ment.) The people lay the land over in furrows, by successive movements of hand and foot; but of course the line is not drawn in a continuous form. The great difficulty in providing their implements was the scarcity of timber, of which none grew in the island, and they had consequently to send to the mainland for it. As a proof of its value, he might mention that the shaft or handle of the 'crass-croom' (which is a piece of wood about the size of a broomstick) would cost 3s. 6d. From the scantiness of the soil, they did not of course produce heavy crops; but here he would instance the ingenuity of the people in making the best of their position. He had seen as good produce of potatoes, barley, or rather bere or bigg-for the new kinds of barley were unknown to them-and oats, as in any part of the country; and they managed to produce these results by the skill with which they prepared the manure. It was efficacious, in the first instance, in the raising of potatoes, and afterwards it produced a fine barley crop. When the barley was ripe, they did not cut it, as was the case clsewhere, but pulled it up by the roots, and tied the whole up in sheaves. When it was won,' and ready for the stalk, the straw was then cut from the sheaves below the band, which had this advantage, that it enabled them to stow away the grain in small bulk -a matter of no small moment in a country exposed to so much wind and rain. After the grain itself had been thus preserved, they took the straw which had been cut from it and placed it on the roofs of their houses. They laid it loosely on, just as the farmers here spread it over the top of a stalk, and then tied it down with ropes spun from the heath. In this position it was exposed to the smoke of their peat fires.

It

requisite to boil their contents when placed on the fire.
(Mr Smith showed a specimen.) They also made their
creels for carrying out their manure, and for other uses;
and when he showed one of them, the audience would be
surprised to hear they were made of the stem of the dock,
or docken.' So much was this plant prized amongst them,
that when it grew between the possessions of two farmers,
the docks were carefully divided between them. There
was not a willow in the island; and the dock, therefore,
was very much prized for its usefulness. They answered
for the women when they went to market, as well as for
carrying potatoes and manure. Another mode of the people
of Lewis was that of feeding their cows on sea-ware.
was just the dulse tangle, which they had often seen sold
on the streets of Glasgow; and it was no unusual thing,
when a woman went out to milk the cows, to take some of
this dulse tangle, which the animal consumed with great
satisfaction while the process of milking was in progress.
The lecturer then exhibited a large bag in use in Lewis,
which was made of the stem of the bent-grass, and spun in
the long winter nights; they were used for keeping the
corn in, and carrying such portions of it to market as they
were able to spare for sale. He might state that there was
only one distillery on the island, which took up all the sur-
plus of the barley crop. After giving a few geological de-
tails, Mr Smith stated that the population extended to
17,000 souls, and there were 270,000 acres of land, which,
if improved as it might be, would maintain twice the num-
ber of people in more comfort than they were at present.
He hoped that the period of this improvement was not far
distant; and that when they went to visit Lewis, they
would find it a green pastoral land instead of a dreary
waste. Mr Smith concluded his lecture, and exhibition
of specimens and implements from the primitive Lewis,
amidst much applause.

TASTE FOR READING.

