his first return from college, he became tutor in the family of Mr M Ghie of Airds, an amiable country gentleman, who had several beautiful daughters. In this ro mantic abode, so favourable to the descriptive muse, Lowe composed many little pieces, of which it is to be regretted that few copies are now to be found, though there are songs of his composition still sung by the common people of the Glenkens in Galloway. He also composed a pretty long pastoral, entitled, Morning, a Poem, which is still preserved in his own handwriting. He likewise attempted to write a tragedy, but no part of it is now to be found. About this time Mr Alexander Miller, a surgeon, who had been engaged to Mary, one of the young ladies of Airds, was unfortunately lost at sea; an event which would probably have been forgotten, but for the exquisitely tender and pathetic song of Mary's Dream, which has given to it immortality. It is presumed that our poet was sensibly alive to the misfortunes of a young lady, whose sister had inspired him also with the tenderest passion; but it was not their fate to be united.

"After finishing his studies at the Divinity Hall, and seeing no prospect of obtaining a living in his native country, Mr Lowe, in 1773, embarked for America. For some time he acted as tutor to the family of a brother of the great Washington; a situation which supplied some hopes of advancement. He next opened an academy for the education of young gentlemen, in Fredericksburgh, Virginia, which was given up upon his taking orders in the church of England. After this event he married a Virginian lady, who unfortunately proved his ruin. She was not only regardless of his happiness, but even unfaithful to his bed. Overwhelmed with shame, disappointment, and sorrow, the vigour of his constitution was broken, and he fell into an untimely grave in 1798, in the forty-eighth year of his age. His remains were interred under the shade of two palm trees, near Fredericksburgh, without even a stone to write, Mary, weep no more for me.

"This truly elegant and popular ballad, however, was originally composed by Lowe in the Scottish dialect, before he gave it the polished English form. As the older ballad may be interesting, even in its rude form, to some readers, it is here subjoined.mit

And there she saw young Sandy stand,

Pale, bending on her his hollow ce.
O Mary dear, lament nae mair!
I'm in death's thraws aneath the sea;
Thy weeping makes me sad in bliss,
Sae, Mary, weep nae mair for me!
3

"The wind slept when we left the bay, But soon it wak'd, and rais'd the main, And God, he bore us down the deep,

Wha strave wi' him but strave in vain. He stretch'd his arm and took me up,

Though laith I was to gang but thee.
I look frae heaven aboon the storm,
Sae, Mary, weep nae mair for me!
4

"Take aff thae bride sheets frae thy bed,

Which thou hast faulded down for me; Unrobe thee of thy earthly stole

I'll meet, in heaven aboon, wi' thee.' Three times the gray cock flapt his wing, To mark the morning lift his ee, And thrice the passing spirit said,

Sweet Mary, weep nae mair for me.'"

ON THE USE OF THE COMMON THERMOMETER AS A HYGROMETER.

MR EDITOR,

I am happy to observe, that you intend to devote a certain portion of your interesting miscellany to the subject of Meteorology, and I have no doubt you can number, among your readers, a great many other meteorologists besides your Reporters. It is a subject to which, from long habit, I feel very partial, and, with your leave, I will submit a few remarks on the use of the hygrometer, for the consideration of such as may be engaged in similar pursuits. It is not my intention to enter into any long or minute detail of the numerous instruments that have been proposed for ascertaining the state of the atmosphere with regard to moisture, or to attempt deciding on the comparative merits of Saussure's hair, and De Luc's whalebone. I believe it may be safely affirmed, that a correct, at least a permanently correct, hygrometer, never can be constructed on the principle of any such contrivance, and for this obvious reason: However accurately the instrument may be originally made, it no sooner begins to operate than it begins to change, the alternate expansions and contractions of the substance producing necessarily, however slowly, some derangement in its natural texture. The contrivance itself may be extremely ingenious, but from VOL. I.

