In this manner twenty-eight occas of fruit produce eight, nine, or ten occas of oil. The water takes up most of the colouring matter of the fruit, and flows away from the cottages like rivulets of blood, dyeing the ground for some little distance of a deep and beautiful crimson. The refuse of the fruit comes from the press in square hardish masses, that are placed before the fire, where they soon become quite dry, and serve for fuel to heat the water that is so constantly required in the various processes. The oil, which is of a beautiful light-green colour, is removed from the trough into a large jar close to the press, and after depositing any water or dirt, is poured into skins, having the hair upon the inside. These are weighed before being carried away to the proprietor's house; a common sized one weighed sixty occas. At the proprietor's house it is poured into large earthenware jars, four or five feet in height, which are let into the ground, so that the short necks are alone seen above the surface. Here it remains for at least two months, till all impurities are deposited, but it still retains a greenish colour, never seen in the oil consumed in England, and which makes it less offensive to the prejudices of those unaccustomed to its use, as it appears more like, what it really is, an agreeable vegetable juice, rather than a gross animal oil. chines are of two kinds, the one in common use has only one stone attached to a perpendicular beam which rotates with it. A horse is attached by traces to a horizontal pole which runs through the centre of the stone, and to a stick on the other side by a rein ingeniously tightened, so that the horse most unwillingly pulls itself along when once the machine is set in motion. The improved machine has two smaller stones further removed from the central beam, which does not rotate with them, but is made fast to the roof of the building. These are much more effective than the other as they describe larger circles, but require more moving power. The object of the mill is only to crush the Olives, no oil whatever being expressed. A sufficient quantity of fruit | being thrown in from the bin at hand, the machine is set in motion, and a man goes before the horse, with a long pole armed with iron, to push the fruit in the path of the wheel. After a few rounds, about two gallons of boiling water is poured in to assist the action of the stone, and more added as required, till | the whole mass acquires the consistence of a coarse paste. It is now put into a large jar and carried to the press, where one of the men kneads it with more hot water into a thinner paste, and as often as he fills the shallow dish before him, empties it upon a square cloth of the same coarse and thick material as the capotes or cloaks of the country, and of such strength as to bear the greatest power of the press without bursting. Another man immediately forms the paste with his hands into a square flat mass, folds up the cloth neatly, ties it with a string attached to each, and places it in the press before him, and so on to the number of sixteen or seventeen. The press is now turned down by means of a hand-lever, and when more power is required, a rope is carried from the lever to an upright rotary beam at some little distance, which two men turn round with great rapidity; this part is very amusing. The men make it rather a sport than work, and there is almost a snake-like elegance in their large half-coppers for boiling the water, requires six men. These clad and swarthy limbs, as they chase each other round the central beam with extraordinary velocity. The effects of their labour are soon seen. The oil and water run down the sides of the pile of cloths in crimson rivulets into the trough before the press, which, though rudely hewn out of one log of wood, is constructed upon the knowledge of the relative specific gravities of oil and water. It is divided into two parts by a partition that does not come to the top of the trough, but is about two inches below the level of the sides, so that when the oil and water run together into one part, it allows the oil, which is lighter than the water, and consequently floats on the surface, to flow over into the other division of the trough, while the water sinks to the bottom and is conveyed away by a pipe carried upwards on the outside, to the level at which they wish to maintain the water within the trough. When the press is screwed down as far as possible, it is loosened; hot water is thrown upon the pile to wash off any oil that may remain upon the cloths, which are now removed and the paste within kneaded, but without unfolding the cloths. More boiling water is poured upon each, and they are again placed in the press, to be again removed to undergo for a third time the same operations, till no oil remains. Sometimes the supply of oil falls short, as was the case in November, 1835, when there was scarcely any old oil to be purchased in or near Athens. In November, 1834, the old oil sold for one drachma (rather more than 84d.) an occa (34 pints), but at the same time in the following year, the same quantity could scarcely be bought for 2 drachmas (about 1s. 8d.) The presses were consequently crowded with purchasers, but the new oil is almost unfit for the purposes of burning, as it gives a most wretched light. To keep a press and mill in constant work, to receive the fruit, send away the oil, and attend to the are paid in oil; it is, in fact, but one continued series of bartering, fruit for oil, and oil for labour, till the produce is carried into the city to be retailed, but the oil being of universal use makes it a most convenient medium of exchange. The above description answers to the method by which oil is prepared in all parts of Greece and the Ionian Islands, and does not materially differ from