124 
sion of the barometer as extraordinary, 
because on examining the tables, pub- 
lished by the Royal Society, of the Ob- 
servations made at their house from 
the 1st of January, 1774, to the end of 
the year 1820, I find the minimum there 
given is only 28:18, and also from 
another set of tables in the Philosophi- 
cal Transactions of Observations made 
by Thomas Barr, Esq. at Lyndon, in 
Rutlandshire, from the year 1774 to the 
year 1799, (both inclusive) it appears 
that the barometer was only twice ob- 
served by that gentleman below 28 
inches, viz. 27-88 in March, 1783, and 
27°92 in January, 1791. From the 
Meteorological Report given in your 
excellent Miscellany, the extremes of 
the barometer are 30°88 and 27:97, and 
in the results of Mr. Pitt’s observations 
made at Carlisle, as published by you, 
the mercury does not appear to have 
ever been below 28 inches, although 
his tables are continued for upwards of 
twenty years; and I am further con- 
firmed in my opinion by an examina- 
tion of the observations made at Ed- 
monton, by that scientific and indefa- 
tigable meteorologist, the master of La- 
tymer’s School. That sucha fall would 
have astonished the philosophical men 
of the last century we may be assured, 
for the celebrated Dr. Wallis never saw 
the barometer lower than 27:99. Mr. 
‘Townley, indeed, observed the mercury 
to fall to 27-80 about 2 p.m. on the 24th 
January, 1698; and Mr. Henry Beigh- 
ton states “ that on theSth of January, 
1734-5, during the greatest storm that 
had been in those days, the mercury 
fell to a tenth below 28 inches, which 
had not been seen,” he says, ** in that 
age, or perhaps since Torricelli’s time.” 
JAMES G, TATEM. 
Harpenden, near St. Albans, Herts. 
Jan. 22, 1822. 
—f>— 
THE GERMAN STUDENT. 
: No. XXIII. 
BEOBACTUNGEN auf REISON in und 
ausser DEUTSCHLAND von D. A. H. 
NIEMEYER. 
YS ana RG is the native place of 
D. Augustus Herman Niemeyer, 
who offers to the European public a 
series of Observations made during his 
Travels in and out of Germany, and of 
Reflections on the Events and Persons 
of hisown Times. He states, in a pre- 
liminary discourse, that he is now 
nearly seventy years of age, that he 
enjoys a lively memory, and recollects 
the original impressions made upon him 
The German Student. —Niemeyer’s Travels. . 
[March ], 
by successive political occurrences from 
the battle of Rossbach to the death of 
Napoleon ; and he proposes to comment 
on what still appears to him import- 
ant among his. various reminiscences. 
A file of the Hamburg Correspon- 
dent, the newspaper he has been in the 
ancient habit of consulting, is to assist 
the precision of his notices, and a jour- 
nal which was kept of his travels is to 
refresh his memory of places and per- 
sons. Chronology is to be sacrificed to 
variety ; and a beginning is made with 
those Travels in England which first 
elevated the author’s point of view 
above national considerations to the 
European level of appreciation. 
The author learnt English of his 
school-fellow, Samuel Thornton, and 
met him fifty years afterwards in Lon- 
don, a director of the Bank of England. 
Young Thornton gave him a Common 
Prayer Book ; and he records the strong 
impression made on him by the funeral 
service, and especially by the sentence, 
“ Wecommit this body to the ground ; 
earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to 
dust.”” 
Mr. Niemeyer was sent to the uni- 
versity in 1771, but hurries over his 
college years without specifying the 
place of study, which was probably 
Halle, or the professional career for 
which he was destined. On a sudden, 
fragments, dated 1770, but indited 
afresh, describe Brunswick, Hanover, 
and Bremen, in which last town, he 
laments to say, has not yet been realiz- 
ed that ccalition of the Lutheran and 
Calvinist churches, under a form of 
liturgy comprehending Unitarians, 
which throughout Protestant Germany 
has almost every where else taken 
place. The celebrated astronomer, O1- 
bers, from whose brain sprang the pla- 
net Pallas, is characterized as an active 
and benevolent pliysician. Hewas de- 
puted to Paris by his fellow-citizens 
when the French occupied the Baltic 
coast. Under the great church at Bre- 
-men is acatacomb called the Bleykeller. 
Anciently it was customary, if any fo- 
reigner died at Bremen, there to place 
the body until orders concerning the 
interment could be received from the 
kinsfolks. It was soon perceived that 
bodies so deposited did not putrefy, but 
are changed, as in the catacombs. of 
Toulouse, inte a sort of mummy. The 
corpse of a Countess Stanhope, not yet 
claimed by the family, has been pre- 
served there above 200 years. The 
Rathskeller, famous for its huge See 
° 
