with reason, since the future character of no infant could ever be predicted at its birth.

History records one occasion, and one only, where such a prediction could be justifiable-the birth of Him who was by "ancient sages long foretold," and who was to be called "Immanuel."

PROPER NAMES INTERPRETED.
Aaron, a mountain. Heb.

Abel, vanity. Heb.

Abraham, the father of many. Heb.
Adam, red earth. Heb.

dance, at the delectable inspiration which an itine- The object of Bobby's consternation, however, gradually withdrew, and the current of his ideas, as well as that of his blood, seemed to flow again. Becoming conscious of that fact, he immediately betook himself to that valour, which on occasions of huge affright, is ever found in the speed of one's heels. He ran nearly two miles, swifter than Crusoe ever chased a goat. And then,

"Like wildfire o'er a mossy heath,

rant ghost blew out of an old pair of bellows, are the only examples, it strikes us, which will sustain any comparison with the diabolical witchcraft of which these inhabitants were wont to complain, to the neighbouring villages. Every happening, a little singular in its nature, was most indubitably the handicraft of a witch. Divers supernatural intonations, awful screeches and thrilling squeals, it is The rumour through the hamlet ran; said, were heard in their vicinage during the season The peasants crowd at morning dawn, of slumber. One of the most corpulent men amongst To hear the tale,-behold the man." them, had grown as lean and lank as a "ribb'd sand Bobby described the terrifick animal as possessed bar"--some people lost their hair-some cows their of the image of mankind, covered with brown hair, tails-some pigs the faculty of lying still without having one eye, like Cyclops, in the centre of his squealing-some chimney cap-stones their equilib- forehead; walk, erect, and carrying a mortal shillalah rium—some shovels and tongs their perpendicular- of hawthorn. The savans of the neighbouring vility-some tea-kettles their tears and sighs-some lage, after a protracted investigation, pronounced the kittens their lives, and numerous other almost in- animal an Homoferus! Class, Mammalia-Order, credible inconveniences perplexed them, it is al-Quadrumana-Specifick genus, Sylve Americanusleged, and all of which were debited to the unlawful Anthropophagi unoculus, capillaceus. practices of witches and wizards.

Every reader who is conscious that the soil he treads upon, was once covered with the trees of a savage wilderness, must also be aware that a war of unsparing extermination has always existed between Americans and all manner of wild beasts. Thus we account for the fact, that the spreading wonder that

Bobby Allyn, whom the reader will not recollect as the main hero of our underplot, felt, numerically, great superstitious misgivings and dreary terrours crawling through his veins, when with "too credent ear" he listened to these rumours. And good reason why; Bobby's diurnal toil always led him, of a cer-an Homoferus was prowling in the mountains, intainty, through the Gulf.

stantly aroused the destructive propensity of every We find the aforementioned personage one cold, Nimrod in that section of the steady Commonclear, tickling morning in January, just at the break wealth. The Gulf, the horrifick abode of this feroof day, wending his steps through this terrifick cious animal, was immediately made the rendezvous mountain pass. He exhibited at every moment an of about two hundred warriours bold. It is regretful extreme sensibility and maiden coyness; for the to record that some of them loaded their fire-arms fellow's head was lumbered with images of Dutch with the fell determination of putting the poor anispooks, English hobgoblins, and African devils. mal to death-a post mortem examination was then Every crack of a bough, every rattle of a tumbling to be executed, and subsequently, extermination, stone or falling icicle, every caw of the high-flying toto cælo. There were amongst them, however, crow, startled him into tremour and perspiration; some, who with more amiable motives had meditated and when he mounted a rail, the frosty thing would the feasibility of taking him alive, and turning him send such a hollow echo through the babbling into a menagerie. However, to proceed, every man forest, that his very blood would be nearly chilled of them, desirous of signalizing himself on the oc with consternation. casion, advanced with vigour and courage.

He arrived, at length, to a point on the road that is darkly overshadowed. The noise of a singular step, cranching the dry sticks and dead leaves, suddenly grated on his terrified ear. Bobby Allyn, almost petrified with horrour, effected a decided halt.

"Each particular hair stood on end,
Like quills upon a fretful porcupine."
"Et vox faucibus hæsit."

His present appearance, in a strictly technical de-
scription might be noted thus: form, erect; hair,
bristled; eyes, dilate, globose; mouth and nostrils,
distended, cavernous; tongue, flaccid; arms, bra-
chiate; legs, divergent, rigid; brain, turbid; blood,
frigid; general aspect, affrighted.

