cumstances, civilization, and cultivation may exert their influence in this matter. Deserts are mostly quite destitute of trees, and where trees are found, even in the midst of deserts, there will water be found. In a country so near the sea as ours, the destruction of the forests might produce no serious consequences; but farther inland, the effects might be no less than reducing the land to the desolate condition of the prairies of Central America, inhabitable only by the Arab-like Indian wanderer. Egypt has, evidently, since ancient times, been continually losing her fertile ground, by the incroachments of the sands of the desert, which have reduced her whole cultivated lands to the very banks of the Nile. Trees are rare in Egypt. From instances of this kind, which might be multiplied, the reader is left to draw his own conclusions.

B. B.

[Furnished for the Tracts and Lyceum.]

MUSIC.

[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 249.]

AMONG the fine arts, a relish for the higher and more complicated efforts of genius, is an acquired taste, and can be felt only by those who have made the subject a matter of study, or have been accustomed to an habitual observation of such excellencies. Refined music speaks a language which is felt by all those who possess the power of moving the soul beyond what human genius, by any other means, is able to effect. But, from the very fact of the universality, generally speaking, of a taste for some of its beauties, has arisen, in this country, the circumstance which has contributed most to check its progress. The generality of men, feeling intensely the charm of those simple airs to which they have been habituated, and, perceiving at first no beauty in the more complicated music of foreign countries, have been naturally led to imagine that there is something artificial and incomprehensible in such foreign productions. They have, consequently, ad

hered with obstinate, though very natural patriotism, to the music of their own country; and without attempting to understand the higher efforts of the art, or to unravel the charms of foreign masters, have rested in the firm belief, that everything from which they derived no pleasure, was, in reality, destitute of beauty; and that the only species of music truly worthy of admiration, was that which came home alike to the heart of the most uninstructed, and the most cultivated part of the audience. Professional men, on the other hand, being led by the study and cultivation of their art to a strong and ardent admiration of those higher branches of music in which its greatest powers are developed, and finding themselves surrounded by persons incapable of appreciating what they felt to be delightful, have almost relinquished the task of improving and new modelling the public taste; but, associating entirely among themselves, and entertaining the most sovereign contempt for the taste of those around them, have created a language unintelligible to the rest of mankind, and established a criterion of taste deviating very widely from the rules of genuine beauty.

From such absurd and contemptible efforts of some of our professional artists has arisen a complete misconception of the nature of refined music. Hence it is, that the Italian compositions in music are thought to be characterized by long shakes and forced exhibitions of the vocal powers, which never would be tolerated upon the other side of the Alps. Nor has the effect of such facts been less injurious on the public taste than on the direction which the efforts of professional men have taken. Most men have relinquished all attempts even to understand an art, from the greater part of whose productions they could derive no pleasure. Hence has arisen the singular fact, that, in this country, there is so little conception of the beauty of Italian music, or so little exertion to comprehend the latent beauties of an art which addresses itself, more directly than any other, to the finest feelings of our nature, and in which, perhaps, the greatest triumphs of human genius are to be found. We are not to impute this extraordinary fact to any want of natural taste

among our inhabitants, for there is no country more naturally inclined to the cultivation of music. It is to be imputed to the want of opportunities of acquiring a taste for the higher branches of the art.

There is a division in society which may be denominated the musical and the unmusical; the former comprehending persons intimately acquainted with the rules, the technical expressions, and the profession of the art; the latter, the whole remainder of the people, whose natural taste has received no cultivation. Both parties entertain a sovereign contempt for each other. The musicantes regard the rest of society as utterly ignorant, and beneath all contempt in the estimation of the art; and they, in their turn, are regarded as a trifling and despicable set of men, who, according to Adam Smith's distinction, have degraded themselves by devoting their time and talents to the arts which please, in place of those which serve mankind.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

P*****.

AMERICAN PLANTS.

