The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 334, October 4, 1828

The climate does not appear to affect even the bodies of men to any great degree. We cannot pronounce that it is the sun which makes the African black, when we see the same heat pouring down on the copper-coloured American, in the same degree of latitude, though in another longitude. The inhabitants of Terra del Fuego are of a very dark hue, approaching to black; and yet that island experiences as severe cold as any part of the earth, as Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander have testified. The complexion and appearance of the Jews, and other emigratory races, is the same in all parts of the world. And a stronger proof cannot be given, than the marked distinction which still exists among the three great families that divide Europe. These three have been for the last 2,500 years, and still are, the Celts, the Teutonic race, and the Slavonic race.

The Celts have black hair and eyes, and a white skin, verging to brown. They chiefly inhabit the west of Europe, viz. the south of France, (called by M. Dupin, France obscure,) Spain, Portugal, and the greatest part of Italy. To them also belong the ancient Britons, the Welsh, Bretons, Irish, Highland Scotch, and the Manks, or people of the Isle of Man. The great German race, with blue eyes, yellow or reddish hair, and a fair and red skin, occupies the middle of Europe. It includes the Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders, Danes, ancient and modern Germans, Saxons and English, Caledonians and Lowland Scotch, the Belgians, the Vandals, and the Goths.

The east of Europe contains the Sarmatian and Slavonic tribes, with dark hair and eyes, darker skin than the Germans, and larger limbs than the Celts. This race includes the Russians, Poles, Croats, Slavons, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Cossacks, and other tribes using the Slavonic language.

We trust we shall not give offence to such of our readers as wear the Celtic appearance, if we assume, as undisputed, the general superiority of the Teutonic to the Celtic or Slavonic races in mental acquirements. We believe that the German race are pre-eminent for their sense of order, of law, and of social institutions; and whether they derive these advantages from the east, whence their origin has now been satisfactorily traced, or however they have attained them, we have only to reflect on the civilization introduced by the Saxons into England—on the actual state of the ancient Britons at present inhabiting Wales and the Highlands—and on the terrible disorder and barbarism that reigns in Ireland—to be thankful that the pure Celtic blood has not been allowed to remain unmixed in these islands.

What, then, it will be asked, is the result of these speculations? Are we to conclude that the races of men are essentially different, or that the variations are attributable to the various degrees of moral cultivation that each nation has received? And our answer is, that we are inclined to believe the capacities for improvement of races, as of individuals, to have been differently bestowed by nature; but that none are actually incapable of culture. There is no land, however sterile, that the art of man may not make to produce fruit; but the difficulty and expense of tillage must be in proportion to the intrinsic richness or poverty of the soil. We fear that the soil of the Negroes3, of the American Indians, and of the Esquimaux, must be laboured at early and late, before it brings forth even an average crop. But we do not despair even here. Still less could we for a moment depreciate the labours of those who are carrying education to the utmost bounds of the earth. The more degraded and stupid the condition of any set of people may be, the more meritorious and thankworthy are those efforts that are made to advance them one point nearer to the heavens—one step above the beasts that perish. The advancement of Hayti, though much overrated, is nevertheless considerable; and we trust that national independence will co-operate there also with the progress of learning, for the increase of happiness and prosperity. A free government, high public spirit, and an eager desire for wisdom, are permanent securities for the welfare of the state, and the happiness of the citizens; and though we cannot control nature, let us endeavour by art to supply what is wanting, where her bounty has been limited; "let us," in the words of Lord Bacon, "labour to restore and enlarge the power and dominion of the whole race of man over the universe of things!"

DMORTON BRIDGEA BALLAD(For the Mirror.)

