Whoever has read the foregoing ballad of "the Lime-tree Branch" will not refuse to join with us in pronouncing Mr. Ainsworth a finished proficient on the old national lyre, and highly deserving of a bough of bay, laureá donandus Apollinari. His tones are, in sooth, most musical, most melancholy; yet he never appears to more advantage than when he relapses into his favourite subjects, the exploits of the highway brotherhood-" le département des ponts et chaussées." Footpad poetry, or, as Horace calls it, sermo pedestris, would seem to have for him ineffable charms. Every great poet has a pet topic. In vain did Anacreon attempt to sing of Cadmus and the Atreida; he quickly reverted to Bacchus and Bathyllus : Burns could never get beyond the barley-bree, or, if he did occasionally soar upwards for a lark, he soon came back into the "bonnie rigs of barley:" :" take the "corn-laws" from Ebenezer Elliot, and you paralyse his muse—

With a neater hand than OLD Mob, Old MOB!

Which nobody can deny.

Nor did housebreaker ever deal harder knocks

On the stubborn lid of a good strong box
Than that prince of good fellows, Tom
Cox, Toм Cox!
Which nobody can deny.

And blither fellow on broad highway
Did never with oath bid traveller stay
Than devil-may-care WILL HALLO-
WAY!

Which nobody can deny.

Then in roguery naught could exceed the tricks

Of GETTINGS, and GREY, and the five or six

Who trod in the steps of bold NEDDY WICKS!

Which nobody can deny.

Nor could any so handily break a lock AS SHEPPARD, who stood on the Newgate dock,

And nicknamed the gaolers around him, 'his flock!'

Which nobody can deny.

Nor did highwayman ever before possess
For ease,
for security, danger, distress,
Such a mare as DICK TURPIN'S Black
Bess, Black Bess!

Which nobody can deny.”

As we said before, our author is by times given, like Hervey, to meditating among tombs. The following has, no doubt, suggested itself to his fancy, in one of his nocturnal rambles through the grand national cemetery in his neighbourhood:

"The Corpse-Candle. "Lambere flamma raqs et circum funera pasci."

Through the midnight gloom did a pale blue light

To the churchyard mirk wing its lonesome flight;

Thrice it floated those old walls round, Thrice it paused-till the grave it found. Over the grass-green sod it glanced,

Like a torch in the night-breeze quivering,

Never was seen so gay a thing!
Never was seen so merry a sight

As the midnight dance of that pale blue light!

Now what of that pale blue flame dost know?

Canst tell where it comes from, or where it will go?

Is it the soul, released from clay,
Over the earth that takes its way,

And tarries a moment, in mirth and glee, Where the corpse it hath quitted interred shall be ?

Or is it the trick of some fanciful sprite, That taketh in mortal mischance delight, And marketh the road the coffin shall go, And the spot where the dead shall be soon laid low?

Ask him who can answer these questions

"Will Davies and Dick Turpin. "Hodiè mihi, cràs tibi."-ST. AUGUSTIN. One night, when mounted on my mare, To Bagshot Heath I did repair; And saw Will Davies hanging there Upon the gibbet bleak and bare, With a rustified, fustified, mustified air.

Within his chains bold Will looked blue; Gone were his sword and snappers, too, Which served their master well and true : Says I, Will Davies, how are you? With your rustified, fustified, mustified air.'

Says he, Dick Turpin, here I be
Upon the gibbet, as you see;
I take the matter easily;

You'll have your turn as well as me, With your whistle-me, pistol-me, cut-mythroat air.'

Says I That's very true, my lad,
Meantime with pistol and with pad;
I'm quite contented as I am,
And heed the gibbet not a d-n,
With its rustified, fustified, mustified air.'"

And so we bid thee good night, Dick Turpin. Keep thy powder dry, my lad; let all thy movements be regular; but let not thy intellect get rusty by too much rustication. The world is impatiently awaiting thy next appearance in the character of " the Admirable Crichton." From what we know of thy handicraft we anticipate a tale as skilfully put together and as well wound up "As the best time-piece made by HARRISON." (Juan, i. 17.)

MY DEAR YORKE, - Before I proceed to give you an account of my Archimedian pretensions to immortality, I must relate a few facts which did not appear worthy of being recorded among the memorabilia of my autobiography; because I had not then, in my own opinion, raised my headstone: I don't say, with Horace, built my monument,-for that may yet be disputed by captious people-those who regard themselves as Solomons, but who by the rest of the world are thought to be only Patches,-some of whom think it as ridiculous in me to make hydraulic experiments as it was in themselves, long ago, to be addicted to such demonstrations on their mothers' aprons. This is vile; and I have dipped my pen in ink to wash away the insinuation, especially as I happen just now to be in one of those "lucid intervals" to which persons subject to irregularity in sleep are supposed to be liable,--not that I suffer in any respect as to a diminution of the requisite quantity; but Nature makes me often as much inclined to nod at the fare of the season as the doctors are to advise me to give it the go-by.

