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GYMNASTICS.

A late distinguished senator said in the parliament of England, man is born to labor as the sparks fly upwards." This observation is founded on a thorough knowledge of the destiny from which none can escape. The idle are always unhappy, nor can even mental vigor be preserved without bodily exercise. Neither he who has attained to inordinate wealth, nor he who has reached the greatest heights of human intellect is exempt from the decree, that every man must "work for his living." If the " gentleman" .does not work to maintain his family, he must work to maintain his life; hence he walks, rides, hunts, shoots, and travels, and occupies his limbs as well as his mind; hence noblemen amuse themselves at the turning lathe, and the workman's bench, or become mail coachmen, or " cutter-lads:" and hence sovereigns sometimes" play at being workmen," or, what is worse, at the "game" of war.

Without exercise the body becomes enfeebled, and the mind loses its tension. Corporeal inactivity cannot be persisted in even with the aid of medicine, without symptoms of an asthenic state. From this deliquium the patient must be relieved in spite of his perverseness, or he becomes a maniac or a corpse. Partial remedies render him "á nervous man;" his only effectual relief is bodily exercise.

Exercise in the open air is indispensable, and many who walk in the wide and rapidly extending wilderness of the metropolis have sufficient; but, to some, the exercise of walking is not enough for carrying on the business of life; while others, whose avocations are sedentary, scarcely come under the denomination of sesquipedalians. These resort to stretching out the arms, kicking, hopping, what they call "jumping," running up and down a pair of stairs, sparring, or playing with the dumb bells: these substitutes may assist, but, alone, they are inadequate to the preservation of health.

Some years ago a work on gymnastics, by Salzmann, was translated from the German into English. Its precepts were unaided by example; it produced a sensation, people talked about it at the time, and

agreed that the bodily exercises it prescribed were good, but nobody took them, and gymnastics, though frequently thought upon, have not until lately been practised in London. Mr. Voelker, a native of Germany, has recently opened a gymnasium in that city.

This gentleman's prospectus of his establishment is judicious. He contends that while education has been exclusively directed to the developement of the mental faculties, the bodily powers have been entirely neglected. "The intimate connexion between mind and body has not been sufficiently considered; for who does not know, from his own experience, that the mind uniformly participates in the condition of the body; that it is cheerful, when the body is strong and healthy; and depressed, when the body is languid and unhealthy?"

An inhabitant of the city need only look out of his own window to see practical illustrations of the necessity of these exercises. How often do we see a young man with an intelligent but very pale countenance, whose legs have hardly strength to support the weight of his bent and emaciated body. He once probably was a strong and active boy, but he came to the city, shut himself up in an office, took no exercise because he was not obliged to take any; grew nervous and bilious; took a great deal of medical advice and physic; took every thing in fact but the true remedy, exercise; and may probably still linger out a few years of wretched existence, when death will be welcomed as his best friend. This, though an extreme case, is a very common one, and the unfortunate beings who approximate to it in a considerable degree are still more numerous. Many of the miseries and diseases of young and old, male and female, in the city, may be traced eventually to want of exercise. Give us pure air, and we can exist with comparatively little exercise; but bad air and no exercise at all, are poisons of a very active description.

It is not easy to describe these exercises to those who have not seen them. They consist: First, Of preliminary exercises of the hand and legs, which give force and agility to those members, and

prepare the body for the other exercises. Secondly, Horizontal parallel bars, from three to five feet high, according to the size of the pupil, on which he raises his body by the arms, and swings his legs over in a variety of directions: this exercise opens the chest, and gives great strength to the muscles of the arms and body. Thirdly, The horizontal round pole supported by posts from five to eight feet high, according to the height of the performer. An endless variety of exercises may be performed on this pole, such as raising the body by the arms, going from one end to the other by the hands alone, vaulting, swinging the body over in all directions, &c. &c. Fourthly, The horse, a large wooden block shaped like the body of a horse-the pupils jump upon and over this much-enduring animal in many ways. Fifthly, Leaping in height and distance with and without poles. Sixthly, Climbing masts, ropes, and ladders of various heights. Seventhly, Throwing lances, running with celerity and for a length of time, hopping, &c. &c. It is, moreover, in our option to take whatever portion of the exercises we may find most agrecable.

