A JOURNAL OF POPULAR INFORMATION AND ENTERTAINMENT. CONDUCTED BY JOHN TIMBS, ELEVEN YEARS EDITOR OF "THE MIRROR." THE SOUTHWARK LITERARY SOCIETY. Ir there be any Engravings germane to "the Literary World," they are, undoubtedly, those which illustrate the advance. ment of Literature and Science among the intelligent middle classes of the community. Such we take to be the Engravings of the Literary and Scientific Institutions of the metropolis, with which our Journal has been embellished ab initio; and of these interesting edifices the previous page presents an additional specimen. This handsome structure is now in course of erection, from the design of Messrs. Wyatt and Brandon, architects, 75, Great Russell-street, Bloomsbury. It is situated upon the south side of the Borough Road, at a short distance from "Stones' End.' "The Southwark Literary Society," for whose accommodation these premises have been designed, was established in June last; and originated, we believe, from an Association formed for similar objects, a few years since, at No. 37, Bridge House Place, where are the "temporary apartments" of the new Society. This consists of two classes of members, viz. proprietors and subscribers. The proprietors are holders of a share or shares of £5 each; and in them is vested the government of the Society. The subscribers are titled to certain advantages and privileges upon the payment of specified sums annually. The introduction of ladies and the exclusion of theological and political discussions, promise well for the harmony of the plan. The Society already possess an extensive and well chosen collection of books. en (Inscription on the First Stone.) COMMEMORATIVE OF THE ERECTION OF THE THE SOUTHWARK LITERARY SOCIETY, Was laid on the 28th day of August, 1840, By HENRY KEMBLE, Esq., M. P. Treasurer.-GEORGE PILCHER, Esq., [Then follow the names of the three Building Trustees; three Proprietary Trustees; the twelve members of the Building Committee, and their Hon. Secretary; of the General Committee; and the Secretary and Librarian.] Architects.-Messrs. WYATT & BRANDON. Within the stone was likewise enclosed a bottle containing newspapers of the day, the Laws of the Society, &c. The new Building will be of fine brick, with stone finishings: width fifty feet; depth, seventy feet. Throughout the design, economy has been kept in view; but all that has been attempted by way of embellishment is in pleasing taste and The elevation architectural propriety. will comprise a basement and three floors, arranged as follow. The Basement will be almost wholly appropriated to Kitchen offices and cellaring. The Ground Floor will comprise an entrance hall leading to a Lecture Room, calculated to accommodate about 500 persons, with a separate apartment, in the rear, for the Lecturer. There will be a separate entrance to the Lecture Room, to allow of its being occasionally used for the delivery of Lectures not immediately connected with the Society. The other apartments upon this floor will be a Library, twenty-two feet by seventeen feet; and a Newspaper Room, twenty-two feet by six teen feet. The first floor will contain a Reading Room, twenty-two feet by sixteen feet; and two Class Rooms. The second floor will comprise another Class Room; with apartments for the residence of the Librarians. We are especially gratified in illustrating this proof of intellectual advancement in the populous district of Southwark. Absorbed as are the majority of the inhabitants with the anxieties of professional pursuits, manufactures, and trade, such réunions as "the Southwark Literary Society" presents, must be delightful acquisitions to the social economy of the neighbourhood. And, it need scarcely be added, that, from the interest we have ever taken in the welfare of Literary and Scientific Societies generally, and in this case especially, from associations of many years standing, the new Institution in Southwark has our most anxious wishes for its permanent establishment and uninterrupted success. 