The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 566, September 15, 1832

On the frail altar of a mortal head
Gifts of infinity!

Thou must be still a trembler, fearful Love!
Danger seems gathering from beneath, above,
Still round thy precious things;—
Thy stately Pine-tree, or thy gracious Rose,
In their sweet shade can yield thee no repose,
Here, where the blight hath wings.

And, as a flower with some fine sense imbued
To shrink before the wind's vicissitude,
So in thy prescient breast
Are lyre-strings quivering with prophetic thrill
To the low footstep of each coming ill;—
Oh! canst Thou dream of rest?

Bear up thy dream! thou Mighty and thou Weak
Heart, strong as Death, yet as a reed to break,
As a flame, tempest swayed!
He that sits calm on High is yet the source
Whence thy Soul's current hath its troubled course,
He that great Deep hath made!

Will He not pity?—He, whose searching eye
Reads all the secrets of thine agony?—
Oh! pray to be forgiven
Thy fond idolatry, thy blind excess,
And seek with Him that Bower of Blessedness—
Love! thy sole Home is Heaven!

    New Monthly Magazine.

ORIENTAL SMOKING

In India a hookah, in Persia a nargilly, in Egypt a sheesha, in Turkey a chibouque, in Germany a meerschaum, in Holland a pipe, in Spain a cigar—I have tried them all. The art of smoking is carried by the Orientals to perfection. Considering the contemptuous suspicion with which the Ottomans ever regard novelty, I have sometimes been tempted to believe that the eastern nations must have been acquainted with tobacco before the discovery of Raleigh introduced it to the occident; but a passage I fell upon in old Sandys intimates the reverse. That famous traveller complains of the badness of the tobacco in the Levant, which, he says, is occasioned by Turkey being supplied only with the dregs of the European markets. Yet the choicest tobacco in the world now grows upon the coasts of Syria.

What did they do in the East before they smoked? From the many-robed Pacha, with his amber-mouthed and jewelled chibouque, longer than a lancer's spear, to the Arab clothed only in a blue rag, and puffing through a short piece of hollowed date-wood, there is, from Stamboul to Grand Cairo, only one source of physical solace. If you pay a visit in the East, a pipe is brought to you with the same regularity that a servant in England places you a seat. The procession of the pipe, in great houses, is striking: slaves in showy dresses advancing in order, with the lighted chibouques to their mouths waving them to and fro; others bearing vases of many-coloured sherbets, and surrounding a superior domestic, who carries the strong and burning coffee in small cups of porcelain supported in frames of silver fillagree, all placed upon a gorgeous waiter covered with a mantle of white satin, stiff and shining with golden embroidery.

In public audiences all this is an affair of form. "The honour of the pipe" proves the consideration awarded to you. You touch it with your lips, return it, sip a half-filled cup of coffee, rise, and retire. The next day a swarm of household functionaries call upon you for their fees. But in private visits, the luxury of the pipe is more appreciated. A host prides himself upon the number and beauty of his chibouques, the size and clearness of the amber mouth-piece, rich and spotless as a ripe Syrian lemon, the rare flavour of his tobaccos, the frequency of his coffee offerings, and the delicate dexterity with which the rose water is blended with the fruity sherbets. In summer, too, the chibouque of cherry-wood, brought from the Balkan, is exchanged for the lighter jessamine tube of Damascus or Aleppo, covered with fawn-coloured silk and fringed with silver.

The hills of Laodicea celebrated by Strabo for their wines, now produce, under the name of Latakia, the choicest tobacco in the world. Unfortunately this delicious product will not bear a voyage, and loses its flavour even in the markets of Alexandria. Latakia may be compared to Chateau Margaux; Gibel, the product of a neighbouring range of hills, similar, although stronger in flavour, is a rich Port, and will occasionally reach England without injury. This is the favourite tobacco of Mehemet Ali, the Pacha of Egypt. No one understands the art of smoking better than his Highness. His richly carved silver sheesha borne by a glossy Nubian eunuch, in a scarlet and golden dress, was a picture for Stephanoff. The Chibouquejee of the Viceroy never took less than five minutes in filling the Viceregal pipe. The skilful votary is well aware how much the pleasure of the practice depends upon the skill with which the bowl is filled. For myself, notwithstanding the high authority of the Pacha, I give the preference to Beirout, a tobacco from the ancient Berytus, lower down on the coast, and which reminded me always of Burgundy. It sparkles when it burns, emitting a bright blue flame. All these tobaccos are of a very dark colour.

