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A WEEKLY JOURNAL OF POLITICS, LITERATURE AND NEWS. *

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. T ry 7 ry + +a i Ps ‘ : ee 94 " aT . . 4 i sa : —s Se eee — ee een mee A -NSS See EDWARD WILELAN] ‘ ‘3 Chis is true Liberty, when Free-bor n Filen, having to advise the JJublic, man speak free——zuriprpes. {EDITOR axp PUBLISHER. a a ie DP wees AR EN Ei AE RE i TT . , if ryNVryy a 7 7 T > % ™ 7 —* = Tau.. V. ___,_ CHARLOTTETOWN, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, MONDAY, JULY 7, 1856. No. 53. —_—— 1) ©2c ’ Aue... , ce a j — ee oe dots cae is , a oe — tai as aan 5 : sad ai ws — "ye Sa ae Yate int ’ a a _— an — . — naan ee Mi On : I pos a. Jl LY, 18 0. an see Dae sinner, ere the tide be received at the Eixcheguer. Four years later, 1292, a forget, is the value of money. The covetous seek and guard an a Sire. morning. : by ne ak eae * Time, - a. clock was placed in the cathedral at Canterbury; it was|it for its own sake, and the prodigal himself must first be irst Quarter L0th day, 2h. 45m. morning. | : ' “ £'Ve lost it—ah, the treasure!” and he died. purohased : rine enuivale o Sane. tenadned oe ; ‘at we - mL: . Full Moon l7th day, 4h. lm. evening, E f I asked the golden sun and silver spheres, purchased ata price equivalent 49 four huadred pounds. | avaricious before he can be profuse. ‘This, of all our passions,

Last Quarter 24th day, 10h. 22m, morning. S.W. a

RR NNR -—-

New Moon 3)st day, 4h. 29m. evening.

Literature.

(From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.) WHERE HAST THOU BEEN, MY BEAUTIFUL SPRING? BY EDWARD CAPER.

The author is a rural postman, or letter-carrier, trudging thirteen miles a day, not excepting Sunday, between Bideford and Buckland Brewer, and supremely happy in the visits of the muse, and revenue of half of a guinea a week.

Where hast thou been, my beautiful Spring ?

To the sultry south, on the swallow’s wing ;

Kissing the little kidnapped slave,

Ere borne away on the deep blue waye ;

Brushing the tear from the mother’s cheek,

As she wept for her child at Mozambique ?

Else whence comest thou with this potent charm,

Chaining the winds to the frigid z

Making the breast of nature warm,

And stilling old Winter's undertone ?

ne,

Where hast thou been, my beautiful Spring ? Away with the honay-be g Sipping the nectar ot famed Cashmere, Sporting amid tho Turk’s parterre, Quaffing warm Araby’s balmy breeze, And spicy ecents of the Ceylonese ?

lapt > wandering,

Else whence comest thou with the odorous breath, Chafing the cheek to a rosy bloom,

And scattering the poisonous air of death, By flinging abroad a rich perfume ?

Whore hast thou been, my heautifal Spring ? Up, ‘mid Heaven's music revelling ? For the tones of thy song from the greenwood bush, The lark in the eky and the mountain thrush, Speak as if it wero given to thee To list to seraphie minstrelsy Aye there thou hast been. ‘Not sunny Franco, Or old Ttalia’s land of song, Can furnish such notes from the poet’s dance, -i3 the melody poured from the musical tongue.

Where hast thou Leer, my beautiful Spring ? Plucking rich plumes from the parroquet’s wing, Robking the clouds of their rainbow crest,

_ Bathing thyself in the glorious west, Robing thy form in the peacock’s hues,

= gathering pearls from the orient dews ? Ae coe

whence comest thou, with this proud array Of beanties to sprinkle the russet wood, Those Léht-lilies bending as if to pray And byaeinthe fringing the marge of the flood?

