PHRENOLOGY.

Ar a grand fête once given at Potsdam, all the [court of Prussia assembled and paraded before the king. Among all the embroidered courtiers, one man particularly attracted the attention of his majesty —he was a tall, bony old man, dressed in black, with a remarkably shaped head. Frederick, who did not know him, inquired of the lord in waiting, "Who is that man in black at the window with our learned chancellor ?" "Sire, it is Dr. Gall, the celebrated physician." "Gall! ah, I should like to satisfy myself whether what I have heard of that man is exaggerated or not-go and invite him to our table on the morrow.'

At the time appointed, a splendid banquet brought together the king, the doctor, and a dozen other personages bedecked with crosses and orders, but of uncourtly aspect and manners. "Doctor," said Frederick, at the end of the repast, "will you have the kindness to inform these gentlemen what are the propensities which their craniological developement indicates." Gall arose, for the request of the king was of course law, and began to examine the head of his neighbour, a tall dark man, who had been addressed as general. The doctor appeared embarrassed. "Speak frankly," said the king. "His excellency seems to be fond of hunting and boisterous pleasures, and would certainly be most at home in a field of battle. His inclinations are warlike, and temperament sanguine." The king smiled. The doctor passed on to the next. He was a young man with a quick eye and daring look. "This gentleman," said Gall, rather disconcerted, "excels in gymnastic exercises, is a great runner, and skilful in all bodily exercises." "That will do, my dear doctor," interrupted the king, "I see that I have not been deceived with regard to you, and will now divulge, what you through politeness palliated. The general next you is an assassin, condemned to chains for life; and your skilful friend is the cleverest pickpocket in Prussia." Having said thus, the king struck the table thrice, at which signal the guards entered from all sides of the room. "Reconduct these gentlemen to their dungeon," said the king, and then turning towards the stupefied doctor, added, "you have been dining with some of the greatest criminals of my kingdom. Search your pockets!" Gall obeyed; he had lost his handkerchief, his purse, and snuff-box. The next day these articles were, how

ever, returned to him, together with a valuable snuff-box set with diamonds, as a present from the king.-Le Caméléon,

NOTICE OF NEW BOOKS.

THE ANGLER IN WALES; OR DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SPORTSMEN. By Thomas Medwin, Esq.

The perusal of these volumes has afforded us much amusement, notwithstanding the conceit which is manifest in every page. The gallant captain takes especial care to remind us that he was once intimate with one "Byron," and gives us an account of his own youthful days, in which self-love is equally conspicuous: still the book is amusing, as the following extract will shew:

NEAPOLITAN BRIGANDS.

"We were now in the last ten of the thirty miles, and in sight of the frontier, when we observed our courier galloping back at full speed.

"Before reaching the carriage he beckoned with his whip to the boy to stop, and was so much out of breath with hard riding and fright when he came up, that he could not speak for some seconds, but at last related, that about a mile a-head he had been fired at by two out of a band of ruffians, who had suddenly risen up a short distance from the road, from behind some logs of wood, which had been omitted to be removed when the trees were cut down that they might not give shelter to the bandits.

"The question was, how to act. To go forward, in the teeth of the gang, with so unequal a force, would have been the extreme of madness, and to pass the night at the wretched post-house in our rear, was a scarcely less preferable alternative. My friend proposed returning to Mola di Gaeta, but this course was speedily rejected. Whilst still doubtful what steps to pursue, Pietro suggested that we had better drive to the nearest military station, about two miles in the rear; and this counsel was finally adopted.

"On arriving at the guard-house, we summoned the commandant, who speedily mustered his men, consisting of ten or twelve poor, emaciated, yellow, halfstarved, fever-stricken wretches, who had not been relieved for several months, and proved what the effect of breathing long the pestilential air of those marshes must be. By dint of persuasion, in the shape of a few ducats, we overcame his scruples about quitting the post; and

putting ourselves at the head of these Falstaff men, commenced our march towards Cisterna, the carriage following. "The sun was sinking fast, and, to save the light, it was necessary to move on at double-quick. With a pair of pistols, one in each hand, I gave the step, and the courier brandished firmly his stiletto, which was the only weapon he possessed. A tremendous show of war we made! Show only it was; for I felt convinced that our allies would have right-about-faced, to a man, at the first click of a musket. Armed, however, they were to the teeth, that chattered, one of them told me, from the ague. In about half an hour we came near the spot where the courier had been attacked; and I counselled the general-in-chief to throw out videttes on the side of the forest; but being, of course, more experienced in strategies, he declined the proposition. Perhaps his Jack-Straw soldiers thought of the fable of The Bundle of Sticks,' for they stuck close together, and their visages reminded me of the assassins in the Cenci,' one of whom reproached the other with being pallid; to which his comrade replied-Then it is the reflection of your fear!'

