Dr. Dalton's Pension.-We have heard much of the preferment said to have been lately showered upon persons of high scientific and literary attainments; but, especially, of a small pension granted to Dr. Dalton, who has passed his eightieth year. The Duke of Sussex, at the last anniversary of the Royal Society, referred to this munificent grant, observing, that if not commensurate with Dr. Dalton's services, it is at least as considerable as the severity of existing regulations will allow: although his Royal Highness could not refrain from expressing his regret at the very narrow limits within which the munificence of the King, and the generosity of the nation, should be confined. The late Sir John Malcolm was one of a family of seventeen children, which enjoyed the distinction of having three of its members created Knights of the Bath in the same year. A monument, by Chantrey, is to be erected to the memory of Sir John Malcolm, in Westminster Abbey, for which ample funds have been provided by the almost spontaneous contributions of his friends: among the subscribers is the name of the Pacha of Egypt. Mr. Joshua Brookes was for more than forty years a distinguished teacher of anatomy; and he is said to have superintended the education of more than 7,000 pupils. Yet he died in comparative poverty, and despondency at the dispersion of his celebrated Museum! The Rev. Fearon Fellows, late Astronomer Royal at the Cape of Good Hope, was so true to his duty, that during the most distressing affliction, he was carried daily in a blanket by his servants from his sick room to the observatory, for the purpose of winding up his clocks and chronometers. The Peerage-Sir Egerton Brydges considers, there is a want of genuine splendour in the Peerage, unless there be, what he calls, an original nobility. By this, he means that very ancient nobility which has an historical appearance of being derived from Charlemagne. This seems to have been the case with almost all the first Anglo-Norman earls and chief baronial houses. Love, like death, is a leveller of all distinctions: it will admit of none will perceive none; and when affection and worldly degree are put in comparison by the lover himself, it is not difficult to foretell by which the scales will be turned. Love's kingdom is founded -Rookwood. Cartwright. A thunder-storm is the finest of all possible sights, when seen at a distance; but, to Selzer Water-At Nieder-Selters, in the Duchy of Nassau, where the celebrated refreshing Selzer water is obtained, the moralists preach on bottles. Life, they say, is a sound bottle, and death a cracked one— thoughtless men are empty bottles-drunken men are leaky ones; and a man highly educated, fit to appear in any country and in any society, is, of course, a bottle corked, rosined, and stamped with the seal of the Duke of Nassau. By the way, Sir Francis Head considers the best analysis he can offer of the Selzer water, is the plain fact, that the inhabitants of the village, who have drunk it all their lives, were certainly, by many degrees, the healthiest and ruddiest-looking peasants he any where met with in the dominions of the Duke of Nassau. Books.-The strictly original authors are incredibly few. Most books are, more or less, the result of memory or compilation; while the original thoughts that are intermixed, are faint and imperfect. In youth and middle age we can read almost anything: as we grow old, we grow very fastidious. Nothing secondary can any longer interest us: we demand what rises, like the freshness of the morning breath, from the pure earth.—Sir E. Brydges. Dwarf Marriage.-A dwarf, named Don Santiago de los Santes, during his exhibitory travels, was lately married to another dwarf, Miss Hipkins, at Birmingham. The Don is 48 years of age, and about 25 inches high; and Miss Hipkins is 28 years of age, and about 40 inches high. The bride and bridegroom were carried to church in a sedan, and the High Bailiff of Birmingham gave away the bride. Printed and published by J. LIMBIRD, 143, Strand, (near Somerset House,) London. Sold by G. G. CHARLES JUGEL, Francfort; and by all NewsBENNIS, 55, Rue Neuve St. Augustin, Paris; men and Booksellers. THIS handsome structure occupies nearly the precise site of the former theatre, which was consumed by fire in February, 1830. A great portion of this interval was spent in negotiating means for connecting the rebuild. ing of the theatre with an important public improvement, viz. the opening of a new line of street from Waterloo Bridge to Long Acre. At length, to quote the lithograph circular issued by the proprietor, " after numerous impediments surmounted and unforeseen, he has been enabled by the kind assistance of Royal and Noble patrons, and many valuable friends, at a large outlay, to rebuild his the. atre, which is situated in the most central part of the metropolis, in the new street opposite the Waterloo Bridge." Once begun, the erection of the theatre proceeded with great rapidity, so as to ensure its completion by the commencement of the summer theaVOL. XXIV. G trical season. It is, altogether, a structure of great beauty, and is, probably, more characteristic of its appropriation than any similar building in London. Covent Garden Theatre, it is true, is of stately architecture, but its magnificence is too heavy for