up to theories, there is a specific gravity in all | tired spot in the city where I might make inthings which keeps constant the level of ter- stant experiment of a jump. With the greatest restrial operations, and prevents the restless difficulty I preserved a decent gait; I walked brain of man from raising any edifice, in brick with the uneasy unsteady motion of a man in or discovery, high enough to be the ruin of his water whose toes might barely reach the botown species. To me, however, the one conside- tom: conscious as I was of my security, I felt ration, that the eternal search of knowledge every instant apprehensive of a fall. Nothing and truth is the very object of our faculties, could have reconciled me to the disagreeable has been the main-spring of my life, and al- sensation I experienced, but the anticipation though my individual sufferings have been far of vaulting unfettered into the air. I stood befrom light, yet at their present distance the hind the cathedral of the Seven Towers; nobody contemplation gives me pleasure, and I have was near-I looked hurriedly around, and made the satisfaction to reflect that I am now in pos- the spring! I rose with a slow, uniform mosession of an art which is continually employed, tion,-but, gracious Heaven! imagine my horday and night, for the benefit of the present ror and distress when I found that nothing but generation and of ages yet to come. the mere resistance of the air opposed my progress; and when at last it stopped my flight, I found myself many hundred feet above the city-motionless, and destitute of every means of descent. I tore my hair, and cursed myself, for overlooking so obvious a result. My screams drew thousands to the singular sight. I stretched my arms towards the earth and implored assistance. Poor fool! I knew it was impracticable. I was born in the Semlainogorod of Moscow; and for ten years applied intensely to chemistry. I confess the failure of many eminent predecessors prevented my attempting the philosopher's stone; my whole thoughts were engaged on the contemplation of gravity-on that mysterious invisible agent which pervaded the whole universe-which made my pen drop from my fingers the planets move round the sun -and the very sun itself, with its planets, moons, and satellites, revolve for ever, with myriads of others, round the final centre of universal gravity-that mysterious spot, perhaps the residence of those particular emanations of Providence which regard created beings. At length I discovered the actual ingredients of this omnipresent agent. It is little more than a combination of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and azote; but the proportions of these constituent parts had long baffled me, and I still withhold them from my species for obvious reasons. Knowledge is power,-and the next easy step from the discovery of the elements was the decomposition of gravity, and the neutralization of its parts in any substance at my pleasure. I was more like a lunatic than a rational chemist; a burning furor drove me to an immediate essay of my art, and stripped me of the power and will to calculate on consequences. Imagine me in my laboratory. I constructed a gravitation-pump-applied it to my bodyturned the awful engine, and stood in an instant the first of all created beings-devoid of weight! Up sprung my hair--my arms swung from my sides above the level of my shoulders, by the involuntary action of the muscles; which were no longer curbed by the re-action of their weight. I laughed like a fool or a fiend, closed my arms carefully to my side, compressed or concealed my bristling hair under my cap, and walked forth from my study to seek some re But conceive the astonishment of the people! I was too high to be personally known;-they called to me and I answered; but they were unable to catch the import, for sound, like myself, rises better than it falls. I heard myself called an angel, a ghost, a dragon, a unicorn, and a devil. I saw a procession of priests come under me to exorcise me; but had Satan himself been free of gravity, he had been as unable to descend at their bidding as myself. At length the fickle mob began to jeer me-the boys threw stones at me, and a clever marksman actually struck me on the side with a bullet; it was too high to penetrate-it merely gave me considerable pain, drove me a few feet higher, and sunk again to the ground. Alas! I thought, would that it had pierced me, for even the weight of that little ball would have dragged me back to earth. At length the shades of evening hid the city from my sight; the murmur of the crowd gradually died away, and there I still was, cold, terrified, and motionless-nearer to heaven than such a fool could merit to rise again. What was to be the end of this! I must starve and be stared at! Imagine my joy when a breeze sprung up, and I felt myself floating in darkness over the town: but even now new horrors seized me;— I might be driven downwards into the Moskwa and drowned; I might be dashed against the cathedral and crushed. Just as I thought on this my head struck violently against the great bell of Boris Godunuff;—the blow and the deep intonation of the bell deprived me