and thanksgiving; and in this respect his enthusiasm was harmless, and perhaps useful. He had occasionally tried almost every style of music-the elegiac, the festive, the amorous, and the sacred: and he is said to have so much excelled in each, that it is scarcely known to which his genius was best adapted. Of several anecdotes illustrative of Carolan's musical abilities, the following is perhaps the most striking :

His fame as a musician having reached the ears of an eminent Italian music-master in Dublin, he devised a plan for putting his abilities to a very severe test. He singled out an elegant piece of music in the Italian style; but here and there he either altered or mutilated it in such a manner that none but a real judge could detect the alterations. Carolan, quite unaware that it was intended as a trial of his skill, gave the deepest attention to the performer who played the piece thus altered in his presence. He then declared it to be an excellent piece of music; but, to the astonishment and satisfaction of the company, added humorously, "But here and there it limps and stumbles." He was then requested to rectify the errors, which he accordingly did. In this state the piece was sent back to Dublin; and the Italian master no sooner saw the amendments than he cordially pronounced Carolan to be a true musical genius. Although Carolan spoke his native language elegantly, he was advanced in years before he learned English, and expressed himself but indifferently in that tongue.

He died in 1738, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and was interred in the parish church of Kilronan, Ardagh. No memorial exists of the spot in which he was laid; but his grave long continued to be known to his admirers and some of the neighboring peasants; and we have the curious information that "his skull was long distinguished from those of others, which were promiscuously scattered throughout the churchyard, by a perforation in the forehead, through which a long piece of ribbon was drawn."

A different and inferior, but still very remarkable man, was DENIS HAMPSON, the blind bard of Magilligan, who may in some sort be regarded as his successor. He was born in 1698, and was a native of Derry. His father was a considerable farmer, holding the whole townland of Tyr

crevan.

He became blind from the smallpox at the age of three years, and at twelve he began to learn the harp from a woman. He acquired further mastery of the instrument under traveling harpers, and at eighteen began to play for himself. He traveled nine or ten years over different parts of Ireland and Scotland. In old age-and he lived to be very old-his memory dwelt upon many of the incidents of this peregrination, and some of them have been printed: but as they tend little to the illustration of his blindness, we pass them over. In his second trip to Scotland, in the year 1745, being at Edinburgh when Prince Charles, the Pretender, was there, he was called into the great hall to play. At first he was alone, but four fiddlers afterward joined him. The tune called for was, "The king shall enjoy his own again." The most interesting accounts of these and other of his early adventures, with anecdotes of the persons he came across in his journeys, were readily given by himself to the narrator when he had attained the advanced age of one hundred and eight years. The narrator,* who had known him when himself a boy, called at his cabin in 1806, two years before his death. "Since I saw him last, in 1787," says the writer, "the wen at the back of his head is greatly increased, and is now hanging over his neck and shoulders, nearly as large as his head, from which circumstance he derives his appellative, 'The man with two heads.' General Hart, who is an admirer of music, sent a limner to take a drawing of him, which cannot fail to be interesting, if it were only for the venerable expression of his meagre, blind countenance, and the symmetry of his tall, thin, but not debilitated person. I found him lying on his back in bed, near the fire of his cabin; his family employed in the usual way; his harp under the bedclothes, by which his head was covered also. When he heard my name he started up, (being already dressed,) and seemed rejoiced to hear the sound of my voice, which he said he began to recollect. He asked for my children, whom I had brought to see him, and he felt them over and over; then, with great affection, he blessed God that he had seen four generations of the

The Rev. Mr. Sampson, who visited the harper at the request of Miss Owenson, (Lady Morgan,) and wrote the particulars to her.

name, and ended by giving the children his blessing. He then tuned his old time-beaten harp, his solace and bed-fellow, and played with astonishing justness and good taste. The tunes he played were his favorites; and he, with a certain elegance of manner, said at the same time: 'I remember you have a fondness for music, and the tunes you used to ask for I have not forgotten.' These were the same which he played at the famous meeting of the harpers at Belfast, under the patronage of some amateurs of Irish music.* Mr. Bunting, the musician of that town, had visited Hampson the year before, taking notes of his tunes and his manner of playing, which was in the best old style. To him the blind bard said with honest and not unbecoming selfesteem: When I played the old tunes, not another harper could play after me.'”

Hampson died at the advanced age of one hundred and ten years. A few hours before his death he tuned his harp, that it might be in readiness to entertain some company who were expected to pass that way shortly after. However, he felt the approach of death, and calling his family around him, resigned his breath without a struggle, being in perfect possession of his faculties to the last moment of his existence.