66 DUTCH TOYS. THE various articles thus named, are, in reality, Sonnenberg wares," being made in the little town of Sonnenberg, in Saxony, chiefly remarkable for this peculiar branch of manufactures, upon which its prosperity depends. These wares consist of toys, dolls, boxes of various kinds, including pill-boxes, boot-jacks, chess-boards, and the endless variety of articles for the amusement of children, which fill the toyshops of every quarter of the globe, and are commonly called Dutch toys. There are several manufactures of papier-máché, to make dolls'-heads and pipe-heads; aud one or two mills for grinding boys' marbles. Hones, for sharpening knives, are prepared here, out of a species of slate; and there is also a quarry producing slate-pencils in the neighbourhood. Altogether, the trade in toys is supposed to produce 600,000 florins annually. TO A PROFLIGATE. DELUDED man, oh! pause awhile and think, Thyself, why thy Creator stamped thee-Man? Thy foul, inhuman, treacherous heart unmask; Search into Nature's great and wondrous plan; Then, will not rising conscience give thee pain; And summon reason to thine erring brain? Dost thou not wish, as once 'twas thine, to be A father's pride, a mother's only joy? Why didst thou crush their fondest hopes for thee? Once by this heartless world respected, why, Didst thou its smile so recklessly destroy? Reclaim thy mispent hours, thy follies past, Dash to the earth the Bacchanalian cup, Flee from the midnight revel, lest the blast Of sin should root thy noblest feelings up; Let Truth illume thy path, thy hope increase, And learn to live that thou may'st die in peace. JUVENIS. AMERICAN HOAX. "MAN favours wonders;" and the following, from the New York Mirror, shews that the English are not the only gullible people in the world: "Great is the gullibility of your great cities, and New York exhibits her full share of that pliable propensity. Credulity is very often charged upon the simple-minded people of the country; and it is a prevailing opinion, that the inhabitants of remote hamlets in the interior, where the newspapers do not penetrate, if such a spot can be found in our country, folks can be made to swallow anything. Now, we undertake to say, that the country is more acute in these matters than the city, with all its advantages; and that there is not a village, from Maine to Mississippi, in which so gross a humbug could be successfully practised, as has been played off for a long time in this city. Some months ago, a couple of wretched boys were brought here from Ohio, and placed in an exhibition-room in Broadway. They were advertised in the newspapers, and placarded in the streets, as two wonderful children with eagle's claws instead of hands and feet: and, true enough, there was a singular malformation in both those extremities; but they no more resembled eagle's claws than they looked like the beak of a spoonbill. They were minus one finger and one toe on each hand and foot; and one of them had a very interesting hair-lipmaking, on the whole, about as disgusting an object as a sight-seer could well desire. The hoax found no thrift in Broadway, and was soon withdrawn. A few mornings since, a miserable old man, with precisely the same deformities upon his own person, was seen moaning at the door of an obscure show-establishment in Chathamstreet; and upon being interrogated, he complained that his children were shut up in that house, and refused to be given to him; and true enough, these poor creatures had been, for months, there exhibited as two wonderful boys from the South Sea Islands! They were both remarkably fair-skinned; but that was nothing to the purpose: the enlighted denizens of that region had been paying their shilling a piece for looking at this marvellous lusus naturæ from the Pacific Ocean. Their father says they were inveigled from him, under the pretext of paying him in a farm, a regular deed of which was delivered, but which turned out, upon investigation, to be situated in 'No Man's Land,' if anywhere-for no such farm existed in the place of its pretended location. The old man was told that he must sue out his habeas corpus before the recorder, if he would recover his children; but we apprehend the recorder would find it difficult to have the bodies before him; for they are no longer on the premises— carried probably, to some other quarter of the city, where people will be gulled out of their shillings, to see 'two remarkable young savages, with split feet, from California or New Zealand."" ANALYSIS OF PENSIONS CONNECTED WITH LITERARY OR SCIENTIFC EMINENCE, AND WITH USEFUL INVENTIONS AND ATTAINMENTS IN THE ARTS. [The following is an interesting Abstract of a portion of the "Report from Select Committee on Pensions: ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 24 July, 1838." The Proceedings of the Com- Banim, John; age, forty-two.-£150. Author of several works of imagination and of poetry. Beaufort, Louisa Catherine; age, fiftyeight.-£81. Daughter of the late Dr. Beaufort, author of The Civil and Ecclesiastical Map of Ireland, and of an Explanatory Statistical Memoir, for which the author received the large gold medal of Denmark. Miss Beaufort is herself the authoress of an Essay upon the Irish Round Towers, which received the gold medal of the Royal Irish Academy. Bisset, Mary; age, seventy-two.