PRIDE, AND ITS EFFECTS. PRIDE is defined by a celebrated moralist, to be "inordinate and unreasonable self-esteem." Now where a man thinks too highly of himself, it is in the course of nature that he should think too lowly of others; and it may be laid down as a general axiom, that the concomitants of pride are scorn and insolence towards one's fellow-creatures, and impiety and irreverence towards God. "The proud have had me greatly in derision," was the remark of the Psalmist; and he laid his finger precisely on that spring where irreligion has its origin, when he said, "the wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts." 99 These are the distinguishing marks of pride, where it is permitted to get dominion over the heart, and to influence the actions. However it be nourished, and whatever be the shape it is invested with, its effects are uniformly hateful and pestilential; uniformly subversive of piety towards God and charity towards man, as well as injurious to the happiness of him who is actuated by it. In the pride of exalted birth, Absalom, the son of David, broke the ties of religion, allegiance and the filial duty, and rebelled against his father, whom the Lord had anointed king over Israel, and was violently cut off in the flower of his age. In the pride of arbitrary power, Jezebel usurped the vineyard of Naboth by perjury and murder, and her carcass was eaten by dogs. In the pride of majesty, the heart of Nebuchadnezzar was lifted up and his mind hardened to forget his almighty Benefactor, and he was driven from men, and his dwelling was with the beasts of the field. In the pride of despotic authority, Pharaoh refused to let the people of Israel go to serve the Lord, and the Lord hardened his heart for a punishment, because he had himself already hardened it by his sin. In the pride of victory, Saul rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord rejected him from being king over Israel. In the pride of royal favour, the insatiable ambition of Haman would not rest, so long as he saw Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate, until he himself was hanged on the gallows that he had prepared for the object of his malice. In the pride of popular applause, Herod permitted himself to be saluted with divine honours, and immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost. In the pride of female beauty and accomplishments, the heart of Herodias's daughter was hardened into the commission of an act of wanton barbarity, in demanding the head of John the Baptist; and the crime was recompensed by the degradation and banishment of her partners in guilt, if not by her own untimely destruction. In the pride of learning, the Greeks esteemed the preaching of Christ crucified to be foolishness, and were judicially given over by God to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient. In the pride of a fancied equality, and consequent disobedience to their rulers, Korah and his company rebelled against Moses and Aaron, and went down alive into the pit, because they had provoked the Lord. Of such a quality as this, so selfish and malignant, so contentious and overbearing, so impatient of control, so resolute in the attainment of its end, and so unprincipled in the adoption of means, of a quality so pernicious to all "the fruits of the Spirit," and so signally branded by the displeasure of God; surely of such a quality it may well and safely be affirmed, that pride is not of the Father, but is of the world. Such being the nature, the tendency, and the consequences of Pride, these considerations might be supposed capable of suppressing it, even if the matter on which it feeds were much more worthy of encouraging extravagant self-esteem than it really is; but, as it hath been well observed,— ....Pride hath no other glass To show itself but pride; otherwise the mirror of reason and common sense, no less than the mirror of revelation, could hardly fail of exposing its folly and deformity. A TREASURE MISPLACED.-To set the heart on the creature is set a diamond in lead; or to lock coals in a cabinet, and throw jewels into a cellar. -Bishop Reynolds. CLEPSYDRÆ, or WATER-CLOCKS. BEFORE the invention of clocks, the only instruments used for the measurement of time were the sun-dial and the water-clock; the sun-dial could only be employed in the day-time, but the water-clock supplied its place during the night. The invention of both these instruments is attributed to the Egyptians; the sun-dial is supposed to have been the first invented. The peculiar method in which this ancient people divided their time into twelve hours, from sunrise to sunset, and twelve hours from sunset to sunrise, rendered the construction of an accurate clepsydra a matter of some difficulty, since it was necessary that the instrument should each day, according to the season of the year, indicate hours of a different length. The modern method of dividing the day and night into twenty-four equal portions, has removed much of the difficulty in the construction of a waterclock. Although the invention of clocks and watches has thrown these instruments into disuse, they might still be made effective measurers of time, if