CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF "CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE," NUMBER 424. THE PLEASURES AND ADVANTAGES OF THERE is in the first place the extremely agreeable The love that man or woman bears to dog is honourable to man or woman; but the course of this love, like that of the much-berhymed passion which man and woman bear for each other, is one which I have never found from tale or history, or any sort of experience or observation, to run smooth. Love in all its shapes implies sacrifices. Much must be conceded, much endured, if we would love. It is so eminently with respect to dogs. You may love your dog; but unhappily, and in despite of the proverb, no other body does. On the contrary, all other people wonder what you can see in the animal to regard it so tenderly, and whenever an opportunity occurs, they will not be averse from letting it feel how much they despise and loathe it. Many a secret kick and tramp on toes does the poor creature get from friend and servant; many a time is he defrauded of his due aliment down stairs. Trifles light as air are brought to his door as great offences, and often is he accused of things of which he is entirely innocent. Rarely indeed does he experience either justice or kindness from any body but yourself. The very neighbours are in a conspiracy against him. If he but howls a little in the court-yard or street by night-merely following his poetical propensity for baying the moon-then have you civil-angry messages in next morning on all hands, remonstrating against what they spitefully call the annoyance. If, in the merest good nature, he leaps up upon a nursemaid, as she parades the street with her interesting charge in the forenoon, then, as soon as papa comes home to dinner, may you look for a peremptory note from that gentleman, representing the fact in the most alarming light (the maid having exaggerated it to mamma, and mamma having in her turn exaggerated it to papa), and demanding no less than that your innocent favourite shall be chained up a prisoner for life, as otherwise the complainant will feel it neces"for the sake of his family," to take legal steps. sary, The police authorities, too, are serious enemies to dogs. Every summer they take it into their heads that the creatures are on the point of turning mad, and out comes an order, commanding that every one of them shall be muzzled, under pain of being apprehended and This is nothing, of course, but an emanapoisoned. tion of that spite which all men bear towards all dogs which do not belong to themselves. The inconveniences entailed upon you by your affection are particularly felt when you and your dog In the course of your stroll you come take a walk. to a pleasant garden or park open to the public, and which you therefore enter; but lo, immediately within the gate you behold the malicious placard, "No Dogs Admitted-All found within the enclosures will be SATURDAY, MARCH 14, 1840. shot." You have therefore either to deny yourself The attendance of your affectionate Roger is apt PRICE THREE HALFPENCE. ture is so attached, and so fond of a walk, that ten to is Dogs are but dogs, and it is canine as well as human to err. Roger was originally a good moral dog, or at the utmost never was known in his early days to steal more than a bone. But keeping bad company ruinous to both quadrupeds and bipeds. He has the wild character in the neighbouring street, and begins to be a good deal out at night. You are at first in no misfortune to become acquainted with a dog of rather fear for his youthful innocence, but by and bye you apprehend that all is not right. You observe that, in the mornings, after any of his nocturnal rambles, he has a remarkably worn-out debauched look, and is You fear he is a misled dog, but you cannot imagine not so ready for his walk on those forenoons as usual. in what way he has been misled. At length, some attri A number of minor evils beset the gentle heart that indulges in an attachment to a dog. For example, no whitened floor can long be kept clean where he is. He walks unthinkingly across large washings, and lies down with wet and dirty sides upon the lambs'-wool mat at the parlour door. Newly raked garden-ground assumes under his feet an appearance which a geologist might prize, if the soil were a clay of the secondary formation, and he an undescribed genus of the Pachydermata, but which (the circumstances being as they are) the gardener is apt to take very testily. On one account and another, he is scolded, complained of, and absolutely ill used, every hour of the day; which you naturally feel to be just the same thing as if you were scolded, complained of, and absolutely ill used yourself. The sufferings which a man thus endures out of affection for a poor dumb animal, that only can wag its tail in his face and lick his hands occasionally, are altogether quite remarkable. It presents both the affections and the patience of our nature in a striking point of view. Upon a review of the whole case, we feel inclined to say that, if men manifested the same resignation under unavoidable calamities and annoyances which they exhibit under the selfimposed torture of keeping a dog, they would be more angels than men. In a number of houses the bells rang; one house of three stories, situated in Crieff, has been rent from the chimney-top half way down the gable; and we have heard that a number of corn-stacks have been thrown down. At Comrie the consternation was such that the people ran out of their houses, and, late as was the hour, many assembled for prayer in the secession meeting-house, where religious exercises were continued until three in the morning. There was a second shock at twenty minutes to eleven, and a third somewhat later, but both inferior to the first." At Perth the shock was felt for nearly a minute, and was so violent that the room in which the editor of the Perth Advertiser was writing seemed "as if it were about to tumble about his ears." At Ballater, in Aberdeenshire, within the range of the Grampians, but nearly a hundred miles from Comrie, "it commenced tremulously, and gradually increasing, terminated abruptly. Chairs, stools, bottles and glasses, rattled furiously, but nothing was overturned. The duration might have been about five seconds; the sensation was as if the movement had been from west to east." These are the principal places near the Grampians from which we have seen reports. As we recede from that range of mountains, we find the motion described as less and less violent. At Aberdeen it "was not of that energetic and irregular character which usually distinguishes volcanic action, but of a gentle kind, producing a horizontal movement, not unlike the rolling of a vessel in an easy sea-way." At Inverness it