DIFFICULTY OF DISTINGUISHING ONESELF IN LONDON.

IN London every man is submerged in the multitude, and he who can hold his head high enough out of the living mass to be known, must have something of remarkable buoyancy or peculiar villany about him. Even parliament, except to a few of the leaders, is no distinction. The member for the shire is clipped of his plumage at the moment of his entering that colossal poultry-yard, and must take his obscure pickings with other unnoticeable fowls.

ADVERTISEMENT FOR A WIFE.

A GENTLEMAN, aged 27, of good education and connections, with an income of £1,300 a year, independent of his profession, is desirous of forming a matrimonial alliance. The lady must not be older than himself, of pleasing manners, and conversant with the usages of society. Property is not so much looked for as an agreeable companion, in whom also a knowledge of music or singing would be desirable, but not indispensable. Ultimate happiness and benefit to both parties is the sole object of this advertisement, and answers will meet with every attention, addressed, prepaid, to S. A., Library, 42, Tottenham Court Road, London.

A LADY'S ANSWER TO THE ABOVE.

In choosing a husband, the man to my mind,
Must be sensible, gentle, benevolent, and kind;
Of a temper quite firm, yet devoid of self-will,
If on good once resolved, pursuing it still;
Of a spirit so great as to keep out of debt!
And at troubles unsought for, disdaining to fret;
I'd have him be lively, yet not void of thinking
What a bad vice it is to give way to drinking;
With a heart to enjoy what his hands may have got,
Contented and cheerful whatever his lot;

I'd have him esteemed by the good and the wise,
Not a man of the world, though striving to rise;

He must love me too well at small errors to frown,
And with me at his table sit happily down.

DRYDEN declared of himself that he was saturnine, and not one of those whose sprightly sayings diverted company; and one of his censurers makes him say

Nor wine, nor love, could ever see me gay,

To writing bred, I knew not what to say.

There are men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation; whom merriment confuses, and objection disconcerts; whose bashfulness restrains their exertion and suffers them not to speak till the time of speaking is past; or whose attention to their own character makes them unwilling to utter at hazard what has not been considered, and cannot be recalled.

THE MOUNTAIN WIND.

Blast of the mountain! the strongest, the fleetest,
Sounding at eve in the pines of Braemar-
Breeze of the desert! the purest, the sweetest,
Warbling alone on the moorlands afar-
Hasten, unseen! from the fields of freedom,
Play round my bosom, and steal o'er my brow-
Harp strings of Movern, and perfumes of Edom,
Bring not my spirits such gladness as thou.
Come from the brake where the wild bird is singing,
Come from the fresh bank that gladdens the bee,
Come from the cliff, where the blue-bell is springing,
Hidden from all but the sunbeam and thee;
Rise in thy strength from the vale of thy slumbers;
Waken my spirit has pined for thee long-
Oh! for the music that swells in thy numbers!
Oh! for the wildness that breathes in thy song!
Welcome, sweet playmate and friend of my childhood!
Thou art the same that I loved in my youth-
Others were false, as those leaves in the wild wood,
Thou still retainest thy freshness and truth;

Thou still rejoicest, in melody roaming

Through the long fern, where the dew spangles gleam;
Thou, when the swift brooks are turbidly foaming,
Dashest the spray from the vexed mountain stream.
Bard of the hill! when thy harping is loudest,
Bid me not think with the tyrant or slave;

Teach me to strive with the worst and the proudest,
Fearless, as thou with steep Garval's dark wave;
Teach me to rise with a lofty devotion,

Pure, as thou rovest the blossoming sod,

Sweeping the chords with a sacred emotion,
Singing of truth, and redemption, and God!

ON FEMALES.

THE female mind is naturally credulous, affectionate, and, in its attachments, ardent. If in her peculiar situation she must be deemed in any degree culpable, let us remember that this is but a frail vessel of refined clay. When the awful record of her errors is enrolled, may that sigh which was breathed for the misery of a fellow mortal, waft away the scroll, and the tears which flowed for the calamities of others, float the memorial down the stream of oblivion. On the errors of women let us look with the allowance

and humanity of men. Enchanting woman! thou balm of life! soother of sorrow! solace of the soul! how dost thou lessen the load of human misery, and lead the wretched into the valley of delight! Without thee, how heavily would man drag through a dreary world; but if the white hand of a fascinating female be twined round his arm, how joyous, how lightly, doth he trip along the path. That warm and tender friend, who in the most trying situation retains her enthusiastic fondness, and in every change of fortune preserves unabated love, ought to be embraced as the first

benison of Heaven, the completion of earthly happiness! Let man but draw such a prize in the lottery of life, and glide down the stream of existence with such a partner, and neither the cold averted eye of a summer friend, nor the frowns of an adverse fortune, should ever produce a pang, or excite a murmur. But enough. Let not the chaste feelings of blushing innocency be wounded by this rhapsody, or for a moment suppose, that the episode, or effusion, or even whatever she pleases, is extended as a vindication of female folly. In good truth it is not. The writer would not wish it delivered to the cold fingered portress of Diana's Temple, but it may be laid upon that altar which is sacred to friendship, to hymen, to love! There will we leave it.

POET'S REMARK.

The Heathen poet justly remarks

"Laws without morals never can well prevail,
And vain the best, where due examples fail."

ON THE HOARY HEAD UNDER RIGHTEOUS
FEELINGS.

Say not it dies, that glory,

'Tis caught unquenched on high, Those saint-like brows so hoary Shall wear it in the skies.

ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY.

THE Science of geography cannot be completely understood without considering the earth as a planet, or as a body moving round another at a considerable distance from it. But the science which treats of the planets, and other heavenly bodies, is called astronomy. Of these, the most conspicuous is that glorious luminary the sun, the fountain of light and heat to the several planets which move round it, and which, together with the sun, compose what astronomers have called the solar system. The way, or path, in which the planets move round the sun, is called their orbit; and it is now fully proved by astronomers, that there are six planets, which move round the sun, each in its own orbit. The names of these, according to their nearness to the centre, or middle point of the sun, are as follows:-Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The two first, because they move within the orbit of the earth (being near the sun) are called inferior planets, or perhaps more properly, interior or inner planets; the three last, moving without the orbit of the earth, are called superior, or perhaps more properly, exterior or outer planets. If we can form a notion of the manner in which any one of these planets, suppose our earth, moves round the sun, we can easily conceive the manner in which all the rest do it.

We shall only, therefore, particularly consider the motion of the earth, or planet on which we live.

The earth, upon which we live, was long considered as one large extensive plane. The heavens, above it, in which the sun, moon, and stars, appeared to move daily from east to west, were conceived to be at no great distance from it, and to be only designed for the use or ornament of our earth: several reasons, however, occurred, which rendered this opinion improbable; it is needless to mention them, because we have now a sufficient proof of the figure of the earth, from the voyages of many navigators, who have actually sailed round it: as from that of Magellan's ship, which was the first that surrounded the globe, sailing east from a port in Europe, in 1519, and returning to the same, after a voyage of 1124 days, without apparently altering his direction, any more than a fly would appear to do in moving round a ball of wax.

The roundness of the earth being thoroughly established, proves the way for the discovery of its motion. For while it was considered as a plane, mankind had an obscure notion of its being supported like a scaffolding on pillars, though they could not tell what supported these. But the figure of the globe is much better adapted to motion. This is confirmed by considering, that if the earth did not move round the sun, not only the sun, but all the stars and planets must move round the earth. Now, as philosophers, by reckonings founded on the surest observations, have been able to guess pretty nearly at the distance of the heavenly bodies from the earth, and from each other, just as every body that knows the first elements of mathematics can measure the height of a steeple, or any object placed on it; it appeared, that if we conceived the heavenly bodies, to move round the earth, we must suppose them endowed with a motion or velocity so immense as to exceed all conception: whereas, all the appearances in nature may be as well explained by imagining the earth to move round the sun in the space of a year, and to turn on its own axis once in the twenty

four hours.

To form a conception of these two motions of the earth, we may imagine a ball moving on a billiard table or bowling green: the ball proceeds forwards upon the green or table, not by sliding along like a plane upon wood or slate upon ice, but by turning round its own axis, which is an imaginary line drawn through the centre or middle of the ball, and ending on its surface in two points called its poles. Conceiving then the matter in this way, and that the earth in the space of twenty-four hours, moves from west to east, the inhabitants on the surface of it, like men on the deck of a ship, who are insensible of their own motion, and think that the banks move from them in a contrary direction, will conceive that the sun and stars from east to west in the same time of twenty-four hours in which they, along with the earth, move from west to east. This daily or diurnal motion of the earth being once clearly con

ceived, will enable us easily to form a notion of its annual or yearly motion round the sun for as that luminary seems to have a daily motion round our earth, which is really occasioned by the daily motion of the earth round its axis, so in the course of a year, he seems to have an annual motion in the heavens, and to rise and set in different points of them, which is really occasioned by the daily motion of the earth in its orbit or path round the sun, which it completes in the time of a year. Now as to the first of these motions, we owe the difference of day and night, so to the second we are indebted for the difference in the length of the days and nights, and in the seasons of the year.

This much being said with regard to the motion of the earth, which the smallest reflection may lead us to apply to the other planets, we must observe, that besides the six planets already mentioned, which move round the sun, there are other ten bodies, which move round three of these, in the same manner as they do round the sun and of these our earth has one, called the moon; Jupiter has four, and Saturn has five: these are called moons, from their agreeing with our moon, which was first attended to; and sometimes they are called secondary planets, because they seem to be attendants of the earth, Jupiter and Saturn, about which they move, and which are called primary.

The annual motion of the earth occasions the diversity of seasons. But this would not happen, were the axis of the earth exactly parallel, or in a line with the axis of its orbit; because then the same parts of the earth would be turned towards the sun in every diurnal revolution, which would deprive mankind of the grateful vicissitude of the seasons, arising from the difference in length of the days and nights. This, therefore, is not the case. The axis of the earth is inclined to the plane of the earth's orbit, which we may conceive by supposing a spindle put through a ball directly forwards, while one end of the spindle continues to touch the ground, and the other points towards some quarter of the heavens, we may form a notion of the inclination of the earth's axis to its orbit, from the inclination of the spindle to the ground. The same observation applies to some of the other planets. The only thing that now remains is to consider what is meant by the mean distances of the planets from the sun. In order to understand which, we must learn that the orbit, or path which a planet describes, were it to be marked out, would not be quite round or circular, but in the shape of a figure called an eclipse, which though resembling a circle, is longer than broad. Hence the same planet is not always at the same distance from the sun, and the mean distance of it is that which is exactly betwixt its greatest and least distance.

The next thing to be observed, is to what are called the fixed stars, which comprehend the luminaries above our heads. The fixed stars are distinguished by the naked eye from the planets,