the sympathy and kind offices of friends have reached a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, she would have experienced no want of consolation, for the Irish are a people of quick and generous sensibilities. The most delicate and cherishing attentions were paid her by families of wealth and distinction. She was led into society, and they tried by all kinds of occupation and amusement to dissipate her grief, and wean her from the tragical story of her lover. But it was all in vain. There are some strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul-that penetrate to the vital seat of happiness-and blast it, never again to put forth bud or blossom. She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, but she was as much alone there as in the depths of solitude. She walked about in a sad reverie, apparently unconscious of the world around her. She carried with her an inward woe that mocked at all the blandishment of friendship, and "Heeded not the song of the charmer, charm he never so wisely." The person who told me her story, had seen her at a masquerade. There can be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre, lonely and joyless, where all around is gay-to see it dressed ont in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and woe-begone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into a momentary forgetfulness of sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra, and looking about for some time with a vacant air, that shewed her insensibility to the garish scene, she began with the capriciousness of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive air. She had an exquisite voice; but on this occasion it was so simple, so touching, it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness, that she drew a crowd mute and silent around her, and melted every one into tears, The story of one so true and tender, could not but excite great interest in a country remarkable for enthusiasm. It completely won the heart of a brave officer, who paid his addresses to her, and thought that one so true to the dead, could not but prove affectionate to the living. She declined his attentions, for her thoughts were irrevocably engrossed by the memory of her former lover. He, however, per sisted in his suit. He solicited not her tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted by her conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own destitute and dependent situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends. 'In a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the solemn assurance that her heart was unalterably another's. He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene might wear out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable and exemplary wife, and made an effort to be a happy one; but nothing could cure the silent and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very soul. She wasted away in a slow, but hopeless, decline, and at length sunk into the grave, the victim of a broken heart. It was on her, that Moore, the distinguished Irish poet, composed the following lines:* She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps, She sings the wild song of her dear native plains, How the heart of the minstrel is breaking! Nor long will his love stay behind him! Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest, They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the west, ORIGIN AND ANECDOTES OF VARIOUS IMPORTANT INVENTIONS. THE CAMERA OBSCURA. In a letter from Sir Henry Wootton to Lord Bacon is the following curious relation respecting Kepler, the celebrated astronomer and mathematician; to whom Sir Henry, then *The foregoing tale is extracted from "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." to which we refer our readers as a work of taste and information. being ambassador to one of the princes of Germany, had made a visit. "I laid a night at Lintz, the metropolis of the higher Austria, but then in very low estate, having been newly taken by the Duke of Bavaria, who, blandiente fortuna, was gone on to the late effects; there I found Kepler, a man famous in the sciences, as your lordship knows, to whom I purpose to convey from hence one of your books, that he may see we have some of our own that can honour our king, as well as he hath done with his carmonica. In this man's study I was much taken with the draught of a landscape on a piece of paper, methought masterly done; whereof inquiring the author, he betrayed by a smile it was himself, adding that he had done it, non tanquam pictor, sed tanquam mathematicus. This set me on fire; at last he told me how. He had a little back tent, (of what stuff is not much importing,) which he can suddenly set up where he will in a field, and it is convertible, like a windmill, to all quarters at pleasure: capable of not much more than one man, as I conceive, and perhaps at no great ease exactly close and dark, save at one hole, about an inch and a half in the diameter, to which he applies a long perspective