were more than a dozen charges of cavalry with various success."

But more than this is stated. Though the fight was obstinately maintained, the Austrians had the best of it. The bulletin continues:

"The hostile cavalry made a rapid movement on our left, which was already shaken. This motion hastened its retreat."

Hostile cavalry pursuing the wing of an army already broken, was well calculated to hasten its retreat. Most awful, and most disastrous for the French, was the scene which immediately followed. The record already quoted adds:

"The enemy advanced on the whole line, keeping up a running fire from more than a hundred pieces of cannon. The roads were crowded with fugitives, and with the wounded. The battle appeared to be lost. The enemy advanced to the village of St Juliano, where the division of Desaix was posted in order of battle, with eight pieces of artillery in advance, flanked by two strong battalions. All the fugitives rallied in the rear of these."

Little did the aged Austrian commander anticipate what was to follow! The victory was gained, and he, considering his duty performed, ordered General Zach to pursue the flying enemy, while he retired to Alessandria to rest himself after the fatigue he had endured. What a surprise awaited him! Desaix charged the victorious Austrians, and in a few hours from that moment, General Zach, who was to pursue the French, was himself (with from six to eight thousand men) a prisoner; several generals were killed, while fifteen standards and forty pieces of cannon, were among the trophies of the day. The Austrians left six thousand killed on the field. Several generals were among the slain.

General Desaix, who contributed largely to the victory, did not live to enjoy it. He had followed the fortunes of Bonaparte in various countries, and had been repeatedly wounded in the several engagements he had seen. On the night before the battle of Marengo, he playfully observed, "that it was so long since he had been in Europe, the bullets would not know him again. Four times, at different periods, he had had his horse killed under him. He joined the army only three days before his death, and was most eager for that struggle to commence, which was the last he was permitted to see. His division charged, he was struck with a ball, and had only time to say to young Lebrun, who was near him, "Go and tell the First Consul that I die with regret at not having done sufficient for posterity."

We can hardly help smiling at language like this. That a man engaged in murderous warfare for the greater portion of

his life, should regret that he had not "done more for posterity," has much of the air of a solecism, unless we suppose posterity will be grateful to those who labour most efficiently to prevent their ancestors remaining in their way! Bonaparte, when informed of the death of Desaix while the battle raged, is said to have exclaimed, "Why am I not permitted to weep for him." The body of the deceased general was conveyed to Milan, there to be embalmed and finally buried at Mount St Bernard, where a monument was ordered to be erected to his memory.

POLLY BAKER S APPEAL. ABOUT a century ago there lived in America a female known by the name of "Miss Polly Baker." This fair one, it would seem, had loved "not wisely, but too well," for without being married she had become a parent, not merely once, but five times! On the last occasion she was brought before a court of judicature at Connecticut, near Boston, in New England, having previously been sharply punished. Miss Polly deemed her case a very hard one, and in this instance, like her namesake in the "Beggar's Opera,' could not refrain from saying

"O ponder well, be not severe ;" or, what was quite as much to the purpose, she addressed her judges as follows:

"May it please the honourable bench to indulge me in a few words: I am a poor unhappy woman, who have no money to fee lawyers to plead for me, being hard put to it to get a tolerable living. I shall not trouble your honours with long speeches; for I have not the presumption to expect that you may, by any means, be prevailed on to deviate in your sentence from the law in my favour. All I humbly hope is, that your honours would charitably move the governor's goodness in my behalf, that my fine may be remitted. This is the fifth time, gentlemen, that I have been dragged before your court on the same account; twice I have paid heavy fines, and twice have been brought to public punishment, for want of money to pay those fines. This may have been agreeable to the laws, and I don't dispute it; but since laws are sometimes unreasonable in themselves, and therefore repealed, and others bear too hard on the subject in particular circumstances; and therefore there is left a power somewhat to dispense with the execution of them; I take the liberty to say, that I think this law, by which I am punished, is both unreasonable in itself, and particularly severe with regard to me, who have always lived an inoffensive life in the neighbourhood where I was born, and I defy my enemies (if man, or child. Abstracted from the law, I have any) to say I ever wronged man, wocannot conceive (please your honours) what the nature of my offence is. I have brought five fine children into the world, at the risk of my life; I have maintained them well by

