as to discard every idea of dignity, and impart to the countenance a character of burlesque and ugly disproportion. It is not one of nature's primitive forms, but a degeneracy produced by perpetual intermarriages of the same race during successive ages. It is a deformity, and comes therefore more properly under the head of nosology. Inest sua gratia parvis; let it not be imagined that all our attention is to be lavished upon these folio noses; the duodecimos and Elzevirs have done execution in the days that are gone, and shall they pass away from our memories like the forms of last year's clouds? Can we forget "Le petit nez retroussé" of Marmontel's heroine, which captivated a sultan, and overturned the laws of an empire? Was not the downfall of another empire, as recorded in the immortal work of Gibbon, written under a nose of the very snubbiest construction? So concave and intangible was it, that when his face was submitted to the touch of a blind old French lady, who used to judge of her acquaintance by feeling their features, she slapt it, exclaiming " Away, this is a nasty joke." Wilkes, equally unfortunate in this respect, and remarkably ugly besides, used to maintain, that in the estimation of society a handsome man had only half an hour's start of him, as within that period he would recover by his conversation what he had lost by his looks. Perhaps the most insurmountable objection to the pug or cocked-up nose, is the flippant, distasteful, or contemptuous expression it conveys, such as that of the late William Pitt for instance. To turn up our noses is a colloquialism for disdain; and even those of the ancient Romans, inflexible as they appear, could curl themselves up in the fastidiousness of concealed derision. " Altior homini tantum nasus," says Pliny, "quam novi mores subdolæ irrisioni dicavêre:" and Horace talks of sneers suspended, "naso adunco." It cannot be denied, that those who have been snubbed by nature, not unfrequently look as if they were anxious to take their revenge by snubbing others. As a friend to noses of all denominations, I must here enter my solemn protest against a barbarous abuse, to which they are too often subjected, by converting them into dust-holes, and sootbags, under the fashionable pretext of taking snuff, an abomination for which Sir Walter Raleigh is responsible, and which ought to have been included in the articles of his impeachment. When some "Sir Plume of amber snuff-box justly vain," after gently tapping its top with a look of diplomatic complacency, embraces a modicum of its contents with his finger and thumb, curves round his hand, so as to display the brilliant on his little finger, and commits the high dried pulvilio to the air, so that nothing but its impalpable aroma ascends into his nose, we may smile at the custom as a harmless and not ungraceful foppery: but when a filthy clammy compost is perpetually thrust up the nostrils with a voracious pig-like snort, it is a practice as disgusting to the beholders as I believe it to be injurious to the offender. The nose is the emunctory of the brain, and when its functions are impeded, the whole system of the head becomes deranged. A professed snuff-taker is generally recognisable by his total loss of the sense of smelling by his snuffling and snorting by his pale sodden complexion-and by that defective modulation of the voice, called talking through the nose, though it is in fact an inability so to talk from the partial or total stoppage of the passage. Not being provided with an ounce of civet, I will not suffer my imagination to wallow in all the revolting concomitants of this dirty trick; but I cannot refrain from an extract, by which we may form some idea of the time consumed in its performance. "Every professed, inveterate, and incurable snuff-taker, (says Lord Stanhope) at a moderate computation takes one pinch in ten minutes. Every pinch, with the agreeable ceremony of blowing and wiping the nose, and other incidental circumstances, consumes a minute and a half. One minute and a half, out of every ten, allowing sixteen hours to a snuff taking day, amounts to two hours and twentyfour minutes out of every natural day, or one day out of every ten. One day out of every ten amounts to thirty-six days and a half in a year. Hence, if we suppose the practice to be persisted in forty years, two entire years of the snuff-taker's life will be dedicated to tickling his nose, and two more to blowing it." Taken medicinally, or as a simple sternutatory, it may be excused; but the moment your snuff is not to be sneezed at, you are the slave of a habit which literally makes you grovel in the dust: your snuff-box has seized you as St. Dunstan did the Devil, and if the red-hot pincers, with which he performed the feat, could occasionally start up from an Ormskirk snuff-box, it might have a salutary effect in checking this nasty propensity among our real and pseudo fashionables. It was my intention to have written a dissertation upon the probable form of the nose mentioned in Solomon's song, which we are informed was like " the tower of Lebanon looking toward Damascus;" and I had prepared some very erudite conjectures as to the composition of the perfume, which suggested to Catullus the magnificent idea of wishing to be all nose: "Quod tu cum olfacies, Deos rogabis, Totum ut te faciant, Fabulle, nasum." But I apprehend that your readers will begin to think I have led them by the nose quite long enough; and lest you yourself, Mr. Editor, should suspect that I am making a handle of the sub ject, merely that you may pay through the nose for my communication, I shall conclude at once with a SONNET TO MY OWN NOSE. O nose! thou rudder in my face's centre, Guard him from all disgrace and misadventure, Scenting the gales of Heaven, that have not yet H. SCIENTIFIC AMUSEMENTS. NO. I. OF AUTOMATA. WHILE political economists amuse themselves and the public with the nicely-balanced powers of man as a propagating and eating animal, and philosophers and divines often assure us that he is, in other and higher respects, but a machine of a superior description; we, in especial deference to the latter