trunk, with a convex glass fitted to the said hole; and the concave taken out at the other end, which extendeth to about the middle of this erected tent; through which the visible radiations of all without are intromitted, falling upon a paper which is accomodated to receive them; and so he traceth them with his pen in their natural appearance, turning his little tent round by degrees till he hath designed the whole aspect of the field. This I have described to your lordship, because I think there might be good use made of it for chorography; for otherwise to make landscapes by it were illiberal; though surely no painter can do them so precisely." THE TRUMPET. The trumpet is said by Vincentio Galileo, in his Dialoge della Musica, page 146, to have been invented at Nuremburg; and there is extant a memoir which shews that trumpets were made to great perfection by an artist in that city, who was also an admired performer on that instrument: it is as follows;-"Hans Meuschell, of Nuremburg, for his accuracy in making trumpets, as also for his skill in playing on the same alone, and in the accompaniment with the voice, was of so great renown, that he was frequently sent for to the palaces of princes the distance of several hundred miles. Pope Leo the Tenth, for whom he had made sundry trumpets of silver, sent for him to Rome; and, after having been delighted with his excellent performance, dismissed him with a munificent reward.” CHURCH BELLS. The invention of bells, such as are hung in the towers or steeples of Christian churches, is, by Polidore Virgil and others, ascribed to Paulinus, bishop of Nola, a city of Campania, about the year 400. It is said that the names Nolæ and Campanæ, the one referring to the city, the other to the country, were for that reason given to them. In the time of Clothair, king of France, and in the year 610, the army of the king was frighted from the siege of the city of Sens, by ringing the bells of St. Stephen's church. In the times of popery bells were baptized and anointed, Oleo Chrismatis; they were exorcised, and blessed by the bishop, from a belief that when these ceremonies were performed, they had power to drive the devil out of the air, to calm tempests, to extinguish fire, and even to recreate the dead. The ritual for these ceremonies is contained in the Roman Pontifical; and it was usual in their baptism to give each bell the name of some saint. In Chauncey's History of Hertfortshire, page 383, is the relation of the baptism of a set of bells in Italy with great ceremony, a short time before the writing of that book. By an old chartulary, once in possession of Weever the antiquary, it appears that the bells of the priory of Little Dunmow, in Essex, were, anno 1501, new cast, and baptised by the following names: Prima in honore Sancti Michaelis Archangeli Tertia in honore S. Johnnis Biaptisti. Quarta in honore Assumptionis beatæ Mariæ. Quinta in honore Sancta Trinitatis, et omnium Sanctorum. The bells at Osney Abbey, near Oxford, were very famous: their names were Douce, Clement, Austin, Hautecter (potius Hautcleri), Gabriel, and John.-Appendix to Hearne's Collection of Discourses by Antiquaries, No. 11. Near Old Windsor is a public-house, vulgarly called the Bells of Bosely. This house was originally built for the accommodation of bargemen and others, navigating the river Thames between London and Oxford. It has a sign of six Bells, i. e. the Bells of Osney. In the Funeral Monuments of Weever are the following particulars relating to bells. "Bells had frequently these inscriptions on them: "Funera plango, fulgura frango, sabbata pango. Excito lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos."-Page 122. "In the little sanctuary at Westminster, King Edward III. erected a clochier, and placed therein three bells for the use of St. Stephen's chapel; about the biggest of them were cast in the metal these words: "King Edward made mee thirtie thousand weight and three; Take mee down and way mee, and more you shall find mee.' But these bells being to be taken down in the reign of King Henry VIII. one writes underneath with a coal, "But Henry the Eight, Will bait me of my weight."-Page 492. This last distich alludes to a fact mentioned by Stow in his Survey of London, ward of Farringdon Within, to wit, that near St. Paul's school stood a clochier, in which were four bells, called Jesus' bells, the greatest in all England, against which Sir Miles Partidge staked a hundred pounds, and won them of King Henry VIII. at a cast of dice. It is said that the foundation of the fortunes of the Corsini family in Italy was laid by an ancestor of it, who, at the dissolution of religious houses, purchased the bells of abbeys and other churches, and by the sale of them in other countries acquired a very great estate. Nevertheless it appears that abroad there are bells of great magnitude. In the steeple of the great church at Roan, in Normandy, is a bell with this inscription: "Je suis George de Ambois, I am George of Ambois,- Thirtie six thousand shall find me."-Ibid. |