GLEANINGS. Purification of Sea Water.-The experiment with the newly-invented apparatus of Mr. Wells, for purifying salt water on board of ships, and rendering it fit for the purpose of drinking, cooking, and washing, was repeated on board a vessel moored for the occasion alongside Carey's floating-bath, off Westminsterbridge. The experiment was completely successful, and answered the expectations of the persons present to witness the process, amongst whom were several Captains in the navy and persons connected with the shipping interest. The apparatus itself is in height about 4 feet 6, and in breadth and length about 4 feet. It is a steam kitchen, calculated to supply the place of a galley and cabouse, and capable of cooking for 70 or 80 persons. It weighs about 11 cwt, and consumes in 12 hours about 2 cwt, of coals. It purifies sea water at the rate of a quart a minute; the stem or distilled water is condensed with great rapidity by means of a pipe or tube though which it passes, being carried along the outside of the bows and side of the vessel, and brought into immediate contact with the ocean, by which means it is rendered immediately cool; the pipe re-enters the vessel and the fluid drops from it as from the worm of a common still. This simplification of the process of condensation appears to be the principal novelty. and it is not the less valuable for its simplicity of contrivance. The water is fit for cooking or washing immediately it decends from the end of the pipe, but it is impregnated with a slight aroma, which renders it not quite fit (though it is very nearly fit) for drinking, until it has been passed though a filteringmachine, or exposed for some hours to the operation of the atmosphere, by which means it collects the carbonic acid and oxygen, of which it has been deprived by distillation. The advantages to be gained from this invention are, the small quantity of fuel consumed in cooking, the certain supply of a palatable water, and the increased room for freightage, by the space occupied by carrying tanks or water-casks being no longer needed for that purpose. The water has no taste whatever of the victuals which are cooked during its purification, which was shown recently by the fact that a dinner was being dressed for upwards of 30 persons at the time the experiment was proceeding. The salt can be collected, and may be made serviceable, or it may be kept in solution by the heat, and drawn off by means of cocks. A Storm in the Orkneys.-If the tourist has the good fortune to be in the Orkney during a storm, he will cease to regret the absence of some of the softer and more common beauties of Landscape, in contemplation of the most sublime spectacle which he ever witnessed, By repairing, at such a time, to the weather shore, particularly if it be the west side, he will behold waves of the magnitude and force of which he could not have previously formed any adequate conception, tumbling across the Atlantic like monsters of the deep, their heads erect, their manes streaming in the wind, roaring and foaming as with rage, till each discharges such a Niagara flood against the opposite precipices as makes the rocks tremble to their foundations, while the sheets of water that immediately ascend, as if from artillery, hundreds of feet above their summits, deluge the surrounding country and fall like showers on the opposite side of the Island. All the springs within a mile of the weather coast are rendered brackish for some days after such a storm, Those living half a mile from the precipice declare that the earthern floors of their cots are shaken by the concussion of the waves. Rocks, that two or three men could not lift, are washed about, even on the tops of the cliffs, which are between 60 and 100 feet above the surface of the sea when smooth, and detached masses of rock of an enormous size are well known to have been carried a considerable distance between low and high water mark. Having visited the west crags some days after a recent storm, the writer found sea insects abundant on the hills near them, though about 100 feet high; and a solitary limpet, which is proverbial for its strong attachment to its native rock, but which also seemed, on this occasion, to have been thrown up, was discovered adhering to the top of the cliff, 70 feet above its usual position.Anderson's Guide to the Orkneys. Force of Imagination,-A few years ago, a celebrated physician, author of an excellent work on the force of imagination, being desirous to add experimental to his theoretical knowledge, made application to the Minister of Justice to be allowed an opportunity of proving what he asserted by an experiment on the criminal condemner to death. The Minister complied with his request, and delivered over to him an assassin. A man who had been born of distinguishe parents. The physician told him that several persons, who had taken an interest in his family, had obtained leave of the minister that he should suffer death in some other way than on the scaffold, to avoid the disgrace of a public execution; and the easiest