From Chambers' Journal.

AMERICAN CLOCKS FOR CHINA.

twelve years, and also to the commencement of the civil day-at eleven P. M. —comprehending the period between this and one A. M. The month which is signified by this term is not the first of the Chinese year, but singularly enough coincides with January. Each of the twelve hours is divided into eight kih, corresponding to quarter-hours. This diurnal division of time does not appear to have been in use in the time of Confucius, as mention is made in the spring and autumn annals of the ten hours of the day."

WITH all their ingenuity and industry, the Chinese appear to employ themselves but little in the art of clock-making; and it may be safely declared that Geneva turns out more time-keepers in a year than are produced in the whole of the Celestial Empire. In the large city of Nankin there are not more than forty clock-makers; Su-chew has thirty, and Ning-po not more than seven; while, until The writer whose remarks we quote, recently, the value of the clocks and watches recommends his countrymen, in manufacturimported into China from Europe, amounted ing clocks for the Chinese, to adopt the clockto about half a million dollars yearly. It is face commonly used in China with some imsaid that the number of clocks really manu-provements, one of which would be to surround factured in the country in a twelvemonth does the twelve "horary characters" with a ring not exceed 1500- - a fact the more remarkable of numerals from one to twenty-four, every when contrasted with the state of the case in other countries. The watch and clock makers in London, including those who manufacture portions of the mechanism only, amount to more than 1000; and, as is well known, the enterprising horologists of New England make and export clocks every year by tens of thousands. These latter, with that keen spirit of trade which characterizes them, have lately been turning their attention to China as a profitable market for their handicraft; and a request was despatched some time since from the United States' Patent Office, to such American citizens as were resident in the flowery land, for any information that might promise to benefit the brauch of industry in question.

From one of the replies which this "request" elicited, we gather that the Chinese have always been too deficient in their acquaintance with astronomy and mathematics to construct proper sun-dials; and that their knowledge of these instruments was obtained from Europeans; while hour-glasses are known only as a contrivance "employed in Western countries to measure time." Many Celestial gentlemen make it a sine quâ non to carry two watches; among these, specimens of very ancient workmanship are sometimes met with, as rotund as "Nuremberg eggs;" and the wearers are too often anxious to make the pair go well together. The trouble they gave in consequence, in former days, to some of the Jesuit Fathers who were skilled in clock-making, will be found mentioned in the Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses.

A Chinese day comprises twelve periods, each equivalent to two hours, and they are represented by twelve characters on the clockface, being those used also to designate the months. The first in the list (meaning Son) is employed at the commencement of overy cycle, and to the first of every period of

alternate one of which would be opposite the half-hour mark of the inner circle, corresponding with a whole hour of our time, and to continue the use of the four signs which now stand near the centre of the face to indicate midnight, dawn, noon, and evening. The pendulum is to vibrate seconds; the minutehand to make half a revolution at every sixty seconds; and the hour-hand is to go but once round the face in the whole diurnal period. As the result of this arrangement

"At one o'clock P.M., our reckoning, the hour-hand will be half-way between the large character at the top and the next one to the right; and the minute-hand, having made half a revolution, will point perpendicularly downwards, and the clock strike one. At the expiration of another of our hours, a whole Chinese hour will have expired, when the former hand will have reached the first large character to the right, and the latter will be directed to the zenith the clock striking two." The minute-hand is, therefore, to make twelve revolutions in the twenty-four hours.

The clocks are to be constructed with lines and weights, as those with springs are not liked in China; and, as a Celestial always likes to see what he is buying, it is suggested that the works be made as visible as possible, and of good quality, to avoid the loss that would be sure to follow attempts to palm off clocks made to sell merely. To gratify the Chinese wish for utility, the lower part of the door is to contain a looking-glass, or if not this, something very ornamental; and inside, instructions in the native character for fixing, winding, regulating, &c. Such clocks as are here described can be manufactured in Connecticut for two dollars and a half each; and, as they can be sold in China at from five to six dollars each, we may shortly expect to see a great and profitable trade in American time-keepers between the two countries.

