new expedient is applied, and a few years more will probably see it wholly removed. It is to matters like these that a truly patriotic government should, could, and would apply itself. We have newspapers enough, radical inflammation more than enough; if ten thousand copies of Mr Hume's best speeches were published at the "reduced rate" of the ten thousandth part of a farthing a-piece, the world would have only so much more nonsense and nausea. But premiums for great discoveries (things which seldom reward the first discoverer), suggestions to point the track of ingenious men towards discovery nationally useful, public aid, where the discovery is incontestably useful, and acts of the legislature directing the habits of the people into their readier and more extensive adoptionthose would be benefits on which no doubt could exist, efforts in which the public would join with cordiality, and therefore with irresistible effect; steps in national advance, each growing wider and loftier in a progress, to which there absolutely appears to be no limit in either the powers of man, the nature of things, or the will of Providence.

The death of Bannister, the comedian, Jack Bannister, as all the world fondly called him, has caused great regret in a large circle of acquaintance. As a comedian, he had ceased to exist twenty years ago, and the rising generation could know nothing of his delightful performance, for delightful it was. There was no constraint, no effort, no error. Every look was characteristic of the part, and yet every look of the actor seemed to be the everyday look of the man. His conception was admirable. The preparation which the artificial actor makes for a point and a plaudit seemed never to enter into his thoughts; the jest, the point, or the sentiment, came from his lips with the apparent unconsciousness of one to whom they were the simplest of all possible things. But no man winged his wit with happier dexterity, or guided it to the heart with finer knowledge of nature.

Bannister had the advantage of being a handsome man; his figure was good, his face intelligent, and his eye a ball of brilliant fire. Yet his line was limited. He wanted elegance for the man of fashion, and finish for the fop; but as the easy English hu morist, the Englishman of middle

life, of middle age, and of middle fortune: the man of independence, oddity, originality, and pleasantry, he was altogether unrivalled. He could adopt the generous, the grave, and even the melancholy; but the restless vivacity of his eye, and the almost irrepressible gladness of his smile, showed that his province was the eccentric, the goodnatured, and the gay. It is gratifying to know that he made a considerable fortune, and was enabled to enjoy his retirement in something not far from affluence; though he often blamed the memory of his ultra-opulent relative, Rundell, the millionaire jeweller, for not leaving him enough to keep a coach.

He possessed, however, what the millionaire could not leave him, health, spirits, good looks, and the use of his legs to the last. The gout touched him now and then, but it was with the tenderness of an old friend come to remind him occasionally of the pleasantries among which they first made acquaintance. Bannister was constantly seen taking his exercise in the streets, and enjoying the scenes which make London a perpetual panorama, with the animation of one who defied old age.

'Bannister was a wit himself as well as the instrument of the wit of others. Some of those recollections still remain. In giving them here, it must be remembered how much is necessarily lost in losing the look, the tone, and the moment. One day, as he was walking with the celebrated Suett, a fellow on the top of a coach cried out, Hope you're well, Master Dickey Gossip." Suett, not prepared for the acquaintanceship, said, peevishly, "What an impudent ruffian! "He seems one of the profession, however," observed Bannister. "Don't you see he is upon the Stage?"

66

A shoemaker in Piccadilly, determined to astonish the world, had put up a motto, from Euripides, over his window. Bannister happened to be passing with, I believe, Porson. "That is Greck," said Bannister. "What! are you acquainted with Greek," asked the Professor, with a laugh?" I know it by sight," was the happy reply.

On the night of Mrs Siddons's retirement from the stage, she withdrew, much affected with the sympathy of the audience; but, as the curtain fell, one of those sounds followed, from some enemy of the great actress,

which penetrates the ear amid a thousand plaudits, and for its susceptibility to which George Colman said the stage was originally called a Histrionic profession. Siddons caught the tone, and turning startled to Bannister, asked, "Can that be a hiss?"___" No," said Bannister, "it is a hys-teric."

The irritability of Matthews was proverbial. He was generous in giving his personal assistance to his brother actors; but it required dexterity, and the fortunate moment, to escape at times an angry reply. An actor once pressed him to play for his benefit at Drury-Lane. "What could I do?" said Matthews, recounting the circumstance to Bannister. "The blockhead knew I was to play at the English Opera-house on the same night; I could not split myself."—“ I don't say that," observed Bannister, "but the poor fellow's idea probably arose from his seeing you, as I have done, play in two pieces on the same night."

