species of the pachydermata (thick-skinned) animals, of the elephant or rhinoceros species. These animals, feeding on the roots of marshy plants, &c., show the vast extent of marsh, and shallow seas or lakes, at the period of their existence. The Palæotherium-was an animal about the size of a horse, but shaped like a hog, with a very prolonged upper jaw, like that of the tapir. There were many varieties, now extinct. In the same stratification we first meet with fossil skeletons of birds, and of some of the carnivorous animals, fresh water tortoises, crocodiles, and several species of fish. Higher up in the stratification we meet with the skeleton of the Dinotherium, a huge animal of the tapir kind, with a shoulder formed for digging up roots like the mole, and large tusks; also animals of the cat tribe, as large as a lion; an animal of the bear species, another allied to the dog, and many others; also dolphins, walrus, whales, &c. Still higher, and in a later formation, the palæotherium and its allied tribes disappear, and the extinct species of colossal elephant takes its place. The Mastodon-was a colossal kind of elephant, twelve feet in height, and of such wonderful proportions that the lower jaw of one was found to weigh upwards of seventy pounds; its teeth being of the same structure as those of the hippopotamus, leads to the conclusion that it fed on roots in marshy soils. These animals possessed a much larger body than the elephant, in proportion to their height; and their limbs were thicker and more clumsy. The Megatherium.-A sluggish, but powerful animal, capable of crushing a lion with a stroke of its paw; cased in armour, like the armadillo species. It was about eight feet high, twelve feet long (exclusive of an enormous tail), and five feet across the haunches; its feet were a yard in length. The Mammoth, or Fossil Elephant-is found in vast numbers at the surface of the tertiary series of rocks; it is about the same size and structure as the elephant of the present day, but distinguished from it by a warm hairy coat, and a neck furnished with a long mane, and was adapted for living in the coldest climates. The beds of the Russian rivers contain myriads of fossil remains of the mammoth; vast numbers also are found in Siberia. The upper portion of the forehead of the Siberian fossil elephant is formed like an inclined plane; that of the African elephant is concave; that of the Indian elephant, convex. The mammoth has also been discovered in America. SUPERFICIAL SERIES. This series of rocks and soils is supposed to have been deposited since the Deluge, and appears as if brought down by a current of water, and deposited on the surface of the other stratifications. In the extensive sandy plains of the North of Europe, immense masses of granite rock are found, called Erratic Blocks, which must have been brought across the Baltic Sea from the Hartz mountains by glaciers, and perhaps a flood; the angles of the stones are quite sharp, and the bottoms scratched in parallel lines, showing rubbing, but not rolling, which would have rounded them. At Glasgow, erratic blocks, composed of mica schist, and containing zeolites, have been found, which must have been transported from Ben Lomond, a distance of 30 miles. Alluvium-is composed of fine particles of clay, sand, &c., held in solution by rivers, and deposited along their banks during floods, or at their mouths. Peat-is an accumulation of vegetable matter, which, by capillary attraction, holds water in solution, and contains considerable quantities of tannin, which by its astringency preserves it from decay; it is used extensively for fuel when cut and dried, both in Scotland and Ireland. Vegetable Soil-is too well known to need description. The fossil remains, in the Superficial Series, are principally those of species now in existence. Vast quantities of bones of carnivorous animals have been discovered in the caverns and fissures of limestone rocks; a rock very remarkable for its cavernous nature. Lough Corrib and Lough Mask, in Ireland, are connected by subterraneous caves, containing many fossil remains of animals. Some caves in Bavaria have been found to contain fossil remains of bears, lions, hyænas, tigers, &c., proving Europe, at some former period, to have been inhabited by these animals: evidence of a hotter climate than at present, probably 2,000 years ago. No skeleton of a human being has ever been discovered below the diluvial bed; but specimens of the quadrumana (or monkey tribe, the nearest approach to man amongst the mammalian tribes), have been discovered in limestone deposits of the upper series of the tertiary group. A skeleton was discovered some years since, called (Homo Diluvii Testis), or the man who witnessed the Deluge, supposed to be human, but, upon closer examination, proved to be merely a species of gigantic newt. NATURE AND LOVE. Love is Nature's counterpart. Forms are Love's eternal preachers, Preaching for it everywhere; What is Love's is also Nature's, What is Nature's Love will share. -E. H. Burrington. THE MAGNOLIA. Diluvium-is a thick bed of clay, mixed with rolling stones and gravel; some are rounded, others not; and they have, in some