Imatges de pàgina
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muft fall below ease again, if we defire to rife above it, and purchase new felicity by voluntary pain. It is therefore not unlikely, that however the fancy may be amufed with the defcription of regions in which no wind is heard but the gentle zephyr, and no fcenes are difplayed but vallies enamelled with unfading flowers, and woods waving their perennial verdure, we fhould foon grow weary of uniformity, find our thoughts languifh for want of other fubjects, call on heaven for our wonted round of feafons, and think ourselves liberally recompenfed for the inconveniencies of fummer and winter, by new perceptions of the calmnefs and mildness of the interme. diate variations.

Every feafon has its particular power of ftriking the mind. The nakednefs and afperity of the wintry world fills the beholder with penfive and profound aftonishment; as the variety of the fcene is leffened, its grandeur is increased; and the mind is fwelled at once by the mingled ideas of the prefent and the paft, of the beauties which have vanished from the eyes, and the waste and defolation that are now before them.

Yet let us reflect on the bleffings heaven grants us at this feafon, which appears to us fo fevere. The froft and cold prevent many hurtful vapours in the higher regions of the atmosphere from falling upon us, and even purify the air. Far from being always bad for our health, it often frengthens it, and preferves the humours from putrefaction, which a conftant heat would certainly occafion. If the va pours which collect in the atmosphere were always to fall in rain, the earth would be too foft and wet, our bodies would be too full of humours and too much relaxed; whereas the cold braces and promotes the circulation of the blood. In very hot countries,, and where the winters are rainy and wet, ferious and mortal difeafes are much more frequent than elfewhere.

We are told by travellers, that is Greenland, where the ground is covered with mountains of ice, and where in winter the days are only four or five hours long, the air is very wholefome, clear, and light; and, except a few complaints in the chest and eyes, (occafioned partly by the quality of the food) they have feldom there the diforders fo common in Europe. It is alfo certain, that the conftitution of the human body varies according to the different climates; confequently, the inhabitants of the northern countries have conftitutions adapted to extreme cold, and are generally ftrong and robuft. As man, though active by choice, and though labour is neceffary to him, is ftill glad to interrupt his employments to taste the fweets of fleep; fo alfo nature yields to the change of feafons, and takes a pleasure in it, because in reality it contributes toward our welfare and happiness. Although our fields and gardens be buried in fnow, this is neceffary, in order to preserve them from the cold, as well as to prevent the grain from corrupting. The ground requires reft after having yielded in the fummer all that we want for the winter. If our prefent fupport had not been provided for; if in this fevere season we were obliged to cultivate the earth, there might be fome foundation for our complaints. Bua our provifion is made: all our wants fupplied, and we enjoy a repofe fuitable to the season.

To thefe advantages, let us add, what has frequently been remarked, and is always very pleafantly felt, that winter has been celebrated as the proper season for merriment and gayety. We are feldom invited by the votaries of pleasure to look abroad for any other purpofe, than that we may shrink back with more fatisfaction to our coverts, and when we have heard the howl of the tempeft, and felt the gripe of the froft, congratulate each other with more gladness upon a clofe room,

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an eaẩy chair, a large fire, and a fmoking dinner. Winter brings natural inducements to jollity and converfation. Differences, we know, are never fo effectually laid afleep, as by fome common calamity. An enemy unites all to whom he threatens dan ger. The rigour of winter brings generally to the fame fire fide thofe, who, by the oppofition of inclinations, or difference of employment, moved in various directions through the other parts of the year; and when they have met, and find it their mutual intereit to remain together, they endear each other by mutual compliances, and often with for the continuance of the focial feafon, with all its bleaknefs and all its feverities.

Dr. Johnson has remarked an advantage of winter, which men of his ftamp will feel with peculiar energy, and it is certainly founded on truth. To men of ftudy and imagination,' fays he, the winter is generally the chief time of labour. Gloom and filence produce composure of mind, and concentration of ideas; and the privation of external pleasure naturally causes an effort to find entertainment within. This is the time in which thofe, whom literature enables to find amufements for themfelves, have more than common convictions of their own happiness. When they are condemn ed by the elements to retirement, and debarred from most of the diverfions which are called in to affift the flight of time, they can find new fubjects of enquiry, and preferve themselves from that wearinefs which hangs always flagging upon the vacant mind.'

The winter, however, differs very effentially in fome countries. If we feel ourselves difpofed to complain, let us confider the following facts, which relate to a great part of the northern nations, which have neither spring nor autumn. The heat is as intolerable in fummer as the cold is in winter. The feverity of the latter is fuch, that the fpirits of wine in the thermometer

freeze. When the door of a warm room is opened, the outward air which comes in, turns all the vapours into fnow; and they appear like thick white clouds. If any one goes out of the house, they are almoft fuffocated, and the air feems to pierce through them. Every thing appears dead, as nobody does venture abroad. Sometimes the cold becomes fo inteníe, all of a fudden, that if they are not saved in time, people are in danger of lofing an arm, a leg, or even their life. The fall of fnow is ftill more dangerous; the wind drives it with fuch violence, that nobody can find their way; the trees and bushes are covered with it, the fight is blinded by it, and people fiuk into precipices at every ftep. In fummer it is conftantly light for three months, and in winter it is perpetual night during the fame fpace of time. We who complain of the cold in our countries, feem not to know our advantages.

