ROPE-RIDING ON HORSEBACK, ON ST. MARK'S DAY AT VENICE. The gaiety and splendour exhibited in the place of St. Mark at Venice on this anniversary, is extremely attractive. Formerly, among the remarkable customs in honour of this the patron saint of the city, it was usual for a man to ascend and descend a rope stretched from the summit of St. Mark's tower, and secured at a considerable distance from the base. On the last day of February, 1680, the doge, the senate, and the imperial ambassador, with about fifty thousand spectators, beheld the annual solemnity. In the first place appeared certain butchers, in their roast-meat clothes; one of which, with a Persian scimitar, cut off the heads of three oxen, one after another, at one blow, to the. admiration of the beholders, who had never seen the like either in Venice, or any other part of the world. But that which caused of greater wonder was this: A person, adorned in a tinsel riding habit, having a gilt helmet upon his head, and holding in his right hand a lance, in his left a helmet made of a thin piece of plate gilded, and sitting upon a white horse, with a swift pace ambled up a rope six hundred feet long, fastened from the quay to the top St. Mark's tower. When he had arrived half way, his tinsel coat fell off, and he made a stand, and stooping his lance submissively, saluted the doge sitting in the palace, and flourished the banner three times over his head. Then, resuming his former speed, he went on, and, with his horse, entered the tower where the bell hangs; and presently returning on foot, he climbed up to the highest pinnacle of the tower; where, sitting on the golden angel, he flourished his banner again several times. This performed, he descended to the belltower; and there taking horse, rode down again to the bottom in like manner as he had ascended.* "Whoever, says Mrs. Piozzi, "sees St. Mark's Place lighted up of an evening, adorned with every excellence of human cart, and pregnant with pleasure, expressed by intelligent countenances sparkling with every grace of nature--the sea washing its walls the moon-beams dancing on its subjugated waves sport and laughter resounding from the coffee-houses-girls with guitars skipping about the square-masks and merry-makers singing as they pass youunless a barge with a band of music is * Malcolm's Manners of Europe.' heard at some distance upon the water, and calls attention to sounds made sweeter by the element over which they are brought whoever is led suddenly," say! Mrs. Piozzi," to this scene of seemingly perennial gaiety, will be apt to exclaim in Venice, as Eve does to Adam in Milton, With thee conversing, I forget all time, "All seasons, and their change-all please alike!" REV. MR. WILSON, THE MAN IN THE MOON. It will now give pain to no one, if I notice Mr. Wilson, formerly curate of Halton Gill, near Skipton in Craven; and father of the late Rev. Edward Wilson, canon of Windsor. He wrote a tract, entitled "The Man in the Moon," which was seriously meant to convey the knowledge of common astronomy in the following strange vehicle: A cobbler, Israel Jobson by name, is supposed to ascend first to the top of Pennigint; and thence, as a second stage equally practicable, to the moon! after which he makes a tour of the whole solar system. From this excursion, however, the traveller brings back little information which might not have been had upon earth, excepting that the inhabitants of one of the planets, I forget which, were made of" pot metal." The work contains some other extravagancies; but the writer, after all, was a man of talent, and has abundantly shown that had he been blessed with a sound mind and a superior education, he would have been capable of much better things If I had the book before me I could quote single sentences here and there, which in point of composition rise to no mean de gree of excellence. It is rarely to be met with, having, as I am told, been industri ously bought up by his family. I have only seen one copy, and my recollection of what I read in it is not very particular.* Mr. Wilson had also good mechanical hands, and carved well in wood, a talent which he applied to several whimsical purposes. But his chef-d'œuvre was an oracu far head, like that of friar Bacon and the disciple of the famous Escotillo, with which he diverted himself and amazed his neighbours, till a certain reverend wiseact threatened to complain of the poor man to his metropolitan as an enchanter! Afte this the oracle was mute.t *Could any reader of the Table Book forward copy?-ED. Rev. Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven, SUMMER SHOWERS SCORCHED LEAVES. In the summer, after some days of fine weather, during the heat of the day, if a storm happens, accompanied with a few light showers of rain, and the sun appears immediately after with its usual splendour, it burns the foliage and the flowers on which the rain had fallen, and destroys the hopes of the orchard. The intense heat, which the ardour of the sun produces at that time on the leaves and flowers, is equal to that of burning iron. Naturalists have sought for the cause of this strange effect, but they have said nothing which satisfies a reasonable mind. This is, however, the fact in the serene days of the summer it is visible that there gathers on the foliage and the flowers, as, indeed, on every other part, a little dust, sometimes more and sometimes less, scattered by the wind. When the rain falls on this dust, he drops mix together, and take an oval or round form, as we may frequently observe in our houses on the dusty floor, when servants scatter water before they sweep. These globes of water form convex lenses, which produce the same effect as burning mirrors. Should the rain be heavy and last long, the sun would not produce this burning heat, because the force and duration of the rain will have destroyed the dust that formed hese drops of water; and the drops, losing heir globular form, in which alone consisted heir caustic power, will be dispersed.