THE parish of St. Martin in the Fields, though still been erected into a parish. As for the church, it is retaining its ancient name, is now one of the most noticed as having gone to ruin, and been rebuilt in the crowded districts of the town, and nearly covered with reign of Henry VIII.; and as having been afterwards streets and houses. It was formerly of very great ex- | greatly enlarged in 1607, by the addition of a chancel, tent, comprehending the whole space, with the exception at the expense of Prince Henry, eldest son of James I., of the parishes of St. John's and St. Margaret's, from and several of the nobility. This building, however, the banks of the river to St. Giles's, and from Somerset- having again fallen to decay, was taken down in the house, in the east, to Hyde-park and Chelsea, in the year 1721; and on the 19th of March, 1722, the founwest. Within the last two centuries, however, several new dation stone of the present church was laid with great parishes have been formed from its different out-wards. ceremony by the Bishop of Salisbury, on the site of the That of St. Paul's, Covent-garden, was erected in 1645; old one. that of St. Anne's, Westminster, in 1678; that of St. James's in 1685; and that of St. George's, Hanover- | square, in 1724. The parish of St. Martin is now confined to a comparatively small district, consisting prin- | cipally of some streets in the immediate neighbourhood | of the church, of the portion of the Strand from near Waterloo-bridge to Charing-cross, and of the continuation of the same line of street to the west end of Pallmall. It also includes the Green-park, and a part of St. James's-park, these being the only fields that now remain within its boundaries, All that is known of the ancient history of this district is, that it appears to have contained a chapel, at least, so early as towards the beginning of the thirteenth century, and that by the middle of the following it had certainly | The building, as is recorded in a Latin inscription over the portico, was finished in 1726; and it was consecrated on the 20th of October, in the same year. The expense of the work was nearly £37,000, of which £33,450 was raised, under the authority of an Act of Parliament, by rates on landlords and tenants, and the remainder consisted of voluntary contributions. The King, on the completion of the building, gave a hundred guineas to be distributed among the workmen, and £1500 for the purchase of an organ. The original instrument, however, we believe, has long ago given place to another. The expense of re-casting the bells, of which the steeple contains an excellent peal of twelve, amounted to £1264. It is said that the famous Nell Gwyn, who was interred in the burying-ground of this parish, left a sum of money to afford a weekly entertainment to the ringers of St. Martin's church, the benefit of which they still enjoy. When the present structure was erected, so many persons were eager to contribute their aid towards *s embellishment, that the managers were obliged to decline accepting some offers of pecuniary assistance which were made to them. "The newspapers of 1724," according to Malcolm, in his Londinum Redivivum,' "mention the refusal of £500 from a lady who would have given that sum towards enriching the altar-piece." The church of St. Martin's is perhaps, next to St. Paul's, the finest building in the Grecian style of which the metropolis has to boast. It is accounted the happiest effort of the eminent architect, James Gibbs, a native of Scotland, by whom it was erected, and who is also well known as the designer and builder of the Senate House at Cambridge, the Radcliffe Library at Oxford, and various other public edifices. The portico, in particular, consisting of very lofty Corinthian columns, to which there is an ascent by a long flight of steps, has been greatly admired. The beauty and grandeur of this noble elevation, however, have only been lately rendered visible by the removal of the old buildings by which it used to be so closely surrounded; and its effect will not be properly appreciated till the completion of the magnificent improvements which are now in progress in this quarter of the metropolis. The spire also of St. Martin's is one of the most beautiful in London; and the interior of the church, and especially its richly ornamented ceiling, may be fairly described as altogether worthy of its external architecture. Its length is 140 feet; its breadth 60, and its height 45. The curve of the ceiling is elliptical. As this parish comprehends within its bounds the palace of St. James's, St. Martin's is the proper parish church of the royal family, and there are seats provided accordingly for their Majesties and their household on each side of the altar. George III. used occasionally to attend public worship here. The Admiralty is