OHN HARRISON, the inventor of the time-keeper, which procured him the reward of the Board of Longitude, was the son of a carpenter in Yorkshire, and assisted his father in the business until he was twenty years of age. Occasionally, however, he was employed in measuring land, and ending clocks and watches. He was from his childhood nd of any wheel machinery; and when he lay ill in his kth year, he had a watch placed open upon his pillow, that might amuse himself in contemplating the movements. hough his opportunities of acquiring knowledge were very w, yet he eagerly improved every incident for information. e frequently passed whole nights in drawing or writing; nd always acknowledged his obligations to a neighbouring ergyman, for lending him a manuscript copy of Professor aunderson's Lectures, which he carefully and neatly trancribed, with all the diagrams.

On the reward being offered in the 14th of Queen Anne or discovering the longitude, Harrison's attention was drawn the subject; and he began to consider how he could alter clock, which he had previously made, so that it might not e subject to any irregularities occasioned by the difference f climates, and the motions of a ship. These difficulties he urmounted; and his clock having answered his expectations n a trial attended by very bad weather, upon the river Humper, he was advised to carry it to London, in order to apply for the parliamentary reward. He first showed it to several members of the Royal Society, who gave him a certificate, hat his machine for measuring time promised a very great and sufficient degree of accuracy. In consequence of this certificate, the machine, at the recommendation of Sir Charles

Wager, was put on board of a man of war in 1736, and ca ried with Mr. Harrison to Lisbon and back again; when i accuracy was such, that the Commissioners of the Board o Longitude gave him 500l., and recommended him to procee He made two others afterwards, each of which were im provements on the preceding; and he now thought he ha reached the ne plus ultra of his attempts: but in an endea vour to improve pocket watches, he found the principles h applied to surpass his expectations so much, as to encourag him to make his fourth time-keeper, which was in the form of a pocket watch, about six inches in diameter, and wa finished in 1759. With this time-keeper, his son made tw voyages, the one to Jamaica, and the other to Barbadoes: i both which experiments it corrected the longitude within the nearest limits required by the act of Parliament; and the inventor, at different times, though not without considerable trouble, received the promised reward of 20,000%.

ANDREW CROSBIE.

The name of Andrew Crosbie is well known to all those who are in the slightest degree acquainted with the modern forensic eloquence of Scotland. The imprudences that tarnished the splendour of his great talents, the vicissitudes that shed a malignant gloom over the evening of his days, it is painful to recollect and tedious to record. His latter indigence was extreme. While in this situation, Mr. Dundas, (afterwards Lord Melville) who had been Crosbie's rival at the bar, and his enemy in politics, gave him to understand that a vacant seat in the Court of Sessions was ready for his acceptance.

"No," said Crosbie, "judges ought to be blameless, superior to corruption, as well in situation as in principle. I never

will sacrifice the reputation of my country's tribunals to my

necessities."

The praise of good men will be divided between the generosity of the offer and the magnanimity of the refusal.

BISHOP OF ARRAS.

In the list of proscription with Pichegru and Georges in France, was M. de Conzies, the Bishop of Arras. Bonaparte had long sought to lay hands on this prelate, who preferred poverty and exile in England, to the Roman purple and the Parisian archiepiscopacy, both of which were offered him in 1801, by the First Consul of France, and the Pope. Unalterable in his attachment to the house of Bourbon, he was made one of the principal counsellors and confidential advisers of the Count d'Artois; unprofitable offices for those who, confounding fortune with justice, regard money more than honour, but advantageous to him who follows the dictates of a disinterested conscience.

The misfortunes of his sovereign and of his country preyed on the sensitive mind of the Bishop of Arras, and deprived the world prematurely of one of its brightest ornaments. The journey of Pius VII. to Paris, and the coronation of Bonaparte, affected him deeply; and he survived but a few days the news of Napoleon's being anointed and crowned Emperor of France. As in health he had been an example of piety and constancy; during his illness he was a model of devotion and resignation. He exhorted his countrymen and fellow-sufferers, like himself, unfortunate exiles, not to deviate from that glorious though painful path they had dutifully and conscientiously entered on. He preached submission to the decrees of the Almighty, in showing the justice of that noble cause to which they had sacrificed rank, property, country,

and everything but their honour. He told them never to forget the gratitude they owed to England, should religion and royalty once more prosper in France. His constant prayers were, on his death-bed, that Christ might again save his church in France, restore there the rightful and faithful to power, and convert, but not punish, the undutiful and unbelieving. It is often more glorious to deserve than to occupy a throne. His royal Highness Monsieur, with a humanity worthy of better times and better fortune, refused himself even the necessary rest to attend his trusty and affectionate servant, who had the consolation to breathe his last in the arms of his good and generous prince. Some few moments before he shut his eyes for ever, he pressed the hand of Monsieur to his bosom, and, with a faint voice, faltered these his last words: "My kind prince, death is terrible to the wicked alone !"

RUSTIC RESPECT.

During the harvest of 1817, as a numerous band of reapers, principally inhabiting a parish in the centre of Fifeshire, were returning from labour rather earlier than usual, they observed a field of ripe corn belonging to the minister of the parish, an excellent man, far from affluent, but endeared to the lower ranks by the benevolence of his character. Thinking it quite fit for the sickle, they immediately and simultaneously proceeded to work; and actually cut down the whole of the grain, and put it in sheaves, without any instructions or expectation of reward. This little trait of unlooked-for attention and kindness from his parishioners and neighbours, could not fail to be highly gratifying to the feelings of the worthy clergyman.

HOW TO SPEND A SATURDAY EVENING.

The late Mr. James Bundy, of Bristol, who from humble poverty raised himself to circumstances of great affluence, was in the regular habit, on Saturday evenings, of visiting the markets; not as an idle observer, but to do good to the poor. If he beheld a poor person at a butcher's stall inquiring the price of a piece of meat, and then turning away for want of more money, he would call him back, saying, "What can you afford to give?" On being told how much, he would produce the additional sum, and enable the poor man to make the purchase. He would then go in quest of other persons of the same description, and assist them in like manner. thus Mr. Bundy spent his Saturday evenings, relieving promiscuously the wants of the poor, who, in return for his humanity and benevolence, offered up prayers and poured blessings upon him. After he had gone round distributing his bounty, he would then purchase pieces of meat for his own poor, or those indigent families whom he visited at their own homes. When he had finished this work of charity and labour of love, he would return home with a glad heart, and recount the blessings he enjoyed above others.

It was

PIETY RESPECTED.

In an action with the French fleet in 1694-5, Captain Killigrew, on coming up with the French vessel Content, discovered that the whole of the crew were at prayers. He might have poured in his broadside with great advantage; this, however, he refused to do, saying, “It is beneath the courage of the English nation to surprise their enemies in such a posture." Poor Killigrew fell in the action.