Opening of the New Pier at Gravesend.-The new grand Stone Pier at Gravesend, erected for the accommodation of passengers to and from the steamers, has been opened. The day passed off without any attempt having been made on the part o f the watermen, who destroyed a short time since a portion of the projection, the Mayor having taken the precaution to swear in 200 special constables to prevent any collision. The new pier extends 100 feet from the grand stone pier, and a further addition of 40 feet will shortly be made. It is said that an additional sixpence will be made by the steamers to the fare to cover the expenses. The watermen, who have refused all offers of accommodation, and even rejected the compensation offered by the Corporation, have announced their intention of landing and embarking passengers at 2d. per head, one-half of the fare allowed by the Act.

SOMERSETSHIRE.

Bristol and London Railway.-A respectable meeting to promote this undertaking has been held at the Guildhall. Some of the principal merchants in the city took part in the proceedings. The report holds out very strong inducements for accomplishing the object; and it cannot be denied that Bristol requires some powerful stimulus to place her upon a footing with Liverpool and other commercial towns. We know nothing more likely to promote our commercial prosperity on an extended scale than this project.-Bristol Puper.

SCOTLAND.

The following is a scale of the debts for which persons were imprisoned in the National Gaol of Scotland, at Edinburgh, during the undermentioned years :—

The amount of the debts of the 499 prisoners in 1824 was 32191. 3s. 6d. ; the 519 prisoners in 1827, 79157. 19s. 2d.; the 494 prisoners in 1828, 40197. 18s. 9d.

Ancient Remains.-There was lately dug up in Shielforky Moss, near Blackford, by some people "casting peats," a box of a very singular kind, and believed to be ancient-since it must have been constructed in a very primitive state of society. It appeared to have been joined together by thongs of leather passing through perforations in the sides, ends, and bottom; and the lid, which projected a little over the front and ends, had been fixed in the same way. As frequently happens in similar cases of discovery, the curiosity was hewn in pieces by the spades of the workmen, before any attention was paid to its contents. They state, however, that it appeared to them to have contained a mass of greasy matter, along with some bones, and a "clumsy lump of brass ;" and, according to the description of one of the men, a 66 queer airn thing," the only article which any of them had the curiosity to carry home. We shall, perhaps, have something more to communicate regarding these reliques, so soon as our correspondent can communicate more particular information on the subject. We can only add, that the "box" was found embedded in the loam, eight feet below the present surface of the moss.-Stirling Advertiser.

Fossil Remains. A specimen of the head of the fossil elk was lately discovered in moss, resting on marl, about six miles from Belfast. The specimen was in a fine state of preservation; the head was entire, and the teeth were perfect, and the immense horns were also complete. The head and horns weigh about 2 cwt. Each horn measures from the base to the tip five feet six inches. The measurement between the tips of the horns is seven feet six inches. The whole specimen is twelve feet in circumference. This beautiful and valuable specimen has been acquired by the Andersonian Museum, of which it forms one of the finest ornaments.- -Glasgow Herald.

Petrifaction. The remains of a tree has been found at Newfaulds quarry, near Tullibody, embedded in a kind of clay, about eleven feet under the surface, seven

of which is surface ground, and four of solid rock. It appears to have been a very large tree, and, judging from the remains, to have been about six or eight feet in circumference. It seems to have been cut through, and the solid rock lies over the place where it has been cut. It lies in a slanting direction. The length of the body of the tree which remains is two feet, six inches; a projecting part of the root is one foot, four inches; the breadth at the top is one foot, three inches; and the breadth at the root two feet, one inch. The remains of the root is one foot in length, and one foot, five inches in breadth. The root sends forth a small fibre, one foot in length. It is one of the finest specimens of petrifaction.

IRELAND.

National Education.-The Synod of Ulster have adopted three resolutions on the subject of national education. The principal points on which the Synod insist are, that the patrons and conductors of schools shall fix the time of teaching in the schools, and shall appropriate a given portion of this time to the reading of the Scriptures; and also, that during this appropriated time the Roman Catholic children may retire if they please at all events, that they shall not be compelled to remain or to join in the Scripture classes, unless they or their guardians choose that they should do so. The giving up of the compulsory principle sets aside the claims of the Kildare-place Society, at least in a national view; and the admission that a particular part of each day may be exclusively appropriated to literary exercises, and another portion to scriptural reading, brings the difference between the National Board and the Synod to a mere question as to the quantity of time to be employed; and this being altogether a matter of local arrangement, the general principle is evidently given up.