grave authorities, have been entertaining ourselves with the notion of his mechanical construction, as contrasted with the various imitations of it, that have been occasionally offered to the world. We take it for granted, in this paper, that man is a machine, and shall not presume to arrogate for him any higher pretensions. We know nothing of his impulses as an animal, nor of the duties or influences to which he is subject as a rational being (if such he be); we only propose to introduce to our readers a variety of claimants for the honour of having made a part of him-of imitating portions of his organs, in their actual exercise-and isolated actions of his very mind. What wonder, if, in the progress of these efforts, our artists should occasionally have struck off a complete and clever duck, a learned fly, or a royal eagle! Automata have been favourite objects of mechanical contri From avros, ipse; and μaoμal, excitor, a self-excited, or self-moving machine. vance from a very early period. If the term, indeed, may be allowed to include what some writers have considered under it, their history would quickly swell into a volume. The celebrated Glanvil, for instance, speaks of "the art whereby the Almighty governs the motions of the great automaton" of the universe! Bishop Wilkins ranks the sphere of Archimedes amongst the AνTOμATA σTATA, or "such as move only according to the contrivance of their several parts, and not according to their whole frame." It was, in fact, an early orrery, according to Claudian: Jupiter in parvo cum cerneret æthera vitro, Jam meus in fragili luditur orbe labor, &c. This learned prelate has even extended the application of the term to machines moved (in consequence of their peculiar construction) by external forces or elements, as mills, ships, &c. Its modern acceptation, however, and that to which we shall restrict ourselves, will not include all machines that are self, or internally moved. It is confined to the mechanical imitation of the functions and actions of living animals, and particulary those of man. The celebrated story of the statue of Memnon (one of the wonders of Ancient Egypt) has some pretensions to lead the way in this historical sketch. We have positive testimony to the circumstance of the most beautiful sounds being emitted from this statue, at the rising and setting of the sun; and from the pedestal after the statue was overthrown. What was the contrivance in this case, it may be vain to conjecture; but automata are, by profession, a puzzling race. If a certain disposition of strings, exposed to the rarefaction of the air, or to the morning and evening breezes, after the manner of our Æolian harps, produced these sounds; or if any method of arranging the internal apertures so as to receive them from a short distance, were the artifice, a considerable acquaintance with the science of music, and with acoustics generally, will be argued. Wilkins quotes a musical invention of Cornelius Dreble of similar pretensions, which "being set in the sunshine, would, of itself, render a soft and pleasant harmony, but being removed into the shade would presently become silent." The statues and the flight of Dædalus are equally famousand, perhaps, fabulous. Aristotle, however, speaks of the former in his treatise De Anima, 1. i. c. 3, as successful imitations of the human figure and human functions in walking, running, * Strabo, lib. xvii. &c. and attempts to account for their motions by the concealment of quicksilver. Archytas' flying dove (originally mentioned in Favorinus) is another of the ancient automata. The inventor is said to have flourished about B. C. 400, and was a Pythagorean philosopher at Tarentum. It was made of wood, and the principal circumstance of its history, which Favorinus mentions, is, that like some other birds of too much wing, when it alighted on the ground, it could not raise itself up again. Aulus Gellius, in his Noctes Atticæ, attempts to account for its flight, by observing (Ita erat scilicet libramentis suspensum, et aura spiritus inclusa atque occultâ consitum, &c.) that it was "suspended by balancing, and moved by a secretly enclosed aura, or spirit!" Friar Bacon, we all know, made a brazen head that could speak, and that seems to have assisted, in no small degree, in proclaiming him a magician. Albertus Magnus is also said to have devoted thirty years of his life to the construction of an automaton, which the celebrated Thomas Aquinas broke purposely to pieces. Men, treated as these were by the age in which they lived, had no encouragement to hope that any details of their labours would reach posterity. Amongst the curiosities of his day, Walchius mentions an iron spider of great ingenuity. In size it did not exceed the ordinary inhabitants of our houses, and could creep or climb with any of them, wanting none of their powers, except, of which nothing is said, the formation of the web. Various writers of credit, particularly Kircher, Porta, and Bishop Wilkins, relate that the celebrated Regiomontanus, (John Muller) of Nuremberg, ventured a loftier flight of art. He is said to have constructed a self-moved wooden eagle, which descended toward the Emperor Maximilian as he approached the gates of Nuremberg, saluted him, and hovered over his person as he entered the town. This philosopher, according to the same authorities, also produced an iron fly, which would start from his hand at table, and after flying round to each of the guests, returned, as if wearied, to the protection of his master. An hydraulic clock, presented to the Emperor Charlemagne, by the Caliph Haroun al Rashid, merits record in the history of these inventions. It excited the admiration of all Europe at the period of its arrival. Twelve small doors divided the dial into the twelve hours, and opened successively as each hour arrived, when a ball fell from the aperture on a brazen bell and struck the time, the door remaining open. At the conclusion of every twelve hours, twelve mounted knights, handsomely caparisoned, came out simultaneously from the dial, rode round the plate and closed the doors. Dr. Clarke, in his last volume of Travels, |