WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, NO 17, PRINCE'S STREET, EDINBURGH; AND T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, STRAND, LONDON ; To whom Communications (post paid) may be addressed. SOLD ALSO BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. OLIVER & BOYD, Printers, Edinburgh. Next month will be published, in 3 vols 12mo, THE EARTHQUAKE, A TALE; By the Author of "THE AYRSHIRE LEGATEES." A voice in the Heavens-a sound in the Earth- But the deeds that shall be to the sins that were done, Printed for WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, Edinburgh; and T. CADELL and W. DAVIES, Strand, London. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No XLIV. NOVEMBER 1820. VOL. VIII. DEAR MR NORTH, HORE CANTABRIGIENSES. No VI. Benet College, Cambridge, 25th October, 1820. WHY does not the Ensign come up to Cambridge, as he promised? I have been looking for him, in his under-graduate's gown, about the middle of every term these two years. However, I see he still keeps his name on the College boards, so there are some hopes of him yet. I am confident he would turn out a wrangler-among the first ten, for a dozen. He is already as well trained as most freshmen. He measures distances to a nicety; describes a circle (or, as he would call it in his unmathematical way, a ring) to admiration; and for squaring, and bringing out the fluent, he is, I verily believe, unrivalled. Here is food for his fancy, in all her forms and figures; and mathematics would, I am confident, give the last finishing touch to him. A mathematician is never knocked down but he can tell the reason, which is more than the primest swell at the Castle-Tavern can say at all times. If he knows the force and direction of the blow, which a man of quick parts and feeling can always discover, he can calculate how long he will be in tumbling from a stage twenty feet high, which is a great satisfaction, besides being a great help in coming to time. And should his neck, by any awkward accident, be dislocated, he is perfectly acquainted with the law by which said accident befell him. We are rather flat here at present, but I enclose you a squiblet, which was written when Sir J. E. Smith, that knight of the gillyflower, made his grand charge on our Botanical Chair. LOCK-AND-BAR. A Botany Bay Eclogue. O GALLANT Sir James is come out of the North, He staid not for frown, and he stopp'd not for groan; The tutors conspir'd—and the lectures came late. Q For a churchman, God wot! and a botanist too, * Sir James shew'd his Pamphlet, and Monk read it through; Then down comes the rogue with an "Answer" forthwith- So stately the tone, and so lovely the print, Even Freshmen conceiv'd there must something be in't. To have match'd your brave Knight in some gooseberry war." A hint such as this had just rung in his ear, When he reached the stage-coach,† and the coachman stood near ; So snugly the reins o'er the dickey were flung We are off! we are off! over bank and o'er hill, "Your Pamphlet may follow," cried James, "if it will.” There is quizzing 'mong wags of the Trinity clan: King's, Queen's men, and Johnians, they all laugh that can ; Was there e'er such a callant as President Smith ? Ah! poor Litchfield the Fruiterer. You little knew, Mr North, the sweets of his delightful shop, or your Magazine would long since have resounded with "Luctus" far more lugubrious than those which you have so eloquently poured over the defunct Sir Daniel. Litchfield's fate was worse than death. He was smashed to a jelly by the tutors for what is elegantly termed, "helping a lame dog over a stile," a most charitable act! The following "Coronach" was sung before his door on the night of his transformation by a chorus of young men and maids, dressed in full mourning, with garlands on their heads. He is gone from the counter; He is gone from the store-chest, Like his brother's prime fount, ere CORONACH. The fount, re-ap pearing, From the rain-drops shall borrow, To Litchfield no morrow! This luminary is not a fixed star, but a comet having taken "a free and lofty range in the world at large." Vid. his Pamphlet. The cheap-and-nasty. This water-spout left off playing, one fine morning, and began, I suppose, to work, -under ground. The hand of the suitor Takes the girl that is fairest, But the voice of the tutor Damns sweetmeats the rarest ; Each gownsman will pop in But they sent Jack a trotting, Firm foot on the causeway, How dark is thy windor! Wishing health to our circle of acquaintance in the Square, I am, Your's ad infinitum, نے This stave was given out by a maiden from the Land of Cockaigne, whose name is Miss Georgiana Matilda Hunt. + The Giants, Gog and Magog, formerly lived on two hills in the neighbourhood, (which still retain those denominations) each under the shade of an oak tree. They are not dwelling there at present, and the only memorial of their local habitation is the name, and some agates found there, about six inches in diameter, which Dr Clarke, with great plausibility, conjectures to have been worn by them as jewels to their thumb-rings. I don't quite understand this wipe. § Ned will perhaps say to me, in the words of mine hostess, (for Ned sucks the sweets of literature)" which bubble, which bubble, thou knave, thou?" Why, sweet Ned, the whole was a bubble. A VISIT TO THE LUNAR SPHERE. ON my passing through the Hague, in the autumn of last year, I took occasion to pay a visit to the famous Professor Heidelbergus, in order to present him with an account of the observations made in the late voyage to the Arctic Regions. I found him mighty busily employed in his study, arranging a huge pile of papers, maps, and instruments, from which he seemed very unwilling to be disturbed. Pretty discoveries, indeed, said the Doctor, for an inhabitant of this globe; but had they possessed the advantage of a lunar view of these continents, we should see a very different account of them. I scarcely knew which way to look, at this observation, when the Doctor, perceiving my confusion, desired me to listen to him without scepticism, and he would communicate a portion of the wonders which he had seen in that delightful planet; with a full relation of which he proposed shortly to favour the world. In his last aeronautic excursion, he inadvertently set off with too much inflammable air, and was carried to a prodigious height, before he could possibly throw a single Number of your Magazine out; where, meeting with a vacuum, occasioned by the tail of an Aurora Borealis, and a pressure from the surrounding element, the Doctor was whisked completely out of the atmosphere. Here he was taken in the eddy of a furious vortex, and whirled with inconceivable swiftness, in a spiral direction, towards the lunar regions. He laments extremely, that from the informal manner in which he was tost about, being sometimes himself uppermost, and sometimes his balloon, he was precluded from making any observations in his flight; but he consoles himself by supposing that, as the moon was then at the full, these atoms were proceeding outwards to form some new planet, which he will have the satisfaction to give the first notice of. Here I requested to know how he came to sustain respiration in such dreary parts, which we are taught to believe are quite a void. Heidelberg said that, so far from there being a void outside our atmosphere, he was almost choked with the pressure and commotion of the circumambient element; but he begged me not to interrupt his relation any more, where the accidents seemed to me unac |