affections, which can never be delineated by the pencil; and it has within its power, not only the world of sensation, but likewise the world of intellect.

In music the powers of art are infinitely more limited than in poetry or painting. The pleasure results from mere combinations of sounds; and is as transient as the motions of the air, by which they are produced. To communicate feeling is the highest attribute of the art. Its means are wholly inadequate to convey ideas, and the attempts at imitation have generally produced only a ludicrous effect. It has this advantage, however, over poetry and painting, that its influence is more immediate and instantaneous, and perceived without study or reflection; that it acts as if by enchantment, and appealing merely to sensation, yet subdues both imagination and memory; makes the soul obedient to its impulses, and creates for the time a world of its own.

The mechanical arts and the fine arts can hardly be compared ; the objects of the first being utility, of the last, pleasure. The mechanical arts delight us only indirectly, and by indistinct associations; the fine arts either directly or by immediate associations. The steam-engine may be an object of wonder, as connected with the power by which it was produced, and the power which it exerts; but to understand its beneficial effects requires extensive knowledge, or a long detail of facts. Mechanism in general is too complicated to produce any general effect of pleasure. Inventions are admired by the multitude, more on account of their novelty or strangeness, than on account of their use or ingenuity. The watch which is the guide of our time, is employed and considered with indifference; but we pay half-a-crown to see a selfmoving spider of steel

In the truths of the natural sciences there is, perhaps, a nearer analogy to the productions of the refined arts. The contemplation of the laws of the universe is connected with an immediate tranquil exaltation of mind, and pure mental enjoyment. The perception of truth is almost as simple a feeling as the perception of beauty; and the genius of Newton, of Shakespeare, of Michael Angelo, and of Handel, are not very remote in character from each other. Imagination, as well as reason, is necessary to perfection in the philosophical mind. A rapidity of combination, a power of perceiving analogies, and of comparing them by facts, is the creative source of discovery. Discrimination and delicacy of sensation, so important in physical research, are other words

for taste; and the love of nature is the same passion, as the love of the magnificent, the sublime, and the beautiful.

The pleasure derived from great philosophical discoveries is less popular and more limited in its immediate effect, than that derived from the refined arts; but it is more durable and less connected with fashion or caprice. Canvas and wood, and even stone, will decay. The work of a great artist loses all its spirit in the copy. Words are mutable and fleeting; and the genius of poetry is often dissipated in translation. The compositions of music may remain, but the hand of execution may be wanting. Nature cannot decay; the language of her interpreters will be the same in all times. It will be an universal tongue speaking to all countries, and all ages, the excellence of the work, and the wisdom of the Creator.

(From the Same.)

SEA SERPENTS AND CAITHNESS MERMAIDS

I DISBELIEVE the authenticity of these stories. I do not mean to deny the existence of large marine animals having analogies to the serpent; the conger we know is such an animal: I have seen one nearly ten feet long, and there may be longer ones; but such animals do not come to the surface. The only sea-snake that has been examined by naturalists, turned out to be a putrid species of shark—the Squalus maximus. Yet all the newspapers gave accounts of this as a real animal, and endowed it with feet which do not belong to serpents. And the sea-snakes, seen by American and Norwegian captains, have, I think, generally been a company of porpoises, the rising and sinking of which, in lines, would give somewhat the appearance of the coils of a snake. The kraken, or island fish, is still more imaginary. I have myself seen immense numbers of enormous Urtica marine or blubbers, in the north seas, and in some of the Norwegian fiords, or inland bays, and often these beautiful creatures give colour to the water; but it is exceedingly improbable that an animal of this genus should ever be of the size, even of the whale: its soft materials are little fitted for locomotion, and would be easily destroyed by every kind of fish. Hands and a finny tail are entirely contrary to the analogy of nature; and I disbelieve the mermaid, upon philosophical principles. The dugong and

manatee are the only animals combining the functions of the Mammalia with some of the characters of fishes, that can be imagined, even as a link, in this part of the order of nature. Many of these stories have been founded upon the long-haired seal seen at a distance; others on the appearance of the common seal under particular circumstances of light and shade; and some on still more singular circumstances. A worthy baronet, remarkable for his benevolent views and active spirit, has propagated a story of this kind; and he seems to claim for his native country the honour of possessing this extraordinary animal; but the mermaid of Caithness was certainly a gentleman who happened to be travelling on that wild shore, and who was seen bathing by some young ladies at so great a distance, that not only genus, but gender was mistaken. I am acquainted with him, and have had the story from his own mouth. He is a young man, fond of geological pursuits; and one day, in the middle of August, having fatigued and heated himself by climbing a rock to examine a particular appearance of granite, he gave his clothes to his Highland guide, who was taking care of his pony, and descended to the sea. The sun was just setting, and he amused himself for some time by swimming from rock to rock, and having unclipped hair and no cap, he sometimes threw aside his locks and wrung the water from them on the rocks. He happened the year after to be at Harrowgate, and was sitting at table with two young ladies from Caithness, who were relating to a wondering audience the story of the mermaid they had seen, which had already been published in the newspapers: they described her, as she usually is described by poets, as a beautiful animal, with remarkably fair skin and long green hair. The young gentleman took the liberty, as most of the rest of the company did, to put a few questions to the elder of the two ladies --such as, on what day, and precisely where, this singular phenomenon had appeared. She had noted down not merely the day, but the hour and minute, and produced a map of the place. Our bather referred to his journal, and showed that a human animal was swimming in the very spot at that very time, who had some of the characters ascribed to the mermaid, but who laid no claim to others, particularly the green hair and fish's tail; but being rather sallow in the face, was glad to have such testimony to the colour of his body beneath his garments. (From the Same.)

