We said, "Good-morrow, master! One little moment stay, And tell us the disaster Which has brought you this way. Then he replied, "Believe me, "Come, join us, good old father! That, looking on with tears, In guessing at your years. We'd ask,-if not too bold,Are you a century old?" "Years more than eighteen hundred "Are you that man of sorrow, To whom, our authors write, To me was given for name, "I've cast me in the occean The waves refused to drown; But elemental strife Peal'd forth their funeral knell: I've eeen the fever spread, I gazed with hope, not fear; "I have no home to hide me; 'Tis never less nor more!" "But you must have offended To all on earth who plod: Then tell us for what crime You bear his wrath sublime?" "'Twas by my rash behavior I wrought this fearful scathe: As Christ, our Lord and Saviour, Was passing on to death. His mild request I spurn'd, His gentle pleading scorn'd. "Beneath the cross when sinking, He pass'd before my door! From the crowd's insults shrinking, He stepp'd the threshold o'er, And made a mild request That I would let him rest. 'Begone!' said I, 'thou vile one! Move on, and meet thy fate, I know it would defile one "A secret force expell'd me That instant from my home; For neither day nor night "Farewell, ye pitying strangers! Thus ends this most singular and beautiful legend, in which the simplicity, and almost ruggedness, of the style, greatly enhances the miracle of the story. It is scarcely necessary to say, that there is no historical authority for the legend; but the Wandering Jew may be regarded as an allegorical impersonation of the destiny of the Jewish nation, which, since the death of Jesus Christ, has been outcast and wandering among the nations of the earth, still subject to that fearful imprecation. His blood be upon us and upon our children!" The words "Tarry thou till I come" were actually addressed to the apostle St. John; and, as this evangelist himself informs us, they led many of the disciples to believe that St. John would be one of those who should be found alive at the second com 46 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 stand here which shall not taste of death until they have seen the kingdom of God come with power." This prophecy, which the best commentators apply to the destruction of Jerusalem, was, by many Greek Christians, supposed to refer to the second advent; and the story of the Wandering Jew was probably invented to support the truth of the interpretation. This was very naturally suggested to the Greeks by their own national legend of Prometheus, whose immortality of wo, fettered to the rocks of the Caucasus, with a vulture eternally preying upon his liver, had been rendered familiar to them by the noblest poeni that ever proceeded from an uninspired pen. tention and devotion. He was a very tall man, with white hair that reached below the middle of his back, and a beard that extended to his girdle; though the weather was still cold, his feet were naked; his dress, which the chronicler describes with edifying particularity, consisted of a sailor's trowsers a world too wide for his shrunk shanks,' a tight-fitting vest, and a large, loose cloak. He readily entered into conversation with the students, telling him that his name was Ahasuerus, and that he had been a thriving shoemaker at the time of Christ's crucifixion. Impelled by the vulgar passion for excitement, which collects crowds to witness executions, rather than by religious bigotry, or 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 alms only for the purpose of distributing them to the poor, and at the same time soliciting their prayers, that he might 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-be blessed with the boon of death. Twenty years 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 days in a trance, he awakes, restored to the same condition of youth and health which he possessed when he insulted our Saviour.* 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. 66 In 1604, the Wandering Jew visited France; The true history of his life, taken from his own lips," was printed at Bourdeaux, in 1608; and his 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. 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 last city he was rather successful as a gambler, we find that he visited Brussels on the 22nd of April, 1771, and sat for his portrait, to illustrate the ballad composed on his interview with certain of the burgesses some centuries before. The portrait was graven on wood, and copies of it may be seen suspended in most of the cottages of Belgium, where his legend has always been more popular than anywhere else. In fac, the two great objects of hero-worship among the Flemings are the Wandering Jew and Napoleon. Dr. Southey has based "The Curse of Kehema” on this legend; and Dr. Croly has made it the subject of his gorgeous romance, Salathiel; but the fiction has never laid hold of the popular mind in England, as it has in France and Germany, though there are few superior to it in the power of captivating the imagination. From Blackwood's Magazine. LINES