-£100. Widow of the late Dr. Bisset, author of The Life of Burke, of sketches of the lives of Pitt, Fox, Crowe, Eyre Evans; age, thirty-nine.£100. Author of various literary works. Cullen, Robena; age, seventy-four.- £97. Daughter of the late Dr. Cullen, in consideration of whose eminent services to medical science this pension was granted. Cumberland, Lady Albinia, and Gordon, Albinia Elizabeth; ages, seventy-eight and -£393 The daughter-in-law and the grand-daughter of George Cumberland, the author; Mr. Cumberland, the husband and father of these parties, being also a military officer, who died in an official situation at Tobago. Dalton, John; age, -£300. Author of the Atomic Theory, and of various philosophical and chemical works; president of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester for many years, &c. Dalzell, Mary; age, fifty.-£49. Daughter of the late professor of Greek, in the Dickson, Jane, Caroline Elizabeth, and Daughters of a late bishop of Down, who died, leaving his family unprovided for, and who, from his character and attainments, was considered to be entitled to the bounty of the Crown. Duncan, Wilhelmina; age, sixty-five.£39. The widow of the late Rev. W. Duncan, master of the grammar school at Aberdeen, a learned and respectable man. He left a widow and six infant children in reduced circumstances. Drysdale, Martha; age, seventy-eight.£49. Niece and representative of the late Robert Hugh Blair, author of the celebrated Sermons, a work on Rhetoric, and Essays on Criticism. and Sheridan, of The History of the Reign of Faraday, Michael; age, George III., and various other works. Blair, Ann; age, fifty-one.-£49. Her father was the inventor of a machine for weaving sail-cloth, on which the Navy Board reported favourably. On his death, his widow and only daughter being left destitute. pensions were granted to both. The widow is now deceased. Brewster, Sir David; age, fifty-six.- £297. Author of several mathematical and scientific treatises; the inventor of the polyzonal lens for lighthouses. Brown, Ann Elizabeth; age, ninety-three. -£97. Widow of the late Principal Brown, of the Uni- Campbell, Thomas; age, sixty.-£184. Cort, Caroline, and Cort, Catherine (now Daughters of the inventor of a method for rendering cast-iron malleable. The memorial for a pension was referred to and reported on favourably by the comptroller of the Navy, before the grant was made. .-£300. The celebrated chemist; author of Chemical Manipulation; and of various papers published in The Philosophical Transactions, and in The Quarterly Journal of Science and Philosophical Magazine. Gilholy, Maria; age, sixty-five.—£21. Physicians, and deputy state physician, Ireland. He died, leaving a widow and eleven children. Grant, Ann; age, eighty-three.—£98. Daughter of an American royalist. These pensions were granted on a memorial drawn up by the late Sir Walter Scott, signed by Lord Jeffrey and Mr. Henry Mackenzie. Mrs. Grant is the authoress of Letters from the Mountains, Memoirs of an American Lady, Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlands, and other works. Halifax. Six daughters of Dr. Halifax, tutor of Trinity Jamieson, John; age, eighty.-£100. other literary, historical, and poetical works. Since the commencement of this inquiry Dr. Jamieson has died. Kirwan, Wilhelmina and Marian; ages, thirty-six and thirty-seven.-£266. Daughters of the Rev. Mr. Kirwan, whose eloquence in the pulpit was, for many years, the main support of the charities of the city of Dublin. The character and services of Dr. Kirwan were thus described, on the 19th of January, 1792, by the late Mr. Grattan, in the Irish House of Commons:-"This man preferred our country and our religion, and brought to both a genius superior to what he found in either. He called forth the latent virtues of the human heart, and taught men to discover in themselves a mine of charity, of which the proprietors had been unconscious; in feeding the lamp of charity he almost exhausted the lamp of life. He comes to interrupt the repose of the pulpit, and shakes one world with the thunder of the other; the preacher's desk becomes the throne of light; around him a train, not such as crouch and swagger at the levees of princes, but that wherewith a great genius peoples his own state: Charity in ecstasy, and Vice in humiliation, Vanity, Arrogance, and Pride, appalled by the rebuke of the preacher, and cheated, for a moment, of their native improbity." These pensions are, by patent under the Great Seal, for life. Lander, Harriet, and Harriet Ann; ages, thirty-three and thirty-eight.