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From Chambers's Journal.

MUSIC IN METAL.

the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The rocker here mentioned is an instrument bearing some resemblance to the bevelled No one who lives within hearing of Bow-bells, soldering-iron used by tinmen. Imagine a piece or of any other such tintinnabulary distributers of brass, four inches long, somewhat similar in of sound, but knows that metal is sonorous. shape to the outer half of a broad old-fashioned Some people like the sound of bells; some the sash-bar, with a thin groove passing from end to clang of cymbals; some the click of a smith's end of its narrowest edge, and with a slim, hammer on the anvil; while others find no metal-straight handle of the same metal, terminating lic music so pleasing as the ring of gold and sil- in a knob, and you have the rocker. The mode ver coins on the counter. Every silversmith of using it will be presently explained. knows that a piece of bent sheet-silver, heated, will hum and sing when placed on a block of cold iron, which is a different sort of music to that produced by percussion, and thus it might appear that the subject of music in metal is speedily exhausted. But in this last-mentioned fact a property is involved of a very remarkable nature-namely, that metals, under certain circumstances, produce their own music, and sing in such a style as to surprise the listener.

Professor Farraday next took up the subject, and made it the theme of a lecture which he delivered at the Royal Institution, embodying an explanation of the phenomenon-lucid and apprehensible, as his explanations always are. He confirmed Mr. Trevelyan's view as to the tones being due to an alternate expansion and contraction caused by the heat. This it is that sets the rocker vibrating; and according to the rapidity or slowness of the vibrations, such is the The thing was discovered in a curious way in pitch of the tone. The particular way in which a stirring year-that which saw the battle of the expansion takes place is, that the groove in Trafalgar by Mr. Schwartz, an inspector of the edge of the rocker makes it a double edge, smelting works in Saxony. He had melted some and whenever the heated rocker is placed, restsilver in a ladle, and being impatient for it to ing on a mass of lead, a couple of little promicool, turned out the hemispherical mass as soon nences or hills rise up, immediately under the as it solidified, on a cold iron anvil, when, to his points of contact, being the natural effect of exastonishment, musical tones came from it similar, pansion caused by heat. At the same moment as he described, to those of an organ. The the rocker begins to vibrate, and no sooner is strange occurrence got talked about, and a one side raised than the hill on that side suddenly learned German professor having heard of it, sinks, owing to the rapid absorption of its heat visited the smelting-works, and had the experi- by the surrounding mass of lead. The consement repeated in his presence. He, too, heard quence is, that the rocker descends through a the sounds, but he did not think them equal to greater distance than it rose, whereby the other those of an organ, and noticed that they were ac-edge being raised, the same effect is produced on companied by vibrations in the lump of silver, and that when these ceased, the sounds ceased also. It was a curious fact, and there the matter rested.

the opposite side; and thus the vibrations continue as long as there is a sufficient difference of The temperature between the two metals. movement, as here described, affords an instance of a curious maintaining power; for "the force which really lifts the rocker is on one side of the centre of gravity, while the rising side of the rocker itself is on the other; and the point under process of heating is always moving towards the other, which is under process of cooling."

Twenty-five years later, the same phenomenon was discovered, but in a different way, near the foot of the Cheviots, by Mr. Arthur Trevelyan, who, to quote an account of the incident, "was engaged in spreading pitch with a hot plastering iron, and observing in one instance that the iron was too hot, he laid it slantingly against a block Although, as yet, there does not appear to be of lead which happened to be at hand. Shortly any way of turning these experiments to a pracafterwards he heard a shrill note, resembling that tical use, they are of much importance in a sciproduced on the chanter of the small Northum-entific point of view, as shown by the researches berland pipes-an instrument played by his father's gamekeeper. Not knowing the cause of the sound, he thought that this person might be practising out of doors; but on going out, the sound ceased to be heard, while on his return he heard it as shrill as before. His attention was at length attracted to the hot iron, which he found to be in a state of vibration, and thus discovered the origin of the strange music."

