Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. I

Having so far satisfied himself as to the height of Atlantic waves in a gale of wind (the Professor's estimate must not be taken as the measurement of the highest known waves, but simply as that of a rough Atlantic sea), he directed his attention to minuter and more difficult observations. He determined to measure the period of time occupied by the regular waves in overtaking the ship, their width from crest to crest, and the rate of their traveling. The first point to be known was the speed of the ship; this he ascertained to be nine knots. His next object was to note her course in reference to the direction of the waves. He found that the true course of the vessel was east, and that the waves came from the west-northwest, so that they passed under the vessel at a considerable angle. The length of the ship was stated to be two hundred and twenty feet. Provided with this information the Professor renewed his observations. He proceeded to count the seconds the crest of a wave took to travel from stern to stem of the vessel; these he ascertained to be six. He then counted the time which intervened between the moment when one crest touched the stern of the vessel, and the next touched it, and he found the average interval to be sixteen seconds and a fraction. These results gave him at once the width between crest and crest. As the crest traveled two hundred and twenty feet (or the length of the vessel) in six seconds, and sixteen seconds elapsed before the next crest touched the stern, it was clear that the wave was nearly three times the length of the vessel; to write accurately, there was a distance of six hundred and five feet from crest to crest.

The Professor did not forget that the oblique course of the ship elongated her line over the waves; this elongation he estimated at forty-five feet, reducing the probable average distance between crest and crest to five hundred and fifty-nine feet.

Being quite satisfied with the result of this experiment, the hardy Professor, still balancing himself on his giddy height, to the wonder and amusement of the sailors, found that the calculations he had already made did not give him the actual velocity of the waves. A wave-crest certainly passed from stern to stem in six seconds, but then the ship was traveling in the same direction, at the rate of nine geographical miles per hour, or 15.2 feet per second; this rate the Professor added to the former measure, which gave 790.5 feet for the actual distance traversed by the wave in 16.5 seconds, being at the rate of 32.67 English miles per hour. This computation was afterward compared with calculations made from totally different data by Mr. Scott Russell, and found to be quite correct.

With these facts the Professor scrambled from the larboard paddle-box of the Hibernia. He had also made some observations on the forms of waves. When the wind blows steadily from one point, they are generally regular; but when it is high and gusty, and shifts from point to point, the sea is broken up, and the waves take a more conical shape, and assume fantastical crests. While the sea ran high, the Professor observed now and then a ridge of waves extending from about a quarter to a third of a mile in length, forming, as it were, a rampart of water. This ridge was sometimes straight, and sometimes bent as of a crescent form, with the central mass of water higher than the rest, and not unfrequently with two or three semi-elliptical mounds in diminishing series on either side of the highest peak.

When the wind had subsided, a few of the bolder passengers crawled upon deck in the oddest imaginable costumes. They had not much to encounter, for about a third part of the greater undulations averaged only twenty-four feet, from crest to hollow, in height. These higher waves could be seen and selected from the pigmy waves about them, at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the ship.

The Professor had been very unpopular on board while the stormy weather lasted, and the ladies had vowed that he was a sarcastic creature, who would have his little joke on the gravest calamities of life, but as the waves decreased in bulk, and the wind lulled, and the sun shone, and the men took off their oil-skin coats, and the cabin-windows were opened, the frowns of the fair voyagers wore off. Perfect good-will was general before the ship sighted Liverpool; and even the cook, as he prepared the last dinner for the passengers, was heard to declare (in confidence to one of the stokers) that, after all, there might be something worth knowing in the Professor's observations.

When the Professor landed at Liverpool, he would, on no account, suffer the carpet-bag, containing his calculations, to be taken out of his sight. Several inquisitive persons, however, made the best use of their own eyes, to ascertain the name of the extraordinary observer, and found it to be legibly inscribed with the well-known name of Scoresby.

That his investigations may be the more readily impressed on the reader's mind, we conclude with a summary of them. It would seem from Dr. Scoresby's intrepid investigations, that the highest waves of the Atlantic average in

HOW TO KILL CLEVER CHILDREN.[20 - From Mayhew's Treatise on "Popular Education," soon to be issued from the press of Messrs. Harper and Brothers.]

