pen, the object of which is to remedy the defect complained of, that the nibs increase in breadth by use. In the new pen, the nibs are made parallel-sided for about one-eighth of an inch long, the remaining portion being cut in the usual curved manner, so that one-eighth of an inch may be worn away without increasing the breadth of the nibs. We have not used any of these pens, but it occurs to us, that by the above means the equable opening and closing of the nib during writing cannot be insured, that the ink would not flow down in sufficient quantity, and that unless the pen were held in one particular direction, the equal wearing away of the nibs would not occur. We should rather fear that the pen would often act the part of a chisel, and dig into the paper instead of moving over its surface; but these objections are offered without ever having used the pen which suggests them.

The oblique position in which the pen is held induced Messrs. Mordan and Brockeden, in 1831, to make their oblique pens, in order that the two sides of the nib should bear equally on the paper. The form of this pen is that of a bird's head and bill; the slit, or mouth of the bird, is the part employed in writing, and this slit is inclined, at an angle of 35°, to the general direction of the pen. They hold a great deal of ink, and their use is pleasant to the writer.

Other pens, called Lunar Pens, have been adopted. Their under surface being large and concave, a great portion of ink is taken up by them, and thus the writer's time is economized.

Mr. Gowland has invented a pen with an additional nib, called the "Three-nibbed Slit Pen." The additional nib is formed by cutting it out of the shank, and turning it back over the nibs. This pen is manufactured by Mordan, as also "Mordan's Counter-oblique Pen." Both these pens hold much ink, and the awkward appearance of obliquity in the bird's-head pen is removed, while, at the same time, the oblique effects are preserved.

There are many other forms of steel pens, which we need not stop to describe, since the examples already given will afford to the reader a sufficiently accurate idea of their forms and uses. We proceed, therefore, to perhaps the most interesting portion of this article, viz., the processes by which steel pens are manufactured.

The steel with which the pens are made is rolled into very thin plates; it is then cut into slips, about four inches broad and three feet long, then annealed for fourteen hours, and again submitted to the roller; the thickness of these bands is not more than sth of an inch. The bands are then passed under a stamping-press, and pieces of the proper size for the pens are cut out with great rapidity. These pieces are called blanks, or flats, and are so cut out, that the fibres of the steel shall run in the direction of the length of the pen. The blanks are now submitted to the action of a hardened steel punch and matrix, of the exact size and shape of the pen, and which are attached to a powerful fly-press. The pens are then softened by being put into an iron box containing tallow; this box is placed in a furnace and equally heated. When the box is withdrawn, the pens are emptied upon hot ashes and covered with the same, and so allowed to cool gradually; by this means they are sufficiently soft for the subsequent processes. They are then marked for the slits; this is done by means of an extremely fine-edged chisel, brought down separately upon each pen, and so admirably adjusted that two-thirds only of the substance of the pen is cut through. The edge of this chisel is finer than any razor, but much harder, because it

will perform its office for a whole day without renew. ing its edge; this superior quality is given to the steel by hammering it for several hours. This is an important fact, and seems to have been discovered by the pen-makers. When the other slits and openings have been made, and the maker's name stamped, the next operation is called dishing, by which the proper shape is given to the pens by means of a metallic punch and die, accurately fitting each other, the two being the exact form of the pen.

The pens are now hardened by being heated to redness, and being then plunged into cold oil, which must be at least three feet deep. The oil in a few weeks loses its properties and becomes charred. The next operation is cleaning and polishing; this is effected by a very curious machine. It consists of a tin cylinder, eight or nine inches in diameter, and three feet long, with a hole in the middle of its length, for putting in and taking out the pens, which hole is covered by a lid. This cylinder is hung on joints at each end to cranks, formed one on each of two axles furnished with a fly-wheel, and one of them with a handle. As this latter is turned, the cylinder is thrown up and down and backwards and forwards, and the pens are agitated in a manner similar to materials shaken in a bag. This motion is continued for eight hours, when many thousands of pens, by rubbing against each other, are found to be entirely deprived of any roughness which might have otherwise existed on them, and which, though invisible to the eye, might offer serious impediments to free writing. They are now tempered by being placed on a furnace-plate, and as soon as they have acquired a bright blue colour they are removed; this colour indicates the best temper for the pens, and is due to a thin film of oxide formed on the surface; were they heated in vacuo, or in any medium containing no oxygen, the blue colour would not appear. The last operation consists in cracking the slits, which is done by pressing the nibs suddenly with a pair of pincers; the slit, which was cut only two-thirds through, then suddenly opens.

It is calculated that the total quantity of steel employed in this manufacture, amounts to 120 tons per annum, from which upwards of 200,000,000 of pens are produced.

