SIR CHARLES LYELL (1797-1875) IR CHARLES LYELL was born at Kinnordy, Forfarshire, Scotland, November 14th, 1797. He took his degree at Oxford in 1819 and began practice at the bar, but from his boyhood he had had a strong leaning towards scientific research which drew him under the influence of Cuvier, Humboldt, and other great investigators, who were just beginning to rid science of the limitations imposed on it by the Middle Ages. Lyell's researches in geology gave them effective support and made him one of the founders of geology as a true science. His works include "Principles of Geology," 18301833; "Travels in North America," 1845; "The Antiquity of Man,” 1863; and "The Student's Elements of Geology," 1871. He died at London, February 22d, 1875. IN THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF LISBON No part of the volcanic region of southern Europe has so tremendous an earthquake occurred in modern times as that which began on the first of November, 1755, at Lisbon. A sound of thunder was heard underground, and immediately afterwards a violent shock threw down the greater part of that city. In the course of about six minutes, sixty thousand persons perished. The sea first retired and laid the bar dry; it then rolled in, rising fifty feet above its ordinary level. The mountains of Arrabida, Estrella, Julio, Marvan, and Cintra, being some of the largest in Portugal, were impetuously shaken, as it were, from their very foundations; and some of them opened at their summits, which were split and rent in a wonderful manner, huge masses of them being thrown down into the subjacent valleys. Flames are related to have issued from these mountains, which are supposed to have been electric; they are also said to have smoked; but vast clouds of dust may have given rise to this appearance. The most extraordinary circumstance which occurred at Lisbon during the catastrophe, was the subsidence of a new quay, built entirely of marble, at an immense expense. A great concourse of people had collected there for safety, as a spot where they might be beyond the reach of falling ruins; but suddenly the quay sank down with all the people on it, and not one of the dead bodies ever floated to the surface. A great number of boats and small vessels anchored near it, all full of people, were swallowed up as in a whirlpool No fragments of these wrecks ever rose again to the surface, and the water in the place where the quay had stood is stated, in many accounts, to be unfathomable; but Whitehurst says he ascertained it to be one hundred fathoms. In this case, we must either suppose that a certain tract sank down into a subterranean hollow, which would cause a "fault” in the strata to the depth of six hundred feet, or we may infer, as some have done, from the entire disappearance of the substances engulfed, that a chasm opened and closed again. Yet in adopting this latter hypothesis, we must suppose that the upper part of the chasm, to the depth of one hundred fathoms, remained open after the shock. According to the observations made at Lisbon, in 1837, by Mr. Sharpe, the destroying effects of this earthquake were confined to the tertiary strata, and were most violent on the blue clay, on which the lower part of the city is constructed. Not a building, he says, on the secondary limestone or the basalt was injured. The great area over which this Lisbon earthquake extended is very remarkable. The movement was most violent in Spain, Portugal, and the north of Africa; but nearly the whole of Europe, and even the West Indies, felt the shock on the same day. A seaport called St. Ubes, about twenty miles south of Lisbon, was engulfed. At Algiers and Fez, in Africa, the agitation of the earth was equally violent; and at the distance of eight leagues from Morocco, a village with the inhabitants, to the number of about eight or ten thousand persons, together with all their cattle, were swallowed up. Soon after, the earth closed again over them. The shock was felt at sea on the deck of a ship to the west of Lisbon, and produced very much the same sensation as on dry land. Off St. Lucar, the captain of the ship Nancy felt his vessel so violently shaken, that he thought she had struck the ground, but, on heaving the lead, found a great depth of water. Captain Clark, from Denia, in latitude 36° 24′ N., between nine and ten in the morning, had his ship shaken and strained as if she had struck upon a rock. Another ship forty leagues west of St. Vincent experienced so violent a concussion that the men were thrown a foot and a half perpendicularly up from the deck. In Antigua and Barbadoes, as also in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Corsica, Switzerland, and Italy, tremors and slight oscillations of the ground were felt. remarkable. The agitation of lakes, rivers, and springs in Great Britain was. At Loch Lomond, in Scotland, for example, the water, without the least apparent cause, rose against its banks, and then subsided below its usual level. The greatest perpendicular height of this swell was two feet four inches. It is said that the movement of this earthquake was undulatory, and that it traveled at the rate of twenty miles a minute. A great wave swept over the coast of Spain, and is said to have been sixty feet high at Cadiz. At Tangier, in Africa, it rose and fell eighteen times on the coast; at Funchal, in Madeira, it rose full fifteen feet perpendicular above high-water mark, although the tide, which ebbs and flows there seven feet, was then at half-ebb. Besides entering