ters seemed ill-disposed to gratify my curiosiTy. However difficult it may be to arrive at the troth in India, it is still more so here, though for a very different reason. The Indian always accommodates his answer to the supposed pleasure of the inquirer: the Kashmirian is trained to practice the art of concealment, which naturally leads to falsehood on every occasion. The workmen bandled the threads with a rapidity which surprised me, moving their heads continually the while. They work in winter in a room which is never heated, lest dust or smoke might injure the material. Generally speaking their features are highly intellectual and animated."

MISCELLANEOUS.

THE BEER SPRING.
From Captain Fremont's Journal of his second
Expedition to Oregon.

August 25.-We made our encampment in a grove of cedar immediately at the Beer Springs, which, on account of the effervesing gas and acid taste, have received their and trappers of name from the voyageurs that country, who in the midst of their rude and hard lives, are fond of finding some fancied resemblance to the luxuries they rarely have the fortune to enjoy.

Although somewhat disappointed in the expectatious which various descriptions had led me to form of unusual beauty of situation and scenery, I found it altogether a place of very great interest; and a traveller for the first time in a volcanic region remains in a constant excitement, and at every step is arrested by something remarkable and

new.

There is a confusion of interesting objects gathered together in a small place. Around the place of encampment the Beer Springs were numerous; but, as far as we could ascertain, were entirely confined to that locality at the bottom.

In the bed of the river in front, for a space of several hundred yards, they were very abundant; the effervescent gas rising up and agitating the water in countless bubbling columns. In lhe vicinity round about were numerous springs of an entirely different and equally In a rather marked mineral character. picturesque spot, about 1,300 yards below. our encampment, and immediately on the river bank, is the most remarkable spring of the place.

In an opening on the rock, a white co lumn of scattered water thrown up, in form like a jet d'eau, to a variable height of about three feet, and, though it is maintained in a constant supply, its greatest height is ttained only at regular intervals, accord

It

ing to the action of the force below is accompanied by a subterranean noise, which, together with the motion of the water, makes very much the impression of a steamboat in motion; and, without knowing that it had been previously so called, we gave to it the name of the Steamboat Spring. The rock through which it is forced is slightly raised in a convex manner, and gathered at the opening into an urn-mouthed form, and is evidently formed by continued deposition from the water, and colored bright red by oxide of iron. It is a hot spring, and the water has a pungent and disagreeable metallic taste, leaving a burning effect on the tongue. Within perhaps two yards of the jet d'eau is a small hole of about an inch in diameter, through which, at regular intervals, escapes a blast of not air with a light wreath of smoke, acc mpa nied with a regular noise. This hole has been noticed by Dr. Wislizenus, a gentleman, who, several years since, passed by this place, and who remarked with very nice observation, that smelling the gas which issued from the orifice produced a sensation of giddiness and nausea. Preuss and myself repeated the observation, and were so well satisfied with its correctness that we did not find it pleasant to continue the experiment, as the sensation of giddiness which it produced was certainly strong and decided A huge emigrant wagon, with a large and diversified family, had overtaken us and halted to noon at our encampment and while we were sitting at the spring, a band of boys and girls, with two or three young men, came up, one of whom I asked to stoop down and smell the gas, desirous to satisfy myself further of its effects. But his natural caution had been awakened by the singular and suspicious nature of the place; and he declined my proposal decidedly, and with a few words about beings, whom he seemed to consider the genius loci. The ceaseless motion and the play of the fountain, the red rock, and the green trees near, make this a picturesque spot.

Mr.

A Vermont farmer last month sent to Boston 7000 lbs of butter! all the produce of his own dairy; and all of the finest flavor and quality, having received the premium at the County Fair. The same farmer has fatted and sold one hundred head of cattle this fall; and has now on hand an acre of hogs, averaging in weight some 400 lbs. each.

A hand used for measuring horses is 4 feet.

For t American Penny Magazine. THE OLD INQUISITION AT AVIGNON

FRON THE REV. MR MITCHELL'S OBSERVATIONS IN EUROPE.

Avignon is on the east bank of the Rhine. It was for a time the seat of the Roman See, The palace of the popes ia a vast pile, now considerably in ruins, but in some parts entire. Enough of it remains to tell more truth than the popes would care to have disclosed, either now or at the time it was occupied by them.