a temple of the drama; and the severity of its Doric details, though easily associated with classic tragedy, are not suited for a theatre in which the pure drama is so little respected. Leaving these matters to critical heads, we are inclined to consider the New English Opera-House in grade of characteristic merit to resemble the Haymarket Theatre, which may be rated as one of Mr. Nash's most successful architectural labours. The new theatre, in plan, may be divided into three portions:-1. the entrances and part used as a residence; 2. the auditory; 3. the stage. The front forms part of the 675 west side of the new street, and the back of the stage department faces Burleigh-street. The principal entrance is under an elegant portico of six, lofty, fluted columns of the Corinthian order; those at the two extremities being coupled-that is, placed on one base. The entablature and pediment which they support, are well proportioned; and the latter is enriched with a handsome cornice, which is continued throughout the entablature of the front, crowned with a balustrade. Above the entrance doors will be placed an appropriate basso-rilievo. The front is otherwise embellished with six pilasters, with capitals corresponding with those of the columns; four being placed behind the portico, and one at each angle. On each side of the portico is a shop, with an elegant balustraded window above it: which may be considered to add much to the lively effect. Above the roof rises a dome, which is a judicious addition to the elevation, and is admirably adapted for ventilation. Of the interior we shall be expected to say little: but that must be laudatory; for the arrangements are of the completest character of convenience. Passing through a hall, with an arched roof, we enter a vestibule, opening into the dress circle of boxes; with a tasteful double staircase on each side, leading to the upper boxes and the saloon. The auditory is in front semicircular, and at the sides of the horse-shoe form, or that which is best adapted for hearing. The architectural design consists of an elegant entablature, surmounted with a light balustrade, forming the front of the gallery and slips, supported on slender columns rising from the dress circle. The enrichments are raised in burnished gold on a white ground. The ceiling, which is circular and slightly concave, is ornamented with coloured arabesques in compartments, with chaste effect. There are two tiers of boxes: in front of the lower, or dress, circle, is a projection, called "the balcony," answering to the premiere galerie of the French theatres: the front consisting of an ornamental trellis-work of gilt metal. The front of the dress circle is ornamented with classical subjects, in the fresco style; and the first or upper tier is embellished with an imitation of rich tapestry, which is novel in an English theatre. The balustrades of the gallery and slips are lined with rose colour. There is only one gallery; but it is through 400 prismatic spears, so that the whole appears like a blaze of sunshine upon a coruscation of icicles. We understand the cost was 7007"* The proscenium is supported by four columns on each side, coupled, on a white marble base; between which are the stageboxes. In the centre of the proscenium are the Royal arms, delicately painted. To the right and left, floral ornaments are introduced, with medallions of Mozart and Weber. The stage is 38 ft. 6 in. wide, being only 4 ft. less than the width of Covent Garden stage. Behind the balcony is a range of small boxes, for family parties. There are also three private boxes at each end of each tier, besides those on the stage. The house, when crowded, will contain 350. The The architect of this superb structure is Mr. Beazley, whose experience in the erection of theatres has been very considerable. The design bears the stamp of classic elegance, and must certainly add to the wellearned reputation of the architect. works have been constructed with substantial neatness, by Messrs. Grissell and Peto, the builders of the New Hungerford Market; and the internal decorations have been executed under the tasteful direction of Mr. Crace. We have only to congratulate the architect upon his success, and to add our anxious wishes, that the proprietor and the performers may please the public, as highly as the theatre itself has pleased ourselves: the satisfaction of all parties will then be complete. PARLIAMENTARY PRIVILEGES. PREVIOUS to the year 1770, (when an Act was passed "For the Further Preventing Delays of Justice by reason of Privilege of Parliament,") the Privileges of Parliament were so extensive, that a Member thereof, or his servants, were not only privileged from arrests, but their property was also exempted, (with a few trivial exceptions,) from the payment of their just debts. The following cases will sufficiently show to what extent these pernicious privileges were carried in former times; and will likewise serve to explain what the subject has gained by the provisions of the several Acts of Parliament, which have restrained the privileges of Members, so far as they could be used as exceptions to, or infringements on, public justice. In the first year of the reign of James I., Sir Thomas Shirley, a Member of Parliament, Parliament, and carried prisoner to the