"At this moment I clearly distinguished, winding among the columns of the trees, about four hundred yards to our right, the party of brigands, easily distinguished as such by their fantastic costumes and their hats ornamented with flowers and lofty plumes.

"Whether it was that they did not like our martial appearance, or that they thought the promise of plunder did not warrant the risk of an engagment, they gradually disappeared, when our troops were loud in their 'per Baccos,' and other equally energetic displays of courage and just as the night was closing in, we found ourselves in the unlighted square of Cisterna. Pietro here ordered fresh horses, but neither bribes nor entreaties could induce the postmaster to give them, and we were forced to pass the night at the execrable albergo in that most miserable of miserable Italian 'paesi,' where no English traveller had ever slept, except ourselves. You may judge of our fare; it being Friday, nothing could be got to eat but 'Baccala,' and then the beds-Dio mi guardi!' I almost wished we had fallen into the hands of the brigands, which but for the circumstance of our having a courier, we most inevitably should."

"Lord Wellington is said to have wished for night, and Ajax is made by

Homer to pray for day. Superstition apart; indistinctness of objects, a sense of danger, accompanied by an ignorance of its extent or in what shape it may come, has power to unnerve the bravest. This may be, as Burke says, very sublime; as doubtless poets are when they envelope in obscurity their want of meaning, but is anything rather than agreeable. I mean this by way of prelude to a situation' in which I was once placed, and the recital of it shall close our noctes.

"In that desert in dust, and wilderness in size, Cawnpore, I had been dining one evening with the fourteenthKing's, and did not leave the table till a late, or rather an early hour. The mess-room was four miles from our lines, and for expedition's sake I made use of my buggy. The horse I drove at that time had been originally in the ranks; a powerful northern animal he was, with a crest that would have almost covered his rider, but full of such tricks as troopers purposely teach their chargers. He had been cast solely for a sand-crack, of which I soon cured him. He was the fastest trotter in the cantonment, but a restive devil; always started at a rear, and once off, had a mouth so callous that a Chiffney bit might have broken his jaw, but I defy it to have stopped him. You will think all this preliminary history of my grey superfluous, perhaps not. The night was tempestuous, and the road only visible by lightning, that rendered the darkness more black during the absence of its glare. There were so many windings and turnings that I was soon out of my latitude, and thinking the horse knew the way to the stables better than I did, gave him his head. On he went for some time at his own spanking pace, at least twelve miles an hour, when I felt from the roughness of the vehicle that we were out of the track. Well was it for me that he had been well manège'd, for on a sudden he made a halt as though he had heard the word of command, and trembled so convulsively that, I felt the whole machine shake over him. imagine I shook too, and well I might, instinctively, for a vivid flash revealed my situation. He was standing suspended over the edge of a ravine sixty or eighty feet in depth; one step more would have plunged me into eternity! -And why not into eternity? what is life that I should cling to it?-why have I escaped all these snares of death, that have been so often laid for me?—To die ingloriously-alone; without a friend

I

to close my eyes, to shed a tear over my remains."

We shall probably renew Our acquaintance with "The Angler

Wales."

ANCESTRESS OF FRANKLIN.

Mary Morriel, the great-grandmother of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, was maidservant in the family of the Rev. Hugh Peters, one of the chaplains of Cromwell, who fled from England in the year 1662. Peter Folger, the first of the name that came to Nantucket, was pas senger on board the same vessel, and became enamoured of the maid, who was a buxom, sensible lass, and won the heart of Peter by laughing at his sea-sickness, and betraying no fear of bilge-water. Peter admired the cheerful endurance of Mary Morriel so much upon the voyage, that he proffered his hand to the maid, and bargained for her with the greedy old hunks, her master, and counted out to him the enormous sum of twenty pounds sterling, all his worldly store, for the remaining term of her servitude. He forthwith married the lass, and apparently had no cause of repentance; for he always boasted afterwards of having "made a good bargain." The value and scarcity of money at Nantucket at the time, may be estimated from the fact, that when King Philip, as he was called, pursued an offending and fugitive Indian to Nantucket, in 1665, about three years after Peter Folger and his wife, Mary Morriel that was, had settled on the island, the Indian king consented to bury the hatchet, and let the offender go free, for the consideration of a present of a wampum composed of a string of coins, in value nineteen shillings sterlings, which was all that could be found in possession of the twenty original proprietors of the island, and Peter Folger to boot. Miriam Coffin.

ASTROLAB;

OR, THE SOOTHSAYER OF BAGDAD.