The remorseless tragedy on which this ballad is founded, took place upwards of a century ago. In the retired village of Romanby, near Northallerton, Yorkshire, there resided a desperate band of coiners, whose respectability and cunning concealment precluded all possibility of suspicion as to their proceedings. The victim of their revenge was Mary Ward, the servant of one of those ruffians. Having obtained an accidental view of some secret apartments appropriated to their treasonable practices, she unguardedly communicated her knowledge to an acquaintance; which reaching her master's ears, he determined to destroy her. The most plausible story, time, and means were selected for this purpose. On a Sunday evening, after sunset, an unknown personage on horseback arrived at her master's mansion, half equipped, to give colour to his alleged haste, and slated that he was dispatched for Mary, as her mother was dying. She lingered to ask her master's permission; but he feigned sleep, and she departed without his leave. On the table of her room was her Bible, opened at those remarkable words in Job, "They shall seek me in the morning, and shall not find me; and where I am, they shall not come." Her home was at the distance of eight miles from Romanby; and Morton bridge, hard by the heath where she was murdered, is the traditionary scene of her nocturnal revisitings. The author has seen the tree said to have been distorted by her in endeavouring to climb the fence; and has visited the village and bridge, from which his descriptions are accurately taken. The impression of her re-appearance is only poetically assumed, for there is too much of what Coleridge would term "the divinity of nature" around Morton Bridge, to warrant its association with supernatural mysteries.

Oh! sights are seen, and sounds are heard,On Morton Bridge, at night,When to the woods the cheerful birdsHave ta'en their silent flight.When through the mantle of the skyNo cheering moonbeams delve,And the far village clock hath toldThe midnight hour of twelve.Then o'er the lonely path is heardThe sigh of sable trees,With deadly moan of suff'ring strifeBorne on the solemn breeze—For Mary's spirit wanders there,In snowy robe array'd,To tell each trembling villagerWhere sleeps the murder'd maid.It was a Sabbath's eve of love,When nature seem'd more holy;And nought in life was dull, but sheWhose look was melancholy.She lean'd her tear-stain'd cheek of healthUpon her lily arm,Poor, hapless girl! she could not tellWhat caus'd her wild alarm.Around the roses of her faceHer flaxen ringlets fell;No lovelier bosom than her ownCould guiltless sorrow swell!The holy book before her lay,That boon to mortals given,To teach the way from weeping earthTo ever-glorious heaven;And Mary read prophetic words,That whisper'd of her doom—"Oh! they will search for me, but whereI am, they cannot come!"The tears forsook her gentle eyes,And wet the sacred lore;And such a terror shook her frame,She ne'er had known before.She ceas'd to weep, but deeper gloomHer tearless musing brought;And darker wan'd the evening hour,And darker Mary's thought.The sun, he set behind the hills,And threw his fading fireOn mountain rock and village home,And lit the distant spire.(Sweet fane of truth and mercy! whereThe tombs of other yearsDiscourse of virtuous life and hope,And tell of by-gone tears!)It was a night of nature's calm,For earth and sky were still;And childhood's revelry was o'er,Upon the daisied hill.The ale-house, with its gilded sign,Hung on the beechen bough,Was mute within, and tranquillyThe hamlet stream did flow.The room where sat this grieving girlWas one of ancient years;Its antique state was well display'dTo conjure up her fears;With massy walls of sable oak,And roof of quaint design,And lattic'd window, darkly hidBy rose and eglantine.The summer moon now sweetly shoneAll softly and serene;She clos'd the casement tremblinglyUpon the beauteous scene.Above that carved mantle hung,Clad in the garb of gloom,A painting of rich feudal state,—An old baronial room.The Norman windows scarcely castA light upon the wall,Where shone the shields of warrior knightsWithin the lonely hall.And, pendent from each rusty nail,Helmet and steely dress,With bright and gilded morion,To grace that dim recess.Then Mary thought upon each taleOf terrible romance:—The lady in the lonely tower—The murd'rer's deadly glance—And moon-lit groves in pathless woods,Where shadows nightly sped;Her fancy could not leave the realmsOf darkness and the dead.There stood a messenger without,Beside her master's gate,Who, till his thirsty horse had drunk,Would hardly deign to wait.The mansion rung with Mary's name,For dreadful news he bore—A dying mother wish'd to lookUpon her child once more.The words were, "Haste, ere life be gone;"Then was she quickly plac'dBehind him on the hurrying steed,Which soon the woods retrac'd.Now they have pass'd o'er Morton Bridge,While smil'd the moon aboveUpon the ruffian and his prey—The hawk and harmless dove.The towering elms divide their tops;And now a dismal heathProclaims her "final doom" is nearThe awful hour of death!The villain check'd his weary horse,And spoke of trust betray'd;And Mary's heart grew sick with fright,As, answering, thus she said—"Oh! kill me not until I seeMy mother's face again!Ride on, in mercy, horseman, ride,And let us reach the lane!"There slay me by my mother's door,And I will pray for thee—For she shall find her daughter's corse"—"No, girl, it cannot be."This heath thou shalt not cross, for soonIts earth will hide thy form;That babbling tongue of thine shall makeA morsel for the worm!"She leap'd upon the ling-clad heath,And, nerv'd with phrensied fear,Pursued her slippery way across,Until the wood was near.But nearer still two fiends appear'd,Like hunters of the fawn,Who cast their cumb'ring cloaks away,Beside that forest lone;And bounded swifter than the maid,Who nearly 'scap'd their wrath,For well she knew that woody glade,And every hoary path,Obscur'd by oak and hazel bush,Where milk-maid's merry songHad often charm'd her lover's ear,Who blest her silv'ry tongue.But Mary miss'd the woodland stile—The hedge-row was not high;She gain'd its prickly top, and nowHer murderers were nigh.A slender tree her fingers caught—It bent beneath her weight;'Twas false as love and Mary's fate!Deceiving as the night!She fell—and villagers relateNo more of Mary's hour,But how she rose with deadly might,And, with a maniac's power,Fought with her murd'rers till they brokeHer slender arm in twain:That none could e'er discover whereThe maiden's corse was lain.When wand'ring by that noiseless wood,Forsaken by the bee,Each rev'rend chronicler displaysThe bent and treach'rous tree.Pointing the barkless spot to view,Which Mary's hand embrac'd,They shake their hoary locks, and say,"It ne'er can be effac'd!"* * H.

SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY

Tanning

The tanner steeps the skin at first in a weak infusion of bark, until it has acquired a nutmeg brown colour, and then he gradually increases the strength of the steeping liquors, and after a time he draws the skin out, and finds that it is converted into leather. A thick piece of hide requires ten, twelve, or fourteen months, to be converted into good leather; and when you consider the length of time consumed in the process, and the great capital necessarily employed, you cannot feel surprised that various plans should have been proposed to lessen both. It was proposed to tan with warm instead of cold liquors; and although the tan appeared to promote the skins in a shorter time, the quality of the leather was so much injured, that it was soon given up. Then it was tried to force the tan through the pores of the skin, by employing great pressure; but this was not found to answer. But you may ask why the tanner does not put the skins at once into a strong liquor? The reason is, that the exterior surface of the skin would soon become tanned, and the central part would remain untanned, which, in a short time, would begin to rot and decay, and the leather so treated would soon fall to pieces. The tanner, therefore, judges of the perfection of the tanning by cutting through the leather; and if he finds it of an uniform brown colour, without any white streak in the centre, he considers that the process has been successfully conducted. It would require much time to describe all the operations of the tan-yard, but many of them are interesting, as regards the chemical agents employed. I might have mentioned to you, that the mode of preparing the skin for tanning, is first to soak it in lime-water, by which the hair is easily detached; but the cuticle and under part of the skin, the cellular substance, are scraped off after it has been soaked in the lime water. A great variety of substances have been used for tanning, as the acorn-cup of the oriental bark; catechu and sumach have been also used; but the oak bark is most generally used, as furnishing a large quantity of astringent matter. It is not the business of the chemist to describe the different kinds of leather, but I may just mention, that the upper leather of shoes is called curried leather; the leather having been tanned, is rubbed over with oil before it is dried, and it is then very flexible, pliable, and durable; but if you take a piece of dry leather, and try to rub it over with oil or grease, you cannot make it enter the pores of the leather; the black colour is produced by rubbing it over with a solution of green vitriol, the sulphate of iron. Russian leather is tanned in an infusion of birch bark, and is said to be afterwards mixed with a quantity of birch tar, to give it that odour for which it is peculiar, which renders it valuable for book-binding, on account of preventing it from being attacked by insects. Tawed leather, used for gloves, is made by impregnating the skin with a liquor containing alum and salt, and afterwards washed in a mixture of yolks of eggs and water; the saline and animal matters combine, and give it that peculiar softness, and such leather is afterwards coloured as may be required; having been rolled over wooden rollers, in which are grooves, it is called Morocco leather. These are the principal varieties of leather employed in this country.—Brande's Lectures—Lancet.

Mites

An indefatigable naturalist has undertaken the very difficult task of arranging the family of acarides, or mites; he divides them into sixty-nine genera, the greater part of them new!

