NOTES OF A READER.

MONT BLANC.

The most interesting night of the late season of the Royal Institution, was the lecture or narrative, given by Dr. Clarke of his ascent of Mont Blanc in 1825. Dr. Clarke led his audience from Geneva to the summit, detailing the enterprise, which, however, he considers not by any means so dangerous as has been represented. At 9,000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean the air becomes extremely rarified, and the sky exhibits a blue-black appearance. He does not consider it at all safe for persons to attempt the ascent, having a tendency to apoplexy, for at the height of 15,000 feet above the level of the sea, the extremely rarified state of the air, as well as the almost unbearable oppression of the sun's rays, though surrounded with snow, would increase that tendency to an alarming extent. So oppressive is the sun, that on sitting down in the shade he was asleep instantly. The passage, just above the Grande Plateau (a surface of ice and snow, many acres in extent, 10,000 feet above the level of the sea) is a point of great difficulty. This chink is about seven feet wide and of immeasurable depth. To get over it the guides first proceed to render the passage more easy. He cautions travellers to pay implicit attention to guides, as the accident in 1822, when three persons sunk into the caverns of snow, was occasioned by this want of caution. It is appalling, said Dr. Clarke, to be carried over an abyss of unknown depth, slung upon cords and drawn over. On arriving at the summit of Mont Blanc the toils are amply repaid. Language cannot depict the scene before the traveller. The eye wanders over immeasurable space. The sky appears to recede, and the vision possesses double power. The Alpine scenery here is awfully grand, and the alternate thaw and freezing (for when the sun is down it freezes rapidly) produces the most grotesque figures. The only living creature found on the summit of Mont Blanc is a small white butterfly (the ansonia,) which flits over the snow. The chamois is found 10,000 feet above the level of the sea; Mont Blanc is 15,500 feet above the Mediterranean. Specimens were exhibited of the compositions of all the mountains round Mont Blanc. Periodically an immense quantity of snow falls down from the summit of the Mont, enough, as the guide said, to crush all Europe like flies. "On throwing stones down the precipices, thousands of feet deep, the traveller feels an almost irresistible desire to throw himself after them!"—Monthly Magazine.

FURIOUS DRIVING.

In going upon the road, in the United States, it is looked upon as a sort of slur on one, if another pass him, going in the same direction; and this folly prevails to as great a degree as amongst our break-neck coachmen; and you will see an old Quaker, whom, to look at, as he sits perched in his wagon, you would think had been cut out of stone a couple of hundred years ago; or hewed out of a log of wood, with the axe of some of the first settlers—if he hear a rattle behind him, you will see him gently turn his head; if he be passing a tavern at the time he pays little attention, and refrains from laying the whip upon the "creatures," seeing that he is morally certain that the rattler will stop to take "a grog" at the tavern; but if no such invitation present itself, and especially if there be a tavern two or three miles a-head, he begins immediately to make provision against the consequences of the impatience of his rival, who, he is aware, will push him hard, and on they go as fast as they can scamper, the successful driver talking of the "glorious achievement" for a week.—Cobbett.

VILLAGE BELLS.

CURIOUS CONTRIVANCE.

In the Pampas, when the natives want a granary, they sew the legs of a whole skin up, and fill it full of corn; it is then tied up to four stakes, with the legs hanging downwards, so that it has the appearance of an elephant hanging up; the top is again covered with hides, which prevent the rats getting in. In stretching a skin to dry, wood is so scarce in many parts of the Pampas, that the rib bones are carefully preserved to supply its place, and used as pegs to fix it in the ground. When a new-born infant is to be cradled, a square sheepskin is laced to a small rude frame of wood, and suspended like a scale to a beam or rail.—Brand's Peru.

SOUTH AMERICAN DINNER.

A recent traveller thus describes a dinner party at Mendoza:—The day of days arrived; the carriage was flying about the town with a couple of mules, to bring all the ladies to dinner, in order to meet the foreign gentlemen. We were all seated higgledy-piggledy at table, dish after dish came in; every one helped themselves, no carving was required, being all made dishes. The master of the house was walking round the room with his coat off, very comfortably smoking his cigar, and between every fresh dish, of which there were some thirty or forty, the ladies amused themselves with eating olives soaked in oil, and the colonel, (one of the military pedlars), to prove that he understood foreign manners and customs, got the ladies one after another to ask the foreign gentlemen to drink wine with them, which was no small ordeal for us to run through. After these half hundred dishes, came the sweets; then the gentlemen's flints and steels were going, the room soon filled with smoke, and the ladies retired to dress for the ball.

EARLY HOURS.

We learn that Mr. Cobbett dines at twelve o'clock on suppawn and butcher's meat, that he sups on bread and milk at six, that he goes to bed at nine, that he rises every morning of his life at four; that before ten o'clock he has finished his writing for the day, and, that though no man has written more than he has, that he never knew any one who enjoyed more leisure than he does, and has done. "Now is there a man on earth who sits at a table, on an average, so many hours in the day as I do? I do not believe that there is: and I say it, not with pride, but with gratitude, that I do not believe that the whole world contains a man who is more constantly blessed with health than I am. In winter I go to bed at nine, and I rise, if I do not oversleep myself, at four, or between four and five. I have always a clear head; I am ready to take the pen, or begin dictating, the moment I have lighted the fire, or it has been lighted for me, and, generally speaking, I am seldom more than five minutes in bed before I am asleep."