ONE evening, while Astrolab the Chaldean was sitting on the flat roof of his observatory in Bagdad, watching an occultation of Aldiboran with the moon, Gules, his servant, obtruded herself before him, and said that an old woman with a beautiful young maiden was eagerly desirous to speak with him. At that moment Astrolab was studiously engaged in examining the immersion of

Gules retired; and the astrologer, without resuming his contemplation of the figure, as it appeared on the plate of quicksilver in which it was mirrored, walked hastily about, agitated with emotions greatly at variance with the solemn and contemplative mood from which the message had roused him. After remaining some time thus disturbed, he at last composed himself, and went down to the chamber where the strangers were sitting.

On entering the room, he was surprised by the remarkable contrast in the appearance of his visitors. Humanity could not be more uncouth than the aged Barrah. She was more like an Egyptian mummy, who had stepped out of a catacomb, than a breathing old woman. She had but one eye, and where the other should have been there was a blind blue blob, like a turquois. It could not be said she had any complexion, for her wrinkled skin was like shrivelled leather, and she had but two teeth in her upper gum, and they resembled splinters of yellow cane-long they were, and seemingly of little use, but her voice was soft and pleasing, and all she said was so discreet and wise, that when she began to speak, her forbidding countenance and deformities were forgotten.

Gazelle, the girl whom she had brought with her, was as beautiful as she herself was the reverse. She was not only fair and young, but adorned with an innocency of look and manner uncommon and fascinating. Astrolab was at once surprised and interested at the combined simplicity and splendour of her extraordinary charms.

After some interchange of civilities, being seated on his sofa beside the two ladies, he inquired to what circumstance he owed the felicity and honour of their visit at such a time; "for," said he, "no doubt you are aware that a great configuration is at this time going on in the heavens, and that all things done and undertaken under it have influences that reach beyond their proper sphere, and affect the destinies of others."

Barrah replied, that really they had not heard any thing of it. "We are," said she, "simple folk, and have only come into Bagdad this evening to have the fortune of Gazelle cast. She is my grand-daughter - her mother is dead, and a great man has been more than once at my house, and has offered a

handsome price if I would sell her; now, as she is very beautiful, which you may well see, I would not wish to part with her until I had some assurance from your knowledge, as to what her future fortunes will be: for her mother had a dream in the night before she was born, in which she was told by the vision of an old man with a crown of gold on his head, that the child she was to bring forth would be a dragon, and rule the fate of kings; therefore we have come to you to have her horoscope drawn, and I have brought with me five pieces of gold to pay you for the trouble."

While Barrah was thus talking, the rose faded from the complexion of the gentle Gazelle, and her face grew pale and so bright, that it almost seemed to glow with the lustre of an alabaster image in the moonshine, while her eyes became more radiant than ever. Astrolab was awed as he looked on her, thinking that a form so strangely lovely could hardly be of human parentage; and when he looked at Barrah, and observed the shocking contrast which she presented, he could not but dread that there was some undivulged mystery in their visit at such a time; and he had a fearful reminiscence concerning the good and evil genii that govern the fortunes of men. Moreover he was grievously perplexed at the value of the fee, it was so much beyond the gift he commonly received for calculating nativities.

However, notwithstanding his fears and his dread, he accepted the money, and taking his tablets began to question the old woman respecting the astrological particulars necessary to enable him to construct the horoscope of Gazelle; and when he had noted the answers, he requested them to give him time to make his calculations, and to consult the stars and their aspects. This was readily acceded to, and the ladies departed, having agreed to revisit him at the same hour of the same day of the same moon, in the year following.

When they had left the sage, and he was on the point of remounting to his observatory, he happened to cast his eyes a little curiously on the notes on his tablets, and beheld with amazement that they did indeed indicate no ordinary destiny.

While he was thus looking at the portents, Gules again came in and said, "Hossain, whom I know by sight, an old officer of the palace, is at the door with a stripling, whom I am persuaded is no other than Motasser, the son of Mollawakkel, the Caliph."

When Astrolab heard her say so, he became as much agitated as when Barrah and Gazelle were announced; nevertheless he ordered the new visitors to be respectfully admitted, and that Gules should take care not to let them perceive that she knew who they were, or suspected their rank.

Hossain and the young prince Motasser having come into the chamber, the former presented the astrologer with five pieces of gold, in all respects so similar to those which he had received from the old woman, and which he had just put into his purse, that he was exceedingly surprised.

Hossain then told him that he wished the horoscope of the lad he had brought with him raised, and related the natal circumstances, while Astrolab took them down in the same manner as he had done those of the birth of Gazelle. then asked the self-same questions, and received the self-same answers.

He

Concealing the astonishment which the singularity of these coincidences produced, he preserved a steady countenance, and requesting time for his arithmetic, agreed with Hossain to deliver the horoscope exactly at the same crisis of time which he had fixed with the old woman to come for that of her beautiful grand-daughter.

