66 exultant thumps were executed upon the are in a little cupboard under my bed!... partition. Good-night, my Ursula! good-night!" The stable clock struck one as he spoke, and after that he allowed us to repose in peace. Dearest!" his little cracked voice uttered in jubilant accents, "I have found them!.... They are apples! . . . . They WHOLESALE MANUFACTURE OF OZONE. It has long been an idea of ours, remarks the Builder, that ozone might be manufactured on a great scale for the purification of close courts, and other cholera and fever haunts; and we pointed attention to the enormous electrical power of Sir W. Armstrong's electric boiler, in order to show the possibility of this being done. It is interesting now to note, in connection with our idea, that a sugar-refining firm in Whitechapel is setting up one of Wilde's extraordinary electric machines on their premises, for the bleaching of sugar; and we do not despair of seeing the same power soon applied, as we originally suggested. Wilde's machine has recently been exhibited to the Royal Society at Burlington House. It is worked by a 15-horse power steam-engine, and possesses wonderful power. The form is magneto-electric; and it has coils 4 feet high and 10 inches thick, containing 14 cwt. of copper wire. The armature rotates 15,000 times in a minute. The intensity of the light produced by this machine is something almost appalling. It required, like the sun, to be gazed at through coloured glasses. By means of lenses the mere rays of light set fire to paper, and its heat could be felt fifty yards off. It melted the refractory platinum as if it were lead! Various uses for it are being suggested. The total cost of its light is said not to exceed 6d. or 8d. an hour, cost of the machine itself included. The same sort of machine is used in Manchester for photographic purposes, being preferable, it is said, to the sun for taking photographs! It can also, of course, be made available by night as well as by day. spice tree has apparently declined. In fact, of late years, it has become a losing businessEverywhere through the Straits it is now pro. nounced a failure. As a substitute for this branch of industry, the planters are setting out their lands with cocoa-nuts. Whether the substitution of the cocoa-nut cultivation for the nutmeg will prove an equally valuable product is yet undetermined. Of course there are other places where the nutmeg will be still grown. It is said to be indigenous to the Molucca Islands and to parts of Java. It grows to some extent in Ceylon, almost by the side of the cinnamon and coffee trees. It has been introduced into the Mauritius, and into some of the West India Islands. CHYMICAL Tors. - Dr. Divers, Lecturer on Natural Philosophy at Charing-cross Hospital, writes to the Times: - "Pharaoh's Serpents,' composed of sulphocyanide of mercury, are highly poisonous, and during combustion evolve most noxious vapours. Larmes du Diable,' formed of metallic sodium, burn with great violence if they are either heated or moistened with water in this respect exceeding phosphorus in danger and scatter caustic alkali about the place when they are used as directed. Sunshine in Winter Evenings and Fiery Swords,' formed of magnesium, are apt in the hands of children to cause nasty burns, through the rapidity of their combustion and the molten and white-hot particles they cast off. Sensation Cigarettes,' charged with gun-cotton, project, when fired, very noxious vapours into the mouth; 'Will o' the Wisp Paper,' Parlour Lightning,' 'Fireflies.'' Aerial Glowworms,' &c., all formed of pyroxilin, or THE NUTMEG. - For many years the Straits paper rendered explosive by the action of consettlements were famed for the cultivation of centrated nitric and sulphuric acids, are highly the nutmeg. At Penang, in Province Welles-inflammable and dangerous-the latest proof ley, at Malacca, and at Singapore, the cultiva- of which is the terrible accident last week at tion of this spice seemed to be attended with Mr. Laidlaw's workshop. I have myself very gratifying success. Young trees were set known bad injuries caused by experimenting out in every direction in plantations, and every-with sodium and water, and also with flowers where they appeared to thrive and to yield a very fair supply of nutmegs. The nutmeg tree has a pretty appearance, running up to a height of from 25 to 30 feet, with numerous branches shooting directly out at right angles from the stem, and the leaves are of a fine green colour at the top, and of a paler hue on the under surface. Strange as it may seem (says the Produce Markets Review) the cultivation of this of sulphur and chlorate of potassium, the rubbing together of which in small quantities is so often recommended in books on Parlour Magic,' &c., as an amusing experiment, quite free from danger. The use of chemical toys in educating