death he could die should be by blood-letting. The criminal agreed to the proposal, and counted himself happy in being freed from the painful exhibition which he would otherwise have been made of, and rejoiced at being thus enabled to save the feelings of his friends and family. At the time appointed, the physician repaired to the prison, and the patient hav ing been extended on a table, his eyes bound, and every thing being ready, he was slightly pricked near the principal veins of the legs and arms with the point of a pin. At the four corners of the table were two little fountains filled with water, from which issued small streams, falling into basins placed there to received them. The patient, thinking that it was his blood that trickled into the basins, became weaker and weaker by degrees, and the remarks of the medical men in attendance, in reference to the quality and appearance of the blood (made with that intention) increased the delusion, and he spoke more faintly, until his voice was at length scarcely audible. The profound silence which reigned in the apartment, and the constant dropping of the fountain, had so extraordinary an effect on the brain of the poor patient, that all vital energies were soon gone, although before a very strong man, and he died without having lost a single drop of blood."-Le Caméléon. Literary Notices. Just Published. The Preacher's Manual; or, Lectures on Preaching: containing the Rules and Examples necessary for every species of Pulpit Address; new edition, revised. By S. 1. Sturtevant. 2 vols. 12mo. Practical Holiness the Ornament of Christianity. By the Rev. John Flavel. With a Recommendation, by Mrs. Mason, author of " Spiritual Treasury," &c. The Three Sisters. By the Rev. A. B. Seckerson. The Young Man's Companion in the World; pointing, by Anecdote and Example, to its vices and virtues. Historia Technica Anglicanæ. A Systematic arrangement of the leading events in English History, from the earliest notices of the country to the present time; with an entirely Original System of Mnemonics. By Thomas Rose. Alphabet of Electricity, for the use of beginners. By W. M. Higgins, 16mo. A Grammar of Phrenology; or, an Analysis of the Faculties of the Human Mind. By H. W. Dewhurst, Esq, Professor of Phrenology and Natural Theology. A Familiar Lecture, illustrative of the Architecture of the Human Body, exhibiting the power, wisdom, and goodness of Almighty God in the creation of Man. By H. W. Dewhurst, Esq. Adapted for the Rising Generation. Sixth edit. 8vo. In the Press. The Life of Thomas Linacre, M. D., Physician to King Henry VIII. and founder of the College of Physicians in London, with Memoirs of his Cotemporaries, and of the Rise and Progress of Learning, more particularly of the Schools, from the Ninth to the Sixteenth Centuries inclusive. By John Noble Johnson, M. D., late Fellow of the College of Physicians, London. Edited by R. Graves, of the Inner Temple, Esq. Six Lectures on the Atheistic Controversy; delivered at Sion Chapel, Bradford. By the Rev. B. Godwin, author of "Lectures on British Colonial Slavery." The First Volume of Mr. Murray's Variorum Edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson; printed uniformly with the Works of Byron and of Crabbe, and embellished with Engravings by the Findens, after Drawings taken on the spot by Stanfield; will be published on the 1st of January next. Hector Fieramosca; or, The Challenge of Barletta. An Historical Tale; by the Marquis D'Azeglio. LONDON: PRINTED AT THE CAXTON PRESS, BY H. FISHER, SON, AND CO. THE IMPERIAL MAGAZINE. DECEMBER, 1834. MEMOIR OF MRS. TROLLOPE. (With a Portrait.) THIS Lady is known to the world by two works of her own; the former on the Domestic Manners of the Americans," the latter a "Narrative of a Tour in Belgium," &c. She is far better known to the world by innumerable reviews, of every diversity and degree of opinion and talent. This principally refers to her first production; and certainly the excitement it occasioned at its first appearance was not a little calculated, if not to compensate for the labour and cost, at least to gratify the vanity of which the race of authors are so shrewdly suspected. Of her latter production, as we have recently given a considerable space in our pages to an examination of its contents, we shall here say nothing. Indeed, in commenting upon the literary character of this Lady, there is a further reason why we should chiefly confine our view to her work on the Domestic Manners of the Americans. It was her first work; it was evidently the most lively, natural, and unconstrained exhibition of her habits as an observer, and her powers as a writer. These powers are at once considerable and curious. At one time the reader meets with that class of objects observed, which a woman's eye alone would catch; and these objects described with such a happy minuteness as leaves small doubt as to the sex of the writer-but anon there is a species of broad farce enacted, an outré style of caricature exhibited, which by no means reminds the reader of a lady's