The nocturnal rumination which this pathological fact implies, has had more to do with the contrivance of the sea-fed engine, as I call my apparatus for propelling vessels without steam, than you can have any idea of; for, although I have been a great observer of drainage expedients, literally since myboyish years," full fifty annuals ago, it was not till my pillow became unvisited by dreams that I called to mind the law of nature which requires two things before a third can be obtained. Lying awake one night, cogitating of this and that, perhaps of nothing at all, the vanity of this world, for example, I remembered some of my thoughts and occupations of other times, and particularly a matter which once interested me, and which has in various ways led me to think that

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamed of in your philosophy."

radise of those who cannot do well in this world, there was a swamp discovered of about ninety thousand acres, which it was possible I might have to drain. Accordingly, I contrived a gigantic syphon (that is, how to fill it), to be employed in that eventual undertaking, to carry off the water over the adjacent rising ground to a lower level; for I need not tell you, man of universal knowledge, that a swamp is surrounded with higher ground, and that if you cannot open from it a run for the water, you must somehow raise the water up, till you can send it off of its own accord.

My syphon, through which you might drive an omnibus, I apprehended might not be sufficient; and, in consequence, thought of another sort of syphon, with which, by artificial pressure, I might be able to eject the water on an elevation, to let it make the best of its way to a stream which did not empty itself into the swamp, but into a river that sought some one of the great lakes. So I made such a syphon, a pressuresyphon, which works under water, and likewise a machine to work it. It has

inconceivably more power than a pump, inasmuch as it drives water downwards in a constant stream, into a crooked conduit, by which it is raised, and it is more easily worked. Vessels, by the way, should have things like it, rather than pumps.

In considering how the pressuresyphon might be applied to other purposes than drainage, an explosion of a steamer in the harbour here sent many honest people one day a flying in the air without their skins, like the phantoms in La Volette's dream; and the accident begat in my fancy a notion of applying my pressure-syphon to the propulsion of vessels, instead of Watt's "chimera dire." In consequence, I began a course of hydrostatic experiments with this view, which, to use a modest expression much in use, "has been crowned with complete success." I tried, by publications and private applications, to get others to test my experiments; but you know, my gallant fel

that although heads of wood are not

"All as one as a piece of a ship." So, failing to meet with others who might become as wise as myself, I resolved to make such a model of brass as no man could gainsay. For this purpose I gave an order to an ingenious operative engineer to make one; but, before he had shewn half "the glory of his art," the newspapers informed me that a reverend amateur in Salisbury was treading fast on my heels; into which I put mettle, and shot a-head, by making a happy induction, namely, that, if artificial pressure, by weight, screw, or lever, force up water, natural pressure, though a much older bodie, must surely do as much; and I ruminated of the weight of the atmosphere upon the sea, and of one specific depth of ocean pressing upon the deeper, until I concluded that there must be a natural untried power applicable to many uses.

This did not surfeit me; on the contrary, it only served to shew the capacity of my pressure-syphon: so, one night, when I happened to be as wakeful and as poetical as the nightingale, making sonnets to the moon, I remembered, in the most extempore manner, a vision vouchsafed to me in early youth.

One day, when a tall boy of about six years old, I was standing on board a ship in the dry dock of that ettling town, Port Glasgow, looking down the main hatchway, to see the effect of water which a number of carpenters were laving against the outside of her bottom to discover a leak. I do not recollect in what way I came to know this; indeed, the object of their labour was probably ex post facto information; for I may not then have known that a leak, being dropsical, was not a bigbellied thing like a bailie. In looking down, however, to the stripped floor of the hold, I beheld at last the water well through. I remember the day, the place, and the ship; nor has the phenomenon ever faded from my memory. I have seen it in the Thames wherries, in Celtic ferry-boats, and particularly in forcing down flower-pots into tubs of water, I have also discovered it in spring-wells, in a great submarine effusion at La Valona, in Albania, as you may see in my Letters from the Levant, published in eras beyond the memory of book-buyers, and in numberless ways felt it to have

imnuli...

but it was not till, in the situation of King Henry V. in the old tuneful ballad, that I thought more about it than a minister of state thinks how the sun came to be in the firmament, as we see every day.

"As the king lay musing in his bed,
He bethought himself upon a time
Of a tribute that was due him from
France,

Which had not been paid for so long a
time."