also in the parish of St. Martin's; and on that account it is customary for naval victories to be first announced by the bells of this church. On the day of the consecration, "the Lords of the Admiralty," says Malcolm, presented to the parish a grand standard of England, thirty feet long and fourteen broad, to be displayed on the steeple during public rejoicings; but it was blown to rags on the first day it was hoisted, August 1, 1726, the anniversary of the accession of George I." 66 WHITE-HEADED OR BALD EAGLE. THE following picturesque description of the Whiteheaded or, as it is commonly called, the Bald Eagle, and its predatory habits, is extracted from the fourth volume of Wilson's American Ornithclogy. The celebrated cataract of Niagara is a noted place of resort for those birds, as well on account of the fish procured there, as for the numerous carcasses of squirrels, deer, bears, and various other animals, that in their attempts to cross the river above the falls have been dragged into the current, and precipitated down that tremendous gulf, where, among the rocks that bound the rapids below, they furnish a rich repast for the vulture, the raven, and the Bald Eagle, the subject of the present account. This bird has been long known to naturalists, being common to both continents, and occasionally met with from a very high northern latitude, to the borders of the torrid zone, but chiefly in the vicinity of the sea, and along the shores and cliffs of our lakes and large rivers. Formed by nature for braving the severest cold; feeding equally on the produce of the sea and of the land; possessing powers of flight capable of outstripping even the tempests themselves; unawed by anything but man; and from the ethereal heights to which he soars, looking abroad, at one glance, on an immeasurable expanse of forests, fields, lakes, and ocean, deep below him, he appears indifferent to the little localities of change of seasons; as in a few minutes he can pass from summer to winter, from the lower to the higher regions of the atmosphere, the abode of eternal cold, and from thence descend at will to the torrid or the arctic regions of the earth. He is therefore found at all seasons in the countries he inhabits, but prefers all such places as have been mentioned above, from the great partiality he has for fish. [White-headed Eagle attacking the Fish-Hawk.] In procuring these, he displays, in a very singular manner, the genius and energy of his character, which is fierce, contemplative, daring, and tyrannical; attributes not exerted but on particular occasions; but, when put forth, overpowering all opposition. Elevated on the high dead limb of some gigantic tree that commands a wide view of the neighbouring shore and ocean, he seems calmly to contemplate the motious of the various fea thered tribes that pursue their busy avocations below; the snow-white gulls slowly winnowing the air; the busy tringa (sandpipers) coursing along the sands; trains of ducks streaming over the surface; silent and watchful cranes, intent and wading; clamorous crows, and all the winged multitudes that subsist by the bounty of this vast liquid magazine of nature. High over all these hovers one whose action instantly arrests all his attention. By his wide curvature of wing, and sudden suspension in air, he knows him to be the fish-hawk (Pandion Haliætus, Savigny), settling over some devoted victim of the deep. His eye kindles at the sight, and balancing himself, with half-opened wings, on the branch, he watches the result. Down, rapid as an arrow from heaven, descends the distant object of his attention, the roar of its wings reaching the ear as it disappears in the deep, making the surge foam around. At this mo ment the eager looks of the eagle are all ardour; and levelling his neck for flight, he sees the fish-hawk once more emerge, struggling with his prey, and mounting in the air with screams of exultation. These are the signal for our hero, who, launching into the air, instantly gives chace, and soon gains on the fish-hawk; each exerts his utmost to mount above the other, displaying in the rencontre the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unincumbered eagle rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent, when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair and honest execration, the latter drops his fish; the eagle, poising himself for a moment as if to take a more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in his grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty silently away to the woods. no more than four years. According to some experiments the hyoscyamus produces more than 50,000 seeds; but assuming the number to be only 10,000, the seeds would amount, at the fourth crop, to 10,000,000,000,000,000, and as the quantity of solid land on the surface of the