And tell me whence cometh,my beautiful Spring, Each star of the earth, cach odorous thi ng These white-fringed daisies with golden-dipped eyes, These butter-cups cleaming like summer-lit skies, These violets adorned with rich parple and blue, These primroses fragrant and innocent too; And lastly, the sweetest and richest, I ween, Of all thy fair daughters, my beautiful Spring, The buddings that stood all thy pathways with green, Say, where were they gathered to shake from thy wing?

THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS.

The topic we have chosen for the present chapter is so in- tangible, that the moment wu essay to grasp it, it is gone. Although impalpable it is get real, for, like the circum- ombient atmosphere, it is ever present with us, although unseon. If we attempt to symbolise it, we fail fully to portray it, and yet images are its only mode of illustration. {t is-both the longest and the shortest, the swiftest and the slowest; the most divisible and the most indivisible; the most regretted and the least valued; without which nothing can be done; yet, that which devours everything, and gives existence to everything. It is the most paradoxical, yet the simplest of elements. Strictly speaking, it is never palpable, yet it is ever present ; a constant succession, an unfathomable duration ; the moxt momentous benefactor to man, yet sel- dom estimated according to its worth.

It is the account current with all, in which more are found bankrupt than wealthy, when the balance sheet is demanded. It marks the rising and the setting sun, spreads over us the black veil of night, and gilds with gladness the face of day ; it rolls on the revolving seasons, chronicling the deeds of centuries ; watching over the birth of infancy, the ardent aspirations of youth, toiling manhood, and tottering steps of the infir tm and aged—bis sorrows, loves, and cares, nor for- sakes him so long as life shall Jast. It is always the friend of the virtuous and true, a tormenting foe to those who abuse the gift; to the former, it is redolent of fragrant and pleasant memories,—to the latter, of gloomy remorse gnd despair.

“ Tt rolls away and boars along A mingled mass of right and wrong ; The flowers of love that bloomed beside The margin of life’s sunny tide ; The poisoned weeds of passion, torn From dripping rocks, and headlong borne Into that unhorizoned sea— Which mortals call eternity !”

And such is that mysterious myth, named Time, who measures our allotted span, from the cradle to the coffin, imingles our joys and griefs in the chalice of life, and then terminates it with this scythe,—

“A shadow only to the eye, It levels all bencath the sky.”

Time is but a name: it is what is done in ime that isthe substance. What are pad centuries to the hard rock, more than twenty-four hours to man, or twenty-four minutes to the ephemera? “ Are there not periods in our Own eats wre an ingentous ee “ a en Space, comput its measure of thoughts, feelings, an events, mocks the "suas of man’s artificial scale aud’ com- prises a lifetime in a day.”

“T asked an aged man, a man of cares, Wrinkled and curved, and white with hoary hairs; aoe is eid of life,” he said. «* Oh tell

Time sowed the seed we reap im this abode.”

ne

| Which beautify or desolate the ground ;

Those bright chronometers of days and years : They answered—« Time is but a meteor’s glare,” And bade me for eternity prepare,

I asked the seasons, in their annual round,

And they replied (uo oracle more wise;) Tis Folly’s blank, and Wisdom’s highest prizo.”

“Time sadly overcometh all things, and is now dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh into Memphis and old Thebes, while his sister, Oblivion, reclineth semi-somnous | on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of| Titanian erections, and turning old .glorics into dreams, History sinketh beneath her cloud. The traveller, as he paceth amazedly through those deserts, asketh of her, Who builded them ? and she mumbleth something, but what it is he knoweth not.”