was felt slightly and produced no serious effect. At Montrose, also, it was slight. In Edinburgh it was felt chiefly in the low parts of the northern suburbs, but so slightly that many persons living there did not remark it. There seems to have been more motion in the peninsular district compreAt Cupar "the hending Fife and Clackmannan. tremulous motions were continued for sixty or seventy seconds. No subterranean sound accompanied the convulsions, which seemed to pass eastward in rapid succession, at first with considerable violence, and a disagreeable complex motion, but which gradually subsided to a slight horizontal rocking that gradually died away. Houses shook, windows rattled sharply, loose pieces of plaster fell from the walls, and light articles of furniture were moved in their places.' The report from Dollar, in Clackmannanshire, is an interesting one, both for its minuteness and on account of the situation of the village under the Ochils, a range of hills nearly connected with the Grampians. "Last night I had gone to my bedroom a little before ten o'clock, and was sitting reading with my face to the south. The house stands quite detached from other EARTHQUAKES are not frequent in our island; but buildings, and faces the west. About ten o'clock I felt a sudden shock, accompanied with a loud and neither are they very rare. Every few years they are uncommon sound, the house strongly undulating in a felt in some part of the country, more generally in the west and east direction. I felt myself moved in the north than the south. No one of great violence or same direction, and the furniture in my room and the destructiveness has occurred within the reach of his- windows shook very much. I was not afraid, but felt tory; but if there be any truth in Mr Lyell's surmise singularly confused; the noise was as if within the house, and similar (though much louder) to the drawthat a liability to these tremors may shift about over ing a heavy table forcibly along the floor. Some of the face of the earth, and after being long absent from the inmates of the house had gone to bed, but they a country, take possession of it again, it is not impos- the lobby, not knowing what the consequences might were so alarmed that they instantly arose and ran to sible that our soil (so much of it being volcanic) may be. I resumed my reading, and about half-past ten once more become the scene of dreadful calamities of o'clock there was a momentary shock, attended with this kind, while they gradually cease to affect South noise, but not nearly so loud as the former; yet it is America, Southern Italy, and other districts, where for remarkable that the sensation was much more unpleaages they have been exhibited on a tremendous scale. sant than the former, which lasted about four seconds. The latter part of the past year, and the beginning Many people here, who had no idea of an earthquake, of the present, have been remarkable for the number bottles, and dishes, were shaken, and some articles conceived their houses were falling, as the furniture, and violence of earthquakes in Great Britain. For a suspended from the walls fell down. After the second fortnight in the middle of October, slight tremors were shock I went to sleep, but upon inquiry this morning felt at Comrie, a village in Perthshire which enjoys I found there had been another shock, comparatively the unenviable distinction of more frequently expe- slight, at twelve o'clock, and another of these shocks was felt last night at eight o'clock." It was generally riencing earthquakes than any other place in the remarked that most people who were in bed at the British islands it is situated in the vale of the Earn, time when they felt the principal shock of this evenjust within the frontier of the Grampian mountains.ing, started from their places of repose, even before On the evening of the 23d of October, about a quarter they knew it was an earthquake, as if through an inpast ten o'clock, an unusually violent shock took place earthquake of 1801, assures us that the same remark stinctive tendency. A gentleman who remembers the here, and spread away in different directions, chiefly was made on that occasion. to the east. It was felt over a great part of the island, but nowhere so violently as at Comrie and the adjacent districts. A reporter at Monzie, a gentleman's seat a few miles from Comrie, thus describes what was experienced at that place and its neighbourhood:"At thirteen minutes past ten in the evening we heard a sound like that of a numerous body of cavalry approaching at full gallop along a grassy sward. When this had continued a few seconds, we felt two or more abrupt concussions, as if a solid mass of earth had struck against a body more ponderous than itself, and rebounded. The rattling of furniture combined with the subterranean thunder, and the reeling of what we had hitherto deemed terra firma, communicated at this moment a feeling of the terrific that must have made the stoutest heart quail. The sound passed off as before, far to the cast, carrying fear into other districts. EXPERIENCES OF EARTHQUAKES IN By far the most remarkable proof of the force of this earthquake which has been recorded, was the bursting of a great dam formed on Cringate Muir in Stirlingshire, for the supply of water to the manufactories on the Carron. This reservoir was surveyed and considered as perfectly secure by two of the most ingenious men of our country, Mr Smith of Deanston and Mr Thom of Rothsay; but it nevertheless gave way under the shock, producing great damage to property in the vale below. At Blairingone, a tremor which took place at five in the morning, elsewhere unnoticed, shook down the sides of a pit, and buried three working men, who were with great difficulty extricated. Some remarkable results have since been observed-" A small tract of boggy land in Morayshire, which, during the winter seasons of at least the last hundred years, has been invariably more than half under water, has remained dry ever since; and * Fife Herald (newspaper); several wells in the neighbourhood of Inverness, which derive their springs from fissures in the old red sandstone of the district, are only now [January 1840] slowly beginning to yield part of their wonted supply."