the same operations as performed throughout Southern Europe. The fresh ripe fruit eaten with bread is by no means unpleasant, and when preserved by being sprinkled with salt, is almost the only food allowed to the poorer Greeks during Lent. The oil too enters into all their dishes, nor are they satisfied with it in the pure inodorous and nearly insipid state that we obtain it in this country, but prefer it, especially the lower classes, after it has acquired a rank odour and rancid taste. I have known Greek servants, when offered fish that had been fried in fresh oil, to suit the fastidious palate of an Englishman, refuse to eat it until they had given it a flavour, by cooking it over again with their own rancid oil; but the decided preference that, under similar circumstances, a Chinese would show for castor oil is still more peculiar. It is, however, to be regretted, that a prejudice against pure olive oil exists at our own tables, for, when taken in small quantities, especially with vegetables, its use is as natural, and its effects as salutary, as those of melted butter are artificial and pernicious. G. F. F. THE SEASONS. accuracy,—an accuracy which has no parallel in the computations of time, and distance, and magnitude, which occur in the ordinary affairs of life. The moon, as being our nearest neighbour in the peculiar `interest and of unwearying observation; chimerical, that we find it difficult to believe in the giving occasion, however, to opinions so wild and sanity of those by whom they were promulgated. It is unquestionable that the moon exercises a specific influence over the atmosphere and the ocean; but it has also been asserted, and is very generally believed, that its influence is equally extraordinary upon the animal creation; and particularly upon the bodies and minds of mankind, those affected by mental derangement having thereby acquired the name of lunatics. THE changes of the seasons, and the varied phenomena consequent thereon, is a subject well deserving the most patient investigation. We believe, how-regions of space, has in all ages been an object of ever, that there is no department of human knowledge, interesting and instructive as it is, respecting which a greater degree of error prevails. Almost everything relating to the weather, to the alternations of heat and cold, to the origin of dew and rain, hail, snow, frost, and storms, is encumbered with popular errors. Many of these errors are of great antiquity, and may be traced to defective information respecting what, in the present day, are considered some of the most simple laws of nature. Other errors originated in the absurd rites and superstitions of idolatry; whilst a third class, and that probably the most numerous, is the offspring of the pretended science of astrology, which, to the credit of the present times, is rapidly falling into the contempt it always merited. As most appropriate to the period of the year in which we are writing, we shall endeavour to explain some of the causes and the effects of the atmospherical changes commonly incident to WINTER, which by their constant recurrence are rendered familiar, but which on that. very account are probably less attentively studied, and less perfectly understood than other phenomena which happen at longer and more uncertain intervals, First of all, let us notice the lowness of temperature, or the coldness of the weather, which is the most remarkable characteristic of Winter. There is no fact in philosophy more satisfactorily established, than that the atmosphere which surrounds the earth, is the medium through which the Creator and Preserver of the universe displays the ordinary operations of his providence towards that portion of his dominions, which is allotted to man for a temporary habitation. The air, in which, as in a seamless garment, our planet is enveloped, and which accompanies it in its diurnal and annual revolutions, is generally supposed to be about 45 miles in height. This elevation, great as it may appear when compared with that of our highest mountains, or the greatest altitude attained by the balloon, (41 miles,) is not equal to one-eightieth part of the earth's semidiameter.. If we suppose the dark line in the annexed figure to indicate a part of the earth's surface, the faint line will denote the extreme limits of the atmosphere as already mentioned, the proportions being about one-twentieth of an inch on a globe of eight inches in diameter. It can hardly be doubted, that the sun (independently of its heating and light-giving properties,) the moon, the planets, and comets also, exercise some kind of influence upon our globe, which, as we may reasonably imagine, bears a direct proportion to the relative sizes, distances, and movements of the respective bodies. But it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine what is the precise character of the mutual influences which we suppose to subsist among the members of that system to which the earth belongs. Nor ought this to be matter of surprise. We may rather wonder that so much is known, respecting bodies so remote. By the aids of modern science, the sizes, distances, and periodical revolutions of the planets, and their attendant satellites, have been ascertained with almost incredible this subject; respecting which, however, it must be There are some very curious facts connected with It ought to be known that fish, which are hung thereby rendered unwholesome. It may not be so in out of doors to dry, if placed in moon-light are every case; but on several occasions we have witfish which had been so exposed. nessed the most alarming symptoms result from eating One case we remember in which a whole family, consisting of six persons, was placed in imminent danger from the cause just mentioned. referred to, and which are supposed to depend on the