Yet we are mistaken if we fuppofe that the inhabitants of the pole are unhappy from the feverity and length of their winter. Poor, yet exempt through fimplicity from all defires difficult to gratify, thofe people live content in the midit of the rocks of ice which furround them, without knowing the bleffings which the fouthern nations confider as an effential part of their happiness. If the barrenness of their foil prevents them from having fuch variety of productions of the earth as we have, the fea is fo much the more bountiful in her gifts to them. Their way of living inures them to cold, and enables them to defy forms. As to particular resources, without which they could not bear the rigour of the climate, nature provides them with abundance. Their defarts are full of wild beafts, whofe furr protects them from cold. The rein deer fupplies them with food, drink, beds, clothes, and tents. These are most of their wants, and give them little trouble to obtain. When the fun does

not

not rife with them, they are furrounded with darkness, nature itself lights a torch for them. The Aurora Borealis brightens their night. Perhaps thefe people confider their country as the greatest and happieft upon earth, and may pity us as much as we pity them.

The moft remarkable phenomena of this season are froit and fnow, and we fhall conclude our article with a fhort account of these, which though the most familiar, are not among the things most generally understood.

The freezing of water was formerly attributed to the entrance of frigorific particles into that fluid: but the augmentation of the bulk of water in freezing, feems to be the only fact which can with reason be alleged in fupport of this doctrine; yet this increase of bulk is not attended with any increase of weight, and may be much better explained, than by attributing it to the addition of frigorific particles, which were never proved to have any exiftence. The increafe which water acquires in becoming folid is about one ninth or one-tenth of its whole bulk. Boyle took a brass tube, three inches in diameter, and put fome water into it; he then brought down into the tube a plug, with a weight placed at the head of it of feventy-four pounds. The expansive power of water, in the procefs of freezing, was proved by a remarkable experiment made in Canada. An iron shell, after having its mouth well plugged up, was filled up with water, and expofed to a fevere froft which prevailed in that country. The expanfion of the ice forced out the plug, and the water, which immediately followed, was frozen into an irregular mafs or column of ice. The inftances already mentioned, however, are far lefs ftriking than one defcribed by Muscherbroek, in which a ball of iron, an inch thick, was burit afun

der in the courfe of twelve hours by the expa-five power of froft. That philofopher having calculated the force exerted by the freezing of water in a fimilar cafe, found it equal to a force capable of raifing a weight of twenty-feven thousand seven hundred and twenty pounds.

When fuch is the expanfive power exerted by water in paffing to the state of ice, we cannot be furprised that vessels, which are left filled with water in froity weather, should be burst by its freezing, and that the fame thing fhould happen to water pipes expofed to the action of froft. The pavement is fometimes loofened from the fame caufe, and in countries where very fevere colds prevail, the fap of trees congeals, and their trunks are burft afunder, with a noife like that of cannon. Froft fertilizes the ground by loofening the cohesion of the particles of earth. Such are some of the most remarkable effects of this phe

nomenon.

If

As to fnow, the cold of the higher regions of the atmosphere is fometimes fo great, as to freeze the aqueous particles which form clouds. the particles become frozen before they have had time to unite into drops, many of the small icicles which are produced, uniting together, and being connected only at a few points, form flacculent maffes, which we call fnow. The order and a rangement of the icicles is not always the fame ; they vary greatly, and this produces the variety which is obferved in fnow. It is remarkable, that though fnow varies at different times, yet what falls together is always the fame; that is, the fnow which falls at a particular time, consists of flakes, which vary only in fize, but are all formed of particles disposed in a fimilar manner. We are not fufficiently acquainted with the laws by which the con cretion or cryftallization of bodies

are

* On expofing the tube to the cold, the water freezing itself, raised the feventyfour pounds,

are regulated, to explain the caufe of these phenomena. On account of the fmall quantity of matter contained in fnow, in proportion to the furfaces expofed, it meets with great refiftance in paffing through the atmof. phere, and confequently falls very flowly. Its great furface alfo renders it very fufceptible of evaporation, which confiderably diminishes its weight, even in the coldeft weather. During the feverity of the froft, little work can be done out of doors by the farmer. As foon as it fets in, he takes the opportunity of the hardness of the ground to draw manure to his fields. He lops and cuts timber, and mends thorn hedges. When the roads become fmooth from the frozen fnow, he takes his team and carries hay and corn to market, or draws coals for himfelf and his neighbours The barn ́refounds with the flail, by the

ufe of which the labourer is enabled to defy the cold weather. In towns the poor are pinched for fewel, and charity is peculiarly called for at this feason of the year. Many trades are at a ftand during the feverity of the froft; rivers and canals being frozen up, watermen and bargemen are out of employment. There is no season

indeed in which there are more preff-
ing calls for charity, and none in
which the rich ought to feel their own
comforts with a gratitude more lively,
and confequently more difpofed to ex-
ertions in favour of the poor.

