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Ml *Ol ft ft ASM !■ ‘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-