* ROYAL SUMMER-HOUSE, IN SIAM. about a quarter of an hour, and it is emptied as quickly. When you enter the pavilion the door is immediately closed, and cemented with mastic, to hinder the water from entering; it is then that they open the sluices; and this great basin is soon filled with water, which is even suffered to overflow the land; so that the pavilion is entirely under water, except the top of the dome, which is left untouched for the benefit of respiration. Nothing is more charming than the agreeable coolness of this delicious place, while the extreme heat of the sun boils the surface of the freshest fountains. SPANISH PUNCTILIO. On occasion of the decease of the queen mother of Spain in 1696, the Paris papers gravely relate the following particulars of a dispute respecting precedence. The officers of the crown and the grandees of the kingdom assembled at the usual time to open her majesty's will; but finding that the first lady of the queen's chamber, who ought by virtue of her office to have been present, was absent, the august body sent a messenger, requesting her attendance. The first lady, deeming the message a gross attack upon her privileges and high importance, indignantly replied, that it was her indispensable duty not to leave her deceased royal mistress, and therefore the nobles must wait on her. Thereupon ensued a negotiation by mes sages, which occupied eight hours. In the course of the discussion, the grandees insisted on their claims of precedence as an aggregate body, yet, individually, they The king of Siam has in one of his counconsidered themselves happy when comry palaces a most singular pavilion. The plying with the commands of the ladies. ables, the chairs, the closets, &c. are all Fixed in her resolution, the lady highomposed of crystal. The walls, the ceiling, chamberlain acquainted her opponents with and the floors, are formed of pieces of plate her final determination.. The decision of lass, of about an inch thick, and six feet the great officers and grandees was equally quare, so nicely united by a cement, which unalterable; but at the last they proposed, sas transparent as glass itself, that the that "without rising from their seats, or nost subtile fluid cannot penetrate. There moving themselves, they should be carried s but one door, which shuts so closely, that to a room at an equal distance between t is as impenetrable to the water as the rest their own apartment and the lady highf this singular building. A Chinese en- chamberlain's, who should be carried to ineer constructed it thus as a certain re- the same place, seated upon a high cushion, nedy against the insupportable heat of the in the same manner as she sat in the limate. This pavilion is twenty-eight feet queen's chamber, to the end it might be n length, and seventeen in breadth; it is said, that neither side had made a step to laced in the midst of a great basin, paved meet each other." It seems that the pernd ornamented with marble of various formance of the solemnity happily termiolours. They fill this basin with water innated the important difference. BOSWELLIANA. The following anecdotes are related by, or relate to, the well-known James Boswell, who conducted Dr. Johnson to the Highlands of Scotland. It may be recollected that when Boswell took the doctor to his father's house, the old laird of Auchinleck remarked, that "Jamie had brought an odd kind o' a chiel' wi' him." "Sir," said Boswell," he is the grand luminary of our hemisphere, quite a constellation, sir."-" Ursa Major, (the Great Bear,) I suppose," said the laird. Some snip-snap wit was wont to pass between sire and son. "Jamie" was bred an advocate, and sometimes pleaded at the bar. Pleading, on a particular occasion, before his father, who, at that time, was 66 " Ordinary on the bills," and saying something which his lordship did not like, he exclaimed to Jamie, "Ye're an ass, mon.' -"No, my lord," replied Jamie, "I am not an ass, but I am a colt, the foal of an ass!"," In 1785, Boswell addressed "a Letter to the People of Scotland" on a proposed alteration in the court of session. He says in this pamphlet, "When a man of probity and spirit, a lord Newhall, whose character is ably drawn in proses by the late lord president Arniston, and elegantly in verse by Mr. Hamilton of Bangour, when such a man sits among our judges, should they be disposed to do wrong, he can make them .hear and tremble. My honoured father told me, (the late lord Auchinleck,) that şir -Walter Pringle spoke as one having authority' even when he was at the bar, he would cram a decision down their throats."" Boswell tells, in the same "Letter," that "Duncan Forbes of Culloden, when lord president of the court, gave every day as a toast at his table, Here's to every lord of session who does not deserve to be hanged!' Lord Auchinleck and lord Monboddo, both judges, but since his time, are my authority," says Boswell," for this.-I do not say that the toast was very delicate, or even quite decent, but it may give some notion what sort of judges there may be." It is further related by Boswell, that a person was executed to please his laird. Before the heritable jurisdictions were abolished, a man was tried for his life in the court of one of the chieftains. The jury were going to bring him in 'not guilty,' but somebody whispered them, that young laird had never seen an execution,' upon which their verdict was →→→→ the The writer of a letter to the editor of th "Times," signed "W." in August, 1821 communicates the following prescription, particularly useful in diarrhoea, accompanie by inflammation of the bowels :— Take of confection of catechu 2 drachm simple cinnamon water 4 ounces; a them together, and give one or two tabl syrup of white poppies 1 ounce. M: spoonfuls twice or thrice a day as require To children under ten years of age give single dessert-spoon, and under two years tea-spoonful, two or three times, as abov stated. This mixture is very agreeable, and preferable to the spirituous and narcot preparations usually administered. In th course of a few hours it abates the dise der, and in almost every instance infallibl cures the patient. During the fruit seas it is especially valuable. Epitaph ON A MARINE OFFICER. Here lies retired from busy scenes From the "Notes of a Bookworm.". This eccentric individual, whose fertile pen procured him notoriety, was the son of a small grocer at March in the Isle of Ely. To use his favourite expression, he " came forth" on Friday, the 13th of April, 1735, O. S. He received the rudiments of his education under "dame Hawkins," from whom he was removed to a most sagacious schoolmaster, named Wendall; and he "astonished his schoolfellows by the brilliancy of his genius," till he was bound to his cousin Coward, of Lynn, to learn the art and mystery of a 66 glover and breechesmaker." He had nearly passed through his apprenticeship, and attained to the age of twenty, unconscious of the numerous "ills that flesh is heir to," when one day gazing at a small shop-window, nearly blinded by gloves and second-hand unmentionables, an accidental aperture favoured him with a glimpse of the too charming VOL. II.-36. Miss Barbara Green, in the act of making wash-leather gloves. She was a maiden, and though something more than fifty, her fading beauty rendered her, to Nathan, all that "Youthful poets fancy when they love." From that moment his eyes lost their lustre, "Love, like a worm i' th' bud, preyed on his damask cheek... He was to be seen pursuing his avocations at his "board of green cloth" day by day, sitting "Like Patience on a monument Smiling at grief.", He "never told his love" till chance enabled him to make the idol of his hope the offer of his hand. "No," said the too fascinating Barbara Green, "I will be an Evergreen." The lady was inexorable, and Nathan was in despair; but time and reflection whispered "grieving's a folly," and "it's better to have any wife than none," and Nathan took unto himself another, with whom he enjoyed all the "ecstatic ecstasies" of domestic felicity. Nathan's business at Lynn became inadequate to his wants, and he removed to the village of Dersingham, a few miles distant; and there, as a glover, poet, haberdasher, green-grocer, and psalm-singer," he 66 vegetated remote from vulgar throng, and beguiled his leisure by "cogitating in cogibundity of cogitation."-Here it was, he tells us, that in 1775 he had a "wonderful, incomprehensible, and pathetic dream " a vision of flames, in the shapes of "wigblocks" and "Patagonian cucumbers," attended with horrid crashes, like the noise of a thousand Merry Andrew's rackets, which terrified and drove him to the "mouth of the sea;" where, surrounded by fire and water, he could only escape from dreadful destruction by awaking. He believed that the fiery wig-blocks were opened to him" in a dream as a caution, to preserve him from temptation. It was soon after this that, seeing one of his neighbours at the point of death, he "cogitated" the following 66 The following ending of a "Love-letter written by particular desire," is a specimen of his "effusions in prose." "Marriage is like war; the battle causes fear, but the sweet hope of winning at the last stimulates us to proceed. But the effects of matrimony are much more agreeable than war, because the engage ment may be accomplished without being prejudicial to the welfare of society. Wer to mention all the comparisons my warm swell this letter to a very great bulk. imagination could furnish me with, it would "So to conclude;-the many inconveni ences attending my being in business alone, are beyond conception; and I wish the fa tigue to be abated by sharing it with some both secrets and circumstances, and all congenial soul, who may be intrusted with affairs of importance, too tedious to mention." Filled with self-importance by a lively sense of his vast acquirements, and his amazing utility to his village neighbours, he turned his thoughts to the "affairs of the nation" in the year 1799, and projected the salvation of the empire, by a plan of finance for raising adequate supplies to carry on the war against France with vigour. This he submitted in a spirited memorial, addressed "TO THE HON. WM. PITT, First of Ministers, &c. &c. &c. "MAY it please your gracious Honour, Dear Sir, to take into your honourable con sideration the undermentioned business, which at this critical crisis and expensive period wants very much to be put in prac tice, to the advantage of the world, the benefit of our own government, the public's welfare, and the glory of Dersingham." Nathan's memorial runs to great length, but he states its real "business" in a few words." Beloved and honourable sir, be not angry at my proposal, if not approved of, which is, to beg of all dukes, lords, earls, baronets, country squires, profound justices, gentlemen, great and rich farmers, topping tradesmen, and others, who, to my certain and inconceivable knowledge, have so much unnecessary ornamental and use less plate, of all sorts and descriptions, to deliver up the same immediately to govern. ment, to be made into money for the sup noured sir, my plan is not to debar any one port of this just and necessary war. Hofrom having a sufficient quantity of such like plate, but only that which stands and remains useless and unused, which would |