Sore pierc'd by wintry winds,
How many fhrink into the fordid hut
Of cheerlefs poverty.'-
Thought fond man

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Of thefe'

The confcious heart of Charity would

warm,

And her wide with Benevolence dilate.-
THOMSON.

ON THE CAUSE OF THE POPULARITY OF NOVELS.

THE HERE is no fpecies of writing that has been more popular among young readers fince its firft appearance, than the Novel or Romance, and I have not been able to discover a better reason for the high favour in which such compofitions are held, than the tameness and infipidity of common life and common events. Tired of this, we firft betake our felves to the page of hiftory, but here, although we occafionally meet with incidents that are furprizing, there is in general a forbidding gravity and dignity in the ftile and manner in which they are related; and for the most part history is employed on the actions and adventures of heroes, kings, and statesmen, a clafs of perfons with which we are but little acquainted, and in whofe fuccefs young perfons feel but little intereft.

Finding, therefore, but scanty amusement in these grave and regular performances, where it is abfolutely neceffary that nothing should be re

Ed. Mag. Jan. 1799.

lated but what is true, and no ornaments appended which did not belong to the original fact, we fly for relief from the fameness of real life to the compofition called Novels. In them we find common things related in an uncommon way, which is precifely the remedy we have been feeking to vary our amusements. Instead, for example, of a young couple walking regularly to church to be married, with their parent's confent and their parent's walking regularly with them (an incident fo common as to occafion little or no notice) we have a pair of true lovers concealing from each other what they both are defirous to reveal, thwarted in their affection by cruel fathers and mothers, or guardians, befet with spies, their letters intercepted, rooms turned into prifons; and if an escape, ufually called an elopement, be practicable, windows are turned into doors, and a ladder becomes a ftair-cafe; pofthorfes are furnished with wings, E

and

and poft-boys of the true Hounflowbreed are converted into cupids, while an old battered chaife is an Hymeneal car.

It is this art of making much out of little that reconciles us to a courfe of novel-reading. We find how tame and infipid real life is; we awake in the morning, drefs ourselves, go out shopping or vifiting, and return in perfect fafety to the fame employments or amufements this day that we returned to yesterday, and which will probably engage our time to-morrow. It is not remarkable, therefore, if young and active spirits become tired of a routine fo dull and unvarying, and are defirous of adventures which may diftinguish them from the common herd of neighbours, and give employment for town-talk. Such are to be found in novels, where in the morning, the hero or heroine is waked by the foft melody of a lute under the window, and immediately upon the window being opened, the found is loft, and no perfon appears! -In thefe worlds of a new creation, if a young lady ventures to walk beyond the limits of her father's domains, fhe is either feduced by the falfe flattering tongue' of fome gay and gallant Lothario, into a pottchaife, or more rudely forced into one by a band of ruffians with masks on their faces, and drawn fwords in their hands. Not an hour paffes without fome incident of this kind, fo that if the real world was like the world of romance, we might fay of the metropolis, with a learned juftice who has written on the police, that there are many thoufands in it who, when they get up in the morning, cannot tell what shall befall them in the course of the day, or where they fhall fleep at night.' For fuch is the ever-varying fate of those who live under the difpenfations of a romantic imagination.

It might, however, be worth while to enquire, whether the events of ro

mantic life are capable of being realifed without danger and disappointment. We are not quite certain that youth is to be divided into three or four volumes, and whatever errors or crimes may be committed, to end in a happy marriage and a great fortune in the laft. Elopements, indeed, have been tried, and they have ferved to vary the common routine of being afked at church, or married by a licence, but it has not been found that fuch marriages have proved more happy than the old fashioned kind-on the contrary, it has been found, that after a few months or weeks, the parties have been plunged into a ftate of life more dull and infipid than before, and which has ended, in more than one recent inftance, in certain adventures which have led the parties into a feparation as romantic, and out of the common way, as the elopement itself. It muft, therefore, I am afraid, be concluded, that however amufing the adventures of Novel-perfonages are, we ought to be very cautious how we attempt to perform them in real life. Our laws unfortunately are not compofed upon the fyftem of romance, and I know not where a collection of more ftern and fevere critics can be found, than in the courts of king's bench, doctor's commons, and the Old Bailey. The Lord Chancellor, too, I am forry to add, is a gentleman of that pe culiar way of thinking, as to confider a door the propereft part of a house for a young lady to walk out at, a flair-cafe a more becoming mode of defcending than a ladder of ropes, and fathers, mothers, or guardians, the beft adepts at explaining or anfwering the contents of a billet-doux. This may probably be owing to his Lordfhip's want of tafte, but it is a want of taste that has been very common among gentlemen learned in the law, for many years.

But notwithstanding the great pains that have been taken in many hundred

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