Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

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by Maria Edgeworth


  Harry’s father had some syphons and bent tubes of different shapes made for him. Harry was very glad of this; for he thought he could try many different experiments with these.

  The thermometer-man was now paid and dismissed.

  As soon as he was gone, Harry and Lucy went to their usual occupations; for they never missed any day their regular lessons. Then came sawing wood — then walking out — Happy children! always doing something useful or agreeable.

  This evening, when they were sitting round the fire after dinner, and after his father had finished reading the newspaper, when he was not busy, Harry asked him what glass was made of. ‘I thought you had known that, long ago, Harry,’ said his father — Surely I have told you, have not I?’

  ‘Yes, father, I believe — I dare say you have; but I always forget; because I never was very curious, or much interested about it till now; but now, when we have been seeing, and thinking, and talking so much about glass, I think I shall remember what it is made of, if you will be so good as to tell me once more.’ His father desired Harry to bring him some sand, which was lying in a paper in his study — Harry did so. Then his father said to his mother —

  ‘I wish I had some alkali, to show the children — some barilla ashes — Have you any in the house.’

  ‘No.’

  There was no barilla ashes; but she recollected that a heap of fern and bean stalks had been lately burned near the house, and the ashes of these were to be easily had.

  Some of these ashes were brought upon a plate; and Harry’s father placed the ashes and the sand before him, and said —

  ‘These, when burnt together, would make glass.’

  ‘I shall never forget it,’ said Harry—’Now I have seen the real things, of which glass is made, I shall never forget them.’

  ‘That is what I say too,’ cried Lucy:—’ Seeing things, and seeing them just at the very time I am curious about them, makes me remember easily, and exceedingly well.’

  ‘Taste these ashes,’ said their father—’ this pot-ash, as it is called; wet your finger, take up a little of it, and put it into your mouth.’ Harry and Lucy did so; but they said the ashes had not an agreeable taste. Their father said, that he did not expect that they should think it agreeable; but that he had desired them to taste the ashes, that they might know the taste of what is called alkali — what is called an alkaline taste.

  ‘I shall not forget that, either,’ said Lucy.

  ‘How wonderful it is,’ continued she — looking first at the sand and ashes, and then at a glass, which she held in her hand—’how wonderful it is, that such a beautiful, clean, clear, transparent thing as glass, could be made from such different looking things, as sand and ashes!’

  ‘And I wonder,’ said Harry, ‘how people could ever think or invent, that glass could be made of these things.’

  ‘Some say that glass was invented, or rather discovered, by a curious accident,’ said his father.

  ‘Pray, father, tell us the accident.’

  ‘Some sailors, or some merchants, who were going on a voyage, were driven by contrary winds, out of their course (or way.) They were driven close to land, and they were obliged to go on shore — the shore was sandy and there grew near the place where these men landed a great deal of sea-weed. The men wanted to boil some food in an iron pot, which they had brought on shore with them; they made a fire on the sands with sea-weed; and they observed, that the ashes of this seaweed, mixed with the sand and burnt by the fire, had a glassy appearance. It looked like a kind of greenish glass. It is said, that, from this observation, they formed the first idea of making glass by burning ashes of sea-weed (called kelp) and sand together.’

  ‘How lucky it was, that they made this fire on the sand with sea-weed!’ said Harry.

  ‘How wise these people were, to observe what happened when they did so!’ said Harry’s father.

  Next morning, when Harry and Lucy went into their father’s room, Harry began with his usual speech —

  ‘Now for the barometer, father! — and, added he, ‘we must make haste, for we are to go to-morrow to my uncle’s, and I must understand it quite, before I see him again — we must make haste, father.’

  ‘Let us go on quietly from where we left off yesterday,’ said his father.

  ‘Yes, about the long pipe,’ said Harry.

  ‘Pray, father,’ said Lucy, ‘when you were speaking of the water staying in the pipe, why did you say, that the water would be held up, or sustained, by the pressure of the atmosphere, to thirty-three or thirty-four feet high in the tube? — Why should you say thirty-three or thirty-four feet? — Would it not stay either at the one or at the other of these heights?’