* The weather on the day and night of this earthquake is universally described as having been rainy. "At Kincardine in Monteith [this place is not far from Comrie], the atmosphere to the south was observed to be in great commotion, resembling the commencement of a hurricane." When the subsequent and lesser shocks were felt during the night, "there was, as before, a very glowing and varied light, and a tint of glowing yellow pervaded the atmosphere." A singular fact was observed in Edinburgh during the ensuing five or six days, namely, that the barometer stood at the height of 304 inches, or Set Fair, although there was rain every day, and often in heavy showers. On Sunday the 19th January 1840, about half past three in the afternoon, another earthquake was felt in Perthshire, particularly in the vale of the Earn. The sound was also heard in the Carse of Gowrie. A party of ladies and gentlemen, on a terrace walk overhang ing that fine plain from the north, heard what one of them has described to us as "a low underground appalling sort of noise, which came as if from the west the direction of Strathearn. In a few minutes they heard the same again. We pass over a number of minor tremors which have occurred during the last twenty-four years, and take up the remarkable earthquake of 1816. The summer of this year was noted for desolating rains and hail-storms, the effects of which were felt in the scarcity of grain during the ensuing season. It was observed, that during the prevalence of the severe weather the barometer did not afford its usual correct indications, the mercury frequently rising immediately before heavy rain, and falling upon the approach of fair weather. The earthquake which took place on the evening of the 13th of August, about ten minutes before eleven o'clock, was felt throughout the greater part of Scotland, but evidently was strongest in a tract extending from western Ross-shire, through eastern Inverness-shire, and so on through the province of Moray-the direction being from W. N. W. to E. S. E. Directly to the north and south of Inverness, it was comparatively slight, but yet was percep tible to many in Edinburgh and Glasgow. At no considerable seat of population was its action nearly so intense as at Inverness. The streets of that town had been emptied of the inhabitants, most of whom had retired to bed, when suddenly the percussion took place. "I could think of nothing," says a gentleman residing there, "that could give so good an idea of what we felt, as that of a person being seated on the back of a horse, when he suddenly and violently shakes himself." A noise like distant thunder was heard. The tremor lasted for about twenty seconds, or, in the opinion of some, nearly a minute. The force was sufficient to throw some persons out of bed. All others who had gone to rest instantly sprang from their places of repose, and, with little ceremony as to clothing, joined the crowds who had rushed into the streets, which immediately became a scene of wild and unusual terror, no one knowing but that a second shock was instantly to bury them under the ruins of their houses. Under this apprehension, many hurried, ill prepared as they were, out of fields. It was found that already great damage had town, and spent the greater part of the night in the been done to the buildings. Many were rent from top to bottom; great numbers of chimney tops had been shaken down. From a stalk of chimneys on the Mason Lodge, a coping-stone weighing fifty or sixty pounds was thrown to the other side of the street, a distance of not less than twenty yards-a fact strikingly showthat the newer houses suffered more dilapidation than ing the extent of the vibration. It was remarkable the older. Amidst the crashing of falling stones and tiles, and the shrieks and lamentations of alarmed women, one curious circumstance was not observed in the town, but was noticed by three gentlemen whe were approaching it from the westward: the great bell tolled twice. In the morning another important fact became known, namely, that the beautiful steeple which had recently been attached to the county jail had suffered a twist at the distance of a few feet from the twist, which was from the east towards the north, was top. The spire was there of octagonal shape, and the to the extent of about a sixteenth of the whole circumference, the angle of the removed part being turned to the centre of the adjacent face in that direction. The present writer speaks of this result from personal observation, for in 1826 he saw the steeple in the condition described; it has since been repaired. Most of the stones detached from the chimney tops were thrown in the same direction, and it was from this fact that the inference was drawn that the direction of the motion in the first instance was from northwest to south-east, for, such being the case, loose parts at the top of a tall building would naturally be left behind, or thrown in the contrary direction. Some gentlemen who had been in the West Indies, where earthquakes are frequent, remarked of this shock, that it was smarter than any they had ever known in that part of the world. gaged from a precipice, and the gable wall of a newly At Cromarty a huge fragment of rock was disen * The Witness (Edinburgh newspaper), January 22, 1840- e old Januar ther ere CHAMBERS'S EDINBURGH JOURNAL. six inches, but a wave eight feet high rushed against built house was rent diagonally from top to bottom. Farther to the north, three arches, which had recently been built as part of a roadway across a small arm of the sea in the county of Sutherland, were thrown down. To the cast of Inverness, in the line of the tremor, the effects were not much less severe than in that town itself. At Relugas House, on the river Findhorn, at Auldearn, and at Forres, the shaking and noise were frightful. Furniture moved, house bells were set a-ringing, and kitchen utensils rattled on the walls. A man who was walking at the time amongst the mountains near Lochindorb, "was first alarmed by a sudden and tremendous noise of a rushing wind, which came sweeping up the hills like a roar of water: this was instantly followed by a rumbling heared and down up noise, and the ground was sensibly under his feet." At Peterhead the rumbling noise was heard, and many people thought it arose from thieves breaking into their houses. A family in that town observed that the clock in their stair warned twice before striking eleven. The shock was violent at Aberdeen, and a second one, of a slighter nature, was there felt at half past eleven. The same motion and the same noise were observed at Montrose, where great alarm was excited, many leaping from bed in the apprehension that their houses were about to fall upon them. Near the town, two excise officers were on the watch for smugglers, whom they expected to approach in a certain direction. They had lain down on the ground, and when the shock took place, one of them leapt up, calling to his companion, There they, are! I feel the ground shaking under their horses' feet !" spring of 1497. He directed his course to Iceland, SEBASTIAN CABOT, THE NAVIGATOR. IT has been a frequent subject of regret, that the name of a comparatively unimportant voyager, Amerigo Vespucci, should have been prominently and that of the earliest traverser of the