my own industry, without burthening the township, and would have done it better if it had not been for the heavy charges and fines I have paid. Can it be a crime (in the nature of things, I mean) to add to the number of the king's subjects, in a new country, that really wants people? I own it, I should think it a praiseworthy, rather than a punishable action. I have taken away no other woman's husband, nor enticed any youth; these things I never was charged with, nor has any one the least cause of complaint against me, unless, perhaps, the minister or justice, because I have had children without being married, by which they have missed a wedding fee. But can this be a fault of mine? I appeal to your honours. You are pleased to allow I don't want sense; but I must be stupified to the last degree not to prefer the honourable state of wedlock to the condition I have lived in. I always was, and still am willing to enter into it; and doubt not my behaving well in it, having all the industry, frugality, fertility, and skill in economy, appertaining to a good wife's character. Idefy any person to say I ever refused an offer of that sort on the contrary, I readily consented to the only proposal of marriage that ever was made me; but too easily confiding in the person's sincerity that made it, I unhappily lost my own honour by trusting to his; for he forsook me. That very person you all know; he is now become a magistrate of this county; and I had hopes he would have appeared this day on the bench, and have endeavoured to moderate the court in my favour; then I should have scorned to have mentioned it; but I must now complain of it, as unjust and unequal, that my betrayer and undoer, the first cause of all my faults and miscarriages (if they must be deemed such) should be advanced to honour and power in the government, that punishes my misfortunes with stripes and infamy. I

lives; and by their manner of living, leave unproduced (which is little better than mur der) hundreds of their posterity to the thousandth generation. Is not this a greater offence against the public good than mine? Compel them, then, by law, either to marriage, or to pay a fine every year. What must poor young women do, whom custom hath forbid to solicit the men, and who cannot force themselves upon husbands, when the laws take no care to provide them any? and yet severely punish them if they do their duty without them, the duty of the first and great command of nature, and of nature's God, Increase and multiply;'-a duty, from the steady performance of which, nothing has been able to deter me; but for its sake, I have hazarded the loss of the public esteem, and have frequently endured public disgrace and punishment; and therefore ought, in my humble opinion, instead of a whipping to have a statue erected to my memory."

6

What effect this had on the court generally we cannot tell, but it produced an impression which poor Polly, highly as she thought of her own merits, could hardly have hoped for. It so gained on one of her judges, whether the gentleman particularly alluded to in her speech does not appear, that he speedily married her. It is added that she made him a very good wife, that they lived happily together, and had a family of fifteen children!

TRAGEDY PREVENTED BY FARCE. DURING the French Revolution, when a frantic rabble, on slight provocation, hung any man they encountered on the nearest lamp-post, Michau, the comic actor, fell into the hands of a street-parading banditti, who doomed him to die in honour of the Cap of Liberty. His gallows was selected, his coat taken off, and the rope about to be put round his neck, when a butcher boy, who had seen him perform, came to his assistance, exclaiming to the intended murderers, " Madmen! you know not what you do. You are going to hang Punch of the Republic?' (the Comédie Francaise was at that time called the Theatre de La Republique). Thanks to his title of Punch, bestowed by the butcher, Michau found himself at liberty, and is said to have accepted the apologies which two hundred ruffians offered as coolly, for their design of hanging him, as if they had simply trodden on his toes.

should be told, 'tis like, that were there no act of assembly in the case, the precepts of religion are violated by my transgressions. If mine is a religious offence, leave it to religious punishments. You have already excluded me from the comforts of your church communion. Is not that sufficient? You believe I have offended heaven, and must suffer eternal fire: will not that be sufficient? What need is there, then, of your additional fines and whipping? I own, I do not think as you do; for, if I thought what you call a sin was really such, I could not presumptuously commit it. But how can it be believed that heaven is angry at my having children, when to the little done by me towards it, God has been pleased to add his divine skill and admirable workmanship in the formation of their bodies, and crowned it by furnishing them with rational and immortal souls? Forgive me, gentlemen, if I talk a little extra- ORIGINAL PAPERS ON SCIENCE. vagantly on these matters; I am no divine; but if you, gentlemen, must be making laws, do not turn natural and useful actions into crimes, by your prohibitions. But take into your wise consideration the great and growing number of bachelors in the country, many of whom, from the mean fear of the expenses of a family, have never sincerely and honourably courted a woman in their

No.

ON THE IGNITION OF GUNPOWDER BY VOL-
TAIC ELECTRICITY."

LOWERING OF DOVER CLIFF, &c.
THE recent successful applications of Vol-
taic Electricity in blasting the Dover cliffs,
and the prior operations at Spithead, fully
evince the superiority of this mode over

every other previously employed.
many of our readers may not understand
the manner of employing the electric fluid
for this purpose, we shall, in the present ar-
ticle, explain the mode of conducting the
operation. If the two terminal plates of a vol-
taic battery, A, B, fig. 1, be connected by

As a stout copper wire, C, C, C, C, the voltaic current generated by the former flows uninterruptedly and imperceptibly through the conductor; the arrows denoting the direction of the electric fluid. If the line formed presents a sufficient amount of conducting surface, the current of electricity flows through it without producing any elevation of temperature. Should any part of this line of wire be broken either by accident or design, even if the distance of the break thus made be not more than the thickness of a single hair, the current will then be unable to flow through the conductor, from the low state of tension of this kind of electricity when compared with the same agent produced by the electrical machine, for the electricity of the battery cannot pass through a non-conducting body, even though it be not thicker or offer any greater resistance than the thin plate of air between the points of the two wires as above, but we well know that the electricity of the machine would pass through that or even a much greater space, producing the well-known effect called the spark.