globe is calculated to be about 1,400,350,599,014,400 square feet, it follows that each square foot must contam seven plants, and therefore the whole earth would be insufficient to contain the produce of a single hyoscyamus at the end of the fourth year. THE SOLITARY. These predatory attacks and defensive manœuvres of WHEN the English Buccaneers were making their first the eagle and fish-hawk are matters of daily observation cruize in the South Sea in the year 1681, they were sud along the whole of our sea-board, from Georgia to New denly frightened from the uninhabited island of Juan England, and frequently excite great interest in the Fernandez, where they had been lying at anchor, by the spectators. Sympathy, however, on this as on most appearance of three Spanish armed ships. They re other occasions, generally sides with the honest and labo-treated in such a hurry that they left behind them a rious sufferer, in opposition to the attacks of power, Mosquito Indian, who had followed them through pure injustice, and rapacity, qualities for which our hero is so affection, and whom they had named William. generally notorious, and which, in his superior, man, are equally detestable. As for the feelings of the poor fish, they seem altogether out of the question. FECUNDITY OF PLANTS. THE rapidity with which individual species have the power of multiplying their numbers, both in the animal and vegetable world, is well worthy of observation. Our attention has been more forcibly attracted to this subject by reading the following fact in an Irish newspaper" During the past season a single grain of potato oats, on the lands of the Rev. Mr. Mills, Ballywillan, near Coleraine, produced thirty-two stalks, all growing from the same root, and containing in all nearly 5,000 grains of corn." If each of these 5,000 grains were, in the ensuing year, to be endued with the same power of fecundity as their parent seed, 25,000,000 grains would be produced; and these multiplying once again, in the same ratio, would yield a harvest of oats which would amount to nearly 30,000 quarters. But though this be a remarkable instance of fruitfulness, there are cases on record which afford still greater evidence of the prolific properties of the grain-bearing plants. Of these several examples are to be found in the volume on Vegetable Substances used for the Food of Man. We select the following quotation from Sir Kenelm Digby, who asserted, in 1660, that "there was in the possession of the fathers of the Christian doctrine, at Paris, a plant of barley which they at that time kept as a curiosity, and which consisted of 249 stalks, springing from one root or grain, and in which they counted above 18,000 grains or seeds of barley." In the same volume there is another well-authenticated fact relative to the power of increase residing in wheat. The result, however, was in this instance obtained by careful cultivation. As the plant tillered or sent up stalks, it was divided and subdivided, till at length the original root was multiplied into 500 plants, each of which produced more than forty ears. "The wheat, when separated from the straw, weighed forty-seven pounds and seven ounces, and measured three pecks and three quarters, the estimated number of grains being 576,840." The seeds of many kinds of vegetables are so numerous that, if the whole produce of a single plant were put into the earth, and again this second produce were made to yield a harvest, and so on, in a very few years the entire surface of the earth would be too limited for the sowing of the seed thus abundantly supplied. The hyoscyamus, or henbane, which, of all known plants, produces the greatest number of seeds, would for this purpose require Three years and two months after the poor Indian had been abandoned in that utter solitude, a second expedition of English Buccaneers, many of whom had been with the first, and were acquainted with William, came to Juan Fernandez. These acquaintances were naturally anxious to know what had become of their former companion, and to see if they could find any traces of him, but with small hope of finding him still there and alive; as soon as they were near enough they went in a boat and hastened to the shore. Dampier, who, though merely a common sailor and a freebooter, was a man of some feeling and considerable talent (afterwards displayed in an account he wrote of his travels and adventures), was in the boat, as also a Mosquito Indian named Robin. As they drew near to land they saw, to their astonishment and pleasure, William standing by the sea-side waiting to receive them. Dampier's account of this unhoped-for meeting is truly affecting. "Robin, his coun tryman, was the first who leaped ashore from the boat, and running to his brother Moskito-man, threw himself flat on his face at his feet, who, helping him