The penny magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, issue 29, September 15, 1832
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Title: The penny magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, issue 29, September 15, 1832

Editor: Charles Knight

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Language: English

Original publication: London: Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1832

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PENNY MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE, ISSUE 29, SEPTEMBER 15, 1832 ***

THE PENNY MAGAZINE

OF THE

Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

[September 15, 1832

29.]

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY.

THE WARWICK VASE.

In an account which we recently gave of Warwick Castle, we mentioned the beautiful and celebrated specimen of Grecian art, which now embellishes the grounds of one of the finest monuments of the feudal grandeur of England. There is something extremely captivating to the imagination to witness one of the most exquisite pieces of ancient workmanship, said to be the production of Lysippus, a statuary of the age of Alexander the Great, thus preserved from the ravages of time, amidst the scenes which tell their story of a past age, not so far removed from the present day, but equally recalling lives and actors essentially different from our present habits and modes of thinking. ‘The Warwick Vase’ was dug up from the ruins of the Emperor Adrian’s villa at Tivoli, and was sent to England by the late Sir William Hamilton, in 1774. It is probably one of the most entire, and, to a certain extent, the most beautiful specimen of ancient sculpture which this country possesses. The material of which it is made is white marble. Its form is nearly spherical, with a deep reverted rim. Two interlacing vines, whose stems run into and constitute the handles, wreathe their tendrils, with fruit and foliage, round the upper part. The centre is composed of antique heads, which stand forward in grand relief. A panther’s skin, with the thyrsus of Bacchus (a favourite antique ornament) and other embellishments, complete the composition. This vase is of very large size, as it is capable of containing a hundred and sixty-three gallons. We have seen a copy of this vase, of the original dimensions, at Birmingham, executed in bronze; which work is one of the many proofs which exist in this country of the intimate union between the manufacturing arts and those which are connected with the highest display of taste. The importance of this union ought never to be lost sight of.

ESCAPE OF DE LATUDE FROM THE BASTILLE.

(Concluded from the last Number.)

De Latude goes on to detail the precautions which he and his companion in misfortune took, in case any of the jailers should be listening, to give feigned names for every thing they used in their work, and states the names used by them for each article. He then proceeds with his narrative: “These things being complete, we set about our principal ladder, which was to be at least eighty feet long. We began by unravelling our linen, shirts, napkins, nightcaps, stockings, drawers, pocket handkerchiefs—every thing which could supply thread or silk. As we made a ball we concealed it in Polyphemus, (the name they called the hiding-place,) and when we had a sufficient quantity we employed a whole night in twisting it into a rope; and I defy a rope-maker to have done it better.[1] The upper part of the building of the Bastille overhangs three or four feet. This would necessarily occasion our ladder to wave and swing about as we came down it, enough to turn the strongest head. To obviate this, and to prevent our fall, we made a second rope 160 feet long. This rope was to be reeved through a kind of double block without sheaves, in case the person descending should be suspended in the air without being able to get down lower.[2] Besides these we made several other ropes of shorter lengths, to fasten our ladder to a cannon, and for other unforeseen occasions. When all these ropes were finished, we measured them—they amounted to 1400 feet. We then made 208 rounds for the rope and wooden ladders. To prevent the noise which the rounds would make against the wall during our descent, we gave them coverings formed of pieces of the linings of our morning gowns, of our waistcoats, and our under-waistcoats. In all these preparations we employed eighteen months, but still they were incomplete. We had provided means to get to the top of the tower, to get into and out of the fossé: two more were wanting—one to climb up on the parapet; from the parapet into the governor’s garden; from thence to get down into the fossé of the Port St. Antoine; but the parapet which we had to cross was always well furnished with sentinels. We might fix on a dark and rainy night, when the sentinels did not go their rounds, and escape by those means, but it might rain when we climbed our chimney, and might clear up at the very moment when we arrived at the parapet: we should then meet with the chief of the rounds, who constantly inspected the parapet, and he being always provided with lights, it would be impossible to conceal ourselves, and we should be inevitably ruined. The other plan increased our labours, but was the less dangerous of the two. It consisted in making a way through the wall which separates the fossé of the Bastille from that of the Port St. Antoine. I considered that in the numerous floods, during which the Seine had filled this fossé, the water must have injured the mortar, and rendered it less difficult, and so we should be enabled to break a passage through the wall. For this purpose we should require an augur to make holes in the mortar, so as to insert the points of the two iron bars to be taken out of our chimney, and with them force out the stones, and so make our way through. Accordingly we made an augur with one of the feet of our bedsteads, and fastened a handle to it in the form of a cross. We fixed on Wednesday the 25th February, 1756, for our flight: the river had overflowed its banks: there were four feet of water in the fossé of the Bastille, as well as in that of the Port St. Antoine, by which we hoped to effect our deliverance. I filled a leathern portmanteau with a change of clothes for both, in case we were so fortunate as to escape.