THE catalogue of hitherto known native and naturalized plants of North America, made by that indefatigable and learned botanist, Dr. Muhlenberg, contains but 863 genera, and not 2,800 species. It is not unreasonable to estimate the whole number of plants in the United States and their territories, at 8,000; and as yet, we have not described 6,000. What an opening does this afford for the operations of scientific inquiry! No wonder that Linnæus was so anxious to visit this country. Catesby, in his Hortus Europæ-Americanus, published in 1767, truly observes, that a small spot of land in America has, within less than half a century, furnished England with a greater variety of trees, than has been procured from all the other parts of the world, for more than a thousand years past.

ORIGINAL MISCELLANY.

REMARKABLE TREES.-M. Schomburgh recently read a paper before the Royal Linnæan Society, on remarkable trees, in different parts of the world. His observations particularly concerned a silkcotton tree-Bombax heptaphyllum-of gigantic dimensions, growing in the island of St. Thomas, West Indies. The circumference is 34 1-2 feet, and its horizontal branches extend 120 feet.

ANTIQUARIAN.-The Dean of Wells, England, has given his views in relation to a crosier, lately found near the cathedral of Wells, which he supposes was made in the 12th or beginning of the 13th century, and probably belonged to Severicus, who was bishop of that diocese in 1192.

CLIMATE.-M. Arago, a philosopher, has advanced the opinion, that the climate of France is gradually becoming colder. He supposes the advance of the north polar ice towards the temperate zones, to be the cause. Mr. Barrow has advanced a similar notion concerning the climate of England.

GREAT MUSICAL FESTIVAL.-In the course of July next, a magnificently conducted musical festival, similar to that in commemoration of Handel, is to take place in Westminster Abbey, under the direction of Sir George Smart, and the patronage of the king.

BOURRIENNE, extensively known as a writer of celebrated memoirs, recently died—so say the French Journals—in a mad-house at Caen. It is moreover asserted that insanity was induced by a course of habitual intemperance.

GRESHAM INSTITUTION.-By the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, an ample estate was left in trust to the corporation and mercer's company, for the delivery of lectures on civil law, astronomy, music, divinity, geometry, and other subjects; and in times past, able

men were employed to deliver them; but a high degree of indignation is manifested in the English papers, at this time, at the scandalous manner in which a few persons have managed to manage the whole business; and, what is worse than all, have been palming off their own vile stuff for lectures, and so pocketed the money.

TABULA PHILOLOGICA.-With this title, a sheet has been engraved, four feet long and three broad, the largest, so it is said, ever engraven, having on it a synoptic table of all the languages of the universe, by M. Florent Galli. The deductions from all known tongues begin with the personal pronoun I.

BATTERING RAM.-Mr. Wilkinson, in a lecture before the London Society of Arts, had occasion to speak of the ancient battering rams. It was his opinion, that one of those instruments, weighing 42,000 lbs., worked by a thousand men, did vastly more execution than a cannon ball of 36 lbs., shot point blank. In the course of the same lecture, he exhibited the walking staff of King Harry V, which was a terrible looking affair-seven feet long, and loaded at both ends with iron knobs and a spear-like point.

AGRICULTURAL WASTE.-Only one third of all the seed-grain sown, it has been estimated, grows, even on the best land. In Great Britain and Ireland, the number of cultivated acres is not far from 47,000,000, of which, 30,000,000 are tilled by the plough. Two fifths, about 12,000,000, are under annual cereal crops. As the average quantity of seed sown is four bushels and two thirds, (of wheat, rye, barley, &c.) the whole quantity scattered must be equal to 7,000,000 quarters. The quantity, therefore, entirely wasted, would support 1,000,000 of human beings.

ANTIQUES.-M. de St. Sauveur, French consul at Salonica, has presented the king some rare antique marbles, found in Macedonia, consisting of the heads of divines and kings, funeral monuments, inscriptions, a colossal bust, supposed to be that of Persius, the last king of Macedon, and another of Diana.