up and embracing him, fell flat with his face on the ground at Robin's feet, and was by him taken up also. We stood with pleasure to behold the surprise, tenderness, and solemnity of this interview, which was exceedingly affec tionate on both sides; and when their ceremonies were over, we also that stood gazing at them, drew near, each of us embracing him we had found here, who was overjoyed to see so many of his friends come hither as he thought purposely to fetch him." The Spaniards, who in all probability would have put him to death as an ally of their persecutors the Buccaneers, had known of his being in the island; their ships had several times stopped there, and sent men in pursuit of him, but William, with his local knowledge, had always contrived to escape. When he was left on the island William happened to have with him a musket, a knife, a small horn of powder, and a few shot. "When his ammunition was expended," says Dampier, "he contrived, by notching his knife, to saw the barrel of his gun into small pieces, wherewith he made har poons, lances, hooks, and a long knife, heating the pieces of iron first in the fire, and then hammering them out as he pleased with stones. This may seem strange to those not acquainted with the sagacity of the Indians; but it is no more than what the Moskito-men were ac customed to in their own country." The clothes, after the fashion of the English sailors, which he had on when abandoned, had long been worn out, and he had now only a goat-skin about his waist. He had made himself fishing-lines by cutting the skins of seals into thongs. "He had built himself a hut, half a mile from the seashore, which he lined with goats'-skins, and slept on his couch or barbecu of sticks raised about two feet from the ground, and spread with goats'-skins." He saw the two Buccaneer ships that now came to his release the day before they anchored, and knew, from the style in which they manoeuvred, that they must be manned by his friends the English. On this happy discovery he hastened and killed two goats, which he dressed with such vegetables as the island produced, and had this treat ready for his friends the moment they landed. "And," as Captain Burney, the historian of the Buccaneers, observes, "there surely has seldom been a more fair and joyful occasion for festivity." THE WEEK. both the obedience and the affection of all who were placed under his command. When he was in the Excellent, Lord St. Vincent used to draft all the most ungovernable spirits of the fleet into that ship, certain, as he said, that Collingwood, if any man could, would reform them. "As his experience in command and his knowledge of the dispositions of men increased," says the writer of his life, "This abhorrence of corporal punishment grew daily stronger; and, in the latter part of his life, more than a year has often passed away without his having resorted to it even once. 'I wish I were the Captain, for your sakes,' cried Lieutenant Clavell one day to some men who were doing some part of their duty ill when, shortly after, a person touched him on the shoulder, and, turning round, he saw the Admiral, who had overheard him. And pray, Clavell, what would you have done, if you had been Captain!' 'I would have flogged them well, sir.' 'No, you would not, Clavell; no, you would not,' he replied; 'I know you better.' He used to tell the ship's company that he was determined that the youngest midshipman should be obeyed as implicitly as himself, and that he would punish with great severity any instance to the contrary. When a midshipman made a complaint, he would order the man for punishment the next day; and, in the interval, calling the boy down to him, would say, 'In all probability the fault was yours; but whether it were or not, I am sure it would go to your heart to see a man old enough to be your father disgraced and punished on your account; and it will therefore give me a good opinion of your disposition, if, when he is brought out, you ask for his pardon.' When this recommendation, acting as it did like an order, was complied with, and the lad interceded for the prisoner, Captain Collingwood would make great apparent difficulty in yielding; but at length would say, "This young gentleman has pleaded so humanely for you, that, in the hope that you will feel a due gratitude to him for his benevolence, I will for this time overlook your offence.' The punishments which he substituted for the lash were of many kinds, such as watering the grog, and other modes now happily general in the navy. Among the rest was one which the men particularly dreaded. It was the ordering any offender to be excluded from his mess, and to be employed in every sort of extra duty; so that he was every moment liable to be called upon deck for the meanest service, amid the laughter and jeers of the men and