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by experiments of a most painful nature. | who have died by the explosion; as is shown Even coal-ships at sea have been the scenes in the following extract, which likewise proves of these demonstrations. For instance: "On the 5th August, 1816, the ship Flora, of London, having just taken a cargo of coal on board in Sunderland harbor, blew up with a terrible explosion; the deck-beams were broken, and the decks torn up. On the 4th July, 1817, the Fly, of Ely, lying at Brandling-staith, on the Tyne, with a cargo of coal just taken in, the gas from it exploded, burned the captain in the cabin, tore up part of the deck, threw a boat from the hatches, and did other serious damage. Upon the 21st July, 1839, the sloop Enterprise, when at sea, with coal, from Pembroke to Newport, Isle of Wight, had an alarming explosion, which fortunately only frightened, but did not injure, the crew. And the schooner Mermaid, of Guernsey, upon the 29th August, this year (1842), lying at South Shields, sustained an explosion; she had been laden that day with Hilda coal, and the hatches immediately battened down, when, six hours after, the gas from the coal exploded at the forecastle-lamp; one man was knocked down, and much burned in the face, another injured, the mate struck down in the cabin, and a hatch started."

It is very remarkable, that it is only with a certain quantity of atmospheric air the firedamp explodes; minus or plus that quantity, and the danger vanishes. In three or four parts of atmospheric air to one of carburetted hydrogen, there is a slight explosion; but the most terrible calamities happen when the mixture is seven parts of carburetted hydrogen to one of atmospheric air. The margin of explosive quantity appears to be from about five to thirteen; above or below these points, and there is no explosion. Hence we see the necessity for a thorough ventilation in mines; for any system by which an imperfect quantity of air is diffused, so far from diminishing, only increases the danger. Another striking anomaly is, that, dreadful and terrible as the explosion itself is, it is only the means for the elimination of an agent of destruction still more fatal. The miner may not have suffered the mechanical violence of the explosion, but frequently he escapes only to die placidly and surely by the fatal after-damp. A principal ingredient is the deadly poison, carbonic acid; and so fatal is it, the committee inform us, that it was stated in evidence, that 70 per cent. of the deaths from explosions were occasioned by this after-damp. So speedy is its action, that Mr. Mather, about two years ago, entering a pit where it preponderated, was taken out insensible in a few minutes. says: “You are struck down, and you scarcely know how or why you naturally sink down asleep. Those who have suffered from its influence may easily be known from those

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that dangers, perils, and heroism are not confined to battle-fields or the raging deep. It relates to the explosion of the St. Hilda pit, in 1839:- "The deadly gas, the resulting product, became stronger and stronger as we approached. We encountered in one place the bodies of five men who had died from the effects of the gas, and had apparently died placidly, without one muscle of the face distorted. Then there were three more that had been destroyed by the explosion; clothes burned and torn, the hair singed off, the skin and flesh torn away in several places, with an expression as if the spirit had passed away in agony. Going with a single guide, we encountered two men, one with a light, the other bearing something on his shoulders. It was a blackened mass -a poor dead burned boy he was taking out. A little further on, we found wagons that had been loaded, overturned, bottom upwards, scattered in different directions; a horse lying dead, directly in the passage, with his head turned over his shoulder, as if, in falling, he had made a last effort to escape; he was swollen in an extraordinary manner. At one point, in another passage, we suddenly came amongst twelve or fifteen men, who, striving to reach the places where bodies or survivors might be found, had been driven back by the surcharged atmosphere of this vast common grave; their lamps were burning dim and sickly, with a dying red light, glimmering as if through a fog."

How, then, are these dread casualties to be prevented? Firstly, the miner has been furnished with a lamp, with the flame so shielded that it cannot come in contact with the dangerous atmosphere; secondly, the foul air has been swept away by ventilation; and, lastly, it has been proposed chemically to decompose the noxious gases, and thus prevent explosion. Of the two first methods, we shall immediately speak; of the last, suffice it to say, that although Mr. Blakemore has offered, through the Royal College of Chemistry, a premium of 10007. for the discovery of some simple practical means by which the explosive gases may be decomposed or neutralized, still science has as yet been unable to obtain this desirable object.

