In a paper on the Construction of the Heavens, Dr. Herschel has the following observation:-"That the Milky-Way is a most extensive stratum of stars of various sizes, admits no longer of the least doubt; and that our Sun is actually one of the heavenly bodies belonging to it, is as evident." In February, 1814, Dr. Herschel, the prince of astronomers, read to the Royal Society, the results of thirty years' observations on nebula, with the best telescopes ever possessed by man. He conceives that the stars form independent systems among themselves. He considers our Sun as part of that shoal or system which we call the Milky-Way, and that all the stars of the first, second, and third magnitudes, belong to that vast cluster. The stars, he remarks, are not spread in equal portions over the celestial sphere, but are found in patches, each containing many thousands, and many more than the eye can separate from the mass. These he calls clusters; and he conceives they have a constant disposition to unite more closely, by a power which he calls the clustering power. He gives an account of eighty of these clusters, some of the drawings of which are copied here. The following figure represents a COMPRESSED CLUSTER OF STARS, the centre part 8' long, 2 broad. COLD WATER. water which nature brews down in the bright "The strength of rum! Give me only the pale crystal alembicks of her cloud-crested mountains! Give me, when I would assail, with strained nerves mount of opposition, reared full and impassable in my and the arduous outlay of bones and sinews some stroke of the prophet's rod-give me that gush, cool path-give me only that pure flow which followed the and clear, that bubbled up before Hagar and fainting Ishmael-give me only that fluid which trickles down the bright sides of our own American mountains-gathers into rills in the wood uplands-then rolls into broad, beautiful, transparent riversspreads into lakes, the looking-glasses to reflect all that is dark, or soft, or bright, or deep, in the unfathomed firmament above-give me these crystal streams, these cool, fever-allaying waves, in health shall assail my vitals-give me these waters, untoror sickness, when the thirst of the last fatal fever tured and free, until that moment when I shall drink the waters of eternal life." The Japanese build upon one floor, and their rooms are parted by their folding-screens, so that they can enlarge or contract them at pleasure. Ancient Chinese bridges, of great magnitude, are built with stone arches, exactly like those which have been considered as a Roman invention. POETRY. ART.-CHARLES SPRAGUE. When from the sacred garden driven, And cross'd the wanderer's sunless path. "Twas Art! sweet Art! new radiance broke, Where her light foot flew o'er the ground: And thus with seraph voice she spoke, "The curse a blessing shall be found." She led him through the trackless wild, Where noontide sunbeams never blazed :The thistle shrunk-the harvest smiles, And nature gladdened as she gazed. Earth's thousand tribes of living things, At Art's command to him are given, The village grows, the city springs, And point their spires of faith to heaven. He rends the oak,-and bids it ride To guard the shores its beauty graced; He smites the rock-upheaved in pride, See towers of strength, and domes of taste. He plucks the pearls that stud the deep, He breaks the stubborn marble's sleep, In fields of air he writes his name, RIO DE JANEIRO AND BRAZIL. We are indebted to a friend, for a sight at a private letter, dated some months back at Rio de Janeiro, which furnishes us with the subjoined important facts in relation to these two countries. The letter is from a highly respectable American mercantile house at that place. Business has been extensively embarrassed during the last year in Rio de Janeiro, in consequence of a bad currency, scarcity of labour, bad faith, and ignorance and corruption in the government. By a recent change in the constitution of the country, provincial legislatures have been established, which seem promising to become independent sovereignties, and to legislate so much in contravention of the interests of each other and the whole empire, that nothing but anarchy and perplexity can be expected from them. "There is now," says the letter, “ no circulating medium of general currency throughout the empire, which could impart confidence and give activity to business; and we have the prospect of having in each province a local or provincial currency unacknowledged by the laws, deriving confidence only from those of the province which may bring it into existence; not current in the payment of dues and duties to the national government, and hence nearly without value, or subject to great fluctuations. The national revenue, it is believed, will be applied in each province to the furtherance of these views, which, under the present