instances, been carried to a great distance by floods, or the action of the glaciers. There of the Magnolia grandiflora; and the pen altogether fails The pencil can give but a faint idea of the splendour are large blocks of granite, or gneiss, in Cumberland, in the effort to describe its charms. The South may well which must have been transported from the Scottish | be proud of the possession of a tree of such noble bearing. hills; the beds being marked in parallel lines during their transport. Glaciers-bring down vast quantities of rock, sand, and gravel from the higher regions. Snow falls on the tops of mountains and is thawed into ice; this is continually repeated, until the gravity of the vast mass of ice, on an inclined plane, brings it down into the valley. Immense masses of rock and gravel fall into it, and are carried along in the ice. These collections are called moraines. In Norway there was one discovered two hundred feet in height, and two thousand feet in length. The destruction such a mass might cause, falling, perhaps, from a height of twenty thousand feet, must be terrific. The leaves are glossy, and of a most luxuriant softness. The young branches are of a fine purplish brown, producing flowers at the extremity of each; and, when the tree rises to the height of sixty or seventy feet, and each branch holds up its petalled vase of ivory whiteness, as if presenting incense to the sun, it affords an appearance of beauty and grandeur that rivals the proudest productions of man. Many of the nations of the earth have chosen a flower for their emblem. The roses of England are well known in story. Ireland has chosen the lowly shamrock. Dear is the thistle to the heart of the Scotchman. If ever the United States should choose a symbol from the vegetable world, let that Symbol be the magnolia !— E. Peabody. HERE'S "CHRISTMAS!" HERE'S "Christmas"-let us boldly greet him, We may as well, for none can cheat him; He will steal on, and slily sprinkle The first grey hair and first faint wrinkle. And yet methinks it little matters To keep Truth's Heartsease still alive Here's Christmas, and it seemeth well Let us peruse the closely sealed, The volume ever unrevealed, And see if we have said or thought No evil thing that shall have brought Blots on our crest The heart is but a ledger sheet The debts we owe. Too many of us get so wrapt Should give to us than we to others. Our grasp is quick to seize and hold But Equity, that bids us pass Our palms more slow. Let us not idly shirk the task, Let us take beed that no arrears With harsh denial. may stand Let us think how "accounts" To pay Humanity's last shilling. We'll pile the log and drain the cup, But not before we reckon up The "balance-sheet" that Conscience draws, And God e'er keeps by his own laws Of Wrong and Right. ELIZA COOK. DIAMOND DUST. THE friendships of the world are often confederacies in Ivice or leagues of pleasure. LIFE is the hyphen between matter and spirit. A BREAKING wave is the only thing in nature which is most beautiful in the moment of its dissolution. THE fetters of rhyme are no more than a bracelet to the true poet. As well pass a kaleidoscope from hand to hand, and expect no trembling touch will alter its aspect, as to think to hear a story from mouth to mouth literally and accurately repeated. WHEN hearts are filled with holy affections, and home is happy, then do the young dwell in a charmed circle, which only the naturally depraved would seek to quit, and across which boundary temptations to error shine out but feebly. THE most strict and severe, and suspicious persons, are precisely those who are most often deceived. Suspicion is so rarely directed aright, that cunning is more than a match for it; and oppression ever begets cunning, which is the dwarfed and deformed cleverness of the slave. THE young should be spared from sorrow as much as possible. Never dim the sunshine of hope and joy, so as to leave them without even the memory of its glory. ROB charity of its name, by the delicacy of your bequests, and you give it a fair chance of proving the divinity of its origin. TEACH self-denial, and make its practice pleasurable, and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer. PATIENCE is very good, but perseverance is much better; while the former stands as a stoic under difficulties, the latter whips them out of the ring. FALSEHOODS, like distorted reflections from an uneven mirror, suffer death by contact with each other. He who wonders, is ignorant in the same proportion. COVETOUSNESS, like a candle ill-made, smothers the splendour of a happy fortune in its own grease. No friends are more faithful, more inseparable, than hard-heartedness and pride, humility and love, lies and impudence. Or all the actions of a man's life his marriage does least concern other people, yet of all actions of our life, it is most meddled with by other people. PEOPLE seldom improve, when they have no other model but themselves to copy after. NATURE SO intertwines the grave with the gay, that the colour of the web is dark or bright according to the humour of him who handles it. OUR follies are our most effectual instructors; and the strongest resolutions of manhood flourish best in that soil in which the extravagances of youthful hopes have found a grave. HUMAN Society can only be a perfect thing when it is the matured exponent of man's nature fully developed in it. IN poetry, as elsewhere, those who forget themselves are the last to be forgotten by others. To estimate justly the faults, as well as the merits of the truly great, is a duty which we owe not only to truth, and to ourselves, but to them. Printed and Published for the Proprietor, by JoHN OWEN CLARKE, (of No. 9, Hemingford Terrace, East, in the Parish of St. Mary, Islington, in the County of Middlesex) at his Printing Office, No. 