Many safety-lamps have been proposed, but, as our readers know, the favorite has been that of Sir Humphry Davy. Some practical miners, indeed, prefer the lamps of Dr. Clanny and of Stephenson; but as these are used in but few collieries, we will confine our remarks to the Davy-lamp. Its illustrious author, after a visit to the Newcastle coalmines in 1815, began a series of beautiful experiments on the properties and structure of flame. From these he was led to conclude, that it could not pass through minute metal

lic tubes, and therefore wire-gauze, consisting | amined by the coroner, they were found to be of a congeries of these tubes, was a safe prison perfect only, as if they had been intensely wherein to confine it: a miner, therefore, hot, and "had been passed through a smith's with a lamp whose flame was thus separated fire." The lamps found after the explosion from the explosive atmosphere, could pursue at Haswell Mine, where 95 people were killed his avocation in perfect safety. In every in 1846, were in a precisely similar state, and chemical handbook there are noted many the catastrophe could be traced to no other striking experiments regarding this peculiar source; as were also several similar, though property of wire-gauze, and in the new cal- smaller accidents happening only last year. oric-engine, the heated air is cooled and con- Besides all this, we find that while, during the ducted into the regenerator by means of this twenty years previous to the introduction of the substance. Nothing can be more beautiful in Davy-lamp, 679 lives were lost, the number theory than Sir Humphry's instrument, and was increased to 744; thus leaving a balance in the laboratory or the lecture-room it truly against the safety-lamp of 65 lives. This may seems perfect. All praise and honor to the in- be accounted for by the increased extent of tellect that labored so well for the service of works, and greater number of mines; but humanity; and let the commendations of the every witness concurred in stating, that the many it has saved from destruction, and the recent fearful increase, of accidents could not many more it has redeemed from penury, be the be thus explained. everlasting monument of their noble benefac- Who can wonder, then, at the general tor! But let us beware of even scientific adoption of the opinion, that to get rid of the idolatry. And let us not take for perfect, gas altogether is preferable to guarding against that which even its inventor pronounced in it? The evidence now before us testifies, that some degree faulty. Be it always remem- however our leading mining engineers and bered, that the mine presents conditions often capitalists may differ as to the method, they totally different from those of the quiet labo- all consider ventilation as the sheet-anchor ratory of the chemist. In a still atinosphere, of the safety of the mines. The committee radiation will destroy the flame ere it has whose labors we have been considering, have time to pass through the wire-gauze. But principally occupied themselves in investigatshould there be also a current of air at the ing the merits of the two rival systems of time, its operations may be counterbalanced, ventilation the furnace and the steam-jet : and there is then no security. Moreover, particles of carbon, oil, dust, sulphur, are always floating about the mines, and lodge themselves on the Davy-lamps. The wiregauze then red-hot, and the lamp in such a state, explosion is almost inevitable. So dirty are the lamps often, after being brought up from work, that one of the witnesses says "no practical man would go into an explosive mixture with them." This being the case, we can well sympathize with another witness, who thinks it a safe lamp in cautious hands, but lately I have got a little nervous about it."

Were miners to receive proper instruction as to the nature and properties of the dangerous gases they constantly inspire- did they possess a staid, scientific deportment, instead of their noted recklessness, then we might trust them with this delicate scientific instrument. But all these they deplorably want. As it is, we must therefore believe with the committee, that "under circumstances of excitement, when danger is threatened, it is not improbably, far oftener than imagined, the very cause of the explosion which it was intended to prevent." Many instances are on record, where the explosion was alone traceable to the Davy. It was so at Wallsend, where, in 1835, 102 people were killed. For two days previous, they were working under red-hot lamps, the flame filling them to the top; and when these were afterwards ex

we have not now the space, even had we the inclination, to follow them in their inquiries; suffice it to say, that while the furnace acts by rarefaction, the steam-jet acts in a strictly mechanical manner, propelling the air before it through the mine, like the piston of a steam-engine in the cylinder. The committee state that"The furnace-system, under favorable circumstances that is, of the area of the shafts being large and deep, the aircourses sufficient, the goves (or old workings) well insulated, and the mine not very fiery -appears to be capable, with strict attention, of producing a current of air that will afford reasonable security from explosion; but when the workings are fiery and numerous, as well as remote, and the intensity of the furnace or furnaces requires to be raised, in order to increase, in any particular emergency, the amount of ventilation, then the furnace not only refuses to answer the spur and to increase ventilation, but from a natural law (discovered by Mr. Gurney, and scientifically and practically confirmed before your committee) there arises a dangerous stoppage to the ventilation going on throughout the mine. . . Your committee are unanimously of opinion, that the steam-jet is the most powerful, and at the same time least expensive, method of ventilation for the mines. Previous to 1848, when Mr. Foster introduced the steam-jet into the Seaton Delaval Mine, the fire-damp was constantly seen playing

