and tendency of the whole affair. But we repeat, there is action-action-action-and success follows. In the present instance, that success was, in some degree, assisted by a little pretty music, which was prettily sung by Miss Pearson and Wood, and by

some lively and pleasant acting by Wallack and Miss Phillips, the latter of whom was, in this instance, much more attractive as her lover than as herself. "My Own Lover" is said to be written, both drama and music, by Mr. Rodwell.

FINE ARTS-PUBLICATIONS.

Finden's Landscape Illustrations to the Works of Lord Byron. No. I.

The success of the Landscape Illustrations to the Novels of Scott has, we presume, led to the publication of this work, for which we may anticipate a very extensive sale. It contains five engrav ings of the highest class of art, calculated for any edition of the poet, but more especially intended to accompany the new and beautiful one, of which the first volume has been just issued by Mr. Murray. The price of these five prints is no more than half a crown. It is, therefore, beyond question the cheapest production that has ever been submitted to the public, and may vie with any one of the Annuals with reference to either designs or engravings. The former are by Mr. Stanfield-the latter by Messrs. W. and E. Finden. They consist of Lachin-y-Gair; Belem Castle, Lisbon; Yanina; Corinth, and a Portrait of the Maid of Athens, drawn by F. Stone, from a sketch taken at Athens in 1812. We imagine that no purchaser of the works of Byron will be without these desirable, or rather necessary accompaniments. The expense is but trifling; the enjoyment will be great. We shall have other opportunities of noticing the publication. If it be continued as it has been commenced (and we have the high reputation of Messrs. Finden pledged for so much,) a more exquisite collection of prints, we speak without reference to the smallness of the price, will never have been published.

The Wreck of the Bridgewater, engraved by E. Duncan, from a painting by W. J. Huggins, Marine Painter to the King.

"Little do we think upon the dangers of the sea." The publications of Mr. Huggins have from time to time led us to rejoice that we are land. lubbers; but they have also taught us to sympa. thize with those brave fellows who encounter death in a thousand forms, either for our protection, or in order to administer to our luxuries. The artist has been a sailor-no one can doubt it who has seen his pictures, and we believe he is unrivalled in his profession for the accuracy of bis details and the effects that his works produce.

KING'S COLLEGE.

Professor Rennie, in his course of lectures at King's College, has directed the attention of a numerous class to the very interesting subject of the habits of animals, particularly those referring to cleanliness; to solitary or gregarious propensities; to pairing; to sheltering; to feeding the young, and to manifestations of feeling in signs and language, particularly those of buoyant joy and hilarity in the singing of birds. Amongst other things, we were amused with the curious notices collected by the Professor respecting the Song of the Nightingale. "Some," he said, go so far as to abuse the song of the sweet bird that shuns the noise of folly,' and represent its notes as an incessant tinkling, trilling, monotonous, and yet laboured effort of execution, unimpassioned, and artificial. It is in this vein that the learned Scaliger represents it (as nearly as his Latin can well be translated) as a birdlet, gurgling canticles and bab bling from its breast on the murmuring

bank :

'Hinc gutturillo Luscinilla cantillans,

Hinc murmurante ripa garriens sinu.' Martial also calls it a garrulous bird :' Flet Philomela nefas incesti Tereos, et quæ Muta puella fuit, garrula fertur avis.' and Strozius talks of its chattering song:

Garrula vicinis carmen Philomela sub umbris Integrat.'

Others even go so far as to speak of the screeching or hissing of the nightingale; and amongst these, Theocritus (if we may put faith in some of his interpreters) makes it a stridulous bird (ὁ ὁλολυγων τρυζεσκεντ), while Sidonius Apollinaris associates the hissing nightingale' (Philomelam sibilantem) with the crinking of grasshoppers, the croaking of frogs, the screaming of geese, the cackling of hens, and the cawing of rooks. In the same spirit, Aristophanes is interpreted by some to say the stridulous nightingale (Andwr diguμulos §); but Cinesias and Aldrovand think tuneful' a better rendering, inasmuch,' says Aldrovand, as the whisper of the nightingale ought to be considered most melodious and delightful; not like the voice of dragons, which is justly termed hissing, but like the soothing sound of a breeze, softly blowing and sweetly murmuring among leaves.' 'Amongst the earliest notices of the night

·

Erot. lib. i. Epist. lib. xi. || Aldrovandi Ornithologia, ii. 340.

+ Eidyllion, vii. 140. In Avibus.

