him till they could get to his Lordship's boat. The scheme succeeded: the boat was near; they got to it unobserved, and rowed about two miles to where the yacht lay, in which they had come for an excursion. The wind being fair, they soon reached Dover, where he was safely landed, on the 11th July 1732.

A long time afterwards, being with the same Lord Baltimore at Greenwich, a message came to him that some gentlemen wished to speak with him at a house close by the water-side, where was a passage into the river from a summer-house in the garden. Lord Baltimore asked who could want him, and recommended Bower not to go. But he, not wishing to be thought afraid, determined to investigate the matter. Two armed serv- | ants, however, attended him; but when he and his guard reached the house, no one there would own to having sent for him.

The hero of the above story afterwards procured an appointment as keeper of Queen Caroline's library, and died in 1766, aged eighty.

JOHN OSWALD.

SCEPTICISM is sometimes carried to ridiculous lengths. There are people who will scarcely believe anything. Full of whims, they think themselves wonderfully clever in rejecting truths in which others put perfect faith. At best, they have their doubts. Early in the last century, there were persons who insisted that Ramsay was not the author of the Gentle Shepherd, and that Thomson was not the writer of the Seasons. We are old enough to remember the plausible arguments employed to shew that Walter Scott was not the Great Unknown-that the true Great Unknown was Scott's brother, living somewhere about Quebec.

This species of perverse eccentricity of disbelief has been curiously demonstrated in assertions that the poor boy Louis XVII. did not die in confinement, as all historians agree he did, but that a dead child was substituted for him in the prison, and that the little prince was smuggled away to the United States, where he lived to be an old, ill-used man, kept out of his rights as legitimate heir to the throne of France. The droll thing is, that the most incredulous people are not uncommonly the most credulous. They will not believe historical evidence, but they will accept legends or fancies as true, which the world at large only laughs at. Perhaps they fall a prey to self-esteem. Fixed in some odd opinion which they have happened to form, it is cherished till it grows into a reality, out of which nothing will shake them; because to relinquish it would be a confession of weakness. They will rather stand alone in an argument, than acknowledge defeat. Derision only makes them cling more firmly to their ridiculous theory.

Scotland has the honour of having produced a fine specimen of one of these argumentative doubters and self-deceived theorists. An account of him is given in a paper written by Dr Robert Chambers, as far back as 1825, and sent by him to Mr Constable, publisher, with a view to being handed to Sir Walter Scott. The paper has only now come to light, being kindly transmitted to us by Mr Thomas Constable. We give it entire as a curiosity.

A person named Dr William T―n, a Scotsman

and book-maker by profession in London, prepared a work, in which, by a long deduction of circumstances, he attempted to prove that Napoleon Bonaparte's real name was John Oswald, and that he was the son of a jeweller in Edinburgh. This Oswald was a person who had left his native country about twenty years before, and engaged himself latterly as a soldier in the army of the French Republic, in which it was known in Scotland that he had attained some command. He was a man of great courage and enterprise, and an enthusiastic admirer of Ossian's Poems-all which Bonaparte was known to be. Upon this slender foundation, the doctor contrived to raise a vast superstructure of argument and conjecture, which might have made an impression on, and staggered the belief of many persons in this country, where the real history of Bonaparte and his family was then very imperfectly known. But he was prevailed upon not to publish it, and it was accordingly suppressed. The person who told this anecdote to my informant, knew Dr T. personally, and had heard him read the book. He had also mentioned the matter to the celebrated General Paoli, in whose company he happened to dine the same day. The general was much amused with the circumstance, but mentioned that he himself could completely disprove the doctor's theory, as he was Bonaparte's godfather, and held him in his arms at the baptismal font.