There is, however, a considerable waste of material in this branch of art. The pieces of steel cut out of the pens cannot be applied to any use; it is so thin that it cannot be welded, and it cannot be melted, because it takes fire and burns, in ́consequence of access of air between the thin pieces.

It is a cheering statement, that in spite of the immense consumption of steel pens, the demand for quills has not abated, but, on the contrary, is on the increase. This is to be accounted for by considering that, within the last few years, population has greatly increased, and that by the diffusion of the refining influence of education, that class of persons now can write which twenty years ago was altogether illiterate. Besides this, the Continent and America are supplied by us with steel pens. When first introduced, they were as high as 8s. per gross, then they fell to 4s., and now they are manufactured at Birmingham at so low a price as four-pence per gross! As yet, it appears that the only branch of trade that has suffered by the introduction of steel pens is the cutlery trade: pen-knives are in less requisition than formerly.

LONDON:

JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, WEST STRAND. PUBLISHED IN WEEKLY NUMBERS, PRICE ONE PENNY, AND IN MONTHLY PARTS, PRICE SIXPENCE. Sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in the Kingdom

PART THE SECOND.

JULY 8th.-The morning of Monday had scarcely dawned, when licentious bodies of rioters appeared parading the streets, renewing the scenes of the former day with tenfold violence. In this, as in every other instance of a popular outbreak, it was found that the disposition to riot, like every other evil principle, is greatly strengthened by indulgence, and that the calamities of licentiousness accumulate with frightful rapidity. The Duke of Arcos resolved to negotiate, and he employed a Neapolitan nobleman, the Duke of Matalone, whom he held at the time as a prisoner in the castle, to act as his mediator with the insurgents.

No more puzzling question could be put to the Neapolitans, than to ask what was the substance of their demands. The expectations of a mob are always vague, and hence they insist upon impossibilities. The leaders of the insurrection demanded not only the abolition of all imposts, but the production of a charter, written, as they said, in letters of gold, and granted by the Emperor Charles the Fifth, to the citizens of Naples. No such document had ever existed, but nothing short of a miracle could convince the multitude of their delusion. Masaniello averred that it had been supernaturally described to VOL. XII.

him, and this declaration rendered further evidence superfluous.

The viceroy under these circumstances endeavoured to palm on the populace a forged document similar to that which they required. There had not been sufficient time to give such a fraud even a chance of success; it was at once detected, and popular indignation was directed against the Duke of Matalone. The fiercer insurgents seized on his person, loaded him with chains, and dragged him to prison.

Masaniello's malady had been aggravated by a sleepless night; he incited his followers to fresh acts of violence, and begun to display a fierce hatred of the nobility and gentry. With his sanction, the houses of all who were regarded as enemies to the people, were gutted and destroyed; his followers, the lowest and most licentious of the Lazzaroni, paraded the streets with boat-hooks to drag the gentlemen from their horses, and inspired such terror, that the appearance of one of them was sufficient to clear a crowded street. The very women joined in these excesses, with muskets on their shoulders, swords by their sides, and daggers in the folds of their dress; and even the children were made to bear their part in the national frenzy. A second night of revolution closed in, and the results of the

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July 9th. The excesses of the former days were renewed with fresh violence. Masaniello led a body of his followers against the steeple and church of St. Lorenzo, which had been garrisoned by a company of Spanish soldiers, who were too few to offer any effective resistance. Henceforth, the church of St. Lorenzo became the chief focus of the insurrection, and its great bell was used to sound the tocsin, whenever Masaniello and his successors deemed it necessary to summon an assembly of the people. In the evening of the day, the viceroy made a new effort to open a negotiation with the insurgents, employing as his ambassador Cardinal Felomarino, Archbishop of Naples, who was rather a favourite with the populace. He persuaded the people and their leaders that he had full power to arrange all the points of difference, and he produced copies of the charters granted by Ferdinand the Catholic, and Charles the Fifth. Though these documents contained nothing like the stipulations ignorantly expected by the multitude, they were received with satisfaction, and the night was passed more peacefully than either of the preceding.

July 10th.-The expectations of peace to which the cardinal's embassy had given rise, were disappointed by a new series of events. Large parties of banditti, which had long infested the kingdom of Naples, flocked to the capital, and were gladly received by Masaniello. To one of these criminals, by name Perrone, he intrusted the charge of the prisoners. But the Duke of Matalone found little difficulty in persuading the bandit to become a traitor to the popular cause, and to join with another bandit, named Palombe, in a plot for the assassination of Masaniello. As a preliminary, the duke was permitted to make his escape, and he took good care to remove himself to a safe distance.