for some minutes of life and recollection. When I revived, I found I was lying gently pressed by the breeze against the balustrades: I pulled myself carefully along the church, pushed myself down the last column, and run as straight as my light substance would permit me to my house. With far greater joy than when I had been disrobed of it, I speedily applied a proper condensation of gravity to my body, fell on my knees to thank Heaven for my deliverance, and slunk into bed, thoroughly ashamed of my day's performance. The next day, to escape suspicion, I joined the re-assembled crowd, looking upward as serious as the rest, gazed about for yesterday's phenomenon, and I daresay was the only one who felt no disappointment in its disappearance. Any one would imagine that, after this trial, I should have burned my pump and left gravity to its own operations. But no! I felt I was reserved for great things;-such a discovery was no every-day occurrence, and I would work up every energy of my soul rather than relinquish this most singular, though frightful, field of experiment. I was too cautious to deprive myself again entirely of gravity. In fact, in my late experiment, as in others, when I talk of extracting my gravity entirely, I mean just enough to leave me of the same weight as the atmosphere. Had I been lighter than that, I should have risen involuntarily upward like an air-bubble in a bucket. Even as it was, I found myself inclined to rise and fall with every variation of the atmosphere, and I had serious thoughts of offering myself to the university as a barometer, that, by a moderate salary, I might pass the remainder of my days in tranquillity and honour. My object now was merely to render myself as light as occasion required: besides, I found that by continual contact with the earth and atmosphere I always imbibed gradually a certain portion of weight, though by extremely slow and imperceptible degrees; for the constituent parts of gravity which I have mentioned enter largely, as every chemist knows, into the composition of all earths and airs: thus, in my late essay, I should certainly have eventually descended to earth without the intervention of the breeze; indeed, I should probably have been starved first, though my body would have at last sunk down for the gratification of my friends. Three furred coats and a pair of skates I gained by leaping at fairs in the Sloboda, and subsistence for three weeks by my inimitable performance on the tight-rope; but when at last | I stood barefoot on a single needle, and balanced myself head downwards on a bodkin, all Moscow rung with applause. But the great object of all my earthly hopes was to gain the affections of a young widow in the Kremlin, whose heart I hoped to move by the unrivalled effects of my despair. I jumped head-foremost from a chair on the hard floor; twice I sprung into a well, and once I actually threw myself from the highest spire in Moscow. I always lay senseless after my falls, screamed at my revival, and counterfeited severe contusions. But in vain! I found my person or pretensions disagreeable to her. The truth is, it did not escape the notice of the people that I was destitute of weight; and although I took care to show myself publicly with a proper gravity, even with an additional stone weight, strange stories and whispers went forth about me; and when my feats of agility, and frightful, though not fatal, falls were recollected, it became generally believed that I had either sold myself to the devil, or was myself that celebrated individual. I now began to prepare myself for immediate escape, in case I should be legally prosecuted. I had hitherto been unable, when suspended in the air, to lower myself at my pleasure; for I was unable to make my pump act upon itself, and therefore, when I endeavoured to take it with me, its own weight always prevented my making any considerable rise. I have since recollected, indeed, that had I made two pumps, and extracted the weight from one by means of the other, I might have carried the light one up with me, and filled myself by its means with gravity when I wished to descend. However, this plan, as I said, having escaped my reflection, I set painfully about devising some method of carrying about gravity with me in a neutralized state, and giving it operation and energy when it should suit my convenience. After long labour and expensive experiments, I hit upon the following simple method: You will readily imagine that this subtle fluid, call it gravitation, or weight, or attraction, or what you will, pervading as it does every body in nature, impalpable and invisible, would occupy an extremely small space when packed in its pure and unmixed state. I found, after decomposing it, that besides the gases I mentioned before, there always remained a slight residuum, incombustible and insoluble. This was evidently a pure element, which I have called by a termination common among chemists, "gravium." When I admitted to it the other gases, except the azote of the atmosphere, it assumed a creamy consistence, which might be called "essential oil of gravitation; and finally, when it was placed in contact with the atmosphere, it