She has pounds of auburn curls; I adore my Neighbor Nelly; Such a darling bud of woman! O to see her with the baby (He adores her more than I), How she choruses his crowing, How she hushes ev'ry cry! How she loves to pit his dimples, With her light forefinger, deep; We must part, my Neighbor Nelly, THE INUNDATIONS IN FRANCE-CAUSE 1 ADAM STREET, ADELPHI,} 16th June, 1856. SIR,Engineering and other criticism on the late water calamities takes the form of a speculation as to what should be done in providing sufficient embankments and outlets to carry off surplus water in times of emergency. There is deeper speculation than this as to the cause of the inundations, and there are certain facts that must enter into the consideration. From The Spectator. is to the mountains of Switzerland that she must apply, not her engineering, but her planting faculties, restoring the pine forests that nature provided and man has destroyed. Better rent from the Swiss the Alpine forests and Lake Leman as snow and water storage, and pay them in coal of St. Etienne the fair value of the fuel, than go on suffering a perennial havoc, or only avoiding it by digging out great trenches and piling up huge mounds, to waste the precious source of fertility in the Mediterranean Sea. Switzerland, like France, trusts to timber for fuel; and population in countries with winters is ever pressing against the means of artificial warmth; and thus trees of all kinds, whether serving for ornament or utility, are destroyed. Only by the free diffusion of mineral fuel, or by lessening the amount of population, can this evil be remedied. It behoves France to study the interests of Switzerland as well as her own, for she holds the keys of the water-supply; and, used rightly, that water-supply would be a source of wealth that would outvalue manyfold the fee simple of the Alpine forests. Years back, a Swiss engineer built up a name by constructing the famed slide of Alpnach, to facilitate the denudation of mountain forests. The economist will win greater fame who shall be the means of restoring the forests to their ancient boundaries, as valuable to France as are the Time was, if report be correct, that the Rhone was a regular river in its habits, providing for navigation the year round, not subject to overflow, and certainly not to the extent observed at various intervals of late years. The proof of this is the large number of buildings formed of sunburned bricks, which melt down like sugarcandy when soaked in water. It is clear that people would not have built such structures where they expected floods to reach them; and thus we have evidence that floods reaoh to a greater height now than formerly. We know also that the Rhone is not a navigable river above three months in the year. We therefore cannot escape the conviction that some great change must have taken place of late years to convert a regular stream into an alternate flood and shal-artificial lakes called bunds to Eastern India. low. The solution is not difficult to arrive at. All great rivers must be supplied from one of two sources the waters of evaporation converted into rain, or into snow. In a country of much rain the river may be maintained in constant flow without great foundation-stores. In a country with a long dry season the regular river must be provided with natural fountainstores for gradual overflow. The sources of the Rhone are the hills and valleys of the Alps. In the olden time these were thickly wooded, and the pine forest sheltered the snow from the sun and prevented it from sliding down the slopes. Gradually melting, it supplied, but did not overflow the river the year round. Increase of population and scarcity of fuel have year after year denuded the mountains of timber. The snow descends, but has no shelter. It collects till change of temperature loosens it, and it rushes down in an universal torrent, to produce temporary destruction succeeded by a draught. Within a few years past several inundations have occurred at Lyons, and the last one the most mischievous. Future ones will probably exceed this. If France would maintain her noble Rhone and disable it for mischief, it Every country possesses its own peculiar pro- STRANGE INSTANCE OF SYMPATHY.-The Duke | feelings. One morning, he tells us, when the de Saint Simon mentions in his Mémoires a president was at the royal audience, he was all singular instance of constitutional sympathy on a sudden attacked by an intense pain in the existing between two brothers. These were thigh at the same instant, as it was discovered twins-the President de Banquemore, and the Governor de Bergues, who were surprisingly alike, not only in their persons, but in their afterwards, his brother, who was with the army, received a severe wound from a sword on the same leg, and precisely the same part of the leg! ces. From Fraser's Magazine. eign copy or example." * Selden, notwithstanding his notes upon Drayton, and his re THE ART OF STORY-TELLING. to learn to make verse, but when they come ""Tis a fine thing (he says) for children to be men, they must speak like other men, or else they will be laughed at. 'Tis ridiculous to speak, or write, or preach in verse. As 't is good to learn to dance, a man may learn his leg, learn to go handsomely [that is, teach it to go handsomely]; but 't is ridic ulous for him to dance, when he should go." THERE is an art in making or doing any-gard for Browne and Ben Jonson, appears to thing well, although we cannot always lay have considered poetry as being altogether an down its exact laws, or any laws that will be absurd and irrational pursuit, and to have equally applicable to it under all circumstan- had a special contempt for its ordinary vehiPoetry has been considered an art from cle verse. time immemorial; but where are we to look for its laws? Aristotle tells us that it is one of the arts of imitation, distinguished from the other imitative arts by its means and modes, and governed by certain rules which he strictly expounds. But this does not satisfy the whole inquiry, and much has been done in opening and lighting up the subject since the days of the Stagyrite, and a great deal discovered that was not dreamt of in his philosophy. Setting aside the laws, where are we to find even a definition of poetry so true, obvious, and comprehensive, as to command general assent? It is curious enough to observe how the critics have differed in their definitions of poetry, upon the essence of which all mankind, including the critics themselves, are, and ever have been, agreed. He thought it particularly ridiculous for a lord to print verses. It was well enough, he thought for a man to twirl his band-strings, or play with a rush to please himself, in his private chamber; but if he went into Fleetstreet and sat upon a stall, twirling his bandstrings, or playing with a rush, all the little boys would laugh at him. "Verse 99 he adds, clenching the argument, "proves nothSir Philip Sidney, in one of the earliest ing but