From Blackwood's Magazine.

A MEDITATION.

SOME hidden disappointment clings
To all of man-to all his schemes,
And life has little fair it brings,

Save idle dreams.

The peace that may be ours to-day,
Scarce heed we, looking for the morrow;
The slighted moments steal away,

And then comes sorrow.

The light of promise that may glow
Where life shines fair in bud or bloom,
Ere fruit hath ripen'd forth to show,
Is quench'd in gloom.

France, where bread is almost the exclusive food quarters that two millions of the Irish are left liteof two thirds of the population, rumors of scarcity rally without subsistence by the potato pestilence. acquire importance as they are repeated, and are According to the report of Lord Devon's comsoon exaggerated into accounts which produce mission, and to a speech delivered to the Repeal panic. We know not how far the opposition Association, four millions and a half of the Irish journals are warranted in sounding the alarm, for people have no land except the potato-field, and as yet the government has published nothing nothing but the potato to live upon. official to tranquillize the minds of the people. One of the semi-official journals, the Débats, has indeed declared that there exists no real ground for apprehension, but it has not given any return of the amount of the corn harvest of 1845 as compared with the consumption, and therefore it is very easy for other journals to create and keep up a painful state of excitement. In Paris, where the price of bread is low as compared with many other parts of France, there has been no display of the uneasy feeling which is beginning to manifest itself in a very marked manner in the provinces, where the price of bread is higher and that of labor lower than in the capital; but it is probable that even in Paris, if some means be not adopted to show that these reports of scarcity are unfounded, there will as the winter proceeds be great excitement. We see by the Sémaphore, of Marseilles, of the 11th, that in that city there is a perfect panic, not merely among the poorer classes, but even among some of the tradesmen. People there are laying in a provision of bread, as if they were menaced with a siege, and saw no prospect of fresh supplies. The bakers' shops are beset with customers, and such is the eagerness to obtain it, that increased prices are paid, in order to be able to carry off a large quantity at once as a store for the future. The Semaphore relates that the police, in searching the house of a woman, suspected to have secreted some stolen jewelry, found-not the stolen articles-but one hundred pounds of bread, which this woman had purchased, and stored up, under the apprehension of an approaching famine. This fact is given as only one of many similar instances, and it shows the extent to which the public mind has been excited. The Semaphore declares that all this excitement is unfounded."

The rapture softest blush imparts,

Dies with the bloom that fades away,
And glory from the wave departs
At close of day.

Where we have garner'd up our hearts,

And fixed our earnest love and trust,
The very life-blood thence departs,
And all is dust.

Then, Nature, let us turn to thee;
For in thy countless changes thou
Still bearest immortality
Upon thy brow.

Thy seasons, in their endless round

Of sunshine, tempest, calm, or blight,
Yet leave thee like an empress crown'd
With jewels bright.

Thy very storms are life to thee,

'Tis but a sleep thy seeming death; We see thee wake in flower and tree At spring's soft breath.

We view the ruin of our youth,

Decay's wan trace on all we cherish;
But thou, in thine unfailing truth,
Canst never perish.

J. D.

The London Times returns to the question of American supplies in reference to European dearth, and discovers that you have a considerable surplus of Indian corn, which it exhorts the British people to learn to relish. It again pleads for the abolition of the duty which assimilates Indian corn to barley. "Sooner or later," exclaims the lofty oracle, "a suspension of the duties LORD, thy servants are now praying in the church, on imported grain must take place the govern- and I am here staying at home, detained by necesment cannot finally withstand a dearth of potatoes sary occasions, such as are not of my seeking but of in Ireland, a deficiency of good corn in England, thy sending; my care could not prevent them, my and a scarcity impending over Scotland." The power could not remove them. Wherefore though Sun mentions that the use of acorns has been 1 cannot go to church, there to sit down at table with recommended as food, and that the bitter taste of the rest of thy guests, be pleased, Lord, to send me a the English acorn might be corrected by chemical dish of their meat hither, and feed my soul with holy process. It would not be a novelty for the British thoughts. Eldad and Medad, though staying still to eat this fruit without alteration. Last winter, in the camp (no doubt on just cause) yet prophesied I put into my drawer various accounts of the large out to the spirit, the spirit came home to them. Thus as well as the other elders. Though they went not quantities gathered in the parks for the consump- never any dutiful child lost his legacy for being ab tion of the poor, and the prices set upon the sent at the making of his father's will, if at the same baskets. The travelling correspondents of the time he were employed about his father's business. leading London journals hold in common this fear too many at church have their bodies there, and language "With bread getting so high and the minds at home. Behold, in exchange, my body here wages not getting up, God above only knows and heart there. Though I cannot pray with them I what is to become of the necessitous people." pray for them. Yea, this comforts me, I am with You will see positive allegations from respectable thy congregation, because I would be with it.-Fuller.