In Lewis there were no fireplaces such as we are acquainted with. The fire was placed in the middle of the room, and there were no vents; but instead, a number of holes were ranged round the top of the side-wall. When the smoke ascended, therefore, as it did by means of its lightness, and a portion of it was forced back, it escaped by means of these holes. A great deal of it, however, made its way up through the straw on the roof; and when apIf I were to pray for a taste which should stand by me proaching one of these little towns, he could compare its in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a appearance to nothing more likely than that presented by source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, the smoke arising from a cluster of heated grain stacks. and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, This straw became very valuable, from the great conden- and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for readsation of ammonia and other products which took place in ing. I speak of it, of course, only as a worldly advantage, it. The people of Lewis planted their potatoes without and not in the slightest degree derogating from the higher any manure whatever; but when the plant had got up to office and sure and stronger panoply of religious principles, the length of two or three inches, a general unroofing of but as a taste, an instrument, and a mode of pleasurable the houses took place, and the straw which had been pre- gratification. Give a man this taste, and the means of paring there all the season was thrown upon the drills; it gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a was rarely covered up, excepting in windy weather, when happy man, unless, indeed, you put into his hand a most a slight sprinkling was put upon it to prevent its being perverse selection of books. You place him in contact blown away. Well, this manure gets into the soil imme-with the best society in every period of history; with the diately, and the potatoes forthwith come up with the wisest, the wittiest, with the tenderest, the bravest, and greatest luxuriance. The people of Lewis, however, had the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You another kind of manure than that described; they had the make him a denizen of all nations-a cotemporary of all manure which was produced from their cows; and he ages. The world has been created for him. It is hardly might here mention, that in their care of it they evinced a possible but the character should take a higher and better degree of intelligence superior to that of farmers of much tone from the constant habit of associating in thought with higher pretensions, for they kept it constantly covered up; a class of thinkers, to say the least of it, above the average and each and all had joined in the opinion, that if it was of humanity. It is morally impossible but that the manexposed, it lost to a great extent its efficacy. Some of the ners should take a tinge of good breeding and civilisation best agriculturists were about to follow this plan of keep from having constantly before our eyes the way in which ing the manure constantly covered up. In Lewis they fol- the best-bred and best-informed men have talked and conlowed a strict rotation of cropping. They had first potatoes, ducted themselves in their intercourse with each other. then barley or bigg, and then oats-constituting a three There is a gentle, but perfectly irresistible coercion, in a years' shift. According to this rotation they had grown habit of reading well-directed, over the whole tenor of a their crops for a hundred years, and one might naturally man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual suppose that the lands would be worn out by it; but this because it works insensibly, and because it is really the was not the case, for they had generally good crops, and last thing he dreams of. It cannot be better summed up last year it was an extraordinary one. There had been than in the words of the Latin poet-Emollit mores, nec inhospitable seasons certainly, in which the crops entirely sinit esse feros.' It civilises the conduct of men, and failed, and great distress followed; but, generally speaking, suffers them not to remain barbarous.-Sir J. Herschel. their crops were excellent. On the whole, there was no doubt that if these people were properly directed in the best modes of cultivation, they would, with their habits of industry, make rapid progress. So much for the agriculture of Lewis. As to their manufactures, he might state that they made their own dishes or vessels from the clay found amongst the granite gravel. They fashioned the vessel merely with the finger and thumb; and the strength and thinness with which they were made, proved the quality of their clay. They turned over the neck or mouth, and by putting a cord, or rather a leathern thong round it, they were enabled to carry the vessel from place to place, containing water or milk; and they also stood the heat

FIRE-FLIES.

As I gazed, the air burst into atoms of green fire before my face, and in an instant they were gone: I turned round, and saw all the woods upon the mountains illuminated with ten thousands of flaming torches moving in every direction, now rising, now falling, vanishing here, reappearing there, converging to a globe, and dispersing in spangles. No man can conceive, from dry description alone, the magical beauty of these glorious creatures. So far from their effects having been exaggerated by travellers, I can say that I never read an account, in prose or verse, which in the least prepared me for the reality. There are

EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.

No. 52. NEW SERIES.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1844.

ADVERTISING CONSIDERED AS AN ART. 'GENIUS,' says Dr Johnson in the fortieth number of the Idler, is shown only by invention. The man who first took advantage of the general curiosity that was excited by a siege or battle, to betray the readers of news into the knowledge of the shop where the best puffs and powder were to be sold, was undoubtedly a man of great sagacity, and profound skill in the nature of man.' It must be a source of some regret to the advertising world, that the name of the inventor of their art has been hidden behind the veil of dim antiquity. Who wrote and published the first recommendation of his own intellectual acquirements, or of his own wares, cannot be ascertained; but whoever he was, he has found in succeeding ages a legion of imitators; and 'every man,' continues the learned doctor, writing three-quarters of a century ago, now knows a ready method of informing the public of all that he desires to buy or sell, whether his wares be material or intellectual -whether he makes clothes, or teaches the mathematics -whether he be a tutor that wants a pupil, or a pupil that wants a tutor.' After saying that advertisements were in his day so numerous, that they were very negligently perused, the Idler adds, that the trade of advertising is so near to perfection, that it is not easy to propose any improvement.' Time has proved that in this speculation the doctor was much in error.

PRICE 14d.

·

He, therefore, who can make himself most notorious, is the best advertiser; he, in short, who takes care that you shall not open a public print without his own name and that of his wares staring you full in the face; nay, more; if you go into the street, that the same words shall meet you at every turn. Men, looking like animated sandwiches-squeezed in as they are between two boards, conspicuously inscribed with huge invitations to Try Potts's pills'-slowly parade the streets. If you turn to look at the progress of a new building, you will see the boarding covered with Potts's pills.' If you make a purchase of a perfumer, you will be sure to find it is wrapped in a paper, setting forth the wonderful cures that have been effected by Potts's pills.' In short, you seem condemned to be perpetually taking ocular doses of Potts's pills, till you are as familiar with the name of Potts as you are with that of Newton or of Shakspeare. What is your case is nearly everybody's; and the name of Potts becomes famous throughout the empire. Thus it is that many men whose humble occupations would, without the art of advertising, have condemned them to the darkest obscurity, have become notorious, if not celebrated. No one can deny that the names of those very respectable blacking - makers of High Holborn, Messrs Day and Martin, are quite as well known to the public at large as Scott of Abbotsford, and Wellington of Waterloo. Such are amongst the glories of advertising, when that art is vigorously carried out!