Atlantic, and indelibly associated with the New World, in place of greatest of all maritime discoverers, Christopher Columbus. But a double injustice has been done here, although few are aware of it. If the name of any other man but Columbus ought to have been bestowed on the great Transatlantic continents, it was not that No meteorological appearances of any importance of Amerigo Vespucci, but of Sebastian Cabot, the first were observed on the evening of this earthquake. The voyager, indisputably, who landed upon the continight was calm and mild. It is, however, a circum- nent of America. It is well known that Columbus, stance too important to be overlooked, that on the in his first two voyages, did not penetrate beyond the islands of the Mexican Gulf. On the occasion of his 7th of August an eruption of Vesuvius took place. In a retrospective view of British earthquakes, no other we believe of any importance occurs till we get third voyage, he certainly reached the American conback to that of 1801. This occurred on the 7th of Sep- tinent; but in the interval Sebastian Cabot had tember, at six o'clock in the morning, and was felt anticipated him in the accomplishment of that honourover a large part of Scotland, but particularly at Crieff able feat. The fact, as here stated, has lately been Land Comrie. In Edinburgh, where it was observed in the New Town, but not in the Old, the sensation within established beyond dispute by the investigation of oridoors was as if the house had been gently lifted up-ginal documents, previously neglected or misinterwards, and then shaken violently in a direction from preted. north to south. Some hours afterwards, a house in the Old Town sank so much as to require being condemned by the magistrates, and the gable of an old barn near the city fell in upon some reapers, two of whom it crushed to death. In 1799, on the 17th of January and 24th of February, earthquakes were felt at Comrie and its neighbourhood. The same place was visited in like manner in 1792, and at several times throughout the latter part of 1789. On one occasion, late in the year last mentioned, the ice on a piece of water near Lawers House was shivered to atoms-an effect which we have nowhere else seen observed. On the 30th of September, in the same year, a tremendous earthquake occurred at Borgo di San Sepolchro in Italy, swallowing up many houses and destroying many lives: it is said that "on the same day three distinct shocks of earthquake were felt at the house of Parson's Green, on the north side of the [volcanic] hill of Arthur's Seat near Edinburgh."* Four days before, a shock had been felt in the county of Wilts. On the 8th of July 1788, an earthquake was felt in the Isle of Man, and on the same day the sea at Dunbar suddenly receded. On the 12th of September 1784, the water of Loch Tay receded from the two ends, and rose in a great wave in the middle, after which it flowed towards the lateral shores, rising high above its usual level. This was repeated every day for a week, with less and John Sebastian brought home, therefore, only the im portant information, that a huge body of hitherto true bulk and figure of the world, that Cabot, when unknown land, with various islands, lay in the western way to India. So little was then understood of the country seems to have undeceived him. Undeterred he first saw Labrador, imagined that it must be Cathay, or India itself, but the cold sterile character of the voyage, he immediately applied for a new patent to by the comparatively unproductive character of his enable him to resume the enterprise. This patent Cabot died immediately afterwards, but this did not was granted, and bore date February 3, 1498, being The particulars again directed to John Cabot and his sons. nied by a crew of three hundred men. prevent Sebastian from at once setting out, accompa of this voyage are given obscurely. Several authors state that he endeavoured to colonise a portion of the northern coasts of America, but found it impossible to degree of latitude, and returned, after what length of effect his purpose on account of the cold. He then passed along the coast to the south as far as the 38th absence we do not know, to the shores of England. Though our records of this, as well as of his other They afforded landmarks to future voyagers, showed voyages, are miserably defective, there can be no them points to run for, and took away from them that doubt that his reports were of great value in their day. awful feeling of uncertainty which must ever press on mariners entering great unknown seas. Sebastian Cabot was an Englishman by birth. His father, John Cabot or Cabota, was a native of Venice, who had come to England to "follow the trade of merchandise,” and had settled in Bristol, where, about the year 1475, Sebastian, the second of three sons, was born. As this youth sprang up into manhood, the subject of maritime discovery became the all-engrossing one throughout the civilised world. The voyages of the Portuguese to the East, and of Columbus to the West, had opened up a new and most brilliant field for the operation of the spirit of enterprise, and one, besides, which held out such hopes of gain as might well dazzle the imaginations alike of prince and private adventurer. Sebastian Cabot was precisely in that position of life to be peculiarly acted upon by such motives. His father seems to have acquired very considerable wealth by commerce, and had consequently early age of four, Sebastian first went to sea, being the command of shipping to a certain extent. At the taken by his father on a voyage to Venice, from which city they returned, after a short stay, to England. In 1493, Columbus came back from his first voyage across the Atlantic, and the news of his discovery spread rapidly over Europe, awakening, to an amazing degree, the feelings which have been described. Sebastian Cabot has given an account of the impression made on his own enthusiastic mind at the time. A conversation of his, reported in Hakluyt's Voyages, contains these words :"When newes were brought that Don Christopher Colones Genoese had discovered the coasts of India, whereof was great talke in all the court of King Henry VII., who then raigned, insomuch that all men with great admiration affirmed it to be a thing more divine than humane, to saile by the west into the east, where spices growe, by a way never knowen before, by this fame and report there increased in my heart a great flame of desire to attempt some notable thing. And understanding, by reason of the sphere, The character of Cabot seems only to have been that if I should saile by way of the north-west, I should by a shorter tract come into India, I thereupon caused to have become jealous of the benefit which might acthe king to be advertised of