imbibed azote rapidly, became immediately invisible, and formed pure weight. I procured a very small elastic Indianrubber bottle, into which I infused as much oil of gravity as I could extract from myself, carefully closed it, and squeezed it flat; and I found that by placing over the orifice an extremely fine gauze and admitting the atmophere through it (like the celebrated English Davy lamp), as the bottle opened by its own elasticity, the oil became weight; and when I queezed it again the azote receded through the gauze and left the weightless oil. I was now in possession of the ultimatum of my inquiries, the means of jumping into the air without any weight, and the power of assuming it when I wished to descend. What I feared came to pass: I was indicted as a sorcerer and condemned to be hung; I concealed my bottle under my arm, ascended the scaffold, avowed my innocence, and was turned off. I counterfeited violent convulsions, but was careful to retain just weight enough to keep the rope tight. In the evening, when the populace had retired, I gently extricated my neck, walked home, and prepared to leave my coun try. At Petersburg I heard that Captain Khark of Voronetz was about to sail to India to bombard a British fortress. I demanded an inter View. "Sir," said I, “I am an unhappy man, whose misfortunes have compelled him to renounce his country. I am in possession of an art by which I can give you accurate intelligence of everything going on in the fortress you are to attack; and I offer you my services, provided you will give me a passage and keep my secret." I saw by his countenance he considered me an impostor. was requisite in northern climes. But when I "Sir," I said, "promise me secrecy, and you casus, fatigued and hungry. I assuaged my shall behold a specimen of my art.” He assented. I squeezed the little bottle under my arm, sprung upward, and played along the ceiling, to his great amaze. He was a man of honour, and kept his promise; and in six months we arrived off the coast of Coromandel. Here I made one of the greatest mistakes in my life. I had frequently practised my art during the first part of the voyage for the amusement of the sailors; and instead of carrying my gravity-bottle with me, I used to divest myself of just sufficient gravity to leap mast-high, and descend gently on the deck; and by habit I knew the exact quantity which VOL. V. hunger with mountain mosses, and slept a few hours as well as the extreme cold would permit me. On waking, the hoplessness of my situation distressed me much. After passing over so many hot countries, where the exhalations from the earth had enabled my body to imbibe gravitation more rapidly than usual, I had gradually moved northward, where the centrifugal force of the earth had much decreased. From these two causes, and in this wild country, without the means of chemically assisting myself, I now found my body too heavy to trust again to the winds-intrenched as I 101 was between the Black Sea and the Caspian, but without weight to give firmness to my step; without the lightness of a fowl I had all its awkward weakness in water. The savage natives cast lots for me, and I became a slave. My strange lightness was a source of mirth to all, even to my fellow-servants; and I found, by experience, how little weight a man bears in society who has lost his gravity. When I attempted to dig, I rose without effect on my spade. Sometimes when I bore a load of wood on my shoulders it felt so top-heavy, that upon the slightest wind I was sure to tumble overand then I was chastised: my mistress one day hoisted me three miles by a single kick on the breech. But however powerless against lateral pressure, it was observed with amaze how easily I raised the vast weights under which the most powerful men in the country sunk; for, in fact, my legs being formed to the usual capabilities of mankind, had now little or no weight of body to support; I was therefore enabled to carry ten or twelve stone in addition to a common burden. It was this strength that enabled me to throw several feet from the earth a native who had attacked me. He was stunned by the fall, but, on rising, with one blow he drove me a hundred yards before him. I took to my heels, determined, if possible, to escape this wretched life. The whole country was on foot to pursue me, for I had doubly deserved death; I had bruised a freeman, and was a fugitive slave. But notwithstanding the incredible agility of these people in their native crags, their exact knowledge of the clefts in the hills, the only passes between the eternal snows, and my own ignorance, I utterly baffled their pursuit by my want of weight, and the energy which despair supplied me. Sometimes when they pressed hardest on me I would leap up a perpendicular crag twenty feet high, or drop down a hundred. I bent my steps towards the Black Sea, determined, if I could reach the coast, to seek a passage to some port in Cathenoslaw, and retire where I might pass the remainder of my life under a feigned name, with at least the satisfaction of dying in the dominions of my legitimate sovereign, Alexander. Exhausted and emaciated I arrived at a straggling village, the site