“Dinner was scarcely over when we set up our great ladder of ropes, that is, we put the rounds to it, and hid it under our beds; then we arranged our wooden ladder in three pieces. We put our iron bars in their cases to prevent their making a noise; and we packed up our bottle of usquebaugh to warm us, and restore our strength during our work in the water, up to the neck, for nine hours. These precautions taken, we waited till our supper was brought up. I first got up the chimney. I had the rheumatism in my left arm, but I thought little of the pain: I soon experienced one much more severe. I had taken none of the precautions used by chimney-sweepers. I was nearly choked by the soot; and having no guards on my knees and elbows, they were so excoriated that the blood ran down on my legs and hands. As soon as I got to the top of the chimney I let down a piece of twine to D’Alegre: to this he attached the end of the rope to which our portmanteau was fastened. I drew it up, unfastened it, and threw it on the platform of the Bastille. In the same way we hoisted up the wooden ladder, the two iron bars, and all our other articles: we finished by the ladder of ropes, the end of which I allowed to hang down to aid D’Alegre in getting up, while I held the upper part by means of a large wooden peg which we had prepared on purpose. I passed it through the cord and placed it across the funnel of the chimney. By these means my companion avoided suffering what I did. This done, I came down from the top of the chimney, where I had been in a very painful position, and both of us were on the platform of the Bastille. We now arranged our different articles. We began by making a roll of our ladder of ropes, of about four feet diameter, and one thick. We rolled it to the tower called La Tour du Treson, which appeared to us the most favourable for our descent. We fastened one end of the ladder of ropes to a piece of cannon, and then lowered it down the wall; then we fastened the block, and passed the rope of 160 feet long through it. This I tied round my body, and D’Alegre slackened it as I went down. Notwithstanding this precaution I swung about in the air at every step I made. Judge what my situation was, when one shudders at the recital of it. At length I landed without accident in the fossé. Immediately D’Alegre lowered my portmanteau and other things. I found a little spot uncovered by water, on which I put them. Then my companion followed my example; but he had an advantage which I had not had, for I held the ladder for him with all my strength, which greatly prevented its swinging. It did not rain; and we heard the sentinel marching at about four toises distance; and we were therefore forced to give up our plan of escaping by the parapet and the governor’s garden. We resolved to use our iron bars. We crossed the fossé straight over to the wall which divides it from the Port St. Antoine, and went to work sturdily. Just at this point there was a small ditch about six feet broad and one deep, which increased the depth of the water. Elsewhere it was about up to our middles; here, to our armpits. It had thawed only a few days, so that the water had yet floating ice in it: we were nine hours in it, exhausted by fatigue, and benumbed by the cold. We had hardly begun our work before the chief of the watch came round with his lantern, which cast a light on the place we were in: we had no alternative but to put our heads under water as he passed, which was every half-hour. At length, after nine hours of incessant alarm and exertion; after having worked out the stones one by one, we succeeded in making, in a wall of four feet six inches thick, a hole sufficiently wide, and we both crept through. We were giving way to our transports when we fell into a danger which we had not foreseen, and which had nearly been fatal to us. In crossing the fossé St. Antoine, to get into the road to Berey, we fell into the aqueduct which was in the middle. This aqueduct had ten feet water over our heads, and two feet of mud on the side. D’Alegre fell on me, and had nearly thrown me down: had that misfortune happened we were lost, for we had not strength enough left to get up again, and we must have been smothered. Finding myself laid hold of by D’Alegre, I gave him a blow with my fist, which made him let go; and at the same instant throwing myself forward I got out of the aqueduct. I then felt for D’Alegre, and getting hold of his hair, drew him to me; we were soon out of the fossé, and just as the clock struck five were on the high road. Penetrated by the same feeling, we threw ourselves into each other’s arms, and after a long embrace we fell on our knees to offer our thanks to the Almighty, who had snatched us from so many dangers.”

1. This is really no exaggeration.

2. This part of the narrative is by no means clear.

VENOMOUS SERPENTS.

⁂ We have received the following interesting communication from a gentleman who has spent much of a valuable life in Africa.

The serpents of South Africa, commonly accounted the most dangerous, are the Cobra-Capello, (or hooded snake,) the Puff-Adder, and the Berg-Adder (or mountain snake.) The first of these is exceedingly fierce and active, and sometimes, it is said, attains the formidable length of ten feet; I have, however, never met with any of much more than half that size. The Cobra has been known to spring at a man on horseback, and to dart himself with such force as to overshoot his aim. The Puff-Adder, on the other hand, is a heavy and sluggish animal, very thick in proportion to its length, and incapable, when attacked in front, of projecting itself upon its enemy. To make amends, however, it possesses the faculty of throwing itself backward with perilous and unexpected effect; but its disposition is inert, and unless accidentally trod upon or otherwise provoked, it will seldom attack mankind. The Berg-Adder, though much smaller in size than either of the preceding, is generally considered not less deadly, and it is the more dangerous from its being less easily discovered and avoided.