  ‘That is a very sensible question, Lucy,’ said her father. ‘ The reason is, that the -pressure of the atmosphere is not always the same. In fine weather, it is generally greater than when it rains or snows; and before it rains or snows, the pressure, or, as it is sometimes called, the weight of the atmosphere, is less than at some other times. So that, if we had such a pipe, or tube, and if the upper part of it were transparent, so that we could see into the inside of it, we could tell, by the rising and falling of the water in the pipe, when the air, or atmosphere, was heavier or lighter, and then we might suppose, that the weather was going to change. I say suppose, because we should not be sure.’

  ‘Then, father,’ said Harry, ‘ if the top of this pipe were of glass, it would be a barometer, would not it?’

  ‘Yes, my dear, it would — Now you know what a barometer is.’

  ‘Why do not people make such barometers as this,’ said Harry.

  ‘Because they would be very inconvenient,’ said his father; ‘in the first place, it would be difficult to piece them so as that the rise and fall of the water could be easily seen, because you must go up to the top of the house every time you wanted to consult the barometer; in the next place, the frost would turn the water in the tube into ice; and there would be an end of the barometer. But the shining liquor, that you saw in your uncle’s barometer, is not liable to freeze.’

  ‘That shining liquor,’ said Harry, ‘ is called quicksilver or mercury.’

  ‘Yes,’ said his father.—’ Here is some mercury; feel the weight of it.’

  ‘The quicksilver, that is in this glass, father,’ said Lucy, ‘ seems as heavy as all the water that is in that decanter.’

  ‘Yes,’ said her father, ‘ mercury is more than fourteen times heavier than water. Now, Harry, if the pipe, forty feet long, which we were speaking of before, was filled with quicksilver, do you think that the pressure of the atmosphere would hold up the quicksilver thirty-four feet high?’

  ‘Certainly not, father,’ answered Harry; ‘because the quicksilver is so much heavier than water.’

  ‘Would it hold it up one quarter the same height,’ said his father.

  ‘No, it would not,’ answered Harry; ‘because it is easy to perceive that the quicksilver is more than four times heavier than water.’

  ‘Yery true, Harry; it has been found by experiment, that the pressure of the atmosphere will sustain a column of mercury about twenty-nine inches high; sometimes, it will sustain only a column of twenty-seven inches; and sometimes, a column of thirty, more or less, according to the pressure of the atmosphere.’

  ‘How long is the tube of the barometer,’ said Harry.

  ‘It is generally about thirty-six inches long; but, as the mercury never rises to the top of the tube, there is always an empty space between the top of the mercury and the top of the glass, which allows the mercury to rise or fall as the pressure of the atmosphere is more or less. The glass tube of a barometer is about one fourteenth part as long as the leaden pipe, which you said would make a water barometer; but the quicksilver is fourteen times as heavy as the water.’

  ‘All this is rather difficult,’ said Lucy.

  ‘So it must appear to you at first, my dear,’ said her father; ‘but, when you have seen it often and talked w
ith your brother about it, you will understand it more clearly.’

  ‘But at least,’ said Lucy, ‘I know now father, what is meant by the glass falling and rising. It does not mean that the glass falls or rises, but that the mercury rises or falls in the glass.’

  ‘Very true, my dear Lucy; saying, that the glass rises or falls, is an inaccurate mode of speaking. Now, my dear boy, I think you will be able to understand your uncle’s barometer, when you see it to-morrow; particularly if you will read, to-night, an excellent description and explanation of the barometer, which you will find in this little book,’ said his father, putting ‘Scientific Dialogues’ into his hands; it was open at the word barometer.

  ‘O, thank you, father!’ said Harry.

  ‘And, my dear Lucy,’ said her father, turning to Lucy, and showing her in a book, which he held in his hand, a print,—’ do you know what this is?’

  ‘A thermometer, father — Fahrenheit’s thermometer — O, I remember what you told me about Fahrenheit’s thermometer.’

  ‘I think you will be able, now, to understand this description of thermometers, my dear; and you may read it whenever you please;’ said her father.

  ‘I please to read it this instant, father,’ said Lucy.