of Dr. Tyndall, professor of natural philosophy at the Roaal Institution. He has repeated the experiments, and extended them to other substances, basides metals, finding in all of them a confirmation of Mr. Faraday's views, and proving, what had been denied that a tone can be produced by two metals of the same kind in contact; for instance, silver on silver, or copper on copper. In this case, however, the silver or copHere was something to set an ingenious mind per rocker is made to rest on a very thin slip of at work; and as nothing happens without a the same metal held in a vice. Agates, and cause, except the breaking of domestic crockery, some other gems, rock-crystal, fluor-spar, fossilMr. Trevelyan, having asked the advice of Dr. wood, glass and earthenware, will also give out Beid of Edinburgh, set himself to discover the tones to a heated rocker-the only condition of Cause of the music. He make a number of care- success appearing to be a clean and even edge ful experiments, during which he ascertained in the substance under experiment. Among this that a "rocker," as he called it, brought out the class of substances, rock-salt exhibits extraordiloudest and clearest notes, and he described his nary effects. Desirous of trying this mineral, proceedings so well, that they were published in Dr. Tyndall, whose remarks we have quoted

above, placed a partially cooled rocker on a mass | Rockers of various kinds may next be introof it, when, as he writes, "to my astonishment, duced, made as above described, and placed so a deep musical sound commenced immediately as to rest horizontally during the experiment. the temperature of the rocker being at the time With a hand-vice, such as will fasten to the edge far below that of boiling water, and when the of a table, after the manner of a lady's pinsinging ended, was scarcely above blood heat." cushion, the thinnest slips of metal may be seIn this case, the want of an edge appears to be curely held while testing their quality. The efof no importance, for when "the heated rocker fect, too, may be tried of pressing slightly with was laid on a large boulder-shaped mass of the a knitting-needle on the back of the rocker imsalt, it commenced to sing immediately. Imediately above the groove: it will be found that scarcely know a substance," adds Dr. Tyndall, a whole octave of tones may be produced by "metallic or non-metallic, with which vibrations varying the pressure; the lowest with least prescan be obtained with greater ease and certainty sure, and shrillest with the highest. than with this mineral."

Perhaps, after all, there may be more in the Now, here is something to furnish occupation music of the spheres than a dream of poets or for evening-hours during the coming winter, the philosophers. We have all heard how that the experiments being such as may be tried by the statue of Memnon used to sing in the morning fireside, and even in the drawing-room. A com- sunbeams, and who shall say that out of the exmencement may be made in a rough way by periments we have suggested may not come a heating a poker, and placing it with the knob musical instrument on which heat shall be the resting on a table, and the heated end on a block only performer! Wind will then have a rival. of cold lead. The singing will at once be heard.

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From the Literary Gazette. M. Oppert has discovered the Babylonian and BABYLON.-TOWER OF BABEL. Assyrian measures, and by means of them has ascertained exactly what part of the city was inTHE French government, two or three years habited, and what part was in fields and gardens. ago, sent three gentlemen to make scientific and On the limits of the town, properly so called, artistic researches in Media, Mesopotamia, and stands at present the flourishing town of Hillah. Babylonia. One of them, M. Jules Oppert, has This town, situated on the banks of the Euphrajust returned to Paris, and it appears, from tes, is built with bricks from the ruins, and many his report, that he and his colleagues thought of the household utensils, and personal ornait advisable to begin by confining themselves ments of its inhabitants are taken from them to theexploration of ancient Babylon. This also. Beyond this town is the vast fortress, task was one of immense difficulty, and it was strengthened by Nebuchadnezzar, and in the enhanced by the excessive heat of the sun, by midst of it is the royal palace-itself almost as privations of all kinds, and by the incessant large as a town. M. Oppert says, that he was hostility of the Arabs. After a while M. Oppert's also able to distinguish the ruins of the famous two colleagues fell ill, so that all the labors of Tower of Babel-they are most imposing, and the expedition devolved on him. He first of all stand on a site formerly called Borsippa, or the made excavations of the ruins of the famous Tower of Languages. The royal town, situated suspended gardens of Babylon, which are now on the two banks of the Euphrates, covers known by the name of the Hall of Amran-ibnspace of nearly seven square kilometres, and Ali; and he obtained in them a number of curi- contains most interesting ruins. Amongst them ous architectural and other objects, which are are those of the royal palace, the fortress, and destined to be placed in the Louvre at Paris, and the suspended gardens. In the collection of cuwhich will be described hereafter. He next, in riosities which M. Oppert has brought away with obedience to the special orders of his govern- him, is a vase, which he declares to date from ment, took measures for ascertaining the precise the time of one of the Chaldean sovereigns extent of Babylon-a matter which the reader is named Narambel, that is, somewhere about one aware has always been open to controversy. He thousand six hundred years before Jesus Christ; has succeeded in making a series of minute sur- also a number of copies of cuneiform inscriptions veys, and in drawing up detailed plans of the im-which he has every reason to believe that he will, mense city. His opinion is, that even the largest be able to decipher. calculations as to its vast extent, are not exaggerated; and he puts down that extent at the astounding figure of 500 square kilometres, French measure (the square kilometre is 1196 square yards). This is very nearly eighteen times the size of Paris. But of course he does not say that this enormous arca was occupied, or anything like it; it comprised within the walls huge tracts of cultivated lands and gardens, for supplying the population with food in the event of a siege.