During a residence of six years in the interior of the Cape Colony, and in the course of various journeys through the interior, (extending to upwards of three thousand miles,) I have met with a considerable number of snakes; yet I do not recollect of ever being exposed, except in one instance, to any imminent hazard of being bit by any of them. On the occasion referred to I was superintending some Hottentots, whom I had employed to clear away a patch of thicket from a spot selected for cultivation, when one of the men, suddenly recoiling, with signs of great alarm, exclaimed that there was a Cobra-Capello in the bush. Not being at that time fully aware of the dangerous character of this species of snake, I approached to look at him. The Hottentots called out to me to take care, for he was going to spring. Before they had well spoken, or I had caught a view of the reptile, I heard him hiss fiercely, and then dart himself towards me amidst the underwood. At the same instant, instinctively springing backward to avoid him, I fell over a steep bank into the dry stony bed of a torrent; by which I suffered some severe bruises, but fortunately escaped the more formidable danger to which I had too incautiously exposed myself. The Hottentots then assailed the snake with sticks and stones, and forced him (though not before he had made another spring and missed one of them still more narrowly than myself) to take refuge up a mimosa tree. Here he became a safe and easy mark to their missiles, and was speedily beaten down, with a broken back, and consequently rendered incapable of farther mischief. The Hottentots having cut off his head, carefully buried it in the ground, a practice which they never omit on such occasions, and which arises from their apprehension of some one incautiously treading on the head of the dead snake, and sustaining injury from its fangs; for they believe that the deathful virus, far from being extinguished with life, retains its fatal energy for weeks, and even months afterwards. This snake measured nearly six feet in length, and was the largest Cobra I have met with.

My little Hottentot corporal, Piet (or Peter) Spandilly, who assisted in killing this Cobra, had a still narrower escape from a small but venomous snake of which I have forgotten the colonial appellation. Piet and his men (six soldiers of the Cape corps, placed at that time under my direction for the protection of our remote settlement against the Caffres) slept in a tent adjoining to mine, pitched in a grove of mimosas on the brink of the Bavian’s river; and one morning when he rose from his couch of dry grass, Piet felt some living creature moving about his thigh in the inside of his leathern trowsers. Thinking it was only one of the harmless lizards which swarm in every part of South Africa, he did not at first much mind it, but came out to the open air laughing, and shaking his limb to dislodge the vermin. But when a black wriggling snake came tumbling down about his naked ancles, poor Spandilly uttered a cry of horror, kicked the reptile off, springing at the same moment nearly his own height from the ground; and though he had in reality sustained no injury, could scarcely for some time be persuaded that he was not “a gone man.”

It is, in fact, from apprehensions of danger, or the instinct of self-defence, far more than from any peculiar fierceness or innate malignity, that the serpent race ever assail man or any of the larger animals. They turn, of course, against the foot that tramples or the hand that threatens them; but happily nature has not armed them, in addition to their formidable powers of destruction, with the disposition of exerting these powers from motives of mere wanton cruelty, or for purposes unconnected with their own subsistence or security. Were it otherwise, countries like the Cape would be altogether uninhabitable. As it is, the annoyance experienced from the numerous poisonous snakes is not such as, on the whole, to affect in any considerable degree the comfort of those accustomed to them.

Conversing on this subject one day with my friend Captain Harding, who had been for many years a resident and magistrate in the interior, I inquired whether he had ever, in the course of his campaigns on the Caffer and Bushman frontiers, and when necessarily obliged to sleep in the desert or jungle in the open air, suffered injury or incurred danger from serpents—he replied, that the only occasion he recollected of incurring any great hazard of this sort, was the following:—

“Being upon a military expedition across the frontier,” said he, “I had slept one night, as usual, wrapt in my cloak, beneath a tree. On awaking at daybreak, the first object I perceived on raising my head from the saddle, which served for my pillow, was the tail of an enormous Puff-Adder lying across my breast, the head of the reptile being muffled under the folds of the cloak close to my body, whither it had betaken itself, apparently for warmth, during the chillness of the night. There was extreme hazard that if I alarmed it by moving, it might bite me in a vital part;—seizing it therefore softly by the tail, I pulled it out with a sudden jerk, and threw it violently to a distance. By this means I escaped without injury; but had I happened to have unwittingly offended this uninvited bedfellow before I was aware of his presence, I might in all probability have fatally atoned for my heedlessness.”

It is not very unusual for snakes of various sorts to be found in the houses at the Cape, nor does it, in ordinary cases, excite any violent alarm when such inmates are discovered. They make their way both through the roofs and under the walls, in search of food and shelter, and especially in pursuit of mice, which many of them chiefly subsist upon. During my residence in the interior, however, I recollect only two instances of their being found in my own cabin. On one of these occasions I had sent a servant girl (a bare-legged Hottentot) to bring me some article from a neighbouring hut. It was after night-fall; and on returning with it, she cried out before entering the cabin—“Oh, Mynheer! Mynheer! what shall I do? A snake has twined itself round my ancles, and if I open the door he will come into the house.” “Never mind,” I replied. “open the door, and let him come if he dare.” She obeyed, and in glided the snake, luckily without having harmed the poor girl. I stood prepared and instantly smote him dead; and afterwards found him to be one of the very venomous sort called Nachtslang.