of the ancient Pityus. This was the last boundary of the Roman power on the Euxine, and to this wretched place state exiles were frequently doomed. The name became proverbial; and, I understand, has been so far adopted by the English that the word "Pityus" is, to this day, most adapted to the lips of the banished. In a small vessel we sailed for Azof; but when we came off the Straits of Caffa, where the waters of the Don are poured into the Euxine, a strong current drove us on a rock, and in a fresh gale the ship went speedily to pieces. I gave myself up for lost, and heard the crew, one after the other, gurgle in the waves and scream their last, while I lay struggling and buffeting for life. But after the first hurry for existence I found I had exhausted myself uselessly, for my specific gravity being so trifling I was enabled to lie on the surface of the billows without any exertion, and even to sit upon the wave as securely as a couch. I loosened my neckcloth, and spreading it wide with my hands and teeth, I trusted myself to the same winds that had so often pelted me at their mercy, and always spared me. In this way I traversed the Euxine. I fed on the scraps that floated on the surface-sometimes dead fish, and once or twice on some inquisitive stragglers whose curiosity brought them from the deep to contemplate the strange sail. Two days I floated in misery, and a sleepless night; by night I dared not close my eyes for fear of falling backward-and by day I frequently passed objects that filled me with despair-fragments of wrecks; and then I looked on my own sorry craft: once I struck my feet against a drowned sailor, and it put me in mind of myself. last I landed safe on the beach between Odessa and Otchacow, traversed the Ukraine, and by selling the little curiosities I had picked up on my passage, I have purchased permission to reside for the rest of my days unknown and unseen in a large forest near Minsk. Here, within the gray crumbling walls of a castle that fell with the independence of this unhappy country, I await my end. I have left little to regret at my native Moscow; neither friends, nor reputation, nor lawful life; and I had failed in a love which was dearer to me than reputation-than life-than gravity itself. have established an apparatus on improved principles to operate on gravity; and I am now employed, day and night, for the benefit, not more of the present generation than of all mankind that are to come. In fact, I am laboriously and unceasingly extracting the gravitation from the earth in order to bring it nearer the sun; and though by thus diminishing the earth's orbit, I fear I shall confuse the astronomical tables and calculations, I am confident I shall improve the temperature of the globe. How far I have succeeded may be guessed from the recent errors in the almanacs about the eclipses, and from the late mild win ters. At I Tway birchen sprays, with anxious fear entwin'd, With dark distrust, and sad repentance fill'd, And stedfast hate, and sharp affliction join'd, And fury uncontroll'd, and chastisement unkind. THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. [William Shenstone, born at the Leasowes, Hales Owen, Shropshire, 1714; died there, 1763. His rural tastes rendered the gardens of the Leasowes even more famous than the proprietor's poetry. His poems chiefly relate to ideal shepherds, and are marked by many affectations; but The Schoolmistress, from which we quote, will preserve his memory by its simple fidelity to nature. Goldsmith said of it: "This poem is one of those happinesses in which a poet excels himself, as there is nothing in all Shenstone which anyway approaches it in merit."] IN IMITATION OF SPENSER. Ah me! full sorely is my heart forlorn, In ev'ry village mark'd with little spire, For unkempt hair, or task unconn'd, are sorely shent. And all in sight doth rise a birchen tree, Near to this dome is found a patch so green, The noises intermix'd which thence resound, Her cap, far whiter than the driven snowe, A russet stole was o'er her shoulders thrown, A russet kirtle fenc'd the nipping air; 'Twas simple russet, but it was her own: 'Twas her own country bred the flock so fair; "Twas her own labour did the fleece prepare; And, sooth to say, her pupils, rang'd around, Thro' pious awe did term it passing rare, For they in gaping wonderment abound, And think, no doubt, she been the greatest wight on ground. Albeit ne flatt'ry did corrupt her truth, Ne pompous title did debauch her ear, Or dame, the sole additions she did hear; Yet these she challeng'd, these she held right dear: Ne would esteem him act as mought behove But there was eke a mind which did that title love. One ancient hen she took delight to feed, Herbs too she knew, and well of each could speak, Yet euphrasy may not be left unsung, That gives dim eyes to wander leagues around, And pungent radish biting infant's tongue, And plantain ribb'd, that heals the reaper's wound, And marj'ram sweet, in shepherd's posie found, And crown her kerchiefs clean with mickle rare perfume. And here trim rosemarine, that whilom crown'd A sacred shelter for its branches here, Where edg'd with gold its glitt'ring skirts appear. |