This Bonaparte of Dr T.'s was the son of a goldsmith or jeweller in the Parliament Square of Edinburgh, and received a good education. While yet young, he enlisted in the 18th or Royal Irish Regiment, in which corps he soon afterwards attained the rank of sergeant. When quartered at Deal, he married a native of that place, with whom he got as much money as enabled him to procure his discharge and purchase an ensigncy in the 42d Regiment, then in America, but which corps he never joined. In 1780, when the 2d Batt. was raised, he procured a lieutenancy in that body, and went out to India. On the passage out, in 1781, when Commodore Johnston's squadron lay at anchor in Prya Bay, he fought a duel with the officer commanding the two companies in the transport, in which he was not the aggressor. They fired two rounds, without bloodshed. His finances not permitting him to join the mess on board the transport, he lived upon the same rations that were served out to the soldiers. The greater part of his time was devoted to the study of the Latin and Greek languages, particularly of the latter. These classical pursuits inspired him with a decided love for the republican form of government, which swayed him in all the future transactions of his life. He sold out before the battalion was engaged in actual service. During the short period of his residence in India, he conformed to the religious observances of the Gentoos—abstaining from animal food, regularly performing his ablutions, and anointing his body with oil. He afterwards returned overland to London, where, it is believed, he chiefly supported himself by his pen. He wrote both prose and poetry. In a production entitled Rana Evangelica, or the Frogs turned Methodists, he displayed no great respect for the Christian religion. His religious principles had been always loose. It is also said that, though theoretically fond of liberty and equality, he was in reality arbitrary and tyrannical; which was strikingly evinced upon one occasion, when his treatment of the

Upon the breaking out of the French Revolution, the events and motives of which keenly interested him, he repaired to France, and there obtained the command of a regiment in the service of the Convention. But his career was not long or successful; for, either in the Vendean or the Chouan war, he was killed at the head of his regiment, along with two of his sons, who, in the true spirit of the period, served as drummers under the command of their father.

FOG-SIGNALS AT SEA.

A RECENTLY published parliamentary paper furnishes some interesting details concerning a matter which is just now attracting much public attention. The deplorable wreck of the Atlantic ocean steamer, involving a more terrible sacrifice of human life than was ever before known in any one merchant or emigrant ship, and which has had few parallels, even in ships of war, gives to landsmen as well as to mariners an earnest desire to know what are the available means for ascertaining when a ship is near a dangerous coast, at times when fog renders lighthouses or sea-lights invisible, except at short distances. On our own shores lighthouses are now tolerably abundant, and if a captain or a pilot is sufficiently experienced to know the characteristics of one light from another, he may be sure of his whereabouts so long as the light itself is visible to him.

The latest official accounts shew that there are 91 lighthouses and lightships on the south coast of England, 85 on the east coast, and 98 on the west and on the coast of Wales; 67 on the east coast of Scotland, 53 on the west coast and the Hebrides, and 15 on the Orkneys, &c.; 12 on the Isle of Man, and 93 on the Irish coast: making a total of 514. There are public establishments under the management of the Trinity House (England and Wales), the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses (Scotland), and the Ballast Board of Dublin (Ireland): besides the harbour and dock lights belonging to corporations, trustees, and joint-stock companies. We have, of course, no power to compel foreign governments to provide such guides to the mariner on their own coasts; a few are better, many worse, than our own; but the British and Irish lighthouses, taken collectively, are certainly not unworthy of the nation.

This, however, is not the immediate point. We are treating, not of the state of matters on a clear night, when the brilliant light can be seen ten, twenty, or even thirty miles off, but of days and nights of fog and murky rain, when the light and the lighthouse, the coast and the breakers, are alike shrouded from view. Then it is that mariners are led to inquire whether the power of sound can be brought in aid of the sense of sight. It is now known that this can be done; and attention is being more and more bestowed upon such an auxiliary.