:

I

GREAT EVENTS FROM TRIFLING CAUSES-NIL DESPERANDUM.

GREAT EVENTS FROM TRIFLING CAUSES.

599

of the potato mischief, and not a cause of it. There is nothing new in the circumstance; we have been We hear sometimes of great events being pro- familiar with it from childhood, and so have many duced by trifling, and, one would think, inadequate simple observers who are older in the art of taking causes. Within these few years, in this country, notice than ourselves are. It is no novelty in this the inadvertence of slightly misplacing a single fig-country, any more than elsewhere; it attracts ature on a scrap of paper occasioned to one person, tention because of the almost universality of its who was ill able to afford it, the loss of a thousand prevalence. And has not the cause been as unipounds, and to another the punishment of seven versal? Cold water is the fountain-head! Take years' transportation. Two builders in Glasgow, our word for it, there is no mystery in the affair; carrying on business in company, discounted a bill cloudy skies and drenching rains have done it all! for £120 with a bank of that city. The slip on which the discount was marked, attached to the bill, was handed by the accountant's clerk to the teller. This charge, deducted from the bill, showed a balance of £117, 14s. 4d. to be paid to the person who presented the bill acting for the company. On the slip, however, it was ascertained afterwards by concurring circumstances, though the slip itself was lost, that the 1 of the shillings being rather near the 7 of the pounds, the

teller had mistaken the sum for £1171, 4s. 4d., and gave away above £1000 more than he should have done; though what is strange, the proper sum was entered in his own cash-book. The deficiency was of course immediately discovered, but neither the teller himself, nor any others in the bank, could at that time trace out how the error had been committed. The teller had, indeed, to give up his place, and his cautioners to make up the deficiency. He was still retained, however, in another department of the same bank; but he removed afterwards to an Edinburgh bank connected with that in Glasgow. Three years had now elapsed since this transaction had taken place, when the secretary of the bank discovered the real cause by comparing the amount of the deficiency with the supposition of the above error; but this did not enable the bank to bring home the charge to the person who received the money. The builders at length becoming bankrupt, and their books getting into the hands of the trustee for their creditors, the sum was found marked with pencil at the end of their cash-book. But the thing was made still more clear by the partner who managed their money matters having told the story to another person, who, it appears, did not keep it a secret. This partner, therefore, being apprehended, and tried before the circuit court of justiciary at Glasgow, the above evidence, both direct and circumstantial, sufficed to convict him, and he was sentenced to seven years' transportation.— Chambers' Journal.

66

We give it as our decided opinion that "potatodisease" and "potato-murrain" are merely idle terms, that bear no direct relation whatever to existing things. There is no "disease," no murrain," properly so called; the potatoes are just rotten, and that is the long and the short of it. The discoloration, commencing in this spot and extending to that, the softness, the waxiness, the fetor, all these things and many more such like, we have seen a score times in potatoes that have spontaneously rotted in a damp dark cellar. We can confirm what the microscopists and chemists say about appearances and reactions, and tell them plenty of untold truths besides: but not potatoes only, any vegetable of similar composition, will give like results when in a state of decay. These acids, alkalies, atomic defects, sporales, granules, ruptured cells, dust, dirt, &c., are a consequence

-Medical Times.