boys. Such an effect had this upon the sailors that they have often declared that they would much prefer having three dozen lashes; and, to avoid the recurrence of this punishment, the worst characters never failed to become attentive and orderly. How he sought to amuse and occupy the attention of the men appears in some of these letters. When they were sick, even while he was an Admiral, he visited them daily, and supplied them from his own table; and when they were convalescent, they were put into the charge of the lieutenant of the morning watch, and daily brought up to the Admiral for examination by him. The result of this conduct was, that the sailors considered him and called him their father; and frequently, when he changed his ship, many of the men were seen in tears for his departure. But with all this there was no man who less courted, or, to The next great action in which Collingwood was speak more truly, who held in more entire contempt, engaged was the ever-memorable fight of Trafalgar, on what is ordinarily styled popularity. He was never which occasion he was second in command under Nelson, known to unbend with his men; while, at the same time, between whom and himself there had long subsisted an he never used any coarse or violent language to them intimate friendship. When Nelson received his death-himself, or permitted it in others. If you do not know wound, Collingwood took the command of the fleet; a man's name,' he used to say to the officers, 'call him and for his admirable conduct, both in the battle and after it was over, he was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Collingwood. From a very early period of his nautical life Lord Collingwood had been distinguished for the happy art by which he secured at once SEPTEMBER 26.-The birth-day of the late Admiral Lord Collingwood, than whom England has scarcely produced a finer model of an officer or of a man. Cuthbert Collingwood was born in 1750 at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where his father, descended from the younger branch of an ancient family, had settled. He received all the education he ever had in his native town; and it is remarkable that of his companions at school two have since risen as well as himself from the middle ranks to the peerage; namely, the present Earl of Eldon and his brother Lord Stowel. The master of this school was the Reverend Hugh Moises. Collingwood, however, did not remain long under this gentleman's care, being sent to sea at the age of eleven. "He used," says Mr. Newnham Collingwood, who has published a most interesting life of him, "to tell, as an instance of his youth and simplicity when he first went to sea, that as he was sitting crying for his first separation from home, the first lieutenant observed him; and pitying the tender years of the poor child, spoke to him in terms of much encouragement and kindness, which, as Lord Collingwood said, so won upon his heart that, taking this officer to his box, he offered him in gratitude a large piece of plum-cake which his mother had given him." He was made a lieutenant in 1775, and in 1779 a commander. In 1790 he married Miss Blacket, niece of Sir Edward Blacket, Bart. By this lady, to whom he continued united by the most tender affection till his death, he had two daughters, who survived him. In 1794 he was present, as flag-captain on board the Prince, at Lord Howe's great victory of the 1st of June. In 1797 he commanded the Excellent at the battle of Cape St. Vincent. In 1799 he was made an Admiral. The few months of peace which followed the treaty of Amiens he spent at home in the society of his wife and children. During this short period of happiness and rest," says his biographer, "he was occupied in superintending the education of his daughters, and in continuing those habits of study which had long been familiar to him. His reading was extensive, particularly in history; and it was his constant practice to exercise himself in composition, by making abstracts from the books which he read; and some of his abridgments, with the observations by which he illus trated them, are written with singular conciseness and power. I know not, said one of the most eminent English diplomatists with whom he had afterwards very frequent communications, I know not where Lord Collingwood got his style, but he writes better than any of us." sailor, and not you sir, and such other appellations; they are offensive and improper.' With regard to expressions, it may be added that, after the occurrences at the Nore, he had the most decided objection to the use of the word mutiny. When complaints were made At of conduct which was designated as mutinous, he would exclaim, Mutiny, sir! mutiny in my ship! If it can have arrived at that, it must be my fault, and the fault of every one of the officers. It is a charge of