my desire, who immecrue from his after-services to England, as we find him diately commanded two caravels to be furnished with raised still higher by this expedition. Spain appears By the date of a patent granted by Henry VII. to all things appertaining to the voyage." some years, the honourable office of pilot-major. In John Cabot and his three sons, we find that this en- again invited to Spain in 1518, and bearing there, for terprise was finally resolved upon in March 1496. Although the name of the father was included in this 1526, he took the command of a fleet of four ships, patent, and although successive modern writers upon fitted out partly by merchants and partly at the maritime adventure have given praise to John Cabot public expense, for the prosecution of trade with as a great discoverer, there is no good authority for the Molucca islands, which had been ceded at that supposing that any one of the Cabots, excepting Sebas- time to Spain. This expedition was, in some respects, tian, had an actual personal share in the conduct of unfortunate from its very outset. Cabot was thwarted the voyages that followed the acquirement of the in every possible manner by those who were concerned patent; though, being parties to it, and sharers in with him in the enterprise, the Spaniards being jealous the fitting out of these expeditions, their names of him as a stranger and foreigner; and, accordingly, are usually associated with his in the history of mari- | on the expedition crossing the Atlantic and touching less force. It is very remarkable that this summer *Scots Magazine, 1816, p. 845. We have no existing account of Cabot's pursuits or employments for a number of years after his return from his second voyage. We first hear of dinand of Spain. He was treated by that monarch him again in the year 1512, as having then been induced to accept of offers of employment from Ferwith high consideration, was made a member of the Council of the Indies, and received the appointment of commander of an expedition destined for the Ferdinand died, and his successor did not follow up discovery of the North-West Passage. But while things were in full preparation for this enterprise, his views. Sebastian Cabot, still eager for employment, came once more to England, and in 1517 was loss, at a later period, of all Cabot's papers and maps, placed at the head of a new expedition, the precise object of which is not well known. The unfortunate leaves us in uncertainty with respect to the fate of this enterprise also. We only know for certain that all Cabot's purposes were frustrated by mutinies and disobedience among his sailors. then have been ruled (says one old English writer), and followed their pilot's mind, the lands of the West Indies, from whence all the gold cometh, would have been ours." "If the mariners would three hundred of the natives. at Brazil, a mutiny broke out against the commander, at the head of which were two brothers of the name of Rojas, and one Martin Mendez. Cabot acted on the occasion with a degree of energy which secured the future peace of the expedition. Though alone, and among strangers, he instantly seized the ringleaders, and placing them in a boat, put them ashore, where they were soon after picked up by a Portuguese vessel. This has been called a cruel act, but it was one of those pieces of severity rendered indispensable by a proper regard both to private and public interests. Having lost one of his vessels by shipwreck, Cabot deemed it imprudent to attempt the fulfilment of the original objects of the enterprise. He pursued his way southwards, and discovered the great river La Plata, on the banks of which he built forts, and where he had much intercourse with the natives, "an infinite people (says an old writer), who with admiration came running daily to the shippes." Sebastian examined the rivers and coasts hereabout with great attention, and inquired closely into the regions where the precious metals were most abundant. He spent about four years here in all, and in the interim transmitted ample accounts of his discoveries to Spain. These accounts led to the mighty expeditions by which the Spaniards afterwards acquired the dominion of the greater part of South America. Unlike his successors, Pizarro and Cortez, Cabot had only one important quarrel with the natives during his stay. It was an accidental one, and led to the destruction of twenty-five of his own men, and It is to be regretted that we possess so few particulars of this voyage, in which Sebastian Cabot undoubtedly exhibited all the qualities of a great captain and discoverer. He returned to Spain in 1531, and resuming his office of pilot-major, lived in Seville in great honour and repute for many years afterwards. In Ramusio's Voyages, a high tribute is paid to him, by one who had seen him, and who "found him a most gentle and courteous person, who treated me with great kindness, and showed me a great many things; and, among the rest, a great map of the world, on which the several voyages of the Portuguese and Spaniards were laid down." He is also praised as a very "valiant man," and one that could make cardes for the sea with his owne hand." He is said, moreover, to have been "preferred above all other pilots that saile to the West Indies." What particular voyages, besides those already pointed out, were made by Cabot after 1531, we are unable to say. Certain it is, that he left Spain in 1548, and returned to England, being apparently desirous to lay his bones in his native land. His high character and importance may be estimated by the fact, that the Spanish ambassador soon after made an importunate demand that "Sebastian Cabot, Grand Pilot of the Emperor's Indies, might be sent back to Spain, as a very necessary man for the emperor, whose servant he was, and had a pension from." But the generous and enlightened young king, Edward VI., not only declined to comply with the request, but bestowed on Cabot many personal marks of favour, together with a pension of two hundred and fifty marks (L.166, 13s. 6d.), a very liberal allowance in those days. The veteran navigator was also appointed to some general superintendence of the maritime affairs of the country, under the title of Grand Pilot, or some such name. Nothing seems to have been done by the English, after this period, in the way of naval enterprise, without his sanction, and to him Britain was indebted for the opening of a new outlet of trade, which has been an important source of income ever since. In order to remedy the depressed state of the national commerce, Cabot strongly recommended an expedition to be sent to the extreme north of Europe, to form a commercial union with Russia. This was done, and, in consequence, a great Russian company was established, of which Cabot