Locke is of opinion that a man, in great misery, may so far lose his measure, as to think a minute an hour; or, in joy, make an hour a minute,

Shakspeare expands the sameidea, where he says—‘* Time travels in divers paces, with divers persons; I'l] tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal. He trots hard with a young maid, between the contract of her mar- riage and the day it is solemnized; if the interim be but a

: constructed dials,

j to the Emperor Frederic IL.

seunight, Time’s pace is so hard, that it seems the length of ‘Seven years. He ambles with a priest that lacks Latin, and fa rich man that hath not the gout—for the one sleops easily, | because he cannot study; and the other lives merrily, be- cause he feels no pain; the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning—the other ‘knowing no burden of heavy, tedious penury; them Time smbles withal. He gakops with a thief to the gallows—for, though he go softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there. He stands still with lawyers in the vacation—for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive nothow Time moves.”

Time is portrayed with wings to indicate his rapid flight, and if he strew our pathway with life’s spring flowers, he ‘also brings, too swiftly, its wintry frosts»and desolations.

He is also represented with a scythe, to notify that he mows ‘down all alike—the young, the refined and the vulgar, the good and the bad. kven such is Time that takes on trust Our youths, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with age and dust ; Who, in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days.”

The earliest expedient for reckoning ‘time seems to have been thesun-dial. Allusion to its use is to be found in H@y Writ. It was c&iled by the ancients sciathericum, from being marked by shadow. ‘This instrument was in vogue among the Romans; we have an accotunt of one being placed in the court of the Temple of Quirinus.

Several of the Grecian astronomers and mathematicians Thales is said to have made one ; as also Aristarehus and Anaximenes, of Miletus. Herodotus _in- forme us that the Greeks borrowed the invention from the Babylonians. The first sun-dial ased at Rome was in use about three hundred years before Christ. Before the use of these instruments in the “ Eternal City,” there was no divi- sion of that day iato hours; nor does that word occur in the Twelve Tables. They only mention sun-rising and sun- setting, before and after mid-day. According to Pliny, mid-day was not added till some years later, an accensus of the consuls being appointed to call out that time when he saw the sua from the Senate house, between the Rostra and the place called Greecostasis, where the ambassadors from Greece and other foreign countries used to stand.

The Alepsydra, or water clock, was introduced by Scipio Narsica at Rome, 157 8. .c, It served its purposes in all weathers, while the dial, of course, depended upon the sun. Sun-dials are occasionally still to be seen in Europe.

“ T count only the hours that are serene,” is the motto of an old sun-dial near Venice. A capital conecit to dispel dulness and discontent. Life is sure to be much brighter if we look at the sunny side of it.

There is a dial in the Temple, London, upon which is in- scribed the admonitory line (a good hiut for loiterers,) “Begone about you’ business.”

Phe Chinese have been accustomed, as early as the ninth century, to have watchmen posted on towers, who announced the hours of the day and night by striking upon a suspended board, A similar custom still remains among the Nussians. Alfred the Great measured his time by the constant burning of wax torches or candles, notched for the hours. In some paris of the East people measured time by the length of their shadow. Consequently, if you ask a man what time of day it is, he will stand erect in the sun and measure his shadow. We find allusion to this in the seventh chapter of Job: ‘As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow.” Hour glasses were first invented at Alexandria, 150 years before the Christian era,

The monks of old, finding the time hang heavy on their hands, devised some curious expedients to get rid of it. The Abbot of Hirsham (temp. 11th century) constructed a time-measurer somewhat similar to our clocks; the machine being different from the sun-dial and the water-clock. It not only pointed out the hours, and exhibited the motion of the earth and other planets, but emitted also a sound, to give an alarm, for the purpose of awakening the sacristan to matins and vespers. Clocks, moved by wheels and weights, also began to be used in the monasteries in Lurope about the eleventh century.

In 1282 a curious clock was sent by the Sultan of Egypt “In the same year,” wri an old author, “the Saladin of Egypt sent by his ambassa- dors, as 2 gift, a valuable machine, of wonderful construction, worth more than five thousand ducats. It appeared to re- semble internally a celestial globe, in which figures of the sun, M00] and planets, formed with great skill, moved, being cate weights and wheels, so that, perfurming their course in certain and fixed intervals, they pointed out the hour, night and day, with infallible certainty; also the twelve signs of the zodiac, with certain appropriate charac- ters, moved with the firmament, contained within themselves the course of the planets.”

