We have received such a number of communications from Positive House that it is impossible for us to give them all room in the Chest this evening. We are therefore obliged tho’ reluctantly to defer the Addresses to Lord Aircastle on his visit, and to read only the introductory letters from Electromagus, Sir Pertinax Townly, and Mr Beauclerc. Sir Pertinax gives such a sprightly description of their mode of life that notwithstanding all his complaints we are half inclined to wish ourselves pupils also. The adventures of the laboratory would afford no bad subject for the artist’s pencil, and we admire the ingenuity of Electromagus in adapting his electric apparatus to the purposes of domestic economy. We wish he would construct for us one of his Voltaic Cooking Stoves.
The present age has been busy in seeking and eager in adopting any inventions that tend to save the consumption of fuel and a stove that requires no fuel at all but a simple supply of cold water must be invaluable. How delightful in the winter to have all the advantages of fire without those volumes of smoke that condensed in the higher regions of the atmosphere descend in the form of dense fogs on this metropolis, rendering the sun dark, the day delightless and chilling by the ungenial influence on the energies of the mind. How delightful in summer to kindle your fire only at the instant it is required and as instantaneously to extinguish it when no longer wanted. Rejoice ye Sons and Daughters of Adam. Rejoice ye horses, ye mules, ye oxen. In a few years will Science burst your yoke and put an end to your labours. Already has she lightened your toil in a thousand ways, and soon shall the general adoption of steam driven chariots. of steam worked boats, and ploughs, of threshing machines that move by the action of the winds, and finally, by the use of electrical cooking stoves, restore the golden age of idleness. Already our gloves are sewed, our cotton wound, and our robes embroidered by machinery alone, and soon may the Dressmaker be dismissed, and the needle to be taught to hem, and stitch, and seam, without the guiding hand. Oh happy dawn of a happy day, the Golden Age is an inadequate title: Let us thank the mineralogists that have afforded us one nobler and call it in gratitude the Age of Platina. Amid all these patriotic and philanthropic reflections we are sorry to find by the communications from Castle Gowrie that suspicions of a terrible nature are attached to the character of Mr Beauclerc but as the names are different we trust he will be able to repel the charge and that his honour everlasting and inconsumable as the Asbestos, will emerge in dazzling whiteness from the fiery ordeal.
We have received another probationary address. The author has been rather tardy but as the laurel is not yet bestowed, he may be admitted as a candidate.
The reply to Anacreon’s Eight Ode “The Dove” translated for the Attic Chest, and read in a former season, is exceedingly elegant and our temperate circle will admire the neat translation from the Greek of Alexis. We wish Mr Ignotus would continue his fragment of “The Pleasures of Poesy” though the long train of imitators that followed the Pleasures of Imagination had almost given us a surfeit of “Pleasures”.
The Second Lecture on comparative physiology is long, but we trust our friends will not think it tedious.
The Memoirs of Ridicule, the Addresses from Positive Hall, the Lovers Calendar &c. &c. &c. shall if possible appear in our next. We have received “The Third Brother’s Tale”, but as that of the second has not yet come to hand and the style is entirely different from the former part of the Hermitage we have deemed it expedient to defer it for the present. We cannot omit this opportunity of expressing our sentiments in favour of the commencement of this poem, which is evidently an imitation of Lord Byron’s productions. The introductory stanzas are equal in elegance, expression, and imagery to the best of Childe Harold and the first Brother’s Tale in style and manner not inferior to the Giaour and the Bride of Abydos.
As it is our intention to collect the productions of the Attic Society into numbers like that of our last meeting now on the table we request the members would preserve some uniformity in the size of their paper and at least write them in the quarto form for the convenience of sewing. In the course of the summer we think of establishing a Manufacture of Attic Paper with which the Society may be supplied and as the number of contributions both in verse and prose is likely to be very voluminous we doubt not but the undertaking will be profitable and enable the Society as in duty bound annually to increase the literary fund.