embarrassed circumstances of the treasury, will occasion almost infinite difficulties and troubles." The importations of flour, grain, wines, and other articles have been far beyond the demands of consumption; and the provinces have produced such an abundance of coffee and sugar, that labour cannot be procured sufficient to harvest them. "At present, on large estates, the planters, for want of hands, cannot secure under usual circumstances all the coffee the plants produce. We find a diminution of the number of slaves in the cities, to be accounted for only by the demand for the agricultural districts, which will presently have a check, if not a reaction. When labour becomes high in the cities, they in turn call upon the agricultural districts for a supply. On the estates, we are assured, the number of native African slaves diminish by death, at the rate of five to ten per cent. per annum; and that not more than one half their offspring survive the period of childhood." SLAVE TRADE OF BRAZIL. The number of slaves imported in Rio de Janeiro in the years 1820 - 15,020 PUBLICK DEBT OF BRAZIL IN 1834. The foreign debt, composed of loans in London and responsibilities there for Portugal, deducting from the latter the sums paid on account of Maria II., Queen of Portugal, is about Internal debt funded Ditto, fluctuating, liquidated, about Ditto, ditto, unliquidated, about Bank notes and Treasury bills given for copper coin, called in down upon a hundred valleys, scan all their inhabitants, and taste their freshness, till the grief. of the body become clean forgotten in the enjoyment of the mind. Or, if other scenes please him more, the warbler shall lead to the groves and bowery glades of the forest, and the green leaves shall play in the scented breeze, and the flowers shall $26,500,000 blow, and the song of nature shall be sweet and 13,067,644 varied, and he shall anew be "the happy boy" even in the extremity of decrepitude. Or the seabird 742,647 shall conduct him to the cliff, against whose caverned 2,227,941 base the waves of ten thousand seas have thundered in vain; and he shall look upon the majesty of the 31,191,174 waters; and the ship shall appear, and he shall mentally get on board, girdle the world, and visit every scene and every tribe of men under the sun. $73,729,406 All this, and much more, may be done by any one who has studied the birds, even of one nook of earth, so in their connexion that they may be (which they never fail to be when rightly studied,) an artificial memory; and in proportion as this species of knowledge extends to the tribes of other lands, the enjoyment-the real and substantial value-for, there is no value but in enjoyment, extends and multiplies in 7,984,044 a progression far more rapid than even the know8,033,529 ledge; so that he who has studied the whole in their connexions, may, literally and without any 12,141,605 figure, be said to have won the whole world for his heritage. And it is a heritage secured under the 745,830 charter of the Almighty, of which the possession cannot be taken away by all the power and all the arts of man; neither can the possessor himself $13,101,331 squander it, as external possessions are often squandered. In life we are constantly hearing of cases in which those, who but a few years before had. wealth sufficient for enriching a parish, sink down to the level of mendicants in the streets. CIRCULATING MEDIUM OF BRAZIL. Bank notes in Rio de Janeiro Copper coin and Treasury bills estimated at 213,896 18,382,352 In reducing the Spanish currency to our own, we have allowed 1360 mil reis to a dollar, which we believe is the present valuation. THE PLEASURES OF ORNITHOLOGY. Every production of nature, when rightly studied, becomes in after time, an index to that part of nature in connexion with which it is found; and a bird, as being one of the most remarkable of those productions, is more easily suggested to the mind than any other, and more readily brings along with it all the relations of its locality, and all the phenomena of the time when it is observed. On this account, he who knows all the birds of the British Islands, in their connexions and relations, can, whenever he is so minded, live mentally in all the varied scenes of the British Islands, and, therefore, enjoy all the pleasures of them, be his bodily locality where it may be. He may be on the bleak moor where there is not a shrub, in the close lane of the city, where even the sky is barely seen, in the solitude of a prisonhouse, or laid on a bed of sickness, deprived of the use of sight, and with all his senses dull and indifferent to present objects. But still, if his former study has been true to nature, nature will not desert him in the hour of affliction, or even at the moment of dissolu Even then, the eagle and the ptarmigan shall fetch him to the mountain, and he shall