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Burder of Clifton on the morning of Sunday, June 30, in the constellation of Auriga, from which it receded in the course of two nights

a basaltic causeway."-At the same meeting an account was given of the recent outburst of a volcano near Edd, on the African coast of the Red Sea; and a notice of that terrible to the muzzle of the Great Bear. It had earthquake at Mendoza, where eighty-five shocks occurred in ten days, and more than ten thousand persons perished. The effect was felt in the Upsallata Pass of the Cordilleras, for at that elevation travellers met a shower of ashes, and found the way obstructed by rocks and newly opened chasms. And at Buenos Ayres, nine hundred and sixtynine miles from Mendoza, it was observed that the pendulums which were swinging north and south were accelerated, while those swinging east and west were not affected.

The astronomer-royal's Report to the Board of Visitors shows that astronomy suffers as well as corn and fruit in unfavorable weather. A plan had been formed for a series of observations of Mars, with a view to the accurate determination of his parallax; but the weather was unusually bad" in 1860, and the observations could not be made. However, as the Report testifies, good work in abundance was accomplished; "the quasi-permanent existence of a belt inclined to the ordinary belts" was noted on Jupiter; Saturn presented at times "the square-shouldered figure which Sir. W. Herschel long ago attributed to him;" time-signals have been, and are sent to many parts of England; the post-office clocks are regulated from the clock at Greenwich; the timeball at Deal has been regularly dropped by signal from the Observatory; and Mr. Airy constantly bears in mind the desirability of exhibiting daily time-signals at Portsmouth and Plymouth, and hourly time-signals at Start Point. These would manifestly be of great use in nautical astronomy. The Ordnance Survey, in which the junction between England and Belgium is to be repeated, has been commenced under direction of Sir Henry James, and after that is complete, steps will be taken to determine the galvanic latitude of Valentia or Lowestoft..

passed the perihelion on the 10th of June at the distance of seventy-six million miles from the sun, and in its recession, on the 28th, it had come within thirteen million miles of the earth. The nucleus is described as having had three luminous envelopes. One observer has announced the probability, that on the 30th we were within the luminosity of the comet. At one time, the tail extended over seventy-six degrees of the northern sky. A French astronomer believes that this is the celebrated Comet of Charles V., which appeared in March, 1556, and caused the retirement of that monarch, and the return of which has for the last few years been looked for; but Mr. Hind, whose opinion in such a matter is entitled to the highest respect, affirms it for certain not to be that comet.

It has been ascertained, from many years' observation, that the wind makes a number of revolutions all round the compass in the course of a year, turning usually in the direction of the hands of a watch-that is, from N. to E.S.W., and round to N.; but last year the directions were retrograde, or in the contrary direction-N.W.S.E. and N. Two entire revolutions were made in this direction, and the phenomenon having attracted attention, the observations of past years were examined, and the remarkable fact was ascertained, that there appears to be a sevenyearly cycle in the course of the wind. In 1853, the wind made rather less than two rotations in the retrograde direction; in all the other years, the opposite direction has prevailed. But taking any period of seven years, we find it commencing with a small number of revolutions, then increasing to a maximum, twenty-one times, twenty-three or twenty-four times round the compass, then sinking to a minimum, and rising once more in the following period. On this remarkable fact Mr. Airy observes, supposing always The astronomical world was gratified on that the septennial cycle be confirmed: "I the last day of June with the sudden appear- should suggest as possible cause, no cycle ance of a comet, generally allowed to be of actions of external bodies, but a periodilarger than that of 1858, and which, it is be- cal throb of temperature from the interior of lieved, would have made a finer show than the earth. It seems likely that a very small any in the present century but for the twi- change of superficial temperature might suflight lingering in the midnight summer sky. ficiently influence the currents of air to proThis bright stranger was observed by Mr.duce the effect which has been observed."

THE INVISIBLE ARMIES.

OH! think not, armies of the earth, As in the march ye go,

To hail a nation's second birth,

Or wrest it from the foe,
That here, upon this mortal field,
Do all your forces stand revealed:

The eternal scenes outstretching time
Are now in movement more sublime!

Hail! heroes of the ages gone,

Of sacred story all,

Who led the hosts of Israel on,-
Who broke the ancient thrall
Of tyrants clamoring for reign
O'er the rich Orient's domain,-
Thy spirits, stirring from their height,
Shall lend to us their former might.