Suggested by David's Picture of Napoleon, asleep inhis study, taken shortly before the battle of Walerloo. STEAL Softly! for the very room, The stately chamber of His rest, Imparts a gasping awe and gloom Unto a rash intruder's breast. Here kneel and look! but breathe not, lest Thy gross material breath alone Should wake that eye's immortal blaze, He sleeps! while Earth around him reels, Their fate from Lapland to the Line- The Warrior Lord of Lodi's fieldO'er Jena's rout, who shook his shieldIs hushed in slumber dim! He sleeps! The thunderer of the World For once hath, wearied, dropt the bolt, Whose strokes split empires up-and hurl'd To dust each purple mantled dolt, 'Mid havoc, ruin and revolt! Lo! lull'd like baby by its nurse, The Imperial Eagle folds that wing Quiescent, whose awaking spring Shall shake the universe! He sleeps and silence binds that tone He sleeps and dreams-oh, for the sense And would its wild ambition strain He dreams and smiles! the Conqueror's brow, As if your ENGHEIN never died! His bony-legions' freezing groans, The plan and pencil in his hand Have dropp'd as though their effort fail'd To draught the crimson sketch he scann'd In Fate's vast volume seven-seal'd; But earth shall see the page reveal'd, And hear its fiery purport too, Until her curdling heart's blood stops, He dreams and smiles! Yon blue sea prison Away, bright Painter! tell thy frere, Whose ready, reasoning tongue would swear From crested care one moment free Tell him thy life-imparting eye, NAPOLEON'S sleepless hour survey'd, And with one deathless glance hath made Immortal now the LIE. Harold. OPTICS. At the Academy of Sciences on the 16th inst, M. Arago communicated some experiments in optics, made by the Commission, which had been charged by the academy to examine the curious specimens of diamond lately received, and to ascertain whether these crystals were really diamonds in their primitive state. M. Arago stated that the commission had employed a simple and infallible means of coming to a decision, and had found that the specimens were really what they were described to be. This means consists in determining whether the angle of the polarization of the crystal is of twentyfour degrees.--Court Journal. THE WEST INDIA MAILS.-A statement of the voyages performed by the West India mail steam-ships during the year 1842, affords a singular proof of the regularity with which transAtlantic communication is effected by means of steam navigation. The average length of the West India voyage, both out and home, appears from the following table to be 18 3-4 days. The longest outward passage was made in 20 days 17 hours, and the quickest in 16 days 19 hours; the distance run over being little short of 4000 miles.-Ibid. SCIENCE AND ART. FRENCH SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS.-We are inform ed 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, fifteen, 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 department: that government cause to be prepared agricultural maps, based on geological maps, and indicating the limits of the various agricultural regions: that government organize the rural police in cantons, so that each canton have its commissary and communal officers under its own direction that government, in its regulations for the plantation of the highway-borders, take into consideration the utility of employing_fruit-trees: that the bases of 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. PEARLY NAUTILUS-Professor Owen exhibited a specimen of the Pearly Nautilus (Nautilus Pompili. us) animal and shell, obtained by Captain Belcher, R. N., at Amboyna. He alluded to the fact of the specimen described by him in 1832 having been detached from the shell, which was destroyed in its capture, and recapitulated the analogies which had guided him in determining the position in which he had restored the soft parts to the shell, and figured them in situ, in his memoir. Objections had been made to this restoration by Mr. Gray, and by Doctors Grant and De Blainville, who were led by other analogies to believe that the upper or outer lip of the shell must have crossed the back of the head, instead of crossing the opposite side, or funnel, as represented by Mr. Owen. M. Valenciennes, who had subsequently received the soft parts of a nautilus, had adopted the position assigned to them by Mr. Owen. The present example, in which the animal had been restored to its shell in precisely the same position in which 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. 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 phewhich have the power of causing ordinary contracnomenon is reproduced by all stimulating bodies tion: 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, and the nerves of the thigh of a prepared frog be brought into contact with it, this thigh immediately experiences a contraction, as in the case cited above. -Literary Gaz. 