ing of the Messiah. Another prophectic declaration | German students encountered him in a church in of our Lord was similarly misunderstood: "Verily Hamburgh, listening to the sermon with great atI say unto you, that there be some of them which tention and devotion. He was a very tall man, with stand here which shall not taste of death until they white hair that reached below the middle of his have seen the kingdom of God come with power." back, and a beard that extended to his girdle; This prophecy, which the best commentators apply though the weather was still cold, his feet were to the destruction of Jerusalem, was, by many naked; his dress, which the chronicler describes Greek Christians, supposed to refer to the second with edifying particularity, consisted of a sailor's advent; and the story of the Wandering Jew was trowsers" a world too wide for his shrunk shanks,' probably invented to support the truth of the inter- a tight-fitting vest, and a large, loose cloak. He pretation. This was very naturally suggested to readily entered into conversation with the students, the Greeks by their own national legend of Pro- telling him that his name was Ahasuerus, and that metheus, whose immortality of wo, fettered to the he had been a thriving shoemaker at the time of rocks of the Caucasus, with a vulture eternally Christ's crucifixion. Impelled by the vulgar paspreying upon his liver, had been rendered familiar sion for excitement, which collects crowds to witto them by the noblest poem that ever proceeded ness executions, rather than by religious bigotry, or from an uninspired pen. personal rancor, he formed one of the multitude which surrounded the judgment-seat of Pilate, and clamored for the release of Barabbas. When Jesus was condemned, he hastened home to give his wife and children an opportunity of seeing the procession which was to pass by their doors. When Jesus came up the street, he staggered under the weight of the cross, and fell against the wall of the house. Ahasuerus repulsed him rudely, and pointing to Calvary, the appointed place of punishment, which was visible in the distance, said, "Get on, blasphemer, to thy doom!" Jesus replied, "I will

return." He was instantly hurried forwards by an irresistible impulse, and never afterwards knew rest. Ahasuerus, according to the report of the students, was a man of few words, very abstemious in his mode of living; accepting alins only for the purpose of distributing them to the poor, and at the same time soliciting their prayers, that he might be blessed with the boon of death. Twenty years later Ahasuerus appeared in Strasburg, where he reminded the magistrates that he had passed through the place two centuries before, a fact which was verified by a reference to the police registers of the city! He inquired rather affectionately after the students with whom he had spoken at Hamburgh, and declared that since his conversation with them he had visited the remotest parts of the Eastern Indies. It is recorded that he spoke German with very great purity, and had not the slightest foreign accent.

The first direct mention of the Wandering Jew dates in the year 1215, when his story was made known to the learned of that day by an Armenian prelate, who came on a pilgrimage to the relics of the saints, which the Crusaders had brought from the Levant to England. According to this episcopal pilgrim, who averred that he had seen and conversed with the wanderer, the name of the hapless Jew was Cartophilus; a name which not a little strengthens the theory of the Greek origin of the legend. He was a subordinate officer in Pilate's court; one of the many chronicles which have re-stop and rest; but you shall march onward until I peated the story, calls him "the crier ;" and, when Jesus was condemned, he struck him a violent blow on the back, and pushing him towards the infuriate crowd, exclaimed, "On with thee Jesus! wherefore dost thou tarry?" Jesus turned round, and, with a severe accent, replied, "I go; but thou must tarry until I come!" The doom was no sooner pronounced than Cartophilus found himself ir resistibly hurried onwards from his family and friends, compelled to be a vagabond and wanderer on the face of the earth, without ever finding any relaxation from his toils. After wandering over the whole of the East, he was converted and baptized by the same Ananias who baptized St. Paul, when he took the name of Joseph. Baptism, however, could not efface the curse; he still continues his erratic life, and looks daily for the second coming of the Messiah. Every hundred years he is seized with a strange malady, which brings him to the very point of death; but, after remaining for several In 1604, the Wandering Jew visited France; days in a trance, he awakes, restored to the same "The true history of his life, taken from his own condition of youth and health which he possessed lips," was printed at Bourdeaux, in 1608; and his when he insulted our Saviour.* Complaint," set to a popular air, was a very faThe chroniclers of the fourteenth century, in re-vorite ballad. The learned Louvet saw him, on a lating this legend, changed the name of Joseph into Sunday, at Beauvais, coming from mass. He was Isaac Lackedem or Lackedion, and omitted the fine surrounded by a crowd of women and children, to incident of his periodical renovation. The ballad whom he recounted anecdotes of Christ's passion in which we have translated is founded on this version so affecting a manner as to draw tears from the of the story, which was generally received in Bra- most obstinate eyes, and to unloose the strings of bant. Indeed, he visited this country, according to the tightest purses. On this occasion, he asked for the Brabantine Chronicle, in 1575. Notwithstand-alms with a lofty tone of superiority, as if he was ing the meanness of his apparel, he was found to be a man of superior education, for "he spoke better Spanish than any nobleman in the court of the Duke of Alva."