  So Lucy sat down, and read, in the ‘Conversations on Chymistry,’ the description of the thermometer; and Harry read the explanation of the barometer, in ‘Scientific Dialogues.’ And when they had finished, they changed books, and Harry read what she had been reading; and Lucy read what Harry had been reading; and they liked the books, because they understood what they had read.—’ I wonder what the rest of this book is about,’ said Harry, turning over the leaves: ‘ here are many things I should like to know something about.’

  ‘And I should like,’ said Lucy, ‘to read some more of these conversations between Emma, and Caroline, and Mrs. B — . There seems to be drawings here, and experiments too. Since father has shown us some experiments, I wish to see more.’

  ‘But, my dear,’ said her father, ‘you are not able yet to understand that book. Look at the beginning of it. Read the first sentence.’

  ‘Having now acquired some elementary notions of natural philosophy—’

  ‘What are elementary notions?’ said Lucy, stopping short.

  ‘I know,’ said Harry; ‘ for I heard the writing-master the other day tell my father, that he had given Wilmot, the gardener’s son, some elementary notions of arithmetic, that is, first foundation notions, as it were.’

  ‘Then I have no elementary notions of natural philosophy — have I, father,’ said Lucy.

  ‘In the first place, do you know what natural philosophy is, my dear,’ said her father.

  Lucy hesitated; and at last she said, she did not know clearly — she believed, it was something about nature.

  Harry said, he believed it meant the knowledge of all natural things — things in nature, such as the air, and the fire, and the water, and the earth, and the trees, and all those things, which we see in the world, and which are not made by the hands of human creatures.

  Their father said, that this was partly what was meant.

  ‘Then,’ said Lucy, ‘I have no elementary notions of natural philosophy.

  ‘Yes, you have,’ said Harry—’ All we have been learning about the air, and the wind, and the pressure of the atmosphere, and all that father has been showing us, about water and quicksilver; these are elementary notions of natural philosophy, are not they, father,’ said Harry.

  ‘Yes; but you have, as yet, learnt very little,’ said his father; ‘ you have a great deal more to learn, before you will be able to understand all that is in these ‘ Conversations on Chymistry,’ and in Scientific Dialogues.’

  ‘Well, father,’ said Harry, smiling, ‘ that is what you used to say to me about the barometer; you used to say, a little while ago, that I must know a great deal more, before I could understand the barometer; but now I have learnt all that, and now I do understand the barometer; and in time, I shall — we shall, I mean — know enough, I dare say, to read these books, and to understand them. just as well as we now understand the barometer and thermometer.’

  ‘Yes, and very soon too, I dare say! — shall we not, father,’ cried Lucy.

  ‘All in good time; we will make haste slowly, my dear children,’ answered their father. ‘Now go get ready, as quickly as you please, to go with your mother and me to your uncle’s.’

  THE END

  MORAL TALES

  CONTENTS

  FORESTER

  THE PRUSSIAN VASE

  THE GOOD AUNT

  ANGELINA; OR, L’AMIE INCONNUE.

  THE GOOD FRENCH GOVERNESS

  MADEMOISELLE PANACHE. SECOND PART

  THE KNAPSACK

  FORESTER

  Forester was the son of an English gentleman, who had paid some attention to his education, but who had some singularities of opinion, which probably influenced him in his conduct toward his children.

  Young Forester was frank, brave, and generous, but he had been taught to dislike politeness so much, that the common forms of society appeared to him either odious or ridiculous; his sincerity was seldom restrained by any attention to the feelings of others. His love of independence was carried to such an extreme, that he was inclined to prefer the life of Robinson Crusoe in his desert island, to that of any individual in cultivated society. His attention had been early fixed upon the follies and vices of the higher classes of people; and his contempt for selfish indolence was so strongly associated with the name of gentleman, that he was disposed to choose his friends and companions from amongst his inferiors: the inequality between the rich and the poor shocked him; his temper was enthusiastic as well as benevolent; and he ardently wished to be a man, and to be at liberty to act for himself, that he might reform society, or at least his own neighbourhood. When he was about nineteen years old, his father died, and young Forester was sent to Edinburgh, to Dr. Campbell, the gentleman whom his father had appointed his guardian. In the choice of his mode of travelling his disposition appeared. The stage-coach and a carrier set out nearly at the same time from Penrith. Forester, proud of bringing his principles immediately into action, put himself under the protection of the carrier, and congratulated himself upon his freedom from prejudice. He arrived at Edinburgh in all the glory of independence, and he desired the carrier to set him down at Dr. Campbell’s door.