Lately, upwards of 300 reapers, from different parts of the country, amongst whom were several of the better class of farmers, assembled at Monart-house, the seat of E. R. Cookman, Esq., and voluntarily cut down all that gentleman's crop which was fit for the sickle, to testify the respect and affection his virtues and excellent qualities as a resident landlord have gained for him amongst all classes. Mr. Cookman entertains his tenantry to dinner after each rent-day.

The new board under the Irish Church Bill will be composed of the following persons, in addition to those who ex officio are to have seats at it :-The Archbishop of Cashel, the Bishop of Derry, the Bishop of Meath, the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr. Sadlier, and Messrs Quinn and Erck. The two latter are to receive salaries.

The Dublin papers advert to the retirement of the Marquis of Anglesey from the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. We believe the whole affair depends upon health; but were it even otherwise, what is to be inferred from a desire to retire after so long and critical an exercise of office? The Evening Mail names the Duke of Richmond for a successor, all which, we apprehend, amounts to nothing beyond tolerably rational guess-work.

[A further return of the assessment at which certain houses in the country are assessed has been laid before the House of Commons, from which we extract the following items:-In the county of Derby, Kedleston, the magnificent mansion of Lord Scarsdale, is only rated at 100l. a year, and pays but 147. 3s. 4d. for inhabited house-duty; the Duke of Devonshire's the same; the Earl of Harrington's, at Elvastine, at 601.; Lord Chesterfield's, at Brodby, at 80/.; Mr. Mundy, at Shipley, 50%. In York, Mr. John Gully, for Ackworth, is rated at 80%.; the Duke of Leeds, 100%.; Lord Wharncliffe, for Wortley, 100. In the Isle of Wight, Lord George Seymour, for Norris Castle, 1007.; Mr. George Ward, for Northwood, 100%.]

THE

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

MY TRAVELLING ACQUAINTANCE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF HIGH-WAYS AND BY-WAYS."

THE HERO OF WATERLOO.

The Hero may sound invidious to those who attach the title indiscriminately to the thousands of brave fellows who fought and fell on the field of Waterloo. At any rate, it may be insisted that the distinctive epithet appertains, par excellence, to him who commanded and conquered on the glorious day, in honour of which so many a ton of powder has exploded, and so many a pipe of port been drained. But if I can prove, as I think I can, that one great unknown exists, greater than the greatest of all who have been slain or sung, buried or bepraised, it will be admitted that I do an act of individual justice, in placing at the head of Fame's muster-roll the name to which the real place of honour, the greenest laurel wreath belongs. Let the many who lie covered with glory and quicklime find their bards, as Achilles found his. My hero shall be honoured in plain prose!

There are few travellers, with any pretensions to research or sentiment, who have failed to make a pilgrimage to Waterloo; a shrine from which mementos are carried away, instead of being hung up there; an uncovered temple, over which Fame will flap her noisy wings as long as memory may cheer or imagination brighten the human mind. Yet few, according to my theory, see Waterloo aright.

To him who has visited the place as it ought to be visited,―in silence and solitude, at least with no sounds but the moaning blast sweeping from the forest, and no society but the carrion crows wheeling round and round, as if tradition had told them the tale of former feasting,-to him who thus sees Waterloo, how disgusting is it to mark the carriageloads of unsympathizing entity that rattle along the road, and trip across the cornfields and meadows which compose the awful spot! There has not been one given day during seventeen summers that has seen Waterloo left free from the intrusion of crowds, heterogeneous in all the mixture of worldly distinctious, yet essentially alike in that empty curiosity which each individual possesses in common with the rest. This moral idiopathy, which neither proceeds from nor depends on any other disease, this itch for seeing memorable places, from which its possessors relieve themselves instinctively, as cattle rub against a post, is peculiarly English. It is like the celebrated sweating sickness of Queen Elizabeth's days, by which, it is said, all Britons were attacked at the same time, and they alone,-be they in what part of the world they might. But that was a passing epidemic,-this is a chronic malady;—and it is as much our own as the "home," and the

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fort,' or any other of the distinctive enjoyments of which we are so justly proud.

And so it is that nine-tenths of the "pilgrims" pay their devotions at this immortal shrine; going there not for its sake but their own, just to have to say they saw it, which, barring the immorality, they might as well say without doing *. But this was not my way. I have been over and over the ground full twenty times or more; that is, over the valleys, and plains, and rising slopes, which were the scene of the fight, and which will go down to the latest posterity as the field of Waterloo. But I have also seen, and examined well, many an accessory spot which are all necessary links in the chain of general interest, but which not one traveller in a thousand ever dreams of looking at.

Can the hasty inquirer, who goes his gallopade across the battle-field, in the care of that commonplace automaton called a guide," that curse of the intellectual observer,-rightly understand the philosophy of such a scene? Is it in an hour's run across the surface that he can read the deep-buried lessons of that vast gymnasium, where he who thinks may be self-taught on all the grandest topics of politics and morals?