A bell is the most readily suggested of all soundproducing instruments for such a purpose; being easily provided and easily struck or sounded. The Bell Rock lighthouse retains in its name a memento of the early use of such an aid to mariners. There are fog-bells at various places on the coasts of the United Kingdom, differing greatly in weight of

slow stroke, some a continuous quick stroke; while the others (especially those worked by machinery) display such diversity, that mariners can distinguish one from another-eight strokes in a minute," one stroke every five seconds,'' six strokes in a minute,' forty-eight strokes in a minute,' ' four strokes in a minute,' four strokes every alternate half-minute,' three quick strokes every quarter of a minute,' 'five quick strokes every half-minute,' 'two quick strokes every quarter of a minute,' &c. Some of these bells have been rather costly to provide, partly on account of their size, partly owing to the difficult sites which they occupy. In most cases, the bell is suspended from the gallery that runs round the lighthouse near the top; and instances have been known, during a raging storm, in which the waves have rushed up outside the masonry of the lighthouse, attacked the bell, and dislodged it from its fastenings. The more ponderous bells would be too weighty to be safely suspended from such a gallery; usually small bells are employed at the rock lighthouses, reserving the heavier kinds for the coast structures, where there are more facilities for secure framing and suspension. The larger the bell the fuller the sound, and the greater the distance to which it can be carried; but, unfortunately, when the wind blows strongly towards the land, bells cannot be heard very far out at sea; they become nearly useless just at the time when their services are most neededapproaching what mariners call a 'lee-shore' in foggy weather.

on

A gong is a sort of brother to the bell; and mariners have not been left unacquainted with the usefulness of its sound at times and places of danger. Of the thirty-nine light-vessels around the English and Welsh coast, thirty-six are furnished with fog-gongs. These gongs vary from twenty-one to twenty-four inches in diameter; they are sounded by hand in foggy weather, with no special kind of stroke, seeing that the peculiar sound is at once distinguished from that of any bell. Periodical supplies of gongs (they are really Chinese) are obtained from Hong-kong, to replace those cracked or worn out; they cost about four guineas each, freight included. Sometimes they can be repaired when cracked, by cutting out the damaged portion, and putting in a new piece of similar metal (about four parts copper to one of tin).

An

A gun, it is well known, furnishes a signal of distress; the 'Minute-gun at Sea' has not only been sung by favourite tenors for two or three generations, but has been heard in reality with painful interest by many of us. A fog-gun is, however, a somewhat different thing; it is provided at a few lighthouses on dangerous spots as a permanent apparatus, to be employed when necessary, by persons who are not themselves in peril, but as a warning to ships coming dangerously near. 18-pounder gun, mounted on Flamborough Head Lighthouse, is fired off every quarter of an hour in foggy weather; a second, of a similar kind, is at Lundy Island; while a third, at the South Stack of Holyhead, is fired every half-hour in fog, or every quarter when the mail-packets are due; it costs from L.250 to L.350 a year to supply the wherewithal for firing off these guns. The gun at Flamborough Head was substituted for a bell in 1861, the height being too great to permit the bell to

be heard well out at sea. At Rathlin, off the coast of Antrim in Ireland, there is a gun which fires every twenty minutes during foggy weather. An opinion prevails that a fog-gun should fire more frequently than at present, seeing that a ship might run into great peril during this silent interval of fifteen, twenty, or thirty minutes.

The fog-whistle is the most powerful signal yet invented. A gush of steam is driven with intense violence against the edge of a sort of whistle, and produces a piercing shriek, surprisingly loud compared with the size of the whistle itself. Of this species of signal, a number have been erected on the Atlantic coast of North America, more particularly in the Bay of Fundy, which is liable to heavy fogs; and we know of at least one that has been established on the Cumbrae Island, mouth of the Firth of Clyde, by the Clyde Commissioners. As steam must be kept up, the process of whistling is costly, but nothing more effective as a warning in the case of dense fogs has ever been invented. The only difficulty for the mariner is to know from what point the whistle is sounding, for he can see nothing. His only resource in such cases is to turn his head first one way and then another, shutting one of his ears, so as, if possible, to discover in which direction the sound is strongest.

A siren or syren is employed in some of the American lighthouses; though we cannot find evidence that there are yet any fog-sirens in use in England. It is a kind of metal box or chamber, pierced with holes in a peculiar way, and having a disc which rotates with amazing rapidity; high-pressure steam is driven violently through the small holes, producing a penetrating shrill sound, audible at a considerable distance. It is obvious that the fog-siren acts nearly on the same acoustic principle as the fog-whistle.