The improvement which the gentlemen who practice these exercises experience in health (not to mention strength, agility, and grace,) is very considerable, and altogether wonderful in several who have entered in a feeble and sickly state. This, one would think, would be sufficient to prove that the exercises are not attended with danger. Neither is their utility necessarily confined to boyhood, as several gentlemen upwards of forty can. elearly testify; nor does the pleasure of practising them depart with the novelty, but always increases with proficiency and time.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

This engraving represents the arrest of Charlotte Corday, the intrepid assassin of Marat, one of the sanguinary tyrants of the French Revolution. This determined female, then in her early youth, and disinguished by her personal attractions, appears to have conceived the idea of the daring deed which she afterwards accomplished, immediately on learning the proscription of the Girondists, and the victory of Roberspierre and his associates in the beginning of June. Having set out from Caen in Normandy (resolved that nothing should deter her from perpetrating her purpose) she arrived in Paris on the 11th of July. On the 12th she addressed a note to her intended victim, professing to have some intelligence to communicate to him respecting those of the proscribed deputies who had made their escape and assembled in the city she had come from, which

would interest him as a lover of his country, and soliciting to be admitted to his presence.

Marat was at this time indisposed, and for the last three days had not appeared in the Convention. On the 13th, in the earlier part of the day, she presented herself at the door of his house, but was refused admittance. Leaving a second note, she retired, and came back between seven and eight o'clock in the evening in a carriage; when, after some opposition from the attendants, she was called in by order of Marat himself, whose attention had been attracted by the noise. She found the deputy in the bath. Having entered into conversation with him, she had discoursed for some minutes on the proceedings of the refugees in Normandy, when Marat remarked that in a few days he would have every man of them guillotined. The words were no sooner uttered, than, drawing forth a long knife from under her robe, the female Brutus plunged it up to the haft in the body of him whom she believed to be the chief enemy and curse of her country..

The cries of the wounded man instantly brought his attendants into the apartment; and his murderess, seeing all chance of escape at an end, resigned herself into their hands, and was forthwith conducted to the prison of the Abbaye, amidst the shouts and execrations of a mob, consisting in great part of the vilest class of her own sex, who had assembled around the house on the rumor of what had taken place. Marat died in a few hours. Four members of the Committee of Police and as many of that of General Security immediately proceeded to interrogate Charlotte Corday respecting the crime she had committed. Her answers to some of the questions put to her by these persons depict forcibly the energetic and resolute character of the woman. She at once admitted that it was she who had slain Marat. Being asked what induced her to commit that assassination? His crimes, she boldly replied. Was it a priest who had taken the oaths to the constitution, they asked her, or one who had not, to whom you went to make confession at Caen? I went, she answered, neither to one nor the other. At another question, raising her voice with all her force, Yes, she exclaimed, I have slain one man to save a hundred thousand, a wretch to preserve those who are innocent, a ferocious beast to give repose to my country; I was a republican before the Revolution, and I never wanted energy. What do you understand by energy? asked her examiners. The sentiment, she replied, by which those are animated, who, casting from them all thought of their interest as individuals, know how to offer themselves up as sacrifices for their country.

Of course, after such an act as she had committed, her fate was sealed. She appeared for the first time before the revolutionary tribunal on the 16th; when nothing could exceed the self-possession of her demeanor, and the lofty indifference with which she regarded the violent death to which she was so soon to be surrendered. This unfortunate woman, notwithstanding her exaggerated patriotism, appears to have possessed a nature in many respects nobly endowed, and even a heart susceptible of the tenderest affections. In a letter which she wrote from her prison to Barbaroux, whom she had known at Caen, she says, "I have never hated but one being on earth, and him with what intensity I have sufficiently shown; but there are a thousand whom I love still more than I

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hated him." "A lively imagination," she goes on, " and a feeling heart, promise but a stormy life; I beseech those who might regret me to consider this, and they will rejoice to know that I am enjoying repose in the Elysian fields with Brutus and others of the ancients." She addressed a short note, on the day before her execution, to her father, in which, after having asked his forgiveness for having disposed of her life without his permission, she adds, "I pray you to forget me, or rather to rejoice in my fate; the cause, at least, in which I perish is a noble one. I embrace my sisters, whom I love with my whole heart, as likewise all my relations. Never forget the verse of Corneille:

Le crime fait la honte, et non pas l' échafaud. "" The heroine, when her last hour was come, shrunk from her fate no more than she had previously done. Before setting out for the place of execution, she asked with a smile of scorn whether the body of Marat was to be deposited in the Pantheon. Such was the imposing dignity of her demeanor as she passed along on her way, that even the abandoned rabble who were wont to flock around the guillotine, and disturb with their ferocious howls the last moments of its victims, were on this occasion awed into comparative silence; and some of the more respectable spectators took off their hats at her approach, while murmurs of applause and sympathy broke from others, which all their fears for themselves could not restrain. She mounted the scaffold with a firm step. When the executioner proceeded to tie her hands, a part of the ceremony for which she was unprepared, she at first manifested a disposition to resist the attempt, imagining that some insult was intended her; but, on the matter being explained, she smiled at her mistake, and offered no farther opposition. When she had laid her head on the block, the executioner removed a handkerchief that covered her neck and shoulders; and on this those who stood around her remarked that a quick instinct of modesty instantly suffused her cheeks with a deep blush. The mounted blood still reddened her visage when the head, after being separated from the body, was held up by the executioner to the view of the multitude.

size, shape, and color, made with small card shutters, corresponding to apertures in the covering. Honey being put into them, they were placed at the distance of two hundred paces from my apiary. In half an hour bees were seen trooping thither, and by carefully traversing the boxes, they soon discovered the openings through which they might introduce their bodies, and, pressing against the valves reached the honey.