children in the science of natural phenomena must be exceedingly slight, and quite incommensurate with their danger. THE personal character of King George the Third, as well as the leading political events of his reign, have been for various reasons so frequently brought under the notice of the readers of this Journal, that we may spare ourselves on this occasion the trouble of adding another elaborate essay on these subjects to those already produced. We shall assume the general familiarity of the public both with the subjects themselves and with the spirit in which we have generally treated them, and content ourselves with such observations as may be called forth by the contents of the works before us, forming, in different ways, supplementary additions to the wealth of information and commentary which late years have brought forth. Mr. Jesse's work is merely what we should call, if the words might be used without irreverence, a book-maker's speculation, put together by an industrious and practical compiler in the historical line. Notwithstanding the occasional garnish of a few fragments of manuscript authority, and even four unpublished letters' of Horace Walpole to Selwyn (when shall we have the last fruits off this very old tree ?), it contains nothing substantial except what is woven out of those many volumes of Diaries and Correspondence of this reign, which are in every one's hands. But having, in the exercise of critical justice, said thus much, we are bound to go some way farther, and to add that a more agreeable, readable, and really interesting compilation has seldom fallen into our hands. It is a book which the reader lays down with sincere feelings of gratitude to the writer for having enabled him to while away some hours in pleasantly furbishing up his acquaintance with many a well-known, but always attractive, passage of recent history, and renewing many a familiar line of thought. And we do not doubt that numbers of our circulating-library readers will obtain from these volumes an amount of knowledge respecting the history of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers which they would have been very unlikely to acquire by any more patient method. Mr. Jesse has worked himself into a most kindly and sympathising spirit with the hero of his biography. We believe that any impartial man, or any one honest though slightly prejudiced in the other direction, would experience the same result from acquiring a real familiarity with the sayings and doings of the worthy old monarch. But, inasmuch as Mr. Jesse is full saturated with the commonplaces of ordinary liberalism, there is occasionally a gentle conflict in his pages between the stern principles of the politician and the weakness of the biographer. Moreover, he is, or pretends to be, credulous to an extent unworthy of one possessed of so much good sense as he frequently exhibits. But as this credulity generally manifests itself in the eager reception of telling' stories on slight authority, we set it down, in fact, as the trick of a caterer for popular taste rather than as the natural bent of his genius. To the same unlucky cause we attribute the most serious blemish of the book in our eyes- the extreme particularity with which he dwells on all the details of the King's insanity. What good can be served by the repeated dishing up of all these morbid horrors - - the ἀποῤῥητα of the sick-room, fit for nothing but professional pages - - which throw in reality no light whatever either on character or events we cannot for our own part imagine. But we make no question that this repulsive part of the work will have many and eager readers, and that Mr. Jesse is fully aware of it. The greater part of these details, we must add, is taken from that very singular repository of court gossip and dialogue behind the curtain, the late Mr. Locker's manuscript collections; with which, however, Mr. Jesse does not appear to be acquainted, except so far as Mr. Massey to whom they were lent, thought it safe and proper to communicate them to the public in his History. These contain some important and some startling matter; much also hardly worth publication a good deal more which is unpublishable. We have accused Mr. Jesse of a kind of artistic rather than real credulity, and we cannot give a better instance than his treatment of the celebrated 'Hannah Lightfoot' story, in his second chapter. So charming a bit of sensation' biography was far too valuable to be frowned sternly away by an anecdotist. Accordingly it is treated with a mock seriousness which is worthy of the pages of Mr. G. W. Reynolds's Mysteries of London,' or any other of those gems of · our penny literature which gratify the taste | draper, carry her off, live with her some of the largest, if not absolutely the most years as his mistress, and marry her to a intelligent, class of our