Euripides alludes to the great variety of the song, when he makes Hecuba exhort Polixena to vary her voice like the nightingale (as ''Andovos croμa).† Hesiod had the same notion, when he applies to the nightingale the epithet of various-throated' (koduga); and Oppian, who calls it various-voiced' (aióλopwvn).§

"By far the greater number of the poetical authorities, both ancient and modern, agree in representing the nightingale's song as mournful and plaintive, contrasting it, as Sophocles does, with vociferous sorrow; ||| in his Electra,' he calls it the 'querulous nightingale.'

Most, if not all the poets of the South of Europe, have sung in the same strain, in which they have been followed by our own poets. Thomson, for instance, has

All abandon'd to despair, she sings
Her sorrows through the night.'

And Coleridge has

'The nightingale's remurmur'd strain,' and pity pleasing strains; yet the same Coleridge, in a different mood of mind, exclaims

A melancholy bird? Oh, idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy.'

Tis the merry nightingale.' + The idea is not, however, new, though rather unusual in poetry; for Chaucer speaks of

The nightingale with so merry a note.'‡‡ "Considering this merely as a piece of music, there can be no doubt that both these views may be supported, though the following description by the Abbé La Pluche is nearer the truth:- The nightingale,' he says, 'passes from grave to gay, from a simple song to a warble the most varied; and from the softest trillings and swells to languishing and lamentable sighs, which he as quickly

• T. 520.

+ Hecuba, Act ii.

+ Εργα και Ημέραι, 201. § Halieut. i. 728.

Ajax. Flag. v. 630. x. T. λ.

** Effusion to the Nightingale. Poems, ed. 1796. + Sibylline Leaves. #Flowre and Leaf. § Spectacle de la Nature, i. 156.

Observing, from their nest, unfledged, has stolen. All night she weeps, and perch'd upon a bough, With plaintive notes, repeated fills the grove.' * TRAPP.

"This error, indeed, was exposed more than two thousand years ago by Plato, who says justly, Nobody can dream that any bird will sing when it is hungry, when it is cold, or when it is afflicted with any other pain; not even the nightingale itself, which is said to sing from grief.'t This is common sense; but what, then, are we to think of the accuracy of Linnæus, who tells us the song of the cuckoo is caused by hunger?

66

Albertus Magnus, as well as the Platonists, to whom he refers, seems to have had a glimpse of the true state of the case. In opposition to Aristotle, who says the nightingale ceases to sing during incubation,' Albertus asserts that it doessing while it is hatching; and certain Platonists add, that it cannot vivify the eggs without singing, which,' adds the naturalist, appears to be true; for the soft air and warmth elevating the temperature of the blood in these birds, stirs up in them the joyousness of song and the desire of rejoicing-the heat of the parent being higher during hatching than at any other period."||

Professor Rennie has also delivered a course of lectures at the Royal Institution, Albemarle-street, and at the London Institution, Moorfields.

external circumstances, which phrenology pointed out. The size and form of the head were the same the day before a man committed the murder, when he is no murderer, as the day after he had committed it, when he is a murderer. But the judgment of the phrenologist who views the cranium on both days must be the same. If the men in question had died before they committed the murder, the character given of their heads by phrenologists would have been the same as now; for their conduct did not arise from a morbid excitement or diseased condition of the brain, nor from any momentary impulse, but was deliberate and settled. Phrenologists, therefore, had a right to expect their organisation would be in perfect harmony with their lives-and so it was. Williams' head, which was by far the worse, had such a deficiency of moral sentiment, of benevolence, veneration, and conscientiousness, of intellectual strength and of ideality, or the sense of that which is refined and exquisite in nature or art, at the same time possessing such a superabundance of desire, covetiveness, destructiveness, secretiveness, and combativeness, that it was no wonder his whole life was marked as low and villainous; that his habits were dissipated, and that he associated with the worst of characters. The head of Bishop, which is much smaller than that of Williams, had a very sloping narrow forehead, the intellectual and moral portion wretched and low, and particularly narrow, while that devoted to the animal propensities was large, which also accorded with his character. The smaller size of the head agreed with the fact, that Williams in a great measure induced Bishop to commit those crimes which terminated on the scaffold. From this circumstance, Dr. Elliotson observed, that he had had no difficulty, when first the casts were shown him, to pronounce which was the head of Williams, and which of Bishop. The large developement of the organ of acquisitiveness, with the small developement of conscientiousness and the moral sentiments, accorded with the account which states that Bishop was always ready to perjure himself for the sake of gain, and to cheat in every way, while the smallness of combativeness equally agreed with his being a sneaking villain and an arrant coward.

ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE.

On the 4th of January, a memoir was read, on the unknown characters engraved on the rocks at Gebel el Mokattib, in the vicinity of Mount Sinai; in a letter addressed to the Secretary by John Belfour, Esq.

These singular and mysterious records, though not hitherto published, have long been a subject of curiosity and conjecture.

The best account published of their situation and general appearance is to be found in the journal of a certain "Prefetto of Egypt," from Cairo to Mount Sinai and back again, published in the year 1772, by Robert, late Bishop of Clogher. Accurate copies of many of them were brought home, on their return from the East, by Lord Prudhoe and Major Felix: these, so far as we know, have not yet been made public; but a very numerous collection, previously made by the Rev. G. F. Grey, have been lithographed for the Royal Society of Literature, and will immediately appear in the next volume of its Transactions. Mr. Belfour's attempts to illustrate the inscriptions were founded upon a comparison of both these authorities.

1. The first object of the discussion was, to ascertain with what ancient language the inscriptions may be associated. The result of the inquiry on this point showed that these remarkable vestiges of antiquity are, as the Bishop of Clogher conjectured, for the most part, in the primitive Hebrew character, that which the Talmudists call Cuthean, or ancient Samaritan; but blended with a mixture of the Chaldee, or present Hebrew character, used by the Jews since the Babylonish captivity; with Greek, &c.

2. In his second subject of inquiry, viz. the nature and probable import of these ancient monuments, Mr. Belfour confined his remarks to the exposition of those characters which appear the most prominently and frequently.

Most of the inscriptions begin with a monogram composed of three letters, usually connected, answering to the Hebrew characters . This symbol, or abbreviatura, is uniformly followed by four other characters, decidedly Cuthean or ancient Samaritan, which correspond to the letters O. Regarding these characters as a kind of key to the whole, Mr. B. endeavoured to find an appropriate meaning by applying to them the several rules of interpretation adopted in the Jewish Cabbala. Reflecting, further, on the sanctity of the mountains Sinai and Horeb, together with the holy exordium pe culiar to the Orientalists in their writings, he found that the above-mentioned monogram (interpreted in conformity with the cabbalistic rule, which consists, 1st, in taking each particular letter of a word for an entire diction; 2dly, in forming one entire diction out of the initial of many,) may be with propriety interpreted

,אדוני יהו מבארו

Be the Lord blessed! or some similar sentence of adoration of the Supreme Being; and that the Samaritan letters which constantly accompany it, (taking again each particular letter for an entire diction,) may read

רם טוב רחום אלהים

The good, the merciful high God; or words correspondently expressive of the attributes of the great Jehovah.

That this principle of interpretation is tenable, as applied to the inscriptions, was shown by applying it in the analysis of se veral of them. It is, however, but of partial application; for even if proved just with regard to the majority of the characters, it still leaves a great variety of anomalies to be accounted for. As tending to the solution of these, it was observed, that the Hebrew and all its dialects, that is to say, the Samaritan, Syriac, Chaldee, Arabic, and perhaps the Phoenician, may be regarded as the same language; as such, therefore, in ancient times, the letters of the various alphabets, formed from one primitive character, might have been promiscuously used; at least, some combinations of the sort might have been admitted by general agreement; and it is only upon this ground that the characters belonging to different languages observable in the same inscription, are reconcilable to any philological rule. The demotic writing of the Egyptians offers an example strongly in favour of such an hypothesis.

ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.

At a recent Meeting was read a communication, addressed to the Society by M. Douville, a French gentleman lately returned from South Africa; and who appears to have made an extraordinary and most successful journey into the interior of that country, behind the Portuguese settlements on the Congo, or Zaire.

M. Douville landed first at Benguela, in 1827, but shortly afterwards proceeded to Loando, and thence to the mouth of the river Bengo, or Zenza; the latter being the proper name, and the former only known to the Portuguese quite at its mouth. From this point he proceeded in a direction nearly east, examining the districts of Bengo, Icolo, Golungo, and Dembos, the latter an object of especial dread both to the natives of the adjoining provinces and to the Portuguese themselves, in consequence of a remarkable echo that repeats the peals of thunder, which, in the stormy season, are almost incessant, so as to produce a truly awful detonation. And here the traveller's constitution first sank under the fatigue and exposure to which he was subjected, and he was long detained by severe illness. His wife, also, who accompanied him, was here severely ill; but with a courage which deserved greater success-for ultimately she died in the country-she persisted in continuing the dangerous route.