was named governor for life. The whale and Newfoundland fisheries were in some measure indebted for their existence to this company, and "hence (says Campbell, in his Lives of the Admirals) Sebastian Cabot may be said, with strict justice, to be the author of our maritime strength, and to have opened the way to those improvements which have rendered us so great, so eminent, so flourishing a people." In addition to these services, it is known that Cabot was the first who pointed out the variation of the needle. He explained the whole subject publicly to Edward VI. Sebastian Cabot died about the year 1557, but the place where he died, and the spot where he lies, are alike unknown. We have some accounts, however, of his deathbed from his friend Richard Eden, and find that the ruling passion of his life kept its hold to the last. In the half-sensible moments of his final hour, he talked flightily of a divine revelation having been made to him respecting a new and sure method of finding the longitude, but which he was not permitted, he said, to disclose. "The spirit of the dying man (says a writer in the American Review) was hovering, like a sea-bird, over that ocean which had been the scene of his dangers, and the field from which he had reaped his harvest of glory; and the stirring music of its billows fell with vivid distinctness upon that inner ear, whose perception grew more acute, as the outward organ ceased by degrees to exercise its functions." This intrepid navigator has received scant measure of justice from historians, whether countrymen or foreigners. A succession of errors, all tending to deprive him of his merited laurels, and even directly to injure his fair fame, has been perpetuated in mari- FACTS CONNECTED WITH THE MEDICAL CHARITIES OF SHEFFIELD. OUR readers will perhaps remember a few remarks * To support his views, he brings the testimony of Facts still more remarkable are brought out by our physician. "The distresses of a community," he says, meaning such a community as that of Sheffield, “will be admitted to bear a strict relation to the state of trade. When this is extremely depressed, many hands are thrown out of employment. When the trade is good, the demand for labour is great; wages advance, and the blessings of plenty are universally experienced. The amount of misery or destitution cannot be the same in these very different circumstances. It cannot be a fixed quantity floating in society. The idea is preposterous; and yet, if the registered demand for is indeed a quantity subject to scarcely any variation charity be any criterion of the misery existing, there whatever. From Midsummer 1835 to Midsummer 1836, between which periods trade was better in this town than it had been known for years, the number of patients admitted on the books of the Infirmary was 3126. From Midsummer 1836 to Midsummer 1837, between which periods the trade was exceedingly depressed, the number was 3431, being an increase only of 305 patients. Between the former periods the number of patients on the books of the Dispensary was 2888. Between the latter periods, that is, from July 1836 to July 1837, the number was 2575, being less by 313 patients. According to these returns there were eight patients more during a prosperous state of trade, recipients of medical charity, than during the severe depression of it.” The book is professedly the composition of an officer of the two medical charities of Sheffield, the Infirmary and Dispensary. He sets out by stating very broadly as his opinion, that the character of the workingclasses in Sheffield is at present undergoing a certain degree of deterioration, in consequence of so many charities, and particularly medical charities, being thrown open to them, the self-respect connected with independence being thus gradually worn away, and with it the virtues which have never yet been found The Infirmary, we are told, to exist without it. was established for the benefit of the poor and needful of all nations; but it never, our author argues, could have been designed for those who are able otherwise to obtain the desired aid. Now, however, the fact of being an operative is held as a sufficient claim. "The artisan never dreams of the possibility of rejection on the ground of being in full and regular employment, and being amply remunerated for his labour. He applies now as naturally to the charity when he is sick, as to the tailor for the repair of his clothes, with this difference, that he would be perfectly astonished were any one to hint at the propriety of paying for the favours conferred by the former." Our author argues against the following classes, at least, having any right to the benefits of the institution-Single men in employment-married men with only young and small families-men with several children but high wages-men who have several sons and apprentices working along with them-servants in situations. All of these persons, excepting the last, must be able to provide medical attendance for themselves, if they economise their resources. He presents a hundred Our author ends by suggesting a number of new cases of applications, being those within the few regulations for the purpose of restricting the benefits weeks before the time when he was writing, and of the medical charities to the really poor, for whom out of these he shows that there were fifteen young has not allowed himself to see to the bottom of the alone they were designed. We fear, however, that he single men, all of whom but two had been in emevil. On reading his book, two considerations arise ployment till the time of their illness, twelve at in our minds. First, in what measure is this great well-paid crafts, and one as a labourer. Eleven cases resort of respectable artisans to charities to be attriwere of married persons without children, and thirty-buted to the unreasonable charges made by medical two applicants were married, with only one or two chil-practitioners from working-men, when they are called dren. In some of the latter instances, "the only child extent may it be owing to the impression which has in upon an independent footing? Second, to what is a daughter eighteen or twenty years of age, who has of late years, justly or unjustly, been prevailing in the business; in others a son apprenticed to his father, and are therefore doing no more than justice in maknever been allowed to go out to place, or to learn any minds of the operative classes, that the capitalled and employing class have an undue advantage over them, and both in regular employment. In one instance, where the wife was the patient, the daughter was in behalf of the employed? The second of these queries ing large and systematic eleemosynary allowances in a warehouse, and the son, a youth of fourteen years of is one which