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‘WATER.
“ ‘ Water, in all circumstances, is of a nobler
nature than the dull earth. It is purer, more ac
tive, more etherial, and moie nearly allied to
spirit. Its native disposition is more celestial;
it takes its place above the rock and the clod, and
more easily mounts and mingles with the pure
splendors of heaven. It is less grovelling and
less gross, less sellishless, full of itself, and opens
its bosom to the fair forms of the forest and the
sky. It is indre rellective, and more suggestive
of reflection. Its associations are more dignified.
It enters into partnership with the sun and the
clouds, the moon and the stars, to accomplish its
purposes, and paints its image on the heavens, or
in its own equally pure bosom. If it admits a
mountain or an oak to more than a passing acquan
tance, it first softens and spiritualizes their gross
er natures, and embraces rather the. fair image of
its own creation, than the ruder originals. In
.fact, with the true “ csscmplaslic power” of genius,
it merely takes its hints and materials from the
gross world of sense, and produces its forms of
beauty and light by a transforming, glorifying
power of its own. In its cosmetic waves the
coarsest features and the meanest objects become
delicate, and the noblest receive anew glory.
‘“Seeks not the moon and glorious sun
In the crystal deeps to lave ?
Hath not his face anew glory won,
Fresh mounting from the wave ?
And charm thee not the heavens, that sleep
In wave-transfigured blue ?
And charm thee not thine eyes, that peep
From out the eternal dew ?”
Water is of a nobler nature. How simple, clear,
and unsophisticated, and yet how mighty V
Though it has at its command all the colors of
the spectrum, all the forms of space, and all the
energies of nature, how unpretending and how
plain ! Although it knows how to clothe heaven
with unaccustomed glory, and can spread out a
sunset in its waves, which the west never equal
led, its ordinary dress is plainrtes even to invisi
bility, Although ordinarily silent, or speaking in
whispers of the softest melody, it knows how to
wake the echoes of the world with its awful roar;
and the gentle playmate of a child, when roused,
can dash navies to atoms, and “thunder-strike
the walls of rock-built cities.”
“ ‘ Water is a lover and a friend of freedom. It
received the boon from its Creator and unlike
servile man, has retained it unimpaired. How it
plays around the world in its untamed liberty!
In brooks and rivers it goes dancing down the
mountains, and through the broad plains. In
seas and oceans it refuses to be still,* and tosses
its spray, and rolls its tides, in unwearied enjoy
ment of unrestrained motion. It mounts *the
skies and roams through the heavens—it descends
through the rocks and investigates the structure
of the earth —it takes possession of the middle
air, and rides on the wings of the whirlwind—it
sports with the frost, and continues even in solid
ity to play “ such fantastic tricks,” as solids
never elsewhere played. Everywhere it is the
same free mocker of restraint. Catch it if you
will, confine it and rouse its rage by letting loose
its ancient enemy, the fire, and it will burst the
world rather than submit. But the crowning vir
tue of water is its moral character. With a mod
esty that increases in proportion as it maintains
the purity of its nature, it hides itself from view,
even while it is beautifying the dull rocks that
look into its waves. It knows how to combine
softness and pliancy, and an insinuating address
with perseverance and unwearied pursuit of its
appointed course. Although cramped and ob
structed at every turn by the sharp corners and
impudent perversities ol hardhearted rocks, it
gently adapts its efforts to circumstances, and
gradually wears down the asperities of the most
iron opposHion. Where it can gain admission
but by single drops, it not only works itself a
passage, but by the power of unconquerable gentle
ness, it transforms its ancient and hardened ene
my into a brilliant resemblance to its own purity.
Again, tortured to an intolerable excess by the
incursion of boiling lava from some subterranean
crater, in awful fury it takes to itself its more
spiritual form, and with the energy of an angry
god, uproots mountains, and dashes their ancient
foundations to the sky.’ ”
A PICTURE OF WINTER.
“ The winter did not pass without its peculiar
delights and recreations. The singing of the
great wood fires; the blowing of the wind over
the chimney-tops, as if they were organ pipes;
the splendor of the spotless snow; the purple
wall built round the horizon at sunset; the sea
suggesting pines, with the moan of the billows in
their branches, on which the snows were furled
like sails; the northern lights; the stars .of steel;
the transcendant moonlight, and the lovely shad
ows of the leafless trees upon the snow ; —these
things did not pass unnoticed nor unremember
ed. Every one of them made its record upon the
heart of Mr. Churchill.