AN IRISH VILLAGE INN.

The form and plan in all parts of the country are pretty nearly the same, though the furniture varies; the hospitable door (inns are proverbially hospitable) stands always open, but the guests are sheltered from the thorough air by a screen, composed like the rest of the mansion, of mud; the partition walls which separate it from the adjoining rooms reach no higher than the spring of the roof, so that warmth and air, not to mention the grunting of pigs, and other domestic sounds, are equally diffused through all parts of the tenement; from the rafters, well blackened and polished with smoke, depend sundry flitches of bacon, dried salmon, and so forth, and above them, if you know the ways of the house "may be you couldn't find (maybe you couldn't means, maybe you could) a horn of malt or a cag of poteen, where the gauger couldn't smell it." If you are very ignorant, you must be told, that poteen is the far famed liquor which the Irish, on the faith of the proverb, "stolen bread is sweetest," prefer, in spite of law, and—no—not of lawgivers, they drink it themselves, to its unsuccessful rival, parliament whisky. Beneath the ample chimney, and on each side of the fire-place, run low stone benches, the fire of turf or bog is made on the ground, and the pot for boiling the "mate, or potaties" as the chance may be, suspended over it by an iron chain; so that sitting on the aforesaid stone benches, you may inhale, like the gods, the savour of your dinner, while your frostbitten shins are soothed at the same time by the fire which dresses it.—Monthly Magazine.

THE TRUE GENTLEMAN.

By a gentleman, we mean not to draw a line that would be invidious between high and low, rank and subordination, riches and poverty. The distinction is in the mind. Whoever is open, loyal, and true; whoever is of humane and affable demeanour; whoever is honourable in himself, and in his judgment of others, and requires no law but his word to make him fulfil an engagement—such a man is a gentleman: and such a man may be found among the tillers of the earth. But high birth and distinction, for the most part, insure the high sentiment which is denied to poverty and the lower professions. It is hence, and hence only, that the great claim their superiority; and hence, what has been so beautifully said of honour, the law of kings, is no more than true:—

ROYAL PLANTERS.

Among the earliest and most successful planters was Count Maurice, of Nassau, who flourished in the seventeenth century. This prince had the advantage of operating in the genial clime, and with the fruitful soil of Brazil, of which in the year 1636, he was governor. He was a man of taste and elegance, and adorned his palaces and gardens in that country with a magnificence worthy of the satraps of the east. His residence was upon an island formed by the confluence of two rivers, a place which before he commenced his improvements presented no very promising subject, being a dreary, waste, and uncultivated plain, equally worthless and unattractive. On this spot, however, he erected a splendid palace, laid out gardens around it of extraordinary extent and magnificence; salubrity, seclusion, horticultural ornament were all studiously and tastefully combined in the arrangement of the buildings; the choicest fruits of a tropical climate, the orange, the citron, the ananas, with many others unknown to us, solicited at once the sight, the smell, and the taste; artificial fountains of water preserved the coolness of the air, and maintained the verdure of the earth; thirteen bastions and turrets flanked and defended the gardens; and seven hundred trees of various sizes, of which some rose to thirty, some to forty, and some to fifty feet high to the lowermost branches, were removed to the spot, and arranged by the designer's skill in such a manner as to produce the most striking and splendid effect. Some of these trees were of seventy and others of eighty years growth. Being skilfully taken up they were placed carefully in carriages, conveyed over a space of from three to four miles in extent, transported on rafts across both the rivers, and on being replanted in the island, so favourable were both soil and vegetation in that genial climate, that they immediately struck root, and even bore fruit during the first year after their removal.

Louis XIV. who, by the good efforts of the learned Jesuits, had been taught that the practice of transplanting was well known to the Greeks and Romans, resolved to rival, and if possible, to eclipse whatever had been achieved in this art by these distinguished nations. Accordingly, among the stupendous changes made on the face of nature at Versailles and other royal residences, immense trees were taken up by the roots, erected on carriages, and removed at the royal will and pleasure. Almost the whole Bois de Boulogne was in this way said to be transported from Versailles to its present site, a distance of about two leagues and a half. To order the march of an army was the effort of common men, and every day commanders; to order the removal of a forest seemed to suit the magnificent conception of a prince, who, in all his enterprises, affected to act upon a scale immeasurably greater than that of his contemporaries. In the Bois de Boulogne, in spite of military devastation, the curious eye may still distinguish, in the rectilinear disposition of the trees, the traces of this extraordinary achievement.

At Potsdam, Frederick II., and at Warsaw, the last king of Poland transferred some thousands of large trees, in order to embellish the royal gardens at those places; and at Lazenki, in the suburbs of Warsaw, the far famed and unfortunate Stanislaus laid out the palace and grounds in a style of luxuriance and magnificence which has, perhaps, never been surpassed since the days of the Roman emperors. To add to the charm of this favourite spot, he removed some thousands of trees and bushes with which the gardens and the park were adorned; both were frequently thrown open to the public, and on these occasions, entertainments of unexampled splendour and gaiety were given to the court and to the principal inhabitants of the capital, which are still recollected with feelings of delight.—Stuart's Planter's Guide.—Westminster Review .