From Chambers' Journal.

to the divine. From the mystic to the real is a wide bound, and few care to take the GUARDED SECRETS. leap. But, leaving to the star-gazer his more WHAT woman is there that confesses not dazzling horizon, let us gather round us for a to the possession of a guarded secret? School-brief space the lowlier interests of humanity; girls have their cherished mysteries; but let us look with reverent eyes into the secret these pass from mouth to mouth till, like the drawer. witches at "seventh hand," all their magic dies out. It is not of such we would speak, but of that sterner and more stubborn secret which is the life in life, which occupies the eoul's inner and most secret chamber, and is the heart's holy of holies; a joy, or a dread, or a pang most commonly the lastthrough life; a thing that weaves itself, with more or less intensity, into every act of our daily struggle on earth; is with us when we rise to a new sun, and lies down with us in the darkness; our accompanying shadow, go where we may, and do what we will; that mocks us when we smile, counterfeits all our agonies; and to lose which would be something like that loss of soul pictured in the well-known German legend. That the constant presence of our secret within us and around us has its meaning for good, who shall doubt? Our human woes would not be allotted to us ay, even as our daily bread -were they not necessary to the nourish ment of a higher life than that which perplexes us here. Our wandering spirits, ever lost and restless, must, like the fabled children in the wood, gather their food from off the thorns. There is, in truth, no teaching like the teaching of a great and master sor

row.

My grandmother had an old-fashioned cabinet, portioned out, as was the method of constructing such commodities in her day, into sundry small shelves, drawers, and oddcovered boxes. The centre compartment of this same old chest opened like a door, having lock and key, and within was a long slidingdrawer, occupying the entire depth of the cabinet. That in this drawer something very precious was stored, all her children knew. None, however, dared to pry into their mother's guarded secret. Her husband, it was more than suspected, could have thrown some light on the matter; but he was never known to do so, and silence rested upon the unknown occupant of the drawer; the inystery remaining a mystery up to the day of my good grandmother's death. But when the cold hand can no more unlock a cabinet than it can unlock the door through which the warm, conscious life has passed; and when the palsied foot, lying stark in its dusty dwelling, no more mounts the stair to the guarded treasure-house of all that was once so dear then comes the revealer; comes, perhaps in the form of a prying sick-nurse, one of those death-watches at the sight of whom the living quake. Or it may be, that hands more tender deal in greater reverence with the departed spirit's cast-off apparel, holding sacred for the sleeper's sake those forsaken relics wept and prayed over by the waking eyes that are never more to weep and pray on this earth again.

---

There are few places filled with more startling materials for the romancist than the much-neglected secret drawer. Secret passages, hidden vaults, tapestry-veiled doors, traps leading downwards through the floor, and escapes opening upward through the In the present case, it was so. The consky-light, we have in abundance; but the tents of the secret drawer were committed to narrow and apparently insignificant recep- the flames, in accordance with the expressed tacle that holds within it, unseen by vulgar wish of the dying. But somehow or other eyes, the hoarded secret of a heart and of a the secret oozed out. It would appear that, lifetime nay, perhaps more-the darkening like most other grandmothers, mine had of a household, the "skeleton behind early in life had presence a love-affair as that the door," seems altogether to have escaped deepest-striking of all woman's experiences the vigilant research of the curious. Relics is somewhat irreverently termed. It was the some sainted, some profane enough- old story: the man she loved went abroad hang visibly about our very doors. We are without having spoken just that one word for all familiar with relics of various kinds, from which her soul thirsted, and which, neverthethe sentimental lover's hair-filled locket down less, had found a thousand other utterances to the religiously-guarded "heart "heart of Mon- scarcely to be mistaken. For years there trose." Some people are essentially relic-was a dreary silence between the two. Then lovers, and will make far-off pilgrimages for came my grandfather, with his earnest courtthe bare sight of an iron belt or a knotted ship. Under the feeling that she was not cord vouched for as the castigatory badge of some mouldered monk, and feel a strange gratification in being permitted to kiss the dust from the worn stones trodden by the feet of those whose once unhonored grave centuries have since hallowed into something akin

justified in cherishing a predilection so appar-
ently unresponded to by the earliest object
of her affection, she yielded, after a prolonged
struggle, to my grandfather's suit.
sooner, however, was she formally engaged
to him, than there came a letter in the old,

No

t

heaven, as she was at the time out of health] duce to the world as his own. To insure his

- whatever that prayer might be, that it was a beautiful and a pure one, I am sure- -the purest and the best, perhaps, in all the long catalogue of guarded secrets.

wife's aid in the project, he carefully concealed from her whatever deep-laid schemes were working in his own mind-made very light of the affair asserted that it was but to serve a temporary purpose, and that, the object in furtherance of which this singular deception was to be carried on once attained, the whole thing should be revealed.