People get used to these things, and even Europeans by degrees come to regard them with much indifference. Just before leaving the colony, I spent a week or two with my friend Major Pigot, at his residence near Graham’s Town; and going one day to take a book from some shelves in the drawing-room, I found a beautiful yellow snake, about five feet long, lying asleep upon the uppermost range of books. It lay so still that I at first thought it was a stuffed specimen; but perceiving a slight movement in its tail, I lent him such a thwack with a quarto volume as broke the poor fellow’s back, and enabled me to demolish him at my leisure. I afterwards learned that another snake had been killed a few days previously in the very same spot, and a third in Major P.’s dressing-room. They had all entered through a loop-hole which had casually been left open, and apparently had no other object in coming there (mousing apart) than literary seclusion.

Such as these are no very uncommon occurrences, and as such pass even for subjects of jocularity amidst the adventures of a wild country. Instances, however, both frightful and revolting, sometimes occur.

It is well known that the Bushmen, a tribe of wild Hottentots who inhabit the mountains and deserts of South Africa, imbue the points of their arrows in a strong and subtle poison, and that the venom of the most dangerous serpents to be found in that country forms a principal ingredient in its composition. The boldness and dexterity displayed by these wild huntsmen, and by many also of the colonial Hottentots, in searching out and seizing alive the formidable Cobra-Capello and Puff-Adder, are truly astonishing. Still more surprising is it to witness the snake-hunter extracting from the yet living and writhing reptile, held fast by his naked foot planted on its neck, the little bag containing the secreted venom, which the rage of the animal injects into the wound made by its fangs at the moment it strikes its victim—to see him take this, and fearlessly drink its contents, as school-boys in England would suck the blob of the honey-bee! The swallowing of this venom, they conceive, renders them in time proof against its deleterious effects, when it is brought into immediate contact with the blood, whether by the bite of a snake or the barb of an arrow.

[Cobra-Capello.]

Several of the most respectable Dutch colonists assured me, as a fact which had come within their own knowledge, that there are to be found among the wandering Bushmen persons whom they term slang-meesters (snake-masters,) who actually possess the power of charming the fiercest serpents, and of readily curing their bite; and who pretend that they can communicate to others their mysterious powers and invulnerability, by putting them through a regular course of poison-eating.

The more usual object, however, of the Bushman in catching serpents (exclusive of their value to him as an article of food,) is to procure poison for his arrows. The animal venom, too thin and volatile to preserve its efficacy long unimpaired when used alone, is skilfully concocted into a black glutinous consistency, by the admixture of powerful vegetable and mineral poisons; the former being generally the juice of the root of a species of amaryllis, called by the boors, from this circumstance, the gift-bol, or poison-bulb; the latter, a bituminous or unctuous substance which is said to exude from certain rocks and caverns. With this deadly mixture the dwarfish and despised African anoints the desperate weapons with which he resists (though unavailingly) the aggressions of the colonists, and sometimes cruelly revenges the injuries they have inflicted.

FINGAL’S CAVE.

[Distant View of Staffa.]

Staffa, one of the Hebrides, or Western Isles of Scotland, lies a few miles to the west of Mull, within a sort of bay formed by the two projecting extremities of that island, and a short distance to the north-east of the more celebrated islet of the same group, Iona, or Icolmkill. It forms part of the county of Argyle, and of the parish of Kilninian, the principal portion of which is in Mull. Staffa is a very small island, scarcely a mile in length from north to south, and about half that extent at its greatest breadth from east to west. Although one of the most wonderful natural curiosities in the world, and lying so near our own shores, this island appears to have remained almost entirely unnoticed till a comparatively very recent period. It is said, in most of the late accounts of it (which are in great part copied from one another,) that its columns and caverns are shortly described by Buchanan. In point of fact, however, that historian merely mentions its name. It is not, we believe, so much as named by Martin in his account of the Western Isles, published in the beginning of last century. Its existence was first made generally known by Sir Joseph Banks who visited it in August, 1772, and whose account was printed in the second volume of ‘Pennant’s Tour in Scotland.’ Banks, in the course of a voyage to Iceland, in company with Dr. Uno von Troil (afterwards Archbishop of Upsal,) was induced to put in at a port in Mull, where he was very hospitably received by Mr. Maclean, the principal proprietor of the island. At Mr. Maclean’s the travellers met with a Mr. Leach, an Irish gentleman, who told them that the day before, in the course of a fishing excursion, he had fallen in with what, in his opinion, was one of the greatest wonders in the world, though none of his Highland acquaintances seemed ever to have had their attention attracted to it. His account so greatly excited the curiosity of Banks and his friend, that it was resolved forthwith to make an expedition to the island. They reached it, and found it to be by far the most stupendous example of that striking production of nature, basaltic architecture, of which they had ever heard.

