2 SEPTEMBER 1854, Page 19

• tittrani ettaniug5.

ENGLISH BEAUTY.—In whatever else London may be defective, it beats all other European capitals for female beauty. We had thought the women, tolerably ugly in Switzerland, but in Milan we found them intolerably so. We sat on Sunday, the most favourable day for observation, for two hours, in the public gardens, hearing the band play, and watching attentively the various groups promenading before and around us ; and I assert without hesitation, that never were so many. civilized human beings collected top-, ther amid whom so little was visible that could make one proud of belonging to the race. Probably we did not see the most aristocratic part of the com- munity; but we were not prepared to witness in so large a proportion of it such an amount of uncomeliness in person and snobbishness in costume.— Out of Harness.

ESTIMATE OF TEE NEGRO EACE.—it should not be forgotten that the ex- periment in respect to this race is essentially a new one The nonsense about Hannibal, and Terence, and Cyprian, and Augustine, being Negro Africans, should have been out of the heads of people long ago. A woolly- headed fiat-nosed African, in ancient times, would have created as great a sensation at the head of an army, or in the chair of a professor, as it would now in the United States or in England. These men were Asiatics or Eu- ropeans rather than Africans; the Great Desert being properly the Northaen. boundary of the African race. The African has never reached, in fact, until the settlement of Liberia, a higher rank than a King of Dahomey, or the in- ventor of the last-fashionable grisgrie to prevent the Devil from assail's& sugar-plums. No philosopher among them has caught sight of the Juts- teries of nature ; no poet has illustrated heaven or earth, or the life of mans. no statesman has done anything to lighten or brighten the links of human. policy. In fact, if all that Negroes of all generations have ever done were to be obliterated from recollection for ever, the world would lose no greats truth, no profitable art, no exemplary form of life. The loss of all that -ix. African would offer no memorable deduction from anything but the earth's. black catalogue of crimes. Africa is guilty of the slavery under which she suffered ; for her people made it, as well as suffered it.—Africa and the Amerman Flag.

PORTUGUESE COVRTESY.—There is a great. deal of courtesy and elaborate civility in the manners of the Portuguese. If a stranger appears in com- pany, he is instantaneously saluted and greeted by every individual present. If they are seated, they all rise with one accord to pay their respects to him. The host generally advances to the door to receive his visitor, and seems for the time converted into a mere master of the ceremonies; he, with great deference' ushers his guest into the apartment, remaining behind himself,, with profuse bows, repeating, "A case 6 sue; tenha a bondade d'en- trar." (The house is yours ; be good enough to go in.) When the visitor takes his leave, this order is sometimes reversed, and the master of the. house walks before his guest; however, the usual way is for the latter to go first. If there are several or many apartments, the affair becomes peon- Early tedious, and requires an iron perseverance and a pliable spine. The host watchfully follows the guest, after the preliminary," A.deos" and at, the door of the first room a halt takes place, and some profound sal; utations are interchanged. At the door of the next room the same low bows have to be repeated ; and these respectful recognitions and reciprocations are as- siduously renewed throughout the long suite of apartments, at the thres- hold of every chamber—nay, if there are corridors to be threaded,. at every turn of the passage they must be receininenced. Nor is there Safety even. in a flight of stairs. Arrived at the banister, which a foreigner is 'apt to hope must be the goal and termination of his trials, while he feels ready to 'bound down the whole staircase at a spring, rejoicing in his deliverance,, etiquette demands and requires a fresh series of salutations; and at the- first larding-place it is indispensable to return to the charge ; indeed, no matter how many landing-places., at each fresh one you must bow and scrape. Having descended the staircase, you may yet have perhaps a vast entrance-hall to traverse. If so, about every other step it would be con- sidered prefty for you (especially if your visit is one of ceremony) to turn round and repeat the same profound inclinations, going through the hall in. a sort of slow demi-waltz.—Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley's Visit to Por- . tugal and Madeira.

THE Ems COUNTRY IN CAMBRIDGPSHIRIL—The fen country is novr so well drained, that almost the whole of it has become highly valuable land, much of which bears heavy crops of wheat. Few things can be more in- teresting to the observant traveller than a journey across this district by the

I >I

,ILisreerrinteita;, Virmatiim:-Crowded settlements, gathered by the capiratisr„-whoseend and aim is to iffikance his can fortune,,, whatever in-, tests may be sacrificed in the procciss. These . are :the- places whorethe largest amount of labour is perfortnedlif the- lewestwag-es ,;- -Where the opera- tivte are 'selected wholly for what they May avail to swelt -the gains of the employer ; where the rudely-constructed "boarding-house" is densely' packed wiett:a heterogeneous mass of humanity; where trade is monopolized, andthe price of hung islaigh; Where-there' is poor' enconragement for fm- gall and thrift„and every facility for reckless expenditure;- where con- gregated iniquity flourishes sena a hot-bed ; where common T.:heels are low, the pulpit stands by offerance, or both are sought to be made sebeikliers to2he gain or aggrandizement of themanufacturer.-,-The 'Shady Sido.