Goethe's travestie of the story is derived from an earlier appearance of the Wandering Jew in Europe. On the Easter Sunday of the year 1542, two

"Goodwin has introduced this part of the legend into his singular romance of St. Leon.

66

conferring, instead of receiving, a favor. His appearance excited great emotion throughout France; some being alarmed at such a portentous apparition, and others affecting to be edified by the instructive narratives he related. Indeed, for nearly twenty years, about this time, several impostors made large sums of money by personating the Wandering Jew.

Passing over some vague accounts of his being seen at Salamanca, Venice, and Naples, in which

SCIENCE AND ART.

so that it is contracted, the leg of the other is also immediately seen to contract. If the nerve of the of the passage of the current, there will be no confirst be raised, so that contraction ceases, in spite traction in the leg of the second. The same phe nomenon is reproduced by all stimulating bodies which have the power of causing ordinary contraction: when a plate of gold is placed between the thigh and the nerves, contraction does not take place; paper has not this effect.

If one of the muscles either of the breast or of the

thigh of a living pigeon be laid bare and cut across, brought into contact with it, this thigh immediately and the nerves of the thigh of a prepared frog be experiences a contraction, as in the case cited above. -Literary Gaz.

FRENCH SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS.-We are informed that the French Scientific Congress, before separating at Strasburg, entered into a series of resolu tions, soliciting the attention of the government to the following recommendations: That government would be pleased to extend greater encouragement than it has, hitherto, done to the learned societies and literary projects of the provinces: that, instead of seeking to congregate the most distinguished savans in the capital, it should endeavor rather to attach them to the provincial academies to which they belong, either by augmentation of their salaries or by honorary distinctions: that the various isolated Faculties of France should be collected into a certain number of great scientific establishmentsacademies complete-centres of learning-and divided among the different districts of the kingdom: that division of property is beneficial to the country, but its subdivision into parcels of less than ten, fif teen, or twenty ares (an are is fourteen square yards, English,) is mischievous: that schools of agriculture, carried direct into the midst of the husbandmen and laborers, be established in all the departments of France, and that the same professor be also teacher at the normal agricultural school of each "The relation between food and the end it has to department: that government cause to be prepared fulfil in the economy of nature is not, to the present agricultural maps, based on geological maps, and in- day, at all made clear, since organic chemistry has dicating the limits of the various agricultural regions: examined it by the quantitative method. A thin that government organize the rural police in can- goose, weighing 4 lbs., increases to 5 lbs. in 36 hours, tons, so that each canton have its commissary and during which time it has had 24 lbs. of maize to fatcommunal officers under its own direction that ten it, and then 3 lbs. of fat may be taken from it. government, in its regulations for the plantation of It is evident that the fat cannot be ready formed in the highway-borders, take into consideration the the food, because the latter does not contain 1-1000 utility of employing_fruit-trees: that the bases of of fat, or like matter." competitions in the Fine Arts be altered; and the pupils be sent, according to their specialty, into those countries in which the particular art studied by each has most splendor.-London Athenæum.

:

FATTY ANIMAL MATTER.-M. Dumas announced that he would shortly communicate the results of his and M. Payen's researches, tending to prove that "all fatty animal matter proceeds from plants, or from the food of the animals which assimilate them in kind, or slightly modified." Previously, however, to the presentation of this work, he thought it right to submit how greatly this proposition dif fered from the opinion expressed by Liebig, to the following effect, in a recent work:

M. Dumas and M. Payen have sought to establish the fattening power of maize. Agriculturists know already that a bushel of maize, weighing about 10 to 11 kilogrammes, yields a quart of oil. Precise PEARLY NAUTILUS-Professor Owen exhibited a experiment has shown that maize contains 9 per specimen of the Pearly Nautilus (Nautilus Pompili- cent. of a yellow oil, 100 grammes of which were us) animal and shell, obtained by Captain Belcher, submitted to the Academy. Thus, in eating 24 lbs. R. N., at Amboyna. He alluded to the fact of the of maize, a thin goose eats, in fact, 2 lbs. of fatty And it is not therefore surprising that, as specimen described by him in 1832 having been matter. detached from the shell, which was destroyed in its mentioned above, a goose furnishes 3 lbs. of fat, if capture, and recapitulated the analogies which had what it already contained be taken into account. M. Dumas added: Hay contains very nearly 2 guided him in determining the position in which he We shall show, he said, had restored the soft parts to the shell, and figured per cent. of fatty matter. them in situ, in his memoir. Objections had been that the fattening ox and the milch cow always furmade to this restoration by Mr. Gray, and by Doc-nish less fatty matter than their food contains. For tors Grant and De Blainville, who were led by other the milch cow, however, the butter, within a very analogies to believe that the upper or outer lip of small ratio, represents the fatty matters of the food, the shell must have crossed the back of the head, at least so far as relates to the food we have as yet instead of crossing the opposite side, or funnel, as examined. In our opinion, agricultural facts and represented by Mr. Owen. M. Valenciennes, who chemical analysis agree in proving that the milch cow constitutes the most exact and most economical had subsequently received the soft parts of a nautilus, had adopted the position assigned to them by means of extracting from pasturage the azotized Mr. Owen. The present example, in which the anand fatty matter they contain.-Ibid. imal had been restored to its shell in precisely the same position in whieh it was received when recent, closely agreed with the description and figure in Professor Owen's work. The involuted spire of the shell is covered by the dorsal fold of the mantle, and is lodged in the concavity at the back of the muscular plate above the Lead. The funnel rests upon the outer wall of the large chamber containing the animal. This appears to be the first specimen of the Pearly Nautilus in its shell which has reached Europe.-Ibid.

ECLIPSE OF THE 8TH OF JULY.-M. Schumacher transmitted some new observations on the eclipse of the 8th of July last. They are extracts from a report five astronomers. Only one, M. Schidoisky, out of to the minister of public instruction of Russia, from the five, but for reasons explained therein, saw the mountains: he only saw two, of the most brilliant and red light; and did not perceive them until a very few seconds before the end of the eclipse; the third was not observed by him.

The communication contained several particulars ANIMAL ELECTRICITY.-If a frog be prepared in and hypotheses to explain many of the singular apthe ordinary manner, and another so that it has pearances; but M. Arago'will shortly be prepared to only one leg with a long nervous fibre; then if this furnish a detailed report on the numerous observafibre be placed on the thighs, and a current of elections of which the eclipse of last July has beeh the tricity passed through the nerves of the first frog, object.-Ibid.

A NEW MICROSCOPE has been this week exhibited | refuse coal which accumulates to even mountain at the Polytechnic Institution, the powers of which in the neighborhood of many of our collieries, parare said to surpass all previous instruments. It con- ticularly to the north; and to render which availsists of six powers. The second magnifies the wings able has excited a great deal of attention and inof the locust to twenty-seven feet in length. The quiry. We understand that the furnace of Mr. fourth, the sting of the bee to twenty-seven feet. By Juckes has been the subject of the most unqualified the sixth, each lens in the eye of the fly is so mag-approbation of Professor Backland, of Sir M. I. nified, that it appears to be fourteen inches in di- Brunel, etc. The saving in fuel alone we are asameter; and a human hair, eighteen inches in disured is about 40 per cent. The plan is applicable ameter, or four feet in circumference.-Athenæum. to railway or steam-boat engines.-Herald.

on the metal is at first invisible, but is readily brought out by the means of any vapor. Mr. Hunt exhibited some specimens of wood and copper-plate engravings, copied from the paper into the metal. These copies exhibited every line of the original, and were far more distinct than any of the early daguerreotypes. Mr. Hunt proposes to call this new art thermography.-West-Briton.