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street, in the Farish of St. Bride, in the City of London, Saturday, December 29, 1849. EMPLOYMENT OF YOUNG WOMEN. It seems still to be a condition of our social system that Woman like Man, should work for her bread, and hire herself out to labour at day's wages. Though it is admitted by all who write and speak on this subject, that the proper sphere of woman is the Home-that her highest duty is to minister to the domestic well-being there that, as the nurse and moral teacher of youth, the refiner and comforter of man, the mother, the wife, and the housekeeper, she is labouring in her truest and holiest vocation,-still it must be confesssed that, for a large number of women, this is but a beautiful theory, and yet very far from being realized in practice. [PRICE 14d. concentration of number gives for moral oversight, might render factory labour one of the most desirable of all occupations for young women. It is so at Lowell, in the United States. The respectable and well educated daughters of New England farmers anxiously seek admission to the mills of Lowell. After working there for a few years, they are enabled to save sufficient for a marriage portion. They deposit their gains in the savings' banks, though their wages are not higher than many classes of female operatives in this country. Their demeanour is extremely modest and lady-like; and their moral character is high. They exercise a rigid, moral supervision among themselves; and no female of immoral character is allowed to remain among them. They employ their leisure hours in self-education, and are most of them members of religious societies. Now, what American young women can be and do, so can English young women. Our great obstacle is in the want of education of our labouring class; we have no common schools such as they have in New England; the deplorable state of elementary education among us being sufficiently proved by the Registrar General's returns, which show that almost one-half of all the women who are married in England yearly, cannot write their own names. Among the working classes, the children, male and female, are all sent out to work as soon as possible. The wages earned by the father are barely sufficient to keep the family, so that the necessity is early forced upon them of hiring out their children for wages, in order to eke out the family means. They are sent to the factory and the workshop, and though the competition is very great, there is usually little difficulty in times of good trade, in finding remunerative employment for them. They would doubtless be better at school, learning to read and write; and allowed to play by themselves occasionally, until their physical frames became wellgrown and better adapted for labour. But our social condition is urgent, and work the children must, for their parents will have it so. Mr Hickson, a late handloom commissioner, speaks very favourably of the tendency of factory labour to elevate the social condition ot the women of the working class in Lancashire. He says "One of the greatest advantages resulting from the progress of manufacturing industry, and from severe manual labour being superseded by machinery, is its tendency to raise the condition of women. Education only is wanting to place the women of Lancashire higher in the social scale than in any other part of the world. The great drawback to female happiness among the middle and working classes is, their complete dependence and almost helplessness in securing the means of subsistence. The want of other employment than the needle cheapens their labour in ordinary cases, until it is almost valueless. In Lancashire profitable employment for females is abundant. Domestic servants are in consequence s scarce, that they can only be obtained from the neighbouring counties. A young woman, prudent and careful, and living with her parents, from the age of sixteen to twenty-five, may, in that time, by factory employmeat, save £100 as a wedding portion. I believe it to be the int..est of the In all the manufacturing districts, women are abundantly employed, sometimes at good wages. The domestic training of these young women is not of the best. Employed in the factory, they learn nothing of the arts of domestic life. Removed from the influences of home, and beyond the reach of parental influence and example, their affections towards father and mother, brothers and sisters, become weakened and blunted. They work for wages among a number of other girls, like themselves, -some of whom perhaps