The very numerous' collection of announcements which led him into these mistakes, was doubtless dis- At the same time, it must not be denied that the implayed in the pages of the Public Advertiser—a news-portunity of advertisers sometimes gives rise to a dispaper about half the size of this Journal, and which taste for their names-too much familiarity has bred contained on an average from ten to fifteen advertise- contempt. At the next unexpected view of the capital ments in each number. The leading journal of modern OP,' which begins the ubiquitous name of Potts, you times publishes on an average from 700 to 1000 an- are apt to turn away your head, or throw down the nouncements every day, or from 208,000 to 364,000 paper in disgust. Hence the proficient artist, when every year! As to the perfection which the art was he finds his name getting unpopular by having had supposed to have attained, the best specimen of adver- it too ostentatiously paraded before the public eye, tising the doctor could produce was that of a wash-ball, insidiously clothes his advertisements in an apparent which was declared to give an 'exquisite edge to the anecdote, a paragraph of important information, or a razor.' This, our readers will at once perceive, is sur- piece of startling intelligence; by which expedient he passed by the most commonplace productions of the leads on his readers to a perusal of the virtues of the present day. The vender, also, of the beautifying article he sells, almost in spite of their eyes. Thus fluid' mentioned by the Idler-who, with a generous the unwary are sometimes entrapped into perusing a abhorrence of ostentation, confessed that, though it pos- description of the wonderful effects of a new patent mesesses wonderful powers over cutaneous disagreeables, dicine, by means of such an enticing commencement as 'it will not restore the bloom of fifteen to a lady of fifty' --would be utterly ashamed of his modesty had he lived to witness the flights of genius indulged in by the proprietors of modern cosmetics. As many persons, even of the present time, are as ignorant as Dr Johnson was of the science of advertising, we propose to give them some idea of the high condition to which modern literary skill has brought it.

The chief end and aim of advertising is notoriety.

The witty Selwyn was once heard to observe,' or, 'It is related of his late majesty, when Duke of Clarence, that'-you read on, expecting some brilliant jeu d'esprit or amusing anecdote. Presently, where you ought to find the point of the joke or the gist of the story-when breathlessly anxious to know what Selwyn said, or what his majesty, when Duke of Clarence, did at this precise part of the paragraph, the never-absent, intrusive, impudent, brazen capital P once more stares you

in the face, and you are recommended, for the ten- Advertising is in France an important branch of literathousand-and-first time, to Try Potts's pills.' ture, and as such we must view it.

In this department of advertising, literary resources of a high character are necessary; and it must be owned that the English professors of the art are far below their American and French brethren in point of skill. It would be difficult to select from the English press a better specimen of the insidious style than one which we have cut out of the New York Herald. It purposes to give an account of

The literary men of Paris may be divided into dramatists, journalists, historians, men of science, poets, and-advertisement writers. Of the latter are demanded ingenious inventive powers, an unbounded play of fancy, and a subtilty of contrivance, which few branches of the literary art require in so high a degree; the great aim is to weave the various advertisements into the text without allowing the non-experienced reader to detect them. In the Petit Courrier des Dames, a publication exclusively devoted to dress and fashion, we have read a tale-with a regular plot, possessing indeed all the conditions imposed by Aristotle on the true epic, namely, a beginning, a middle, and an end-which was

species of composition the following will afford no exaggerated notion :

THE LOVERS' QUARREL.