One secret, which in every age has been most carefully and religiously guardedguarded in terror and dismay, through inconceivable wrong and suffering, through life and up to the grave's brink, not perhaps even A quick instinct of wrong, in the mind of then to be rendered up to those who stand the young wife, made her at first hesitate; around scattering their last tears with the but the recollection of that strict abnegation "dust to dust "- is the secret of birth. In- of her own will to which she had vowed herstances of the kind alluded to are so numerous self, at last prevailed over her scruples, and and so startling, that it would be difficult to the pleading looks of the helpless little orinvent any story surpassing in interest the phan, lying safe and warm within her arms, already written and attested records of that melting her soul, she took the forlorn babe to most dangerous secret. There are few fami- her bosom, and bestowed upon it heartily a lies who cannot recount, from the oral tradi-mother's care. The child proved sickly, a tions of their house, some legend touching on weary burden to any but a real mother; yet this subject-strange glimpses of some half- its foster-parent, though young and unused to developed tragedy, if not so terrible as that such a charge, never for a moment shrunk of the Family of Montorio," yet sufficiently from the responsibility she had incurred. The suggestive to people the dreams of their hear-consequence naturally was, that the boy ers for nights to come. Such tales I remem- learned to love her strongly and entirely. ber to have heard in Scotland. One, in particular, struck me as most singular, because, though generations have been born, and have passed out of being since the occurrences narrated took place, no clue was ever found to the secret so cautiously and mysteriously guarded. The following is an outline of the tradition :

But towards his reputed father he at all times evinced a most strange and unaccountable aversion, amounting to an instinctive horror and shrinking from his presence. When the child had grown to be about a year old, Mr. A- -g, the gentleman in question, his plans now apparently matured, resolved at once to introduce his protégé to his family, as his A couple, coming whence no man knew, own legitimately born son and heir. Mr. arrived one sharp winter night amid the Ag was a descendant of one of the old sinoke of Edinburgh. The wife was younger border families, renowned in history for many than her husband by some years, and, possi- a raid and many a foray across the English bly from the fact of this disparity of age, frontier, and, judging from his deeds, the unlooked up to him with a feeling of reverential scrupulous character and adventurous spirit devotion belonging rather to a daughter than of the early freebooter would seem to have to a wife. It was noticed, indeed, by all who been transmitted down through many generknew them, that she had, even thus early in ations, little modified by the march of centuher wedded life, laid down for herself a law of ries. And now came the poor wife's trial. more strict and unquestioning obedience than In her husband's home, and under the eyes is usually practised by even the best of wives. of his kindred and household, she was soon The result of this blind submission, as will doomed to feel bitterly how a single deception be seen, must have borne hard upon a pure inevitably leads to numerous others, and how heart and tender conscience, such as hers one fulsehood entails the necessity of a thouwere represented to have been, though not sand more to follow in its wake. A mother perhaps until added years had brought home in seeming, yet no mother in truth, her the lesson, rightly understood by few, that entire ignorance concerning all that related no mortal, even though he be a husband, has to the birth of her supposed child became a a right over any other human soul, authoriz- subject of ridicule with the female members ing him to rule its obedience contrary to God's of the family. Sooner or later betrayal higher law. The married pair, it would seemed inevitable. Nor was this all: the seem, had been united for some years; yet worst was to come. No sooner had the imno offspring had been granted to their prayers. posture been carried out successfully, than It was now that, while living in the utmost the young wife found herself about to become retirement, in an obscure street, the husband a mother. Here was a new involvement. introduced to his wife an old Scotch nurse, She had, then, given up the birthright of her bearing in her arms a new-born child. This own child in favor of a stranger! child, said by him to be the posthumous son true that the fact of the imposition of the of a dear friend recently deceased, he repre- adopted child could be proved, but what husented it was his interest to adopt, and pro-miliation must accompany such a confession

It was

what a heart-wearing tissue of law-proceedings might not be entailed by the admission! To the married pair, years of torturing anxiety and strange discord followed.

From the Gentleman's Magazine.