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: "The relation between food and the end it has to fulfil in the economy of nature is not, to the present day, at all made clear, since organic chemistry has examined it by the quantitative method. A thin goose, weighing 4 lbs., increases to 5 lbs. in 36 hours, during which time it has had 24 lbs. of maize to fatten it, and then 3 lbs. of fat may be taken from it. It is evident that the fat cannot be ready formed in the food, because the latter does not contain 1-1000 of fat, or like matter." 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 experiment has shown that maize contains 9 per cent. of a yellow oil, 100 grammes of which were submitted to the Academy. Thus, in eating 24 lbs. of maize, a thin goose eats, in fact, 2 lbs. of fatty matter. And it is not therefore surprising that, as mentioned above, a goose furnishes 34 lbs. of fat, if what it already contained be taken into account. M. Dumas added: Hay contains very nearly 2 We shall show, he said, per cent. of fatty matter. that the fattening ox and the milch cow always furnish less fatty matter than their food contains. For the milch cow, however, the butter, within a very small ratio, represents the fatty matters of the food, at least so far as relates to the food we have as yet examined. In our opinion, agricultural facts and chemical analysis agree in proving that the milch cow constitutes the most exact and most economical means of extracting from pasturage the azotized and fatty matter they contain.-Ibid. ECLIPSE OF THE 8TH OF JULY.-M. Schumacher transmitted some new observations on the eclipse of the Sth 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, frem the five, but for reasons explained therein, saw the and red light; and did not perceive them until a mountains: he only saw two, of the most brilliant 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, I 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. 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 flintcovery was arrived at by following out the recent peculiar to the country.-Ibid. discoveries of Moeser, that bodies were constantly making impressions upon each other in absolute darkness, by the agency, as he considered, of latent light, but which Mr. Hunt thinks he has certain proof of being latent heat. The impression received 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. INVENTION FOR THE CONSUMPTION OF SMOKE-A furnace has recently been invented by Mr. Juckes for the perfect combustion of smoke. He has secured 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 A NEW COMET.-M. Laugier, of Paris, has disHe states that it has a reapplication of heat in the process of destructive covered a new comet. distillation when it is submitted to the action of trograde movement, and circulates in an inclined heat in a fire or furnace. To make this portion of orbit of 74 deg. 31 min., the ascendant node having the fuel available for the production of heat has for longitude 28 deg 31 min. The passage to the excited much inquiry and ingenious speculation; perihelium will take place in December by 328 deg. and, in this case, the results are obtained by the 22 min. of longitude, and at a distance from the mechanical arrangements of the furnace, which are sun expressed by 0,512. The comet continued apmade 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. when it was distant from it 4-10ths of the range of bars, forming an endless chain, which by the the terrestrial orbit. The brightness of this comet steam-engine (and the same may be done by an has, up to the present time, gone on increasing as occasional application of manual or mechanical to its nucleus, but there has been no sensible in. power) progresses with the fuel in an active state crease in its tail since the 2d instant; its length is of combustion under the boiler at the rate of about hardly 10; the width of the nebulosity has an anone inch each minute. The fuel at first introduced gle of about 5. M. Laugier has consulted the ar parts with the more volatile products, which are chives of astronomy, to ascertain whether the comet carried over those portions of the fuel where the of 1842 was not the return one already known. production of the heat is most perfect and intense, The work of Pingré mentions a comet which was and thus every part of it is made available to the seen in China in 1301, the elements of which, calsupport of combustion, which is rendered still more culated according to the observations of the Chinese, complete by the admission of atmospheric air accord in a remarkable manner with the results of through each of the bars, by which oxygen gas is the new calculation. It is, therefore, possible that admitted sufficient for the conversion of the whole M. Laugier has recorded the second passage of a of the incandescent materials into gaseous products. comet, whose period of travelling occupies more No fuel is wasted, as is apparent from the entire than 500 years.-Britannia. 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 October last; when M. Rafn, the secretary, and M. the consumption of the smaller particles, or of the Finn Magnusen, offered communications respecting 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. |