But when I happened in that fytte to think of it, I said to myself, Caro amico mio!-that water was assuredly driven up through that leak by the carpenters, argol, the carpenters' power drove it, and something of the same nature must have driven the water up in the other cases. It must, therefore, be a greater force than the pressure of the atmosphere, otherwise the effect woud not have been observable. What can it be? It must be caused, in these latter cases, by the superincumbent weight of the sea, independent altogether of that of the atmosphere. Nature is too wise to make useless things. There must be a use for this power. What can that use be?

Having previously ascertained, by the pressure-syphon, that a certain degree of power was disposable, as a force that might be employed by pressure on the incompressibility of water, it occurred to me that, as this was immeasurably greater, it might be employed. to turn an upshot wheel, properly secured in a box, and that the axle of the wheel could be made to set paddles agoing. But, then, what was to be afterwards done with the water let in, when it came from performing its masterdom on the wheel. Here again the pressure-syphon, like Pallas cap-à-pié from the head of Jove, stepped in, and with the utmost courtesy offered to carry away the water received into a cistern, which has only to be placed under the level of the surface of the exterior sea-especially as then only the weight of water would have to be considered, the force being expended before it fell into the cistern.

This finished the FIRST DEPARTMENT of the sea-fed engine, namely, the water let in by a conduit from the bottom, turned the wheel in the box; and having done so, then fell into the cistern, from which

eiented

The SECOND DEPARTMENT was that of the cistern in which the pressuresyphon (or syphons) worked. I have various modifications of the pressuresyphon by me; but I need not trouble you with any other than the description of the last made, because it is the simplest,― merely a case, with sides of leather, like a common bellows, with a hole in the lower side, covered with a valve opening inwards; by which hole the water rises into the inside, and when pressed down, the valve shuts ; and the water, by its own incompressibility, naturally seeks to escape by a conduit, up which it rushes, and, like Lady Randolph, oppressed with woes, plunges headlong into the ocean, and is drowned.

The means of pressure for effecting this felo-de-se is simply a weight, raised as need requires by a crane or winch; when the valve opens, and the water enters into the ventricle of the syphon, and forces the upper cover to rise; when the cover is raised, the weight is then to be let down from the crane or winch upon the top, upper part, or cover of the ventricle, which it will again force down, and so on.

I have a contrivance to work the pressure-syphon, or syphons, in the cistern, by a wheel, over which may be placed a strap to connect it with the movable axle, or by a rack wheel, being simpler; but the mode here described is perhaps better. I am not quite all dead, however, to conviction on this point; for I think one of those

coomy creatures," viz. operative engineers, likely to make a better mechanical contrivance than any thing I can suggest. I am only a dabbler in principles.

The sea-fed engine being thus completed, I began to think that, as rates and relative dimensions could not be ascertained without experiment, perhaps the motion sought might be too slow to satisfy the impetuous desires of "honest travellers by sea." Of its existence there could be no doubt. So, recollecting that if a cause be increased, increased effect must follow; and the cause here being pressure, it occurred to me that, by adding artificial pressure, the water might be rendered an agent to increase the power obtained by that which welled up from the bottom of the ship

making a cylinder communicating by another aperture in the bottom, through that of the vessel, with the sea. Up this aperture the water would well and fill the cylinder. I then supposed a valve over this aperture, opening upwards, which valve would of itself shut so soon as a piston in the cylinder was pressed down upon the water. The water would then endeavour by a conduit to get along to the wheel, fly in the most impassioned style up the wheel, driving it before it, and finally go to pot in the cistern, wherein lay the pressure-syphons, daidling till then at their ease. The screw by which I supposed the piston forced down I thought should be worked as a capstan by sailors for pastime, where they could be had, as in a ship of war; but in common cases the pressure might be effectuated by the movable paddle axle, turning and returning a screw with a wheel head, which any operative engineer could make; and the piston in the cylinder would work like that of a spouting gun, with which young dragoon officers are supposed to be well acquainted.

You will, it is to be hoped, see much in the foregoing for meditation, even to madness, among those kind of handlers of hot iron who call themselves engineers; and I expect, also, you will discern that there is more merit in finding a use for a natural power, which has been visible since Noah built the ark, that earliest and first work of genius, than in discovering another reason than ripeness and wind for apples falling from the trees. Indeed, I wonder why the world makes more ado about those vagabonds the comets, and the grave bodies of the circuit, ycleped planets, connected though they be with the Newtonian theory, than a safe and expeditious mode of "sailing the world all round.” But it is time I should now conclude; promising, however, that on some future occasion, when "Old Philosophorum is in the humour, to send you another disquisition as instructive.

Yours, &c. JOHN GALT. N.B. In reading over the foregoing, I perceive that, by using the word "cylinder" and "piston," I may suggest ideas of bigger things than I mean. I therefore request it may be me in mind, that I am constantiv