A horn or trumpet does this sound more loudly than a whistle? Opinions differ on the question. Some give the verdict one way, some the other. There is reason to believe that both may be right; that, in certain states of the atmosphere, the brazen baritone of a horn will penetrate farther than the shrill treble of a whistle; while opposite results will be obtained under different atmospheric conditions. Be this as it may, foghorns are coming observably into favour. In 1863, a fog-horn was substituted for a bell at Dungeness Lighthouse, as an experiment; it was called 'Daboll's Fog-horn, third-class, worked by a caloric engine.' The mouth of the horn was made to traverse an arc of 210 degrees seaward, so as to point in every direction within these limits (N.E. by E. E. to W. N. and vice versa) once in each minute; each blast of the horn lasted five seconds, with an interval of fifteen seconds between one blast and the next. The Trinity House spent L.536 on this horn, which in 1865 was considerably damaged by an accidental fire; and they availed themselves of the opportunity to exchange it for one of the second-class, a larger and more powerful instrument, at a cost of L.1576, including necessary new buildings. The result was so favourable as to lead to further extensions of the system. In 1868, St Catherine's Lighthouse, Isle of Wight, was provided with a fog-horn, which, with duplicated apparatus and necessary buildings, cost no less than L.2175. The source of power, and the duration and intervals of the blasts, were like those

at Dungeness; but the mouth of the horn traversed an arc of 215 degrees instead of 210. Newarp light-vessel, off the Norfolk coast, was furnished in 1869 with the third-class horn which had been removed from Dungeness. Souter Point Lighthouse, on the Yorkshire coast, an unusually fine and lofty structure, finished in 1870, is provided with a double fog-horn, having their mouths so directed as to cover an arc of 180 degrees; the horns rotate by steam-power; while the blasts, one every forty-five seconds, are produced by compressed air conveyed through a tube 118 yards from the engine-house to the edge of the cliff. This horn is on Holmes's plan; and so is that which was set up in the Seven Stones light-vessel, off the Isle of Wight, in 1871, in substitution for a gong; it blows a blast every ten seconds, and is so arranged that the mouth is always turned to windward, in whatever direction the wind may be. Lastly, at the Owers light-vessel, in the English Channel, there has recently been set up, or will be shortly, a similar horn. All the fog-horns up to the present time adopted on our coasts, with the exception of the Souter Point, are worked by caloric engines.

The history of these fog-horns is interesting. They were long used for special purposes both on land and on sea; but as no machinery was employed to blow them, they emitted a sound too feeble to be heard at any great distance. After one or two abortive attempts to use machinery, Mr Daboll, an American engineer, contrived the horn known by his name. It was first experimentally used at Rhode Island: the air was compressed by pumps worked by horse-power; and this compressed air produced the blast in the horn; the sound was heard at a distance of two or three miles during a strong cross wind. Mr Daboll made many improvements in subsequent years; and his fog-horns are numerous along the American coast.

So important is this subject of fog-signals now regarded, that a committee of the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House was appointed to visit America in the autumn of 1872, to examine all the varieties used in that country. Sir Frederick Arrow, Captain Sydney Webb, and Mr Price Edwards formed the members of the committee. They heard the fog-gun at Belle Isle, at a distance of five or six miles. In the Manicouagan lightvessel, on the river St Lawrence, they examined a steam-whistle of which the cup or bell was ten inches diameter by eighteen inches high; its sound was clear and good at six miles' distance, and did not cease to be audible until a twelve-mile run had been made. In another light-vessel on the St Lawrence, they examined a fog-whistle, which in one winter sounded ten seconds in each minute six days uninterruptedly, so dense and continuous was the fog: this whistle could be heard at distances varying from six to nine miles, according to the direction and force of the wind. A Daboll horn in Long Island Sound had made itself heard, the committee learned, to a distance of no less than fifteen miles, when the wind was in a particular quarter. The committee, summing up the results obtained or ascertained by them, say: The necessities of the American coast have caused the authorities to pay particular attention to their system of fog-signals. The bell, as with us, is generally applied only in places where other signals cannot be conveniently used,