When Hossain and the prince were gone away from him, he resumed the consideration of what he had inscribed on his tablets, and saw, without casting a single calculation, that the fate of Gazelle was in every planetary aspect exactly similar to that of the prince. In musing on the singularity both of this and their visit, his astronomy was forgotten, and the remainder of the night was spent in the consultation of his science.

Early in the morning he called up Gules, and directed her to go in quest of Barrah, and to bring her to him, as there was an important question omitted, without the answer to which he could not develope his inferences. Gules observed, that as she might be detained in the search through the bazars, it would be as well for her to bring home something for dinner, and begged him to give her some money. This recalled the attention of Astrolab to the rich fees he had received, and putting his hand into his purse, to take out a piece of the gold, bade Gules buy the nicest fish she could find; but, instead of the ten pieces of gold, he found only five, and five worms! A transformation so hideous, revived the dread which he had felt during the visit

of Barrah and Gazelle; and he was now convinced that there was something about them unearthly, and wondered if they could indeed be of the good and evil demons that sway the mutations of human fortune. Thus impressed with mystery, and convinced that some extraordinary event was to come out of the adventure, he threw the five worms from him, with an exclamation of abhorrence, and trod them to death, and five spots of blood remained on the floor: at the same time he expressed his wonder to Gules, how the odious creatures could have

found their way into his purse. From this incident it occurred to him, that Gules was not likely to fall in with Barrah, or her companion, so instead of desiring Gules to go in quest of Barrah, he directed her to proceed to the Almanzor, or the palace of thirty thousand chambers, and inquire there for Hossain, and deliver to him the message he had intended for the old sorceress, for such he deemed Barrah now to be.

Gules being thus instructed, proceeded on her errand; and when she reached the great gate of the palace, she went into the interior court, and was permitted to enter at freedom into all the public halls; for it was one of the Caliph Mollawakkel's grand days, when he received on the throne of the hundred golden lions, the petitions of his subjects.

On every side her eyes were enriched with his grandeur. She gazed with unspeakable delight on his innumerable guards, in radiant armour,—the gorgeous officers that surrounded his throne, -the thousands of slaves and eunuchs, covered with cloth of gold and purple, and studded with gems,-the living tapestry which adorned the walls,-the golden fountains, which spouted not water, but quicksilver, perfumed with the rarest odours,- and the silver floors, enamelled with flowers more precious than gold, and which were justly esteemed scarcely splendid enough for the glory of the walls and the ceiling. Such vast magnificence seduced the innocent Gules from all remembrance of her errand, and of the nice fish she was to buy for dinner; and she roamed from hall to gallery, and tripped along the marble terraces in an ecstasy of pleasure, until the crowd and guards assembled in the courts and gardens, began to disperse. Suddenly passing into a colonnade, she beheld Barrah and Gazelle walking in a flowery parterre of the garden below, and immediately behind them Hossain and Motasser. Thus reminded of her

negligence, she ran immediately towards them to execute her errand; but before she reached the place where she had seen them, Gazelle and Barrah were gone, and she found Hossain talking to Motasser of Gazelle's extraordinary beauty; for it was Hossain who had been bargaining with the old woman for her grand-daughter, to be the first ornament for the harem of the young prince. Gules lost no time, for she had already lost too much, in delivering her message; on receiving which, Hossain left Motasser amidst the flowers, and went straight to the house of Astrolab.

Motasser being thus left alone, strayed along the plats and walks of the parterre, till he came to a flight of yellow marble steps, which ascended to a lofty terrace, that overlooked the crystalline current of the Tigris. The platform of this terrace was adorned with the rarest shrubs and flowers, the seeds of which were collected from all parts of the world, at a vast expense, by Almanzor, the founder of the palace and city. The terrace itself was called the garden of the seven fountains, on account of seven prodigious basins of rock crystal, which stood in a row under a wall, from the top of which seven lions, of red Egyptian granite, discharged into the basins copious streams of limpid water, perfumed with lemons, the fragrance of which spread a delicious freshness in the air.

These limpid fountains afforded a supply of sherbet, by merely dipping certain curious shells, which stood around the basins, incrusted by the skill of the adepts of the palace, with a preparation of candied honey, pure as the sun-dried salt of the ocean, and which was every morning renewed.

Motasser beheld at the most remote fountain from the top of the stairs the light and elegant form of Gazelle, and hastened towards her. He was greatly delighted with her graceful innocence, and began in a gay and playful manner to converse with her on the beauties of the gardens, and the pleasing spirit that breathed in that calm and balmy afternoon. He was charmed with the simplicity of her answers, and led her to another terrace which communicated with the garden of the seven fountains, by a gateway of such proportions, that none ever passed through it without expressing their admiration of the skill and tastefulness of the architect. In the middle of this garden stood a platform, about the height of a table. It was fifty cubits square, and covered with one entire sheet of malachite, as perfect in the