In Turkey there is one very fine tobacco, which comes from Salonichi, in ancient Thrace. It is of a light yellow colour, and may be compared to very good Madeira. These are the choicest tobaccos in the world. The finest Kanaster has a poor, flat taste after them.

The sheesha nearly resembles the hookah. In both a composition is inhaled, instead of the genuine weed. The nargilly is also used with the serpent, but the tube is of glass. In all three, you inhale through rose-water.

The scientific votary after due experience, will prefer the Turkish chibouque. He should possess many, never use the same for two days running, change his bowl with each pipe-full, and let the chibouque be cleaned every day, and thoroughly washed with orange flower water. All this requires great attention, and the paucity and cost of service in Europe will ever prevent any one but a man of large fortune from smoking in the Oriental fashion with perfect satisfaction to himself.—New Monthly Magazine.

NOTES OF A READER

BUILDING A SCHOOL IN THE HIGH ALPS

[We find the following "labour of love" recorded by the Rev. W.S. Gilly, in his Life of Felix Neff, Pastor of the French Protestants in these cheerless regions. Its philanthropy has few parallels in the proud folio of history, and will not be lessened in comparison with any record of human excellence within our memory.]

It was among the grandest and sternest features of mountain scenery, that Neff not only found food for his own religious contemplations, and felt that his whole soul was filled with the majesty of the ever present God, but here also he discovered, that religious impressions were more readily received and retained more deeply than elsewhere by others. In this rugged field of rock and ice, the Alpine summit, and its glittering pinnacles, the eternal snows and glaciers, the appalling clefts and abysses, the mighty cataract, the rushing waters, the frequent perils of avalanches and of tumbling rocks, the total absence of every soft feature of nature, were always reading an impressive lesson, and illustrating the littleness of man, and the greatness of the Almighty.

The happy result of his experiments, made the pastor feel anxious to have a more convenient place for his scholastic exertions than a dark and dirty stable; and here again the characteristic and never-failing energies of his mind were fully displayed. The same hand which had been employed in regulating the interior arrangements of a church, in constructing aqueducts and canals of irrigation, and in the husbandman's work of sowing and planting, was now turned to the labour of building a school-room. He persuaded each family in Dormilleuse to furnish a man, who should consent to work under his directions, and having first marked out the spot with line and plummet, and levelled the ground, he marched at the head of his company to the torrent, and selected stones fit for the building. The pastor placed one of the heaviest upon his own shoulders—the others did the same, and away they went with their burthens, toiling up the steep acclivity, till they reached the site of the proposed building. This labour was continued until the materials were all ready at hand; the walls then began to rise, and in one week from the first commencement, the exterior masonry work was completed, and the roof was put upon the room. The windows, chimney, door, tables, and seats, were not long before they also were finished. A convenient stove added its accommodation to the apartment, and Dormeilleuse, for the first time probably in its history, saw a public school-room erected, and the process of instruction conducted with all possible regularity and comfort.

I had the satisfaction of visiting and inspecting this monument of Neff's judicious exertions for his dear Dormilleusians—but it was a melancholy pleasure. The shape, the dimensions, the materials of the room, the chair on which he sat, the floor which had been laid in part by his own hands, the window-frame and desks, at which he had worked with cheerful alacrity, were all objects of intense interest, and I gazed on these relics of "the Apostle of the Alps," with feelings little short of veneration. It was here that he sacrificed his life. The severe winters of 1826-7, and the unremitted attention which he paid to his duties, more especially to those of his school-room, were his death-blow.

[Neff then relates some preliminary arrangements.]