At any time in life, excessive and continued mental exertion is hurtful; but in infancy and early youth, when the structure of the brain is still immature and delicate, permanent injury is more easily produced by injudicious treatment than at any subsequent period. In this respect, the analogy is complete between the brain and the other parts of the body, as is exemplified in the injurious effects of premature exercise of the bones and muscles. Scrofulous and rickety children are the most usual sufferers in this way. They are generally remarkable for large heads, great precocity of understanding, and small, delicate bodies. But in such instances, the great size of the brain, and the acuteness of the mind, are the results of morbid growth, and even with the best management, the child passes the first years of its life constantly on the brink of active disease. Instead, however, of trying to repress its mental activity, as they should, the fond parents, misled by the promise of genius, too often excite it still further by unceasing cultivation and the never-failing stimulus of praise; and finding its progress, for a time, equal to their warmest wishes, they look forward with ecstasy to the day when its talents will break forth and shed a lustre on their name. But in exact proportion as the picture becomes brighter to their fancy, the probability of its becoming realized becomes less; for the brain, worn out by premature exertion, either becomes diseased or loses its tone, leaving the mental powers feeble and depressed for the remainder of life. The expected prodigy is thus, in the end, easily outstripped in the social race by many whose dull outset promised him an easy victory.

To him who takes for his guide the necessities of the constitution, it will be obvious that the modes of treatment commonly resorted to should in such cases be reversed; and that, instead of straining to the utmost the already irritable powers of the precocious child, leaving his dull competitors to ripen at leisure, a systematic attempt ought to be made, from early infancy, to rouse to action the languid faculties of the latter, while no pains should be spared to moderate and give tone to the activity of the former. But instead of this, the prematurely intelligent child is generally sent to school, and tasked with lessons at an unusually early age, while the healthy but more backward boy, who requires to be stimulated, is kept at home in idleness merely on account of his backwardness. A double error is here committed, and the consequences to the active-minded boy are not unfrequently the permanent loss both of health and of his envied superiority of intellect.

In speaking of children of this description, Dr. Brigham, in an excellent little work on the influence of mental excitement on health, remarks as follows: "Dangerous forms of scrofulous disease among children have repeatedly fallen under my observation, for which I could not account in any other way than by supposing that the brain had been excited at the expense of the other parts of the system, and at a time in life when nature is endeavoring to perfect all the organs of the body; and after the disease commenced, I have seen, with grief, the influence of the same cause in retarding or preventing recovery. I have seen several affecting and melancholy instances of children, five or six years of age, lingering a while with diseases from which those less gifted readily recover, and at last dying, notwithstanding the utmost efforts to restore them. During their sickness they constantly manifested a passion for books and mental excitement, and were admired for the maturity of their minds. The chance for the recovery of such precocious children is, in my opinion, small when attacked by disease; and several medical men have informed me that their own observations had led them to form the same opinion, and have remarked that, in two cases of sickness, if one of the patients was a child of superior and highly-cultivated mental powers, and the other one equally sick, but whose mind had not been excited by study, they should feel less confident of the recovery of the former than of the latter. This mental precocity results from an unnatural development of one organ of the body at the expense of the constitution."

There can be little doubt but that ignorance on the part of parents and teachers, is the principal cause that leads to the too early and excessive cultivation of the minds of children, and especially of such as are precocious and delicate. Hence the necessity of imparting instruction on this subject to both parents and teachers, and to all persons who are in any way charged with the care and education of the young. This necessity becomes the more imperative from the fact that the cupidity of authors and publishers has led to the preparation of "children's books," many of which are announced as purposely prepared "for children from two to three years old!" I might instance advertisements of "Infant Manuals" of botany, geometry, and astronomy!

In not a few isolated families, but in many neighborhoods, villages, and cities, in various parts of the country, children under three years of age are not only required to commit to memory many verses, texts of Scripture, and stories, but are frequently sent to school for six hours a day. Few children are kept back later than the age of four, unless they reside a great distance from school, and some not even then. At home, too, they are induced by all sorts of excitements to learn additional tasks, or peruse juvenile books and magazines, till the nervous system becomes enfeebled, and the health broken. "I have myself," says Dr. Brigham, "seen many children who are supposed to possess almost miraculous mental powers, experiencing these effects and sinking under them. Some of them died early, when but six or eight years of age, but manifested to the last a maturity of understanding, which only increased the agony of separation. Their minds, like some of the fairest flowers were "no sooner blown than blasted;" others have grown up to manhood, but with feeble bodies and disordered nervous system, which subjected them to hypochondriasis, dyspepsy, and all the Protean forms of nervous disease; others of the class of early prodigies exhibit in manhood but small mental powers, and are the mere passive instruments of those who in early life were accounted far their inferiors."

This hot-bed system of education is not confined to the United States, but is practiced less or more in all civilized countries. Dr. Combe, of Scotland, gives an account of one of these early prodigies, whose fate he witnessed. The circumstances were exactly such as those above described. The prematurely developed intellect was admired, and constantly stimulated by injudicious praise, and by daily exhibition to every visitor who chanced to call. Entertaining books were thrown in its way, reading by the fireside encouraged, play and exercise neglected, the diet allowed to be full and heating, and the appetite pampered by every delicacy. The results were the speedy deterioration of a weak constitution, a high degree of nervous sensibility, deranged digestion, disordered bowels, defective nutrition, and, lastly, death, at the very time when the interest excited by the mental precocity was at its height.