We learn that, in 1288, an artist furnished the famous clock-house near Westminster Hall with a clock, to be heard by the fourts of law. This clock was considéred, during the reign of Henry VI., to be of such consequénce, that it was

| Stephen’s, together with the pay of six pence per dienr, to

consigued to the Keeping of William Warby, dean of St.

In 1523, the clock of St. Mary’s, Oxford, was furnished out of fines imposed on the students of the university.

THE MODERN MOLOCH.

The question proposed by little Paul, in Dombey and Son, is suggested by the caption of our chapter—‘ What's money.” The reply of many would doubtless be the same as that returned to the young querist referred to—a mere mercantile one—namely, that it is currency, specie, and bank notes, or gold, silver and copper. But this did not suffice for little Paul; he repeated his inquiry—*I mean, what’s money after all?” This is the question we propose to discuss in ap illustrative way. First as to its material, Gold and silver, styled the precious metals, are both pure, ductile and malleable, and unaffected by most conditions of atmosphere. They are of intrinsic and positive worth, and were therefore adopted as the standards of value, to represent all commercial exchanges,

The Numismatic Journal states, in reference to the attempt to establish the true origin of coins, that accord ng to the Parian Chronicle, a record of the third century before Christ, Phiedon, king of Argos, in order to facilitate commerce, stamped silver money in the islam’s of Algina, in the year before Christ, 805. Now as Homer existed immediately prior to this epoch, and makes no mention of coined money, whilst 1e does mention the system of barter, we may infer that it was ubknown in his time; for it is impossible to imagine a writer, by whom no art or science has been overlooked, to have passed over so useful an invention as stamped coin, had it existed. In the time of Lycurgus, which followed that of Homer—certainly not Jater than a century, though there is some difficulty in ascertaining a more positive date, it is equal- ly certain that gold and silver coin, as money, existed in (imeges, as proved by his law prohibiting their use in Sparta, and substituting iron: probably rings, similar to the iron ring money of the early Celtie nations, of which specimens have been.giscovered iu Ireland. This brings the introduction of coins between the epochs of Tfomer and Lycurgus, in faet to the precise period assigned to the invention of Vhieddn; aud the coins of /Kgina, from the rudeness of their devices, and imperfection of their execution, may fairly be supposed to be of the age in question. This, compared with the assertion of the Parian Chronielc, the silence of Homer, and the law of Lycurgus, scenss fairly to authenticate the claim of Phiedon, and to establish the origin of the first current money as having occurred nearly nine hundred years before the Christian era, in the island of Aigina.

Numa Pompilius caused money to be-made-of-weod and leather—-hence the Latin word J’ccunia ; afterwards bits of copper, marked according to weight, were stamped with figures or images, Money, as to its name, is derived from

B. OO. :

The most ancient Jewish coins represented a pot of manna on one'side, and Agron’s blossoming rod on the other; the inscription being in Samaritan. :

Jewish shekels were 1s. 7d.; a talent was 3,000 shekels, or £342 Ss. Od. sterling.

The Egyptians did not coin till the accession’of the Ptole- mies, nor the Jews till the age of the Maccabees, of the date of about: 500 years before Christ.

Athelsten first established a uniform coin in Eagland. The Egbert silvor coins were shiddings, thrimsas, pennies, hal/- lings, feorthlings. Gold coin was introduced by Edward ILL., in six-shilling pieces, uearly equal in sizo, but not in weight, to modern sovereigns. JNod/es followed at 6s. 8d., and became the lawyers’ ice. Hdward LY. coined angels, with a figure of Michael and the Dragon.