At that time the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland was the chief collection of pillars of basalt which was generally known either to the public or among scientific inquirers. Since then, many other specimens of the same phenomenon have been described by travellers and geologists in Wales, Iceland, Germany, Italy, France, and other countries. Various theories have been suggested to account for the origin and formation of these pillars. They may be described generally as consisting of a greyish or brownish stone, of finer or coarser grain, formed into clusters of angular columns, having each from three or four to six or seven sides or faces, and in many cases so regularly cut, if we may so express ourselves, as to rival the symmetry of human architecture. Sometimes these columns are found as it were chopped down into fragments, and lying scattered and in confusion like a heap of ruins; in other instances, although the several blocks which compose each shaft still adhere firmly together, the inclination of the whole from the perpendicular is so considerable as to present at best only the appearance of an edifice half fallen down; but in some rare specimens the magnificent pile stands almost as erect as any work of human hands, thus forming a structure in which all the regularity of art is combined with a grandeur which art never reached. From the circumstance of lava being always an accompaniment of these basaltic formations, it is now commonly held that they are a volcanic product, or in other words have been thrown up from the earth by the action of internal fire. It does not, however, seem so easy to explain how the fused stone, in the process of cooling, crystallized into the regular shapes which it now exhibits. This effect can only be supposed to have taken place in virtue of certain affinities or mutual tendencies naturally belonging to the atoms of which the material consists.

The island of Staffa is a mere mass of lava and basalt. The columns of the latter substance, which compose the chief part of it, are generally hidden beneath a thin layer of soil; but in many places, even of the surface of the island, they are to be found shooting out through this acquired covering; and the stone is every where come at on digging a few feet down. Around almost the whole circumference of the island the rock stands bare to the view. The grassy top of the isle seems to be supported nearly all round on a range of pillars, in some places indeed so low as to be almost on a level with the surface of the water, but for the greater part elevated far above it, and in some places rising into the air to the lofty height of 150 feet. The name of this extraordinary isle, accordingly, describes it by its most remarkable feature. Staffa is a Norse term, meaning staffs or columns.

[Entrance to Fingal’s Cave.]

The highest part of the line of pillars is at the southern end of the island; and it is here that the celebrated natural excavation called Fingal’s Cave is situated. Its opening is very near the south-east corner, and it extends nearly due north. The name by which it is commonly known, we may remark in passing, would rather appear to be merely a modern and accidental designation. Sir Joseph Banks states, that upon asking his Highland guide what it was called, the boy answered in Gaelic, the Cave of Finlin; and in reply to a second question, explained Finlin to be Finlin-Mac-Coul; or, as he had been called by the English translator of Ossian’s poems, Fingal. This fragment of criticism, however, we may fairly suppose to have been really the remark, not of the guide, but of the interpreter. A subsequent visitor of Staffa, the French geologist, M. Faujas Saint Fond, says, that on making minute and careful inquiry into the matter, on the spot and in the neighbourhood, he could not learn that any person there knew the cave by the name which Banks had given it. It was universally called Uamh an Binn, that is, the Cave of Music. And the explanation which he received of Banks’s error, or rather that of his interpreter, was, that binn being pronounced vinn, and Finlin being in the genitive Fin, of which the sound is nearly the same, the one word had been mistaken for the other. This is a curious and not an uninstructive example of the degree of certainty that belongs to information thus obtained. However, it is not impossible, whatever be the common name of the cave, that there may be also a tradition of its having been the work of the great Fingal, to whom other such stupendous miracles of nature in various other parts of the Highlands of Scotland are popularly ascribed, and who has also, we believe, the credit of being the architect of the Giant’s Causeway in the sister island. This conjecture is rather confirmed by an anecdote which is related by another traveller among the Hebrides, Dr. Thomas Garnett, who has also given us an account of Staffa. “Our interpreter,” says he, “on hearing me express my admiration of this wonder of nature, told me that it was generally considered as the work of Fion-macool, but that for his part he thought it had been built by St. Columba!”

The excavation in question, at all events, is a vast opening, 42 feet in width at the mouth, extending 227 feet in depth, and gradually diminishing from nearly 100 to about 50 feet in height, supported throughout on both sides by perpendicular columns of extraordinary regularity. The opening is surmounted by a noble arch, and from this to the farther extremity of the cave the roof extends in an unbroken surface, composed in some parts of smooth and unvariegated rock, in others at the ends of pillars stuck together in groups or bunches, and with the stalagmitic substance which fills up the interstices, displaying a species of mosaic work of great regularity and beauty. On the west side the wall of pillars is 36 feet in height; but on the east, although the roof is of the same elevation, they spring from a much higher base, and are themselves only 18 feet in length. Along this side is a narrow footpath, raised above the water which covers the floor, along which it is possible for an expert climber to make his way to the farther end of the cave, although the attempt is rather hazardous. The proper and usual mode of viewing the cave is by entering it in a boat; but even this can only be done with safety when the weather is tolerably calm. From the opening being so spacious there is abundance of light to the extremity; and from the same cause the waves, when there is a heavy sea, roll into it with great force. Dr. von Troil, who has given us a description of it in his Letters on Iceland, states that, very far in, there is a hole in the rock below the water, which makes a singularly agreeable sound on the flux and reflux of the tide. It is this melodious murmur of the waters passing into it, which has doubtless given origin to its common name of the Cave of Music.

