sary, I hoped he might forget it; and as for the inscription, I had it in my pocket; but as he did not seem to press for it, I did not shew it to him. "The next time I visited him, Anne Dunn astonished me by say ing her master was gone out, alone, in a coach, and had directed the coachman to go to the Percy coffeehouse; but he returned within two hours, though much exhausted. I called afterwards at the Percy Coffee-house, but he had not been there: nor had he been there before, when he gave similar directions. This was the last time he went from home. He once more attempted it in a kind of delirium. He said he had ordered a chaise, and that I was expected: he sent Anne Dunn for it: she came back, and told him it would be ready by the time I arrived: he would not wait, but, to her astonishment, he staggered down stairs, and went into the street. She followed him, and with the assistance of his neighhours, took him in, and laid him upon the sofa. When I visited him on the same day, he did not mention to me one single syllable about it. "At this period, he became more and more indifferens to all external objects, and was found always reclining upon the sofa in a drowsy state. On the fifth of June, I found him so changed, that I had my doubts whether he could survive the day; and he thought so to; as, not recollecting that he had put his will into my possession or not wishing that the copy of it should lie about, he folded it up, directed it, and left it for me over the chimney-piece. In the state I left him, if I had not known his hand-writing, I should have thought this impossible. The Best day, the sixth of June, and the seventh, he was in bed all day; but on the eighth, he rose as usual: a chair was got with casters, which he jocularly called his town cbariot, and he was rolled into his sitting-room. He rose every day afterwards to the day of his death; and passed from one room to another. He could, at this period, hold a short conversation; but in the midst of it, during an answer to what he had said, he would fall into a state of somnolency. "With an alteration almost imperceptible, and without the least pain, he thus continued till within two days of his dissolution. His pulse, till the fifth of this month, was as good as any man's in health: but from that time, when he appeared so very ill, it became irregular, or rather regularly irregular. It would beat ten steady strokes, and then there would be an intermission. His respiration became more hard and laboured, and his deglutition seemed difficult and impeded. He had, when in health, a great defluxion from the trachea, for which he used to smoke a pipe every morning, but this was given up. He had not, to the very last, any complaint that required the skill of a physician or a surgeon. He was frequently heard to describe his own situation, by repeating the two following lines from his favourite poet, Pope. Taught, half by reason, half by mere decay To welcome death, and calmly pass away. "When I visited him on the eighteenth, about one o'clock, he was in bed, and Anne Dunn, as usual, announced to him my arrival. He put his hand towards me, looked at me, and tried at utterance, but it was inarticulate, and he returned to his former state of somnolency: and yet, at twelve on that day, he counted the clock; and he he had got out of bed at ten, and told Anne Dunn to look sharp, which was to make his bed quickly. It was visible at one o'clock, that his dissolution was fast approaching: his hands were cold and damp, his jaw was fallen, and his mouth was open. He muttered sounds, but could not be understood: and yet he drank, but with difficulty, whilst I was there, by being lifted up.Without any other change than a a slight struggle (as if he wanted to breathe on, but could not), a few minutes after four o'clock in the afternoon of the eighteenth of June, 1805, he expired!" MANNERS MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF NATIONS. "TH JOURNEY TO THE GEYSERS. [FROM MR. HOOKER'S TOUR IN ICELAND.] HIS morning (July 13) we had rain and squalls. After breakfast the priest came down, and begged that he might be allowed to accompany me to the Geysers; but this I could by no means consent to, as it was my full intention to proceed to Hecla, and to return by another route. He insisted, however, upon conducting me some way on my road, and especially across a river, which he called Brueraa, and which, owing to the late wet weather, he thought might probably be too deep to cross to-day. He accordingly went to his wardrobe in the church, dressed himself in his best clothes, and was ready to start with us. We continued our jour ney along the foot of a barren mountain, at no great distance from the marshes. Here and there, indeed, we met with a few stunted birch trees, but no plants that I had not seen elsewhere. Leaving the mountain, and crossing a disagreeable swamp, we, in about two or three hours, arrived at the most fordable part of the Brueraa. There was already a party of horsemen, resting their horses a little, to prepare them for the fatigue of passing through this stream, the bottom of which is exceedingly rocky, and the river itself both wide and deep, but at this time considered fordable. The packages of fish, wool, &c. were carefully fastened by ropes to the top of the horses' backs, so that they might be as little exposed to the water as possible; and the horses, being then tied in a line one behind the other, all reached the opposite shore in safety, though the smaller ones were compelled to swim. A foal, which was tied by the neck to the tail of its mother, was dragged through, and landed on the other side of the river, more dead than alive, through fear and cold. Our party followed, and was equally fortunate in getting over without any accident (except the wetting of the luggage