But what's thy life, O Hafez! say? Where boundless love and pleasure reign! The beautiful little poem that follows, is copied from the Edinburgh Evening Courant of November 26. 1792. I A SONG FOR SEVENTY. TOLD you Mary, told you true, If love to favour had a claim, For wealth I had not to bestow; O Mary, on thy lovely neck The diamond fhone with sweeten'd glance, And graceful was the silken robe That mark'd thy motions in the dance; Thy birth entitled thee to join ; But pomp, and wealth, and friends, you left, 'Tis long now, Mary, since we met? And yet, my love, you're wondrous fair; While accents cheerful grac'd your tongue, And accents that adorn'd thee young; And bade me hope, and bade me love? This alludes to the oriental custom of throwing away handfuls of a smal coin, called, among other names, nisar, to the populace, at public entertainments, and upon other occasions of festivity, as marriage, procefsion, and the like; the eager multitude catch the falling gift in cloths stretched on sticks for the purpose. BEND from thy throne, fair emprefs of the night! O! if in all thy course, divinely bright, Thou see'st one wretch in felon malice mean, Or one fell murd'rer burst the bands of night, Dart through his soul, severely bright, a ray Whose living splendor fhall his hand arrest; And to his guilty conscious spirit say, "Though thou may'st live unknown to law's behest, "And hide thy deeds from mortals and the day, "Yet conscience' worm shall rankle in thy breast.> ARCTIC NEWS. J Guthrie The Siberian ruby. PROFFESSOR HERMAN, a German employed by government in the mineral department of Siberia, has lately discovered in that country a most curious and beautiful species of ruby-coloured shorl, which from its great hardness takes a fine polish, and is named, with some appearance of truth, the Siberian ruby. It is certainly valuable and unique; more especially as the small quantity found by the professor is all already disposed of for rings, earings, &c. and no more as yet discovered after much diligence. It is supposed by him to have been pent up in the fifsure of a granite rock, decomposed by time, and forming the bed where he found it, a mass of felt-spath, quartz, mica, &c. all reduced to sand or gravel, the ordinary component parts of that species of rock, which he supposed to have once stood there. This ingenious supposition was supported by several arguments which we have no room for, and by the nature of this ridge of mountains running in the line where this uby fhorl lay. I take no notice here of the singular crystalization and configuration of this gem; as the intention of these short notices is rather to raise than satisfy curiosity, and to call the attention of mineralogic dillettanti to the curious productions of the European Peru, which Siberia cer-. tainly is in some measure degrée was that interesting d might become.so in a great file country properly peopled, and sufficiently explored and cultivated, which cannot be done without a much greater proportion of inhabitants. Nothing can be more interesting to the philosophic naturalist, than the changes that curious part of the globe has undergone; where by little and little almost every curiosity, metal, and gem, of the East is found, even to the remains of the elephant and rhinoceros, in such immense quantity, as to contrast singularly with its present climate. These remarks apply to both the European and Asiatic parts of it. General diffusion of silver. I have lately received a very curious communication from a friend in Bernaul, near the silver mines of Kolivan, on the borders of China. It is well known that the experiments of the great Swedish mineralogist, Bergman, led him to conclude, that, next to iron, gold was the metal most universally diffused through matter in general. General Millar, governor of the district of Kolivan, by a similar chemical research, has found a simular diffusion of silver in all the earths and stones of his government, which have fallen under his examination. Even porphyry contains a minute portion, so that it seems only the wide and minute diffusion of the precious metals, and the expence of extracting them, which makes them so rare, rather than their scarcity in the mass of the globe. Singular crystalization of silver. I fhall now finish my present budget of Arctic news with an article interesting at least to your chemical readers, received from the same gentleman. A Mr Smyde, employed in assaying the minerals at Kolivan, had occasion, in the course of his businefs, to add to a solution of silver in the nitrous acid, a certain portion of zinc; which mixture was afterwards set aside, and forgot for upwards of a year, when, to the great surprise of that gentleman, he found in it a beautiful crystalization of silver, similar to what is sometimes found naturally in the bowels of the earth, and which the origin of has so much puzzled mineralogists. Much attracted by this unexpected phenomenon, he long endeavoured to imitate it, without effect; however, at length my friend informs me, he has found out the circumstances on which that configuration depends; and can now produce it at pleasure. I fhall pro-. bably be informed in the course of next winter of the rationale of the procefs, and fhall communicate it through the medium of the Bee. My ingenious friend offers to me as a query, whether admixture of zinc, which has so singular an effect on silver, may not be instrumental in producing the beautiful crystalizations of other metals in a native state, which Siberia so often exhibits; particularly our beautiful crystalized arborization of native copper, which resembles burnished gold more than a base metal? Thus ends my budget on the present occasion; and I beg those who may wish to see a greater variety of topics from this country, to recollect, that the subjects treated in general, are the most proper and prudent in the situation of Imperial Corps of Nobles and Cadets. S ARCTICUS. IN SIR, ON CHARACTERISTIC MISSIVE LETTERS, &c. La B. To the Editor of the Bee. my Hints to the Learned, and Gleanings of Biography, which have frequently found a place in your respectable miscellany, I have had occasion to fhow the importance. of attending to the characteristic correspondence of eminent persons; and have indicated many of the repositories in Europe, where such interesting documents are easily accesible. Many isolated papers of this kind are lost in the cabinets of private families, that might be produced without any impropriety, and throw a blaze of light upon the |