Avignon was at that time a considerable city, as it long had been. The arrival of the pope, with his train, together with all the illustrious strangers which his court brought together, ambassadors, princes, bishops, turned things upside down. The population of the place was at once doubled, and crowded to excess; its customs were changed, and its manners exceedingly debased. The palace which the popes built, corresponded with their ambition, and was suited to their ends; being at once a magnificent palace, a terrible prison, and a strong fortress. We went deliberately through it, accompanied by a grandam guide, who had grown old in her office, and who repeated her accustomed story of the different apartments, with the gestures, the solemn looks, the exclamations, and the whispers, that were suited to the subject, as it varied from the cheerful or indifferent, to the pathetic, the mysterious and the diabolical. The diabolical abounded. The apartments tnost interesting to see are those which pertained to the Inquisition.

In the room called the Tribunal of the Inquisition, there is still legible on the wall against which the judges' seats were placed, a long Latin inscription signifying that there was no appeal from that tribunal, and that the accused did not often leave it but to go to their punishment. In the vault above there were concealed lobbies, in which clerks sat, to note down the responses of the accused. The trial was of course with closed doors.

ers.

The Hall of Torture is in one of the Tow

To prevent the possibility of the cries of the tortured being heard without, the wall of the tower, which is octagonal, is of great thickness; and the corners of the interior are finished in a kind of conchoidal shape, for the purpose of destroying all echo, and reducing the noise of the cries within. You here see the oven, or furnace, in which the accused were scorched; the stone basin, which held the boiling water; the place of the posts in which the victims were attached; and the opening through which the bodies were thrown down into the pit, of great depth, called the gluciere, or ice-house.

Chapel of the Inquisition.-I will only mention concerning this, that the ceiling is covered with religious paintings; that here those condemned for heresy used to come, with a wax candle in the hand, to make

"amende honorable," (so says one of my historians of the place) before going to their punishment; and that among the paintings you see a group of soldiers of the Inquisition accompanying a heretic to his execution.

Then there is the place called the Bucher del' Inquisition; that is, the wood-house, or the funeral-pile, as you choose to render it. It was in this bucher, that those were executed who were condemned to the flames. You here see an iron chair on which the sufferer was placed, clothed with a shirt dip ped in sulphur. The vault above is still blackened with the smoke of these burnings.

Dungeons of the Inquisition.-One of these is half fallen into ruins; another is entire. Its walls are covered with inscriptions written by its unhappy inmates, attesting their innocence and the cruelty of their treatment.

There is one dungeon belonging to this establishment, the existence of which was not known till within a very few years. It is deep and large, and frightful to look into through the trap door above. Some repairs were making in the room over it, and a portion of the floor being removed, one of the workmen lost his hat through, and on going down to get it, was shocked to find himself in a charnel-house. Around him lay nineteen ghastly skeletons, supposed to have been victims of the Inquisition.

I will mention but one more of the apart ments, the Salle Brulee, or Burnt Hall. This is memorable for an act of vengeance perpetrated by one of the pope's legates in 1441. A nephew of the legate had insulted certain distinguished ladies of Avignon, whose parents punished the young man in a mortifying way. The legate resolved to have revenge, but to make it more complete, dissembled his resentment for several years. He then made advances to the offended parents, to bring about a reconciliation; and when it appeared to be sincere, he invited to a splendid banquet the entire families of those concerned. A careless gaiety animated the repast; but while the dessert was served, a Swiss entered to inform the legate that a foreign ambassador solicited an audience extraordinary. He excused himself to the company, and withdrew, followed by his officers; a few minutes after, five hundred persons were buried in ruins. All that wing of the edifice in which the banquet was furnished, was blown up with a terrible explosion.

Curing Meat.-Among the many inventions of the day is an apparatus for curing meat in a very short time and in the hottest weather. The process consists in forcing the brime into the meat; and one of the advantages attendant on it is this: that the salt and water, or the brine used, can be seasoned with spices, sugar, or any desired ingredient. By this means spiced meats, corned meats, or very salt meats, can be made to order with great despatch.

THE SECRETS OF ROME. Since we began to direct the attention of our readers to Italy, and indeed within a few days, a new publication has been placed in our hands, by a highly esteemed friend, from that interesting country, which we find abounds in facts well adapted to our use. After giving a short accouut of the work, we will, therefore, translate certain passages for insertion in some of our subsequent numbers.