"The last of our bards now sleeps cold in the grave," was the cry which arose when his death became known.

It may be generally, but it is not familiarly known, that the great master, HANDEL, was himself blind in the last years of his life. In 1751 he became alarmed by a disorder in his eyes, which he was told was a cataract. From that moment his usual flow of spirits forsook him, and scarcely left him patience in that crisis of his disorder in which he might hope for relief. An operation to which he submitted proved unsuccessful, and he was at length told that for the remainder of his days a relief from pain in his visual organs was all that could be hoped for. Notwithstanding his dejection, and the forlorn condition to which he was reduced,

At this meeting there was one harper who had never seen Carolan, nor was taught directly by any person who had an opportunity of copying from him, who had acquired upward of a hundred of his tunes, which he said constituted but a very inconsiderable part of the whole number. This shows the fertile genius of that extraordinary person.

VOL. II, No. 1.—D

which precluded him from any longer conducting his oratorios, he applied his mind to the altered arrangements which this new condition of circumstances involved, and the oratorios continued to be performed even to the Lent season in which he died, with no other apparent omission than that of his own accompaniment upon the harpsichord; for the rich flow of his fancy always supplied him with subjects for extempore voluntaries on the organ, and his hand never lost the power of executing whatever his invention suggested. "It was a most affecting spectacle," says the writer of his biography, "to see the venerable musician whose efforts had so long charmed the ear of a discerning audience, led to the front of the stage, in order to make an obeisance of acknowledgment to the enraptured multitude. When Smith played the organ, during the first year of Handel's blindness, the oratorio of 'Samson' was performed, and Beard sang, with great feeling :

'Total eclipse-no sun, no moon;

All dark amid the blaze of noon.' The recollection that Handel had set these words to music, with the view of the blind composer, then sitting by the organ, affected the audience so forcibly, that many persons present were moved even to tears."

Among the blind musicians of England, the highest name is undoubtedly that of JOHN STANLEY. He was born in 1715, and at two years of age totally lost his sight by falling on a marble hearth with a China basin in his hand. At the age of seven, he first began to learn music, his friends thinking that it was likely to amuse him, but not supposing that it was possible for him, circumstanced as he was, to make it a profession. His first master was Reading, a scholar of Dr. Blow's and organist of Hackney; and when his father found that he not only received great pleasure from music, but had made a rapid progress in it, he placed him with Dr. Green, under whom he studied with great diligence, and with the success by which diligence is always rewarded. So early as at eleven years of age he obtained the situation of organist at All Hallows, Breadstreet; and in 1726, at the age of thirteen, was elected organist of St. Andrew's, Holborn, in preference to a great number of candidates. In 1734 the Benches of the Inner Temple elected him one of their

organists and these two honorable musical stations he retained to his death. At a later period he was appointed master of the King's band. Few musical men, even in possession of sight, have spent a more active life in every branch of the art than Stanley; for he was not only a very able and accurate performer, but a natural and agreeable composer, and an intelligent instructor. After the death of Handel, he, in conjunction with Mr. Smith, (who had assisted Handel after he became blind,) undertook to superintend the performance of the oratorios during Lent; and, after Smith had retired, he carried them on in conjunction with Mr. Linley till within two years of his death, which took place on the 19th of May, 1786. On the 27th, his remains were interred in the new burial-ground of St. Andrew's; and on the following Sunday, instead of the usual voluntary, a solemn dirge, and, after service, "I know that my Redeemer liveth," were, with great propriety, given upon that organ at which the deceased had for so many years presided.

Besides various compositions for the organ, Mr. Stanley was the author of two oratorios-Jephthah, which was written in 1757; and Zimri, which was performed at Covent Garden during the first season of his management of the oratorios there. Dr. Alcock, who had been a pupil of Stanley's, speaks of his scientific knowledge in the highest terms. He says that most of the musicians of the day contrived to make his acquaintance, which they found much to their advantage: and it was quite common, just as the sermon at St. Andrew's or the Temple had ended, to see forty or fifty organists at the altar, waiting to hear his last voluntary. Handel himself was frequently seen at both these places. "In short," says Dr. Alcock, "it must be confessed that his extempore voluntaries were inimitable, and his taste in composition wonderful."