What further honors may await Lord Raglan we cannot say; but Her Majesty has already conferred on him the rank of Field Marshal, and in due time the country will no doubt see him rewarded, as other great commanders have been, by elevation in the peerage and a large addition to his income.-Economist.

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From Household Words.
MR. WHITTLESTICK.

worked out is all stuff. He does not believe in luck; attributes his own good fortune to innate force of character. Believes that he IN the San Francisco newspaper, entitled would have got along anywhere, and that any the Wide West, Mr. Whittlestick amused the man who really works in the mines can do people at the diggins with a sketch of Califor- well. Never wearies of writing home to his nian character. The diggers liked to see their friends, especially to those who always told every-day acquaintances in print, and called him, etc. Thinks the unsuccessful miner for a corrected and revised edition of Whittlestick's works. This has duly appeared in twenty-four pages large octavo, from the press of Bonestell and Williston, Court Block, Clay Street, one door below the Post Office, San Francisco."

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rather green in his speculations, but sees clearly that his own losses in quartz mining and town lots were unavoidable. Has an interest in one or two stores, in different parts of the mines, and is very apt to mention those localities to the new-comers who may ask his opinion, as the likeliest places at which to begin. Considers prospecting a very good thing; but as long as he has a claim affording an average yield, prefers that some one else should do it. Is confident that he can wash` a pan-ful of dirt quicker, and get more gold out of it than any other man in the mines. Claims to be the original inventor of the long tom, and knew that a sluice was first-rate for washing gold long before it was introduced. Looks upon sleeping in a tent as an enervating luxury. Give him a blanket and a stone.

Herein the miner may read about himself. If he be an unsuccessful miner, this is his character:-He knows California to be a humbug. In his judgment the mines must soon give out. He thinks that if he had arrived in '49 he could have made his fortune. But not in digging. No! Head work is what he was cut out for. There was a fine opening in '49 for any man of talent and energy to speculate in real estate. He don't believe half the tales told about profitable mining. People can't fool him with their stories. California being a humbug, he would go home if he Another kind of digger, is the digger Inhadn't to admit when he got home that Jim dian. He is clumsy; has black, matted hair; and Tom knew just how it would be-that is coarse featured; wears any thing or noththey were right and that he was wrong. He ing-that is to say, wears whatever clothes won't admit that. He will starve first. He he gets and all that he possesses. If he has is pretty nigh starving. He could go and been fortunate, he may be met attired in sevwork by the day for the Rattle Gulch Water eral shirts, coats and pantaloons, one over the and Mining Company, but he likes independ-other. If he has not been fortunate, he wears, ence; and as he has his mind to cultivate, perhaps, nothing but a single pair of stockobjects to doing forced labor for more than ings. Of soap he has no knowledge-water eight hours a day. Prospecting is, in his touches his skin only when he goes into it for opinion, the only way to strike a lead. The fish. He eats acorns, and grasshoppers crushbig strokes are what he is after. He don't ed together, when fresh, into a pasty mass, or want merely to make a living-he could have sun-dried for winter use. He gets up dances, done that at home. His luck will turn some at which he appears not in full dress, but day. It is all luck. Brooks went home with strictly and always in full undress, while his a fortune, and told the unsuccessful miner's wives and his daughters appear in the usual friends that the unsuccessful miner hadn't half variety of costume. He gambles deeply, at a worked. It isn't work that does it-it is game known by our children as " which hand luck. Brooks would have worked for nothing will you have? He eats no pork, but rejoices if he hadn't been so lucky; besides, Brooks with his whole tribe at the stranding of a was avaricious. The unsuccessful miner has whale. He takes a wife, or a family of wives, slaved it in California long enough; Austra- by exchange of gifts, giving a jug and taking lia is the place for him; wishes he had gone in exchange a net. His body, when he dies, there at once; want of capital is the only thing is burnt, and it is a point of honor with his that hinders him from going now. Too many relatives to stand in a ring as near as possible persons are allowed to come into the diggins. to the burning pile until it is consumed; his In his opinion it is immigration that has ruined bereaved wife puts on a widow's cap of pitch, the mines. He believes in quartz mining. which she wears on her head for several Thinks that the directors of a quartz mining months, according to the digger Indian way of company make a snug thing of it, and wouldn't going into black. mind starting such a company himself, if he could find purchasers for stock. Seldom