Many other effects, equally remarkable as those moon's influence, could be enumerated; but these hints must here suffice. It has been stated that the periodical changes peculiar to the different climates of the earth, are effected through the agency of the atmosphere; but in this important work it performs only the part of an auxiliary; the sun, as the source of light and heat, being the primary cause of those changes.And let it not be supposed that the relative intensity of the sun's rays, or, in other words, their heating property, as experienced at different periods of the year, is occasioned by the earth's nearer approach to, or greater distance from, the sun. Strange as it may appear, the earth, during the period of Winter in this country, is many millions of miles nearer the sun than it is in Summer. Other causes operate, therefore, in producing the variations of temperature on which the aspects of the seasons depend; and the principal of these is the position of the earth with reference to the direction of the sun's rays, and as a consequence of that position, the alternate increase and decrease of the period of day-light. It cannot escape the notice of the most superficial | observer, that, from the 21st of December until the 21st of June, the arc in the heavens described by the sun gradually enlarges; that luminary rising earlier and setting later in proportion as the space it occupies above the horizon increases. Arrived at its extreme northern boundary, the sun, from day to day, rises more towards the south, and on the 21st of December its return to the north recommences. A fact we must not omit here to mention, will be required for the illustration of succeeding parts of our subject. We allude to the periods of the highest and lowest temperatures; which do not occur just when the sun has reached its respective southern and northern limits; but in both cases about four or five weeks afterwards. Thus, the warmest weather generally happens in July or August, and the coldest in January or February. It will be understood that in speaking as we have done of the sun, we have been describing appearances only. The earth is the body actually in motion, whilst the sun is stationary; and the apparent advance and retirement of the sun through a certain portion of the heavens is occasioned by the earth's motion in the contrary direction. works on a hinge, is intended to exclude as much light as possible from the surface of the ground-glass; and when the instrument is in use it is brought down halfway to B. The rays of light from an object placed at N, pass through the lens G, and reaching the looking-glass H are reflected upwards on the ground-glass L, and an image of the object is seen on its upper surface. This image may be traced with a black-lead pencil, but it is almost impossible to transfer it from the glass. To obviate this inconvenience, Sir D. Brewster recommends the employment of a partially opaque varnish to the surface of a piece of smooth glass. This varnish can be marked with the finest lines of a pencil, and an impression of the sketch conveyed to paper, by slightly pressing it on the drawing with the hand: one of the simplest and the best of the varnishes he used was that of skimmed milk, perfectly freed of all remains of cream. Another form is the following:-the frame-work of this Camera Obscura is made of thin mahogany, THE CAMERA OBSCURA. THE Camera Obscura, or dark chamber, is an optical instrument, for the purpose of making drawings of objects, which was invented rather earlier than the telescope. If a room be made entirely dark, and a convex lens of two or three feet focus be placed in a hole in the shutter, a beautiful image of all the objects before will be formed in the room behind it, and this image may be received on a sheet of white paper held behind it, but the image will necessarily be reversed. Suppose A, Fig. 1, to be the object, c the shutter, with the lens in the centre, and в the image received on a white screen. If it is required to trace the outline of this pic Fig. 1. ture a different arrangement must be made. The most usual form in which the Camera Obscura is made on a small scale is the following: A, B, C, D, is a small oblong mahogany box, with the side removed to show the internal arrangement; a smaller box, E F, slides easily in and out at one end. In the end of this box, at G, a convex lens is placed, whose focus is rather greater than the length of the larger box. H is a looking-glass placed at an angle of forty-five degrees with respect to the bottom of the box: that is, if a perpendicular line were drawn from I to K, D, B, K, I, would form a square on the top of the box at L, a square piece of ground glass is placed. The cover м, which and so contrived as to fold up; the inside of this, and of all these instruments, must be painted black. A is the mirror, в the lens, c a white surface on which the image is received; the draughtsman passes his head through an opening on one side, and his hand with the pencil through another, a green curtain surrounding him to exclude the light. When a Camera Obscura is intended to allow several persons to see the picture at the same time, it is made on a large scale, and great care is taken in preparing the table on which the picture is to be received. The outer portion of the image transmitted by the lens when thrown upon a flat surface, is always distorted, especially when the table is large. To remedy this in some degree, the table is hollowed out like a saucer, the curve being decided by that of the lens itself: thus, A being the centre of the circle which forms the outline of the lens, B will form also the centre of the intended curve of the table; according to this rule, therefore, the curve CD would represent a section of a table adapted to receive the picture through a