For, saith the High and Mighty One,
Who sitteth in the heaven,
'Tis not of earth and time alone

That nations thus are riven;
Behold the armies of the skies,-
The embattled legions-see them rise,
Arrayed, and officered, and led,
By angel chieftains from the dead!
The solemn vision deepening, lo!
What mighty numbers swell,
Rising from their dark pits of woe,
The serried ranks of hell!
Great God! it is the conflict dire
Which raged of old on plains of fire!
Jesus, the mighty Victor, knew,
Both worlds were open to his view.

And when again, on Canaan's land,
The rebel armies stood,
Behold! the angel in command-
How soldierly his word!
"I'm captain of the hosts "-he said,

With sword drawn in his hand,—and led,
Unseen by Joshua before,

To victory all the tribes of war!

And so when Syria's guilty king
'Gainst Israel led the foe,
And evil omens 'gan to spring

From out that threatening woe,
"Fear not," said Israel's prophet bold,
Our numbers cannot now be told,
And lo! the mount of vision came,
With hosts and chariots of flame!

And shall not fair Columbia too-
Land of the brave and free,
Her ancient heroes wake anew,

To life-to liberty?
Ho! all ye martyred sons of flame,
Statesmen and warriors of fame,
Filled be the air afresh with fire
Which your immortal minds inspire.
And when, in conflict with the foe,
The nations reel and rock,
Trembling as if beneath the blow

Of some tremendous shock,
Remember, 'tis the Lord that fights;
He rules the deeps, he crowns the heights,
Sends the "destroying angel" forth,
Or heaven's strong legions bids to earth.

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From The Examiner. | Lemberg, with forty-six years to her twentyThe last Travels of Ida Pfeiffer; inclusive two, and apparently rich. Loth to fulfil her of a Visit to Madagascar. With a Bio- pledge, she told him of her love for the graphical Memoir of the Author. Trans- tutor, hoping thus to disgust him. fated by H. W. Dulcken, Ph.D. Rout- however, said that he liked her all the betledge and Co. ter for having such an affectionate disposiMORE interesting than the main part of tion. In a few weeks they were married. this book is the short memoir with which it In a few weeks more the doctor, being deopens. From babyhood to death, Madame | prived of his employment through no fault Ida Pfeiffer's career was an odd one. of his, lost all his own and all his wife's She was born at Vienna in 1797,-the sin- money. Ten years of extreme poverty folgle girl among five brothers. In boyish Madame Pfeiffer had to give drawways she was therefore at home: indeed, in music lessons that her children' later life, she boasted that she was bolder might get even dry bread, and she now and, and more forward than her elder brothers. then begged some small help from her' She dressed always in their clothes, scorned | brothers. Then her mother died, and bedolls and needlework, and delighted in drums queathed her a little more money. Loving and swords and all out-of-door pranks. Her her children more than her husband, she left father on other points a stern discipli- him to live at Lemberg, and betook herself narian-approved of these ungirlish tastes, to Vienna, where good schooling was much and promised in jest, which was carnest to cheaper than elsewhere. her, that she should be sent to a military school, and should be brought up as an officer. But he died when she was nine, and her mother tried to put her into petticoats. Since the attempt made the child ill out of sheer anger, the doctor who was called in prescribed a pair of trousers as the only remedy. Four years later she had sense enough to consent to change her clothes, although, as she averred, at the cost of many tears and much unhappiness: "How awkward and clumsy I was at first! how ridiculous I must have looked in my long skirts, jumping and racing about, and behaving generally like a wild, restless boy!"

But next year a T- came to be tutor in the family, and Ida straightway fell in love with him. For his sake she grew coy, and learned sewing and cookery. When she was seventeen, the appearance of a wealthy suitor drove T to a proposal of marriage, which she very gladly accepted. Not so the mother, who desired her daughter to be wedded to some husband with a fortune at any rate equal to her own. The poor tutor was accordingly banished, but Ida refused to accept any one of the lovers, who were, it would seem, as many and as diverse as bewildered Portia herself. Each rejection being followed by a severe motherly scolding, at last the girl's spirit was broken. She promised that she would marry the next elderly suitor who offered himself. The fortunate man was Dr. Pfeiffer, a lawyer of