we are forbidden to discuss in this paper; age, was a day scholar in a respectable private academy but we may make the remark that, if the fact be so in the town. The husband had received regularly to any extent, it is much to be lamented, as even a twenty-four shillings a-week for the last twenty years. ing. With regard to the first query, we feel more at right obtained in a mendicant way must be demoralisMany of the thirty-two cases are even more flagrant liberty. instances of impositions on the charity." Certainly in the whole number of applicants for relief, as far as our author has described them, we do not find that proportion of persons likely to be in necessitous circumstances, which might be expected. He elsewhere states that healthy seasons are marked by no diminution of the number of applicants. "We hesitate not to assert that, during the last twelve months, there has been less disease in this town and neighbourhood than has been known for many years, and yet during this period the demands on medical charities have increased." We have been at some pains to ascertain the charges usually made to working-men in England for medicine and medical attendance; and though the returns little reason to doubt that these charges in general are to our inquiries have been various, we fear there is too such as must act as a constant temptation to the working-classes to resort to medical charities. We shall first lay before our readers the following extracts from a letter with which we have been favoured by a provincial physician eminent in the literature and science of his profession : My experience of upwards of twenty years leads me to assert that the labouring classes generally are unable to pay private medical practitioners for illnesses in their families, if of any severity or extent of duration. This is true with scarcely any qualification with the whole class of day-labourers and farmlabourers, who earn from eight to twelve or thirteen shillings a-week. Men of superior rank, such as artisans in good employment, who may earn twenty or thirty shillings, if they have families, can hardly pay the doctors' bills, unless they are men of very uncommon prudence, or have singularly healthy homes or singularly liberal doctors. The general custom in England (until lately the universal custom) is for general practitioners,' as they are called-that is, the sole doctors of the lower and middle classes-to charge nothing for attendance (unless they pay visits in the country at some distance from their homes, when they charge 2s., 2s. 6d., 5s., 7s., according to the distance), but for medicines supplied; but the price put on medicines is always calculated so as to include virtually the charge for attendance. Thus, if an apothecary visits an artisan or labourer, he sends him perhaps a bottle of physic, worth possibly a halfpenny or a penny, or it may be twopence or even threepence, and charges him 3s., 3s. 6d., or certainly 2s. or 2s. 6d. This may last two or three days according to circumstances, so that the cost to the patient will be 1s., 1s. 6d., or 2s. per day. Suppose the man's illness lasts but a few weeks, the bill will be certainly 10s., 20s., 30s., or in longer illnesses several pounds." Our correspondent then relates the particular case of the brother-in-law of his housemaid, a jobbing day-labourer, realising at the time 12s. 6d. per week, paying L.9 of house rent besides poor-rates, and having a stances, so that the independence of these men would | SLEEP-WALKING. No phenomenon in the human economy is calculated History :-" Near thirty years ago, I had an opportunity of examining a striking example of somnambulism. Within a mile of Edinburgh, I happened to reside some time in a farmer's house. Mr Baird, my landlord, had a servant maid, whose name was Sarah. I was not long there, when I learned from the family, that Sarah, particularly after receiving an affront, or being angered, was accustomed to rise in her sleep, to go out, and to walk about the fields. My curiosity was excited, and I begged to be informed the first time that Sarah should rise in her sleep. A few nights afterwards, one of Mr Baird's sons awaked me, and told me that Sarah had got out of bed. I immediately hastened to the apartment where she slept. When I arrived, Mr and Mrs Baird, one of their sons, and a servant maid, Sarah's companion, were present. Sarah was in the midst of them. I took my seat by her. We began immediately to converse. She answered any questions that were put to her pretty distinctly; but she always mistook the person who spoke, which gave us an opportunity of assuming any character within the circle of her acquaintance. I knew that one of the farmer's servants, whose name was John Porteous, was a lover of hers; and therefore I addressed her in the style which I supposed John might have sometimes done. From that moment she began to scold me, and in the most peremptory manThe conversation was accordingly changed. I talked of ner forbade me ever to speak to her again on that topic. her mistress, who was in the room, because I knew that they had occasional quarrels. Till now, I suspected that the whole was a trick, but for what purpose I could not discover. Sarah, however, abused Mrs day she had been accused of stealing and drinking wife and child. This man, falling sick, was attended ample, can be led to dream of particular subjects by ceived notion of imposture, and therefore changed the by a general practitioner between the 16th December and the 8th January, being little more than three weeks. The doctor's bill, which has been transmitted to us, shows a succession of charges for pills, draughts, and mixtures, at 2s. and 3s. each, mingled with some blisters and leeches; and the whole amount is L.4, 5s. -a sum evidently far beyond the means of such a man, but which he nevertheless paid by taking some money out of the savings' bank, and economising severely during the year ensuing upon the illness. The worst of it was, that at January 8, when he had thus incurred a ruinous charge, he was not half cured, but had then after all to resort to the medical charities. not pay. Baird in the harshest terms; she said but the other some bottles of ale; that her mistress was suspicious, cruel, and narrow-minded. As the mistress of the house was present when these and other opprobrious terms were used, I began to be shaken in my preconobject of my experiments and inquiries. I examined her the talk of others placed near them when sleeping; countenance, and found that her eyes, though open, while other dreamers are totally insensible to all sounds wild, and staring, were not absolutely fixed. I took emitted within the range of their organs of hearing. a pin, and repeatedly pricked her arm; but not a motion are often exercised to a slight