From the Gospel Messenger.

NIL DESPERANDUM.

In this case thou oughtest not to be dejected, nor to despair, but at God's will to stand steadily, and whatever comes upon thee, to endure it for the glory of Jesus Christ; for after winter followeth

summer; after night the day returneth, and after a
tempest, a great calm.—Thomas á Kempis.

TRAVELLER, on the thorny path,
Wearied with a thousand cares,
Burdened with a thousand wars,
Heavenward lift thy hopes and
Shrink not in thy hour of trial;

prayers:

Bide thy time in earnest faith;
Bear thee up without despairing;
Live as that one lived, who saith,
After winter cometh summer;
After night returns the day;
After tempests, calms, returning,

Fling the threat'ning clouds away.

Mourning one, with moistened eye,
Writhing under fancied loss,
Think of Christ's afflictions here;

Keep thine eyes upon the Cross.
Stand thou firm without dejection;
"Stand thou steady at God's will;
And whatever comes upon thee,"
Bear it firm, remembering still—

After winter cometh summer;
After night returns the day;
After tempests, calms, returning,
Fling the threat'ning clouds away.

Christian, who art bowed down,

By the burden of thy woes;
Yet, firm-hearted, keep good courage,
Though surrounded by thy foes.
Bear affliction for His glory;
Bear with patience sorrow's sting;
Never shrinking, never failing,
Ever yet remembering,

C

After winter, comes the summer;
After night, returns the day;
After tempests, calms, returning,

Fling the threat'ning clouds away.
Hall, Sept. 1845.

C.

From Songs of Our Land.

TELL ME ALL.

BY MRS. HEWITT.

"Story! God bless you! I have none to tell."
"COME, mother! sit beneath the vine,
Here by our open door,
And tell me who my fathers were
In the glorious days of yore.

From the North British Review.

that thousands of years are but as nothing amidst

1. "Ironmaking" and "Smelting," in the Ency- eternity, and, as it were, in mockery of the fleeting perishable course of the mightiest potentates among clopædia Britannica. 7th Edition. mankind."

2. Report of Trial in causa, James Beaumont Neil-
son and Others against the Househill Coal
and Iron Company. Edinburgh, 1842.
3. Report of Trial in causa, James Beaumont Neil-
son and Others against William Baird and
Company. Edinburgh, 1843.

4. First Report of the Children's Employment Com-
mission (Mines,) and Appendixes thereto. Lon-
don, 1842.

5. Report of Special Commissioner on the State of the Population in the Mining Districts. London, 1844.-Report of do. do. London, 1845.

*

But the science of geology is not more remarkable for its magnitude and sublimity than it is for its utility. By ascertaining the relative positions of strata to each other, it directs our otherwise blindfold search into the bowels of the

earth. The importance of such a guide in a country like ours, where the strata of the carboniferous group abound, cannot be over estimated; and strikingly appears from two illustrations that may here be quoted :

"It is not many years since an attempt was made to establish a colliery at Bexhill, in Sussex. The appearance of thin seams and sheets of fossil"GEOLOGY, in the magnitude and sublimity of wood and wood-coal, with some other indications the objects of which it treats, undoubtedly ranks, similar to what occur in the neighborhood of the in the scale of sciences, next to astronomy." This great coal-beds in the north of England, having remark of Sir John Herschel is verified by the led to the sinking of a shaft, and the erection of most cursory glance at the researches of geolo-machinery on a scale of vast expense-not less gists. Although the range of their actual pene- than eighty thousand pounds are said to have been tration has been limited to 3000 feet beneath the laid out on this project-which, it is almost needsurface, they present us with an analysis of the less to add, proved completely abortive, as every crust of our globe to a depth of ten miles. They geologist would have at once declared it must, the tell us that, resting on a foundation of unstratified whole assemblage of geological facts being adverse rocks, of igneous origin, there rise, in successive to the existence of a regular coal-bed in the Hastpiles, a series of parallel stratified layers, deposited, ings sand; while this, on which Bexhill is situfrom time to time, by the action of water-they ated, is separated from the coal-strata by a series inform us that these strata, though, if left in their of interposed beds of such enormous thickness, as natural order, placed far beyond the reach of man, to render all idea of penetrating through them have been dragged up from their beds for his in- absurd. The history of mining operations is full spection and use, by the force of what may be of similar cases, where a very moderate acquainttermed volcanic levers; they disclose to us the ance with the usual order of nature to say plants which flourished in luxuriant vegetation nothing of theoretical views-would have saved during each successive epoch of the earth's his- many a sanguine adventurer from utter ruin.''* tory; and they reveal to us the animals that roamed unrestrained amid the primeval forests and marshes of these far distant periods. So minute, indeed, are the discoveries of geologists, that they can even track the footsteps of the tortoise as it crawled over the long buried sands of another age; thus warranting the following beautiful reflections by one of the most distinguished of their number.†