Dormilleuse was the spot which I chose for my scene of action, on account of its seclusion, and because its whole population is Protestant, and a local habitation was already provided here for the purpose. I reckoned at first that I should have about a dozen élèves; but finding that they were rapidly offering themselves, and would probably amount to double that number, at the least, I thought it right to engage an assistant, not only that I might be at liberty to go and look after my other churches and villages, but that I might not be exposed to any molestation, for in France nobody can lawfully exercise the office of a schoolmaster without a license, and this cannot be granted either to a foreigner or a pastor. For these reasons I applied to Ferdinand Martin, who was then pursuing his studies at Mens, to qualify himself for the institution of M. Olivier, in Paris. It was a great sacrifice on his part to interrupt his studies, and to lose the opportunity of an early admission to the institution; nor was it a small matter to ask him to come and take up his residence at the worst season of the year, in the midst of the ice and frightful rocks of Dormilleuse. But he was sensible of the importance of the work, and, without any hesitation, he joined our party at the beginning of November. The short space of time which we had before us, rendered every moment precious. We divided the day into three parts. The first was from sunrise to eleven o'clock, when we breakfasted. The second from noon to sunset, when we supped. The third from supper till ten or eleven o'clock at night, making in all fourteen or fifteen hours of study in the twenty-four. We devoted much of this time to lessons in reading, which the wretched manner in which they had been taught, their detestable accent, and strange tone of voice, rendered a most necessary, but tiresome duty. The grammar, too, of which not one of them had the least idea, occupied much of our time. People who have been brought up in towns, can have no conception of the difficulty which mountaineers and rustics, whose ideas are confined to those objects only to which they have been familiarized, find in learning this branch of science. There is scarcely any way of conveying the meaning of it to them. All the usual terms and definitions, and the means which are commonly employed in schools, are utterly unintelligible here. But the curious and novel devices which must be employed, have this advantage,—that they exercise their understanding, and help to form their judgment. Dictation was one of the methods to which I had recourse: without it they would have made no progress in grammar and orthography; but they wrote so miserably and slowly, that this consumed a great portion of valuable time. Observing that they were ignorant of the signification of a great number of French words, of constant use and recurrence, I made a selection from the vocabulary, and I set them to write down in little copy-books,[14 - They have no slates in this country—nor in the valleys of Piemont.—Two benevolent benefactors to the Protestant cause in Italy, who wished to confer a benefit upon the schools of Piemont, have enabled me to supply the Vaudois schools with this useful and economical article.] words which were in most frequent use; but the explanations contained in the dictionary were not enough, and I was obliged to rack my brain for new and brief definitions which they could understand, and to make them transcribe these. Arithmetic was another branch of knowledge which required many a weary hour. Geography was considered a matter of recreation after dinner: and they pored over the maps with a feeling of delight and amusement, which was quite new to them. I also busied myself in giving them some notions of the sphere, and of the form and motion of the earth; of the seasons and the climates, and of the heavenly bodies. Every thing of this sort was as perfectly novel to them, as it would have been to the islanders of Otaheite; and even the elementary books, which are usually put into the hands of children, were at first as unintelligible as the most abstruse treatises on mathematics. I was consequently forced to use the simplest, and plainest modes of demonstration; but these amused and instructed them at the same time. A ball made of the box tree, with a hole through it, and moving on an axle, and on which I had traced the principal circles; some large potatoes hollowed out; a candle, and sometimes the skulls of my scholars, served for the instruments, by which I illustrated the movement of the heavenly bodies, and of the earth itself. Proceeding from one step to another, I pointed out the situation of different countries on the chart of the world, and in seperate maps, and took pains to give some slight idea, as we went on, of the characteristics, religion, customs, and history of each nation. These details fixed topics of moment in their recollection. Up to this time I had been astonished by the little interest they took, Christian-minded as they were, in the subject of Christian missions, but, when they began to have some idea of geography, I discovered, that their former ignorance of this science, and of the very existence of many foreign nations in distant quarters of the globe, was the cause of such indifference. But as soon as they began to learn who the people are, who require to have the Gospel preached to them, and in what part of the globe they dwell, they felt the same concern for the circulation of the Gospel that other Christians entertained. These new acquirements, in fact, enlarged their spirit, made new creatures of them, and seemed to triple their very existence.

In the end, I advanced so far as to give some lectures in geometry, and this too produced a happy moral developement.

Lessons in music formed part of our evening employment, and those being, like geography, a sort of amusement, they were regularly succeeded by grave and edifying reading, and by such reflections as I took care to suggest for their improvement.

