Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. IX.—February, 1851.—Vol. II.

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Various. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. IX.—February, 1851.—Vol. II.

THE TRAVELER; OR, A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY

AN INVITATION TO THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

DEATH OF HOWARD THE PHILANTHROPIST.1

A SKETCH OF MY CHILDHOOD

THE HISTORY AND MYSTERY OF THE GLASS-HOUSE

AN EXCELLENT MATCH; OR, THE BLESSINGS OF BAD LUCK

ANECDOTES OF WORDSWORTH

MODERN MUMMIES. – A VISIT TO THE TOMBS OF BORDEAUX

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHANTREY, THE SCULPTOR

SAILING IN THE AIR. – HISTORY OF AERONAUTICS

RECOLLECTIONS OF SIR ROBERT PEEL

THE MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT

AN APOLOGY FOR BURNS

A TALE OF SHIPWRECK

THE GIPSY IN THE THORN-BUSH

VISIT TO A COLLIERY

THE KAFIR TRADER; OR, THE RECOIL OF AMBITION

THE WOODSTREAM

THE TALISMAN. – A FAIRY TALE

MICHELET, THE FRENCH HISTORIAN

FREAKS OF NATURE

LAND, HO! – A SKETCH OF AUSTRALIA

THE CLIMATE OF CANADA

A WINTER VISION

A LITTLE STIMULANT. – A TEMPERANCE TALE

MAURICE TIERNAY, THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE

CHAPTER XXI. OUR ALLIES

CHAPTER XXII. THE DAY OF "CASTLEBAR."

SKETCHES FROM LIFE

I. THE OLD GOVERNESS

II. THE COLLEGIAN

III. THE MAID-SERVANT

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

ON BIRDS, BALLOONS, AND BOLUSES

CAROL FOR THE NEW YEAR

THE EDIBLE BIRDS'-NESTS OF CHINA

THE PASSION FOR COLLECTING BOOKS

A BACHELOR'S CHRISTMAS

CRAZED

ACTORS AND THEIR SALARIES

ENCOUNTER WITH AN ICEBERG

THE DOG AND DEER OF THE ARMY

Monthly Record of Current Events

THE UNITED STATES

MEXICO

GENERAL VIEW OF THE STATES OF EUROPE

GREAT BRITAIN

FRANCE

GERMANY

ITALY

SPAIN

UNITED STATES

GREAT BRITAIN

FRANCE

GERMANY, Etc

Literary Notices

Fashions for Later Winter

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On the 5th of July, 1789, Howard quitted England to return no more. Arriving at Amsterdam on the 7th, he proceeded by slow stages through Germany and Prussia into the empire of the Czar, which he entered at Riga. He was destined never more to quit the soil of Russia. The tremendous destruction of human life to which the military system of that country gives rise, had not then, as it has since, become a recognized fact in Western Europe; and the unconceived and inconceivable miseries to which Howard found recruits and soldiers exposed in Moscow, induced him to devote his attention to them and to their cause. In these investigations horrors turned up of which he had never dreamed, and impressed him still more profoundly with a sense of the hollowness of the Russian pretense of civilization. In the forced marches of recruits to the armies over horrid roads, being ill-clothed and worse fed, he found that thousands fell sick by the way, dropped at the roadside, and were either left there to die of starvation, or transferred to miserable hospitals, where fever soon finished what fatigue had begun. This waste of life was quite systematic. An hospital for the reception of the poor wretches had recently been erected at Krementschuk, a town on the Dnieper, which contained at that time 400 patients in its unwholesome wards. Thither Howard repaired to prosecute his new inquiries. The rooms he found much too full; many of the soldiers were dreadfully ill of the scurvy, yet they were all dieted alike, on sour bread and still sourer quas, alternated with a sort of water-gruel, which, if not eaten one day, was served up again the next. From this place, Howard went down the Dnieper to Cherson, where he examined all the prisons and hospitals, and made various excursions in the neighborhood for the same purpose. The hospitals were worthy of the evil which they were designed to alleviate. Our countryman thus sums up his observations upon them: "The primary objects in all hospitals seem here neglected – namely, cleanliness, air, diet, separation, and attention. These are such essentials, that humanity and good policy equally demand that no expense should be spared to procure them. Care in this respect, I am persuaded, would save many more lives than the parade of medicines in the adjoining apothecary's shop."

While at Cherson, Howard had the profound gratification of reading in the public prints of the capture and fall of the Bastille; and he talked with delight of visiting its ruins and moralizing upon its site, should he be again spared to return to the West. But, however moved by that great event, so important for all Europe, he did not allow it to divert him from his own more especial work; the sufferings of poor Russian soldiers in the hospitals of Cherson, Witowka, and St. Nicholas, had higher claim upon his notice at that moment, than even the great Revolution making in the Faubourg St. Antoine at Paris.

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No less than twenty workmen are engaged in these operations, and during the whole time the apartment is kept perfectly still, lest a motion of any kind should set the air in motion, the slightest disturbance of the surface of the plate being calculated to impair its value. "The spectacle of such a vast body of melted glass," observes Mr. Parks, "poured at once from an immense crucible, on a metallic table of great magnitude, is truly grand; and the variety of colors which the plate exhibits immediately after the roller has passed over it, renders this an operation more splendid and interesting that can possibly be described."15

To attempt the briefest outline of the vast number of objects that are composed of glass, and the variety of processes to which the material is subjected in their production, would carry us far beyond the limits within which we are unavoidably confined. Even the most trifling articles of daily use, apparently very simple in their formation, involve many elaborate details. Take a watch, for example. The history from the furnace to the workshop, of those parts of a watch which are composed of glass, is full of curious particulars. The watch-glass maker exercises a function distinct from any one of those we have hitherto been considering. He receives from the blower an accurate hollow globe of glass, measuring eight inches in diameter, and weighing exactly twelve ounces, which is the guarantee at once of the regularity and thinness of the material. Upon the surface of this globe the watch-glass maker traces with a piece of heated wire, sometimes with a tobacco pipe, as many circles of the size he requires as the globe will yield, and wetting the lines while they are yet warm, they instantly crack, and the circles are at once separated. He finds the edges rough, but that is got rid of by trimming them with a pair of scissors. The circles thus obtained are deficient, however, in the necessary convexity; he accordingly reheats them, and, with an instrument in each hand, beats or moulds them into the precise form desired, much in the same manner as a dairy-maid, with her wooden spoons beats a pat of butter into shape. The edges are now ground off, and the watch-glass is complete. The preparation of the dial, which is composed of opaque white glass, ordinarily known as enamel, is a much more complicated work, involving several minute processes and a larger expenditure of time. Upon both sides of a thin plate of slightly convex copper, bored with holes for the key, and the hour and minute hands, is spread with a spatula a coat of pounded glass which has gone through several stages of solution and purification before it is ready for application. In the management of this operation, and the absorption of any moisture that may linger in the enamel, considerable care and delicacy of hand are necessary. As soon as the dial-plate is perfectly dried it is put into the furnace to be heated gradually. These processes of firing and enameling must be repeated altogether three times before the work is finished; after which the lines and divisions for the hours and minutes are marked upon the surface by a totally different process. We have here merely touched the principal points in the formation of dial-plates; the details are too complex for enumeration.

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