hand. Furthermore, those outrageous lithographs form a very novel adjunct to a female performance, and draw, with a prodigality worthy of Munchausen, upon the faith of the untravelled reader. Her descriptive powers are unquestionably very superior. The gigantic scale of the American scenery; the eager bustle of the jostling, elbowing, progressing American; the uniform commercial stamp of each of the thousand individuals whom the traveller meets in the steam-boats, taking their little five-hundred-mile trips "up the country;" the spick-and-span new aristocracy of New York; "the insensible perspiration" of the never-ending canvass: all these are depicted with the most diverting verisimilitude. To an English reader, who has never seen America, the effect of the representation resembles that of some portraits which we sometimes see, which we feel convinced must be excellent likenesses, though the originals are unknown to us. Some of the most piquant of her dialogues and adventures are indeed a little too good to be true, and are rather more redolent of Sister Trollope than of Brother Jonathan. These, however, are pardonable peccadillos; they are redeemed by a fund of humour, which must have produced laughter enough, one would suppose, to fatten a whole generation. 2D. SERIES, No. 48.-VOL. IV 3z 192.-VOL. XVI. The chief objections to Mrs. Trollope's mode of writing are, first, a strong infusion of prejudice, which she has too much honesty to dissimulate. "I speak," says she, "of the population generally, as seen in town and country, among the rich and the poor, in the slave states; and the free states I do not like them; I do not like their principles; I do not like their manners; I do not like their opinions." In the comprehensiveness of this denunciation, so much must of necessity be involved which never did or could come under Mrs. T.'s observation, and which was 66 never dreamt of in her philosophy," that the remark can only be traced to insuperable prejudice. A more serious charge, however, against the writings of Mrs. Trollope, is the sacrifice of religion, and of what we should call morals also, to the prosecution of her main object. It is a dangerous thing to scatter indiscriminate censures against any class of professing Christians, it looks very like an invidious attack upon religion itself. Upon the minds of the thoughtless it produces precisely the same result, and in the mind of the author it may be shrewdly suspected to flow from the same source. Nay, we should go still further: if we see in the pages of an author, any indications that he does not himself possess personal knowledge of, and sense of interest in, the truths of Christianity; if he indicate that he is not himself a Christian,—we must risk the charge of being uncharitable, by altogether denying his admissibility as a witness; we will not allow him to come into court; he labours under something more than absolute ignorance, namely, an obliquity of vision and a delusion of mind. For such an author, therefore, to criticise sermons and exercises of devotion, is just a little more absurd than for a man born deaf to dogmatise about flats and sharps. Again, with respect to morality, we are not much pleased with Mrs. T. for such a declaration as the following. "On entering a slave state, I was immediately comfortable and at my ease." The tender affections in man may, indeed, be extirpated by the storms of avarice and political passions, but we seem to feel a right to look, even in the very wilds of barbarism, to woman's eye for the tear of pity, to woman's heart for the sigh of sympathy, and to woman's life for the prayer of intercession. It is painful in a British lady to look for these in vain. Upon Mrs. Trollope's political views, and on her notions of those of the Americans, it is unnecessary to enter; the truth is, that the essence of the charge which she brings against our transatlantic brethren, is their want of refinement; this, it must be confessed, is not a crime of the first magnitude, nor we fear is it the greatest crime. The Edinburgh Review, however, suggests to the accused party an appropriate defence, in the reply of a great man of antiquity-" True, I can not fiddle, but I can make a small state a great one;" and, in the same article, remarks, with that enviable felicity which is common only in the pages of that work-" Mrs. Trollope addresses the Americans much as Touchstone addresses Corin:- Wast ever at court, shepherd? No, truly. Then thou art damned. Nay, I hope. Truly thou art damned like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side. For not being at court? your reason. Why, if thou never wast at court, thou never saw'st good manners; if thou never saw'st good manners, then thy manners must be wicked; and in wickedness is sin, and in sin is damnation. Thou art in a perilous state, shepherd.' Corin's answer comprises a considerable portion of the proper American reply-' Not a whit, Touchstone: those that are good manners at court, are as ridiculous in the country, as the behaviour of the country is most mockable at court.'' |