the gravest nature, and it shall be most gravely inquired into.' With this view of his feeling on this subject, the officer was generally induced to consider and represent the affair more lightly, or sometimes to pass it over altogether." This admirable man died at last, as he had lived, in the service of his country, having remained on the foreign station to which he had been sent by the Government long after the state of his health would have entitled him to resign his command, and until, indeed, he had left himself no chance of recovery. last, in the beginning of March, 1810, when nature was almost entirely exhausted, it was resolved that he should set sail for England from off Minorca, where he was then cruising. "When Lord Collingwood," says his biographer, "was informed that he was again at sea he rallied for a time his exhausted strength, and said to those around him, 'Then I may yet live to meet the French once more.' On the morning of the 7th there was a considerable swell, and his friend Captain Thomas, on entering his cabin, cbserved that he feared the motion of the vessel disturbed him. No, Thomas,' he replied, 'I am now in a state in which nothing in this world can disturb me more. I am dying; and I am sure it must be consolatory to you, and all who love me, to see how comfortably I am coming to my end.' He told one of his attendants that he had endeavoured to review, as far as was possible, all the actions of his past life, and that he had the happiness to say that nothing gave him a moment's uneasiness. He spoke at times of his absent family, and of the doubtful contest in which he was about to leave his country involved, but ever with calmness and perfect resignation to the will of God; and in this blessed state of mind, after taking an affectionate farewell of his attendants, he expired without a struggle, at six o'clock in the evening of that day, having attained the age of fifty-nine years and six months.' SONG OF THE WILD BUSHMAN. I plant no herbs or pleasant fruits, The countless springboks are my flock, Thus I am lord of the Desert Land, For the cruel White Man's gain- Pringle's Ephemerides. The Bushmen appear to be the remains of Hottentot hordes, originally subsisting, like all the aboriginal tribes of Southern Africa, chiefly by rearing cattle; but who have been driven, chiefly by the gradual encroachments of the European Colonists, to seek for refuge among the inaccessible rocks and sterile deserts of the interior. Most of the hordes known in the colony by the name of Bushmen are now entirely destitute of flocks or herds, and subsist partly by the chace, partly on the wild roots of the wilderness, and, in times of scarcity, on reptiles, grasshoppers, and the larvae of ants, or by plundering their hereditary foes and oppressors, the frontier boors. In seasons when every green herb is devoured by swarms of locusts, and the wild game, in consequence, desert the pastures of the wilderness, the Bushman finds a resource in the very calamity which would overwhelm an agricultural or civilized community. He lives by devouring the devourers; he subsists for weeks and months on locusts alone, and also preserves a stock of this food dried, as we do herrings or pilchards, for future consumption. The Bushman retains the ancient arms of the Ho tentot race; namely, a javelin, or assagai, similar to that of the Caffers, and a bow and arrows. The latter, which are his principal weapons, bot! for war and the chace, are small in size and formed of slight materials; but, owing to the deadly poison with which the arrows are embued, and the dexterity with which they are launched, they are missiles truly formidable both to man and beast. One of these arrows, formed merely of a piece of slender reed tipped with bone or iron, is sufficient to destroy the most powerful animal. Nevertheless, although the Colonists very much dread the effects of the Bushman's arrow, they know how to elude its range; and it is, after all, but a very unequal match for the firelock, as the persecuted natives, by sad experience, have found. The arrows are usually kept in a quiver formed of the hollow stalk of a species of aloe, and slung over the shoulder; but a few, for immediate use, are often stuck in a band round the head, in the manner represented in the cut. *The zebra is usually termed Wilde Paard, or wild horse, by the Cape Colonists. [Wild Bushman. ] LET the proud boor possess his flocks. Hull, STEPHENSON. Lincoln, BROOKE and Sons. Liverpool, WILLMER and SMITH. Manchester, ROBINSON; and WERE and SIMMS. Newcastle-upon Tyne, CHARNLEY. Norwich, JARROLD and SON. Nottingham, WRIGHT. Oxford, SI.ATTER. Portsea, HORSLEY, Jun. Sheffield, RIDGE. Worcester, DXIGHTON. Dublin, WAKEMAN. Edinburgh, OLIVER and BOYD. Glasgow, ATKINSON and Co. Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Stamford-Street |