According to Dr. Macculloch, who, in his Description of the Western Islands, has given the latest and most accurate account of Staffa that has appeared, the basaltic pillars of this cave are “of one ingredient only, which is a granular splintery material resembling clinkstone, highly coloured with iron, but of a greenish black hue.” Between the several pillars has exuded a yellowish substance, producing everywhere a deep contrast of two distinctly defined colours, which admirably relieves what would otherwise be the sombre aspect of the cave. The stone, according to Dr. Garnett, is in many places richly coloured with light green, yellow, and orange, produced by different species of lichen growing on it. Dr. Macculloch says, in concluding his account, “It would be no less presumptuous than useless to attempt a description of the picturesque effect of that to which the pencil itself is inadequate. But if this cave were even destitute of that order and symmetry, that richness arising from multiplicity of parts, combined with greatness of dimensions and simplicity of style, which it possesses; still the prolonged length, the twilight gloom, half concealing the playful and varying effects of reflected light, the echo of the measured surge as it rises and falls, the transparent green of the water, and the profound and fairy solitude of the whole scene, could not fail strongly to impress a mind gifted with any sense of beauty in art or in nature. If to those be added that peculiar sentiment with which nature perhaps most impresses us when she allows us to draw comparisons between her works and those of art, we shall be compelled to own it is not without cause that celebrity has been conferred on the Cave of Fingal.”

SCOTTISH HUSBANDMEN OF THE LAST CENTURY

The patriarchal simplicity of manners which about the middle of last century, so especially characterised the Scottish husbandmen of the Lowlands, was calculated, in a high degree, to foster deep affections, and a sober but manly earnestness both of principle and deportment; and it may be fairly stated as one of the happy privileges of the Scottish church, that so large a number of its ministers have sprung from this virtuous and valuable order of men. The following brief description of the mode of life and household discipline of a Scottish farmer of former days, is a sketch, by an eye-witness, from early recollections of scenes long gone by:—

“When old simplicity was yet in prime;
For now among our glens the faithful fail,
Forgetful of their sires in olden time;

That grey-haired race is gone, of look sublime,

Calm in demeanour, courteous, and sincere,

Yet stern when duty called them, as their clime,

When it flings off the autumnal foliage sere,

And shakes the shuddering woods with solemn voice severe.”

The habitation of a Scottish husbandman in the southern counties, sixty or seventy years ago, was generally a plain, substantial stone building, holding a middle rank between the residences of the inferior gentry and the humble cottages of the labouring peasantry. The farm-house, with the small windows of its second story often projecting through the thatched roof, occupied for the most part, the one side of a quadrangle, in which the young cattle were folded; the other three sides being enclosed and sheltered by the barns, stables, and other farm offices. A kitchen-garden stocked with the common potherbs then in use, and sometimes with a few fruit trees, extended on one side, sheltered perhaps by a hedge of boortree or elder, and often skirted by a few aged forest trees; while the low, thatched dwellings of the hinds and cotters stood at a little distance, each with its small cabbage-garden, or kail-yard, behind, and its stack of peat, or turf fuel in front.

An upland farm, of the common average size, extending to three, four or five hundred acres, partly arable and partly pastoral, usually employed three or four ploughs; and the master’s household, exclusive of his own family, consisted of six or seven unmarried servants, male and female. The married servants—namely, a head shepherd, and a hind or two (as the married ploughmen were termed)—occupied cottages apart; as likewise did the cotters, who were rather a sort of farm-retainers than servants, being bound only to give the master, in lieu of rent, their services in hay-time and harvest, and at other stated periods. The whole, however, especially in remote situations, formed a sort of little independent community in themselves, deriving their subsistence almost exclusively from the produce of the farm. The master’s household alone usually amounted to fifteen or twenty souls; and the whole population of the farm, or onstead, to double or treble that number,—a number considerably greater, perhaps, than will now be commonly found on a farm of the same extent,—but maintained with much frugality, and always industriously occupied, though not oppressed with labour.