Masaniello summoned a general assembly, to deliberate on the proposals made by the cardinal; an immense multitude thronged into the square appointed for the meeting; but the appearance of five hundred banditti, armed to the teeth, well mounted, and acting in concert, excited some alarm. They rode forward to the place where Masaniello stood; some exclamations from the crowd excited his alarm, and he commanded the bandits to dismount. Instead of obeying the order, seven of them discharged their carbines at him, but though his shirt was burned by the gunpowder, not a ball struck him. The enraged mob immediately assailed the bandits; thirty of them fell at the very first discharge, and the rest sought shelter in a church, trusting that the Neapolitans, who are proverbial for superstition, would respect the sanctuary.

But in the terrible excitement of popular fury, religion ceases to curb violence, and superstition is of course still more inefficacious. The enraged multitudes forced the gates, the work of butchery went on in the sacred precincts, the floor was flooded with blood, wretches were slaughtered while they grasped the altar, and the images of the Virgin and the Saints were stained with the gore of the victims. A few were reserved for a worse fate; they were tortured to force a confession; cords were drawn round their thumbs, and tightened until blood spouted from the nails; the heads of others were subjected to similar compression until their eyes were starting from the sockets: they confessed the plot that had been laid for the murder of Masaniello, and the intention of their masters to fall upon the mob during the confusion that must necessarily result from the loss

The assembly still continued its meeting; Masaniello, guarded by the most ferocious of the Lazzaroni, bearing on pikes the gory heads of the slain banditti, harangued the multitude, exaggerating the daugers from which he and they had escaped, and calling for vengeance on the whole body of the nobles. Horrid outeries rent the air as he concluded; a party instantly departed in search of the duke and his brother, while others, in anticipation of their capture, hastily prepared a wooden scaffold; the bleeding bodies of those who had been slain were tied to the tails of horses and dragged through the streets; the fishermen, the Lazzaroni, and hordes of degraded women, incensed by fury, mutilated the senseless carcasses, while children wallowed in the blood, and seemed to take a premature delight in slaughter. Matalone escaped his pursuers, but Caraffa was taken and dragged towards the square. His captors could not delay their eagerness for his blood, and, before he reached the scaffold, a butcher struck off his head with a blow of a cleaver. intelligence of this event reached Masaniello, he ascended the scaffold, still in his sailor's dress, with a drawn sword in his hand, and exclaimed, Bring here the head of the traitor." His orders were obeyed, and the furious demagogue insulted and spurned the corpse of the unfortunate nobleman, until his own followers could not conceal their feelings of disgust.

When

During this dreadful day the Neapolitan clergy kept the churches open, covered the altars with the ornaments used in the services for the dead, offered up prayers for peace, and repeated the service of their church called " supplications for the passing soul," usually recited for persons at the point of death. Even this spectacle failed to produce the intended effect; murderers with their weapons of slaughter, incendiaries waving their blazing torces, stopped at the gates of the churches as they passed, uncovered their heads, knelt for a few moments to go through the mummery of devotion, and then went on their way to continue the work of destruction.

July 11th.-The Duke of Arcos was far from breaking off the negotiations in consequence of the preceding horrors. Cardinal Felomarino again presented himself as a mediator; Masaniello, who was unable. to write, dictated to his secretaries certain conditions for peace, principally insisting on the total abolition of taxes, and full indemnity for all who had engaged in the insurrection. When the articles were prepared, they were read to the people in the church of the Carmelites, and received with loud acclamation. Cardinal Felomarino then proposed that Masaniello should accompany him to the Spanish governor; the proposition was adopted, and the demagogue exchanged his sailor's dress for a superb robe of silver tissue. He then mounted a splendid charger, richly caprisoned, and, accompanied by a vast multitude, proceeded to the viceroy.

The Duke of Arcos, though imbued with a double portion of Spanish pride, received the imperious fisherman with the utmost respect, and treated him as if he had been the first of the grandees. The courtly ceremonies .were tedious; they were pro

tracted to such a length, that the crowd which waited outside for Masaniello's return, began to get alarmed, and to show symptoms of suspicion and uneasiness. On hearing this Masaniello stepped to the window, and by a single word hushed the miscreants to silence. He took the opportunity of showing to the viceroy the wonderful and perilous influence which he had established over the populace by manifesting their immediate and implicit obedience to his commands. He gave a signal with his hand, and instantly all the bells in the city began to toll; he waved his hand once more, and their knell instantly ceased. He lifted his arm, and the multitude raised deafening shouts; he placed his finger on his lips, and the assembled thousands became mute and motionless as statues. Such an exhibition produced the designed effect; the viceroy felt it necessary to recognise the title of so potent a demagogue; he not only saluted him as captain-general of the populace, but placed a gold chain round his neck with his own hands, and proclaimed him Duke of St. George.

