his ancestors, where he was preparing himself to become a monk, but the sudden entry of the French into the "eternal city," altered the course of his education, and being destined to travel, he has been a wanderer ever since. His family not being rich, he was compelled to live upon his own industry, and having turned his attention to the study of Hydraulics, he derived much advantage from it, and it was ultimately the cause of his going to Egypt. In 1803, he arrived in England, and soon after married an English lady, we believe; and in 1813, he visited in company with Mrs. Belzoni, Portugal, Spain, and Malta, from which latter place he embarked for Egypt, where he remained from 1815 to 1819. Here he had the good fortune (as he modestly terms it) to be the discoverer of many remains of antiquity of that primitive nation. He succeeded in opening one of the two famous Pyramids of Ghizeh, as well as many of the tombs of the kings at Thebes. Among the latter, that which has been pronounced by one of the most distinguished scholars of the age, to be the tomb of Psammuthis, is at this moment, the principal, the most perfect and splendid monument in that country. The celebrated bust of young Memnon, which he brought from Thebes, is now in the British Museum, as is also the beautiful alabaster Sarcophagus, found in one of the tombs of the King. I Near the second cataract of the Nile, He opened the temple of Ybsambul; then made a journey to the coast of the Red Sea, to the city of Berenice, and afterwards an excursion in the western Elloah or Oasis. Next to the promotion of science, M. Belzoni was induced to visit Egypt, in consequence of his having received information that an Hydraulic machine would be of great service in that country, which wants only water to irrigate the fields, to make them produce at any time of the year. In this expectation, we believe, he did not meet with the encouragement he expected; he, therefore, solely devote his time and talents to the attainment of that in which, as we have shewn, he so ably succeeded. In his narrative of these journeys, he gives a most animated description of the wonders that every hour attracted his attention, in order to do justice to which, we purpose at some future time, to give extracts from the work itself, of the prin cipal discoveries made by him during those interesting tours. In the prosecution of his great designs, he had the misfortune to experience very many vexatious impediments, which the illconcealed malice and envy of his rival explorators attempted, though vainly, to throw in the way of his success; he feelingly laments these petty artifices of his fellow-labourers, in the same honorable field, and which were happily ren dered nugatory by his perseverance and promptitude. After an absence of twenty years, he returned to his native land and the bosom of his family, and shortly after which lie came to England. On his arrival in Europe, he found that so many erroneous accounts had been given to the world of his operations and discoveries in Egypt, that he determined to publish a narrative of his proceedings, and which for the scientific knowledge and deep research it displays, may compete with the best works on the subject. In the unfortunate death of M. Belzoni, Science has experienced a loss we fear irreparable; no one was fitter for the task, and none ever pursued with greater ardour the accomplishment of his views; he combined the elegance of the gentleman to the acquirements of the scholar; and in private life, he was every way amiable. In person M. Belzoni was tall and finely formed, with a face expressive of great animation. Like most of the natives of Italia's fine sky, M. B. was dark, and the better to prosecute his designs, he suffered his beard to grow to a great length, and on all occasions, assumed the Eastern costume. His partiality for this country, and the encouragement (which to the honor of the nation be it said) he met with here, induced him to present all the monuments of his persevering labours to the English nation, in token of his gratitude for their liberal support. We have, therefore, greater cause to lament his premature death; but his well-earned fame can never die; and the name of Belzoni will be handed down to posterity with veneration and pride, along with those who by their useful researches have conferred such benefits on society. THE HERMIT ABROAD. THE POST-OFFICE. "Speeds the soft intercourse from soul to soul, And wafts a sigh from Indus to the pole." POPE. A POST-OFFICE, like a direction-post or a mile-stone, is passed inattentively by thousands hourly; those only, who have direct dealings with this depository of commerce, confidence, mutual and common place intercourse, secrets, affections, plans, plots and negociations, treasons, treaties, and trivial communications, stop to remark the varieties which such a spot affords; but to the calm observer of life, to the man who has leisure and tranquillity, the peace of the heart and unprejudiced views, the letter-box, the mile-stone, and the road post have more in them than mere wood and stone. The circulating medium of the post-office, affects high and low, rich and poor, foreign and domestic interests; its operations are hopeful and fearful to many, and yet how few look attentively on the living drama acted daily at its doors. 66 The proud man views it not, because my porter, or my agent receives my letters;" the mercantile man waits in his counting house for a fortune or a bankruptcy enclosed in the mouth of secresy, whose lips, unlike those of folly, are ever open but speak not; the soldier expects a dun or a love-letter, a challenge from the drum-major, or a more fearful attorney's notice; whilst the few most feelingly affected, draw their pains and pleasures, their success or failure directly from the dumb limbs of their oracle, or fortune-teller. The man who sails tranquilly down the stream of time, and whose correspondence is confined to acts of friendship and to the gentle usages of life, to congratulations, condolings, orders to servants, and directions to men of business, to advice to a nephew, or a remittance to a weak brother, may dispassionately stand aloof to view, the busy scene of the mail's arrival, and draw from it reflections and information; and, although I do not identify myself with any character, I must be permitted to take my station here, and to recount what passed before my eyes. I give it to my readers because I reaped amusement and instruction therefrom: I give it to those who may become dramatis persona in the scene; because caution and circumspection, prudence and; eli ¡ ossession may be of infinite service to them in their different walks of life, and that they may learn that, when they consider themselves as least observed, their passions may be strongly visible, and calculations may be made, and conjectures formed, of which they cannot be in the least aware. A spy (but spies have no hearts and therefore very imperfect minds) might, if he were divested of his degradation, discover half the secrets of the town; but any man gifted with strong percep tions might delineate the passions, characters and professions of the frequenters of the post-office, as well the depositors as the receivers of letters, and decide from the eagerness or interest, the expectation or trepidation, the craft or concealment, the ease or indifference of the acting party, whether a miser or an ambitious one, a speculator or a suitor, a swindler or a forlorn fair one, a prose perous trifler, or a mere porter of franks or letter-packets, dropped the billet, or enquired for the more or less important epistle; not forgetting the author, the advertiser, the pauper, genuine or pretended, and the hoaxing adventurer enquiring if there are no letters for the house of Kite, Vanwind,* and Co. ?--and smiling at the self-written important blanks which arrive to bolster up a falling trade, or to give a colouring to a bill acceptor, a money scrivener a travelling trader, a straw bail, or to the accomplice and accommodating partner in some nefarious traffic. Departing, however, from crime, let us pass to the higher frequenters of the post-office. "Are there any letters for Sir Jeremiah Juniper?" said a brazen-faced fat distiller, (one of the first whom I ob served at the letter-office), and who was rolled into the four-fold importance of an ex-mayor, an address-knight, a magistrate, and the late purchaser of a borough. Yes, Sir Jerry," replied a clerk in office, handing him over a packet addressed to Sir Jeremiah Juniper, Baronet, M. P. The words "Sir Jeremiah" occasioned a swell of consequence; "baronet" was swallowed with complacency; M. P. went down like a matter of right, and drew a smile from promoted insignificance as he said, thank you, young man, there's your money. The destroyer of stomachs, and dealer in blue ruin only came to The name of Vanwind is common in Flanders. show who he now was; that was clear, and his servant went for his letters the next day. "Is there a letter directed for Lorenzo Lonsdale?" enquired a young man of fashionable appearance, but the lines of whose countenance bespoke fear, anxiety and self accusation? "For whom?" replied a coarse voiced fellow, who was looking over a bundle of let ters, and the words "for whom" electrified the incognito prodigal. It was obvious to me that this romantic name was assumed, and that he had changed his own without an estate, a bequest, or any act of the herald's office; he received a paoket with trembling hand, and put it in his pocket, as if he required a turn or two in the air, or a glass of brandy to give him courage to break the seal. 66 Aye, aye," said I to myself, "no money can be raised on your moonshine securities; post-obits, and wind bills all fail, duns are increasing at your doors, bailiffs are hunting after your person, you have not five pounds in your exchequer, and perhaps "Still you are in love, and pleased with ruin.' This enquirer was followed by a fellow who carried Cocker, not merely at his fingers' ends, but in every line of his features; he seemed almost to calculate how he could spare shoe leather in crossing the pavement, or how he could get the weather-gage of a fellow traveller on life's foot-path, so as to save his own coat and hat from a cloud of dust, or a drop of rain, by running under his lee. "What letters are there for the house?" quoth he hastily; and, on receiving half-a-dozen, he eagerly broke the seals, and seemed to chuckle at their contents, as if he would have read. "Took in Nobs and Co. finely with the hardware; got off the damaged goods safe to the continent; the dubious bill of exchange is paid; and poor Dicky Dupe safe in the sheriff's stone jug; all taken in, in different ways, and the firm snug and thriving." 66 To this character succeeded a man reduced in circumstances, who (with a sigh) demanded if there was nothing addressed to C. D., (seedy enough in apparel). Nothing!" A florid appeal to feeling (probably) thrown away; quondam friends and acquaintances all false; the bait had doubtless failed, and a tale of real distress had lain for days on the tables of the wealthy and great, but had been as little noticed as the gilded New Testaments, the fixtures of booksellers' shops, or the moral essays which fill a nook in their libraries, until the moth becomes their only customer. "D---n the post,” (at last), thundered out an irritated Exquisite, turning away in disgust from the office, and looking as if some unaccommodating agent, frothy professor of promised services, or hard-fisted relative, had deceived him, and left him no resource but uncle at the corner of the street, to pay his washer-woman, his perfumer and his servant's board wages, whilst his horses were, not unlikely, advertised for their standing at a livery stable. I shall now proceed to the depositors of communications of divers kinds. The first billet which I observed gently dropped into the general receiver was a love-letter: there was nothing dubious in the symptoms which characterised its nature: the bearer of it was all sympathetic sensibility; she looked around her as if she feared that the tattling breeze might disclose her lover's name. On taking the letter from her bosom, her colour acquired a deeper hue; her eye enlarged and sparkled; she seemed to breathe all she felt into every fold of the envelope; she read the address as if the name was dear to her, and, lastly, let it fall from her taper fingers, with a grace which was designed to give an additional charm to every line which it contained. "Credulous fair one!" said I to myself. "Alas! how uncertain is the return which thou mayst meet with for all this tenderness and truth; how probable it is that thou art only corresponding with some gay seducer, and returning genuine affection and artless expression for the cold, hackneyed promises of a betrayer." A Meek and mild-eyed, gently moving, and hopeless in appearance, another female approached the aperture, and deposited a lengthy epistle in its deep recess. There was so much cross-writing and lines surpassing the seal, that it must have been a volume in itself. heart transfixed by an arrow was the impression, and the writing was faint and taper,---not so the damsel's waist. The history was visible: the tone of upbraiding filled the whole paper, and that tone came too late. Her written evidence was but an ex post facto statement which had lost its season of success. Sweet sufferer! to no one couldst thou trust this tale of sorrow, but to thine own trembling hand, and the odds are fearfully against thee, that all thy appeals to conscience, all thy bringings back to remembrance, thy retracing the scenery of love, groves, bowers and solitary paths, echoes and murmuring streams, moon-light wanderings, deep shades and plighted vows will avail thee nothing, for he who could desert thee thus will leave thy letter unanswered. It is too late, it is too late! Patience and long suffering in manly form paced after the fair forlorn one. The bearer of the next packet was a man of trading appearance, but of a cast which implied the world went not well with him; that onest endeavours met not with corresponding success; that bad debts. a large family, the want of capital, reduced by both, kept him ever backward in fortune's lists; that a wish to keep square with mankind, and a reluctance to resort to coercion, to fraud, to usury, or to double dealing, fettered his operations, whilst the more enterprising and lucky passed him by. Like Sysiphus, he was ever rolling the weighty mass to the mountain's point, but it as often revolved back upon him, and left his endeavours to be resumed again. He shook his head as he put the packet into the office, addressed to lords, honourables and M. P.'s, to privi leged great ones at home, and to dash ing fashionables abroad. "It is about twenty to one but all these applications will not produce the price of the writing paper,' ," said I to myself, for I easily found him out: he was a Dun, the creditor is often unjustly stigmatised by the name, and I must confess that this was the first time I ever saw one of that description in an amiable point of view. Two merry blades hustled the dun as they hastily popped their productions into the letter-box; they both laughed immoderately, as they lounged off arm in arm, and I was just calculating what their characters and productions were, and had set down one for a hoaxer, and the other for a wild spendthrift, either humbugging a credulous mother or aunt, or making up a tale of marvel and misery to raise the wind, when I overheard their conversation which led to the following discovery; namely, that the one was forwarding an advertisement for a wife, and that the other was writing to an honest curate, his former tutor, and pretending to be arrested for fifty pounds, in order to obtain this sum from the credulity of a simple, virtuous, and unworldly man. "Poor old Tupto will nibble to a certainty, he will swallow the bait," said the one. "What lots of fun we shall have, besides the chance of Let me now advise the frequenters of the post-office to recollect that observers may watch their motions, and that a malevolent one might follow up observations even to detection. This hint may be useful to timid lovers and disappointed enquirers, to pining expectancy and to self-blinded consequence; secrecy is the seal of all letters, circumspection ought to guide the pen of every writer, in whatever line he or she may correspond. Let all descriptions put this to their own breast, and they will have no cause to reject this advice, from THE HERMIT ABROAD. VARIETIES. LUCRETIA. The famous Roman matron, was the daughter of Lucretius, and the wife of Collatinus, and the cause of the revolution of Rome from a monarchy to a republic. Her husband being at the siege of Ardes, a conversation took place between him and the three sons of Tarquin, respecting the prudence and fidelity of their wives. At length they all agreed to take a ride to Rome to see how their respective ladies were employed. The daughters-in-law of Tarquin were indulging themselves with all manner of luxuries; but Lucretia, surrounded by her maids, was busily employed in needle-work. It was therefore admitted that her conduct was the most commendable, and they returned to the camp. Sextus, the eldest, came again to Rome a few days after, and calling on Lucretia, was treated with all the civility due to his rank. After supper he was conducted to the chamber where he was to repose. At a time that he supposed all the family were asleep, he took a sword in his hand, went to Lucretia's apartment, and practised every art to subdue her virtue. Finding all his artifices useless, he threatened, that after having killed her, he would kill a slave and lay the body by her's, and then spread a report, that, having found them in the act of adultery, he had slain them both. Terrified at this horrid menace, the lady yielded, and the monster returned to the camp. Lucretia, the next day, sent for her father and her husband, to whom she related the horrid circumstances that had occurred. In vain they endeavoured to console her, for instantly drawing forth a dagger, she plunged it into her breast. Lucretia's death occasioned the liberty of the Romans, who, excited by Brutus, expelled the Tarquins from their city. This happened 509, B.C. ADVICE TO YOUNG UNMARRIED LADIES. If you have blue eyes you need not languish. If black eyes you need not leer. If you have pretty feet, there is no necessity to wear short petticoats. If you are doubtful as to that point, there can be no harm in letting them be long. If you have good teeth do not laugh. If you have bad ones, do not laugh less than occasion may fairly justify. If you have pretty hands and arms, there can be no objection to your playing on the lute, if you play well. If you are disposed to be clumsy, work tapestry. If you have a bad voice, rather speak in a low tone. If you have the finest voice in the world, never speak in a high tone. If you dance well, dance but seldom. excuses. If you sing indifferently, hesitate not a moment when you are asked; for few people are judges of singing, but every one is sensible of a desire to please. If in conversation you think a person wrong, rather hint a difference of opinion than offer a contradiction. If you discover a person to be telling an absolute falsehood, unless it is particularly injurious, let it pass in silence; for it is not worth your while to make any one your eneiny, by proving him or her a liar. Never touch the sore place in any one's character; for be assured whoever you are, that you have a sore place in your own--and a young woman is a flower that may be blasted in a moment. It is always in your power to make a friend by smiles: what a folly then to make an enemy by frowns! When you have an opportunity to praise, do it with all your heart. When you are forced to blame, appear at least, to do it with reluctance. Make it a rule to please all, and never appear insensible to any desire of pleasing or obeying you, however awkwardly it may be executed. If you are disposed to be pettish or insolent, it is better to exercise your ill humours on your dog, your cat, or your femme de chambre, than on your friends. If you would preserve beauty, rise early. If you would preserve esteem, be gentle. If you would obtain power be condescending. If you would live happy, endeavour to promote the happiness of others. A REMARKABLE INSTANCE OF HUMANITY. A native of Holland, who from his early youth, had lived a rural life in the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope, happened to be on horseback on the coast, at the very point of time that a vessel was shipwrecked by a dreadful tempest; the greatest part of the crew perished in the waves; the remainder were struggling with death on the shattered planks that still floated on the surface of the water: no boat could be sent out in such a dreadful storm for the deliverance of these poor people; the intrepid and humane Hollander undertook to save them; he blew some brandy into the nostrils of his horse, and fixing himself firmly in his stirrups, he plunged into the sea, and gaining the wreck, brought back to the shore two men of the crew, each of whom held by one of his boots. In this manner he went and returned seven times, and thus saved fourteen of the passengers. But the eighth time (and here the generous heart will almost fail) on his return, a rapid and immense surge overset his horse: the heroic rider lost his seat, and was swallowed up with the two unfortunate victims he was endeavouring to snatch from death. What exit could be more glorious than that of this generous man? We celebrate the chiefs who expire in the fields of battle, among the victims |