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real praise.

shop which has the hue of a humbug. the artist had befooled me.
I advise the proprietor of the Diora-
ma (which appears to intend itself
for a permanent exhibition) to divert
the enthusiasm of his steam-engine,
or whatever" old mole" it is that
works beneath his platform, from dis-
arranging the stomach of his visiters,
to the less ambitious purpose of mov-
ing his scenery around them.

Trinity Chapel and the Valley of Sarnen have been carried about the town these two months by the billstickers, proclaiming every week to be the "last week" of their existence. I don't know if they are dead yet; but it is no harm to afford them a little posthumous praise if they are so. The first of these scenes was a complete deception; I.expected every moment the dean and chapter to make their appearance. In this respect it is the best of the two, which however is more owing to the nature of the subject than the felicity of the painter; it is much easier to represent in successful perspective a chapel, however large, on a sheet of canvas, than a whole country like the Valley of Sarnen. The imagination can readily allow the one, but the reason strongly rejects the other. At all events I confess Trinity Chapel fairly took me in. In my golden simplicity of mind I thought, when I saw it, that "the play hadn't begun," and that I was merely contemplating one of those multitudinous specimens of plasterwork and architectury which are scattered over the West End and Regent's Park, to the utter discountenance of brown brick and comfortability. The beauty of the structure was the first thing that brought back my senses, this being a quality which seldom obtrudes itself upon the eye of the western itinerant.* By narrowly watching the direction of the shadows and finding them to be permanent I was at length convinced that

I beg leave to direct the attention of all admirers of genuine gothic to a string of towers in wooden bonnets, at the other side of the park from the Diorama. They may afford to the romantic and imaginative a tolerable idea of a row of giants standing asleep in their bedgowns and white cotton night-caps.

This is

The view of the Valley of Sarnen was, however, the chief attraction. The felicity of the execution surprised less, but the beauty of its scenery gratified more. The interior of a chapel, unless of the very richest order of magnificence, cannot be as interesting to the spectator as a green woodland, a mountain prospect, or a pastoral vale. He may happen also to be one of those sad dogs like myself who have been compelled by their follies to exchange a romantic home for the close squares and crooked alleys of this populous wilderness

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London: if so, the Valley would possess in his mind a double advantage over its competitor. He would see his native hills in the misty pinnacles, and the green dwelling of his fathers in the deep-bosomed glen of the Alpine illusion before him. He would, moreover, perhaps acknowledge himself largely indebted to the faithful transcriber of the Valley of Sarnen for the sight of a phenomenon which he had never the good fortune to witness in his own country. Two lofty hills rise on the back ground, one immediately behind the other. The hindermost is a sugar-loaf piercing into the skies far above the tration of his round-shouldered brother. Now the phenomenon in the picture (and, of course in the living scene) is this: the lower and nearer of these hills is covered with snow, whilst the higher and more distant is green to the apex. I am not sufficiently natural philosopher to account for this extraordinary appearance, but suppose it to arise from a different mode of snowing they have amongst the Alps from what we ususally see here amidst our humble hillocks. To accomplish the aforesaid phenomenon it is only necessary that it snow horizontally in Switzerland, by which means a mountain may with every facility be snowed up as far as the shoulders, and yet preserve his head as green and as flourishing as ever. Notwithstanding the strangeness to a plain-going English eye the above stroke of nature, the view

of

of the Valley of Sarnen was picturesque and delightful,-and if it is not gone it is so still. The Swiss cottage, the mountain road, the flock of sheep feeding in a sequestrated nook, gave a kind of lonely animation to the scene; the deep verdure of the glades and slopes, contrasted with the blue surface of the lake into which they decline, and the vapoury magnificence of the surrounding hills, combined to throw a most romantic air over this beautiful picture. I sighed for home when I saw it. A runnel of living water bestowed reality on the scene, and was so contrived as to flow down the canvas as naturally as if it was painted there, not spoiling the eye for the artificial part of the scene. This is a good test of the merits of the painting; the works of nature when set beside those of art generally put the latter out of counte

nance. I hope the Valley of Sarnen will remain in the Regent's Park,or that it may be replaced by something as beautiful.

There is likewise the Cosmorama, and the Myriorama, and may others not mentionable. I hear also that there is one in preparation, which is to be perfectly ecliptic of all its predecessors, and is to be called the Pandemoniopanorama, being an exact View of Hell, intended chiefly, I suppose, for the patronage of those who intend emigrating thither. It has been painted from drawings taken by Padre B who visited the premises, and has been since restored to life by Prince Hohenlohe. But I must defer the account of these to a future opportunity. At present-"I can no more" (as we say in a trag edy). Vale!

JACOB GOOSEQUILL.

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ON THE OPERATION OF COUCHING.

CHESELDEN the celebrated surgeon and oculist gives some very curious particulars respecting a boy who was couched by him in his thirteenth year his narrative is the more interesting as it seems to determine the question so long and so hotly contested by philosophers,-Whether a person blind from his birth upon being made to see could, by sight alone, distinguish a cube from a globe? Most persons would probably answer in the affirmative, notwithstanding the many theoretical arguments which might be brought against it,-at least until they have such facts as the operation of couching discloses, which are of too stuborn a nature to be easily evaded.