July 12th.—The hopes of peace were baffled by the increasing malady of Masaniello; he was haunted by a morbid terror of death, dreading particularly the banditti, and the nobles by whom he believed them to be instigated. He could only sleep for a few minutes at a time, keeping his attendants in constant excitement, by springing from his troubled slumbers and exclaiming," Up, up, there can be no rest for us until we are masters of Naples!" He received food only from the hands of one of his relations, and he frequently expressed a belief that he would eventually be deserted by the fickle populace, ignominiously slain, and that his body would be exposed to insults as gross as those which had been offered to the remains of Caraffa. Agitated by these apprehensions, he no longer received applications and petitions in the market-place, but posted himself at the window of his own cottage, in his fisherman's dress, with a loaded blunderbuss at hand. A body of the Lazzaroni surrounded the house as guards and executioners of his will; two secretaries prepared his answers, sentences, &c., and in all of these Masaniello continued to manifest an implacable hatred of the aristocracy.

July 13th.-The business of this day was the installation of Masaniello in the cathedral, and the solemn ratification of the articles of peace arranged between him and the viceroy. During the ceremony the marks of Masaniello's madness first became obvious to the spectators; he frequently interrupted the reading of the articles by captious and even absurd objections; at the conclusion of the ceremony he was with difficulty restrained from throwing off his robes, and assuming his old dress in the presence of the whole assembly. The multitude, however, still adhered to him, and their acclamations succeeded for a time in restoring his equanimity.

July 14th. The insurrection had now lasted a week; a second Sunday had dawned, and the distractions of Naples seemed to have become worse than ever. Masaniello's insanity now began to be manifest to the multitude; he gailoped through the streets half-naked, invited the cardinal and the Duke of Arcos to sup with him, jumped into the sea with his clothes on, continued to swim about for an hour, and drank at supper twelve flasks of strong wine. The intoxication which ensued, produced the only sound sleep he had enjoyed since his elevation.

July 15th.-Insurrectionary violence was now beginning to grow weary of its own excesses. The populace had nothing to do; for all who could be regarded as enemies of the public cause were removed. Masaniello's insane freaks, sometimes ludicrous and

always mischievous, tended greatly to abate the popular enthusiasm in his favour; a new conspiracy was formed for his destruction, in which many who had been his most ardent supporters were included. His despotic power, which he frequently manifested by various acts of tyranny during the day, seemed still too formidable to be resisted. But towards evening he drew his sword, cut furiously at all around him, and became so outrageous that his friends were obliged to bind and secure him during the night,

July 16th.-Early in the day Masaniello escaped from the friends who detained him in custody, and rushed into the church of Del Carmine, during service before a crowded congregation. When the solemnity was concluded, Masaniello ascended the pulpit with a crucifix in his hand, harangued them in a desponding mood, complaining that he was betrayed and deserted. As he grew warm with the fervour of discourse, his insanity began to break out; at length his language and his gestures became so outrageous that the priests removed him by force from the pulpit. He then applied to the cardinal for protection, offering to resign all his authority to the viceroy, and the prelate persuaded him to retire into an adjoining cloister. The conspirators soon burst into his place of refuge, exclaiming, "Health to the king of Spain and death to Masaniello !" For a moment his former energies were rallied; he turned round to the assassins, and in a tone of firmness exclaimed, "Do my faithful subjects seek me? Here I am." The words had scarcely passed his lips when he received the fire of four muskets in his bosom; he had only time to exclaim, "Ungrateful traitors!" as he fell. He was a dead man ere his head touched the earth.

The crowded congregation, in the church of Del Carmine, learned the fate of the popular favourite without emotion. Those who had followed shouting in his train on the preceding day, patiently stood by while his head was cut off to be borne as a trophy to the viceroy. His body was dragged through the streets by a rabble of boys, among whom the nobility freely flung pieces of money, and was then cast into one of the city ditches.

July 17th. The death of Masaniello does not conclude his " strange eventful history." On the morning after his murder a vast crowd of the Lazzaroni assembled, sought out his dishonoured remains, and carried them in melancholy procession to the cathedral; there his body was arrayed in royal robes, decorated with a crown and sceptre, and treated with all the respect due to a deceased sovereign. His funeral was celebrated with the utmost pomp; thousands of armed men followed the hearse, testifying their respect and sorrow; as the body sunk into the grave the assembled multitude burst into a passion of tears, prayers, and lamentation, and the memory of the unfortunate fisherman was long held in the highest veneration by the mob of Naples.

Thus, in the short space of ten days, Masaniello was raised from indigence and obscurity to the height of power; then suddenly slain as a wild beast and dragged through the city with ignominy, yet finally buried as a prince and almost worshipped as a saint.

The civil war soon broke out afresh, but the Neapolitans, after their first enthusiasm had cooled, proved unable to resist the might of the Spanish monarchy. Torn in sunder by internal tumults, insulted by their leaders, betrayed by their favourites, and plundered by banditti, they were glad to purchase peace upon any terms, and to submit to a government still more oppressive than that against which they had taken up arms.