Electro-Attraction of Leaves

The results of a French experimentalist have lately led him to conclude that the leaves, hairs, and thorns of plants tend to maintain in them the requisite proportion of electricity; and, by drawing off from the atmosphere what is superabundant, they also act in some measure as thunder-rods.

Enormous Whale

The skeleton of a whale, 95 feet long by 18 feet high, has lately been deposited in the Cabinet of Natural History at Ghent. In the opinion of many naturalists, among whom is M. Cuvier, this fish could not have been less than 900 or 1,000 years old!

Fly in Wheat

In North America, much damage is done to crops of wheat by the Hessian fly. The female deposits from one to eight or more eggs upon a single plant of wheat, between the vagina or sheath of the inner leaf and the culm nearest the roots; in which situation, with its head towards the root or first joint, the young larva pass the winter. They eat the stem, which thus becomes weak, and breaks; but are checked by another insect, called the destructor, otherwise whole crops of wheat would be annihilated.

Spiders

A correspondent of London's Magazine of Natural History says, that he lately amused himself for more than an hour in observing the proceedings of a little spider, whose bag of eggs had been removed and restored!

Light of the Sea

Its appearance previous to a storm is a very old observation among sailors. It is, however without foundation, as it is to be seen, more or less, all the year round in the Carribean sea, where there are no storms but in the hurricane months. In the hand it has a kind of mucous feel.—Mag. Nat. Hist.

Woodpeckers

A specimen of the least woodpecker was lately shot near Newcastle; and another has since been heard and seen near Coventry. Its noise resembles that made by the boring of a large auger through the hardest wood; whence the country people sometimes call the bird "the pump-borer."—Ibid.

The Tea Shrub

Has been naturalized in Java with complete success; so that, sooner or later, the Chinese monopoly will come to an end.

Floating Island

From the earliest times, there are to be found in authors, notices of the singular geological phenomena of floating islands. Pliny tells us of the floating islands of the Lago de Bassanello, near Rome; in Loch Lomond, in Scotland, there is or was a floating island; and in the Lake of Derwent Water, in Cumberland, such islands appear and disappear at indefinite periods. Mr. A. Pettingal, jun. has recently described a floating island, about a mile southwards of Newbury port, 140 poles in length, and 120 in breadth. It is covered with trees; and in summer, when dry weather is long continued, it descends to the bottom of the lake.—American, Journal of Science.

An immense Medusa

A species of sea-serpent, was thrown on shore near Bombay, in 1819. It was about 40 feet long, and must have weighed many tons. A violent gale of wind threw it high above the reach of ordinary tides; in which situation it took nine months to rot; during which process travellers were obliged to change the direction of the road for nearly a quarter of a mile, to avoid the offensive effluvia. It rotted so completely, that not a vestige of bone remained.—(C. Telfair, Esq. to R. Barclay, Esq. of Bury Hill.)

Himalaya Mountains

Captain Gerard, in exploring these mountains, with a view to measurement, had ascended to the height of 19,600 feet, being 400 feet higher than Humboldt had ascended on the Andes. The latter part of Captain Gerard's ascent, for about two miles, was on an inclined plane of 42°, a nearer approach to the perpendicular than Humboldt conceived it possible to climb for any distance together.—Heber's India.

Hippopotamus

The head of a Hippopotamus has recently been brought to England, with all the flesh about it, in a high state of preservation. This amphibious animal was harpooned while in combat with a crocodile, in a lake in the interior of Africa. The head measures near four feet long, and eight feet in circumference; the jaws open two feet wide, and the cutting-teeth of which it has four in each jaw, are above a foot long, and four inches in circumference. Its ears are not bigger than a terrier's, and are much about the same shape. This formidable and terrific creature, when full-grown, measures about 17 feet long from the extremity of the snout to the insertion of the tail, above 16 feet in circumference round the body, and stands above 7 feet high. It runs with astonishing swiftness for its great bulk, at the bottom of lakes and rivers, but not with as much ease on land. When excited, it puts forth its full strength, which is prodigious. "I have seen," says a mariner, as we find it in Dampier, "one of these animals open its jaws, and seizing a boat between its teeth, at once bite and sink it to the bottom. I have seen it on another occasion place itself under one of our boats, and rising under it, overset it, with six men who were in it, but who, however, happily received no other injury." At one time it was not uncommon in the Nile, but now it is no where to be found in that river, except above the cataracts.

