that time nothing more than a square box, to which was affixed a pair of organ-bellows; and that, at each answer of this nondescript speaker, the inventor put his hand under a curtain that covered it, to touch, apparently, the springs that produced the articulation.

It appears to have been M. Kempelin's design to give to this automaton the form of a child of five or six years of age, as the voice which he produced was that of this period of life. He, however, exhibited it in an unfinished state; and we have not been able to learn to what figure it was finally adapted. The narrative of his proceedings in accomplishing what he did effect, and which we abridge from a curious treatise of his, "On the Mechanism of Speech," appears to us to be amongst the most interesting and useful of all the automatical details. Our modern removers of impediments in speech may work wonders, perhaps, by looking into his artificial jaws!

The first object of M. Kempelin, though upon what ground he reasoned we cannot imagine, was the production of the vowel sounds, rather than those of any of the consonant, which he hardly expected to be able to combine with them. He investigated the affinity between the sound of various instruments and the human voice; and between the use of the artificial reedstop, or voce humana, (which has sometimes been applied to the natural organs) and the general functions of the glottis. To the honour of our Northern countrymen, after exhausting his patience on qualifying and combining bassoon with clarionet reeds, those of hautboys, &c., he found the reed of the Highland bagpipe to furnish the best practical basis of his attempts, and sounds approximating the nearest to the harmony divine of human speech!

He now conceived that the fundamental powers of the voice were in A, the sound of which vowel he easily produced by combining the reed with a tube and a pair of organ-bellows; but beyond this he could not proceed, until it occurred to him that the organ of developing the sounds desired, demanded his principal attention. He divided, therefore, a deep elliptical box into two parts, which shut upon each other with a hinge, in the manner of the human jaws, connecting his tube with the back of it, and carefully varying their opening and manner of action until he could command the sounds of O, OU, and E. Year after year was devoted to this instrument, we are told; but I, or the German U, refused to obey his call. K, L, M, and P, however, rewarded his efforts; when he attempted to form the letters he had obtained into syllabic combinations and words. Here an almost insuperable difficulty occurred; the sounds of the letters would not flow into each other without a clatter or pause. If too slowly enunciated, they would seem like a child repeating

his alphabet, and have no resemblance to the word intended; and if the tube was too rapidly supplied, it would produce a catching gust of air in the mouth, which interrupted every letter with the sound of K. An aspirating sound following that of the consonants, was also very troublesome to overcome. In the beginning of the third year of his labour, he could execute, pretty accurately, the words Papa, Mama, Aula, Lama, Mulo. The sounds of most of the other consonants were ultimately obtained. P, K, and T, required the greatest quantity of air, we are told; and the whole machine about six times the quantity of the human lungs. But the two latter consonants, with D and G, were always imperfectly articulated. Some of his best sentences were, Romanorum Imperator semper Augustus. Leopoldus Secundus. Vous êtes mon ami. Je vous aime de tout mon cœur.

M. De Kempelin finally perfected, 1. Nostrils, which he found of great importance in articulation, and which consisted of two tin tubes, communicating at bottom with the mouth. 2. The mouth, made of elastic gum, and of a bell form, so contrived that the sounds of the reed issued immediately from it, and connected with the air-chest by a tin tube, which kept it always full of air. S. The air-chest, which was of an oblong shape, and received at one end the voice-pipe containing the reed, and at the other the bellows-pipe, both closed round with leather. In this chest were contained two inferior ones, each having a valve at the top closed by a spring, and a round aperture adapted to receive through the side of the larger chest a tin funnel, and a round wooden tube, which produced the hissing sounds of CH, J, S, and Z. The voice-pipe entered the larger chest between the two smaller ones. 4. The bellows, answering the purpose of lungs, and which acted in the ordinary manner of those belonging to an organ. 5. The reed, which was in imitation of a bagpipe drone, the hollow portion being square, and the tongue of it formed of thin ivory, vibrating horizontally, to produce the various sounds. The square end was inserted, as we have noticed, in the air-chest. Along the upper side of the tongue was a moveable spring, which slightly bent it inward; and the part on which it fell was covered with leather, to modulate the vibra tions. The sounds were more acute as the spring acted toward the outer extremity of the tongue, which was then more rapid in its motions; as it was withdrawn from this part, the vibra tions were slower, and the sounds more grave.

The name of M. Maillardet, a Swiss artist of modern celebrity, is the only one that merits association with that of De Kempelin. He has executed two or three celebrated figures, with whose exploits we must "close this strange eventful history."

One of these is a lady at her piano-forte. She executes eighteen tunes by the actual pressure of her fingers on the keys; and while all the natural notes are thus performed, her feet play

the flats and sharps by means of pedals. The instrument, in fact, may be correctly called an organ, as it is mainly moved by bellows; to bring which into proper action is the one important object of the machinery. The whole is impelled by six strong springs, acting on twenty-five communicating levers, and regulated and equalized by a brass fly. The interior of the instrument is, of course, very complicated and minute in its mechanism, which requires to be wound up once an hour. Before commencing a tune, the lady bows her head to the auditors; she is apparently agitated with an anxiety and diffidence, not always felt in real life; her eyes then seem intent on the notes, er her bosom heaves, and at a distance it is impossible to discover any semblance of a work of art.