Such, however, is the ignorance of the majority of parents and teachers on all physiological subjects, that when one of these infant prodigies dies from erroneous treatment, it is not unusual to publish a memoir of his life, that other parents and teachers may see by what means such transcendent qualities were called forth. Dr. Brigham refers to a memoir of this kind, in which the history of a child, aged four years and eleven months, is narrated as approved by "several judicious persons, ministers and others, all of whom united in the request that it might be published, and all agreed in the opinion that a knowledge of the manner in which the child was treated, together with the results, would be profitable to both parents and children, and a benefit to the cause of education." This infant philosopher was "taught hymns before he could speak plainly;" "reasoned with," and constantly instructed until his last illness, which, "without any assignable cause," put on a violent and unexpected form, and carried him off!

As a warning to others not to force education too soon or too fast, this case may be truly profitable to both parents and children, and a benefit to the cause of education; but as an example to be followed, it assuredly can not be too strongly or too loudly condemned.

[From the Dublin University Magazine.]

MAURICE TIERNAY, THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE

(Continued from Page 639.)

CHAPTER XVI.

"AN OLD GENERAL OF THE IRISH BRIGADE."

In obedience to an order which arrived at Saumur one morning in the July of 1798, I was summoned before the commandant of the school, when the following brief colloquy ensued:

"Maurice Tiernay," said he, reading from the record of the school, "why are you called l'Irlandais?"

"I am Irish by descent, sir."

"Ha! by descent. Your father was then an Emigré?"

"No, sir – my great grandfather."

"Parbleu! that is going very far back. Are you aware of the causes which induced him to leave his native country?"

"They were connected with political troubles, I've heard, sir. He took part against the English, my father told me, and was obliged to make his escape to save his life."

"You then hate the English, Maurice?"

"My grandfather certainly did not love them, sir."

"Nor can you, boy, ever forgive their having exiled your family from country and home: every man of honor retains the memory of such injuries."

"I can scarcely deem that an injury, sir, which has made me a French citizen," said I, proudly.

"True, boy – you say what is perfectly true and just; any sacrifice of fortune or patrimony is cheap at such a price; still you have suffered a wrong – a deep and irreparable wrong – and as a Frenchman you are ready to avenge it."

Although I had no very precise notion, either as to the extent of the hardships done me, nor in what way I was to demand the reparation, I gave the assent he seemed to expect.

"You are well acquainted with the language, I believe?" continued he.

"I can read and speak English tolerably well, sir."

"But I speak of Irish, boy – of the language which is spoken by your fellow-countrymen," said he, rebukingly.

"I have always heard, sir, that this has fallen into disuse, and is little known, save among the peasantry in a few secluded districts."

He seemed impatient as I said this, and referred once more to the paper before him, from whose minutes he appeared to have been speaking.

"You must be in error, boy. I find here that the nation is devotedly attached to its traditions and its literature, and feels no injury deeper than the insulting substitution of a foreign tongue for their own noble language."

"Of myself I know nothing, sir; the little I have learned was acquired when a mere child."

"Ah, then you probably forget, or may never have heard the fact; but it is as I tell you. This, which I hold here, is the report of a highly-distinguished and most influential personage, who lays great stress upon the circumstance. I am sorry, Tiernay, very sorry, that you are unacquainted with the language."

He continued for some minutes to brood over this disappointment, and, at last, returned to the paper before him.

"The geography of the country – what knowledge have you on that subject?"

"No more, sir, than I may possess of other countries, and merely learned from maps."

"Bad again," muttered he to himself. "Madyett calls these 'essentials;' but we shall see." Then addressing me, he said, "Tiernay, the object of my present interrogatory is to inform you that the Directory is about to send an expedition to Ireland to assist in the liberation of that enslaved people. It has been suggested that young officers and soldiers of Irish descent might render peculiar service to the cause, and I have selected you for an opportunity which will convert those worsted epaulets into bullion."

This, at least, was intelligible news, and now I began to listen with more attention.

"There is a report," said he, laying down before me a very capacious manuscript, "which you will carefully peruse. Here are the latest pamphlets setting forth the state of public opinion in Ireland; and here are various maps of the coast, the harbors, and the strongholds of that country, with all of which you may employ yourself advantageously; and if, on considering the subject, you feel disposed to volunteer – for as a volunteer only could your services be accepted – I will willingly support your request by all the influence in my power."

"I am ready to do so at once, sir," said I, eagerly; "I have no need to know any more than you have told me."