are vicious and depraved, infecting them ruinously by bad example. Such are the moral results of female labour among the working classes in many of our large towns, and they must be admitted to be of the most injurious tendency. There is however, a brighter side to this. It is not a necessary condition of factory labour that it should be demoralizing. On the contrary, the opportunity which the community that every young woman should have this in business, is very great. A Paris correspondent of the Dublin Nation thus refers to the subject: "It is amazing the aptitude for business which French women display, and the efficient aid they give their fathers and husbands in their affairs. In the majority of houses they keep the books, and write the letters. Foreign correspondence is almost invariably carried on by women, who are better linguists here than the men. An incident illustrative of their business habits which lately came to my knowledge, will give you some idea of how much more practically these Frenchwomen employ their intelligence that our own countrywomen. "Mademoiselle D The greatest deficiency of employment is experienced by the young women of the middle classes. Of course, they avoid domestic service as well as factories; and almost the only sphere of occupation which presents itself, is teaching. Hence the intense competition for governess' situations, of which we have spoken in a previous article. * Dressmaking and millinery also attract a considerable number, and here the competition for employment is so intense, that many young women are found willing to work, during "the season," for eighteen, twenty, and even more hours, out of the twenty-four. About fifteen thousand are thus employed in London; and their labours are of a kind more irksome, toilsome and incessant, than are to be found in perhaps any other description of labour. "The pro-versation, she mentioned how grateful she was to her tracted labour of the milliners and dressmakers," says one of the Commissioners of Inquiry into this subject, "is quite unparalleled in the history of manufacturing processes. There is nothing in the accounts of the worstconducted factories to be compared with the facts elicited in the present inquiry." Sir James Clarke says-" I can scarcely believe that the system adopted in our worst regulated manufactories can be so destructive of health as the life of the young dressmaker." Yet the competition for such situations is always great. So soon as the ruined constitutions of one set of dressmakers compel them to retire, another set, fresh and healthy, are found ready to take their places. The doors to these chambers of death are always crowded by applicants, eager for admission. When a life of industry is attended by such toils and sufferings, is there room for wonder that the wages of idle dissipation should so often lure these poor girls from virtue, and that they should start aside suddenly into the paths of vice? a highly educated lady, to whom I was introduced at the house of her brother-in-law, a distinguished member of the bar, was questioning me one day on the sort of education Irishwomen get, and whether they were brought up with independent habits and ideas. I was obliged to confess how miserably dependent our women were, and, with all our poverty, how few modes of industry we had. During our confather who had brought her up usefully. He had been an extensive agent for purchasing fabrics in muslin, silk, and all the luxuries of dress, for the large merchant houses which supply the East and West Indies, and South America. In making his selections from the wholesale warehouses to suit each market, (an exploit requiring the nicest judgment and long experience,) he invariably brought his daughter with him, to have the benefit of her correct taste; and thus by degrees she learnt precisely the species of goods that would sell in each market. Her father had been dead many years, and his business abandoned, but her services were eagerly solicited by houses who knew the value of her long disciplined judgment, and by devoting a portion of her mornings occasionally to these selections, (she had not even the trouble of writing a letter,) she earned somewhat about £300 a year." Many of the young Frenchwomen are enabled to make a respectable livelihood by furnishing designs to the manufacturers. There are special schools for drawing and design in the principal towns of France, which are well frequented by girls of the artisan class, who there practise drawing from "the round," copying simple natural objects set before them, and combining them in graceful and artistic forms. A sure foundation is thus laid for accurate knowledge and judicious improvements in whatever trade or pursuits in life they afterwards may adopt. Indeed, there is little reason to doubt that the special education which the French artisans receive at these schools, is the true cause of their greatly superior skill in the art of decoration, as compared with the English producers. Our best patterns are borrowed from the French. Some of our leading houses keep agents in Paris for the express purpose of selecting the best French designs, and copying them in our English