climb, with bounding heart and sinewed limbs, and the healthful breeze shall play around him, and he shall look But no man who has once acquired knowledge can despoil himself of that. The mental perception is as immortal as the mind itself; and the attempt to extinguish the one, were as vain as that to annihilate the other. Robert Mundie's Natural History of Birds. SAND STORMS OF THE DESERT. The great Sahara Region of Africa is a vast desert of sand, which is composed of particles of white and gray quartz, very small, and seldom attaining so large a size as to form gravel or pebbles. It is by far the dreariest region on the face of the whole globe, and the wind frequently raises this sand in clouds so dense as to overpower a whole company of travellers. "The sand storm we had the misfor tune to encounter," says Denham, "in crossing the desert, gave us a pretty correct idea of its dreadful effects. The wind raised the fine sand with which the desert was covered, so as to fill the atmosphere, and render the immense space before us impenetrable but for a few yards. The sun and clouds were entirely obscured, and a suffocating and oppressive weight accompanied the flakes and masses of sand, which I had almost said we had to penetrate at every step. At times we almost entirely lost sight of the camels though only a few yards before us. The horses hung their tongues out of their mouths, and refused to face the clouds of sand. A parching thirst oppressed us, which nothing alleviated." When whirlwinds visit this immense desert, the sand is raised into pillars, a vivid description of which has been left us by the traveller, Bruce. "At one o'clock," says he, "we alighted among some acacia trees at Wady el Halboub, having gone twentyone miles. We were here at once surprised and terrified by a sight surely one of the most magnificent in the world. In the vast expanse of desert, from west to northwest of us, we saw a number of prodigious pillars of sand at different distances, at times moving with great velocity, at others stalking on with majestick slowness. At intervals we thought they were coming in a very few minutes to overwhelm us, and small quan, ties of sand did actually more than once meet us; again they would retreat so as to be almost out of sight, their tops reaching the very clouds; then the tops often separated from the bodies, and these, once disjoined, dispersed in air, and did not meet more; sometimes they were broken in the middle as if they were struck with a large cannon-shot. At noon they began to advance with considerable swiftness upon us, the wind being very strong at north. Eleven ranged along side us, at about the distance of three miles; the greatest diameter of the larger appeared to me at that distance as if it would measure ten feet. They retired from us with a wind southeast, leaving an impression on my mind to which I can give no name, though surely one ingredient was fear, with a considerable deal of wonder and astonishment. It was in vain to think of flying; the swiftest horses would be of no use to carry us out of this danger, and the full conviction of this riveted me to the spot." Adanson, in crossing the river Gambia from the Great Desert, observed one of these pillars of sand crossing that river. "It passed within eighteen or twenty fathoms of the stern of the vessel, and seemed to measure ten or twelve feet in circumference, and about two hundred and fifty feet in height. Its heat was sensibly felt at the distance of a hundred feet, and it left a strong sulphurous smell behind it." STATISTICKS OF PRISONS. "In Sing-Sing prison, only 289 out of 842 could read and write tolerably, and but 42 had received a good English education; 485 had been habitual drunkards, and many had committed their crimes while intoxicated. Of 670 prisoners at Auburn, three only had received a collegiate education, and 204 a good English education; 503 had been intemperate, and 400 were committed for crimes perpetrated while under the influence of spirituous liquors. In the Connecticut prison 8 in 100 only could read, write, and cipher, when convicted, and 46 in 100 could read and write. Forty-four in 100 committed their crimes under the influence of alcohol. Instruction, temperance, and industry are found to be the surest preventives of crime. POLAR SCENES. Have any of my friends ever travelled three hundred miles in the depth of winter, without inwardly rejoicing the moment they passed the one hundred and fiftieth milestone-or, have they ever made a voyage from Bristol to Cork without mark ing, if they are not too miserably seasick, the pro gress of the packet as she passed Lundy Island? I, myself, once made a trip to China; and I well remember how impatiently anxious we were to turn, as it were, each cornerstone in our voyage. There was, to begin with, the Land's End-then Madeirathe Equador and St. Helena-then