and ourselves), though the water reached to the middle of the body of our tallest horses. Here, after procuring us some milk from a cottage close by, the priest took his leave of us. In the vicinity of the house were two or three boiling springs, which were used by the inhabitants for the purpose of cooking, as well as for that of washing their clothes. At a few miles distance, on our right, we saw a very considerable column of steam, rising from the marshes, at a place which the guides called Reykum, and which they said I might visit on my way to Skalholt. Our journey now lay either entirely over a morass, which proved extremely fatiguing to our horses, or upon the edge of it, where a quantity of loose soil had been washed down from the mountains by the torrents, and was scarcely more firm. At about five o'clock in the afternoon we obtained the first view of the mountain called Laugerfell, from which the Geysers spring. It is of no great elevation, and, according to Sir John Stanley, who had an opportunity of ascertaining by admeasurement, rises only three hundred and ten feet above the course of a river which runs at its foot. It is, however, remarkable for its insulated situation; being entirely surrounded by a morass, which extends for a very considerable way in every direction, except towards the north, where it is not separated by an interval of more than half a mile from higher mountains. The north side is perpendicular, barren, and craggy; the opposite one rises with a tolerably gradual ascent, and from this, near its base, we saw a number of columns of steam mounting to various heights, We quickened our pace, and at eight o'clock arrived at the foot of the hill. Here I left my horses, &c. to the care of the guides, and hastened among the boiling springs, happy in the prospect of soon beholding what may justly be considered as one of the most extraordinary operations of nature. The lower part of the hill was formed into a number of mounds, composed of what appeared to be clay or coarse bolus, of various sizes: some of them were yellowish white, but the greater number of the colour of dull red brick. Interspersed with them, here and there, lay pieces of rock, which had rolled, or been washed down by the rains, from the higher parts of the mountain. On these mounds, at irregular distances, and on all sides of me, were the apertures of boiling springs, from some of which were issuing spouts of water, from one to four feet in height; while in others the water rose no higher than the top of the basin, or gently flowed over the margin. The orifices were of various dimensions, and either covered on their sides and edge with a brownish siliceous crust, or the water only boiled through a hole in the mound, and became turbid by admixture with the soil, which coloured it either with red, dirty yellow, or grey. Upon the heated ground, in many places, were some extremely beautiful, though small, specimens of sulphuric efflorescence, the friability of which was such, that, in spite of the utmost care, I was not capable of preserving any in a good state. I did not remain long in this spot, but directed my steps to the loftiest column of steam, which I naturally concluded arose from the fountain that is alone, by way of distinction, called the Geyser. It lies at the opposite extremity of this collection of springs, and, I should think, full half a quarter of a mile distant from the outermost ones which I at first arrived at. Among numerous smaller ones, I passed three or four apertures of a consi derable size, but all so much inferior to the one I was now approaching, that they scarcely need any farther notice. It was impossible, after having read the admirable descriptions of the Geyser, given by the Archbishop Von Troil and Sir John Stanley, and, especially, after having seen the engravings made from drawings taken by the last-mentioned gentleman, to mistake it. A vast circular mound (of a substance which, I believe, was first ascer tained to be siliceous by Professor Bergman) was elevated a consider able able height above those that surFounded most of the other springs. It was of a brownish grey colour, made rugged on its exterior, but more especially near the margin of the basin, by numerous hillocks of the same siliceous substance, varying in size, but generally about as large as a molehill, rough with minute tubercles, and covered all over with a most beautiful kind of efflorescence; so that the appearance of these hillocks has been aptly compared to that of the head of a cauliflower. On reaching the top of this siliceous mound, I looked into the perfectly circular basin, which gradually shelved down to the mouth of the pipe or crater in the centre, whence the water issued. This mouth lay about four or five feet below the edge of the bason, and proved, on my afterwards measuring it, to be as nearly as possible seventeen feet distance from it on every side; the greatest difference in the distance not being more than a foot. The inside was not rugged, like the outside; but apparently even, although rough to the touch, like a coarse file: it wholly wanted the little hillocks and the efflorescence of the exterior, and was merely covered with innumerable small tubercles, which, of themselves, were in many places polished smooth by the falling of the water upon them. It was not possible now to enter the basin, for it was filled nearly to the edge with water the most pellucid I ever beheld, in the centre of which was observable a slight ebullition, and a large, but not dense, body of steam, which, however, increased both in quantity and density from time to time, as often as the ebulli tion was more violent. At nine o'clock I heard a hollow subterraneous noise, which was thrice repeated in the course of a few mo An ments; the two last reports follow- |