Fleet; was arrested four days before the sitting of Literary Gazette. on which a warrant was issued to the Clerk of the Crown, for a Habeas Corpus to bring him to the House; and the sergeant was sent for in custody, who, being brought to the bar, and confessing his fault, was excused for that time: but, upon hearing counsel at the bar for Sir Thomas Shirley, and the warden of the Fleet, and upon producing precedent, Simpson, the prosecutor, who caused the arrest to be made, was ordered to be committed to the Tower; and afterwards, the warden refusing to execute the writ of Habeas Corpus, and the delivery of Sir Thomas being denied, he was likewise committed to the Tower; though on his agreeing to deliver up Sir Thomas, upon a new war rant for a new writ of Habeas Corpus, and making submission to the House, he was discharged. As this affair took up some time, the House entered into several debates touching their privilege, and how the debt of the party might be satisfied; which produced three questions: 1st, Whether Sir Thomas Shirley should have privilege? 2ndly, Whether presently, or to be deferred? And 3rdly, Whether the House should petition the King for some course for securing the debt of the party, according to former precedents, and saving harmless the warden of the Fleet? All these questions were resolved; and a Bill was brought in to secure Simpson's debt, &c. which also occasioned the statute, 1 James I., c. 13, for relief of plaintiffs in writs of execution, where the defendants in such writs are arrested, and set at liberty by Privilege of Parliament; by which a fresh prosecution and new execution may be had against them when that privilege ceases. And again, in the nineteenth year of the same King's reign, one Johnson, a servant to Sir James Whitelock, a Member of the House of Commons, was arrested by two bailiffs; who being told that Sir James Whitelock was a Parliament-man, answered, that they had known greater men's servants than his taken from their masters in time of Parliament; and this appearing, the two bailiffs were sentenced to ask pardon of the House and Sir James Whitelock, on their knees; and to ride on one horse, bare-backed, back to back, from Westminster to the Exchange, with papers on their breasts signifying their offence; all which was to be executed presently, sedente curia. EARLY ENGLISH SHIPPING. (Continued from page 53.) DURING some of the succeeding reigns, but few mariners appear to have been employed in English shipping: in 1304, the largest British man-of-war was manned but by forty sailors; and at the siege of Calais, in 1346, the number of men employed in Edward III.'s ships, did not average more than twenty in each; his fleet, nevertheless, was considerable, consisting of 700 English, and 38 foreign, vessels. Upon his invasion of France in 1359, he is said to have carried thither the enormous armament of 11,000 ships; which included all the vessels of Great Britain, of every size and description, which could be pressed into the king's service, from all the ports of England; and merchantmen coming into our roads, which had not yet made their destined ports, were unladed and applied to this purpose. By the accounts transmitted to Edward, from his naval parliament in 1344, it appears that Yarmouth and London boasted of shipping more numerous than any other ports in the kingdom.* Nevertheless, the complaints of the Commons in parliament on this subject, afford clear evidence that, notwithstanding the immense number of vessels alluded to in the foregoing paragraph, there was in reality a diminution in the shipping establishment of the realm; nor is it difficult to assign reasons for such a decrease. English ships, the private property of individuals, and English sailors, had small temptations to seek for support in a country where they might be, and were, both, most frequently seized on by government for the king's use; and where the greatest possible encouragement was given to merchantstrangers, (which were, by most solemn engagements, exempted from the action of the press warrant,) which monopolized trade, and which were encouraged by the British princes of this period, to the infinite detriment of their subjects, for the sake of the loans they were enabled to bestow upon them. obviate this evil, was the design of the first navigation act, passed a. D. 1381, (Statutes at Large, 1381,) by which English mer Coke, in his Institutes, also tells us, that the King cannot take notice of any thing, said to be done in the House of Commons, but by the report of that House. And in Atkins's Jurisdiction and Antiquities of the House of Commons, the following instance is adduced in proof of this singular doctrine: When Charles the First, being in the House of Commons, and sitting in the Speaker's chair, asked the then Speaker, ment of many other of the great trading towns. Το The naval parliament was assembled for the purpose of commanding every seaport town, to send commissioners to London in order to supply an exact account of the state of the shipping in Edward III.'s dominions at this period. Now Yarmouth and London were required to send four of these commissioners, whereas two, and even one, was the comple chants were compelled, under penalty of forfeiting all their cargoes embarked in foreign vessels, to freight with them