around the face and edges of the goaves and rejoicing, and carrying branches of cherryother parts of the workings. Since that peri- trees, laden with their handsome fruit, instead od, the mine is swept so clean, that it is never of the former funereal emblems. The Naumobserved, and all danger of explosion seems burgers, in commemoration of their deliverremoved in a very fiery mine. The increase ance, ever after celebrated a festival, called of ventilation is from 53,000 cubic feet per Kirschenfest, or the Feast of the Cherries, on minute under the furnace-system, to 84,000 the 20th of July, the day of the infant deputaunder the steam-jet; and to double that quan- tion. At the commencement of the festivities, tity, which Mr. Foster considers sufficient, troops of children, gayly dressed and crowned would, he says, only require the application with flowers, paraded the streets in procession, of some extra jets. Mr. Foster states the carrying branches adorned with cherries. original outlay for the steam-jet to be less than for the furnace by 391. 15s. 6d. ; and the annual cost to be less by 507. 12s. 1d.; while the power of ventilation is increased nearly double."

Additional inspectors, increased power vested in them, a central board of control, mining-schools, a special coroner, a preliminary examination of managers and over men, and the other topics touched on, all invite comment, but we forbear; and that the more willingly, since Lord Palmerston has stated that he may perhaps be able, this session, to introduce a bill on the subject. Let us hope that he may do so, and thus a little time will be spared from polemical discussions and devoted to the cause of practical humanity.

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THE bright, round, shining Cherry, the favorite plaything with children (who has not loved bob-cherry) has a pleasing reminiscence connected with it. After the early reformer, John Huss, had perished at the stake, his followers, the Hussites, or Bohemian Protestants, took up arms in their self-defence. During the prolonged war, they besieged the city of Naumburg (in Saxony) in 1482; and Procopius Nossa, their general, declared his intention to raze the place, and exterminate the inhabitants, in revenge for the people having formerly voted for the death of John Huss, at the Synod of Kernitz. The Naumburgers, seeing themselves on the verge of destruction, were in despair, when a citizen, named Wolf, proposed an experiment to mollify the fury of the general. At Wolf's suggestion, all the children from the ages of seven to fourteen, were dressed in shrouds, and each holding a green bough and a lemon (which it was customary for mourners at German funerals to carry), were sent into the Hussite camp, to intercede with the general for the safety of their relatives and their native city. Procopius was moved by the tears of the young suppliants; he granted their petition, treated them with kindness, and ordered them refreshment, and in particular regaled them with a quantity of cherries (it was then the month of July). The delighted children returned home singing and

The cherry was introduced into Ireland by Sir Walter Raleigh, and first planted at Affane, near Cappoquin, county Waterford, on lands granted to him out of the forfeiture of the Desmonds, the most celebrated house in Irish history, to one of whose most renowned ladies a cherry-tree of Sir Walter's proved fatal, according to local tradition. The famous old Countess of Desmond was born about 1465; she danced with Richard III. at court, just before the battle of Bosworth, in 1485, and lived to see the vicissitudes of the Desmonds, and the fall of their vast power and wealth in the attainder of 1586. She went to London, being then over one hundred and twenty, to plead for the preservation of her jointure, and succeeded, and returned to live at her birthplace and usual abode, Dromana (near Affane) a castle of the Desmonds, and now the seat of a noble descendant of that house, Lord Stuart de Decies. One day, when she was (according to the tradition) a hundred and forty years old, she saw some very fine cherries on one of the trees at Affane, and, having no attendant at hand to gather them, she attempted to climb up to them, but fell, and soon after died from the effects of the fall. Her picture, painted when she was extremely old, is preserved at Dromana.

Extremes meet; our ceresial reminiscences began with childhood, and end with old age. But as the cherry is especially child's fruit, we will place as its associate an

EPITAPH ON A CHILD.

FROM THE GERMAN OF MATHISSON.*
(Sanft wehn im Hauch der Abend luft.-U. S. W.)
The vernal grass and flowrets wave
In evening's breath, where o'er thy grave
Weeps sorrow, wan and faded;

Oh! ne'er till death has set us free
From earth, can thy sweet image be

By dim oblivion shaded.