The next provinces which M. Douville

examined were those of Ambacca and Pungo Andongo, the geological formation of which he describes as extraordinarily rent and torn by volcanic action, now extinct. And thence he turned directly south through Haco, Tamba, and Bailundo, independent provinces, occupied by a fierce, warlike people, from whom, however, he met with little molestation. He states, indeed, that almost everywhere he was better served and less obstructed in the independent, and, as they are called, savage districts, than in the Portuguese; the authorities in which last were uniformly jealous of him; while the bearers and guides whom he was enabled to procure from them were at the same time weaker, less enterprising, and less to be depended on in almost every particular.

From Bailundo, M. Douville was obliged to return to Benguela; but, after a very short repose, he again set forth, and proceeding S. E. first traversed the province of Nano, and thence arrived at Bihé, situate in 13 deg. 37 min. south latitude, and 20 deg. 14 min. east longitude from London. The general elevation of this country is considerable, being about 7000 feet above the level of the sea; all its rivers are rapid, and make a very loud noise in their beds; and a great variety of curious and previously unknown plants are found in it. M. Douville has brought back with him many specimens of these, and others he has drawn with great care.

From Bihé the route pursued was first N. and then towards the N. E., into the states of the Cunhinga. Thence M. Douville sent a large portion of his effects, under the care of native and Mulatto bearers, direct to Cassange, which was the point towards which he purposed ultimately proceeding, while he himself turned west, to examine a volcanic mountain on the confines between Libolo and Quisama, whence he was tempted to return to Loando for a short time, examining the provinces of Cambambé, Massangano, Muchima, and Quisama, on his way. These are all subject to the Portuguese, except Quisama, which, though maritime, has preserved its independence; and where the inhabitants, who suffer from a want of water in the dry season, have contrived a very singular sort of reservoir. A large tree, not the Adansonia, but called there "Imbondero," is abundant in the country, averaging 60 feet girth near the ground, and growing to the height of 100 feet, with spreading branches, and bearing a large fruit resembling a melon in consistence, but insipid in taste, and considerably larger. This tree, then, they cut over about 60 feet from the ground, and hollow out to a considerable depth, almost, indeed, to the ground, but without otherwise cutting it down, or stripping it of its branches,

which continue to flourish; and the water received in the cavity in the rainy season constitutes a provision in the dry. These trees are also used, occasionally, as prisons; and criminals are sometimes starved to death in them.

From Loando, M. Douville proceeded to Ambriz; thence in a direction nearly east, to rejoin his bearers at Cassange; and from this point the most remarkable part of his journey commenced. Crossing the Zahire, (which he identified with the Couango, and ascertained to rise in the S. E., and not, as has been imagined, N. E. from its mouth, but which receives at the same time many and even very considerable confluents from the N. E.) he penetrated to the northward, visiting states of which the names even have been hitherto unknown,-ascertaining the existence and position (between 3 deg. and 5 deg. of south latitude, and 29 deg. and 30 deg. east longitude from London) of a great lake, called by the natives Couffoua, but which he considers to be the lake Maravi of our maps; in all respects resembling lake Asphaltes, or the Dead Sea, in its own properties, and surrounded by dark, fetid mountains, which are called stinking" in the language of the country, (mulunda gia caiba risumba); thence crossing the equator in about 30 deg. east longitude, and gaining the parallel of 2 deg. north; but then, wasted by fatigue and disease, having lost his wife, turning again to the southwest, and reaching the coast near Ambriz. The entire circuit accomplished was about 2000 leagues; including a direct line of 400 leagues from the sea-coast; above 200 leagues farther than had ever before been accomplished, and to where the rivers flowed east.

M. Douville illustrated his communication by a great many drawings and sketches which he brought with him; and was warmly thanked by the meeting, and elected a foreign honorary member of the society by acclamation, on a motion to that effect being made by Mr. Barrow.

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES (PARIS).

At a recent Meeting of the Academy of Sciences, M. Cordier communicated a fresh notice from M. Rozet, upon certain physical phenomena observed in the environs of Algiers. M. Rozet had before several opportunities of observing, while in France, that under certain circumstances the atmospheric air has the property of presenting a twofold image of objects nearly in the same manner as the doubly refracting Iceland spar.

During his continuance in Africa, the same phenomenon presented itself at different times in a very remarkable manner, and particularly at the camp of Staonetti, on the 27th of June 1830.