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The glass is next presented to the face of the successful miner:-In the opinion of the successful miner, the idea that the mines are

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Another of the noticeable characters is the Chinaman. Wherever there is money to be earned, John Chinaman is earning it. He is butcher in Dupont street, a merchant at Sacramento, a fisherman and fish-drier on Rincon Point, a washerman at the Lagoon ;

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154

MR. WHITTLESTICK.

and his idea of what will do for a flat-iron The genius of a poor Frenchman first there amazes the Anglo-Saxons. His ene- struck out a line of business as bootblack, and mies insinuate that linen has a tendency to the French bootblack soon became a stock return as cotton from his hands. In every-Californian character. A file of bootblacks thing, as in washing, his notions of work are now does duty in front of the California ExAsiatic. If Chinamen have anything to lift, change, and the man with dirty boots who they first ascertain whether one man can lift passes them and is no customer must run the it; and, if he can, they send four to perform gaunlet. The first bootblack provided for his the duty. All their work is done on the same customer a wooden stool. Competition led to scale. For ease in carrying heavy burdens, the introduction of a chair with a back to it. the Chinaman depends on the balancing of Capital then entered the field with arm-chairs weights at each end of a pole carried on his and cushions, and to the arm chairs and cushshoulder. If he has a bundle weighing fifty ions newspapers were added. There, inpounds to hang on one end of his pole, he will vention was exhausted until somebody hit hang fifty pounds of anything as ballast on upon the idea of blacking boots in-doors. the other. John Chinaman, in figure and Californian boots are not all to be blacked with costume, much differs from western notions of ease. A respectable city boot blacking estabthe graceful or the beautiful. Little Califor- lishment that had suffered much grievous nian boys shoot at him arrows barbed with wrong at the feet of possessors of greased or pins; men passing him on the pavement jostle wet boots, posts in front of the customer's him; dogs snap at his heels. He is disliked, seat-close to his eyes—this placard :— except by his countrymen; but they back

25 cents. 50 cents.

Persons considering these rates too high are recommended to visit the Plaza, where ex

him with energy. Is he before the recorder, Boots blacked, (not wet or greased), and wants an alibi? Twenty John Chinamen Boots blacked, (all over, legs, etc.,) will prove that he was in twenty other places, at the time in question. John Chinaman has Boots blacked, (when wet or greased), 50 cents. his own way of shopping. He enters a store and for a long time silently and stolidly gazes at the object of his desire. The store-keeper penses are not so heavy. at last retires in dudgeon. John attempts then the expression of his mind in English, ascertains the price asked for the article, and The Californians have a decided taste for bids about one-tenth of it. His offer is refused, sugar candy. One of the most imposing and and he departs; he never offers more at the imperturbable of public characters at San first visit. After a few days he returns to Francisco, who with a rough bass voice purrenew his offer, and if it be refused, to buy sues the even tenor of his way, is the "Big on the store-keeper's terms. The Chinaman Lump Candy Man." Grateful to all men is is successful as a miner, but he dislikes dig- the sound of his "Here you are!-Big ging; for rocking and tom-washing he dis- lumps and str-r-r-ongly flavored. Ever-r-yplays genius. He lives sparingly, unless body buys them! Sam Br-r-annan buys poultry be put in his way; for he has a won- them! Kate Hayes buys them." There have derful greed for chickens. In '49, the Chi- arisen lately, base men, copying his cry, and nese were eminent in San Francisco as keep-intercepting some part of his custom; so that ers of the cheapest and best frequented eating he is bound now to cry his big lumps as "the houses. They were the only men who had old or-r-riginal," to assert himself occasionally, on hand an unlimited supply of potatoes-then as the "man the papers tell about." a Californian luxury. These trades have now We have given very reduced copies of Mr. declined. The founder of the best of them Whittlestick's sketches, and have omitted has removed, and is said to be a thriving eat- from the series two most important characing-house keeper in the Sandwich Islands. ters, the news-boy and the grizzly bear.

A statue of Wordsworth, executed in white marble, by Mr. Thrupp, has just been set up in Westminster Abbey. "It represents the author of the Excursion' sitting in the open air, in a contemplative mood, as if communing with Nature, under whose habitual sway he may be said to have lived. He is resting on a moss and ivymantled stone or knoll, with the green sward at his feet enamelled with flowers; the legs are

crossed; his right hand and arm are wound gracefully round one knee; the left hand, the fore-finger slightly uplifted, is laid upon an open book, which the poet has just been reading; the eyes are bent, in pensive admiration, upon the flowers at his fect; and the spectator may fancy him saying

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

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From the New Monthly Magazine.