It is previously remarked by Cheselden that though we speak of persons afflicted with cataracts as blind, yet they are never so blind from that cause but that they can distinguish day from night; and for the most part in a strong light distinguish black, white, scarlet, and other glaring colours: but they cannot distinguish the shape of any thing. And he gives

the following reason for his remark. The light coming from external objects being let in through the matter of the cataract which disperses and refracts the rays, these do not, as they ought, converge to a focus on the retina or back part of the eye, so as to form a picture of the objects there; the person afflicted is consequently in the same state as a man of sound sight looking through a thin jelly. Hence the shape of an object cannot be at all discerned, though the colour may. And this was the case with the boy couched by the operator. couching he could distinguish colours in a strong light, but afterwards, the faint ideas he had previously acquired of them were not sufficient for him to recollect them by, and he did not know them to be the same that he had seen dimly, when he was enabled to see them perfectly. Scarlet he now thought to be the most beautiful, and of others the gayest were the most pleasing: black, the first time he saw it perfectly, gave him great uneasiness, but after a little time he became more reconciled to it; he however always

associated some unpleasant idea with it, being struck with great horror at the sight of a Negro woman whom he met some months afterwards.

When he first saw, he was so far from making any right judgment about distances, that he thought all objects whatever touched his eyes (so he expressed it), as what he felt did his skin. He thought no objects so agreeable as those which were smooth and regular, though he could form no judgment of their shape, nor guess what it was in any object that pleased him. He did not know any one thing from another, however different in shape or size; but upon being told what things those were whose form he knew before from feeling, he would carefully observe that he might know them again. Having often forgot which was the cat, which the dog, he was ashamed to ask, but catching the cat (which he knew by feeling), he looked steadfastly at her, and then putting her down, "So, Puss," said he, "I shall know you another time." He was very much surprised that those things which he had liked best when blind did not appear most agreeable to his eyes, excepting those persons whom he loved most would appear most beautiful, and such things most agreeable to his sight which were so to his taste. His friends at first thought that he even knew what pictures represented, but found afterwards they were mistaken; for about two months after he was couched he discovered that they represented solid bodies, at first taking them for partycoloured planes or surfaces diversified with a variety of paint: but even then he was surprised that the pictures did not feel like the things they represented, and was amazed when he found that those parts of pictures which by their light and shade appeared prominent, and uneven to his sight, felt equally flat with the rest. On this latter occasion he pertinently inquired -Which was the lying sense, feeling or seeing?

Being shown his father's picture in a locket at his mother's watch, he acknowledged the likeness, but was very much astonished, asking how it

could be that a large face could be expressed in so little room, and saying that it should have seemed as impossible to him as to put a bushel of any thing into a pint.

At first he could bear but very little light, and the things he saw he thought extremely large; but upon seeing things larger, those first seen he conceived to be less than they had appeared before, never being able to imagine any figures or lines beyond the bounds he saw the room he was in he said he knew to be but part of the house, yet he could not conceive that the whole house could look bigger. Before he was couched he expected little advantage from seeing, worth undergoing an operation for, except reading and writing; for he said he thought he could have no more pleasure in walking abroad than he had in the garden at present, which he could do safely and readily. And even in blindness he said he had this advantage, that he could go anywhere in the dark much better than those who could see. After he was enabled to see he did not soon lose this faculty, nor desire a light to go about the house in darkness. He said every new object was a new delight, and the pleasure was so great that he wanted words to express it; but his gratitude to the operator was extreme, never seeing him for some time without shedding tears, and if he did not happen to come at the time he was expected, the boy could not forbear crying at the disappointment. A year after his first seeing, being carried to Epsom Downs, he was exceedingly delighted with the largeness of the prospect, and called it a new kind of seeing. He was afterwards couched of the other eye, and found that objects appeared large to this eye, but not so large as they did at first to the other looking upon the same object with both eyes, he thought it appeared about twice as large as to the first couched eye only,―it did not appear double.

:

Mr. Cheselden performed the operation of couching on several other persons, who all gave nearly the same account of their learning to see as the

preceding. They all had this curious defect after couching in common, that never having had occasion to move their eyes, they knew not how to do it, and at first could not direct them to any particular object, but had to move the whole head, till by slow degrees they acquired the faculty of shifting the eye-balls in their sockets. Several philosophical inferences may be deduced from the above-cited experiment. First it is evident that the eye is not a judge of direct, though it may be of transverse distance, i. e. that it cannot estimate the distance between two trees, for example, nearly in a line with itself, though it may, if they are at equal lengths from it, but not in the same line with it. Hence when we look at a chair standing against the wall of our chamber we really do not see that the fore legs stand out upon the carpet,-we see both them and all parts of the chair painted as it were (projected is the philosophical word) on the wall. It is only by having felt that they do stand out from the wall that we judge them so to do, when we merely see them exhibiting the same appearances they had when we felt them before. The boy upon whom Mr. Cheselden operated, thought, it seems," that all objects whatever touched his eyes," i. e. all objects and parts of objects appeared equally distant from him, the fore-legs of a chair as distant as the hind, in short he could not see direct distance at all. It was only by habit, by feeling a table, for instance, by then observing the lights and shades its different surfaces presented to his eyes (for of colour the eye is a judge), it was only by this process that he was at length enabled to know a table when he merely saw it. And it is the same process which gradually teaches us in our infancy to correct the errors of our sight by the testimony of our feeling, and to know that that is protuberant which appears flat, as every object does to the eye of a new-born child. This habit, which the mind gets of deciding upon the massive form of objects immediately upon seeing them, is that from which the whole effect of painting results:

when we see a landscape or a group of figures on canvass, the parts assume to our eyes a depth or protuberance, though really flat, because, exhibiting the same light and shade which the objects represented by them do themselves rerum neutrá present, we judge them to be similar in all their dimensions, and to recede or come forward from the canvass in the same manner as the real objects would do if placed against a wall. In conformity with this reasoning it appears that the boy who was couched had no perception of the effect of painting: not having yet obtained experience of the lights and shades imitated on canvass they could not deceive him, as they do a person of sound sight, into the supposition that they were reflected by massive bodies,-he only saw flat canvass diversified with a variety of paint.

Secondly, as it appears that the boy could not tell a cat from a dog until he had felt them, it is plain that neither could he tell a cube from a globe. It is to be observed, however, that although at first all distinction of shape were perceived, yet experience would shortly have taught him to distinguish, by sight alone, a cat from a dog, a cube from a globe. All that Locke and his partisans asserted was,

that sight alone would never have taught him to determine (unless by chance) which of the bodies was the cube of his feeling, which the globe. He would in a short time have seen that one of these bodies was even, and the other angular, but he could not certainly tell that the former would feel as the globe felt before he saw it, nor the latter as the cube did. That which was a cube to his sight he would probably have fixed upon as that which was the globe to his feeling. At least, there is no reason why, because a given body appeared evenly shaped to his sight, it should enable him to determine that this body must necessarily, when he touched it, give him that sensation which he denominated smoothness before he was made to see.

Thirdly, the above-mentioned experiment appears to suggest a doubt of the truth of that philosophical dis

tinction which has usually been put between Reason and Instinct. If it is by an exertion of judgment that a man coming into a room where there is a real chair and one ill-painted on the wall, will sit down upon the form er and neglect the latter, it is certainly by an exertion of a similar faculty, that a cat coming into a room where there is a real mouse and an ill-painted one, will spring upon the former and neglect the latter. And from the same principle it is that the man will attempt sitting down on a wellpainted chair, and a cat will attempt catching a well-painted mouse,-neither discovering their error till they come near enough either to see the defects of the painting or to feel the delusive objects, and thus correct the mistake of their judgment acting upon the information of sight alone. For it is to be remembered that, in this case, it is not their sight which deceives them, but their judgment; sight informs them that certain colours, lights, and shades, appear before them, and its information is true; whilst judgment tells them that these colours, lights, and shades, indicate a massive substance (viz. a chair or mouse) which is false. From this it would appear, that instinct has no more to do with a cat mouse-catching, than with a man hare-hunting; and similar considerations may perhaps, teach us, that brute animals approach much nearer to us in faculties than philosophers are generally disposed to allow.

Lastly, it may be inferred, that the staring and vacant expression of coun

tenance, which is to be seen in children and idiots, proceeds rather from an inability to move their eyes than from a want of thought at the time. The former through inexperience, the latter through mental weakness, have not been sufficiently conversant with different objects to have exercised the moving powers of the eye, which therefore remains generally fixed. Both, when they wish to observe a new object, turn the whole head rather than the eyeball. And, that vacancy of look does not always proceed from want of ideas in the mind at the time, is evident from this, -that men intently engaged in contemplating certain ideas generally stare with a fixed and foolish countenance, whilst their reverie continues. If a child were shut up in a dark room where he might exercise all his senses but one, it is obvious that upon light being admitted at the end of some years, when he had acquired a good stock of ideas by means of these four senses,--it is obvious that he would still continue to stare like an infant, how full soever his mind might be of ideas. For the motion of his eyes is consequent upon an act of his will so to move them, and he can have no will to move them from the object at which he first looks, because he knows as yet of no other object existing, and could therefore have no motive to ex cite his will to action.

There are many other inferences which might be drawn from this curious experiment, but I will leave them to the reader's own sagacity or fancy.

GREENWICH HOSPITAL. THE BARGE'S CREW.

"Tis sweet to poise the lab'ring oar
That tugs us to our native shore,
When the Boatswain pipes the barge to man.”

WHY, aye, Mr. What's your name, we were the pride of the ship-all picked men; and if you had seen us in those days, when hope and enterprise spread our white canvass to the breeze, and we either

lufft up to get to windward of an enemy, or sailed large to run down to the succour of a friend in dis

tress, it would have done good to your heart, man. Then there was our barge, so neat and trim with her gratings in the bow, and starn sheets as white as the drifted snow, and every oar a perfect picture. But to see

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