romance-devourers. convenient nobody. Alexander Dumas We are told that the father of the said Hannah, the fair quaker,' a respectable tradesman, resided at Execution Dock, Wapping in the East (?), a district sufficiently remote, one would have thought, to have preserved his daughter from the temptations and perils of a Court. Unfortunately however, she had an uncle, a prosperous linendraper, of the name of Wheeler, who resided in the more fashionable vicinities of Leicester House and St. James's Palace. . . . The house in question-interesting, perhaps, as having been the last in which she was destined to press the pillow of innocence! - stood at the southeast corner of Carlton street, and of what is now called Market-street.' And so on through some pages of similar rhetoric, until we are left in some doubt whether the author is not himself disposed to believe in the foolish story which he thus solemnly palms upon us. He even professes a mysterious doubt whether George the Third and Hannah were not actually married, although, on his own showing, or rather that of his authorities, the marriage is reported to have been celebrated at Keith's chapel,' in Curzon-street; and he shows himself that solemnisation in that chapel was put an end to by the Marriage Act of 1753; so that when the eventful ceremony took place the princely bridegroom (born in June, 1738) must have been somewhat under fifteen! remem But the story of the seduction itself will not really bear inspection any more than that of the marriage. It took place early in 1754,' when, therefore, the hero was under sixteen. Now, to quote at second hand from Mr. Jesse himself, it must be bered that the Prince, sedulously trained aloof from the world bigoted; young, and chaste,' as Horace Walpole terms him was childish,' according to his mother, in his habits, and backward in his years (1752), and had hitherto given no indication of an immoral tendency; that his brother the Duke of Gloucester, many years afterwards, thus spoke of him to Hannah More: No boys were ever brought up in a greater ignorance of evil than the King and Myself. At fourteen years old we retained all our native innocence. Now a princely lad thus trained may no doubt in spite of mother and preceptor, become the prey of a designing woman of the world. But he does not, at fifteen, seduce the prim daughter of a respectable linen himself would hardly have ventured to insert so coarse a patch of fiction into the tapestry of history. We must on the present occasion content ourselves with adverting briefly to the curious and minute inquiry just instituted by Mr. Thoms into this tale- to his proofs that the several authorities' cited by Mr. Jesse resolve themselves into the invention of one fertile brain to the shrewd indications which he furnishes, not only that there never was any 'marriage' with Hannah Lightfoot, but that there never was any such person_as Hannah Lightfoot, alias Wheeler, alias Oxford, at all* that the entire story is as complete a fabrication as the Book of Mormon! Certainly, until some one can show us a single contemporary notice of this mysterious lady, or any notice whatever anterior to the year 1800, and not traceably connected in some way or other with Mrs. Olivia Wilmot Serres, we hold ourselves quite safe in provisional incredulity. Of course Mr. Jesse does ample justice to the romantic aspect of the poor king's more authentic flirtation, his short-lived amourette with Lady Sara Lenox which we could never bring ourselves to regard as meaning anything more than a little shy, though honest, gallantry on the part of the youth, a little innocent scheming on that of the lady, and a little not unnatural_calculation on that of some of her connections. sey. It is no more worth remembering than any other of the ægri somnia' so carefully and indecently chronicled by members of his Court. Mr. Jesse, by the way, does not appear to understand the hidden meaning of one anecdote, which he cites, having reference to this subject. The king, on more than one occasion, when under this influence, expressed in conversation his admiration for the Lutheran Church and its tenets. This puzzles Mr. Jesse, accustomed to regard him as a peculiarly orthodox son of that of England. He does not perceive the chain of thought which was forming in the poor distracted brain. The king remembered the bigamous indulgence accorded by Luther to the Landgrave of Hesse, and meditated on the possible application of the precedent to himself. We have already complained a little of the profuseness with which Mr. Jesse indulges in the often reproduced and most painful details of these dreary interregna in the king's mental sanity. On one point, however, connected with this humiliating subject, we think he deserves credit at the hands of all lovers of fair history. A great deal too much has been made of the