Money had its equivalent in salt in Abyssinia—a smal! shell called cowery, in Hinduston—dvied fish in Iceland—— and wampum among the North American Indians. were formerly in use in Scotland, as we learn from Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

‘The three principal mints in tie world are those of London, of the Uniicd States, and of Paris. The total coinage dering 13538, according to the London Economist, was as follows, in pounds sterling; Paris, £14,901,702; London, £12,666,- 008; United States, £11,101,120. The total amount of this in dollars is $193,644,150,

To lack money, it has been remarked, is to lack a passport or admission ticket into the pleasant places of God’s earth— to much that is glorious and wonderful in nature, and nearly all that is rare, curious and enchanting in art.

Hood’s lines suggest a little moralizing :

“Gold! gold! gold! gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold, Molten, graven, hammered, rolled ; Heavy to get, and light to hold;

~ Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold ; Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled ; Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old, To the very verge of the church-yard mould ; Price of many a crime untold ; Gold! gold! gold! gold!”

What has not man sacrificed upon the altar of Moloch ? his time, his health, his friendship, his reputation, his con- science, and even his life itself, ond all ils great issues. Rightly used, money is the procurer of the domestic comforts and luxuries, as well as of the necessaries of life, but when inordinately cherished *and coveted, it becomes the bane of happiness and peace. In the affair-of marriage, how much of disaster has it superinduced—how much of infelicity has it entailed upon the domestic relations. Instead of surren- | dering to Cupid, how many have been led captive by cupidity, vainly dreading of hearls’-case when. they have showa their preference to marry gold, But money cannot purchase love, or virtue, or happiness, A. philosopher has said, “ though | a man Without money is poor, a man with nothing but money is still poorer.” Fuller wisely insists that itis much better

character is often indicated by his mode of using money. |

A vain man’s motto is, “ win gold and wear iy’—a gene- rous man’s, “win gold and share it”-—a miser’s, “ win gold and spare it”—a prolifigate’s, * win ‘gold and spend it "—a broker’s, “ win gold and lend it ”’—~a fool’s, “ win gold and end it”’—a gambler’s, “ win gold and lose it”—a wise man’s “ win gold and use it.” rs

Of all the evil propensities to which human nature is sub-

Juno Moneta, the Roman Temple where it was coined 260, :

Nails}

| who is cut off from all connection with his kiud.

is best able to fortify itself by reason, and is the last to yield to the foree of reason. Philosophy combats, satire exposes, religion condemns it in vain; it yields neither to argument, nor ridicule, nor conscience. “T riches read,

And deem them root of all disquietness,

Viret got with guile, and then preserved with dread ;

And after spent with pride and lavishnesse,

Leaving behind them grief and heaviness.

Infinite mischiefes of them doe arise;

Strife and debate, bloodshed and bitternesse,

Outrageous wrong, and hellish eovetize,

That noble heart in great dishonor doth despise.”

This love of money, whieh Holy Scripture tells us is “ the root of all evil,” Jeremy Taylor describes as a vertiginous pool, sucking all into its vortex, to destroy it. That this love of gold is the master passion of the age, few will question. It is “the age of gold;” the auriferous sands of the Pacific for the westerm hemisphere, and those of Australia for the eastern, are incessantly pouring out their treasures to feed the insatiate cravings of avarice, ‘The liturgy “on Change” seems to read—Man’s chief end is to make money, and to enjoy it while he can. The votaries of Mammon, however, do not enjoy their possessions—they have no leisure, in their ceaseless, toilsome .efforts, to augment their fortunes. A contemporary observes, with great justice :

“ Many a man there is, clothed in respectability, and proud of his honor, whose central idea of life is interest and ease— the coneeption that other men are merely tools to be used as will best serve him ; that God has endowed him with sinews and brain mercly to scramble and to get; and so, in the midst of this grand universe, which is a perpetual circulation of benefit, he lives like a sponge ona rock, to absorb, and bloat, and die, Thousands in the great city are living so, who never look out of the narrow circle of self-interest ; whose decalogue is their arithmetic; whose Bible is their ledger; who haye so contracted, end hardened, and stamped their natures, that in any spiritual estimate they would only pass as so many bags of dollars.”