the very nature of the materials employed, such hygrometers must be imperfect, in as much as they are subject to changes, the extent of which it is impossible exactly to appreciate. Now, is it not very strange, that after all the complaints that we have heard among meteorologists, and philosophers in general, about the want of a hygrometer on accurate principles, they should hesitate a single moment about adopting one as simple and accurate as it is elegant and philosophical? I allude to the differential thermometer of Professor Leslie, which the ingenious inventor has applied, among many other useful purposes, to that of measuring the relative dryness of the atmosphere, and which does so upon principles as fixed and determinate as those of the common thermometer. For the sake of such of your readers as may not be conversant with the subject, I shall give a short description of it nearly in the Professor's own words: "It consists of a thermometer tube, curved like the letter U, with a hollow ball at each extremity containing air, and holding an intermediate portion of sulphuric acid, tinged with carmine. When these balls are of the same temperature, the liquor will remain stationary, but if one of the balls be warmer than the other, the liquor, urged by the increased elasticity of the air, will descend proportionally on that side. To measure the difference of heat between the two balls, the whole interval beween freezing and boiling water is divided into a thousand equal parts. If one of the balls be covered with cambric or silk, and wetted with pure water, the instrument forms a complete hygrometer; for it will mark, by the descent of the column in the opposite stem, the constant diminution of temperature which is caused by evaporation from that hunnid surface, and it must consequently express the relative dryness of the ambient air." It is hardly necessary to observe, that hygrometers constructed on this principle must always indicate the same dryness, in the same circumstances, and may therefore be as readily compared with one another as thermometers themselves. But my object is not so much to discuss the merits of the instrument itself, as to shew that the common thermometer may be us3 C

ed in its stead, and that though it may not possess the same degree of delicacy, it is sufficiently accurate for all the ordinary purposes of meteorology. Let two spirit of wine thermometers be chosen, as nearly of the same size as possible, and graduated so as exactly to coincide at different temperatures. Let the bulb of one of them be covered with blue or purple silk while the other remains naked, and let them be suspended at about the distance of two inches from each other. Let the covered bulb be then wetted with pure water, and the two thermometers will very soon indicate a difference of temperature, the wetted one, from the cold produced by the evaporation, sinking below the other, more or less, according to the rapidity of the evaporation; that is, according as the air is more or less dry. If the thermometers be graduated according to Fahrenheit's scale, each degree of difference must be multiplied by 54, and the product will express the degrees of the Professor's hygrometer nearly; or if they are graduated according to the centigrade scale, the degrees of difference, multiplied by 10, will give the hygrometric degrees exactly. From numerous comparative observations, I am able to say, that the average dryness of a month, as indicated by the thermometers, will not differ from that indicated by the hygrometer more than two hygrometric degrees, a quantity that may be safely overlooked in a series of observations which do not admit of extreme accuracy. It may perhaps look like presumption, but I cannot help observing, that the thermometers appear to me better calculated to give the mean dryness of the air than the hygrometer itself, as the latter, from its extreme delicacy, is sometimes affected by a sudden gust of wind at the moment of observation, so as to rise two or three degrees. There is, however, one obvious advantage which the thermometers possess over the hygrometer, and that is, their shewing not only the difference between the temperatures of the two bulbs, which is all that the hygrometer shews, but also the actual temperature of both the wet and dry surface, a circumstance necessary to be taken into the account, in estimating the absolute quantity of water held in solution by the atmosphere at the moment. I hope it will not be supposed that these

remarks are intended to throw any obstacles in the way of a more extended and general use of an instrument which is likely to be of such essential service to science, and which has already done so much honour to the ingenious inventor. My object is to press upon those who may not have had an opportunity of making any observations with the hygrometer, but who are familiar with the use of the thermometer, not to neglect the means which they possess of collecting facts on a branch of science which is still in its infancy, and which never can make any advancement, but by the patient application of the inductive philosophy. I remain, sir, yours respectfully, G.

Ks, 2d July 1817.

FRAGMENT OF A LITERARY ROMANCE.