the city and committing great havoc, it overflowed other seaports in the island. At Kinsale, in Ireland, a body of water rushed into the harbor, whirled round several vessels, and poured into the market place. It was before stated that the sea first retired at Lisbon; and this retreat of the ocean from the shore at the commencement of an earthquake, and its subsequent return in a violent wave, is a common occurrence. In order to account for the phenomenon, Michell imagined a subsidence at the bottom of the sea from the giving way of the roof of some cavity, in consequence of a vacuum produced by the condensation of steam. Such condensation, he observes, might be the first effect of the introduction of a large body of water into fissures and cavities already filled with steam, before there had been sufficient time for the heat of the incandescent lava to turn so large a supply of water into steam, which, being soon accomplished, causes a greater explosion. JOHN LYLY (c. 1554-1606) UPHUES, OR THE ANATOMY OF WIT," by John Lyly, is responsi ble for the word "Euphuism" to indicate what Saintsbury calls conceited and precious language in general." Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," published in 1621, more than forty years after Lyly wrote "Euphues," is another noted example of the same style. Lyly was born in Kent, England, about 1554. At Oxford, where he took his first degree in 1573, he was known as a "noted wit" whose genius, it was said, "naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry, as if Apollo had given him a wreath of his own bays, without snatching or struggling." Lyly wrote a number of plays and followed the «< Anatomy of Wit" with his "Euphues and his England" in 1580. In 1589 he published a tract entitled, "Pappe with an Hatchet, alias a Figge for My Godsonne; or Crack Me This Nut; or A Countrie Cuffe," etc., as his contribution to the celebrated Martin Marprelate controversies. He died in neglect in 1606. His burial is registered on November 20th of that year at St. Bartholomew the Less, in London. His work belongs largely to the curiosities of literature; but in spite of its worst affectation, it is frequently interesting in itself, and always so as an illustration of the eccentricities of intellect which accompany such great crises in history as that which developed in the Puritan revolution against the Stuarts. I A COOLING CARD FOR ALL FOND LOVERS T Is a world to see how commonly we are blinded with the collusions of women, and more enticed by their ornaments being artificial than their proportion being natural. I loathe almost to think on their ointments and apothecary drugs, the sleeking of their faces, and all their slibber sauces, which bring quasiness to the stomach, and disquiet to the mind. Take from them their periwigs, their paintings, their jewels, their roules, their bolsterings, and thou shalt soon perceive that a woman is the least part of herself. When they be once robbed of their robes, then will they appear so odious, so ugly, so mon strous, that thou wilt rather think them serpents than saints, and so like hags that thou wilt fear rather to be enchanted than enamored. Look in their closets, and there shalt thou find an apothecary's shop of sweet confections, a surgeon's box of sundry salves, a peddler's pack of new fangles. If every one of these things severally be not of force to move thee, yet all of them jointly should mortify thee. Moreover, to make thee the more stronger to strive against these sirens, and more subtle to deceive these tame serpents, my counsel is that thou have more strings to thy bow than one. It is safe riding at two anchors; a fire divided in twain burneth slower; a fountain running into many rivers is of less force; the mind enamored on two women is less affected with desire, and less infected with despair; one love expelleth another, and the remembrance of the latter quencheth the concupiscence of the first. Yet if thou be so weak, being bewitched with their wiles, that thou hast neither will to eschew nor wit to avoid their company; if thou be either so wicked that thou wilt not, or so wedded that thou canst not, abstain from their glances, yet at the least dissemble thy grief. If thou be as hot as mount Etna, feign thyself as cold as the hill Caucasus, carry two faces in one hood, cover thy flaming fancy with feigned ashes, show thyself sound when thou art rotten, let thy hue be merry when thy heart is melancholy, bear a pleasant countenance with a pined conscience, a painted sheath with a leaden dagger. Thus dissembling thy grief, thou mayest recur thy disease. Love creepeth in by stealth, and by stealth slideth away. Let every one loathe his lady, and be ashamed to be her servant. It is riches and ease that nourisheth affection; it is play, wine, and wantonness, that feedeth a lover as fat as a fool; refrain from all such meats as shall provoke thine appetite, and all such means as may allure thy mind to folly. Take clear water for strong wine; brown bread for fine manchet; beef and brews for quail and partridge; for ease, labor; for pleasure, pain; for surfeiting, hunger; for sleep, watching; for the fellowship of ladies, the company of philosophers. If thou say to me, Physician heal thyself, I answer that I am meetly well purged of that disease, and yet was I never more willing to cure myself than to comfort my friend. And seeing the cause that made in me so cold a devotion should make in thee also as frozen a desire, I hope thou wilt be as ready to provide a salve as thou |