Spurzheim was lecturing on phrenology. "What is to be conceived the organ of drunkenness?" said the professor. "The barrel organ," interrupted Bannister.

A farce, from the French, was performed, under the title of "Fire and Water.""I predict its fate," said Bannister. "What fate?" whispered the anxious author at his side. "What fate?" said Bannister. "Why, what can fire and water produce, but a hiss."

On the French flight from Moscow, some one said, that the French would be very lucky dogs to escape, with Platoff and his Cossacks after them. “ Much luckier dogs they would be,” observed Bannister, "to escape, in their old style, with the plate-off before them.'

The accounts from Constantinople are startling. The plague, breaking out violently in the autumn, still continues ravaging that most unhappy of all capitals. Nine thousand deaths a-week! are the frightful calculation; but the misery may be beyond all calculation. What must be pangs of hunger and nakedness in the midst of the universal panic? How many wretched human beings must be at this hour lingering in the last agonies of desertion and famine, even where disease has not broken out among

them? The first terror of the plague must have the effect of destroying all commerce, all the common resources of labour, all the intercourse by which men aid each other in the common casualties of life. Even the provisions of the city must fail, or be greatly circumscribed, from the natural fear of the country people and traders to approach this huge cemetery-a cemetery in all but the silence and rest of the grave. What cries of unspeakable anguish, misery, bodily and mental pain, terror for the fate of children, horror at inevitable death, the madness of that excessive agony which totally masters human endurance, or suffers reason itself to exist only to add the hideous prospect of the morrow to the present misery.

The

It is a remarkable fact, and one that is perhaps connected with more than physical circumstances, that the plague never dies out of the regions of Mahometanism. If it is not in Morocco, it is in Algiers; if not in Algiers, it is in Alexandria; if not in Alexandria, it is in Constantinople. It may move from place to place, but it never quits the land of the Mahometan. This is not to be explained on the common grounds of the predestinarianism, which renders the Moslem careless of precaution, or the ignorance which deprives him of medical resources. Both undoubtedly have their effect; but they are inadequate to account for the almost perpetual presence of the most terrible of all diseases. Christian nations bordering on the Mediterranean are nearly as careless, are as much predestinarians, so far as neglect goes, are scarcely less ignorant of medicine, and are to the full as squalid in their persons, and as unwholesome in their food, yet the plague has not visited even Malta this quarter of a century, though more African than European, and almost within sight of the land of Mahometanism, in its most barbarian condition; nor Sicily, though proverbial for the mixture of all kinds of population, their squalidness, their recklessness, and their ignorance. It is no superstition to regard this perpetual recurrence as a judicial punishment of the perpetual offence to Heaven that exists in the nature of Mahometanism.

Yet while we recognise the high hand which punishes national crimes

by national sufferings, we are undoubtedly not the more discharged from the duty which enjoins us to alleviate every calamity of human nature, as far as it may be in our power. A letter in that very able and valuable paper, the Standard, puts this question in a point of view which seems to be unanswerable. We willingly take advantage of its authority.

After some general remarks on the ravages of the pestilence at this moment in Constantinople, it calls on British benevolence to consider how far it might be enabled to lighten this deplorable calamity. The number dying are represented to exceed a thousand a-day! But, says the letter, "the still more unhappy part of the case is, the condition of the families of the dying and dead. Famine, nakedness, and all the miseries of desertion and destitution, must be their universal lot. The horrors thus experienced in the present ravages of this most horrible of all the scourges of man must be indescribable." It then urges the especial interposition of that class of persons whose connexion with the country, and knowledge of circumstances, at once calls upon them, and is likely to render their assistance most available.

"We have large trading concerns with the Levant. Many of our principal merchants are making fortunes by this trade, which, of late years, has greatly increased. Would it not be becoming in those men to relieve, in some degree, the miseries of the lower population of Constantinople-to assist the famishing with food-to supply the sick with medicines-and, not less usefully, to introduce among them some employment of that medical science, which, under God, preserves Europe from the excesses of all epidemic disease? It is true that the objects of this benevolence would be Turks, and Turks are infidels. But we pray for them in our church service, and, if our prayer is not mere words, it implies a desire and a duty to relieve them, Turks and infidels as they may be, when the relief is within our means. It is also true that we have distress at home; but the plague is so tremendous an affliction, that all others are trifling in comparison." The writer proceeds to press this duty upon the Englishman as a matter of gratitude for the past protection of his

country from this dreadful misfortune, or even as a shield from its possible future ravages; concluding with the words" I am neither a foreigner nor a merchant. I can have no direct interest in any measures of relief to the miserable population of Islamism. But, as a man, I feel for human beings-as a Briton, I feel for the honour of England—and as a Christian, I acknowledge the responsibility of showing that the faith of Christ is a religion of good-will to all mankind. I have no doubt that if a subscription were opened, under any respectable names, and soon, it would amply succecd."