"Every scribe now falls asleep,
And in his dreams

Out-steps some Fairy straight, ten pound

to one,

Awake, he rubs his eyes, and prints his.
Tale."

Marston's Satyres.
СНАР. І.

IT was a beautiful evening in June. The sun had nearly sunk beneath the western horizon, and was shedding a lingering golden ray on the tops of the mountains. The heat of the day, which had been excessive, was now tempered by a gentle breeze, and I had retired" to dose, perchance to dream," in that little rustic arbour, so romantically situated on the side of the rivulet which runs past my cottage. Seated in my oaken chair, I had abandoned my weary mind to the free current of its own reflections. All thoughts, good, bad, and indifferent, in such thick progress that one rode on the other, pursued, I cannot say the noiseless tenor of their way; and the imagi nation, well aware that its jailor, the reason, no longer mounted guard, flew from its imprisonment with the rapidity of lightning, and began to play those fantastic gambols which I am now about to embody in perhaps as fantastic a history.

I imagined (whether dreaming or in a waking vision I cannot tell) that, as I listened, other sounds than the murmur of the rivulet arose out of some quarter near me. It seemed a

mon nap without having some goddess or devil at my elbow." So I turned my night-cap inside out, and, replacing it again on my head, resumed my former position. "I thank you for your compliment, continued the gentle apparition, but you might have spared yourself all this trouble, for I am about to give you a proof of our existence, far superior to what is contained in the turning of your night-cap.

"But first let me inform you to what circumstance you are indebted for my appearance.

"We spirits, you must know, for a certain time are endowed with those supernatural powers with which I shall afterwards make you more fully acquainted. But whenever this portion of our existence is completed, we are destined to change our shape into whatever being we may chance first to turn our eyes upon at the moment our stated tract of years has expired. It signifies nothing what this being may be. Whether rational or irrational whether an inhabitant of the earth or of the air, that shape we must assume, or rather it is superinduced upon us by a power over which we have no control. In this shape we continue upon earth for a series of years, at the expiration of which we resume our spiritual form and invisible existence. If it is a human being upon which we may chance, at the expiry of our spiritual life, to turn our eyes, we immediately become mortals like yourself, and engage in all your terrestrial pursuits with as much eagerness, but much more ability than you in the world are capable of exerting. This will in some measure account to you for those wonderful geniuses which sometimes appear upon your earth. You will recollect a little, sickly, rickety, but, as he appeared to you, most extraordinary person, who was the wonder and admiration of what you term your seventeenth century, under the name of Alexander Pope. That was none other than myself. You may start and look amazed, but I swear to you, upon my spiritual word, that it is a solemn truth. I had been engaged at a little aerial masquerade, where I met with some very pleasant spirits, who made up a party of pleasure to visit your earth. We came of course to England. And in walking through one of its most beautiful counties, our party happened to

be passing a cottage, out of which there came an old woman with a sickly and deformed infant in her arms. Not aware of the importance of this to my future destiny, and ignorant that at that moment my stated period of existence had been completed, I unfortunately cast my eyes on this infant.

*

The laws of our being took effect, and I instantly became its very prototype. As I grew up, observing the adulation which began to be paid to literature, and the unexampled celebrity of a fellow of the name of Dryden, I turned my genius into that channel, and commenced author. No previous education was necessary. As a spirit I had made the tour of the universe, and it was to amuse my time, as long as I was confined to an earthly shape, not to gratify my vanity, that I ever thought of writing. To one who, like me, had held converse with superior beings,-who had ranged at will through those innumerable worlds that glitter in the boundless heavens,— and whose scenery is infinitely more beautiful,-and whose inhabitants far more perfect than here on earth, it was no wonder that there should occur something like contempt for those consequential emmets that were swarming around me.t Johnson knew nothing of this, and has growled out against me many of those high-sounding and sourhearted maxims which have imposed on your foolish world. It was great wonder, truly, that one should be irritated with the slow and awkward service of a mortal domestic, who had