1821.] 



Cornucopia, 



537 



HANOVERIAN SUCCB5SSION SECURED 

 BV WEIiSH VOTES. 



Oa the day that tlie Hanoverian suc- 

 cession bill passed the house of Com- 

 mons, Sir Arthur Owen, hart, member 

 for Pembrokeshire, and Griffith Rice, 

 esq. member for Carmarthenshire, pre- 

 vented the friends of the present royal 

 family from being left in a minority. 



The particulars, as related by the 

 posterity of these families, are, that Sir 

 Arthur Owen and Mr. Griftitli Rice, on 

 that day, met accidentally in the Lobby, 

 when the Tory administration were 

 stealing the question through the house 

 at an early hour, and when many of 

 the whigs were absent. The house 

 was about to divide, when one of the 

 Whig membeis seeing a majority in fa- 

 vour of the house of Stuart, exclaimed 

 that the whole was an infamous pro- 

 ceeding. Almost frantic, he immedi- 

 a.t«ly ran out of the house in search of 

 some of his partizans, to give a turn in 

 favour of the Elector of Hano\'er. Per- 

 ceiving Sir Arthur and Mr. Rice, as he 

 came out, walking leisurely about the 

 Lobby, he addressed them with much 

 vehemence — " What do you mean, gen- 

 tlemen ? — staying here when the Hano- 

 verian succession Bill is going to be 

 thrown out!" " When I heard that," Sir 

 Arthur used often to relate," I made but 

 one step into the house, and my voice 

 made the number equal for the bill, 117, 

 and the tories had no more. Mr. Rice, 

 with great gravity coming after me, had 

 the honor of giving the casting vote in 

 favour of the Hanoverian succession !" 



CAST-IRON TOMBSTONES. 



At Vienna it is common to cast slabs 

 for the lids of tombs. Moveable types 

 are inserted in the moulds to trace the 

 inscription, and a basso relievo of em- 

 blematic design adorns mostly the tab- 

 blet. The poet Komer is thus interred ; 

 and the design on his monument re- 

 presents a lyre and a sword : he fell, 

 like Kleist, fighting for a country, 

 which his lyric and dramatic verses 

 had delighted and illustrated. 



Marble slabs are in this country very 

 costly : it is probable that tombstones 

 of cast-iron could be substituted with 

 economy, and with encreased grace and 

 elegance of sepulchral architecture. 



ENGLISH VERSES OF VOLTAIRE. 



Some inedited letters and poems of 

 Voltaire were printed at Paiis in 1820 ; 

 among them occur the following stanzas 

 addresseil to Lady Hervey during the 

 author's stay in England, about the 

 year 1720. 



Hervey, would you know the passion 



You have kindled in my breast ? 

 Trifling' is the inclination, 



Which by words can be exprest.- 

 In my silence see the lover ; 



True love is by silence known : 

 In my eyes you'll best discover 

 All the influence of your own. 

 These verses are easy and natural ; 

 and display a greater command of 

 English language, than his letters to 

 Pope Gangauelli do of Italian; yet his 

 English prose is less idiomatic than 

 these verses. 



THE TELESCOPE AND MICROSCOPE. 



It is the common opinion that we 

 owe the first invention of the telescope 

 to James Metius, about the beginning 

 of the seventeeulh century. Such too 

 is the sentiment of Des Cartes, who 

 wrote in Holland about thirty years 

 after the discovery. On this subject 

 he expressed himself as follows, at the 

 beginning of his dioptrics : "It is not 

 easy to find an invention that shall in- 

 crease the powers of our sight more 

 than those wonderful telescopes which, 

 tliough their date is so recent, have al- 

 ready discovered new stars in the fir- 

 mament, and other new objects upon 

 earth, in greater number than those 

 we had seen before ; so that extending 

 our views much farther than tiie imagi- 

 nation of our forefathers had been able 

 to reach, they seem to have opened to 

 us a path by which we may attain a 

 much greater and more perfect 

 knowledge of nature than they pos- 

 sessed. It is about thirty years since 

 James Melius, of the town of Alkmaar, 

 in Holland, a man who had never stu- 

 died, though he had a father and a 

 brother professors of Mathematics, but 

 who took particular delight in making 

 mirrors and burning glasses, forming 

 them in winter even of ice, as experi- 

 ence has shewn may be done, having 

 on this account glasses of various forms, 

 fortunately thought of looking through 

 two ; one of which was a little thicker 

 at the centre than at the edges, and the 

 other on the contrary much thicker at 

 the edges than in the centre ; and he 

 applied them so happily to the two ex- 

 tremities of a tube, that the first of the 

 telescopes of which we speak was com- 

 posed ; aud it is wholly after the pat- 

 tern of this, that all the others we have 

 since seen were made, &c." 



The celebrated Dutch historian Jfage- 

 naar, relates, " that in the year 1598, 

 the children of Zaf7/a»v'«.*Jrtn.?e« a glass- 

 grinder and spectacle-maker of Mid- 

 delburir 