"Yelled on the view the opening pack,
Rock, glen and cavern paid them back;
To many a mingled sound at once,

The awakened mountain gave response."
Rocks, caves, dingles, hollow trees, logs, brusk
heaps, rubbish, in fact, all that forest gear underwent
the strictest scrutiny of the keenest hunters. The
uproar
and the downroar was tumultuous and terrible

"The owlets started from their dream, The eagles answered with their scream; Round and around the sounds were cast, Till echo seemed an answering blast." They had at length "beaten every tack," probed every lurking place, and awakened every solitude. The fierce army, as is the custom in all similar hunts, had now encircled a hill, and were gathering

o a central point at its apex, when the cry of "He's other. She is familiar with the domestick matters up! mark! mark!" ran through the awakened ranks. of almost every family in the western county, Rifles cracked, and queen's arms roared in arith- brings dry sticks for the fire, sings sacred songs for metical progression, till all was one tremendous, the children, anathematizes the elders for their derebooming thunder. In the midst of this universal lictions, admonishes priests of their duty, and quotes roar, a lean, emaciated woods-gray fox, without a tail, with astonishing facility the terrours of the law to darted out of a hollow stump, near which Bobby sinners. She awes some people into subjection to Allyn had taken his station, and with a most fright- her will, and is abused by others to a brutish exful attempt to scream, quickly disappeared down the treme. One place never contains her more than hill. The effect which the sudden appearance of one day or one night-the latter she spends somethis frightful image of a fox produced upon poor times in a house, sometimes in a manger, and at Bobby's nerves is indescribable. Suffice it to say, others it is impossible to divine where she slumhis musket fell from his nerveless arm; and as it bers. Not unfrequently, she disappears for an entire fell, discharged itself into the air, while the unfor- winter, and appears again in the spring as mystetunate man was himself, at that very instant, the riously as the wild woman of the Pyrenees. She recipient of a missile of death from the misdirected seems happy, always cheerful, sometimes even aim of one of his companions. humorous, and always healthy. Her hold upon The disappointed party gathered mournfully life is indeed mysterious; her destiny unprophearound the unfortunate victim, and placing the body sied. upon a litter, moped quietly and sadly away;

"And silence settled, wide and still,

On the lone wood and mighty hill."

The reader may suspect that Crazy Bess was the Homoferus of the Gulf. We must confess that there are indeed, grounds whereon that suspicion

Reader! perhaps thou hast perused Miss Sedg-may rest. wick's New England Tales. If thou hast given thyself that pleasure, thou art, peradventure, acquainted with one Crazy Bess. Thou mayst have been informed, that she was born to a goodly heritage of worldly estate, of personal beauty, of surpassing intelligence, of purest Christian virtuesthat she was alike the pride of her friends, the ornament of her sex and the delight of a wide and extending circle.

BIOGRAPHY.

JOHN MARSHALL,
Chief Justice of the United States.

This venerable and distinguished man died at Philadelphia on the sixth of July. In ill health. emaciated, and full of years, the event was not unexpected either to his friends or to himself. He >That she possessed a very retentive memory, an had lived eighty years, and his valuable life has been acute discrimination, shrewd wit, keen sarcasm, identified with the most important events in our and ready repartee, but an amiable disposition, and history. It cannot be denied, that as a soldier, was every inch a lady. But thou must also have a lawyer, a legislator, a historian, and lastly as learnt, that she and all her race, were the unfortu- Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United nate inheritors of the dire seeds of pitiable insanity. States, Mr. Marshall has exhibited pre-eminent At that early age when hope is brightest, affection talents, and sustained himself with enduring honour. strongest, beauty loveliest, when talent begins to His elevated qualifications for the Chief Justicebloom and society to charm, she became the irrevo-ship, indeed his seeming natural-adaptedness to that eable victim of a wild, irremediable, constitutional precise situation at the peculiar and important insanity. Her health continued good, and she still period when he was called to it, can be fully appre retained her memory, sarcasm, repartee, and occa-ciated only by those who can understand the diffisional wit, but the intellectual energies lost all concentrativeness; they were hurried on into a lawless unremitting whirl.