I neither deserve nor claim any particular merit for seeing Waterloo as it should be seen. I lived in its neighbourhood for a long time, and I was probably its visitor less frequently than I should have been. Thousands come away disappointed, unmoved by the scene; and so might I, had I visited it in the usual hop-step-and-jump manner of the many. I remember once standing in the very centre of the field with an eminent poet, but a poor philosopher, for he is a narrow politician. No man, however, has a finer imagination, or is more likely to be affected by whatever is rich in mighty inspiration: yet he was totally unaffected and quite uninterested by the place, and knew not a thrill of feeling nor a shudder of awe, while

He told me that "he was never moved by any site, however memorable for deeds done upon it, that did not present some feature of natural beauty." I could not exactly understand such want of susceptibility to the moral sublime. But I am sure that had he wandered previously through the forest-paths of Soignies, or the delicious defiles between Wavre and Waterloo, let his mind grow redolent with images of the past, and his fancy conjure up the myriads of bright spirits that wait upon its spell, he had found the field too acutely exciting, instead of being, as it seemed to him,

"Flat, stale, and unprofitable."

It was after such a ramble as I here allude to, gun on my arm and dog at heel, that I burst suddenly from the forest, in pursuit of a covey of partridges, in the very place where Bulow first appeared to the deceived and then desperate gaze of Imperial Napoleon. The season was advanced. It was September; and I had abundant proof in my gamebag that I had not spent my day for nothing, but that if I had been wandering in a mood of sadness," shooting had physicked care."

* Most people have heard (but some may not) of Sheridan's characteristic reply to his son's assertion that he went down into a coal mine, merely that he "might have to say he did so."—"Ah! Tom," replied the father, "you might have easily Said it, without committing the folly of doing it."

Just as I emerged from the forest the sun was going rapidly down. The western horizon was filled with the mixture of haze and light that forms so indescribable a beauty of the hour, which the pen may talk of without telling, and the pencil may daub but cannot paint. The lion, that fine emblem which should teach the nations who adopt it that dignity is joined with true courage, stood evident on his earthen mound, formed of the very floor that had echoed the tramp and turmoil of the fight. This noble monument was fully lighted by the sunbeams, projected towards it in triangular shapes, and giving to the whole an effect of vapoury yet brilliant architecture, quite indescribable, yet often attempted, in pictures which, while meant to be holy, are but mockeries of heaven. "Just at this hour," thought I, (6 on that great day of battles, the whole English line sprang up and rushed to the charge, just at this hour the Prussian columns, flushed with the memory of disgrace which had, for two days, defied even the temporary oblivion of sleep, and parched by the double thirst of vengeance and fatigue, deployed in merciless vigour on the broken foe-just now the worn-down French, frantic in hopeless heroism, gave way and fled! Now let me tread the ground, uninterrupted, alone, while imagination acts again the awful scene in all its grand details. To heel, Carlo! To heel!"

I had then most assuredly began to moralize,-to poetize, perhaps,had not my attention been suddenly called away from images of the past, by a figure of palpable existence, little in unison with those which had been filling my mind's eye. It was that of a man on horseback. When I first observed him he was careering at full gallop along the sloping ground in front of the spot where Wellington's Tree" had stood, till some speculating Vandal cut it down to make snuff-boxes. I was astonished at his speed; but more so still when I saw him, a little beyond the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, turn suddenly down the valley; and when he reached the lower extremity of the orchard hedge, just where Shawe, the life-guardsman, fell and was buried, (after despatching four of his assailants to prepare his billet in the next world,) he pulled up his horse, and, with all the rapidity of the riding-school or drill-yard, he went through the semblance of a series of manoeuvres, such as might have been acted on the spot by the brave bruiser over whose grave he was careering.

I had by this time clambered up the rough pedestal of earth which supports the little obelisk raised to the memory of the slain of the German legion. I leaned against the pillar, and watched my man. I very soon concluded that he was mad,-but not without method either; -for he went through, in the course of half an hour, a whole series of evolutions, formed columns, squares, and lines, advanced and retreated, charged, ran away, and went through the whole mimicry of the great battle, as evidently and as perfectly as any single individual could possibly do. He was capitally mounted on a chestnut horse of true English breed, showing age, but much blood, and displaying a speed that might, in days of yore, have carried away many a cup and plate. The man rode admirably for one of his nation, with quite the air of a dealer in the animals he knew how to manage so well.

After some time I attracted the attention of this solitary evolutionist, and he came towards me as though he intended to take the monument by storm. But when he reached the high road which runs at its foot,