We think so too; and we think that it ought to be begun without delay. The calamities of nations, like the calamities of individuals, are probably in all instances Divine inflictions for some failure of virtue; but, like the calamities of individuals, they are doubtless also intended to have the result of calling us to a sense of commiseration for the sufferers. A few thousand pounds sent in the hour of distress to the unfortunate population of Constantinople, and judiciously applied by an European committee there, might make the whole difference to multitudes, between life and death, restoration, and the most agonizing of all wretchedness. Who can tell what might be the effect of this sudden benevolence in softening, at a future day, even the prejudices of the Mahometan? Of one thing, at least, we are certain, that it would benefit ourselves, and perhaps, too, our country, in some other return of tenfold the value. Donations given from motives of genuine benevolence will have a record higher than the frail memory of man.

Mr Green and his balloon have at last accomplished their object-passe the seas, swept over the cities, topped the mountains, and, alighting beyond the Rhine, astonished the whole Hun and Sclavonian population before they had taken the nightcaps from their heads or put their pipes in their mouths. This is the triumph of ærostation. So far as yet appears, Mr Green might have gone to Constantinople, Crim Tartary, or China without stopping, if his fowls, cheese, and cigars would have held out. He might have crossed the Pacific, made the circumnavi

gation of the globe, and dropping in Vauxhall Gardens, might have indulged the amateurs with a bird's-eye sketch of every sovereign of the earth at his favourite pastime for the week. It is impossible to regard this voyage, even curtailed as it has been, but as a very remarkable exploit. Yet its first-fruits to Mr Green's countrymen were great fears that he and his balloon had gone to "that bourne from which no traveller returns." In the multitude of reports which floated even with more rapidity than the balloon itself, it was said that the intention of the voyagers was merely to show the possibility of crossing to Calais. In that case, we should have heard of them within a few hours. Their diligence, too, in dropping letters and parachutes to tell us of their proceedings every couple of hours, gave the idea that they were anxious to communicate the most immediate intelligence. But when twenty-four hours passed, when we had begun to reckon, not by hours, but by days-when a week had nearly passed, the public curiosity was changed into alarm. The late hour at which the balloon had ascended, plunging it into night before it could cross the sea-the uncertainty of its direction afterwards through the night-the confusion produced by the various reports of its arrival-and, above all, the violent wind from the south-west, which, within twenty-four hours of their departure, swept the whole Channel, producing many wrecks, and which, if it had - caught the balloon, would inevitably have shot it up the Northern Ocean, or torn it into fragments at once, produced an extreme fear that the aeronauts had either been flung into the sea, or, what would be a still more melancholy fate, were whirling along over the waste of waters, hopeless of return, and feeling themselves doomed to die of famine, cold, and despair. No condition could be conceived more unhappy than that of being whirled along over an almost boundless ocean, seeing, day after day, nothing below them but the waves, in which they must be buried at last, and reproaching each other with the rashness of their attempt, until they died, feeding on their own flesh, half frozen, raving with thirst, mad, and miserable.

We never remember to have observed more real anxiety among the

public than on this occasion. But, luckily, those formidable speculations were thrown away; and while all England was conjecturing, the intelligence arrived that Mr Green and his companions were feasting in the midst of all the good things of the Rhineland, promenading in a German paradise, hanging up their balloon under the gilded roof of a German palace, and equally amazing and delighting the German politicians five hundred miles off, by showing them the "London papers of yesterday.'

The facts of the case are, that a balloon can be constructed sufficient to carry from ten to twenty persons at the rate of the wind itself, for whatever time they may lay in provisions. In this instance, which is to be considered merely as a first experiment, three persons were carried nearly 500 miles within 17 hours, with perfect ease, and might probably have gone on, with the same ease, until they had devoured the last of their "dozen fowls," and been forced to descend merely to recruit their stock; and if they had gone on at the same rate, they might have dined in the sunset clouds a mile over the golden steeple of the giant Cathedral of Vienna, or taken their supper and showered their fireworks, like a descending constellation, over the gardens of the Seraglio.