It is indispensable, in some cases, that men should have money, for without it they would be worth nothing. This, however, offers no apology for the universal scramble after money. Is this money-mania the highest development of our vannted civilization ?—the semmum bonum of human exist- ence? the Uléima Thode of human efiort ?

“The plague of gold strikes far and near, And deep and strong it enters ; The purple cymar which we wear, Makes madder than the centaurs; Our thonghta row blauk, our words grow strange, We ch the pale gold-diggers, | Each soul is worth so much on ’Change, And marked, like sheep, with figures.”

“ Men work for it, fight for it, beg for it, steal for it, starve for it, lie for it, live for it, and die for it. “And all the while, from the cradle to the grave, Nature and God are ever thun- dering in our ears the solemn question—" What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” _ This madness for money is the strongest and the lowest of the passions; it is the insatiate Moloch of the human heart, before whose remorseless altar all the finer attributes of humanity are sacrificed. It make merchandise of all that ix sacred in human affections, and even traffics in the awful solemunities of the eternal world,”

“Gone, the spirit-quickening leaven, Faith, and love, and hope in hcaven— All that warmed the earth of old, Dead and eold, © Its pulses flutter ; Weak and old,

Its parched lips mutter, Nothing nobler, nothing higher Than the unappeased desire,

The quenchless thirst for gold !”

Money is a very good servant, but a bad master. It may be accused of injustice towards mankind, inasmuch as there are only a few who make false money, whereas money makes many false men.

Mammon is the largest slave-holder in the world—it is 2 composition for taking stains out of character—it is an altar on which self sacrifices to self,

* How many a map, from loye of pelf, To stuff his coffers, starves himeelf; Labor's, accumulates and spares,

To lay up ruin for his hetrs ;

Grudges the poor their scanty dole, Saves every thing except his soul ; And always anxious, always vexed, Loses both this world and the next!”

Shakspeare defines the sordid passion as—

‘* Worse poison’ to men’s souls,

Doing more murders in this loathsome world Than any mortal drag.” In the words of Johnson, it is the “« Wide wasting pest! that rages unconfined, And crowds with crimes the records of mankind: For gold, his sword the bireling ru‘ian draws, For gold, the hireling judge disterts the laws ; Wealth heaped on wealth, nor truth nor safety buys, The dangers gather as the treasures rise.”

‘A miser,” observes Hazlitt, “is the true alchemist, the mayician~in his cell, who overlooks a mighty experiment, whe sees dazzling visions, and who wields the will of others at his nod, but to whom all other hopes and pleasures are dead, ana He lives in a splendid hallucination, a waking trance, and so far it is woll; but if he thinks he has any other necd or use for all this endless store any more*than té swell the ocean) he deccives himeelf, and is no conjuror efter all. Le goes<on, however, mechanically adding to his stock, and fancying that

to have your gold in the hand than in the heart. A man’s | great riches isgtcat gain—that every particle that swells the

heap is somethiag in reserve sgainst the evil day, and ad efence against the poverty which he dreads more the farther bo is removed from it, as the more giddy the height to which we ‘have attained, the more frightful docs the gulf yawn bélow— so easily does habit get ihe mastery of reason, and so ngarly is*passion allied to madness.” ‘This,is the turm-the-love o! money takes in cautious, dry, recluse and speculative min’s. Lf-it were the pure aud abstsact love of money, It could take

1

ject, there is no one so genera!, so insinuating, so corruptive,

early, aad it continues to the end of life. One ofthe first

lessons which children learn, and one which old men never

and so obstinate, as the love of money. It begins to operate |

no other turn but this, Pa «“ The wretch concentrated all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, chal! go down