The next illustration is of an opposite kind :"Only sixteen years ago (it is in our own memory) a valuable estate in Durham was pronounced to be devoid of coal, because it was situated on the magnesian limestone;' and might have been sold under this opinion, but that a geologist of celebrity, Dr. William Smith, showed the falsity of the reasoning-reported favorably of the probability of finding good coal in abundance "The historian, or the antiquary, may have beneath the property-and advised the proprietor traversed the fields of ancient or of modern battles, to work it. That estate is now the centre of a and may have pursued the line of march of trium- rich and well-explored mining tract, all situated phant conquerors, whose armies trampled down the beneath the magnesian limestone; and this result most mighty kingdoms of the world. The winds was the fruit of scientific geology, not 'practical' and storms have utterly obliterated the ephemeral coal-viewing, though the professional mine-agents impressions of their course. Not a track remains of the north of England are now employed in exof a single foot, or a single hoof, of all the count-tending its benefits."

stone;

less millions of men and beasts whose progress The carboniferous group, of which mention has spread desolation over the earth. But the reptiles been made, contains ironstone, coal, and limethat crawled upon the half finished surface of our infant planet have left memorials of their passage, enduring and indelible. No history has recorded their creation or destruction-their very bones are found no more among the fossil relics of a former world. Centuries and thousands of years may have rolled away between the time in which these footsteps were impressed by tortoises upon the sands of their native Scotland, and the hour when they are again laid bare and exposed to our curious and admiring eyes. Yet we behold them stamped upon the rock, distinct as the track of the passing animal upon the recent snow, as if to show

"and the occurrence of this most useful of metals (ironstone) in immediate connection with the fuel requisite for its reduction, and the limestone which facilitates that reduction, is an instance of arrangement so happily suited to the purposes of human industry, that it can hardly be considered as recurring unnecessarily to final causes, if we conceive that this distribution of the rude materials of the earth, was determined with a view to the convenience of its inhabitants."

It is to the distribution here referred to, that we owe the iron manufacture of Great Britain, of which a brief account will now be given.

*Herschel's Int. to Nat. Phil., sec. 36., p. 45.
+Phillips' Geology, ii., p. 295.

* Conybeare's Geology of England and Wales, p. 333.

tons.

Such was the miserable state of the iron manufacture in England an hundred years ago. The following table shows its subsequent development down to the present time :—

Any one unacquainted with minerals, would be number, and their produce had fallen to 17,350 unable to discover the slightest affinity betwixt the rough ironstone, as brought up from the mines, and the iron of commerce. The two have apparently no properties in common. And it is only after subjecting the ironstone to severe processes of manufacture, that iron can be obtained from it. These processes include, 1st, the roasting or calcining it, so as to clear it from sulphur, carbonic acid, and other deleterious substances; and, 2d, the exposing the calcined iron ore, so obtained, to intense heat in a blast furnace, charged with fuel and flux.

In early times, the furnace used for the latter purpose was of the rudest description-consisting of a low narrow conical structure, such as is still to be seen in Africa. It was called an air-bloomery, and was dependent, for its blast, upon the varying currents of air that played around the hill on which it was placed.