We have frequently observed with much interest the method taken by various species of bees to open the flower of the common snapdragon. Resting upon the lower lip of the flower, the insect insinuates its tongue between the upper lip and the valve, and then thrusting in its head, acts with it as a wedge to force the shut edges asunder. In this manner it speedily accomplishes an entrance, and the flower shuts over it with a snap; hence, perhaps, the popular name. When the bee has obtained the honey at the bottom of the flower, it makes its exit in the same way as it entered.

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SENSE OF SMELL IN INSECTS.

In bees, the odor of honey produces the most obvious influence.- Mr. John Hunter mentions that he has seen great commotion produced in a recent swarm, in wet weather, when he supposed the bees to have been hungry, by placing honey on the floor of a glass hive, which gave him a good opportunity of observing their proceedings. All of them appeared to be eagerly on the scent, and even those which were weak and hardly able to crawl, threw out their tongues as far as possible to get at the honey. The elder Huber instituted some experiments still more interesting.

"In order," he says, "to ascertain whether the appearance of the flowers or the odor of the honey apprises bees of its presence, we placed honey in a window, near a hive, where the shutters, almost close, still permitted them to pass if they wished. Within a quarter of an hour four bees and a butterfly had insinuated themselves, and we found them feeding thereon. For the purpose of a still more accurate experiment, I had four boxes, different in

*The crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.

Snapdragon, and Bees entering the flowers.

REFLECTIONS ON THE STUDY OF NATURE. BY LINNEUS.

I know not what to think of those people who can, without emotion, hear or read the accounts of the many wonderful animals which inhabit foreign countries.

What principally strikes us agreeably at first sight, is color; of which the good and great Creator has given to some animals a rich variety, far beyond the reach of human art. Scarcely any thing can equal the beauty of birds in general; particularly the splendor of the Peacock.

The Author of Nature has frequently decorated even the minutest insects, and worms themselves, which inhabit the bottom of the sea, in so exquisite a manner, that the most polished metal looks dull beside them. The great golden beetle of the Indies has its head studded with ornaments like precious stones, brilliant as the finest gold; and the Aphrodita Aculeata, reflecting the sunbeams from the

depths of the sea, exhibits as vivid colors as the peacock itself, when spreading its jewelled train.

The difference of size, in different animals, must strike us with no less astonishment; especially if we compare the huge whale with the almost invisible mite; the former, while it shakes the largest ships with its bulky body, is itself a prey to the diminutive Onisci, and is obliged to have recourse to the sea birds, who, sitting on its back, free it from these vermin.

We are as much amazed at the prodigious strength of the elephant and rhinoceros, as we are pleased with the slender deer of Guinea, which is, in all its parts, like our deer, but scarcely so large as the smallest lap-dog. Nature has, however, in the nimbleness of its feet, abundantly compensated this animal for the smallness of its size.

The Great Ostriches of Arabia, whose wings are insufficient to raise their bulky body from the ground, excite no less admiration than the little humming-birds of India, hardly bigger than beetles, which feed on the honey of flowers, like bees and flies, and, like those insects, are the prey of ordinary spiders; between which, and the large spider of Brazil, there is as much difference in size, as between the humming-bird and the ostrich. This great spider often attacks the largest birds, dropping on their backs, by means of its web, from the branches of trees; and while they vainly seek for security in flight, it bites them in such a manner that they not unfrequently fall lifeless to the ground.

The singular figures of some animals cannot fail to attract our notice. We wonder, with reason, at the angular appendage to the nose of the American bat: nor is the short and slender upper mandible, or jaw, of the Indian woodpecker less remarkable; the form of the latter being as unusual among birds, as is among fishes the figure of the American fishing-frog, which is furnished with feet, but cannot walk; while another kind of fish, when the rivulet which it inhabits, becomes dry, has a power of travelling over land, till it finds more copious

streams.