lens of the same curvature as B. Fig. 4. There is a very excellent table of this description in the Camera Obscura in the Observatory at Clifton, near Bristol. LONDON: JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, WEST STRAND. PUBLISHED IN WEEKLY NUMBERS, PRICE ONE PENNY, AND IN MONTHLY PARTS, PRICE SIXPENCE. Sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in the Kingdom. wh SOME ACCOUNT OF THE CITY OF ROME. PART VII. VIEW ON THE TIBER NEAR THE CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO. THE BATHS OF TITUS. "THIS name," says Dr. Burton, "by no means answers to the immensity of the building which once covered great part of the Esquiline Hill, and should more properly be styled the Palace of Titus. This is, in fact, the name which Pliny gives to it." The present ruins extend from the base of the Esquiline Hill near the Coliseum, to one of its summits at the Church of SS. Martino e Silvestro, and to another at S. Pietro in Vincoli. The site is, to a great extent, occupied by gardens, in various parts of which are to be seen fragments, all once belonging to the same great edifice. The house of Mecenas had previously stood on the same spot, to which, indeed, the Golden House of Nero had extended from the Palatine Hill. Titus employed the materials of both of these edifices, and even of VOL. XII. some entire parts, in constructing his baths; this fact is abundantly shown by certain irregularities which the present ruins display. A number of apartments belonging to the baths, were discovered in the sixteenth century; they had lain hidden for centuries under a mass of ruins. It is said that Raffael studied their fresco ornaments, and imitated them in painting the ceiling of the Vatican; and he is accused of having had the rooms filled up again that his thefts might not be discovered. It is certain that they were open in his time, and that they were subsequently filled up; and appearances seem to justify the supposition that they were filled up purposely, and not by the gradual accumulation of soil. But there are other modes of accounting for the filling up, without charging it upon Raffael; the owners of the land, may have wished to clear it for the purposes of cultivation, and these subterranean chambers 363 would afford most convenient receptacles for the superincumbent rubbish. According to one account, they were filled up to prevent their becoming the hiding-places of banditti. If the fact be true, it furnishes an impressive comment upon the state of the modern, as well as of the ancient city, at that period. In the year 1777 a new excavation was made; but the chief merit of clearing away the rubbish which concealed the chambers is due to the French, who carried on the work with great spirit during their occupation of Rome. The building seems to have originally consisted of two stories: of the upper one but little remains; of the lower there are more than thirty rooms perfectly accessible. 66 We passed," says the author of Rome in the Nineteenth Century, describing a visit to the Baths," the mouths of nine long corridors, converging together like the radii of the segment of a circle, divided from each other by dead walls, covered at the top and closed at the end. They must always have been dark. They are supposed to have been entrances to the baths, and they are supposed to have served for substructions to the theatre above, which is supposed to have formed a part of the upper story, of which not a trace remains; and the whole of these suppositions have their source in the inflammable imaginations of Roman antiquaries. Nothing is certain about them, excepting that they are not worth looking at. In one of them are piled up pieces of broken amphora, marbles of various kinds, and other heterogeneous fragments found in the excavations by the French, among which are some pots of colours. They were analyzed, but nothing new discovered. "Having passed these corridors, we entered the portal of what is called the House of Mecænas. It is known that the house and gardens of Mecænas stood in this part of the Esquiline Hill, which, before it was given him by Augustus, was the charnel-ground of the common people. The conflagration in Nero's reign did not reach to them; and it is believed, that a part of them was taken by Nero into his buildings, and by Titus into his baths. Antiquaries think they can trace a difference in the brick-work and style of building, between what they consider as the erection of Augustus's and that of Titus's age; and on these grounds, the parts they point out as vestiges of the House of Mecenas are, the entrance, which leads into a range of square and roofless chambers, (called, on supposition, the Public Baths,) and the wall on the right in passing through them, which is partially formed of reticulated building in patches. From these real or imaginary classic remains, we entered a damp and dark corridor, the ceiling of which is still adorned with some of the most beautiful specimens that now remain of the paintings of antiquity. Their colouring is fast fading away, and their very outline, I should fear, must be obliterated at no very distant period; so extreme is the humidity of the place, and so incessantly does the water drop fall*. By the light of a few trembling tapers elevated on the top of a long bending cane, we saw at least twenty feet above our heads, paintings in arabesque, executed with a grace, a freedom, a correctness of design, and a masterly command of pencil, that awakened our highest admiration, in spite of all the disadvantages under which they were viewed..... Leaving the painted corridor, which is adorned with these beautiful specimens of ancient art, we entered halls, which, like it, must always have been dark, but are still magnificent. The bright colouring of the crimson stucco, the alcove still