none but English. When the act had had time, as it is technically termed, to work, it was quickly discovered that a procedure upon it tended greatly to interrupt and decrease the trade of native English merchants; it was, therefore, altered or repealed, and, in the following year, another act granted them permission to freight foreign vessels, when native ones could not be procured. Few voyages of discovery appear to have been undertaken in the fourteenth century, either by British or foreign navigators, although the mariner's compass, invented as some assert by Flavis de Gioca of Almaphi, A. D. 1302, or, as others hold, improved by him in its construction with eight points, was now in constant use. Nicholas de Lenna, however, a Carmelite friar, is asserted to have made five voyages towards the North Pole, in the reign of Edward III., and to have presented that monarch with a written description of the unknown countries and people he had found. The discovery of Madeira, attributed to Macham, an Englishman, (with the particulars of whose romantic story few are at this day unacquainted,) is placed in the year 1344. In the same year, Pope Clement VI. created Lewis of Spain, King of the Fortunate Islands, (supposed to be the Canaries,) though the fortunate monarch of these delightful regions had never the happiness of knowing exactly what they were, or whereabout they might be situated! But the Canary Islands, truly and actually, were discovered in 1395, by some Spanish and French adventurers; and, according to Hakluyt, they seem to have been the furthest point towards the S. W. to which any Europeans had penetrated by sea at the conclusion of the fourteenth century. The cannon used in ships of war at this period, appear to have been few in number, and small in size, but little is this to be wondered at, when gunpowder, (if previously known to monkish chemists,) was not used with guns until A.D. 1340, when Edward III. possessed but four field-pieces, and these contributed to gain him the battle of Crecy. The munition of the vessel called the Queen's Hall, in which Queen Philippa was sent over to her husband, is thus described in Rymer's Fœdera: " Henry Somers, keeper of the private wardrobe in the Tower, delivered to William Loveney, treasurer to Queen Philippa for the armament of her ship,-two guns, forty pounds of powder for these guns, forty stone balls," &c. ; whence it is apparent that one pound of powder was the charge for each of these guns. The reign of Henry IV. was favourable to the interests of the British navy, as the French, Flemings, and Bretons, were com pelled to confess; to whom our king amply repaid the insults he had received from them during his contests with the Earl of Northumberland and his confederates. William de Wilford, admiral of the narrow seas, in an expedition against Brittany, captured forty of their ships, and burnt as many. The Earl of Kent did even greater mischief on the coast of Flanders, and the celebrated Henry Pays, admiral of the Cinque ports, took a fleet of French merchantmen of 120 sail. Henry V. was equally victorious_by_sea and by land, and the fleets of England during his reign maintained their supremacy over the narrow seas. His brother, John, Duke of Bedford, in 1416, and the Earl of Huntingdon in the following year, obtained decisive naval victories over the combined fleets of France and Genoa, to the complete establishment of the maritime ascendancy of Britain for several years. Henry appears to have been the first English monarch who had ships of his own; amongst these have come down to us the names of two which he had on his first invasion of France, the King's Chamber, and the King's Halllarge and beautiful vessels with purple sails; he also possessed, says a poet of his days, "The Trinity, the Grace-de-Dieu, and Holy Ghost, And other more, which now be lost." The reign of the barbarous Richard III. was too brief and disturbed to allow of his attending to the maritime interests of this kingdom; their present footing, however, was too firm to permit their being lightly shaken; yet, as things which do not progress are invariably allowed to retrograde, in all human probability, the landing of his rival, the Duke of Richmond, and the subsequent loss of his crown and his life, might have been prevented had he taken sufficient care to guard the narrow seas. The reign of his predecessor had been favourable for the navy, Edward IV. paying great attention to mercantile and maritime affairs, and sometimes collecting large fleets, (of course we omit all mention of the mere nominal sovereignty of the murdered infant Edward V.); the ships, his own private property, he sometimes employed in commerce for himself, to the great augmentation of his treasures, and sometimes protected with them that of his people. And although the imbecile reign of Henry VI. and the turbulent one of Richard III. were little favourable to the naval interests of England in general, yet it will certainly appear to our readers that, in spite of occasional languor and discrepancies, the maritime power of Britain was, with her commerce, during the periods we have latterly surveyed, exceedingly strengthened and extended. Attempts were also beginning to be made to build ships of greater burden than those heretofore in use, after the fashion |