“ His twilight walks, his long Saturday after
noon rambles, had again become solitary; for
Kavanagh was lost to him for such purposes, and
his wife was one of those who never walk. Some
. times he went down to the banks of the frozen
river, and saw the farmers crossing it with their
heavy-laden sleds, and the Fairmeadow schooner
imbedded in the ice; and thought of Lapland
sledges, and the song of Kulnasatz, and the dis
mantled, ice-locked vessels of the explorers in
the Arctic Ocean. Sometimes he went to the
neighboring lake, anci saw the skateis wheeling
round their fire, and speeding away before the
wind, and in his imagination arose images of Nor
wegian Skate-Runners, bearing the tidings of
King Charles’s death from ETederiekshall to
Drontheim, and of the retreating Swedish army,
frozen to death in its fireless tents among the
mountains. And then he would watch the cut
ting of the ice with ploughs, and the horses drag
ging the huge blocks to the store-houses, and
contrast them with the Grecian mules, bearing
the snows of Mount Parnassus to the markets of
Athens, in panniers protected from the sun by
boughs of oleander and rhododendron.”
< I believe that a philosopher,’ says Mr. D’ls
raeli, ‘would consent to lose any poet to regain an
historian.’ Perhaps so ; if the exchange were
always between a Claudian and a Tacitus. But
the latter must be great indeed, to outweigh a
Homer, a Shakspeare, or a Milton. ‘ Fancy may
be supplied,’ he remarks, ‘ but truth once lost in
the annals of mankind, leaves a chasm never to
be filled.’ We fear that the fancy of the highest
poetry is not quite so promptly made to order;
while, on the other hand, Niebuhr has pretty
clearly shown that history is far from being al
ways truth; not to mention that, if it were so,
the highest creations of poetry —those of a Ho
mer or a Shakspeare —embody truth yet more
comprehensive and universal than any consigned
to the page of history. Montaigne remarks in
one of his essays, that the value of history does
not consist in the bare facts it records, but in the
instruction the facts are capable of conveying;
and this is so true, that the parts of history which
are positively fabulous are often more full of sig
nificance, and have really had more influence than
the most accurate recital of the bare facts. Plu
tarch has, we suspect, with all his credulity and
love of fable, really exerted more powder over the
minds of men than any of the more authentic his
torians of antiquity. The graphic account which
Livy has left of the discordant counsels given to
the Samnites by Herennius Pontius respecting
the disposal of the Romans taken at the pass of
Candium, has, perhaps, as much historic truth in
it as any other of the ‘ thousand and one ’ legends
which his historic muse (rightly so called) has
seized and adorned; but the whole is infinitely
more instructive and more impressive than any
narrative of the negotiations for a surrender of
prisoners of war, with which tame history has
supplied us. That the fox spoke to the crane
what is attributed to him in the fable, is very
doubtful ; and that some ‘ nobody ’ killed some
other ‘nobody’ may be very certain ; but the fa
ble, in the one case, is full of meaning, and the
fact of history may be wholly insignificant. In
our own age, honorably distinguished as one of
severe historic research, and which has produced
more than one historic work, and one very re
cently, which posterity will reckon among its
treasures, it is well that historians, while accu
rately distinguishing truth from fable, should nei
ther forget the beauties nor the uses of the latter;
nor, on the other hand, overwhelm us with tedi
ously minute investigations of insignificant facts,
which no one cares for, and which it does not
matter whether they happened in this way or
that, or not at all. In the department of history
there is no more frequent cause of that plethora
of books under which the world is groaning.—
Walter Scott’s remarks on his own Life of Napo
leon are true in their principle, whatever we
may think of the application of them: ‘Superfi
cial it must be, but I do not care for the charge.
Better a superficial book, which brings well and
strikingly together the known and acknowledged
facts, than a dull boring narrative, pausing to see
farther into a mill-stone every moment than the
nature of the mill-stone admits. Nothing is so
tiresome as walking through some beautiful scene
with a minute philosopher, a botanist, or pebble
gatherer, -who is eternally calling }mur attention
from the great features of the natural picture, to
look at grasses and chucky-stones.’ If Niebuhr
had given us, by his matchless acuteness of in
vestigation and boundless learning, nothing more
than the correction of minute dates and the true
version of petty events, his powers would have
been sadly wasted.
WENHAM LAKE ICE.
I should like to know what you are about now
in Salem. lam reminded of Salem whenever
I go down the strand, by the sign of the Wenham
Lake Ice Company, and a large block of ice
which appears at the window. In passing the
shop, the other day, on the box of an omnibus, I
heard a very person, who sat on the
other side of the driver, gravely inform him that
this ice came from the West Indies ; very mar
vellous geographical knowledge ! This block of
ice is about eighteen inches square, and about
twelve think. The Londoners look upon it with
amazement. lam told they sometimes go into
the shop after gazing through the window, and
put their hands on it, to be sure that it is not glass.
Many consider it, likewise, a sort of miracle, for
they don’t see that it diminishes, not having a
suspicion that the cunning Connecticut Yankee
who exhibits it, takes a Inew piece out of the re
frigerator every morning.—
CAM ELINA SATIVA.