extent. A made several attempts to get out by the door; but that In ordinary dreaming, too, the powers of voluntary muscle moved, not a symptom of pain was discoverable. At last she became impatient to leave the room, and dreamer, under the impression that he is engaged in an was prevented by the domestics. Perceiving her inaactive battle, will frequently give a bed-fellow a smart bility to force the door, she made a sudden spring at the belabouring. Often, also, in cases of common dream- window, and endeavoured to throw herself over, which ing, the muscles on which the production of the voice would have been fatal to her. To remove every suspicion of imposture, I desired the people, with proper depends are set in action, through the instrumentality precautions to prevent harm, to try if she would really of that portion of the brain which is not in a quiescent precipitate herself from the window. A seemingly free state, and the dreamer mutters, or talks, or cries aloud. access was left for her escape, which she perceived, All these partial demonstrations of activity in the and instantly darted with such force and agility, that external senses, and in the powers of voluntary motion, more than one-half of her body was projected before her friends were aware. They, however, laid hold of form an approach to that remarkable state termed her, and prevented the dreadful catastrophe. She was somnambulism, in which all or nearly all of the senses, again prevailed upon, though with much reluctance, and of the muscles of the body, are frequently in perfect to sit down. She soon resumed her former calmness, activity, the torpor of a part of the cerebral organs and freely answered such questions as were put to her. being the only feature rendering the condition diffe- This scene continued for more than an hour. I was rent from that of waking life. The degrees in which picions, that the woman was actuated by strong and perfectly convinced, notwithstanding my original susthe preceding characteristics are observable in som- natural impulses, and not by any design to deceive. I nambulism, vary, as is natural, in different cases, and asked if any of the attendants knew how to awaken her. the causes of this, as well as of the condition itself, are A female servant replied that she did. She immediately, well and forcibly explained by Mr Macnish, in his to my astonishment, laid hold of Sarah's wrist, forcibly Anatomy of Sleep. "If we dream that we are walk-squeezed and rubbed the projecting bones, calling out at the same time, 'Sarah ! Sarah ! By this operation Sarah awoke. She stared with amazement, looked round, and asked how so many people came to be in her apartment at so unseasonable an hour? After she was completely awake, I asked her what was the cause of her restless and violent agitation? She resued by a furious bull, who was every moment on the point of goring her." Another case was that of a foreman to a printer, re- and exciting energy as to arouse the muscles of loco- Another of our correspondents, a young Scotch physician settled in London, represents, on the other hand, that the doctors' bills are very frequently left unpaid, and that a vast deal is done by the profession gratuitously among the humbler classes, from the mere These brief explanations may aid in preventing the spirit of benevolence. This may quite well be, and reader from being puzzled by the philosophy of this yet the system upon the whole may be such as to curious condition of the bodily system, or from being press severely on those who are willing and able to pay disposed to discredit the cases related. The simplest reasonably. If the prudent and honest man can only and perhaps least surprising cases are those in which obtain independent medical attendance by the sacrifice the locomotive powers alone of the body are set in of the little sum he has been able to put into a savings' action by the vividness of a dreaming impulse. The bank, he has but little encouragement to make the at- person rises, strikes his head or body against sometempt to save. If he is obliged from absolute poverty thing, and awakes. A leap from bed is also a comto leave a large bill altogether unpaid, he is degraded paratively common and slight species of somnambulism. in his own esteem, and rises from his sick-bed a worse In the belief of being compelled to cross a ditch by member of society than he lay down. Between the the pursuit of a bull, a gentleman bounded some demoralisation thus produced, and that which arises time since from bed, and at one spring found himself from the direct resort to medical charities, we see placed upon a dressing-table which stood a short way little difference. It may at the same time be true from the foot of the bed. A few inches farther, and that the system is not a good one upon the whole for he would have passed through or at least struck a the medical men; but if this be the case, why should window. But such cases have little interest in comthey oppose the introduction of a better? Why should parison with those in which the somnambulism is not they not come to some arrangement for charging the momentary, but of continued duration. The following operative classes according to their actual circum-case is related by Smellie, in his Philosophy of Natural In the preceding case there is one point worthy of especial note, and this is the insensibility of the girl will be shown afterwards, this is a phenomenon which to pain when her arm was repeatedly pricked. As nambulism, and made it a subject of greater importhas recently thrown quite a novel interest over som ance. The somnambulist in Smellie's case had not apparently the perfect power of vision. She did not or could not recognise the persons about her, yet she saw a window, and would have leapt through it, knowing that a passage was practicable. The true condition of the vision in somnambulism is indeed the point most difficult to comprehend. The boy who, according to the common story, rose in his sleep and took a nest of young eagles from a dangerous precipice, must have received the most accurate accounts of external objects from his visual organs, and must have been able to some extent to reason upon them, else he could never have overcome the difficulties of the ascent. He dreamed of taking away the nest, and to his great surprise found it beneath his bed in the morning in the spot where he only thought himself to have put it in imagination. The following case, mentioned by Mr Macnish, is scarcely less wonderful. It occurred near one of the towns on the Irish coast. "About two o'clock in the morning, the watchmen on the Revenue Quay were much surprised at descrying a man disporting himself in the water, about a hundred yards from the shore. Intimation having been given to the re |