A NEW COMET.-M. Laugier, of Paris, has disHe states that it has a recovered a new comet. trograde movement, and circulates in an inclined orbit of 74 deg. 31 min., the ascendant node having for longitude 28 deg 31 min. The passage to the perihelium will take place in December by 328 deg. 22 min. of longitude, and at a distance from the sun expressed by 0.512. The comet continued ap

CAMEO. At a late meeting of the Academy of EXTRAORDINARY DISCOVERY.-At the conclusion Sciences at Brussels, M. Perquin de Gembloux pre-of the lecture at the Polytechnic Hall, Falmouth, sented a cameo of the fifth century, found at Orchi- Mr. Robert Hunt, the secretary, announced the mont in 1811, in an old church. It is supposed to discovery by himself of a metallic plate which represent Attili, and, according to the judgment of would receive by mere contact, impressions of any several members of the Academy, must have been printed page, an engraving, or the like. This disexecuted in Belgium, as the stone is a kind of flint covery was arrived at by following out the recent peculiar to the country.-Ibid. I discoveries of Moeser, that bodies were constantly making impressions upon each other in absolute INVENTION FOR THE CONSUMPTION OF SMOKE-A darkness, by the agency, as he considered, of latent furnace has recently been invented by Mr. Juckes light, but which Mr. Hunt thinks he has certain for the perfect combustion of smoke. He has se-proof of being latent heat. The impression received cured it by patent; and it is in many respects so useful and ingenious, that it will, probably, become extensively patronised as its merits are made known. The first peculiarity which strikes the eye is the total absence of smoke from the chimney of a furnace under a boiler which works an engine of 20-horse power. This of itself implies a perfect and entire combustion of the fuel, the smoke which is given off, and causing the offensive nuisance, being merely particles of coal separated on the first application of heat in the process of destructive distillation when it is submitted to the action of heat in a fire or furnace. To make this portion of the fuel available for the production of heat has excited much inquiry and ingenious speculation; and, in this case, the results are obtained by the mechanical arrangements of the furnace, which are made to effect the perfect chemical decomposi-proaching towards the earth until the 15th instant, tion of the fuel. The fire-grate is a series of fire bars, forming an endless chain, which by the steam engine (and the same may be done by an occasional application of manual or mechanical power) progresses with the fuel in an active state of combustion under the boiler at the rate of about one inch each minute. The fuel at first introduced parts with the more volatile products, which are carried over those portions of the fuel where the production of the heat is most perfect and intense, and thus every part of it is made available to the support of combustion, which is rendered still more complete by the admission of atmospheric air through each of the bars, by which oxygen gas is admitted sufficient for the conversion of the whole of the incandescent materials into gaseous products. No fuel is wasted, as is apparent from the entire absence of carbon or smoke in the chimney. The most prominent feature is the perfect uniformity of heat under the boiler, which is also secured without the constant attendance of the stoker, as a sufficient charge can be given in the hopper outside the furnace door to last upwards of an hour, which is slowly carried on by the rotatory motion of the fire bars; this furnace door acting in a perpendicular manner, being so regulated as to give the requisite quantity of fuel. Here the fire bars are always feeding, taking in the fuel at one end while they reject the scoriæ at the other; being constantly free from clinkers, the supply of the requisite quantity of oxygen gas for the support of combustion through the fire bars is always uniform and unimpeded, and the bars are as clear in the evening as they The Royal Society of Northern Antiquities (Cowere when they commenced working in the morn-penhagen) held a quarterly meeting on the 27th of ing. The furnace is also admirably adapted for the consumption of the smaller particles, or of the

when it was distant from it 4-10ths of the range of the terrestrial orbit. The brightness of this comet has, up to the present time, gone on increasing as to its nucleus, but there has been no sensible in crease in its tail since the 2d instant; its length is hardly 10; the width of the nebulosity has an angle of about 5. M. Laugier has consulted the archives of astronomy, to ascertain whether the comet of 1842 was not the return one already known. The work of Pingré mentions a comet which was seen in China in 1301, the elements of which, calculated according to the observations of the Chinese, accord in a remarkable manner with the results of the new calculation. It is, therefore, possible that M. Laugier has recorded the second passage of a comet, whose period of travelling occupies more than 500 years.-Britannia.

The French papers mention that the construction of the tomb of the Emperor Napoleon is about to be commenced, and that for the last few days a model An equestrian statue of the Emperor is to be placed has been exposed to public view at the Invalides. in the middle of the great court, and on the pedestal will be represented the arrival of his ashes at the place were they now lie. The entrance of the crypt, destined to receive the Emperor's moral remains, will be ornamented on each side by two gigantic statues and two lions couchant. This entrance will be surmounted with an altar on spiral columns. The present grand altar and its rich canopy must be removed to admit of this arrangement.-Athenæum.

October last; when M. Rafn, the secretary, and M.
Finn Magnusen, offered communications respecting