manufactures. But our prints, our castings and mouldings, our furniture, are all clumsy and ugly compared with the French. What grace we display in such articles, is for the most part borrowed from them; though, even in borrowing, for the want of taste, we not unfrequently spoil their finest patterns. We yet want the polite graces of manufacture; we want in cultivated taste and fancy; hence we run great risk of losing our hold of the markets throughout the world, though this is what we cannot at all afford to do. But, were our young men and The Parisian women are not only employed exten- young women educated as they ought to be, this inequality sively as shopwomen; they are also employed as book-would not fail soon to disappear, while the exercise of keepers, copying clerks, conductors of journals, and writers of books, to a large extent. They engage extensively in business on their own account; and the nunber of French women now in London, who are engaged It is probable that were young women better educated than they are at present-more solidly, with an eye to utility rather than to exhibition,-they would find many more profitable methods of employing themselves than in governessing and dressmaking. Without education they are necessarily weak; for the weakest and most helpless classes of the population, of both sexes, are invariably those which are the least instructed. A cultivated, welltrained mind always serves to give a woman, as a man, greater resources, enables her to turn her industry to the best account, and to employ it with the greatest advantage to herself and to others. The French and Ame-design, and in the manufacture of all objects of taste and rican women have decidedly the best advantage over us in this respect, because of their better education, and their social position is more advanced accordingly. In France, women of the middle classes are highly productive labourers. As modistes, they lead the taste of Europe, and supply the markets of fashion with their wares. They are the principal shopkeepers, and are far more expert in displaying and selling wares than men are. They have a quickness, skill, and tact, which render them invaluable as shopwomen. And shop work is generally far more of the character of women's work, than men's. It seems to us out of keeping to see a tall, broad-shouldered fellow of six feet, measuring ribbons, folding net, exhibiting flannel, or displaying gloves. * No. 20. taste and skill in the arts of design, would, by stimulating the demand for our manufactured productions, largely increase the field of employment for the skilled labourers of both sexes. Other departments of industry might be named, in which women might be profitably occupied. The art of wood engraving is now already pursued by young women with considerable success; and it is a kind of occupation, from the neatness and finish of execution required, in which they are peculiarly calculated to excel. In Switzerland, the women are watchmakers; and their labours in this beautiful art, in their cottage homes, tend greatly to add to the comfort, independence, and respectability of themselves and families. In the United States, many young women are employed as compositors in printing offices, and in this vocation they earn high wages. Neatness, expertness, and intelligence, are the main qualities required; the physical labour being of the lightest kind. It might be said that the employment of young women in such occupations in this country, would only displace so much men's labour, and tend to lower wages; and to some extent this must be admitted to be true. We are already, in most trades, overstocked with labourers; and there are more men seeking employment than can find it. There remains then, lastly, for those who would find remunerative employment, the consideration of Emigration as a means towards that end. All our colonies are calling out for female help. The young men emigrate in increasing numbers from year to year, leaving the young women at home. A male population thus accumulates in the colonies, and as they get settled, and accumulate property, they want servants, they want housekeepers, they want wives. Every ship which arrives from Australia brings intelligence of the dearth of female labourers. Servants become difficult to manage in consequence of the host of competitors for their services. They get very high wages, from £20 to £30 a year, with board; and sempstresses, milliners, governesses, and female teachers, are also eagerly sought for. Young women, of intelligence and moral courage, might reasonably look to this field of profitable employment, with hope and joy. There are many whose circumstances would at once be immensely improved by emigration. We know personally of many cases of success. The voyage is long, it is true, but the female emigrants are carefully attended to on ship-board, and on their arrival in the Australian colonies, they are taken in charge by a committee of ladies, until they are carefully settled, or provided for. There is the same demand for female labour in the United States, but principally for domestic servants. A large portion of the maid servants in the New England States are