THE COSMOPOLITE

A CHAPTER OF BULLS

I confess it is what the English call a bull, in the expression, though the sense be manifest enough.—POPE.

We are friends to the exposition of the weak sides of great men, inasmuch as it reads them a valuable lesson on their own infallibility, and tends to lower the molehills of conceit that are raised in the world as stumbling-blocks along every road of petty ambition. It would, however, be but a sorry toil for the most cynical critic to illustrate these vagaries otherwise than so many slips and trippings of the tongue and pen, to which all men are liable in their unguarded moments—from Homer to Anacreon Moore, or Demosthenes to Mr. Brougham. Our course is rather that of a good-humoured exposé, the worst effect of which will be to raise a laugh at the expense of poor humanity, or a merited smile at our own dulness and mistaken sense of the ridiculous.

First, of the ancient Poets, who make departed spirits know things past and to come, yet ignorant of things present. Agamemnon foretels what should happen to Ulysses, yet ignorantly inquires what is become of his own son. The ghosts are afraid of swords in Homer, yet Sibylla tells Aeneas in Virgil, that the then habit of spirits was beyond the force of weapons. The spirits put off their malice with their bodies; and Caesar and Pompey accord in Latin hell; yet Ajax in Homer, endures not a conference with Ulysses.

In Painting alone we have a rich harvest. Burgoyne in his travels, notices a painting in Spain, where Abraham is preparing to shoot Isaac with a pistol!

There is a painting at Windsor, of Antonio Verrio, in which, he has introduced himself, Sir Godfrey Kneller, and Bap. May, surveyor of the works, in long periwigs, as spectators of Christ healing the sick.

In the Luxembourg is a picture of Reubens, in which are the queen-mother in council, with two cardinals, and Mercury!

There may be, also, a sort of anachronism of the limbs, as in the case of the painter of Toledo, who painted the story of the three wise men of the east coming to worship, and bringing their presents to our Lord, upon his birth, at Bethlehem, whence he presents them as three Arabian, or Indian kings; two of them are white, and one of them black; but, unhappily, when he drew the latter part of them kneeling, which, to be sure, was done after their faces, their legs being necessarily a little intermixed, he made three black feet for the negro king, and but three white feet for the two white kings; and yet never discovered the mistake till the piece was presented to the king, and hung up in the great church.

There was, also, in the Houghton Hall collection, Velvet Brughel's Adoration of the Magi, in which were a multitude of figures, all finished with the greatest Dutch exactness; in fact, the ideas are rather a little too Dutch, for the Ethiopian king is dressed in a surplice, with boots and spurs, and brings, for a present, a gold model of a modern ship.

The monks of a certain monastery at Messina, exhibited, with great triumph, a letter written by the Virgin Mary with her own hand. Unluckily for them, this was not, as it easily might have been, written on the ancient papyrus, but on paper made of rags. On some occasion, a visiter, to whom this was shown, observed, with affected solemnity, that the letter involved also a miracle, for the paper on which it was written was not in existence till several hundred years after the mother of our Lord had ascended into heaven.

In the church of St. Zacharia, at Venice, is the picture of a Virgin and Child, whom an angel is entertaining with an air upon the violin. Jean Belin was the artist, in 1500. So, also, in the college library of Aberdeen, to a very neat Dutch missal, are appended elegant paintings on the margin, of the angels appearing to the shepherds, with one of the men playing on the bagpipes.

There is a picture in a church at Bruges that puts not only all chronology, but all else, out of countenance. It is the marriage of Jesus Christ with Saint Catherine of Sienna. But who marries them? St. Dominic, the patron of the church. Who joins their hands? Why, the Virgin Mary. And to crown the anachronism, King David plays the harp at the wedding!

Albert Durer represented an angel in a flounced petticoat, driving Adam and Eve from Paradise.

Lewis Cigoli painted a picture of the Circumcision of the Holy Child, Jesus, and drew the high priest, Simeon, with spectacles on his nose; upon a supposition, probably, that, in respect of his great age, that aid would be necessary. Spectacles, however, were not known for fourteen centuries afterwards.