So time rolled on. Once the mother went to Trieste, and saw the sea for the first time. It roused in her her old longings after a traveller's life; and in due course, the boys being started in life, and she a voluntary widow of forty-five, the longing was still to be satisfied. With strict economy she reckoned that her little income would supply her needs, and in 1842 she started secretly, and quite alone, on a visit to Palestine. The journey furnished matter for a book; the book brought her money, and the money was enough to take her, in 1845, to Iceland and back. It was an odd craze for an elderly lady to leave an aged husband and a couple of youthful sons, and wander about the world with no other object than the gratification of mere passion for travel. But this was Madame Pfeiffer's mania, and it grew stronger with her years. In 1846 she began a thirty months' tour round the world, visiting many strange regions, some of them never before trodden by white men, and certainly never by lone European woman. The first of this was her "Woman's Journey round the World." A second journey, taken on a different route, occupied the time from 1851 to 1854; and this also was duly chronicled in a well-known book. The last expedition was that of which record is to be found in the book before us.

Of this little need be said. It comprises an account of the authoress' experience of English, Fre..ch, and Dutch life, and a more

full and stirring narrative of her journey to Madagascar. It is like her other books, full of gossip which is always entertaining, generally instructive. With a woman's aptness to write down all the strong expressions of like or dislike which each scene or circumstance aroused in turn, her statements are often overcolored, but the intention is always honest and simple-minded.

The visit to Madagascar was very disastrous. Unfortunately, instead of travelling alone, she went in company with a Mr. Lambert, who meddled in the politics of the island, and thereby incurred the wrath of the

cruel Queen Ranavola. At first the white Christians were doomed to die for giving aid to the black converts. As an act of clemency, this sentence was remitted, and they were banished the island. Such studied hardship, however, was enforced by the escort which took them to the shore, that Madame Pfeiffer was seized with a fever which never entirely left her. After a long illness at the Mauritius, she planned a voyage to Australia; but the fever returned, and she was driven, in all haste, to find her way back to Germany and die. She died three years ago, her age then being sixty-one.

duced on Siberia and on the Amoor, have made the whole world familiar with his name, and with his extraordinary assemblage of qualities and accomplishments. These books were not only great books, but great deeds. Like Livingstone's Travels," the "Amoor" is not so much a successful piece of writing as a series of accomplished facts, and it represents, with the usual amount of midnight oil, preliminary years of hard riding, scant fare, nervous watching, desert fever, hunger, thirst, and cold,—the privation of a tent,—and the fag of a savage life. Out of that misery and adventure has come to us a most precious treasury of knowledge. By pen and pencil Atkinson opened to Western Europe, and even to the Russians of St. Petersburg and Moscow, the vast regions of the Amoor. Before his day, those regions were a mystery and a blank; they are now as well known to us as the country of the Orange River, and better than the shores of Carpentaria. If it be a noble thing to add to the stock of human knowledge, Atkinson had gained a high degree of glory.-Athenæum, 24 Aug.

ATKINSON, THE TRAVELLER.-A noticeable man has passed away in our Siberian illustrator and explorer, Thomas W. Atkinson. His death took place at Lower Walmer, Kent, on Tuesday, last week. For about a year, the great traveller had been ailing; never having quite recovered from the waste of his long and arduous journeys in the wild country of the Amoor; but no immediate danger had been feared by his physician. Little or no suffering had accompanied his decline, and his most intimate friends had scarcely dreamt that his life was in peril. He tried the country air; he rode; he walked; he handled his familiar gun. In the early summer he had a fall which shook and injured him. But he bore up well, and wentalown to Walmer, as every one goes down in August to the sea. At length he passed away as into a tranquil sleep. Atkinson was born in Yorkshire, on the 6th of March, 1799, and he was consequently in his sixty-second year when he died. He was in the truest and best sense a self-made man. Left an orphan when a child, he began life for himself at the early age of eight; from which time he gained his own living, while training himself into a good scholar and a well-mannered gentleman. Those who met him in his later years in the drawing-room or the country-house, were struck by the undefinable grace and bearing which are sometimes thought to be the monop oly of ancient race. He educated himself as an architect, and a church built by him in Manchester testified to his skill as a builder; but his instrument was the pencil, and his vocation that of a traveller. Owing to an accidental remark of Alexander Humboldt, he turned his eyes to the picturesque land of Oriental Russia. His pictures, which have been much exhibited at evening parties, and have been reduced for his books, are exceedingly clever, and he wrote with as much power and freshness as he drew. In person, he was the type of an artistic traveller, thin, lithe, and sinewy, with a wrist like rock, and an eye like a poet's; manner singularly TENNYSON is expected to write the poem for gentle, and an air which mingled entreaty with the opening of the great World's Fair at Lon. command. The two great works which he pro-don, during the coming year.