In proof of his masterly management of the organ, it is related, that when, at the performance of one of Handel's Te Deums, he found that the organ was half a note too sharp for the other instruments, he without the least premeditation transposed the whole piece; and this with as much facility and address as could have been manifested by one possessed of sight. This was the more remarkable, since the key into which it was transposed, (that of

C sharp major,) from having seven sharps in the clef, is so exceedingly difficult that it is scarcely ever made use of. It is probable there was not then in the kingdom any performer who would have attempted it, even though he had previously taken the trouble of writing out the whole part.

It was not only in music that Stanley excelled. In general accomplishment and in acuteness he is one of the most remarkable blind men on record. His favorite amusements were playing at billiards, "missisipi," skittles, shuffle-board-at which games, for which sight seems very necessary, he usually beat his competitors. Dr. Alcock, who was a stranger to London when first apprenticed to Stanley, states that one of his first proceedings was to show him the way through the private streets of Westminster, the intricate passages of the city and the adjacant villages, both on horseback and on foot. The same person remembers to have heard him play very correctly all Corelli's and Geminiani's twelve solos. He had so correct an ear, that he never forgot the voice of a person he had once heard speak. An instance is given in which he recollected the voice of a person he had not heard for twenty years, and who then accosted him in a feigned voice. If twenty people were seated at table together, he would address them all in regular order, without their situations being previously known to him. Riding on horseback was one of his favorite exercises, although it would seem a very dangerous one for the blind, and toward the close of his life, when he lived in Epping forest and wished to give his friends an airing, he would take them the pleasantest road, and point out the most agreeable prospects. He played at whist with great readiness and judgment. Each card was marked at the corner with the point of a needle: but these marks were so delicately fine, as scarcely to be dis

This seems to be no uncommon faculty with the blind. The present writer remembers to have accompanied his grandmother when a boy to her native place, where she had not been for thirty-six years. On her first arrival she was speaking to some persons on the green, and her name had certainly not yet transpired, when an old and half-idiotic blind man, who sat in front of his cottage, startled all of us by suddenly calling out in a very eager voice"Is that C. M. that I hear?" mentioning an early name which she had ceased to bear for more than thirty years.

cerned by any person not previously apprized of them. His hand was generally the first arranged, and it was not uncommon for him to complain of the party that they were tedious in sorting the cards. He could tell the precise time by a watch. He knew the number of persons in a room when he entered it; would direct his voice to each person in particular-even to strangers after they had once spoken; and would miss any one who was absent, and could tell who that was. In a word, his conceptions of youth, beauty, symmetry, and shape, were, for a person in his condition, truly wonderful attainments. So delicate and susceptible was his ear, that he was able to accompany any lesson with ' thorough bass, though he had never heard it before; thus anticipating the harmony before the chords were sounded, and accompanying it in a manner suitable to its character.

INFLUENCE OF CLOTHING ON THE

IT

HEALTH OF THE SKIN.

T is a fact which must be apparent to every one, that clothing, in itself, has no property of bestowing heat, but is chiefly useful in preventing the dispersion of the temperature of the body, and, in some instances, in defending it from that of the atmosphere. This power of preserving heat is due to the same principle, whatever form the raiment may assume, whether the natural covering of birds and animals, or whether the most beautiful and elegant tissues of human manufacture. In every case it is the power which the coverings possess of detaining in their meshes atmospheric air that is the cause of their warmth. We have an exemplification of this principle in the lightness of all articles of warm clothing, as compared with water; the buoyancy, for example, of a fleece of wool, or the lightness of a feather. In the eider-duck or the sea-bird, it is the accumulation of warm air within their downy covering that defends them, alike from the temperature of the water, and from its contact. The furs from the piercing regions of the North, which we prize so highly as articles of dress, are, the animals they invest, so many distinct atmospheres of warm air, and the same principle is carried out in the clothing of Our garments retain a stratum of air kept constantly warm by its contact

man.

to

with the body, and as the external temperature diminishes, we increase the number of layers by which the person is enveloped. Every one is practically aware that a loose dress is much warmer than one that fits close, that a loose glove is warmer than a tight one, and that a loose boot or shoe, in the same manner, bestows greater warmth than one of smaller dimensions. The explanation is obvious; the loose dress incloses a thin stratum of air, which the tight dress is incapable of doing, and all that is required is that the dress should be closed at the upper part to prevent the dispersion of the warm air and the ventilating current which would be established from below. The male summer dress in this climate consists of three layers, which necessarily include two strata of atmospheric air; that of females contains more; and, in the winter season, we increase the number to four, five, or six. As the purpose of additional layers of dress is to maintain a series of strata of warm air within our clothes, we should, in going from a warm room into a cold, put on our defensive coverings some little time previously, in order that the strata of air which we carry with us may be sufficiently warmed by the heat of the room, and may not be in need of borrowing from our bodies. Otherwise we must walk briskly in order to supply heat, not only to keep up the warmth of the strata of atmosphere nearest ourselves, but also to furnish those which we have artificially made by our additional coverings. When we have been for some time in the air, if we could examine the temperature or climate between the several layers of our dress, we should find the thermometer gradually falling as it was conveyed from the inner to the outer spaces.