the resources of modern science were directed to their improvement. In noticing several of these curious instruments, we shall confine ourselves to the description of those whose construction is most simple, and least likely to give an incorrect result; the simplest mode of measuring time by the means of water is the following. Let a glass vessel A, say twelve or fourteen inches in length, be suspended in an iron frame, attached to a tin vessel B; at the bottom of the glass vessel at c is a small hole, through which water, if placed in the vessel itself, will gradually fall in drops; the size of this hole must be so managed, as to cause the vessel to be emptied in rather more than twelve hours: the descent of the water in the glass vessel will point out the time that has elapsed since it was filled, and consequently indicates the time of day; but as, when the vessel is full, the water escapes more rapidly than afterwards, the interval between the first and second hour will be longer than that between the second and third, and this last than that between the third and fourth, and so on. The relative distances of each of the hour-marks may be marked on the side of the glass, by noting the place occupied by the surface of the water during twelve successive hours, taking the time from a well-regulated clock. The same end may be attained by calculation, but to render the method intelligible would require too much space. To be continued. INSCRIPTION.-The following is a translation of ground in France. a verse placed over the entrance to a buryingThese dead once liv'd, and thou who liv'st shalt die; Thou heed'st it not; yet that dread day draws nigh. We shall take an early opportunity of laying before our readers a short description of the ancient ruins near Casal Crendi, together with a general plan of the same so far as they have been excavated. Quarterly Subscriptions at 1s. and communications received at No. 97 Str. Forni. The 'Chorus of Singers,' otherwise more explicitly described as the 'Rehearsal of the Oratorio of Judith,' was published in 1734, and employed in the first instance as a ticket for the sale of 'Modern Midnight Conversation.' The oratorio to which it refers was written by William Huggins, Esq., and set to music by William de Fesch, who was some time chapel-master of the cathedral at Antwerp, and was, in Hogarth's time, a respectable professor of the violin, and, during several seasons, a leader of the band at Mary-le-bone Gardens. The 'Oratorio of Judith' was performed with scenes and decoration, but met with no success, and was therefore published in some sort as an appeal from the decision of the audience. It however met with an indifferent reception from the public at large, notwithstanding it was decorated with a frontispiece engraved by Vandegucht, from a design furnished by Hogarth. In the group before us, the line on the music-book 'The world shall bow before the Assyrian throne,' is taken from the oratorio, and was probably selected for the sake of conveying a satirical allusion to the ill success which had attended the performance. Mr. Nichols, in his statement of the variations of Hogarth's plates, says there is a mezzotinto of this plate entitled 'The Musical Group,' in which the title given on the top of the book is 'An Ode for the New Year's Day;' and the line on the music book is,— 'Cecilian sisters, tuneful nine.' "To paint a sound," says Mr. Ireland, "is impossible; but, as far as art can go towards it, Mr. Hogarth has gone in this print. The tenor, treble, and bass of these earpiercing choristers are so decisively discriminated that we all hear them." friend, Mr. Tothall, a woollen-draper, who lived in Tavistock Court. The name of the performer on his right hand, "Whose growling bass Would drown the clarion of the braying ass,' he could not learn, and thinks it probable that, with the above exception, the heads are not intended as particular portraits, but as a general representation of the distortions into which the public singers are sometimes in the habit of throwing their features, either from the difficulty of producing particular notes, or mere affectation. Mr. Charles Lamb observes on this plate: "I can see nothing dangerous' in the contemplation of such scenes as this, or twenty other pleasant prints which come crowding in upon my recollection, in which the restless activities, the diversified bents, and humours, the blameless peculiarities of men, as they deserve to be called, rather than their 'vices and follies,' are held up in a laughable point of view. All laughter is not of a dangerous or soul-hardening tendency. There is the petrifying sneer of a demon, which excludes and kills love, and there is the cordial laughter of a man which implies and cherishes it. What heart was ever made the worse by joining in a hearty laugh at the simplicities of Sir Hugh Evans or Parson Adams where a sense of the ridiculous mutually kindles and is kindled by a perception of the amiable? That tumultuous harmony of singers who are roaring Out the words 'The world shall bow to the Assyrian throne,' from the opera of 'Judith,' in the third plate of the series, called 'Four. Groups of Heads;' which