sociate, with privilege to attend the progress of the Machine now building on the premises." The Duke of Brunswick is also hard at work on a new Aërial Machine.

In the Great Exposition, we have had the pleasure of examining the new Aërial Machine invented by Mr. E. Mason, of Brompton, together with the Locomotive Balloon, and Locomotive Parachute of Mr. H. Bell, of Millbank. The former of these presents the appearance of a huge vegetable marrow, with a broad Dutch rudder at the stern, and an apparatus of revolving sails at each bow; Mr. Bell's invention is a long silver fish, for a boat, with revolving fans, in place of fins, for progression, and sustained by a balloon of blue silk. (It is said that Marshal Ney expended a considerable sum in experiments with a balloon of the fish-shape; but it could not be made to swim the air as he wished.) Mr. J. Brown, of Leadenhall Street, has a most solid-looking model, like a mahogany Dutch boat sustained by an immense inflated bonnet, or closed hood, and guided by a jib in front, with a tri-sail for a rudder. Mr. H. Plummer has a machine to fly with wings only, the power to be derived from the action of springs, &c. Mr. G. Graham exhibits a steering apparatus for a balloon. sembles some enormous fire-work case, or skeleton of some fabulous bird. These long wings are, in fact, to be used as immense oars; a project somewhat resembling that of Messrs. Aine and Robert, in 1784. Mr. W. Sadd, of Wandsworth, exhibits a singularly light, and curious aërial machine, evidently the result of immense consideration in its principles and details, and if ever we ventured up in an experimental trip of this kind, we should be disposed to give this

It re

but it is good to be careful, and better still, perhaps, not to venture for a long time to come. All these machines have a wonderfully eccentric look, of course; and there are no explanations to any of them, excepting the following:

A pamphlet has just been published by Mr. Luntley, with a frontispiece of a very new kind of balloon, in form not unlike two bagpipes of the early Italian shepherds, sewed together. It is to be of prodigious magnitude. The principle of propulsion will be that of the screw; but the balloon is to be its own screw, and work itself, by rotation, through the air. A wheel and strap are to give the rotary motion; and the inventor is convinced that one end of the bagpipe (or queer curled point) will propel, and the other attract the air in its embrace, which will enable the aëronaut to advance in any direction he pleases. His power is to be derived from steam; and the weight of cargo he expects to be able to carry (besides the weight of his machine and apparatus) is the moderate amount of twenty-seven tons-about the weight of six full-grown elephants, with their " castles."

Well, we take our breath after all this; but, supported by the opinion of many scientific men of various periods, and by the scientific triumphs accomplished in our own time, we venture to indulge a hope of flying, some day, whither we list (with a reasonable recollection that even ships at sea cannot leave port in an adverse storm, and that very few birds can fly against a strong wind); but we do not think the day has yet arrived; and we confess to a somewhat uncomfortable sensation at the idea of "going up" in company with a cargo of twenty-seven tons.

Fate Dags.

T is a difficult puzzle to reconcile the existence of certain superstitions that continue to have wide influence with the enlightenment of the nineteenth century. When we have read glowing paragraphs about the wonderful progress accomplished by the present generation; when we have regarded the giant machinery in operation for the culture of the people-moved, in great part, by the collective power of individual charity; when we have examined the stupendous results of human genius and ingenuity which are now laid bare to the lowliest in the realm; we turn back, it must be confessed, with a mournful despondency, to mark the debasing influence of the old superstitions which have survived to the present time.

The superstitions of the ancients formed part of their religion. They consulted oracles as now men pray. The stars were the arbiters of their fortunes. Natural phenomena, as lightning and hurricanes, were, to them, awful expressions of the anger of their particular deities. They had their dies atri and their dies albi ; the former were marked down in their calendars with a black character, to denote ill-luck, and the latter were painted in white characters to signify bright and propitious days. They followed

the finger-posts of their teachers. Faith gave dignity to the tenets of the star-gazer and fire-worshipper.

The priests of old taught their disciples to regard six particular days in the year as days fraught with unusual danger to mankind. Men were enjoined not to let blood on these black days, nor to imbibe any liquid. It was devoutly believed that he who ate goose on one of these black days would surely die within forty more; and that any little stranger who made his appearance on one of the dies atri would surely die a sinful and violent death. Men were further enjoined to let blood from the right arm on the seventh or fourteenth of March; from the left arm on the eleventh of April; and from either arm on the third or sixth of May, that they might avoid pestilential diseases. These barbaric observances, when brought before people in illustrations of the mental darkness of the ancients, are considered at once to be proof positive of their abject condition. We thereupon congratulated ourselves upon living in the nineteenth century, when such foolish superstitions are laughed at; and perhaps our vanity is not a little flattered by the contrast which presents itself, between our own highly cultivated condition, and the wretched state of our ancestors.

Yet Mrs. Flimmins will not undertake a sea-voyage on a Friday; nor would she on any account allow her daughter Mary to be married on that day of the week. She has great pity for the poor Red Indians who will not do certain things while the moon presents a certain appearance, and who attach all kinds of powers to poor dumb brutes; yet if her cat purrs more than usual, she accepts the warning, and abandons the trip she had promised herself on the

morrow.

Miss Nippers subscribes largely to the fund for eradicat

poor

ing superstitions from the minds of the wretched inhabitants of Kamschatka; and while she is calculating the advantages to be derived from a mission to the South Sea Islands, to do away with the fearful superstitious reverence in which those dear islanders hold the native flea: a coal pops from her fire, and she at once augurs from its shape, an abundance of money that will enable her to set her pious undertaking in operation; but on no account will she commence collecting subscriptions for the anti-drinking-slavegrown sugar-in-tea society, beeause she has always remarked that Monday is her unlucky day. On a Monday her poodle died, and on a Monday she caught that severe cold at Brighton, from the effects of which she is afraid she will

never recover.

Her un

Mrs. Carmine is a very strong-minded woman. lucky day is Wednesday. On a Wednesday she first caught that flush which she has never been able to chase from her cheeks, and on one of these fatal days her Maria took the scarlet fever. Therefore, she will not go to a pic-nic on a Wednesday, because she feels convinced that the day will turn out wet, or that the wheel will come off the carriage. Yet the other morning, when a gipsy was caught telling her eldest daughter her fortune, Mrs. Carmine very properly reproached the first-born for her weakness, in giving any heed to the silly mumblings of the old woman.

Mrs. Car

mine is considered to be a woman of uncommon acuteness. She attaches no importance whatever to the star under which a child is born,-does not think there is a pin to choose between Jupiter and Neptune; and she has a positive contempt for ghosts; but she believes in nothing that is begun, continued, or ended on a Wednesday.

Miss Crumple, on the contrary, has seen many ghosts,in fact, is by this time quite intimate with one or two of the