LIGHT READINGS IN ALISON.

And the Devil looked wise, as he saw how the while

It cut its own throat. "There !" quoth he with a smile,

"Goes England's commercial prosperity."

Not that the "smile" pertains to Sir Archithe general character of the smiling Mephis bald, any more than does (absit comparatio!) topheles: Sir Archibald is too serious, and in fact too much of a croaker, to smile much in print at any time, especially when paper cur rency and protection are his theme. Smollett represents as the most hardy of all Lieutenant Lismahago's crotchets, his position "that comof any nation where it flourishes to any exmerce would, sooner or later, prove the ruin tent" that eccentric and gallant countryman of Sir Archibald strenuously asserting, "that

LEST subsequent paragraphs should seem to be too exclusively informed by a spirit of captious "censure"-by a carping detraction, a nibbling disparagement, of Sir Archibald Alison's literary character,-be the present and opening one devoted to a sincere ascription of homage to whatever is laudable (and there is much that is highly so) in his historical writings. The more needful is this, because the subsequent paragraphs in question are, after all, concerned rather with superficial points, connected with such things as style and composition, than with the substance of his narrative. Honor due, then, and the dues are considerable, be forthwith and cordially paid to the learned baronet's industry, energy, en- the nature of commerce was such, that it could thusiasm, elevation of moral tone, and honest not be fixed or perpetual; but, having flowed impartiality of purpose. Especial honor, that with such strong and staunch convictions of to a certain height, would immediately begin his own, he can and will, not only lend an at- should be left almost dry,"-while there was to ebb, and so continue, till the channels tentive ear, but assign a prominent place, to the equally strong and utterly opposed conno instance of the tide's rising a second time victions of others. He is himself deeply im-Tis consolatory, when one remembers the date to any considerable influx in the same nation. pressed with, and consistently prompt to impress on his countrymen the belief,

That for the functions of an ancient State-
Strong by her charters, free because unbound,
Servant of Providence, not slave of Fate-
Perilous is sweeping change, all chance

of that gallant officer's prelections, to find that the old British channels are not yet left almost dry; and one cannot but hope that the Scotch baronet of the nineteenth century may be as far out (as to time if not fact) in his proun-leptical philosophy, as was the Scotch lieutenant of the eighteenth. Goldsmith's Chinese cosmopolite laughed, in his day, at our national propensity to gloomy forebodings, periodically ers who, said he, make it their business, at revived, and exposed those professional croakconvenient intervals, to denounce ruin both on their contemporaries and their posterity. England," he adds, "seems to be the very not only can give an unbounded scope to the region where spleen delights to dwell: a man disorder in himself, but may, if he pleases,

the else monotonous recurrences and unmean

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Mr. de Quincey has remarked of Southey, as a writer of history, and the remark may be applied in a measure to Alison, that his very prejudices tended to unity of feeling-being in harmony with each other, and growing out of a strong moral feeling, which is the one sole secret for giving interest to an historical narrative, fusing the incoherent details into one body, and carrying the reader fluently along ing details of military movements. † The propagate it over the whole kingdom, with a Corn-laws and the Currency,-who has not that the government, the government is all certainty of success. He has only to cry out, dipped into and dozed over the learned baronet's lucubrations on those terrible topics? Which of us has not guiltily skipped by the score whole-page tables of statistics, laboriously compiled, and infallibly demonstrative of old England's moribund state? One is profanely reminded (mutatis mutandis), by the spectacle of Sir Archibald's mode of watching and predicting the free-trade décadence de l'Angleterre, of a stanza in a much-disputed

Down the river did glide, with wind and with tide,

A pig with vast celerity;

*Wordsworth: Sonnets.

† De Quincey's Autobiographic Sketches, vol. ii.

wrong, that their schemes are leading to ruin, ber of the commonwealth thinks it his duty, in that Britons are no more; every good memsuch a case, to deplore the universal decadence with sympathetic sorrow, and, by fancying the constitution in a decay, absolutely to impair its good old Lien Chi Altangi sojourned in Lonvigor. Let us hope that since the time when don, and consorted with Beau Tibbs and the

Man in Black, nous avons change tout, or a good part of, cela. Meanwhile, there may be expected political monitors of the George Grenville type, to whom Burke applied the

lines

Humphrey Clinker.

† Citizen of the World. Letter cvii.

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