Little of the jealous distinction of ranks which now subsists between the farming class and their hired servants, was then known. The connexion between master and servant had less of a commercial, and more of a patriarchal character. Every household formed but one society. The masters (at that time generally a sober, virtuous, and religious class) extended a parental care over their servants, and the servants cherished a filial affection for their masters. They sat together, they ate together, they often wrought together; and after the labours of the day were finished, they assembled together around the blazing fire in the “farmer’s ha’,” conversing over the occurrences of the day, the floating rumours of the country, or “auld warld stories;” and not unfrequently religious subjects were introduced, or the memory of godly men, and of those who, in evil times, had battled or suffered for the right, was affectionately commemorated. This familiar intercourse was equally decorous as it was kindly,—for decent order and due subordination were strictly maintained. It was the great concern of masters and mistresses, when new servants were required, to obtain such as were of sober and religious habits: if one of a different character got in, his dismissal, at the first term, was certain. Servants in those days never thought of changing masters, unless something occurred which rendered the change indispensable.

At ordinary meals, the master (or good-man, as he was termed) took his seat at the head of the large hall table, the mistress sitting on his right hand, the children on his left, the men-servants next in station, and the maid-servants at the bottom,—one of the latter serving. The use of tea was then unknown, except in the houses of the gentry. Porridge was the constant dish at breakfast and supper; at dinner broth and meat, milk, cheese, and butter. Twice in the year, exclusive of extraordinary occasions, there was a farm festival, in which every inhabitant of the place partook; namely, the kirn or harvest-home, at the close of autumn, and the celebration of the new year. On these occasions, an abundant feast of baked and boiled cheered the heart of the humblest labourer on the land, and was closed with decent hilarity by a cheerful beaker or two of home-brewed ale.

But the religious order of the family was the distinguishing trait. The whole household assembled in the hall (or kitchen) in the morning, before breakfast, for family worship, and in the evening before supper. The good-man, of course, led their devotions, every one having his Bible in his hand. This was the stated course even in seed-time and harvest; between five and six in the morning was the hour of prayer in these busy seasons.

On Sabbath all went to church, however great the distance, except one person, in turn, to take care of the house or younger children, and others to tend the cattle. After a late dinner, on their return, the family assembled around the master, who first catechised the children and then the servants. Each was required to tell what he remembered of the religious services in which they had joined; each repeated a portion of the shorter catechism; and all were then examined on heads of divinity, from the mouth of the master. Throughout the whole of the Sabbath, all worldly concerns except such as necessity or mercy required to be attended to, were strictly laid aside; and nothing was allowed to enter into conversation save subjects of religion.

These homely details may perhaps seem, at first sight, calculated to corroborate, in some respects, the exaggerated notions which prevail in England, respecting the religious austerity of the old Presbyterians; and readers, looking exclusively to the strictness of their discipline, their alleged “proscription of all amusements,” the limited education, the want of books, and, above all, the want of refinement which, according to our modern notions, might be expected to be the necessary result of familiar association with menial servants,—may possibly picture to themselves a state of society altogether clownish, melancholy, and monotonous. Yet this would be a very false estimate of the real character and condition of the old Scottish tenantry.

The life of the husbandman and his dependents, in those days, were so far from being unenlivened by mirth and enjoyment, that there was in truth much more real enjoyment than is now often to be witnessed. They had more leisure to be merry than their descendants, and there was, in reality, no proscription of innocent amusements. Spring and autumn were the only seasons that required very arduous labour in the old system of husbandry; and then those seasons came round with an air of more festivity, and more of a heart-stirring aspect about them, and their toils were encountered with a more grateful alacrity than in our days:—at least so it appears to one who looks back upon them. At other seasons of the year the labours were comparatively light. The winning of peats and hay, ewe-milking, sheep-shearing, the dairy, and the tending of the flocks and herds, chiefly occupied the jocund days of summer. In winter their leisure was still greater, and their enjoyments not less diversified. Field-sports were eagerly followed in the intervals of labour, or when frost and snow had stopped the progress of the plough; nor were the peasantry then restrained from such hardy amusements by the enforcement of demoralizing game-laws. At other times, the grave good-man would toss down to his sons and servant-lads the foot-ball or the kitticat, and bid them take a bout to warm their youthful blood. And in the long winter evenings, when seated around the fire, harmless mirth and jocularity pleasantly alternated with more grave and instructive conversation; nor did any puritanical sourness forbid the recitation of the old romantic border ballads and legends, or the singing of the sweet pastoral songs, of which both the poetry and the music were, like the broom and birch of the braes around them, the spontaneous and unsophisticated growth of their own beautiful country. And thus, with very few books of mere amusement, and without any games of chance, or stimulating liquors, our simple ancestors managed to beguile their hours of leisure and relaxation cheerfully and innocently; and, on the whole perhaps, quite as rationally, if not quite so elegantly, as their more bustling and ambitious offspring. Amidst the manifold improvements of more recent times, (the value of which, in many respects, we are far from denying,) it may yet be considered very questionable, whether all that has been abandoned of former manners has been equally well replaced, and whether even our progress in refinement has not been but too dearly purchased by the sacrifice of qualities still more valuable.

⁂ The preceding article is extracted from a ‘Memoir of the Rev. Dr. Waugh,’ and has been furnished to us, with some alterations, by the writer, himself the son of a Scottish farmer.

INSCRIPTION.