the stormy Cape-the squally isle of Madagascar-the Straits of Sunda, and finally the Bouge of Tigris, all were duly and joyfully noted as so many chapters finished in the journal of our voyage. But what had the polar adventurers to cheer them through their dark and dreary winter? Had we the power of locomotion? Assuredly not; for our ships were as firmly locked in the ice as if they had grown there; and the novelty of changing the scene, even from the Atlantick to the Pacifick, with which we should have been quite content, was effectually denied us by the impenetrable barrier which nature had thrown in our way. What had we to distinguish the day from night? not the light from heaven, for it was removed to a happier clime; nor the domestick morning cries of the dustman, the milkman, or the baker-we had not, in fact, any vestige of the busy haunts of man to indicate a living world-all was hushed in the long uninterrupted stillness of a midnight scene, more like the silence of death than the existence of life; and it would seem that we had nothing left but to brood on our recollection of nature in its civilized state; but such was not the case. It is an essential part of the character of a sailor rather to look forward with hope, than back with despair; and as it is his province to be as anxious today to glide with the current, which to-morrow he may have to stem, so it should be as much an object to turn to advantage the resources of the present, as it is his duty to trim his sails to catch the ever-varying breeze. And thus it was with us-for each succeeding day brought with it some little event which, happily for us, we contrived to make the most of and these casualties, trifling as they were, served to lighten, in some degree, the prolixity of those moments in which we were not speculating on the progress we should make in the ensuing season to wards Icy Cape. At the period of which I am now writing the moon shed its pale light throughout the day, so like the cold frosty nights of January in England, that we could only distinguish the diurnal part of our existence by the usual meal hours which called us together. And here it may be asked, how could we possibly amuse ourselves throughout the day? In the first place, we had an excellent library, which comprised eighteen hundred volumes of the most esteemed authors; then, again, each had formed for himself some pursuit which perhaps his natural instinct, more than the intervention of acquirements, led him to adopt. One, for instance, set about building a miniature of the Fury, which he already imagined in an ornamental glass case in a conspicuous part of his father's mansion; another taught himself, or tried to teach himself, the violin-and well we knew it; a third went through a course of mathematicks, the most useful of the whole; a fourth was eternally mending his old clothes-he should have been a tailor; a fifth excelled every one else in skinning birds, and thought of nothing but the museum he would have to show his admiring friends when he took a small half-pay box in the outskirts of London-somewhere about the Old Kent Road-Lee, or Lewisham; a sixth kept a private journal, like inyself, intended to show off in the periodicals, as I am anxious to do; a seventh-and he was an odd fellow-shut himself in his nest of a cabin, five feet by three in length and breadth-with thermometer at ninety, from which he emerged, with a sickly jaundiced hue, only to devour a portion of food worthy a more active calling; but he was an exquisite draughtsman, a good surveyor, and a capital water-drinker. Poor fellow! he was sanguine about his promotion-never got it, and I am told he died of a broken heart. Then we had an occasional siesta after dinner-a casual bear hunt—an evening school for the instruction of those of the crew who could neither read nor write sociable concerts twice a week in Sir Edward Parry's cabin, and an extra glass of grog every Saturday night to sweethearts and wives. amusement; but I should have deemed it impossible to evade the lynx-eyed scrutiny of my companions, when the few places of concealment which a ship affords is considered. With respect to habiliments, those who found it difficult to contrive a dress suitable to the character they wished to appear in, naturally regretted they had not had a hint of the affair before we left England; and those who complained most were on the female side of the question; and this was also natural, as the difficulty, to do justice to the bust, seemed at first insurmountable. This perplexing affair, however, like many others, was conquered with sailor-like ingenuity. I believe, that when a case of necessity is made known on board a man-of-war, and particularly upon an occasion of this kind, which is yet more singular, there are few things which may not be procured without stirring one foot from