the year 1779; and, considering it to be the first bridge of the kind, I feel little hesitation in stating it to be, even now, the most beautiful one. This structure, at that time thought to be a wonderful attempt, was the entire offspring of Mr. Reynolds' genius; it was planned, cast, and erected, under his immediate care and superintendance.

I cannot suppose the reason given by your author for the discontinuance of the works at Colebrook-Dale to be correct, as there is another large furnace in the immediate neighbourhood, called "Madeley Wood Furnace" (also belonging to Mr. Reynolds's family), which was allowed to make, and, I believe, still makes, the best iron and steel in the United Kingdom. Mr. Reynolds had also other great iron-works at Ketley, since carried on by his two sons, William and Joseph, and still in high reputation, as to the quality of the iron made there; these are not more distant from Colebrook-Dale than six or seven miles, and between the two there are the extensive and highly valuable works of "Old Park," &c., belonging to Mr. Botfield (so that the whole district abounds in the materials), which not having the advantage of the immediate vicinity of the Severn for conveyance, would have been more likely to have stopped from the circumstances stated in your extract; viz. the failure in quality or quantity of iron-stone, coals, or other necessary matter. The Colebrook-Dale fires must, therefore, I conceive, have ceased to blaze, and the blast of her furnaces to roar, from some other cause, and from some private reason of her late proprietors.

Your constant reader,

Shrewsbury. SALOPIENSIS.

NOTES OF A READER.

TRAGEDY.

We do not see any necessary and natural connexion between death and the end of the third volume of a novel, or the conclusion of the fifth act of a play,—though that connexion in some modern novels, and in most English tragedies, seems to be assumed. Nor does it seem to follow, that, because death is the object of universal dread and aversion, and because terror is one of the objects of tragedy, death must, therefore, necessarily be represented; and not only so, but the more deaths the better. If it be true that familiarity has a tendency to create indifference, if not contempt, it must be considered prudent to have recourse to this strong exhibition as to drastic remedies in medicine, with caution and discrimination, and with a view to the continuance of its effect. We cannot help wishing that our own Shakspeare, who lays down such excellent rules for the guidance of actors, and cautions them so earnestly against "overstepping the modesty of nature," and the danger of "tearing passion to rags," had remembered, that the poet himself has certain limits imposed upon him, which he cannot transgress with impunity. We should not then have observed, in the perusal of some of his plays, the marginal notice of ["dies"] with about as much emotion as a note of exclamation; nor, when at the actual representation, we behold the few remaining persons of the drama scarcely able to cross the stage without stumbling over the bodies of their fallen companions, should we have felt our thoughts unavoidably wandering from the higher business and moral effect of the scene, to the mere physical and repelling images of fleshly mortality.—Edinburgh Rev.

The inquiries of the committee appointed to devise means for the suppression of mendicity, leave us no reason to doubt that in an average of cases a London beggar made by "his trade" eighteen-pence per day, or twenty-seven pounds per annum!

One-ninth of the whole population of Paris are wholly maintained by funds which the different bureaux of charity distribute for their relief; and still a countless horde of mendicants infest her streets, her quays, and all her public places.

Science and literature are "the nourishment of youth, the delight of age, the ornaments of prosperous life, the refuge and consolation of adversity, the companions of our weary travels, of our rural solitudes, of our sleepless nights."

The following quotation from Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary points out the frugal and temperate Scot; and, in illustration, may be contrasted with the proverbial invitation of the better feeding English, "Will you come and take your mutton with me?"

"KAIL, used metonimically for the whole dinner; as constituting among our temperate ancestors the principal part, s.

"Hence, in giving a friendly invitation to dinner, it is common to say, 'Will you come and tak your kail wi' me?' This, as a learned friend observes, resembles the French invitation, Voulez vous venir manger la soupe chez moi!"

THE RIVER NILE.

Ledyard, in his Travels, speaks thus contemptuously of this celebrated wonder:—"This is the mighty, the sovereign of rivers—the vast Nile that has been metamorphosed into one of the wonders of the world! Let me be careful how I read, and, above all, how I read ancient history. You have heard, and read too, much of its inundations. If the thousands of large and small canals from it, and the thousands of men and machines employed to transfer, by artificial means, the water of the Nile to the meadows on its banks—if this be the inundation that is meant, it is true; any other is false; it is not an inundating river."

The Jewish children to this day celebrate the fall and death of Haman, and on that anniversary represent the blows which they would fain deal on his scull, by striking with envenomed fury on the floor with wooden hammers. This observance was but very lately forbidden in the Grand Duchy of Baden.

TRAVELLING FOLLIES.

"Many gentlemen," says an old English author, "coming to their lands sooner than to their wits, adventure themselves to see the fashion of other countries; whence they see the world, as Adam had knowledge of good and evil, with the loss or lessening of their estate in this English Paradise; and bring home a few smattering terms, flattering garbs, apish carriages, foppish fancies, foolish guises and disguises, the vanities of neighbour nations."

The Spaniards are infinitely more careful than the French, and other nations, in planting trees, and in taking care of them; for it rarely happens, when a Spaniard eats fruit in a wood or in the open country, that he does not set the stones or the pips; and thus in the whole of their country an infinite number of fruit-trees of all kinds are found; whereas, in the French quarters you meet with none—Labat.

PAINTING.

It is painful to think how soon the paintings of Raphael, and Titian, and Correggio, and other illustrious men will perish and pass away. "How long," said Napoleon to David, "will a picture last?" "About four or five hundred years!—a fine immortality!" The poet multiplies his works by means of a cheap material—and Homer, and Virgil, and Dante, and Tasso, and Moliere, and Milton, and Shakspeare, may bid oblivion defiance; the sculptor impresses his conceptions on metal or on marble, and expects to survive the wreck of nations and the wrongs of time; but the painter commits to perishable cloth or wood the visions of his fancy, and dies in the certain assurance that the life of his works will be but short in the land they adorn.—For. Rev.

A Chinese novelist, in describing his hero, says, "the air of the mountains and rivers had formed his body; his mind, like a rich piece of embroidery, was worthy of his handsome face!" Pity he has not been introduced among our "fashionable novels."

PHRENOLOGY.

In 1805, Dr. Gall, the celebrated phrenologist, visited the prison of Berlin in the course of his