"Le Socret de Rome au 19 e siecle," as as this publication is entitled, is a French work, now publishing in elegant style in Paris, in pamphlets, with fine wood engravings. It describes some important scenes and characters, the former of which are notoriously correct, and the latter often so, as we believe, although the author has chosen to give them fictitious names. This work, he tells us in his introduction, is not an isolated one, but has the same object as "The Mysteries of the Inquisition," which preceded it.

"Spain and Italy," he remarks, "are the countries which have suffered most from religious fanaticism. Both, lying in the yoke of an ambitious and corrupt clergy, have had their national existence and dignity extinguished after a long and tormenting agony." Now, that the horrible and destructive systems which have sunk those nations, are seriously pressed upon France and other countries, the author remarks with great force, the world should be reminded of the solemn lessons which history has recorded. He has adopted the following natural divisions in this work :-the people, the court, and the church. Two of the principal personages are thus described.

Olympia is a lady somewhat advanced in age, a native of Cremona, widow of the Count of Serravalle, and owner of a valua ble rice estate near Mantua. She has resided in Rome about twenty years, where, after outgrowing the age of fashion, devoted herself for a time to a religious career, appearing at churches, shrines, processions, &c., on all occasions, she at length gave herself up to the business of intriguing for office seekers. These three stages are spoken of as in the regular course of things for women of her condition in Rome.Pasquin (that is the writers of satyres) very appropriately wrote her name" Ólimpia."*

Panfilio is one of the most subtle prelates of the Romish clergy. He was of a noble

* In Latin signifying formerly pious.

family, and entered the ecclesiastical magistracy in early life, and soon began to display the leading traits of his character, which are a wonderful suppleness, and a submissiveness to ruling power, pushed quite to servility. "Educated by the Jesuits, he had early learned to follow the examples of his masters." He was rich and intriguing, and was a kind of amphibious animal, having a station half political, half ecclesiastical, with manners and costume to suit. Early in this century, when the Pope was expelled from Rome, Panfilio took refuge in the neutral ground of diplomacy, and so kept one foot on the Roman soil and the other abroad. While the French remained masters of Italy, he convinced them of his attachment to their cause; was employed in all the arrangements made with France about the free exercise of Religion, and received thanks from both Napoleon and the Pope. When Pius VII. returned to Rome, Panfilio was the indirect counsel. lor of the measures in which he protested against his own acts, and proclaimed the fallibility of the Pope out of his own mouth. He was the confidant of the two Cardinals who dictated to Pius his disavowal of his own Concordat, and made him write to Napoleon on the 24th of March, 1814: "It was the spirit of darkness, it was Satan himself, who breathed into all the articles of that Concordat."

Monsignor Panfilio was also the secret agent of the persecutions practised at Rome on the Pope's return, against those who had avowed friendship for the French, and who were betrayed by informers, some to banishment, and some to death. To him is attri buted also the drawing up of the bull of the succeeding year, by which the order of the Jesuits was restored, on the anniversary of St. Loyola. That document says: "The Catholic world demands the reestablishment of the Jesuits with an unanimous voice. The glory of the Catholic religion demands that we yield to the wishes of the people, and reorganize that sacred militia." "This bull," adds our author, "was sent from the Vatican to the Tuileries, as a present agreeable to the restoration."

American Clocks at the Liverpool CustomHouse. The Liverpool papers contain the advertisement of 660 American Clocks, from the celebrated manufactory of Mr. C. Jerome, seized and condemned for some infraction of the law relative to the ad valorem duty, and to be sold by auction. Also at the same time for the same cause, 100 boxes American cheese.-N. Y. Express.

For the American Penny Magazine.

"GOD IS A SPIRIT.”

He is not bound down, nor is his sphere of action circumesribed by the cumbersome machinery of a material body. No for.n of earthly mould, perishable and fading as al of earth must be, encircles in its folds the God of the universe. No spot can be a signed him-no local habitation is his. The laws which are found to govern matter, extend not to its Author. As a spirit, he knows no weariness, experiences no decay, and is not affected by change. The past and the future are alike present with him. A thousand years are to him as one day, and one day as a thousand years. As a spirit he is omnipresent. "Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven; thou art there. If I make my bed in the other world; behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.'