the quantity of syllables; they are treatises in our language on the subject, not meant for logic." Philips, evading the adopts, as he was bound to do, Aristotle's difficulties of a definition, ignores both imitageneral definition, and then goes on to say tion and invention, and refers the whole that it is not "apparelled verse "" that con- matter to inspiration. "Poetry," he says, stitutes poetry, "since there have been many "is a science, certainly of all others the most excellent poets that never versified, and most noble and exalted, and not unwormany versifiers that need never answer to the thily termed divine, since the height of poetname of poets; " and that "it is not rhym-ical rapture hath ever been accounted little ing and versing that maketh a poet, no more less than divine inspiration." Channing than a long gown maketh an advocate, who, regards poetry as an aspiration after a higher though he pleaded in armor, should be an state of existence. He says it is the advocate and no soldier; but it is that feign-breathing or expression of that principle or ing notable images of virtues, vices, or what sentiment which is deepest or sublimest in else, with that delightful teaching, which human nature; we mean of that thirst or must be the right describing note to know a aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a poet by."'* Puttenham rejects imitation al- stranger, for something purer or lovelier, together, and describes the poet as a creator something more powerful, lofty, and thrilor inventor. "A poet," he declares, "is ling, than ordinary and real life affords." § as much to say as a maker; " and he adds," Poetry," says Coleridge," is not the proper that as God, "without any travel to his antithesis to prose, but to science. divine imagination, made all the world of naught, nor also by any pattern or mould, as the Platonics with their ideas do fantastically suppose, even so the poet makes and contrives out of his own brain both the verse and matter of his poem, and not by any for * The Defence of Poesy. Poe try is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement or communication of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is Table Talk. The Arte of English Poesie. Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum. the communication of immediate pleasure."*pleased under the sanctions of authority? But as there are other works which also com- If there be any such people, they constitute municate immediate pleasure, and which a special class in themselves, and should live cannot be called poems, he adds the distin- apart in a particular world of their own. guishing characteristic by which poetry is to They have no right to trespass on the green be identified, a pleasurable emotion, or pe- fields of fiction, where people should take culiar excitement in the poet, which imparts their pleasure at their ease, without stopping to his production a more vivid reflection of the to ask questions as to whether they should be truths of nature and of the human heart, pleased or not. united with a constant activity, modifying and correcting these truths. Leigh Hunt enforces a similar theory. His definition is less lengthy, and may therefore be cited in full. That a story must be constructed upon a plan of some kind is plain without any help from the critics, who very often spoil more enjoyment than they promote, by setting up regulations where there is no need for them. "Poetry is the utterance of a passion for It is obvious enough, for example, that a truth, beauty, and power, embodying and story should begin at the beginning, unless illustrating its conceptions by imagination there is some peculiar reason for beginning at and fancy, and modulating its language on the end. In this respect it resembles a the principle of variety in uniformity. Its house, which is usually built up from the means are whatever the universe contains; foundations, architects generally finding it inand its ends, pleasure and exaltation. Poetry stands between nature and convention, keeping alive among us the enjoyment of the external and spiritual world: it has constituted the most enduring fame of nations; and next to Love and Beauty, which are its parents, is the greatest proof to man of the pleasure to be found in all things, and of the probable riches of infinitude."t Whether the accomplished reader, with all these definitions before him, sees more clearly into the matter than he did before, must depend upon the special gifts of his understanding; but we apprehend that a person who had his attention directed to the subject for the first time by such a conflict of guides, would be terribly perplexed in his attempts to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. Keeping clear, however, of scholastic refinements, every human being knows perfectly well what poetry is, by an instinct at once inscrutable and infallible; and to that instinct, let us distil our criticisms as we may, all poetry, and art, and fiction of every kind, must ultimately and finally appeal. convenient to build down from the roof. should not be very long, because the essential attribute which distinguishes a story from other modes of fiction is its brevity. should not aim at grand effects, because grand effects must inevitably become ridiculous on a small scale. It should have nothing superfluous, for the best of all possible reasons, that it cannot afford space for superfluities. It should not make a severe strain upon the mental faculties, because people are not supposed to take it up for study, but for recreation. It should not put forward any show of pedantry, or make excursions into far-off regions of knowledge, because such impediments to the flow of the narrative interrupt the pleasure of the reader, and have much the same sort of effect upon him as would be produced upon a voluptuary by finding every now and then a fragment of cork in his wine. These conditions are exacted involuntarily by all people who indulge in the luxury of reading stories; and any considerable deviation from them is quite certain to diminish the Does anybody want an aesthetical devel- zest of the entertainment, although it is not opment of the art of telling a story? We given to everybody to penetrate the cause. sincerely wish he may get it. Does anybody The multitude have a keen relish for what is want to be instructed upon the difference good in its kind; and it is dangerous to trust between a story that makes his pulses thrill, too much in their lack of critical discernment. and a story that makes him yawn? Does If they cannot always tell you why they disanybody require a learned Theban at his side to prescribe the legitimate forms of story-telling, with which alone he is permitted to be *Lectures on Shakspeare. like a thing, their dislike is not the less stubborn on that account. Indeed, it generally happens that when people are most at a loss to assign reasons for their faith, they are most obstinate in its defence. The Dr. Fell argu |