alleged levity and recklessness of the conduct of his sons towards him in bis madness of 1788: conduct which, had it really taken place as represented, would certainly have excited to a dangerous pitch of fury the feelings of society, by no means predisposed in their favour. Too much has been made, also, of the supposed brutalities exercised towards the royal sufferer by some of his palace attendants, urged on by the unfilial example. seems to exist whether violent measures were moval took place, and consequently, as Dr. Willis was called in so carly as Friday, the 5th of December, the period is of course reduced to only six days. Moreover, considerable doubt resorted to at all, so long as the King was under the charge of his regular physicians; in fact, whether Dr. Willis was not himself the first to advocate and to employ them. From Miss Burney, for instance, we learn that up to the date of the King's removal from Windsor, not only had there prevailed among his medical attendants the greatest disinclination to put any force upon him, lest it might be resented by human being dared even mention compulsion." him in the case of his recovery, but that "no "His smallest resistance," said Sir Lucas Pepys, "would have called up the whole country to his fancied rescue." Lady Harcourt's further account of the cruel state of isolation in which the King found himself at Kew, of the withdrawal of his faithful equerries, the hurried departure of the physicians, and the consignment of his person to mere pages and keepers must also be received with some qualifica tion. So far, indeed, from the King having been so utterly deserted as stated by that lady. we have evidence not only that a physician, as well as either a surgeon or an apothecary, regularly slept in the palace, but that both an equerry and a groom of the bedchamber were in constant attendance. 'No But the most painful part of Lady Harcourt's narrative is doubtless the insolent and cowardly treatment which the defenceless King is said to have experienced in Kew Gardens at must at once confess that we discredit the truth the hands of his German page, Ernst. We of this singularly painful story. doubt, could it be clearly proved that Ernst received his dismissal at this period, some degree of credit might be claimed for Lady Harcourt's extraordinary statement. So far, however, from his having been so dismissed, the author, on searching the books in the Lord Chamberlain's department, discovered the name of 'These facts,' says Mr. Jesse, 'are related on high authority, that authority being Elizabeth Countess Harcourt, who was not only a lady of George Ernst, Esq.," registered as a Page of the bedchamber to Queen Charlotte, and sister- the Back Stairs, with a salary of 801. a year, so in-law to General Harcourt who accompanied late as the 15th of April, 1801, when one Samthe King to Kew, but who also lived on terms uel Cox was sworn in, in his room. Not imof particular intimacy with their Majesties. probably Ernst may have died shortly after this Moreover, as regards the painful episode of the date, since, on referring to the books of the German page, Ernst, Lady Harcourt goes so Treasury, the author found that by two royal far as to vouch that, after the King's recovery, warrants, severally dated the 14th of October, she heard the story from his Majesty's own lips. 1801, a pension of 150l. a year was granted to Nevertheless, we cannot but think that these Dorothy Ernst, widow, and a pension of 50l. to terrible details are greatly, though doubtless Charlotte Ernst, spinster; these persons being not wilfully, exaggerated. In the first place, probably the wife and daughter of George these barbarities are stated to have commenced Ernst. To these evidences of the Ernst family on the removal of the King to Kew, in the having enjoyed the favour of royalty may be month of October, and to have lasted till the added the further fact, that some years aftermonth of December, "when, happily, Dr. Wil-wards the pension of the latter was increased to lis was called in ;" thus extending the period of his Majesty's sufferings over several weeks. But the fact is, that instead of the King having been removed to Kew in the month of October, it was not till the 29th of November, that his re 150l. After all, the story of Ernst seems to be capable of easy explanation. It was one of the peculiarities attending the King's subsequent restoration to reason that, for many weeks after wards, he found it impossible to shake off the | seem not to add much to the historical valconviction that certain things were not realities, ue of the collection, although no doubt inwhich in fact had had no other foundation than teresting from the additional light which in his own distempered fancy; and according they throw on the character of the writer. ly, many painful particulars that he related to Lady