adorned with gilding, and the ceilings beautifully painted with fantastic designs, still remain in many parts of them; but how chill, how damp, how desolate are now these gloomy halls of imperial luxury! No sound is to be heard through them, but that of the slow water-drop. In one of these splendid dungeons, we saw the remains of a bath supposed to have been for the private use of the emperor. In another we were shown the crimson-painted alcove where the Laocoon was found in the reign of Leo the Tenth. The French, who cleared out a great many of these chambers, found nothing but the Pluto and Cerberus, now in the Capitol, a work of very indifferent sculpture." The height of the rooms in the Baths of Titus is very great, or as Dr. Burton expressed it, prodigious; and they are comparatively very narrow. Mr. Williams assigns them Dr. Burton's account is, on this head, very different. He says that, "Notwithstanding the depth of soil which has accumulated on the top of the building, and which serves for gardens, there are paintings on the ceiling which may be called extremely perfect. The damp seems to have had little or no effect upon them, which is probably owing to the excellence of the Roman brickwork," a height of thirty feet, which must, of course, make them appear still narrower than they are. Many of them are without any trace of windows, as is the case with the most perfect remains of chambers in the Baths of Caracalla. As the ancients were acquainted with the use of glass even for windows, it is presumed that the object of omitting windows here was to render the rooms as cool as possible by excluding the external air. "In such rooms as these," says Dr. Burton, "in the Baths of Titus, lamps must always have been used; and it may be observed, that there is scarcely a passage in an ancient author, where mention is made of a banquet, but 'the golden lamps,' hanging from the roofs,' are always added. According to the hours which the ancients observed for their meals, (the cana, or last meal, being at about three o'clock,) there would have been no need of lights had there been windows to the rooms; which affords another proof that they were frequently constructed without them. Indeed, Grecian architecture seems to derive a peculiar character from the absence of such apertures; if any objection is to be made to the chaste and simple models which ancient Greece has left us, it is that there is a heaviness and a want of relief in the vast masses of solid masonry. The modern Italian architects have gone into the contrary extreme; their aim seems to have been to break every portion of the building into as many parts as possible; and in the pediments of their windows they have been particularly profuse of ornament. The difference is probably to be traced to the fact of the ancients having had few windows in their buildings, and the moderns having many. In such structures as the Palace of Titus, where many ornaments, both in painting and sculpture, were assembled, it might be thought that much of the effect would be lost by their being never seen except by the light of lamps. With respect to sculpture, however, it is well known that there is no greater test of the excellence of the work, than to view it by torchlight; the rising of the muscles, and all those delicate touches of the chisel, which are scarcely observed on the smooth surface of the white marble, are thrown into a much stronger light and shade in this manner. It is not uncommon for parties to visit the Vatican at night, and view the statues by torch-light. The effect is certainly very good; and some pretend to discover that the modern productions appear greatly inferior to the ancient on such occasions. We know that there were formerly some of the finest specimens of sculpture in the Baths of Titus, and the paintings on the walls still remain." These paintings on the walls consist chiefly of what we now call arabesques; the figures are all very small, and arranged in patterns and borders. They consist of birds, beasts, &c., among which some green parrots may be seen very distinctly; the ground is generally a rich dark red. At the end of one of the rooms is a large painting of some building, in which the perspective is said to be correctly given; this seems to disprove the charge which has been brought against the ancient painters of not understanding the rules of perspective. None of these paintings can, however, be justly regarded as specimens of ancient art; they were intended solely as decorations to the apartments, and were doubtless the work of ordinary house-painters. To judge of the proficiency of the ancient painters from such remains as these, would be as unfair, to use Dr. Burton's remark, as to estimate the state of the arts in England from the sign-posts. Where the walls of the rooms are bare, the brickwork has a most singular appearance of freshness; the stucco also is very perfect in many parts; but the marble, of which there are evident traces on the walls and floors, is gone. THE SEVEN HALLS OF VESPASIAN. IN one of the gardens forming a portion of the large tract of ground over which the ruins of the Baths of Titus are spread, is a building supposed to have been connected with these baths, and commonly called the Sette Sale di Ves pasiano," the Seven Halls of Vespasian,"-though for what reason it would be difficult even to conjecture. The name was given to it when only seven halls had been opened; there are nine now, and as they form an upper story, it is supposed that there are nine others below them in the lower story which is buried. These halls communi cate with each other by means of arches in the partition walls; and the arches are not placed opposite to one another so as to afford a straight view through the whole building in the direction of its length, but are so arranged |