CHARACTER OF BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR. Taylor is written in an old copy of the Holy -The following note on the character of Bp. Living, in handwriting of a date at about the end of the seventeenth century :—

"The author of this excellent book had the good-humor of a gentleman, the eloquence of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the acuteness of a schoolman, the profoundness of a philosopher, the wisdom of a counsellor, the sagacity of a prophet, the reason of an angel, and the piety of a saint."-Notes and Queries.

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From The Saturday Review. they take no exercise except a little swimGERMAN AMUSEMENTS. ming. However that may be, the fact reTRAVELLER after traveller has described mains. The Germans can go on with their how easily the Germans amuse themselves, amusements, and find a continual relish in and has painted, with contempt or admira- them. No wonder that this provokes the tion, the happy air of the leisurely groups investigation of foreigners. Surely, a people that pass the long hours of a summer day that can get so much amusement must be in beer-gardens or dancing-halls. If the happy, and have much to teach the rest of amusements of the Germans are amuse- the world in the art of living. That the ments at all, it must be confessed that they Germans are very happy is not impossible. are good of their kind. With the exception They really, we are inclined to think, have a of their execrable cigars, they have every large share of placid content, and strike a thing they want of a very excellent sort. happy balance between a morbid appetite for When they listen to music, they listen to the excitement and complete stagnation. But best bands science and art can turn out when we begin to fancy they may read a leswhen they dance, they generally secure large son to their neighbors, we must look a little rooms and a slippery floor-when they go further into the matter; and we shall then to the theatre, they see good acting. They find that the German mind is divided on sit in well-ordered and often magnificent the head of amusements from the French houses, and rest their limbs on seats that and English by a chasm which cannot be are as comfortable as they are cheap. Many of these amusements are intensely slow to At first we do not understand what is English people. Let any one try, and hon- meant by people having no wish for exciteestly state his feelings after he has passed ment. We see the bad side of excitement, the third hour of the third evening at a beer- and know all the sin and misery to which it garden, and he will acknowledge that he leads. When we hear of amusement withfeels a peculiar and utter sensation of weari- out excitement, we think that this would be ness which is unknown except on the Conti- the very thing for us. We feel like a person nent. But no one can doubt that the Ger- who, after a season of venison and turtle, mans are thoroughly happy. This is shown craves for plain food and mountain fare. By not only by their air of gentle content, but plain food, however, he means good meat by the extraordinary importance which they and bread, and good cooking. If he comes attach in common conversation to what we to real mountain fare-to sour black bread should think the most insignificant occur- and curdled milk-he cannot touch it. It rences. Such an event as a brewery giving is not that he wishes to be dainty, but the its grand yearly festival, or new cellars be- difference between such fare and that which ing inaugurated by a treat to the workmen, he has been accustomed to is overpowering. is discussed with the strangest outpourings So it is with amusements. We can fancy of triumph, pleasure, and pride. Long prac- simple amusements; we do not wish for any tice, too, or hereditary taste enables the Ger- thing feverish, or fast, or exaggerated; we mans to take more of these pleasures than are willing to content ourselves with innoEnglish people can do. We speak of a Ger-cent and unpretending pleasures. But the man spending seven or eight hours a day in German extreme-the utter absence of exsmoking and drinking as a curious trait of character, as an odd national custom, as a habit of an animal different to ourselves; but why on earth does not all this beer and smoking make Germans bilious? A German considers that, on busy days, he must limit himself to about twelve or fourteen cigars, while on holidays he takes from of obscure theatres, or small towns, or untwenty to twenty-five. Brewers alone could calculate how much beer would be in proportion. We should like to know why this does not make Germans ill, particularly as

citement which that happy nation can endure

is beyond us. Perhaps theatricals furnish the best example. The pieces that will go down in Germany are inconceivable. How any human beings should think it pleasanter to behold them than to be in bed, surpasses our comprehension. We are not speaking

successful pieces. At Munich, where there is one of the largest and best theatres in Germany, a piece has lately been played, called Die Grille. It has been much ad

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