The air-bloomery was succeeded by the blastbloomery, which, though not differing materially in construction, was blown by bellows, driven by water or wind power, whereby a more regular blast was obtained. This was its distinguished feature; and the change formed an important improvement in the manufacture of iron.

The blast-bloomery, in its turn, gave way to the modern blast-furnace, now almost universally used in the smelting of iron. The blast-furnace costs about £1500 to erect. It is a huge building of brick or stone, bulging out near the base, and gradually narrowing towards the top. Its height may be from 40 to 50 feet-its width from 12 to 15. And its capacity and strength may be estimated from the fact that the largest of these furnaces will hold 150 tons. The materials are thrown in at an opening in the top, by which the gases also escape; and the molten metal flows out from an aperture at the bottom, and is run into moulds of sand made for the purpose of receiving it.

1740, Number of tons of pig iron produced, 17,350
1788,
1796,
1806,
1820,
1827,

1845,

Ditto,
Ditto,

Ditto,

Ditto,

Ditto,

61,300 108,793*

250,000*

380,000

654,500

Ditto, (estimated) 1,250,000+

On looking over the materials from which this table has been obtained, it is remarkable to notice the altered distribution of the furnaces in point of locality. So long as charred wood was used as fuel, Gloucester, Sussex, and Kent were the principal seats of the iron manufacture; but, after the substitution of coke, the manufacture was transferred to Wales, Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Yorkshire, where coal abounded.

Another remark that occurs is the gradual increase in quantity of the iron produced by each furnace in the year and week, as shown in the subjoined

note:

Ditto, (estimated,) 5200 0 0 100 0 0

Thus, it appears that in England, during the last 100 years, the produce of iron has increased from seventeen thousand to a million and a quarter tons; and the yield of each furnace during the same period has multiplied nearly twenty fold-illustrating at once the extent of the demand, the capital expended, and the improvements introduced in the manufacture.

Cotemporaneous with the improvements in size, strength, and capacity of the modern furnace, were Turning from England to Scotland, we find the the improvements in its blast. A gigantic steam-progress of the iron manufacture still more striking. engine has been substituted for water or wind, as The carboniferous strata of Scotland form a broad the propelling power; and, in order to equalize the belt which traverses the centre of the island from blast, this steam-engine transmits the air into a ca- the Firth of Forth to the shores of Ayrshire; and pacious cylindrical iron reservoir or regulator, alongst this belt will be found the principal coal (placed in the vicinity of the furnaces,) from which and iron works of the country. In the east of the blast is conveyed to the fire-not as previously Scotland, the coal is wrought almost exclusively in irregular gusts-but in regular and continuous for family consumption; but in the west of Scotland, the iron works absorb a great proportion of it Another not less important change was the sub--the fact being, that in one parish in Lanarkshire stitution of charred pit coal, or coke, for charred wood, as the fuel for the furnace. It was not until the end of last century that this change was completely effected. Coke had been tried in James the First's time, but had not succeeded; and the experiment was not repeated until the supply of wood had entirely failed, when the iron-masters were necessitated again to resort to coke, and finally to adopt it.

currents.

During the period of transition from the one fuel to the other, the iron manufacture was in a most languid state. A short time prior to 1740, the number and produce of the furnaces in England appears to have been very considerable; but, by that year, the number of furnaces had decreased to fifty-nine, being only three fourths of their previous

*The main channel in the sand is called the sow, and the branches from it the litter of pigs-hence the name pig-iron.

(Old Monkland) as much coal is consumed in a year at the blast-furnaces as is sufficient for the supply of the entire city of Glasgow, including its manufactories and public works.

Carron, near Falkirk, in Stirlingshire, was the

* We are indebted for our knowledge of the iron trade in 1796 and 1806, to the attempts made (unsuccessfully) at these periods to tax coal and iron, which caused inquiry into the subject.

↑ According to a statistical return made by M. Goldenberg of Berlin, the following is the annual production of iron in the different European States:England, (including Scotland also,) France, Russia, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Sweden,

Other parts of Europe,