These observations on dress have reference to the number of layers of which the covering is composed, but they are equally applicable to the texture of the garment itself. The materials employed by man in the manufacture of his attire, are all of them bad conductors of heat-that is to say, they have little tendency to conduct or remove the heat from the body; but, on the contrary, are disposed to retain what they receive; hence they are speedily warmed, and, once warm, preserve their temperature for a lengthened period, and convey the sensation of warmth to the hand. They are also bad conductors of

electricity, and on this account become sources of safety in a thunder-storm.

They are all derived from the organic world-some from the vegetable, and some from the animal kingdom: for instance, hemp and flax are the fibers of particular plants, while cotton is the covering of the seed of a plant. Silk, wool, hair, feathers, and leather, are animal productions; of these materials, the first five are chiefly employed as articles of clothing, and in order to be fitted for that purpose, are spun into threads, and then woven into a tissue of various degrees of fineness and closeness. It is evident that this tissue will have the effect of retaining a quantity of air proportioned to the size of its meshes; hence, besides the strata of atmosphere imprisoned between the different articles of clothing, each article is, in itself, the depository of an atmosphere of its own. Thick textures are warmer than thin ones made of the same material, because the body of air retained in their meshes is greater, as we see illustrated in blankets and woolen garments.

To the inhabitants of cold climates, feathers are a source of peculiar comfort, but, from their bulk, are not easily convertible into body garments.

Linen is a bad conductor and bad radiator. On this account it is that, despite its excellence in other particulars, it feels cold when it touches the skin. From the porosity of its fiber, it is very attractive of moisture, and when the body perspires, it absorbs the perspiration actively, and displaces the air, which in a dry state is held within its meshes: so that in place of an atmosphere of dry air, it becomes the means of maintaining a layer of moisture. Now, water is one of the best conductors of heat, and removes it so rapidly from the body, as to cause a general chill. But this is not all; the moisture in the tissue of the linen has so great a capacity and attraction for heat, that it continues to rob the body of more and more of that element, until the whole of the fluid is evaporated. These circumstances have caused the entire abandonment of linen as a covering next the skin, in hot climates, where the apparel must be necessarily thin. But in temperate and cold climates we get over the inconvenience by wearing over the linen a woolen or leather covering in the winter, and a cotton or thin woolen in the summer.

BRONZES-HOW THEY ARE MADE.

N a former article we spoke of the process of producing a marble statue: we now propose to speak of bronzes.

Bronze is essentially a compound of copper and tin, which metals appear to have been among the earliest known. Copper is not unfrequently found in its metallic state, and fit for immediate use; and tin, though not so met with, often occurs near the surface, and its ore is easily reduced. These metals, though neither of them possesses the hardness requisite for making instruments either for domestic or warlike purposes, appear to have been early found capable of hardening each other by combination; the bronze, which is the result of this combination, consisting of different proportions of them, according to the purposes to which it is to be applied.

Bronze is always harder and more fusible than copper; it is highly malleable when it contains 85 to 90 per cent. of copper; tempering increases its malleability; it oxydizes very slowly even in moist air, and hence its application to so many purposes. The density of bronze is always greater than that of the mean of the metals which compose it: for example, an alloy of 100 parts of copper and 12 parts of tin is of specific gravity 8.80, whereas by calculation it would be only 8.63.

The green hue that distinguishes ancient bronzes is acquired by oxydation and the combination with carbonic acid; and the moderns, to imitate the effect of the finer antique works, sometimes advance that process by artificial means, usually by washing the surface with an acid. Vasari alludes to this practice among the artists of his time, and to the means they adopted to produce a brown, a black, or a green color in their bronze.

Bronze was well known to the ancients. Among the remains of bronze works of art found in Egypt, none are of large dimensions. Many specimens of bronze works found in India are doubtless very ancient. In the time of Homer, arms, offensive and defensive, are always described as being made of bronze, or perhaps copper alone, which it is possible they had some means of tempering and hardening. The art of casting statues seems to have been first practiced in Asia Minor, Greece, properly so called, being then prob