Notes on the culture of the Camclina Sativa , or
Gold of Pleasure, native of Siberia.
The quantity required to sow an acre is ten
pounds, and the produce in ordinary lands is
about five quarters (forty bushels) per acre —
weight is from fifty-six to sixty pounds per bush
el—must be free from dust or other seeds. Ihe
plant is annual, growing from two and a halt to
three feet high; the soils best suited to its cultiva
tion are those of a light nature, but a crop will
never fail on land ot the most inferior descrip
tion. It will grow upon barren sandy soils where
no other vegetable would grow, and notwithstan
ding a long drought, the plant grows most luxuri
antly, yielding a large and certain crop. When
grown upon land that has been long in tillage and
well farmed, the crop will be most abundant.
The best time for putting in the seed in England
is in the Spring, say March. It should be drilled
in rows nine inches apart, and when sown, watch
ed to prevent the depredations ot birds, who are
very fond of this seed. As soon as the plant is
grown to five or six inches, a hand or horse hoe
may be used to cut up the weeds between the
rows, and no further culture is required. The
crop will be fit to harvest early in July in this
climate, and the farmers can have the important
advantage of a crop of turnips afterwards. It is
a plant that can be cultivated after any corn
(grain) crop, it being proved to be a non-exhaus
ter of the soil. It may be sown with all sorts of
clover. Being particularly small, every thing
underneath it having uninterrupted grovyth, it is
removed early, and the clover has time to estab
lish itself.
The grower of this valuable plant is in all sea
sons sure of a crop, inasmuch as it is not sub
ject to damage by spring frosts, heavy rains, or
above all the ravages of insects, particularly the
cabbage louse (xAphis Borussica) which so fre
quently destroys rape, turnips, &c., when coming
into bloom.
The seed is ripe as soon as the pods change
from a green to a gold color, and care must be
taken to cut it before it becomes too ripe, or much
seed may be lost. As soon as it becomes ripe,
it must be protected from birds (where they are
numerous,) and when cut with the sickle, it is
bound in sheaves and stacked in the same man
ner as wheat; and the process of ripening com
pleted, is thrashed like other grains.
In a warm climate two or even three crops would
be obtained. The straw may be turned into
good account by cutting up into chaff, when ex
cellent food is produced of a very nutritious na
ture, as the stalks abound in a gelatinous sub
stance as well as the chaff*; or it can be burnt
into ashes or made into manure/ The stalks be
ing duarble make good thatches for ricks, &c.
It can be hand sown but answers better in
drills.
Extract of a letter dated London, sth April,
1849 :
“ The seed is very scarce and difficult to ob
tain, I wish you to get someone of extensive
ideas and means to try it in various soils, so as to
go into it largely x upon ascertaining beyond doubt
the produce per acre. I could now make a con
tract with a first rate house here for 50,000 quar
ters.
“ The sample sent cost 4d. per lb., and very
little to be had. I have to send to the continent
for it. As ordinary merchandise, it will sell by
the quantity for not less, or probably near the price
of Flaxseed.”
A TRAVELLER IN CLOVER.
You see the date of my letter (Nottinghamshire)
and I have seldom in my life passed a more agree
able Sunday. I have been twice at church, and
am staying with the clergymen. He is a gentle
men of fortune, and though without title himself,
he married a lady of rank, and his family are al
lied bv blood or marriage to some of the highest,
aristocracy in the kingdom. He specially invited
me to come and pass a few days with him ; and
I came by appointment yesterday, and shall leave
to-morrow, as my engagements do not admit of
longer delay, though he has urged me to remain.
He has a small church; a parish with the excep
tion of a few families, composed principally of
tenant farmers and laborers. His salarv is <£9oo,
that is about $4,500, and a house and glebe of
about forty acres. His father, a man of great
wealth, lives directly in his neighborhood. Ima
gine a beautiful country, not naturally fertile, but
made one of the most productive by cultivation,
and everywhere covered with a luxriant vegeta
tion ; imagine roads as fine as can be trodden,
without a pebble to impede the carriage, and
bounded with green and neatly trimmed hedges;
imagine here and there a substantial farm-house,
surrounded with acres and acres of green crops,
and many of them with stacks of wheat and bar
ley made in the most finished and beautiful man
ner, in some cases twenty, thirty, and even forty
in number, containing, by estimate, two hundred
and three hundred bushels of grain each (I am
only stating facts); imagine your approach to a
large cluster of ornamental trees, through which
you see the turrets of the house rising, and occa
sionally appearing and disappearing as you ap
proach ; imagine several smooth avenues,border
ed with shrubs and flowers of the richest descrip
tion ; imagine an extensive lawn, stretching far
away in front of one side of the house, as smooth
as Milton describes it, with the sheep and cattle?