_.■TIO3 COMO o.-LThis river is more than two leagues broadit its mouth. At the diatance of eight or ten miles seaward,-in a North- westerly direction; the water prepdrves i fMshness'; and at theiliatance ef fifty and even sixty miles, it hes a black tinge. here are often seen small-islands floating seaward, formedof fibrous roots, bamboo, rushes, and long grass, aud covered with birds. ' The bafiks of the Congo are-lined Withilow mangrove bushes,' with clumps of a taller species interspersed, growing-to the height of sixty and seventy feet. Palm-trees,- and others of a smaller growth; are seen with a rich and beau- tiful foliage. - In going up the river, the- Southern shore where there is plenty of waterelose in-with the land, should be tepe-aboard.,-,The current Is SO strong-often running six miles an hour off Shark's Point-that aneit2' ceerlingly:freeh sea-breeze is necessary in order to Steni.the stream. The greatest strength of this current, .however, is superfioialowt extending more then--six or eight feet in.,depth.-. The Congo, like all rivers in :Africa exeent thei.Nile, is navigable-but a short distance before reaching-the rapids. The great central regions being probably not less than three thousand feet in'alti- tu_cle above the see,: these 'tapide are formed by a sudden depression of 'the surface of the country towards the sea, or-by a bed of hard rocks stretching aciess the basin of the river.-..effrica and the American Flag.

PUNISHMENT or StAvE-Tnanne0.-Strange and frightful maladies have beim engendered by the cruelties perpetrated within the held et, ttaiaver. if any',disase affecting the human constitution were brought there, we may be sure that it would be nursed into mortal vigour in these reeeptatleii of filth, coreuption, and despair. Crews have been known to die by the fruit, of their own. crime, and leave ships almost helpless. They have carried the scourge with them. The coast fever of Africa, bad enough where. it has its birth, came in these vessels, and has assumed perhaps a permanent abode in the Western regions of the world. No fairer sky or healthier climate were there on earth than in the beautiful bay and amid the grand 'and picturesque sceiiery of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. But it became the haunt Of slavers, and the dead of-Africa floated on the glittering waters, and were tumbled upon the sands of its harbour. ' The shipping found, iu the hot ,surainer, of 1849,-that death had tome with the slavers. Thirty of forty vessels Were lying idly at their anchors, for their crews had mostly perished. The, pesti- lence swept along the Oast of that empire -With fearful malignity: Cuba for the same crime met the seine retribution. Cargoes of slaves were landed to die, and brought the source of their mortality ashore, vigorous and deadly. The fever settled there in the beginning of 1853, and came to our country, as summer approached, in merchant-,vessels from the West Indies. At New Orleans, Mobile, and other places, it spread desolation, over Which 'the couti- try.mourned. Let it-be remembered, that it -is never even safe to dint egard crnne.-Idem.

POST ABROAD.-A word about the postal authorities here. My brother having left a sick wife at Boulogne, had arranged with her whert and where to write to him, the first place-being Lucerne.' "No letter;" lfavrever, was the answer to his inquiry on the appointed day. The same answer is given him the next day; he having written in the mean time to his wife, to say he would be at Geneva on a certain day, and wait there for d letter. 13efere starting, however, for Geneva, I suggested that my brother should ask to look at the letters himself. This request was very grudgingly complied 'with; but the result of the inspection was that a letter was found to have arrived en the very day it had been inquired for. The same thing-occurred ore our arrival at Geneva, with the exception that the post-Office official would not permit any other inspection than his own, until MY brother in- stated-when the result was a letter, as before. To sue the same thing oc- curred subsequently at Rome ; and indeed, I found several travellerscern-

plaining of aim i

ilar occurrences n their own case.-Out of Harness.

Caprn-tvs.-Until of late years, candles 'were solely manufactured from bees-wax, spermaceti, or tallow. The application of- scientific chemical re- search, however, to this branch of-art, coupled with the withdrawal of the vexatious e±cisp-superVision, which prevents improvements, in every trade which comes under its influence, has so improved-the materials used, as well as the manufacture itself, that All the best Candles are now made from the puie solid -and crystallizable nierorie and genic acids. These are freed from the fluid oleic acid, and from glycerine, which exist in combination with them iMordinary tallow, as well as frotriother analo,gons substances,. as from pa- raffine, (a carho-hydrogenous substance resembling spermaceti, prepared from tar and peat,) the stearic and margarieueids of the cocoa-nut oil and the palm- oil, besides the old substances spermaceti and wax both Vegetable and animal. Only the coarsest description of candles arc now made from the tallow of the ox or sheep; but -as the illuminating power of 'these candles is small compared with the improved candles, while their rapidity of consumption is much greater, they are absolutely dearer as articles of consumption than the candles of improved manufacture. . . . . The discovery by the celebrated French chemist Chevread that fats were composed of three highly inflammable bodies, &Marie and margarie acids (solids), and oleic acid (a liquid), conibined with a comparatively uninflammable body, glycerine, has led to the creation of the great new manufacture of stemic and composite candles; the import- ance and growth of which will be understood when we state, that while in 1833 the new candles were unknown in England,' Mid the quantity manu- factured in France amounted to only twenty-five tons annually, a single [on- don house (that of E. Price and Co.) manufactured last winter -(l854) more than that quantity of stearic and composite candles daily, and eniploys in this business above 900 hands, and a capital of nearly three-quarters of a Brilannica ; new edition. Eastern Counties Railway, which either by its main line- or its breaches - pateet Pretrgli the'fent in severaI'lltectireds''"I`he,fiefili: dividtld'.'breret elitblies, Use "constantly recurring bridges, over,ge,great drams, • the , pasisng of,the_, artificial, rivers, the high .„state , the almost .abso- lietrilY level, censtry, present such asieue:aaaanetto befouucl elsewhere is Britain. When contemplating it, we-cannot avoid !being struck., by the stieteaS which has attended the application of great skill and consummate energy and perseveranep ha the work of renddring available for agricultural purposes this extensive-arid once nearly Mules§ trAt.-Eneyelopedia Bri- tannica ; new edition.