Harcourt were in all probability, not Mr. Donne has accompanied his edition what had really occurred, but what he morbidly with an exceedingly minute running comimagined had taken place. It should be men-mentary, identifying names and explaining tioned that to Miss Burney, as well as to Lady allusions to the most satisfactory extent. Harcourt, the King represented himself as hav- But, as he has thought it necessary to suing been laid violent hands on by Ernst; but peradd what we may term a political comas the conversation with the former lady took mentary also, after the manner of old-fashplace while the King's mind was still partially ioned editors of the Bible, who favour their deranged, she seems to have attributed his con- readers at once with an exegetical' and a viction on the subject to what we conceive to 'critical' exposition running along side by have been the true cause -a mere illusion of his malady.' (iii. 82-89.) side; and as moreover Mr. Donne, being a liberal in politics and a great admirer of American independence, differs from, and disputes with, his Majesty and his Tory minister all through; the result, certainly, is a somewhat voluminous miscellany, in which the materials bear a very small proportion to the garnish. 6 The King's letters undoubtedly do differ widely in manner from the ordinary political confidences of sovereigns; such, for instance, as those of his son William the Fourth to Lord Grey, just published, for which the polished and courtly pen of Sir Herbert Taylor was called into requisition. George the Third never dictated. His letters, says Mr. Donne, are Here, however, we must part with Mr. Jesse, not without renewed thanks for the amusement which he has given us. Our more serious business is with the contribution to the authentic history of an earlier period of the king's reign afforded by Mr. Donne. Mr. Donne has for the first time printed, from the original manuscripts in Her Majesty's possession, George the Third's letters to his prime minister, Lord North, from 1768 to 1783. The answers, unfortunately, are wanting. These remarkable letters have long been partially known, and their literary history is somewhat singular. They are the property of Her Majesty. They have been made use of by Lord Brougham, Lord Stanhope, and Mr. Ban-strictly such as one man of business commonWith very rare excep croft, for their respective publications. But ly writes to another. these writers, one after the other, have only tions they are written in haste, and sometimes had access, not to the originals themselves, shock Lindley Murray; in some of them Priseven with impetuosity. Many of them would but to a manuscript volume of extracts, cian's head is broken; in few of them is there transcribed by Sir James Mackintosh. Now a vestige of preparation, in none of them eleSir James was the last man partly from gance of expression. Louis XIV. wrote very natural indolence, partly from utter con- indifferent grammar, and George III. wrote not tempt of mere dilettante antiquarianism much, if at all, better than his Most Christian to consider it of any importance that the Majesty. In this respect, indeed, he was on a public should have any part of these letters, par with many of the nobility and gentry of except what seemed of consequence to him- the time, who may, notwithstanding, have composed faultless verses at Eton; and perhaps the royal style, rough and tumbling as it usually is, is not more unpalatable than the epistolary bombast of Lord Chatham, whom, were we to judge of him by his correspondence alone, we can hardly fail to tax with affectation, if not insincerity. There is, in spite of their defects, no small amount of self-portraiture in these letters; and this, except by ceremonious readers of them, will scarcely be thought to lessen their value. They put before us a blunt, busy, positive, shrewd, but not very sagacious self. So he selected only such portions as may have seemed to him most important, or as best suited to a particular purpose. In many i y instances he has taken only a single sentence from a letter, in others he has combined sentences which were originally unconnected, while he has passed over a considerable number. In the following pages, entire and exact copies of the letters are for the first time published.' So the editor informs us. We are, howev-man; one well acquainted with public business er, bound to say, in justice to Sir James's memory, that we have found the supposed inaccuracies of his transcription far less than we had anticipated: and, farther, that the omitted letters, with some exceptions, better versed in it indeed than many of his advisers; a restless, inquisitive man, who chose to know how matters were being managed, and was not averse from interfering with them, though perchance they might have gone on better had he let alone the well or the ill in |