'A CITY PARTY.-Two lovely girls met in the Park in the morning, both elegantly dressed, both beautiful, one almost magnificently so. "My dear Eliza," cried one, "how do you feel this morning, after the dance last night at Madame Bonville's party ?" "Very well; we didn't stay late, you know. You seemed to enjoy your-nothing more than a series of advertisements. Of this self. By the way, Emma, that new dress becomes you, and is just the thing." "Oh, but, Eliza, how well you looked, and are looking now; I never saw such an alteration in any human being. You looked so dignified and queen-like." "Where is the alteration, my dear Enima?" said Eliza smiling, and looking indeed transcendently lovely. "Why, it seems as if your face and forehead had grown larger and broader." "It has, my dear; and if you wish, I will tell you a secret. I have entirely destroyed all the hair which grew down on my forehead, removed a part of my eyebrows where they joined over the nose, and freed my lips from what threatened to be a beard." "But how?-what magic has worked this transformation ?" "No magic at all, but a scientific powder prepared by Dr Felix G- -, and sold at Broadway." The ladies parted; and doubt not that Emma will avail herself of the most wonderful discovery which modern science has added to the toilet of beauty.'

Another specimen from the same print is of a more vigorous character. It is well known that paper-wars are carried on in America not in the tame, half-courteous style they are with us. There, newspaper editors indulge in an energetic style of controversy, designed apparently for nothing short of mutual destruction. Strong feelings infer the use of strong expressions, and these come of course to be expected by the public when any quarrel is in the wind. These things being premised, our readers may judge of the probable attractiveness of a paragraph commencing in the manner of the following:

YOU PUSILLANIMOUS SCOUNDREL; whose meanness can equal yours? Look at your fair young wife, with her bright, sunny, healthy face! Look at your own, pitted with eruptions and blotches! Yet you are too mean to give fifty cents for a cake of the great Italian Chemical Soap, which would entirely free you from them, and make your yellow skin clear and healthy. Go at once and get a cake at the sign of the American Eagle, No. Street, Brooklyn.'*

We are inclined to dwell on this department of the art of advertising, because, as has been before remarked, it is unquestionably its highest branch. The reader will perhaps admire the ingenuity with which cosmetics are advertised in the United States; but when we make him acquainted with the high state of the advertising art which has been attained in the French capital, the American announcements will pos

sess about the same relative merit in his estimation as

the poem of Little Cock Robin bears to Childe Harold.

Juliè de Balmont was reclining on one of those elegant On a lovely day in August, the gay and fascinating fauteuils, for the sale of which M. Bergère (of the Boulevart Italien, No.-) has made his warehouse so famous, when Albert Fâtard entered her presence with more haste than ceremony. The truth is, that, after having been admitted by the portière, he rushed up the stairs four at a time-a feat which he certainly could not have performed had he not been provided with the elastic India-rubber braces and straps, of which the Brothers Bandes and Cie. of the Rue Montmartre (No. -) hold the exclusive patent. The moment Juliè beheld him, she became pale and agitated, and had it not been for a bottle of the exquisite smelling salts, sold by Dr Mogué at his fashionable dispensary in the Rue Castiglione, she assuredly would have fainted. Such, however, is the wonderful efficacy of that astonishing restorative, that beautiful sleeping baby, which has just been executed Julie was presently as composed and as calm as the in marble for its bereaved mother, by that eminent statuary M. Cisel, whose residence is opposite to the principal entrance of Père la Chaise. Not so Albert. He was too agitated to speak; yet, amidst all his emotion, he could not look upon those roseate cheeks, the lily whiteness of that complexion, without feelings of the in some degree modified, had he known that for the warmest admiration. These would, however, have been latter Julie was partly indebted to the exquisite poudre des perles of M. Savon of the Passage Vivienne (two doors from the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs).

'Albert cast a withering look on the fair, exclaiming, "That bracelet-I mean the one you wore at Madame Pompadour's last evening. Say, was it not the gift of my rival?" The lady, as if not heeding the question, specimen of Boiteur, the eminent jewel-case maker's arose from her seat, and moving towards a casket-a best manufacture-said with apparent indifference, Would you like to see it?" She then deliberately took the bijou from its depository, and placed it in Albert's hand.

'Two powerful emotions struggled for mastery in Albert's breast-hatred for his rival and admiration of the magnificent bracelet. "Yes," he exclaimed, “I see it all! In the chaste but brilliant design, in the exquisite workmanship, in the skilful assemblage of jewels, in the wonderfully artistic execution of the chasing; in short, in the unequalled tout ensemble of this gorgeous bauble, I perceive a fatal termination to my fondest hopes." At these words Albert's agitation was so great, that Juliè could scarcely restrain her own sympathetic emotion. "Too well I know," continued the lover, still gazing on the subject at once of his detestation and his praise"too well I know that so perfect a specimen of art could only have issued from the atelier of one individual in

* Both these advertisements are extracted from the New York Paris, nay, I may add, in Europe. That individual— Herald for April 15, 1844.

cruel, false woman-has, I know, long been your per