It is true, that in many places in the inspired writings, God is spoken of as possess. ing some of the material organs belonging to man. He is mentioned as inclining his ear that he may hear, as keeping his people as the apple of his eye. It is said, "Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good;" and the Psalmist declares: "I will behold thy face, in righteousness." His right hand and his holy arm are also frequently spoken of in Scripture. But this manner of expression is undonbtedly designed as an accommodation to our modes of thinking merely, and should not be understood literally. Some have fallen into errors of this kind; and it is necessary for us to guard against them continually for we are very apt to judge of things unseen by comparing them with those things which. are seen, and with which we are familiar, But, we are acquainted with no object which has not a form and size of some kind, made up of material organs. We are in danger of thinking of God thus, and ascribing like organs to him. Nothing, however, can be more erroneous, more opposed to revelation, or to the dictates of enlightened reason. Man, it is true, has been said to have been made " in the image of God:" but by this is meant not a corporeal similitude, but a resemblance in his moral nature to the moral nature of God, and is elsewhere said to consist in "knowledge, righteousness and holiness." This view of the passage is both reasonable and scriptural: for

we find, in other parts of the sacred volume. such descriptions of the workings of God as are totally incompatible with the idea of his being possessed of a material system like our own. "He measures the waters

"He

in the hollow of his hand, and meteth out the heavens with a span, and comprehendeth the dust of the earth in a measure.' is the King eternal, immortal and invisible, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, where no man hath seen or can see-all which capabilities and attributes are utterly irreconcileable with the idea of a "corporeal and limited existence."

This is one of the subjects which finite understandings cannot fully comprehend. The more we reflect upon it, the more mysterious it appears; and we are at last compelled to acknowledge, that the words placed at the head of this article convey the only true idea of the essence of deity, when they declare, in the conciseness and sublimity of inspiration:-" God is a spirit."

LARGE OWL.-An Owl was shot on Sunderland Mountains, on Thursday of last week, by a son of Mr. Fairchild of Sunderland, the wings of which when spread measured more than four feet. When shot he was devouring a full grown rabbit, which had probably been caught just before. So firm was its grasp of its victim, and so great its apparent reluctance to yield it, that its talons were not withdrawn from the rabbit, but remained in it when seen by our informant.-Amherst Express.

ONE-EYED SOLDIERS. - Dr. Durbin, in his "Observations in the East," just published, mentions that in some parts of Egypt, to avoid the conscriptions of Mehemet Ali, the women have been in the habit for years back, of maiming their children so as to unfit them for mtlitary service. The destroying of one eye was a common operation. the Pacha has taken an effectual way to put an end to this cruelty, by forming two regiments of one-eyed soldiers. The evil is said to be already much diminished.

But

A great mortality among wild fowls has taken place on the northern and western shores of Galveston Bay, thousands of which have been swept ashore, to_the great satisfaction of the people on the Bay, who gathered an immense number to obtain their feathers.-N. Y. Express.

Francis Dwight, Esq, the Editor of the Common School Journal, at Albany, died on Monday last.-Sun.

POETRY.

For the Amer. Penny Magazine. "Christ Tempted on the Mount." Upon the mountain, sanctified With holy presence, side by side, Behold the Temp er and the Tried: The friend and foe of man! Above-Heaven's stretching canopy, Beneath-Earth's broad fertility, Around-spacious immensity, Nature's mysterious plan.

God's image, impressed on the one,
Whose earthly sorrows had begun,
Marked him "the well beloved son."
True to his father's will.

The other-Satan-he who fell
Striving 'gainst Heaven to rebel,
With all his legions cast to Hell,
Unconquerable still.

Commodore Smith and his Crew.-The crew of the U. S. frigate Cumberland, at this port, preceded by the Brass Band, and bearing aloft at regular intervals the national flag, walked in procession yesterday to the U. S. Hotel, to pay their part respects to their beloved Cmmodore. The sailors were dressed in blue jackets and trowsers, white frocks with blue collars, and black hats with the frigate's name on the hands. Nothing can be more morally true than the old saying, "that good officers make good men," and vice versa.—Post.

WHO WANTS WAR?-Who wants a war between England and the United States! Nobody. Go through this country, or through the British Isles; and you will find scarce a man, none but the vilest of the vile, or the maddest of the mad, that would not profess a strong desire for peace, and extreme reluc tance to employ the savage, brutal arbitrament of the sword.

Yet some hands are confessedly pushing these two countries to the verge of war; whe are they?—N. Y. Express.