Thou 'rt blest, though short thy opening bloom;
From worldly joys, from pride, from gloom,
From sense delusive parted;
Thou sleep'st in peace; in care and strife
We wav'ring tread the maze of life,
Too rarely tranquil-hearted.

*The Poet of Magdeburg, at the close of last century.

From the New Monthly Magazine. AMERICAN AUTHORSHIP.

No. II. RICHARD HENRY DANA.

AMERICA is a great fact. Even the dimeyed, bespectacled Old World can see and acknowledge that crabbed and purblind as the aged witness is thought over the water. A greater fact, measured by square inches, it might be hard to find. Equally great, perhaps, if considered as the theatre of scenes of struggle and acts of enterprise, present and advent, in the drama of the world's progress, in the working out of interests, and the solution of problems, on a gigantic scale, material, moral, social, political. But one thing American there is, which we cannot yet regard as a great fact; one thing, which, at best, is only a fiction founded upon fact; and that is, its poetical literature. Hitherto the national genius has sought—or rather has found ready to hand other modes of expressing its character and asserting its power. It has been occupied with the task of ordering the chaos of elements, colossal and crude, rich with teeming germs of promise, amid which its lot is cast; it has been too busy to sing, though not to talk; it has had too many urgent calls on its physical faculties, its bread-winning arts and money-making appliances, to "go courting" the coy muses, or to build model stables for Pegasus. The young Titan's instinct has been to exercise his muscular frame in turning prairies into parks, and forests into cities, and rivers into mill-streams, rather than haunt the pine-woods in quest of aboriginal dryads, or invoke primeval silence in the depth of sylvan wilds, with hymns inspired by the ecstasy and attuned to the large utterance of the elder gods of song. Compared with her other attainments, America's poetry is backward, stunted, unshapen. It is, comparatively, a lisping speech. Its stars are many in number, but pale in lustre; not much differing from one another in glory, and altogether comprising a sort of milky way, with a soupçon of water in it; whereof the constellated members, though forever singing as they shine, have not yet caught the rolling music of the spheres. American poetry is not of its mother earth, earthy. It is rather of the Old World, worldly.

Imitation is, in effect, the vice of transatlantic verse; the very head and front of its offending. Not yet has it learned to walk alone on the steeps of Parnassus, bold as is the national mien, and firm as is its step, on the level of this work-day world. Again and again we hear the complaint, that American poets give us back our own coin, thinned and deteriorated by the transit-" as if America had not the ore of song in all her rivers, and a mint of her own in every mountain, she

does little more for the service of the muse than melt down our English gold and recast it in British forms." Again and again we hear it charged on the American bard, that he is a dealer rather than a producer; an echo rather than a voice; a shadow rather than a reality; that what he exports he can hardly be said to grow; that he has no faith in his native muses; that Europe is the Mecca of his poetical superstition-England the Jerusalem of his imaginative worship; and that when, at length, the harp is taken down from the trees where for centuries it has hung tuneless, it is but to sing the old songs of his poetical Zion in a strange land. "How is it," asks an eloquent critic," that America's children, who wear the new costume of their condition with an ostentation so preposterous, put on the old threadbare garments of the past whenever they sit down to the lyre? While the prosaic American is acting poetry without knowing it, building up new cities in a night, as the poet in the old time reared his fabrics, the bard, his brother, is haunting the ruins of the European past. The transatlantic muse is an exile, as much as in the days of the pilgrim fathers. Her aspect is that of an emigrant, who has found no settlement; her talk that of one who fain would be hame to her ain countree.' In a word, all things that creep on the face of the earth have gone up with the American to his new ark of refuge, and naturalized themselves there; but again and again the dove is sent forth to bring in the olive-branch of song from a strange land." This indictment is confirmed by America herself. Says one of her shrewdest sons to his loving brethren,

The most of you (this is what strikes all beholders) Have a mental and physical stoop in the shoulders; Though you ought to be free as the winds and the You've the gait and the manners of runaway

waves,

slaves;

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men's thought,

With their salt on her tail the wild eagle is caught; Your literature suits its each whisper and motion To what will be thought of it over the ocean.

Emerson, again, utters his aspirations for a day when his country's long apprenticeship to the literature of other lands shall draw to a close; when the millions who are there rushing into life shall find they can no longer feed on the sere remains of foreign harvests; when poetry shall revive and lead in a new age. And so with almost every literary "power" among his countrymen. Nowhere is the charge, such as it is, ignored by grand or petty jury.