Irishwomen, who receive from five to eight dollars a month, and they are generally enabled to save out of their wages sufficient to bring over the rest of their poorer relatives from old Ireland. In the interior of the country also, and in the Western States, the demand for female servants, for dairymaids, and such like, is still greater, and they are certain of obtaining high wages. The social position of woman in the States is considerably higher than amongst us. America has been called the paradise of women; and the inducements which that country, as well as our own colonies hold out to the thousands of unemployed young women in this country, are certainly worthy of their serious regard and consideration. Ir is a profitable study to trace the life, the trials, and the successes of those who have triumphed over difficulties and raised themselves to eminence and honour. But it is often equally profitable to mark some humbler character, and meditate on the quiet virtues which have endeared their owner in his generation, and enabled him to lead a happy and a useful life, even under circumstances which the world esteems unprosperous. There could hardly, in the records of private life, be a more striking and touching history than that recorded in his autobiography by Sir John Blamston, of his grandmother, Mary Hill. This exemplary lady was descended from a highly respectable English family, but her parents having been driven from their home by the terrible persecutions of Queen Mary, she was born and baptized in the year 1652, at Antwerp, where Mr. and Mrs. Hill had taken shelter. In the second year of Queen Elizabeth's reign they returned to England, and here the young Mary was educated, and brought up to love that church for which her parents had suffered persecution, and for the sake of which she herself must have undergone considerable inconvenience, during their exile in Flanders, and their tedious voyage on returning. At the age of six she lost her father, Nicholas Hill, and the ensuing year her mother married again, to Bishop Bullingham, but of the character of the father whom she lost, or the step-father who supplied his place, we have no record in the memoirs; but we are told that she was carefully and piously educated, and so well grounded in her faith, and so firmly attached to that Communion for which she had been born an exile, that neither threats, arguments, or entreaties could draw her from it, though she was assailed on every side, and lived in what were truly troublous times. Reaching the uncommon age of ninety-four, a glance at English history, at that period, will show us the changes she witnessed, and the political, moral, and religious convulsions which shook England in her life-time, when the monarchy and the church were alike overthrown, and the triumphant enemies of both pointed exultingly to their demolition as a certain evidence of the wrath of Heaven. The date of Mary Hill's marriage is not mentioned, but her husband was one of the first physicians of his day, and was descended from an old and honourable family, being the younger son of Sir Edmunde Moundeford, of Feltwell, in Norfolk; from this marriage sprang four children, but, though it appears that their talents and virtues gave promise of being a comfort to their parents, they were all cut off early in life. The two sons died unmarried; the elder, who was distinguished at College as a young man of great promise, being drowned in his travels, and the younger dying of a decline; all hope of their name being transmitted to posterity was taken away, and the affectionate tenderness of the mother must have centred itself in the surviving daughters. But here again her affections were destined to be invaded: her eldest daughter, in the bloom of beauty, in the enjoyment of an excellent husband's love, and surrounded by a numerous young family, was suddenly torn from every tie, and her eight little children were made motherless at a stroke. But they were not left desolate, for it was now that their grandmother aroused herself, and resolved on sacrificing time and ease, and (what the old value so much) quiet, for the children of her daughter. She who had trained the mother they had lost, now took her place with them, and quitting her own house in Milk Street, resolved to reside entirely with her son-in-law. Nor must this be esteemed a trifling sacrifice, for, in addition to the care of eight children, she had her husband, and attendance, and she was herself at the time advanced old, infirm, and sightless, dependent on her for comfort in years, as she must have been at least 62 or 63. Her cares, however, were not confined to her own grandchildren, for Sir John records to her honour, that, "after the death of his uncle Stephen, (who had married his father's sister) his father, Sir John, was left by him chancellor and overseer of his will, and the care of the children being left to him also, this Mary took the care off my father and the trouble to herself, and bred up the boys with my brother Francis, and the girls with my sisters, which they very gratefully acknowledged during their lives, calling her grandmother, though she was allied no otherwise than in her cares.' |