TRAITS OF THE TRAPPISTS.

on

THE Cardinal de Richelieu and the MarHeart-burnings of many kinds unavoidably quise d'Effiat (whose son, Cinq Mars, his arose out of a state of things so unnatural. eminence soon after judicially murdered), The real son became a secondary consideration in the household, the very servants seeking favor with the presumed heir, and looking down on the " younger brother."

the 9th Jan., 1626, met to hold as sponsors at the baptismal font the young heir to the almost ducal house of Bouthilier de Rancé. The infant received the Christian names of his illustrious godfather, and the little Jean Armand was endowed by the cardinal with the sponsorial gift of the Abbey de la Trappe, to be holden by him in "command," that is, to take its profits and neglect its duties.

All this time the mystery was still maintained. Whence the adopted had come, and to whom he belonged of right, was throughout kept a guarded secret from the wife her husband's solitary admission to her being to the effect, that the boy's mother was a lady Let me here state, by way of parentheof noble birth of the father he never spoke. sis, that of all the abuses in the Church of Meanwhile, Mr. A-g made frequent and France, there was none so outrageous as that sudden journeys from home, no one knew of the "commendams. In old times, when whither or for what purpose, always returning war or pillage threatened an ecclesiastical as unexpectedly as he had departed. After property or institution, it was the custom to these absences he was observed to be gloomy, make over the same, recommended (commendnay, almost fierce in his temper, his irritation atum) to some noble powerful enough to proshowing itself especially towards the child of tect it. This was a provisional arrangement his adoption, between whom and himself a with the election of the titulary; but the mortal antipathy appeared to exist, and to commendatory drew the revenues, and men increase with the boy's years. What might became proud of being commendatories. have been the issue in after-years, it is need- They were ready to pay for the office by asless to surmise. The Gordian-knot of all this signing to the nominators a portion of the evil was suddenly and unaccountably cut by income; and, moreover, the papal sanction that unseen Hand, which has undone many always made an ultramontanist of him who another coil of mischief in the world. One profited by the bargain. The commendams day the adopted child was found drowned in increased daily, and that most in times when the Tyne, which rolled its waters through they ceased to be needed. "If an Indian Mr. A- -g's estate. There was a hurried were to visit us," remarks Montesquieu, "it and unsatisfactory inquest held on the body, would take more than half a year, as he and all was done. Through one breast- walked over the trottoirs of Paris, to make that of the wife. a secret shudder ran. A him comprehend what a commendam is." An sickness as of death fell upon the heart of her abbé en commande was "in orders," without who alone knew what hidden temptation being a priest, and might take a wife unto might have lain in wait, like the weird sisters himself, on condition of surrendering his of Macbeth, urging on the man with whom "commande." If he did worse than marry, her fate was bound up to the commission of such sacrifice was not required of him. At a deed without a name. 19 From that hour all times the office might be retained by a a blight fell over the fated house. The very liberal payment. Indeed, the nobles who had rooks, so my informant told me, disappeared the power of appointing, derived a considerafrom their customary haunts. Mysterious ble fortune from them. In the reign of Louis sights and sounds visited at eerie-hours the XIII. the Count de Soissons heaped a dozen old border mansion. Nay, report even went of these offices on a single abbé, who retained so far as to say, that the phantom of a ghastly but a poor thousand crowns for his pay, and child rose up from time to time before the returned many hundred thousand into the eyes of Mr. Ag's descendants, as if the coffers of his very religious patron. But to soul of the departed refused to rest until the return to De Rancé. secret of its birth, or perhaps of its death, was revealed. But to this day all is enveloped in mystery. It is true that the bare fact of the imposition of such a child in place of a real heir, in course of time, and after the death of Mr. A- -g, got rumored abroad; but the actual parentage of the ill-fated victim of the imposture remained, and will now doubtless forever remain, among the catalogue of those guarded secrets which the grave refuses to render up.

CCCCLXXVII.

LIVING AGE. VOL. II. 6

He was a marvellous boy that Jean Armand Bouthilier de Rancé! He was yet in short clothes when he puzzled the king's confessor by asking him questions on Homer in Greek; and he published an edition of Anacreon, with notes, at the same age (twelve years) as Campbell made the translation of the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, which was given to the world by a two-penny subscription of his school-fellows. The cardinal gave his godson some valuable church preferment for this