VOL. V

M

COLOURS IN SNOW AND WATER

Poietes. You, Halieus, must certainly have considered the causes which produce the colours of waters. The streams of our own island are of a very different colour from these mountain rivers, and why should the same element or substance assume such a variety of tints?

Halieus. I certainly have often thought upon the subject, and I have made some observations and one experiment in relation to it. I will give you my opinion with pleasure; and as far as I know, they have not been brought forward in any of the works on the properties of water, or on its consideration as a chemical element. The purest water with which we are acquainted, is undoubtedly that which falls from the atmosphere. Having touched air alone, it can contain nothing but what it gains from the atmosphere; and it is distilled without the chance of those impurities, which may exist in the vessels used in an artificial operation. We cannot well examine the water precipitated from the atmosphere, as rain, without collecting it in vessels, and all artificial contact, gives more or less of contamination; but in snow, melted by the sunbeams, that has fallen on glaciers, themselves formed from frozen snow, water may be regarded as in its state of greatest purity. Congelation expels both salts and air from water, whether existing below, or formed in, the atmosphere; and in the high and uninhabited regions of glaciers, there can scarcely be any substances to contaminate. Removed from animal and vegetable life, they are even above the mineral kingdom; and though there are instances in which the rudest kind of vegetation (of the fungus or mucor kind) is even found upon snows, yet this is a rare occurrence; and red snow, which is occasioned by it, is an extraordinary and not a common phenomenon towards the pole, and on the highest mountains of the globe. Having examined the water formed from melted snow on glaciers, in different parts of the Alps, and having always found it of the same quality, I shall consider it as pure water, and describe its character. Its colour, when it has any depth, or when a mass of it is seen through, is bright blue; and, according to its greater or less depth of substance, it has more or less of this colour; as its

insipidity, and its other physical qualities, are not at this moment objects of your inquiry, I shall not dwell upon them. In general in examining lakes and masses of water in high mountains, their colour is of the same bright azure. And Captain Barry states,

that the water on the Polar ice has the like beautiful tint. When vegetables grow in lakes, the colour becomes nearer sea-green, and as the quantity of impregnation from their decay increases, greener, yellowish green, and at length when the vegetable extract is large in quantity, as in countries where peat is found, yellow and even brown. To mention instances, the Lake of Geneva, fed from sources (particularly the higher Rhone) formed from melting snow, is blue; and the Rhone pours from it dyed of the deepest azure, and retains partially this colour till it is joined by the Saone, which gives it a greener hue. The Lake of Morat, on the contrary, which is fed from a lower country, and from less pure sources, is grass green. And there is an illustrative instance in some small lakes fed from the same source, in the road from Inspruck to Stutgard, which I observed in 1815, (as well as I recollect) between Nazareit and Reiti. The highest lake fed by melted snows in March, when I saw it, was bright blue. It discharged itself by a small stream into another into which a number of large pines had been blown by a winter storm, or fallen from some other cause; in this lake its colour was blue-green. In a third lake, in which there were not only pines and their branches, but likewise other decaying vegetable matter, it had a tint of faded grass-green; and these changes had occurred in a space not much more than a mile in length. These observations I made in 1815; on returning to the same spot twelve years after, in August and September, I found the character of the lakes entirely changed. The pine wood washed into the second lake had disappeared; a large quantity of stones and gravel, washed down by torrents, or detached by an avalanche, supplied their place; there was no perceptible difference of tint in the two upper lakes; but the lower one, where there was still some vegetable matter, seemed to possess a greener hue. The same principle will apply to the Scotch and Irish rivers, which, when they rise or issue from pure rocky sources, are blue or bluish green; and when fed from peat bogs, or alluvial countries, yellow, or amber-coloured or brown, even after they have deposited a part of their impurities in great lakes. Sometimes, though rarely, mineral impregnations give colour to water; small streams are sometimes green or yellow