Most of the young adults of the village were present at such lessons, as were within the reach of their comprehension, and as the children had a separate instructor, the young women and girls of Dormilleuse, who were growing up to womanhood, were now the only persons for whom a system of instruction was unprovided. But these stood in as great need of it as the others, and more particularly as most of them were now manifesting Christian dispositions. I therefore proposed that they should assemble of an evening in the room, which the children occupied during the day, and I engaged some of my students to give them lessons in reading and writing. We soon had twenty young women from fifteen to twenty-five years of age in attendance, of whom two or three only had any notion of writing, and not half of them could read a book of any difficulty. While Ferdinand Martin was practising the rest of my students in music, I myself and two of the most advanced, by turns, were employed in teaching these young women, so that the whole routine of instruction went on regularly, and I was thus able to exercise the future schoolmasters in their destined profession, and both to observe their method of teaching, and to improve it. I thus superintended teachers and scholars at the same time.

It is quite impossible for those who have not seen the country, to appreciate the devotedness to the Christian cause, which could induce Neff to entertain even the thought of making the dreary and savage Dormilleuse his own head quarters from November to April, and of persuading others to be the companions of his dismal sojournment there. I learn from a memorandum in his Journal, that the severity of that, winter commenced early. "We have been in snow and ice since the first of November, on this steep and rugged spot, whose aspect is more terrible and severe than any thing can be supposed to be in France." He himself was the native of a delightful soil and climate, and even some of the mountaineers, whom he drew to that stern spot, were inhabitants of a far less repulsive district, but had yet made it their custom to seek a milder region than their own, during the inclemency of an Alpine winter. To secure attendance and application, when once his students were embarked in their undertaking, he selected this rock, where neither amusement, nor other occupations, nor the possibility of frequent egress or regress, could tempt them to interrupt their studies:—and he had influence enough to induce them to commit themselves to a five months' rigid confinement within a prison-house, as it were, walled up with ice and snow.

It was a long probation of hardship. Their fare was in strict accordance with the rest of their situation. It consisted of a store of salted meat, and rye bread, which had been baked in autumn, and when they came to use it, was so hard, that it required to be chopped up with hatchets, and to be moistened with hot water. Meal and flour will not keep in this mountain atmosphere, but would become mouldy,—they are, therefore, obliged to bake it soon after the corn is threshed out. Our youthful anchorites were lodged gratuitously by the people of Dormilleuse, who also liberally supplied them with food for fuel, scarce as it was, but if the pastor had not laid in a stock of provisions, the scanty resources of the village could not have met the demands of so many mouths, in addition to its native population.

A note of the expenditure upon this occasion will excite some wonder in the minds of many readers, who are not aware how much good may be done at a small cost, when the stream of bounty is made to pass through proper channels.

"Our disbursements for the adult school, including candles, ink, and paper, the salary of an assistant master, and food for the sixteen or seventeen students who came from a distance, did not exceed 560 francs (about 22l. 10s.) for four months. Of this sum I can replace a little more than two-thirds, because some of the students have repaid their share of the expense, and even the poorest furnished their quota of bread. We did not provide commons for those who belonged to Dormilleuse, because they boarded at home."

THE NATURALIST.

NOTES

Abridged from the Magazine of Natural History

Habits of the Fern Owl, by Rusticus.—Beyond Godalming, on the Liphook road, is a great tract of barren heathy land: it stretches wide in every direction, and includes immense peat-bogs, and several large ponds. One particular district, called the Pudmores, is the favourite resort of the fern owl. In the daytime, while walking across the moor, you will every now and then put up one of these singular birds; their flight is perfectly without noise, and seldom far at a time: but of an evening it is far different; about twenty minutes after sunset, the whole moor is ringing with their cry, and you see them wheeling round you in all directions. They look like spectres; and, often coming close over you, assume an unnatural appearance of size against a clear evening sky. I believe its very peculiar note is uttered sitting, and never on the wing. I have seen it on a stack of turf with its throat nearly touching the turf, and its tail elevated, and have heard it in this situation utter its call, which resembles the birr of the mole-cricket, an insect very abundant in this neighbourhood. I have almost been induced to think this noise serves as a decoy to the male mole-cricket, this being occasionally found in the craw of these birds when shot. Those who may not be acquainted with the cry of the bird or the insect, may imagine the noise of an auger boring oak, or any hard wood, continued, and not broken off, as is the noise of the auger, from the constant changing of the hands. The eggs of the fern owl have frequently been brought me by boys: they are only two in number, greyish white, clouded and blotched with deeper shades of the same colour; the hen lays them on the soil, which is either peat, or a fine soft blue sand, in which she merely makes a slight concavity, but no nest whatever. The first cry of the fern owl is the signal for the night-flying moths to appear on the wing, or rather the signal for the entomologist expecting them.