the vessel, however ridiculous their being in possession of a sailor may appear; and it was laughable enough to find our About this period, notice was given that a grand wants relieved as they became publick—that is, Venetian carnival or masquerade would be held on indirectly-through the medium of one, two, and board the Fury, to commence at six in the evening, often three agents, to escape detection. When, for and sanctioned by authority. It was also stated in instance, the plays were first introduced on a former the programme, that all the musical talent in the voyage, an amateur wanted a pair of spurs to comcountry was engaged for the occasion, and every plete his costume. Who could have imagined that attention would be paid on the part of the stewards such an article would have found a resting-place in to promote the conviviality of the evening-no one one of the discovery ships! The armourer set to to be admitted except in character or domino-and work, when, to the astonishment of every one, an no bad characters eligible. This notice was posted old sailor, who had never trusted himself on the up in the most conspicuous part of the ship, with a back of a horse in his life, produced a pair from the lively sketch appended to it, of a blind fiddler a la bottom of his chest, wrapped in a piece of flannel, Cruikshank, led by a tottering old woman, with the as highly polished as if they had done duty at the sorry remnant of a soldier's coat on her back, a Horse Guards the week before. Upon the present round hat no mean resemblance of Liston as Moll occasion, a mask, a domino, a lady's fan, and some Flaggon, but infinitely less portly and swaggering, other things of an equally novel nature, were found for in this sketch the feebleness of old age and meek-by one of the officers, which, we concluded, must ness of poverty were apparent in the curved form and lank visage of the fiddler's wife. have been dropped into his trunk by his fair fille-dechambre, when she packed it for him. Will you Novelty has more or less its charms everywhere lend me this, or that? Have you such a thing in and for every one-from London to its antipodes your possession as an old pattern to a petticoat or a and back again. On the present occasion, its influ- gown? Can you inform me where I can get a ence in facilitating our ways and means was singu- bunch of false ringlets, or how I shall manage withlarly successful. Masks and caps made of paper, out a chemise, or an under garinent of some kind to wigs made of oakum, false hips and bustles, false conceal an old pair of trousers which are covered fronts and false calves, bonnets, shawls, gowns, and with tar? These were the constant questions of petticoats, were eagerly sought after, and as inge-emissaries in every quarter; and the week precedniously contrived. In fact the lower deck every ing the masquerade appeared the shortest in our evening presented a more than usual scene of busy calendar since we left England. animation-patching, darning, and transforming old clothes; making liveries out of red and green baize, lawyers' gowns of black bunting, and ladies' stays of good stiff number-one canvass-paste, putty, vermilion, and ivory-black, with features of mystery and cunning, some working dexterously with smiles of self-satisfaction, others perplexed and embarrassed in their schemes, and all equally anxious to disguise as much as possible the dress in which they hoped to disguise themselves. At last the eventful evening arrived, and no schoolboys ever broke loose from the trammels of their pedagogue with more searching anticipation of Christmas enjoyments, than did our seamen. The arrangements on board the Fury were too good to pass unnoticed, every thing was so well adapted for the purpose for which it was designed. A rough sign over a raised platform, at the extreme end of the central part of the forecastle, exhibited the jolly sailor just landed from his voyage of discovery, with A masquerade in the polar regions! Who ever a well-filled purse in one hand, and a long pipe in heard of such a thing? It was as little thought of the other. He had his blooming wife under his arm, when we left England, as our attending the carnivals and the Hecla and Fury were visible in the backof Venice during our absence; and had the idea ground. It is almost needless to add, that the jollythen occurred to us, we should have thought the first faced landlady of the jolly sailor did ample justice to as improbable, as we knew the second to be impos- the good humour which rallied around her. sible. In amateur plays the difficulty of disguising farther end of the quarterdeck, another rude sign one's self, and the still greater difficulty of casting announced that the Swiss giantess, lately exhibited the characters, may have suggested this kind of at most of the courts of Europe, patronised by his At the |