the quick eye of Hogarth must have struck off in the very infancy of the rage for sacred oratorios in this country, while 'Music yet was young;' when we have done smiling at the deafening distortions which these tearers of devotion to rags and tatters, these takers of heaven by storm, in their boisterous mimicry of the occupation of angels, are making→ what unkindly impression is left behind, or what more of harsh or contemptuous feel "The principal figure," continues the same writer, "whose head, hands, and feet are in equal agitation, has very properly tied on his spectacles; it would have been prudent to have tied on his periwig also, for, by the energy of his action, he has shaken it from his head, and, absorbed in his eager attention to true time, is totally un-ing, than when we quietly leave Uncle Toby conscious of its loss." Mr. Ireland informs us that the little figure in the left corner is a likeness of Hogarth's and Mr. Shandy riding their hobby-horses about the room? ANECDOTES OF MOZART AND HAYDN. Notwithstanding the indefatigable ardour with which Mozart, used to write at those times when his mind was strongly engaged in his work, at other times he would give himself up to indolence, and often procrastinated the completion of a piece till the moment of performance was at hand. On such occasions he got out of the scrape, sometimes by working with surprising rapidity, and at the other times by trusting to his memory, and playing a piece without having written it down. The celebrated overture to Don Giovanni was entirely written during the night previous to the first performance of the opera, after he had spent the day in the fatiguing occupation of conducting the general rehearsal. He began his task about eleven o'clock at night, . having, got his wife to make him some punch, and to sit by him to keep him awake. He wrote while she ransacked her memory for the fairy tales of her youth, and all the humorous and amusing stories she could think of. As long as she kept him laughing till the tears ran down his cheeks he got on rapidly, but if she was silent for a moment, he dropped asleep. Seeing at last that he could hold no longer, she persuaded him to lie down for a couple of hours. At five in the morning she awoke him, and at seven, when the copyist appeared, the score was completed. There was barely time to write out the necessary number of parts, and the overture was performed without any rehearsal,-a thing which, in those days, could have been done nowhere but in Germany. A celebrated female performer on the violin being in Vienna in the year 1786, solicited Mozart to compose a piece for their joint performance at her concert. With his characteristic good-nature he agreed to do so, and accordingly composed and arranged, in his mind, his well known sonata for the piano-forte and violin, in B flat, esteemed one of the finest of his works of this class. But the day of the concert approached and the lady, full of anxiety, endeavoured, without effect, to get him to commit it to paper; it was only the evening before the concert that he sent her the violin part. The concert was attended by the court, and all the rank and fashion of Vienna. The sonata began; the performance of raptures. But there was one personage in both artists was perfect, and the audience in the room whose enjoyment exceeded that of all the rest of the audience-it was the Emperor Joseph the Second, who, in his box over the heads of the performers, was able, by means of his opera glass to see that Mozart had nothing before him but a sheet of blank paper. At the end of the piece, the emperor beckoned Mozart to his box and said to him, in a half-whisper, "So, Mozart, you have once more trusted to chance."-"Yes, Sire," answered the composer, with a smile of mingled triumph and the piece along with the lady, this feat would confusion. Had he previously played over not have been so wonderful, even though he had not written down the piano-forte part but he had never once heard it along with the violin.-Musical History Vol. II. WHEN Haydn felt himself in a disposition to write a symphony, he thought it necessary to have his hair put in the same nice order as if he were going out, and dressed himself with a degree of magnificence. Frederick II. had sent him a diamond ring, and Haydn confessed that often, when he sat down to his piano, if he had forgotten to put on his ring, he could not summon a single idea. The paper on which he composed must be the finest and whitest possible, and he wrote with so much neatness and care, that the best copyist could not have surpassed him in the regularity and clearness of his characters. It is true, that his notes had such little heads and slender tails, that he used, very properly, to call them his flies' legs. After these mechanical precautions, Haydn commenced his work by noting down his principal idea, his theme, and choosing the keys through which he wished to make it pass. His exquisite feeling gave him a perfect knowledge of the greater or less degree of effect which one cord produces in succeeding another; and he afterwards imagined a little romance, which might furnish him with musical sentiments and colours. |