Let us suppose that the conductor thus divided be again united in one line, but the wire employed to effect the union shall be of such a thickness, say the 1-200th of an inch, which by experiment we have ascertained is insufficient to convey the amount of electricity produced by the battery, then that thin wire, as at A, B, which with its general conductor we have represented by the dotted line within the former, will be either made red hot or fused. If then, prior to the connexion being made with the battery, the thin wire be surrounded with a charge of gunpowder, the instant the electric current flows through the conductor, the fine wire is made red-hot and the charge of powder ignited. The effect is instantaneous, and admits of an absolute certainty, which in every other mode cannot be obtained.

In the recent results at Dover, several charges were ignited at the same time; to effect this it is only necessary to carry the line of conducting wire from the battery over those places, and at the precise spot to arrange wires similar to the former, as represented by the positions in the dotted line, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, the contact being made as before, the several discharges are produced at the same instant, in consequence of the extraordinary velocity with which this agent passes through good conductors. Where several charges are to be ignited at the same time, it has been found better to arrange the exploding wires somewhat different to the plan described above. A, B, fig. 2, are the conducting

which groove the copper wires, D, D, are firmly fixed by packthread, fig. 6; the two wires at the point C, which is placed in immediate contact with the powder, are united together by the fine wire, B, B, as explained in figs. 1 and 2. The wires D, D, may be three or four hundred feet in length, extending to where the battery is stationed; the voltaic fuse, thus prepared, is then introduced down the hole left by the needles, and when all is ready the wires D, D, being brought in contact with the battery, the fine wire B, B, is made red hot and the charge exploded.

In these operations, from very considerable experience, we would recommend the sustaining battery of Professor Daniels; one composed of six cells two feet long will be amply sufficient, and far superior to any other.

ANNONAY.

B.

[We have been favoured with the following curious matter, collected in a recent visit by a gentleman

connected with the mercantile world, on whose accuracy and judgment we can rely with the most perfect confidence.]

THE town of Annonay, in the department of Ardêche, about 50 miles south of Lyons, and near the Rhone, is one of the most remarkable in France for the concentration of a particular manufacture, or preparation,-that of kid skins, for export to Paris, Grenoble, and London, for the making of gloves. It is situated on two rivers, the Cance, and the Deume, both being, when swollen by the rains, or melting of the snows from the adjacent mountains, impetuous torrents; having their sources at a short distance from the town,

and, after joining their streams, falling into the Rhone at the distance of a few leagues.

The ancient history of towns is at all times interesting, and it appears from the 'Nouvelles Recherches sur la France,' published at Paris in 1766, that Annonay derives its name from the Latin, Annonœum, or depôt of victuals for the Roman armies. Another account lays the foundation of the town in the fifth century, when a party of manufacturers of parchment, attracted, of course, by its superb streams, settled there. We incline to think the latter account the most correct and probable, for undoubtedly trade and commerce have always been more powerful elements in the origin of towns than war; albeit, it is worthy of remark that the names of some of the streets* indicate a Roman origin, and are clearly traceable to that era.

Annonay, probably from its secluded situation, was in ancient times a stronghold of the church, and has given birth to men of great renown, viz., two cardinals, three archbishops, and four bishops. Its modern history is not less interesting, for here lived the famous Montgolfier, who first conceived and put into execution the idea of sending a balloon into the clouds, which took place in June, 1783. A column in the principal square marks the spot whence it ascended.

The finest writing papers in France are the production of Annonay; and the inventor of the suspension principle for bridges is also a native of the town.

But the most remarkable part of our information refers to the manufacture of skins.

Let us imagine a troop of four millions of kids being annually slaughtered to feed the fabriques of the place, which has drawn the whole of this commerce in France to itself by the peculiar qualities of its waters, the pureness and softness of which we believe to be unrivalled. In the proper season the manufacture proceeds at the rate of one hundred thousand skins per week, and in the months less favourable to the fabrication, or when the yearly crop of skins is exhausted, the consumption is reduced by about one-fifth.

But if the purity of the waters of Annonay is important, the town has other advantages, amongst which the extreme cheapness of living, compared with more populous places even in the south of France, is worthy of being noted. At the table d'hôte of the principal hotel, two good dinners, at eleven and six (for the dejeuner a la fourchette of the French is to all intents and purposes a dinner), are given at 150 francs per month, or not above 8d. per meal, excellent ordinary wine (vin ordinaire)