WOMAN.

(A Bagatelle.)

It is a question whether exquisite beauty, extreme sensibility, termagancy of temper, or versatility of attachment or preference, has with the greatest propriety been attributed to woman-perhaps all of them may have a place in the composition of the feminine character.

Philosophers would be puzzled in determining to whom the moon, the weather, the vegetable world, and the vicissitudes of the seasons, emblematically apply with so mnch exactness as to the tastes, the humours, and the frailties of the fair.

Alas! fashion is not more variable; nor, in all the interchanges of vision, is there a more constant or fascinating succession of light and shade, of sadness and gaiety..

影

"Yet, O thou fairest and sweetest of Nature's works, how desolate and disconsolate were man, though possessed of every other enjoyment, without thee! The fountain is not more necesssary to the stream, than thou art to his happiness. The fierceness of his nature, the barbarity of his manners, the violence of his passions, would precipitate him into every misery, and leave him no other associates than the prowling savages of the desert, but for the softening influence of thy charms! The earth would not be more gloomy and blighted in the absence of the heavenly luminaries, the salutary winds, or refreshing rains, than he is in thine. The tenderness of thy hand proves a healing balsam to all his wounds; thy friendship lightens the pressure of his cares !" There is no distress in which he can be involved, no disaster that can befal him, no bitterness to which his heart may be liable, in which he does not find, in the sympathy of a kind and worthy woman, a more sovereign remedy, and a more immediate relief, than from any nostrum the medicinal world has yet produced.

But yonder comes a rake, or man of gallantry! His presence, like a mildew, suddenly blasts this pleasing prospect. His progress resembles that of a storm, which is every where marked with devastation and horror. "Before him is the garden of

Eden; behind him a desolate wilderness!" He examines the map of the female world, like the fellest murderers of the species, only to sketch out for himself one cool geographical line of destruction. Would you contemplate the havock which this splendid monster has made, and hourly makes, among the choicest of Nature's offspring-explore the habitations of the wretched, the hospitals of the diseased, or the walks of the lewd and abandoned! The man who is not shocked by these awful spectacles, either has not a heart, or must possess the heart of a monster.

"Ye batchelors, who abstract or seclude yourselves from such endearments as a manly and lawful reciprocity of affection with the sex, how contemptible your taste, how pitiable your condition! The wide world is to you a solitude; and some malignant dæmon, by perverting your affections, blinds and abuses you, only that your misery may be inevitable. In the animal and vegetable creation there is no instance of such folly: the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the field, upbraid your preference of a single life, as treasonable against the first law of your being, and as an insult on the bounties of Providence."

Happy the man who is married to a sensible, a quiet, and virtuous woman!-she is the greatest blessing this world can bestow. On earth he enjoys a heaven; in want, he acquires wealth; in misery, he arrives at felicity.

"O thou whom my soul loveth!-thy beauties, thy virtues, and even thy foibles, controul the workings of my understanding, as well as the feelings of my heart! The satire which I meditated against thy sex is changed, by thy wonder-working influeuce, into a panegyric on their excellencies !"

MOUNT ETNA.

This volcano was called the Pillar of Heaven, by Pindar, who flourished four hundred and thirty-five years before the Christian Its astonishing height is such, that Vesuvius, if placed be

era.

side it, would appear but a small hill. This enormous mass is surrounded by smaller mountains; and while the lava of Vesuvius may issue its stream for seven miles, Etna will emit a torrent of liquid fire thirty miles in length.

All travellers agree, that this mountain affords an epitome of the different climates throughout the world. Towards the base it is extremly hot; further up, more temperate; and grows gradually colder, till at length the traveller perceives that its head is enveloped in a mantle of eternal snow.

In the middle, at the top, stands the great mouth of the volcano, which is a little mountain about a quarter of a mile perpendicular, situated in the centre of a gently inclining plain. In the middle of this little mountain is a large hollow, the inside of which is incrusted with salts and sulphur of different colours. In the midst of this funnel is the terrific gulf, whence continually issues smoke accompanied by terrible and confused noises, which, during the time of an eruption, may be heard at a prodigious distance.

The great eruption of this volcano in the year 1669, broke out on the 11th of March, two hours before midnight, on the southeast side of the mountain, about twenty miles from the old mouth, and ten from the city of Catania. The matter thrown out was a stream of metals and minerals, which ran for fifteen or twenty days together into the sea, close to the walls of Catania. In its course it overwhelmed fourteen towns and villages, and during the whole time of this eruption, which was fifty-four days, neither sun nor stars could be seen in the neighbouring country.

COMPOSITION OF THE BLOOD.

Sir Everard Home, in delivering his introductory lecture on the physiology of the blood, at St. George's Hospital, explained a discovery made by him on the component parts of the blood, in the year 1818, and which is known but to few of the profession. Sir Everard's new theory is, that carbonic acid gas forms a large proportion of the blood, and that this fluid is of a

tabular structure. He asserts that carbonic acid gas exists in the blood, in the large proportion of two cubic inches to an ounce, and that it is given out in large quantities from the blood of a person after a full meal, and very little from the blood of a feverish person. The fact of the appearance of the tubes passing through every particle of the blood, Sir Everard was led to discover by observing the growth of a grain of wheat daily through a microscope, he first saw a blob, and then a tube passing from it; the blob was the juice of the plant, and the tube was formed by the extrication of carbonic acid gas. Reasoning from analogy, he examined a globule of blood, and found it composed of similar tubes, which he was enabled to inject under the exhausted receiver of an air-pump. His discovery, trifling as it may appear, will probably lead to important results.

EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCE.

The American brig Indus, J. Day, master, which arived at Cowes, about two months since, afterwards proceeded to Hamburgh to discharge her cargo. In removing the bags of coffee between decks, two of the crew discovered a large snake coiled up. The reptile reared its head and began hissing, which so alarmed the men, that they both fell backwards; but the snake remained coiled up very quiet, it being rather cold. The men soon recovered themselves, and mustered up courage to make a blow at it with an axe, which nearly severed the head from the body. The skin is remarkably beautiful. It has a yellow serpentine line from the head to the tail, each side of which is bordered with black and brown, in every hollow is a spot of white in the shape of a diamond: the head resembles that of a large congor eel, and the body in its natural size was four inches wide; the tail was similar to that of an alligator or lizard, about twelve inches long. On opening the hody it had a great quantity of undigested Indian corn in its stomach, which must have been its principal food for nine months-the time it must have been on

board. The Indus touched at several parts of the East Indies, before she could procure a cargo; and it is conjectured the animal must have got on board by the cable through the hawseholes, whilst the brig was at anchor at Siane; for a number of snakes were observed swimming about in the water there, but at no other place that the brig touched at.

CONFESSION OF HARTLEY.

Mr. Editor,

The following "Confession of Hartley" though it has appeared in a great portion of the London and Provincial Journals, is of so extraordinary a nature, that I doubt not you will give general satisfaction, by assigning it a place in yonr entertaining miscellany.

Jan. 28, 1823,

I am,

Sir. yours, &c.

A SUBSCRIBER.

This notorious and hardened offender suffered the sentence of the law at Maidstone, on Thursday, January 9, and it will be seen by the following particulars which have since transpired, that he has made a confession which may be the means of bringing to justice the long-sought murderers both of Mrs Donatty and Mr. Bird and his housekeeper, at Greenwich. The ruthless deeds of this man appear to have rivalled even those of the notorious Abershaw, whose body was stolen from the gibbet on which it hung on Wimbledon Common.-Some days before his execution, Hartly confessed to the Rev. Mr. Winter having been concerned in upwards of two hundred burglaries in Kent, Essex,