The migratory periods of this bird are not well ascertained; but I have known one shot Nov. 27th, 1821, and they had arrived April 28th, 1830. As there is scarcely a British bird of which so little is known, the following notes may be interesting:—It has been seen perched on the bar of a gate, not across, but according to its length, with the tail elevated; uttering its peculiar sounds; but when perching, as it often does, on the summit of a twig of oaken copse, it fixes upright, with the feet grasping the twig, and not sitting; just as the swift perches against a wall. One was killed in broad daylight, perched on the upper side of a sloping branch of considerable size; the head was uppermost, and it rested on the feet and tarsi, the latter being bare on the under surface for that purpose. Its attitude in this situation much resembled that of a woodpecker. One that was kept alive with its wing broken sat across the finger, like another bird. When about to take flight it makes a cracking noise, as if the wings smote together, after the manner of a pigeon.

Harbingers of Spring.—One of the earliest intimations of approaching spring is the appearance of the Phalaena primaria, and of one or two other moths, floating with expanded wings on the surface of ponds and still water. A butterfly, Caltha palustris, is commonly drawn forth from its winter quarters by one of the first warm and sunny days that happen to occur in the month of March: hence it has been termed fallax veris indicium, (the deceitful token of spring.) In the Isle of Wight it has been seen on the wing the 8th of January, 1805.—Rev. W.T. Bree.

Ravages of the Beetle.—Mr. Bree describes the Scarabaeus horticola as "exceedingly destructive in gardens. Being on a visit in Staffordshire, in the month of June, I observed whole beds of strawberries (not hautboys) likely to prove nearly barren, though they had flowered copiously, and the season, was favourable for a crop. I was informed that the failure was owing to the fernshaws (the provincial name for the beetle), which are accused of eating the anthers and interior parts of the blossom. In the same garden my attention was also called to the ravages committed by this depredator on the apples, by gnawing holes in the young fruit; which consequently dies and falls of, or at least becomes much blemished. I was assured that the fernshaws had been detected in the fact; and I am rather disposed to think that the charge in both instances is well founded. I had long been aware of the insect's partiality for rosebuds and blossoms, which it greedily devours. In the north of England, where it is much used as a killing bait for trout, the insect is commonly known by the name of 'bracken-clock,' a name of the same import with the Staffordshire term 'fernshaw,' each signifying 'fern-beetle.'" Another correspondent says—Scarabaeus horticola, called "the chovy" in Norfolk, is there deemed very injurious to apple-trees, and other trees and plants, as it feeds both on leaves and all the parts of the flower. Chovies were abundant at Thetford, Norfolk, about ten years ago; but, as far as my experience has reached, always rare about Bury St. Edmunds. On the 9th of June, 1829, I saw one in the botanic garden of the last-named town, flitting about a flowering bush of the Provence rose.

Ink of the Cuttle-fish.—[By way of addenda if not corrigenda to our description of the Cuttle-fish, at page 104 of the present volume, we quote the following observations.]

"When in danger, cuttle-fish are said to eject a copious black liquor through their funnel or excrementary canal, as a means of obscuring the circumfluent water, and concealing themselves from all foes:—

"Long as the craftie cuttle lieth sure
In the blacke cloud of his thicke vomiture."[15 - "The ink secreted in this bag has been said to be thrown out to conceal the animal from its pursuers; but, in a future lecture, I shall endeavour to show that this secretion is to answer a purpose in the animal economy connected with the functions of the intestines." (Hume's Comp. Anat. vol. i. p. 376.) Dr. Coldstream, in a letter to the author, detailing the manners of Octopus ventricosus in captivity, says, "I have never seen the ink ejected, however much the animal may have been irritated." I have, however, been told by our fishermen, that they have seen this species eject the black liquid, with considerable force, on being just taken from the sea.]