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Now, imitation in poetry is ipso facto ex- those who claim for him this bright particular communication from the inner circle of the star-shine. His verses are distinguished by ecclesia of song. It strips the imitator of his meditative calmness, religious aspirations, and priestly vestments. It cuts off the candidate manly simplicity. This simplicity, indeed, from first-class honors. The world declines trenches on the bald and barren, and has to recognize a revised edition of Homer's been called morbid in its character. His "Achilles," or a modernized version of Shak- diction is often common-place and prosaic, speare's Hamlet," or a corrected proof of but occasionally indulges in abrupt, and often Milton's "Satan." Imitation in such cases spasmodic, intervals of "strong endeavor." implies either the feebleness of self-distrust, Sometimes unruffled and musical, it is at or the boldness of piracy, and, either way, others rasping, rugged, grating, to "ears pronounces its own doom. polite." That Mr. Dana specifically and of Has America, then, no poets? We are not set purpose imitates any one particular bard, sophistic enough to set about proving a ne- we do not believe; whatever of the imitative gation of that sort. But if it be asked, "Has feebleness just referred to may attach to his she any great poets?" then we, who love poems, is there rather implicitly, and by America much, but truth more who like to " spontaneous generation" (if that may be read Bryant and Longfellow, but not in for- said of anything imitative). Ilis tendency, getfulness of Shakspeare and Milton - then however, is to the reflective stand-point of we venture to answer, "Surely not.' Here Wordsworth and Coleridge; and his doctrines again we are not called upon to prove a nega- of idealism and super-sensual insight, now tive. Let the New York Dante appear; let widely and earnestly affirmed, and often exthe Boston Chaucer arise; let the Charles- aggerated, at Boston and other nests of the town Wordsworth come forth-each in the singing birds, were once scouted as heretical spirit and power, not merely in the mantle, by haters of paradox, and by cui bono men of of the respective bards-and forthwith the letters. oracles of criticism are dumb, only to find For his prose writings as well as his verse, new speech wherein to welcome the new a permanent place is assured to him, by Griscomers. Understand what you may by the per- wold, in the literature of America. As a haps indefinite expression "great poets," we prose writer (though malicious detractors simply imply that America has not yet produced may affect to see nothing but prose in him) he an "" Iliad, or a Divine Comedy," or a is almost wholly unknown in England. "Jerusalem Delivered;" not yet a Prome- His "Paul Felton" and "Tom Thornton" theus Bound," or a "Macbeth," a "Faery have been heard of; voilà tout. Yet his Queene," or a "Paradise Lost ;" not yet, to doings in romance, politics and criticism, approach more debatable ground, a " Marmi- have been considerable, though far from sucon," or a " Childe Harold," 66 an Excursion," cessful in a pecuniary sense; - his son's or a "Gertrude of Wyoming." We will add, graphic narrative of "Two Years before the however, that in the matter of living poets, Mast" has had a run to which he is quite a we have anything but a crushing majority of stranger. It is nearly forty years since he merit. And doubtless the day will dawn began his contributions to the North American it may be soon-when the American imag- Review, in the editorship of which he afterination shall prove its creative power. And wards took part. It was in this journal that her first great poet-one of her living proph- he excited the opposition of the "Queen ets hath prophesied it will take his in- Anne's Men" and reigning arbiters in poetispiration from those very themes and ob- cal criticism, by his eulogy of the Lake poets. jects from which, in her young and imitative He " thought poetry was something more time, the transatlantic muse seeks to escape. than a recreation; that it was something He will teach truth by American parable. superinduced upon the realities of life; he The wisdom which is of all time, and of every believed the ideal and the spiritual might be land, will be presented by him in the especial as real as the visible and the tangible; form and striking aspects which she has thought there were truths beyond the underchosen for herself in the country wherein he standing and the senses, and not to be reached sings.' America's future will have its poe- by ratiocination."* In a periodical of his try "uttered," as her past has its poetry own, called the Idle Man, he published his unexpressed". novel of "Tom Thornton," which an able reviewer has pronounced "interesting, and written in a style of earnestness which holds adorn vice with a veil of beauty." This truth paramount even to taste, and refuses to periodical ceased with the first volume, which did not pay its expenses, owing, it is said, to the absence of laws of protective copyright;

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For though no poet then she had to glorify her fame,

Her deeds were poems, that could light dead words with living flame.

The time has been when Richard Henry Dana was regarded as America's brightest orb of song. And there are probably still

*Griswold.

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