She is old and gray now the pilgrim of the highway, the homeless wanderer of the fields and woods. Her face is deeply wrinkled, cheeks sunken, teeth dilapidated, and her hazel eye flashes under long gray eyebrows. You may see her by the road side, in her brown dress and hood, half a dozen vari-coloured shawls and perhaps red sash; supporting herself by a broken bough in one hand, and bearing roots, herbs, and evergreens in the VOL. III.-13

culties of framing a new, and indeed almost original system of National Jurisprudence adapted to an experimental government, and that government a Re publick, and who can perceive the success of his labours in that undertaking, and understand the importance of their results. The office of Chief Justice of the United States is most difficult, most important, most responsible, and second only to the Presidency in every point of view. That Mr. Marshall has acquitted himself with distinguished ho nour in that station, the expressions of the Bar in the different parts of the country abundantly indicate

66

“The Chief Justice," says the Philadelphia In- any other gentleman on earth. To continue the quirer, was born in Virginia, on the 24th of Sep- portrait: his head and face were small in proportion tember, 1755; and, as early as the summer of 1775, to his height; his complexion swarthy; the mus received a commission as lieutenant of a company cles of his face being relaxed, gave him the appear of minute-r.en, and was shortly after engaged in the ance of a man of eighty years of age. His counte battle of the Great Bridge, where the British troops, nance had a faithful expression of great good hu under Lord Dunmore, were repulsed with great gal-mour and hilarity; while his black eyes-the uner lantry. He was subsequently engaged in the mem-ring index-possessed an irradiating spirit, which orable battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and proclaimed the imperial powers of the mind that sai Monmouth, and, in 1780 obtained a license to prac- enthroned within. tise law. He returned to the army shortly after, and continued in the service until the termination of Arnold's invasion.

This extraordinary man, without the aid of fancy, without the advantage of person, voice, attitude, gesture, or any of the ornaments of an orator, de"In the spring of 1782 he was elected a member serves to be considered as one of the most eloquent of the State Legislature, and in the autumn of the men in the world; if eloquence may be said to consame year, a member of the Executive Council, and sist in the power of seizing the attention with irremarried in 1783. In 1788 he was elected as rep-sistible force, and never permitting it to elude the resentative of the city of Richmond in the Legisla- grasp until the hearer has received the conviction ture of Virginia, and continued to occupy that sta- which the speaker intends. tion for the years 1789, 1790, 1791, and upon the As to his person it has already been described recall of Mr. Monroe, as Minister from France, His voice was dry and hard, his attitude in his most President Washington solicited Mr. Marshall to ac-effective orations was extremely awkward; as it cept the appointment as his successor, but he re- was not unusual for him to stand with his gestures spectfully declined. In 1799 he was elected and proceeding from his right arm, and consisting merely took his seat in Congress, and in 1800 he was ap-in a vehement perpendicular swing of it from above pointed Secretary of War. the elevation of his head to the bar, behind which he was accustomed to stand.

As to fancy, if she held a seat in his mind at all, which I very much doubt, his gigantick genius trampled with disdain on all her flower-decked plants and blooming parterres. How, then, will you ask with a look of incredulous curiosity-how is it possible that such a man could hold the attention of an audience enchained through a speech of ordinary length? I will tell you.

resistless than was his astonishing penetration. Nor did the exercise of it seem to cost him an effort. On the contrary, it was as easy as a vision. I am persuaded that his eyes did not fly over a landscape and take in its various objects with more promptitude and facility than his mind embraced and analyzed the most complex objects.

"On the 31st of January, 1801, he became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, which distinguished station he continued to fill with unsullied dignity and pre-eminent ability, until the elose of his mortal career. His biographer eloquently observes: What indeed strikes us as the most remarkable in his whole character, even more than his splendid talents, is the entire consistency of his publick life and principles. There is nothing in either which calls for apology or concealment. He possessed an original and almost supernatural Ambition never seduced him from his principles-faculty, of developing the subject by a single glance popular clamour never deterred him from the strict of his mind, and detecting at once the very point on performance of his duty. Amid the extravagances which the controversy depended. No matter what of party spirit, he stood with a calm and steady in- the question, though ten times more knotty than the flexibility-neither bending to the pressure of ad-"gnarled oak," the lightning of heaven is not more versity, nor bounding with the elasticity of success. He lived as such a man should live, by and with his principles. If we were tempted to say in one word in what he excelled all other men, we should say, in wisdom; in the union of that virtue, which ripened under the hardy discipline of principles, with that of knowledge, which constantly sifted and refined its old treasures, and as constantly gathered Possessing while at the bar this intellectual elevanew. The Constitution, since its adoption, owes tion, which enabled him to look down and compremore to him than to any other single mind, for its hend the whole ground at once, he determined, im true interpretation and vindication. Whether it mediately, and without difficulty, which side the lives or perishes, his exposition of its principles question might be most advantageously approached will be an enduring monument to his fame, so long and assailed; in a bad cause, his art consisted in as solid reasoning, profound analysis, and sober laying his premises so remotely from the point diviews of government shall invite the leisure, or rectly in debate, or else in terms so generous and command the attention of statesmen and jurists.' specious, that the hearer, seeing no consequences The following portrait of Chief Justice Marshall which could be drawn from them, was just as willing was drawn by a distinguished jurist, since deceased: to admit them as not: but his premises once adHe was in his person tall, meager, emaciated, mitted, the demonstration, however distant, followed his muscles relaxed, and his joints so loosely con- as certainly, as cogently, and as inevitably, as any nected as not only to disqualify him, apparently, for demonstration in Euclid. any vigorous exertions of the body, but to destroy every thing like elegance and harmony in his air and movements. Indeed, in his whole appearance and demeanour-dress, attitude, and gestures-sitting, standing, or walking-he was as far removed from the idolizing graces of Lord Chesterfield, as