Pizarro here was born; a greater name
The list of glory boasts not, toil and pain,
Famine, and hostile elements, and hosts
Embattled, failed to check him in his course;
Not to be wearied, not to be deterred,
Not to be overcome. A mighty realm
He overran, and with relentless arms
Slew or enslaved its unoffending sons,

And wealth, and power, and fame, were his rewards.

There is another world beyond the grave,

According to their deeds where men are judged.

O reader! if thy daily bread be earned
By daily labour,—yea however low,
However wretched be thy lot assigned,
Thank thou, with deepest gratitude, the God
Who made thee, that thou art not such as he.

Southey.

THE WEEK.

[Marshal Turenne.]

September 16.—This is the anniversary of the birth of Marshal Turenne, one of the most renowned generals of modern times. Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Viscount Turenne, was the second son of the Duke de Bouillon, Prince of Sedan, in Champaigne, where he was born in 1611. His mother was Elizabeth of Nassau, daughter of William, Prince of Orange, commonly called William the First, the illustrious founder of the Dutch republic. His father having died, Turenne was sent by his mother, at the early age of thirteen, to the Netherlands, to be trained to the art of war under his uncle, Prince Maurice, who, since the assassination of William in 1584, had presided over the affairs of that country. The young recruit was placed at first in the ranks, and served for a year as a common soldier, taking his share in all the labours and hardships of his comrades, before he was raised to a post of command. In 1630 he returned to France, and was immediately invested with the command of a regiment. In 1634, having made a brilliant display of his skill and courage at the siege of the fortress of La Motte in Lorraine, he was raised to the rank of Marechal de Camp. The next year he was sent to Germany to take part in the war against the Emperor. From this date till his death, he was almost constantly engaged in active service; and for the next forty years no military name in France, or in Europe, was more renowned than that of Turenne, but we cannot here follow him through his successive campaigns. He was made a Marshal of France in 1642, at the early age of twenty-seven, and Marshal-General of the French armies on the marriage of Louis IV. in 1660. The chief scenes of his exploits were Holland and Flanders, Italy, and different parts of Germany. He also took a leading part in the civil dissensions which distracted his native country during the minority of Louis XIV., espousing in the first instance the cause of the Fronde, or combination of malcontented nobility, but afterwards taking the side of the court, and fighting as valiantly against his late associates. The career of Turenne was closed by one of the accidents of war which may befall the highest or the humblest soldier. As he was reconnoitring the position of the Austrian General Montecuculi, near Saltzbach, he was struck by a cannon ball, and fell dead from his horse, on the 27th of July, 1675. Turenne had married in 1653 the daughter of the Duke de la Force, who died however in 1666, without leaving children. This lady was a person of great piety, and strongly attached to the Protestant faith, of which her ancestors had been among the first and most strenuous defenders. While she lived, Turenne, a Protestant also by education and by descent, both on his father’s and mother’s side, resisted all the solicitations of the court to change his religion. Not long after the death of his wife, however, after professing to have studied the points in dispute between the two churches, he publicly declared himself a Catholic. In sagacity, steady perseverance, self-reliance, and many of the other qualities which go to form an able commander of an army, Marshal Turenne has scarcely been surpassed; and he was also brave as his sword, and so wholly devoted in heart to his profession, that he thought as little of its toils as of its dangers, and was at all times ready to share both with the meanest in the camp. Hence he was the idol of his men as well as their pride; they not only admired, and followed with alacrity to the field, the consummate captain and hero of a hundred victories, but they loved the man. This military spirit was the soul of Turenne’s character and the source both of its bright and of its darker points. Indeed, bred as he was to the trade of arms almost from his childhood, and living in an age of such incessant warfare, it was hardly possible that he should have been anything more than a mere soldier. His name will be eternally disgraced by the ravages which he caused to be committed in the campaign of 1674, in the Palatinate, or the dominions of the Elector of Palatine. At the same time it should be borne in mind that war was the spirit of his age; and it would be unjust to pronounce upon the character of an individual, who certainly possessed many high qualities, by subjecting him to the standard by which we have learnt to estimate the pretensions of mere warriors.

[French Cavalier.]

⁂ The Office of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is at 59, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

LONDON:—CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST.

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Transcriber’s Notes

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain. Itemized changes from the original text:

- p. 234: Added opening quotation mark before phrase “Dinner was scarcely over when we set up our great ladder of ropes.”

- p. 235: Added period after phrase “or mountain snake.”

- p. 240: Replaced period with comma after phrase “no military name in France, or in Europe, was more renowned than that of Turenne.”

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PENNY MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE, ISSUE 29, SEPTEMBER 15, 1832 ***

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Table of Contents

- The Penny Magazine, September 15, 1832

- THE WARWICK VASE.

- ESCAPE OF DE LATUDE FROM THE BASTILLE.

- VENOMOUS SERPENTS.

- FINGAL’S CAVE.

- SCOTTISH HUSBANDMEN OF THE LAST CENTURY

- INSCRIPTION.

- THE WEEK.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE