by national sufferings, we are undoubtedly not the more discharged from the duty which enjoins us to alleviate every calamity of human nature, as far as it may be in our power. A letter in that very able and valuable paper, the Standard, puts this question in a point of view which seems to be unanswerable. We willingly take advantage of its authority.

After some general remarks on the ravages of the pestilence at this moment in Constantinople, it calls on British benevolence to consider how far it might be enabled to lighten this deplorable calamity. The number dying are represented to exceed a thousand a-day! But, says the letter, "the still more unhappy part of the case is, the condition of the families of the dying and dead. Famine, nakedness, and all the miseries of desertion and destitution, must be their universal lot. The horrors thus experienced in the present ravages of this most horrible of all the scourges of man must be indescribable." It then urges the especial interposition of that class of persons whose connexion with the country, and knowledge of circumstances, at once calls upon them, and is likely to render their assistance most available.

"We have large trading concerns with the Levant. Many of our principal merchants are making fortunes by this trade, which, of late years, has greatly increased. Would it not be becoming in those men to relieve, in some degree, the miseries of the lower population of Constantinople-to assist the famishing with food--to supply the sick with medicines and, not less usefully, to introduce among them some employment of that medical science, which, under God, preserves Europe from the excesses of all epidemic disease? It is true that the objects of this benevolence would be Turks, and Turks are infidels. But we pray for them in our church service, and, if our prayer is not mere words, it implies a desire and a duty to relieve them, Turks and infidels as they may be, when the relief is within our means. It is also true that we have distress at home; but the plague is so tremendous an affliction, that all others are trifling in comparison." The writer proceeds to press this duty upon the Englishman as a matter of gratitude for the past protection of his

country from this dreadful misfortune, or even as a shield from its possible future ravages; concluding with the words" I am neither a foreigner nor a merchant. I can have no direct interest in any measures of relief to the miserable population of Islamism. But, as a man, I feel for human beings-as a Briton, I feel for the honour of England-and as a Christian, I acknowledge the responsibility of showing that the faith of Christ is a religion of good-will to all mankind. I have no doubt that if a subscription were opened, under any respectable names, and soon, it would amply succeed."

We think so too; and we think that it ought to be begun without delay. The calamities of nations, like the calamities of individuals, are probably in all instances Divine inflictions for some failure of virtue; but, like the calamities of individuals, they are doubtless also intended to have the result of calling us to a sense of commiseration for the sufferers. A few thousand pounds sent in the hour of distress to the unfortunate population of Constantinople, and judiciously applied by an European committee there, might make the whole difference to multitudes, between life and death, restoration, and the most agonizing of all wretchedness. Who can tell what might be the effect of this sudden benevolence in softening, at a future day, even the prejudices of the Mahometan? Of one thing, at least, we are certain, that it would benefit ourselves, and perhaps, too, our country, in some other return of tenfold the value. Donations given from motives of genuine benevolence will have a record higher than the frail memory of man.

Mr Green and his balloon have at last accomplished their object-passed the seas, swept over the cities, topped the mountains, and, alighting beyond the Rhine, astonished the whole Hun and Sclavonian population before they had taken the nightcaps from their heads or put their pipes in their mouths. This is the triumph of ærostation. So far as yet appears, Mr Green might have gone to Constantinople, Crim Tartary, or China without stopping, if his fowls, cheese, and cigars would have held out. He might have crossed the Pacific, made the circumnavi

animal. The bird derives its buoyancy from the wing; the tail, whose chief or only purpose is steerage, scarcely aiding that buoyancy, and being scarcely movable but in the lateral direction required for the steerage. The fish is generally buoyant by its nature. The tail supplies at once its progress and direction, and it is therefore a powerful and peculiarly active instrument. Either would answer the purpose of the balloon. But its buoyancy brings it nearer to the fish than the bird. Its requisite would be a rudder of such length and force as at once to accelerate (or retard) and guide. This rudder might be a long frame, with a wheel or vane kept in rapid motion at its end. For this some modification of the steamengine would be required; but we have overcome so many of the difficulties of the steam-engine, that we are not entitled to doubt much of ultimate success even here. Still, as we observed in some former mention of this subject, we may doubt strongly of the value of the boon if it were general, and have strong fears of the perils of an invention which would make fortifications and natural boundaries useless as means of protection; lay nations almost wholly at each other's mercy, or even at the mercy of malignant individuals; render war a scene of terrible and unavoidable surprises; and divest peace of all security, not merely from the sudden attacks of neighbour nations, but from the most remote and savage. Still it is to be remembered, that for every dangerous invention there has hitherto been found a counterpoise; and that the more dangerous the invention, the more forcible, active, and comprehensive, and therefore the more capable of being turned to good it is. The first contemplations of the devastating strength of gunpowder must have been full of terror: it was pronounced a curse; the musketeer was always refused quarter; and the inventor, monk though he was, was regarded as little less than an especial instrument of Satan. Yet gunpowder has since been one of the great civilizers of the earth; one of the great protectors of mankind from savage hostilities; and even the great restrainer of massacre in the field. More men perished in one day, in

many an ancient battle, than now fall in a campaign.

But even in its present condition the balloon may be of service, though scarcely in our country. We are too near the sea, and too liable to sudden shifts of wind. In England, except in the very centre of the country, wherever the balloon ascends it has water within its horizon: half an hour's shift of the gale from the south would have carried Mr Green inevitably into the North Sea. It is in the spaces of the great continents where this danger is not to be dreaded, and where the wind blows for days or weeks together from the same point, that the balloon might even now be of admirable service. Thus, in India, in case of a Russian invasion, a balloon from the frontier, or from the Himmeleh, might convey the intelligence to Calcutta with the most important celerity. Thus, in case of an European war, a balloon from Alexandrià might carry the despatches across Arabia, to Bombay, with a speed which might not merely enable the Indian Government to be on its guard, but to strike the most instant and decisive blows. In passing the Tartar deserts, or in penetrating into Africa, the balloon might make all the chief difficulties disappear, arising, as they do, from the sultriness, the sands, the scantiness of provision, the deficiency of transit, and the wars, treacheries, and extortions of the savage kings. In the mean time, we congratulate Mr Green and his companions. If it be fame, as Horace says it is "Volitare super ora hominum," he has amply secured his

renown.

We always regarded the "Cheap Press" cry as a genuine piece of Whiggism, for which, in the language of honest men, there was but one expression, however humbleHumbug! The whole scheme has turned out the reverse of all that was intended. The great Conservative newspapers have not been crushed, but have risen, like giants, refreshed. The little Radical papers have risen, only to be crushed. All the Radicals were in a riot of triumph at the prospect of being able to get rid of stamps, those fetters and manacles of mind, and so forth; but their emancipation

may

The subject is wide. But we restrict ourselves for the moment to one instance where the remission of the stamp has been of service at once to the community and to the revenue. But this is not in the case of the cheap sedition, but in the case of the Almanacs. The Almanac is useful to every body, a circumstance in which it differs largely from incentives to assassination, lectures on Atheism, calls for "bread or blood," and vulgar libels on the Lords. The difference is already sufficiently marked by the result. John Bull may be a sullen animal, but he knows the distinction between the useful and the worthless; he talkers by profession to talk Whiggism, suffer but he is a good sound Tory in his heart, and he shows it by regularly dropping the Whigs and their protligate nonsense without any ceremony whatever. Thus, though the Radical papers should be as cheap as the dust, he leaves them to perish, while the generation of Almanacs has become boundless as motes in the sun-is, like them, constantly rising before the eyeis, like them, of all shapes, sizes, and colours-and, like them, often gilded and glittering. We now have them at all prices, beginning with the lar penny Almanacs for the trader, the popupolitician, the poet, the sailor, the stargazer, the gentleman, the lady, the courtier, the citizen, the lawyer, the lover, the punster, and the philosopher. The multitude of them is so prodigious, that the Government duty on the mere paper is said much to exceed the former stamp.

And thus undoubtedly a good has been done, though it as undoubtedly never entered into the heads of those

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wise personages, who, singing their old chorus of "Ca Ira," longed only to see new editions of "Insurrection made Easy," and "Every man his own King." We have been led to speak of those useful little publications by having just met one of them, in the shape of a collection of pleasantries. quainted with strange bed-fellows. Time, like adversity, brings us acBut we were not prepared for this wise, of the chronicle which reminds curious combination of the merry and wit which makes us forget its exus of the flight of our years, and of the istence.

Almanac for 1837; or, an Ephemeris This work is the "Comic in Jest and Earnest." The engravings, from sketches of oddity, absurdity, and month has its appropriate engraving, character, by Cruickshank. Every with verses equally suited to the scene. ing metrical receipt for that formidable July has its mad dog, with the followphenomenon :—

to drink.

let them carry (sons