-£120. The widow and daughter of the enterprising African traveller, who perished in his attempts to explore the African continent. Lloyd, Mary Harriett; age, forty-nine.£200. Widow of Dr. Lloyd, preacher at Lincoln's-Inn, regius professor of Divinity at Oxford, mathematical lecturer and tutor at Christ-church, and, appointed in 1827, Bishop of Oxford. M'Crie, Mary; age, fifty.-£100. Widow of the late Dr. M'Crie, author of The Life of Knox, The Life of Andrew Melville, and other narratives illustrative of Scotch history, together with various other works. M'Farlane, Margaret; age, sixty-nine.— £97. Niece of the late Walter M'Farlane, who devoted much of his time and fortune to the statistics, geography, and history, of Scotland. Mackenzie, Hope and Helen; ages, fiftytwo and forty-one.-£97. Children of the late Henry Mackenzie, author of The Man of Feeling. Maturin, Harriot; age, sixty-five.-£43. The widow of the late Reverend Charles Maturin, author of various dramatic works and works of imagination. Millingen, James; age, .-£100. Reward for literary attainments; royal associate of the Society of Literature. Mitford, Mary Russell; age, fifty-one.— £100. Authoress of various dramatic and poetical works, and other works of imagination. Montgomery, James; age, sixty-six.-£150. Author of The World before the Flood, The West Indies, and various other poetical works. Moore, Thomas; age, fifty-seven.-£300. Author of Lallah Rookh, The National Melodies, and other poetical works; of the Lives of Sheridan, Byron, &c. Mudge, Thomas; age, seventy-seven.£100. Son of the inventor of certain Time Keepers, into the merits of which a Committee of the House of Commons, of which Mr. Wyndham was chair man, and Mr. Pitt was a member, inquired. The report was favourable, and, on the application of Mr. Wyndham to Mr. Pitt, this pension, which had been previously granted to the inventor, was, on his death, continued to his son. Nash, Mary; age, sixty-five.-£100. Widow of the late architect, who directed the improvements in the Regent's-park, in Regentstreet, and in Waterloo-place. O'Keefe, Adelaide; age, -£50. The only surviving child of O'Keefe, the dramatist. Ouseley, Sir William; age, seventy-two.£100. A distinguished oriental scholar; one of the royal associates of the Society of Literature. Outram, Margaret; age, .--£97. Daughter of the late Dr. James Anderson; in consideration of whose works upon agriculture and statistics, this pension was granted; Mrs. Outram was married to the civil engineer, from the contraction of whose name the familiar phrase of tram roads is now derived. Page, Mary Harriet; age, thirty-four.£60. Anna; age, twenty-nine.-£60. Emma Rose; age, twenty-seven.—£60. Elizabeth; age, twenty-six.— £60.= £240. Four orphan daughters of a late under-master and head-master of Westminister school; when he died, after fifteen years' service, at the early age of forty. His widow received a pension, which was considered as royal bounty, for the relief of her necessity, and as a tribute to her husband's merits. On her death, the pension of £300 was divided amongst her five daughters, one of whom has since died. Paley, Family of.- £200. Daughter-in-law and grandchildren of the late Archdeacon Paley, author of treatises on Moral Philosophy, the Evidences of Christianity, &c. Pond, Ann Gordon; age, forty-nine. £200. Widow of the late astronomer royal. Pye, Martha; age, sixty-six.-£60. Widow of the late poet laureate. Robinson, Rachael; age, seventy-four.— £184. Widow of the late Professor Robinson, whose memoirs have been written by Playfair and Dr. Gleig. Professor Robinson was employed by Government, to make an experimental voyage with Harrison's chronometer, but never received any remuneration for his labours. Russell, Eleonora, Daughters of; ages, fifty-four and fifty-eight.-£64. Grand-daughters of Robertson, the historian. pension was granted to the mother of these ladies, with a survivorship to her daughters; of these one is now dead. A Smith, William; age, sixty-nine.-£100. Author of various works on geology, of The Map of the Delineations of the Strata of England and Wales, and of various other works on geological topography. [Died in 1839.] Somerville, Mary; age, fifty-eight.-£300. Author of The Mechanism of the Heavens, The Connexion of the Physical Sciences. This work has been translated into German and French, under the superintendence of Arago, astronomer royal of France; author of an article on Halley's Comet, and of communications to the Royal Society. The bust of Mrs. Somerville has been placed by the Royal Society in their hall. Somerville, Janet, Margaret, and Martha; ages, fifty-eight, fifty-four, and fiftythree.-£97. Daughters of the late Dr. Somerville, an active |