gazing upon if; imagine a beautiful mirrored
lake of half a mile in length and with correspon
ding width, glistening and sparkling at the f oot
of the lawn ; imagine a grove of magnifio ent
forest trees, in the rear of the parsonage, with the
tower of the old church mantled with ivy, show
ing its grey and venerable image? among [these
trees, with its churchyard, and marble and moss
grown monuments, where Old Mortality
find congenial employment for days and months
and you will have some little notion of the exte
rior of my transient resting place. Now enter
the house, and find the libraries stored with books
and the drawing-rooms, elegant in their plainest
attire, but crowded with the most beautiful ob
jects of ornament and curiosity, and fitted up
with every possible appendage of luxury and
comfort; imagine an elegant dining-room, the ta
ble covered with the richest plate, and this plate
filled with the richest viands which the culinary
art and the vintage and the fruit-garden can suji
ply; imagine a horse at your disposal, a servant
at your command to anticipate every want; im
agine an elegant bed-chamber, a bright coal-fire,
fresh water in basins,'in goblets, in tubs, napkins
without stint as white as snow, a double inattrass,
a French bed, sheets el the finest linen, a canopy
of the richest silk, a table portfolio, writing ap
paratus and stationary, allumettes, a night-lamp,
candles and silver condlesticks, and beautiful
paintings and exquisite statuary, and every kind
of chair or sofa but a rocking-chair, and then
you will have some little notion of the place
where I now am, and indeed a pretty aeourate
and not exaggerated description of my residences
for the last three weeks—four weeks—five weeks
—three months —I cannot say how loner, and
then judge whether it is not likely entirely to
spoil me. For the last fortnight, for example,
with the exception of one day, I have dined off
nothing but silver and porcelain, and have sat
down each day to a table as sumptuous and abun
dant, and various and elegant as 1 ever saw at
any dinner-party in Boston ; indeed, more so,
and much of the time with a large party of la
dies and gentlemen, as elegant in dress and man
ners as you can meet with; never with less than
four men-servants, many times with eight or ten,
and in one case I counted eleven, eight of whom
were in elegant livery, trimmed with silver and
with silver epaulettes, &c., &c.”
ADVERTISEMENTS OF THE TIMES.
The advertising in the Times is a source of
immense income, as an advertisement is paid for
at the same price for every insertion, and not as
with us by a gradually diminished scale, on repe
tition.
“Eight times out of nine, the Times publishes
a supplement, and very frequently two supple
ments, almost exclusively devoted to advertise
ments. The charge for advertising is always
considerable, though there is included a heavy
duty to the government. Each column of adver
tisements, after the duty to the government is de
ducted, may be expected to pay at least twelve
pounds sterling, or say sixty dollars. Now, in
counting the columns in the times, with its two
supplements, which lays before me, I find seventy
six columns of advertisements. This would be
£912, or $4,560, for the advertisements in this
single paper ; now, two-thirds of this sum, say for
three hundred days, would be $912,000. Add to
this, the proceeds ol twenty-five thousand papers
sold, after allowing the government tax, which
would he $1,750 per day, and would he, by the
year, $546,000, making a total of the receipts for
a single newspaper establishment, of $1,455,000.
What do you say to this ?
“Proposals for carrying the mail!” exclaimed
Mrs. Partington, in atone of virtuous indignation,
as she happened to glance over an .advertisement
in one ol the papers. “ Has it come this, that us
poor unfortunate emitters are to be made beasts of
burden, to carry about a pack of good-for-nothing
mail men on our backs?” She threw down the
paper and rose hastily from the chair and took
snuff* at a prodigious rate ; highly excited at the
degrading proposition.
BOOK AND JOB PRINTING,
Os all kinds, executed at this Office, with neatuenm and
‘despatch.
HAVING lately put our Office in complete order
and made large additions to it, we have now the most ex
tensive Job Printing Office in the City and are prepared to
execute all kinds of PLAIN AND FANCY PRINTING,
with neatness and despatch, and on the most accomodating
terms. Office 10*2 Bryan-street, entrance on Bay Lane.
Savannah, March 22d, 1849. EDWARD J. PURSE.
A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY,
A WEEKLY SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER, PUBLISHED
EVERY THURSDAY, BY
EDWARD J. PURSE.
TERMS:—T WO DOLLARS A YEAR.
Three Copies for one year, or one copy three years, $5 00
Seven Copies, - - - - - - 10 0)
Twelve Copies, 15 00
*** Advertisements to a limited extent, will be inserted
at the rate of 50 cents for a square of nine lines or less, for
the first insertion, and 30 cents for each subsequent insertion.
Business cards inserted for a year at Five Dollars.
IdF 3 A liberal discount will be made to Post Masters who
will do us the favor to act as Agents.
E3F° All communications to be addressed (post-paid) to
E. J. PURSE, Savannah, Ga-