We understand that Mr Green doubts of the future possibility of steering the balloon. That it is beyond our power at present, is admitted. But what steers a bird? What enables that floundering voyager, a crow, to steer perfectly at his will from field to forest, and make turnings among the branches, that would raise the envy of the Jockey Club? What steers and carries the wild swan, as heavy as an infant, a thousand miles ahead through the tempest and against the tempest? The united action of the wings and the tail. The buoyancy of the balloon would render the wings unnecessary, except for addition to the steerage power. The true and only difficulty to be mastered is, that of enabling the balloon to go faster or slower than the wind; for it is only in such cases that the rudder can have any thing to act upon. The steerage of a bird and of a fish exhibit the power of direction in a surrounding element. The means are complete in both, but varied, from the circumstances of the

animal. The bird derives its buoyancy from the wing; the tail, whose chief or only purpose is steerage, scarcely aiding that buoyancy, and being scarcely movable but in the lateral direction required for the steerage. The fish is generally buoyant by its nature. The tail supplies at once its progress and direction, and it is therefore a powerful and peculiarly active instrument. Either would answer the purpose of the balloon. But its buoyancy brings it nearer to the fish than the bird. Its requisite would be a rudder of such length and force as at once to accelerate (or retard) and guide. This rudder might be a long frame, with a wheel or vane kept in rapid motion at its end. For this some modification of the steamengine would be required; but we have overcome so many of the difficulties of the steam-engine, that we are not entitled to doubt much of ultimate success even here. Still, as we observed in some former mention of this subject, we may doubt strongly of the value of the boon if it were general, and have strong fears of the perils of an invention which would make fortifications and natural boundaries useless as means of protection; lay nations almost wholly at each other's mercy, or even at the mercy of malignant individuals; render war a scene of terrible and unavoidable surprises; and divest peace of all security, not merely from the sudden attacks of neighbour nations, but from the most remote and savage. Still it is to be remembered, that for every dangerous invention there has hitherto been found a counterpoise; and that the more dangerous the invention, the more forcible, active, and comprehensive, and therefore the more capable of being turned to good it is. The first contemplations of the devastating strength of gunpowder must have been full of terror: it was pronounced a curse; the musketeer was always refused quarter; and the inventor, monk though he was, was regarded as little less than an especial instrument of Satan. Yet gunpowder has since been one of the great civilizers of the earth; one of the great protectors of mankind from savage hostilities; and even the great restrainer of massacre in the field. More men perished in one day, in

mauy an ancient battle, than now fall in a campaign.

But even in its present condition the balloon may be of service, though scarcely in our country. We are too

near the sea, and too liable to sudden shifts of wind. In England, except in the very centre of the country, wherever the balloon ascends it has water within its horizon: half an hour's shift of the gale from the south would have carried Mr Green inevitably into the North Sea. It is in the spaces of the great continents where this danger is not to be dreaded, and where the wind blows for days or weeks together from the same point, that the balloon might even now be of admirable service. Thus, in India, in case of a Russian invasion, a balloon from the frontier, or from the Himmeleh, might convey the intelligence to Calcutta with the most important celerity. Thus, in case of an European war, a balloon from Alexandria might carry the despatches across Arabia, to Bombay, with a speed which might not merely enable the Indian Government to be on its guard, but to strike the most instant and decisive blows. In passing the Tartar deserts, or in penetrating into Africa, the balloon might make all the chief difficulties disappear, arising, as they do, from the sultriness, the sands, the scantiness of provision, the deficiency of transit, and the wars, treacheries, and extortions of the savage kings. In the mean time, we congratulate Mr Green and his companions. If it be fame, as Horace. says it is "Volitare super ora hominum," he has amply secured his

renown.

We always regarded the "Cheap Press" cry as a genuine piece of Whiggism, for which, in the language of honest men, there was but one expression, however humbleHumbug! The whole scheme has turned out the reverse of all that was intended. The great Conservative newspapers have not been crushed, but have risen, like giants, refreshed. The little Radical papers have risen, only to be crushed. All the Radicals were in a riot of triumph at the prospect of being able to get rid of stamps, those fetters and manacles of mind, and so forth; but their emancipation