The plaice, the sole, and many other fishes, although the only animals which have both eyes on the same side of the head, do not, perhaps, astonish us so much, being common fishes, as the horned frog of Virginia, whose head is furnished with a pair of horns, at the extremities of which its eyes are placed; its stern aspect cannot fail to strike with horror all who behold it. This frog is unable, however, to move its eyes in different directions at the same time, like the chameleon, which appears to have a power of contemplating at once many distant objects, and of attending equally to all: for this animal certainly does not live on air, as many have reported, but on flies, which it follows with its piercing and sparkling eyes, till it has got so near them, that by darting forth its long tongue, they are instantly caught and swallowed. While the slender ant-bear, which has no teeth, and which the Creator has appointed to live on ants alone, by coiling up its tongue like a serpent, and laying it near an ant hill, collects the little animals, and devours them entire.

He who has given life to animals, has given them all different means of supporting it; for, if all birds were to fly in the same manner, all fishes to swim with the same velocity, and all quadrupeds to run with equal swiftness, there would soon be an end of the weaker ones.

THE FIRST OF MARCH.
The bud is in the bough
And the leaf is in the bud,
And Earth's beginning now

In her veins to feel the blood,
Which, warmed by summer's sun
In th' alembic of the vine,
From her founts will overrun
In a ruddy gush of wine.
The perfume and the bloom
That shall decorate the flower,
Are quickening in the gloom

Of their subterranean bower;
And the juices meant to feed
Trees, vegetables, fruits,
Unerringly proceed

To their pre-appointed roots.
How awful the thought

Of the wonders under ground,
Of the mystic changes wrought
In the silent, dark profound;
How each thing upward tends
By necessity decreed,
And a world's support depends
On the shooting of a seed!
The Summer's in her ark,

And this sunny-pinioned day
Is commissioned to remark
Whether Winter holds her sway;
Go back, thou dove of peace,

With the myrtle on thy wing, Say that floods and tempests cease, And the world is ripe for Spring. Thou hast fanned the sleeping Earth Till her dreams are all of flowers, And the waters look in mirth For their overhanging bowers; The forest seems to listen

For the rustle of its leaves, And the very skies to glisten In the hope of summer eves.

Thy vivifying spell

Has been felt beneath the wave,
By the dormouse in its cell,

And the mole within its cave;
And the summer tribes that creep,
Or in air expand their wing,
Have started from their sleep,
At the summons of the Spring.
The cattle lift their voices

From the valleys and the hills,
And the feathered race rejoices
With a gush of tuneful bills;
And if this cloudless arch

Fills the poet's song with glee,
O thou sunny first of March,
Be it dedicate to thee!

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Lowell, the American Manchester, is situated at the confluence of Merrimack and Concord rivers, twenty-five miles northwest from Boston. This town received its name from Francis C. Lowell of Boston, who was distinguished by his successful efforts in introducing the cotton manufacture into the United States. The place is undoubtedly destined to be a great manufacturing city.

The growth of Lowell for a few years past has been almost unparalleled. The foundation of the second factory was laid here in 1822, at which time, the land now included in the town, exclusive of one factory establishment, contained less than one hundred inhabitants.

It may not be uninteresting to our readers to learn the state of the manufactures of cotton and woollen goods in Lowell at the present time. We are indebted to the Journal of that place for the following statistical remarks:

"The whole amount of capital at present invested, is $6,150,000. The number of large mills in actual operation is nineteen. These mills are each about one hundred and fifty-seven feet in length and forty-five in breadth of brick, five stories high, each story averaging from ten to thirteen feet high, thus giving opportunity for a free circulation of air. The aggregate number of spindles used is 84,000-looms 3000. The whole number of operatives employed is about 5000, of which 1200 are males, 3800 are females. The quantity of raw cotton, used in these mills per annum, exceeds 8,000,000 pounds or 20,000 bales. The number of yards of cotton goods of various qualities

manufactured annually is about 27,000,000. Were the different pieces united, they would reach to the distance of 15,300 miles! In this estimate is included about 2,000,000 yards of coarse mixed cotton and woollen negro clothing, in the manufacture of which about 80,000 pounds of wool are used per annum.

"The quantity of wool, manufactured annually into cassimeres, is about 150,000 pounds, making about 150,000 yards.

"The Lowell Carpet Manufactory is in itself a curiosity. Sixty-eight looms are kept in operation by hand labor, viz: fifty for ingrained or Kidderminster carpeting, ten for Brussels, and eight for rugs of various kinds. One hundred and forty thousand pounds of wool in the course of a year are manufactured into rich and beautiful carpets, the colors of which will vie with any imported. The number of yards of carpeting made per annum is upwards of one hundred and twenty thousand, besides rugs. The operatives at present employed in all these mills receive for their labor about one million two hundred thousand dollars per

annum.

"The Lawrence Company has now but one mill in operation. One other is erected which will be in operation in a short time. The foundations of two others are laid which will be ready to go into cperation in the course of this year, (1833). These mills will contain about 16,500 additional spindles for cotton, and 550 looms, and will use 2,500,000 lbs. of raw cotton annually, furnishing employment for 700 operatives. These three mills will proba

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