A magician, that has sometimes accompanied this musical lady, is also a considerable triumph of mechanical skill. He sits at the bottom of a wall, with a long wand in his right hand, and a book in his left. Questions inscribed on thin oval counters, twenty in number, are put into the spectator's hand, who is desired to enclose one or more of them in a drawer, which shuts with a spring. A medallion, for instance, has the question, What is the most universal passion? which being put into the drawer, the figure rises with a solemn gait, bows his head, draws a circle or two with his wand, consults his book, and lifts it toward his face, as if in meditation. He then strikes with his wand on the wall above his hand, when two folding doors open, and discover the inscription Love, as the reply. The counters are remarkably thin, and similar in all other respects but their inscriptions, which some of them bear on both sides: certainly the mechanism that can discriminate the one from the other, must be exquisite; and mechanism alone, we have the highest authority for believing, it is.*

M. Maillardet's writing-boy is hardly less meritorious. He is exhibited kneeling on one knee, and an attendant having dipped his pencil and laid the paper before him, he executes drawings, and French and English sentences, in writing, of a very superior description. Every natural motion of the fingers, elbow, eyes, &c. is correctly imitated.

The first of these figures the artist stated to have cost him the sum of £1500 in its construction.

We have now placed before the reader as complete an account of the most celebrated automata, as the limits of our publication will admit. We believe no remarkable contrivance of this kind has escaped our notice; and as we reminded him of some visionary speculations on the powers of man in the commencement of our sketch, is it too much to ask him for one serious reflection, at the close, upon the wisdom of that Almighty Architect, by

See the article "ANDROIDES," in Brewster's Encyclopedia, before alluded to.

whom we are so fearfully, so wonderfully, so inimitably made? Without any speculation on the possible powers of man, or the tendency of his habits and impulses on a large and hypothetical scale, let the entire muscular action of a single youthful arm, in striking a shuttlecock, be perfectly imitated by him, and we could consent to resign to the artist the government of our share of the world!

SONNET ON VISITING DONNINGTON CASTLE,

Said to have been the latest residence of Chaucer, and celebrated for its resis tance to the army of the parliament during the civil wars. OH for some gentle spirit to surround,

*

With clinging ivy, thy high-seated towers,
Fair Donnington, and wipe from Chaucer's bowers
The last rude touch of wo! All sight, all sound
Of the old strife, boon Nature from the ground
Hath banish'd. Here the trench no longer lours,
But, like a bosky dell, bedeck'd with flowers,
And garlanded with May, sinks dimpling round,
A very spot for youthful poet's dreams

In the prime hour: Grisildi's mournful lay,
The "half-told" tale, would sound still sweeter here.
Oh for some hand to hide with ivy spray
War's ravages, and chase the jarring themes
Of King and State, Roundhead and Cavalier!

SONNET WRITTEN IN SICKNESS.

FAREWELL, dear haunts of childhood's happy hours,
The hallow'd RUIN,† and the moss-clad TREE,‡
Whose boughs of yore form'd Wolsey's canopy
When fortune frown'd. Adieu, ye greenwood bowers-
Ye pleasant meads, adorn'd with innocent flowers,
Scenes of my youth-ye bloom not now for me;
No more may I your smiling verdure see,
For fell disease my spirit overpowers.
Like a faint pilgrim at some distant shrine,
Foreworn by travel in the tedious way,

At that dread hour his soul for home doth pine,
When feeble nature sinks in deep decay-
Oh! might he there his parting breath resign,
Where life began-but Death brooks no delay.
"Or call up him, who left half-told

M.

J. P.

The story of Cambuscan bold," &c.-MILTON, П Penseroso. The Ruins of Cawood Castle, Yorkshire, formerly the archiepiscopal seat of the see of York.

A large chesnut-tree of great antiquity, which is still standing in Cawood castle garth. The writer of this heard the late archbishop Markham observe, that Wolsey used frequently to sit beneath its shade, to ruminate on and lament his disgraceful fall. Wolsey retired to Cawood after his fall, and was there arrested for high treason by the Earl of Northumberland.

A CALL TO THE BAR.

MR. EDITOR-Your correspondent E. R. in his pleasant paper on the antiquities of the Temple, appears to me scarcely to have done justice to its later dwellers. He has touched but lightly on the grandeur of the Middle Temple Hall, and on the high festivities which are holden within its walls on the call of any of its students to the bar. These things I esteem worthy of more honourable mention; and shall, therefore, with your permission, state my own recollections of them, now softened and deepened by years.

I can never, indeed, forget the feelings with which I was filled on my first entrance into that princely room to which I have alluded. The vastness of its area, the majesty of its proportions, its noble rough-hewn roof, the collected emblems of all those who have there first glowed with generous ambition, and who have added to the most select associations connected with its walls, at once expanded and awed my heart. I felt on the instant an embryo chancellor, and yet the spirit of worldly ambition was strangely softened by the sense of dim antiquity, of the transitoriness of wealth and honours, of the gentle fading away of the "roses of flowers" of those who, by long toils and anxious struggles, carved out for themselves armorial bearings and a pompous sepulchre. So deep was the first impression, that it was some time before I felt any disposition more minutely to examine the decorations of the hall. But when I did so, I found nothing which tended to dissipate or weaken the first great crowd of emotions which were awakened within me. Across the eastern side I found a noble skreen, carved with curious images of antique delicacy and grace. At the upper end a raised platform of oak formed a noble terrace, which terminated at both extremities in recesses. In the southern of these was a painted window overlooking the river, and almost embowered by the venerable trees of the small garden of the Middle Temple, where I almost imagined myself transported to the lone tower of some castellated pile in the inmost regions of romance, and expected to hear the distant roar of artillery, or the lover's lute trembling mournfully on the waters. Over the raised platform was a series of pictures, of which the fine portrait of Charles the First, by Vandyck, was the principal; and far above these, a small pictured window half covered with a curtain of crimson, through which the sun shed the loveliest of roseate hues. At that moment I confess that I missed not the "armed footstep," or the clashing of swords; but, anticipating a series of holier battles for freedom and for justice, exclaimed triumphantly to myself "I too am a Templar."