  “The doctor is not at home,” said the footman, who opened the door.

  “He is at home,” exclaimed Forester with indignation; “I see him at the window.”

  “My master is just going to dinner, and can’t see any body now,” said the footman; “but if you will call again at six o’clock, maybe he may see you, my good lad.”

  “My name is Forester — let me in,” said Forester, pushing-forwards.

  “Forester! — Mr. Forester!” said the footman; “the young gentleman that was expected in the coach to-day?” Without deigning to give the footman any explanation, Forester took his own portmanteau from the carrier; and Dr. Campbell came down-stairs just when the footman was officiously struggling with the young gentleman for his burden. Dr. Campbell received his pupil very kindly; but Forester would not be prevailed upon to rub his shoes sufficiently upon the mat at the bottom of the stairs, or to change his disordered dress before he made his appearance in the drawing-room. He entered with dirty shoes, a threadbare coat, and hair that looked as if it never had been combed; and he was much surprised by the effect which his singular appearance produced upon the risible muscles of some of the company.

  “I have done nothing to be ashamed of,” said he to himself; but, notwithstanding all his efforts to be and to appear at ease, he was constrained and abashed. A young laird, Mr. Archibald Mackenzie, seemed to enjoy his confusion with malignant, half-suppressed merriment, in which Dr. Campbell’s son was too good-natured, and too well-bred, to participate. Henry Campbell was three or four years older than Forester, and though he looked lik
e a gentleman, Forester could not help being pleased with the manner in which he drew him into conversation. The secret magic of politeness relieved him insensibly from the torment of false shame.

  “It is a pity this lad was bred up a gentleman,” said Forester to himself, “for he seems to have some sense and goodness.”

  Dinner was announced, and Forester was provoked at being interrupted in an argument concerning carts and coaches, which he had begun with Henry Campbell. Not that Forester was averse to eating, for he was at this instant ravenously hungry: but eating in company he always found equally repugnant to his habits and his principles. A table covered with a clean table-cloth; dishes in nice order; plates, knives, and forks, laid at regular distances, appeared to our young Diogenes absurd superfluities, and he was ready to exclaim, “How many things I do not want!” Sitting down to dinner, eating, drinking, and behaving like other people, appeared to him difficult and disagreeable ceremonies. He did not perceive that custom had rendered all these things perfectly easy to every one else in company; and as soon as he had devoured his food his own way, he moralized in silence upon the good sense of Sancho Panza, who preferred eating an egg behind the door to feasting in public; and he recollected his favourite traveller Le Vaillant’s enthusiastic account of his charming Hottentot dinners, and of the disgust that he afterwards felt, on the comparison of European etiquette and African simplicity.

  “Thank God, the ceremony of dinner is over,” said Forester to Henry Campbell, as soon as they rose from table.

  All these things, which seemed mere matter of course in society, appeared to Forester strange ceremonies. In the evening there were cards for those who liked cards, and there was conversation for those who liked conversation. Forester liked neither; he preferred playing with a cat; and he sat all night apart from the company in a corner of a sofa. He took it for granted that the conversation could not be worth his attention, because he heard Lady Catherine Mackenzie’s voice amongst others; he had conceived a dislike, or rather a contempt for this lady, because she showed much of the pride of birth and rank in her manners. Henry Campbell did not think it necessary to punish himself for her ladyship’s faults, by withdrawing from entertaining conversation; he knew that his father had the art of managing the frivolous subjects started in general company, so as to make them lead to amusement and instruction; and this Forester would probably have discovered this evening, had he not followed his own thoughts, instead of listening to the observations of others. Lady Catherine, it is true, began with a silly history of her hereditary antipathy for pickled cucumbers; and she was rather tiresome in tracing the genealogy of this antipathy through several generations of her ancestry; but Dr. Campbell said “that he had heard, from an ingenious gentleman of her ladyship’s family, that her ladyship’s grandfather, and several of his friends, nearly lost their lives by pickled cucumbers;” and thence the doctor took occasion to relate several curious circumstances concerning the effects of different poisons.

 

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