that meteors are a sign of foul weather. By remembering a few simple rules, and inspecting the published reports, everyone may be his own weather prophet. A man who possesses a barometer and a thermometer, and knows how to read them, can beat all prophets out of the field. Change of weather is gradual, and great storms or changes are usually shown by falls of the barometer exceeding an inch, and by differences of temperature exceeding fifteen degrees. The more rapidly such changes occur, the more risk is there of severe weather. The normal height of the barometer in these latitudes is 29.24 to 30.00, though 27.45 has been registered in the Orkneys. A tenth of an inch an hour is a fall indicating a storm or very heavy rain.
The thermometer is also valuable for foretelling wind and weather. Shaded, and in the open air, when much higher than the following averages between eight and nine o’clock, a.m., it indicates southerly or westerly wind; when considerably lower the reverse. The table is calculated for Greenwich, but, allowing for differences of mean temperature, can of course be used elsewhere for weather prognostication.
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January
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
37° |
|
February
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
39° |
|
March
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
31° |
|
April
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
46° |
|
May
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
53° |
|
June
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
59° |
|
July
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
62° |
|
August
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
61° |
|
September
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
57° |
|
October
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
50° |
|
November
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
43° |
|
December
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
39° |
ENGLAND’S SUTTEE.
Ho, Seeva—deck the chamber!
Ho, flash the red wine up!
Whilst the fiery goblet sparkles,
And fury crowns the cup:
Wreathe fast the bridal chaplet,
And shout the loud acclaim—
To-night another victim
Shall come to thee in flame!
****
Where eyes with love are lighting,
And tender glances meet,
And the dizzy valse flies faster
To the sweep of silken feet;
In the flush of airy triumph,
She comes, supreme, elect,
A gleam of gauzy splendour,
A sacrifice, full deckt.
And lo! the pile awaiting—
Already round her crowd
The ministers of torture,
The weavers of her shroud;
They press . . . Ah, God, the fire!
Too late they shriek her name;
Wild thro’ the frenzied tumult
She flies a living flame! . . .
Enough. The curtain closes,
The trembling guests are fled;
A mother seeks her daughter—
The living clasps the dead:
Slain, in the first sweet promise
Of life, and love untried,—
In the blossom of her beauty—
To-morrow’s noon, a bride.
A bride! ay—for thee, lovely,
A bridegroom truly comes,
With pomp of stately pageant,
In pride of sable plumes;
The solemn priest stands ready,
The wedding-guests are there,
But hearts with grief are breaking,
And one shall wed Despair.
And long for thee shall Sorrow
Sit mute at hearth and hall;
For thee the lip shall tremble,
The blinding tear shall fall;
And the fresh spring shall come over,
And the flowers with summer’s breath,—
But thou shalt know no spring-time
Whose bridal fere was Death.
INIGO JONES AND HIS WORK.
YORK GATE.
Inigo Jones, the English Palladio and father of English architecture of the 17th century, was one of the few of our eminent artists who have been born citizens of London. He saw the light in the neighbourhood of old St. Paul’s, that glorious fabric which he lived to disfigure with King James’s Gothic,[1] and which the great fire of 1666 happily graced with an act of oblivion as a per contra to the vast disaster which it involved. The feeling and sentiment of the painted style of architecture had ceased to exist in Inigo’s time as in that of his great successor, Christopher Wren: witness the towers of Westminster Abbey. Had Inigo been left to his original employment as a carpenter, doubtless he would have made a first-rate hand: but the patronage of the Earl of Arundel, or the Earl of Pembroke, it is not quite clear which—but probably the former—paved the way to a higher destination. Under the auspices of one of these noblemen, he was sent to Italy to study landscape painting. A specimen of his performance in this art is mentioned by Horace Walpole with some faint commendation, not unmixed with censure of his attainment as a colourist.
In Italy Jones studied the works of Palladio, and is said, but upon doubtful authority, to have designed the front of a church in Leghorn. To this his celebrated barn, the church of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, bears a general resemblance, and it possibly may have procured him the credit of the former. Of his church at Covent Garden we have the following story. Jones was instructed by his patron, the Earl, to build as plain and convenient a church as possible, and but little better than a barn: to which the architect replied he would build a barn, but that it should be the best in England. A fire in 1795 destroyed this specimen of noble simplicity in style; but the Earl of Burlington’s re-edification preserves a general resemblance.
- ↑ “James, both for empire and for arts unfit,
His sense a quibble and a pun his wit,
Whatever works he patronised, debased,
But haply left the pencil undisgraced.”
Hayley. “Epistle to Romney.”