All his eloquence consisted in the apparently deep self-conviction, and emphatick earnestness of his manner; the correspondent simplicity and energy of his style, the close logical connexion of his thoughts, and the easy gradations by which he opened his lights on the attentive minds of his hearers.

BOTANY.

The ultimate and proximate principles of all vegetation are oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and occasionally nitrogen. The proximate principles depend

The twenty-four classes of Linnæus are called, on the proportion of those elements; as when the according to the number of Stamens :

oxygen is in greater proportion than water, or less, or equal, or when there is nitrogen. This general division indicates acid vegetables, neutral vegetables, inflammable vegetables, and animal product. The first, where the acids prevail, is the acetick acid, the oxalick, citrick, tartarick, benzoick, camphorick, gallick, malick, suberick, succinick mellitick, saclactick, fungick, and kinick. These acids confer an acidulous character on all vegetables with which they are combined.

When the oxygen and hydrogen are combined in the same proportions as in water, the substance is not acidulous, but consists of sugar, gum, starch, wood, or lignin tannin, and what is called ex

The orders are as under, depending on the tractive. Pistils:

The only successful opponents of this system were the Jussieus, who promulgated a natural system, founded on the habits and affinities of plants; and this system is now generally adopted in France, and much respected throughout Europe and America.

The terms in botany are very numerous and complicated, and, though generally expressed in Latin, they have clear English synonymes. 25 terms are used in general description. 13 for state of vegetation.

68 divisions of particular descriptions; each subdivided into 400 discriminations, divided among the 68 divisions.

The anatomy and physiology of plants includes half as many more, and the classes and orders about 300 more.

Jussieu divides plants into three divisions: the acotyledons, when the seeds are destitute of lobes; the monocotyledons, with one lobe; and the dicotyledons, with two lobes. The first includes what Linnæus calls cryptogamia; the second is divided into three classes, of four orders, eight orders, and four orders. The dicotyledons are divided into eleven classes, containing seventy-eight orders.

When there is an excess of hydrogen, then unctious and inflammable bodies are generated, as fixed oil, volatile oil, resin, caoutchouck, camphor, and In the division containing nitrogen is found vegetable gluten.

wax.

Vegetables contain in substance, acids, sugar, gum, mucus, jelly, starch, gluten, and five or six peculiar principals, as tannin, indigo, the bitter and narcotick principle, &c. They also yield oils, wax, resins, &c. In all about thirty-four several products.

Vegetables yield nine several acids: the oxalick in rhubarb; the tartarick in tamarinds, grapes, and mulberries; the citrick in oranges, lemons, and onions; the malick in apples, cherries, &c.; the gallick in elm, oak, &c.; the benzoick in balsamick trees; the prussick in laurel leaves, peach blossoms, and bitter kernels; phosphorick in barley, oats, &c.

The true nutmeg, as well as the clove, is a native of the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, but principally confined to the group, called the Islands of Banda, under the equator, where it bears blossoms and fruit at all seasons of the year. In their native country, the trees are almost always loaded with blossoms and fruit; and the latter is gathered at The Linnæan system consists of twenty-four three different periods of the year; viz., in July, classes, and twenty-six orders, divided into 3,000 November, and April. The mace is there in July, genera; the genera into 50 or 60,000 species; and when the nut is most abundant; in November it is the species into an almost infinite number of varie- superiour, but in April, both the nutmeg and the ties. The twenty-four classes depend on the num-mace are in the greatest perfection, the season then ber of stamens, aud the orders, on the number of pistils.

Botanists record 56,000 species of various plants; and 38,000 are to be found in catalogues.

being the driest. The outer pulpy coat is removed, and afterwards the mace; which, when fresh, is of a crimson colour, and covers the whole nut. The nuts are then placed over a slow fire, when the dark