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The areka is most frequently met with in Siam, the Moluccas, Cambodia, and Cochin China. It is more prolific along the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal, and flourishes in the neighbouring isles of Sumatra, Pulo Penang, &c. The East India company purchase twenty thousand nuts, or about 260lb. weight, for about 2000 settees, equal to 2 dls. 10 cts., though others pay 6 cents a pound.

The betel is cultivated in most parts of India, and turns round props like the hop-plant. The leaf approaching the laurel, and the blossom the pear, it makes a pretty appearance; and the leaf, with the areka and chunam, a lime produced from calcined shells, furnishes one of the greatest luxuries in the east: it is every where presented as the first offering of friendship, and considered as the emblem of the highest respect.

The soil best adapted to the betel is a rich loam or heavy clay, and, like the manchineal of Barbadoes, it skirts the coasts of the ocean.

For the Literary Magazine.

FEMALE CLOTHING.

THE English fashion in dress among the ladies has given rise to the following judicious remarks, which are now, or shortly will be, for all English fashions are itinerant, quite as applicable to our own modes.

The materials of female clothing are now almost entirely of cotton, and that of the finest and slenderest fabric. Every lady now, in her full dress, or rather undress, is an oriental queen, or a princess of the Fortunate islands, floating, like a bird of Paradise, in a cloud of airy plumage, scarcely palpable to the touch, Shrouded from head to foot in combustibles, she adds a length of train reaching beyond any common estimate of personal proximity; and every sudden turn in the neighbourhood of a fire or a candle exposes

her to as much hazard as the moth fluttering round the evening taper. Seldom a week passes without some dreadful story of a female martyr to fashion, whose sufferings exceed those of former martyrs to religion at the stake, without the hope of a future recompence. Who can affirm that women are by nature timid, when they consent daily to undergo as much danger by their fire-sides, as the soldier in the field, or the sailor on the ocean?

But the mischiefs produced by cold in consequence of the present mode, though less obvious and alarming, are much more numerous. Our changeful and habitually cold and moist climate is peculiarly productive of that fatal disease the consumption, to which none are so liable as delicate females in the first bloom of life. No guard against it is equally important with the preservation of an equable warmth over the whole surface of the body; for the sympathy between the lungs and the skin infallibly renders a partial application of cold to the latter, the cause of disorder in the former. The progress from a cold to a cough, and from the latter to a consumption, is so frequent, and in some constitutions so rapid, that no common danger from disease at the age of puberty can be compared with it. Nor is it possible to conceive any mode of dress more calculated to produce inequality of bodily temperature than that of modern fashionable females. I acknowledge, that to meet them in the streets, wrapt up in pellisses, and buried in fur muffs and tippets, they seem as impenetrable to cold as the animals from which they borrow their shaggy spoils. But how different their ap pearance in the parlour or drawingroom, where some of the very parts which are most guarded abroad are reduced to absolute nudity! I do not pretend to deny that comfortable flannel may lurk under an exterior coating of fine muslin; but their elbows and arms! think of their poor, cold, red elbows and arms! By the bye, I will venture to suggest, and I be,

lleve I shall have even the young men on my side, that the fair sex in general were never more out in their politics than when they chose to treat us with the view of a part of their persons which is very rarely a captivating spectacle, and often much the reverse. Necks and shoulders, too, we may certainly say, are out of the region of flannel; and I suspect that the delicate ankle, which has lately so much grown up on us, has rarely a second covering. On the whole, I can never on a cold day behold a young lady in her Chamberry or muslins, her transparent drapery and her nudities, without a sympathetic shudder; and when I seriously reflect on the manifold dangers to which she is exposed, I lament that so fair a thing should be so perishable. When shall we see again the good times of silks and satins, stuffs and calimancoes?

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thoughts of death, were to them unknown. The corpse consumed by funeral fires, and the ashes inclosed in urns and deposited in the earth, presented no offensive object or idea. Besides, to dissipate the sorrow of the living, or perhaps with a desire to gratify the spirit of the dead, wines were poured and flowers scattered over the grave. last pious offices were called the grateful tributes of love and veneration. The manes of the deceased, still wandering about the place of interment, might perhaps partake of the libation or enjoy the odour: at least his memory would be honoured, and his ghost delighted.

These

Whatever may have been the original purpose of these ceremonies, we find repeated allusions to them in the poets. Anacreon mentions the rose as being particularly grateful. The tomb of Achilles was adorned with the amaranth. Elec

tra complains that her father's grave had never been decked with myrtle boughs. Anacreon, in another passage, alludes still more forcibly and beautifully to the same custom :

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Hence we may collect, that offer. ings of this nature were made with a view of gratifying the deceased; and it seems to have been a very prevailing notion among many nations besides the Greeks, that men after death retain the same passions and appetites that distinguished. them when living.

Quæ gratia currûm Armorumque fuit vivis, quæ cura ni

tentes

Pascero equos, eadem sequitur tellure repôstos.

In Lycophron, a mountain is placed between the tombs of two enemies, lest their manes may be offended at seeing the funeral honours paid to each other. An epigram of Bianor's contains a similar idea, attended with a circumstance of singular horror.

In Thebes the sons of OEdipus are laid; But not the tomb's all desolating shade, The deep forgetfulness of Pluto's gate, Nor Acheron, can quench their deathless hate.

Even hostile madness shakes the funeral pyres,

Against each other blaze their pointed fires.

Unhappy boys! for whom high love ordains

Eternal hatred's never-sleeping pains.

I recollect somewhere to have met with a story of two Scandinavian heroes, who having, like these Grecian brothers fallen by mutual Wounds, were buried together, while yet living, on the field of battle, and some centuries after, as the legend relates, were discovered still fight. ing with unabated rage, with the addition that one of them had gnawed his adversary's head to the skull.

I will produce a few examples of the monumental inscriptions of the Greeks, among which will be found some of the best and most affecting epigrams that have come down to

us.

On the same melancholy occasion which dictated a beautiful little poem of Meleager's, there is another scarcely inferior by the poetess E: inne.

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The cruel fate of her who lies below. With the same torch that Hymen gladly led

Th' expecting virgin to the genial bed, Her weeping husband lit the fun'ral pyre,

And saw the dreary flames of death aspire.

Thou too, oh Hymen! bad'st the jocund lay

That hail'd thy festive season, die

away,

Chang'd for the sighs of woe, and

groans of deep dismay.

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Of the following epigram the thoughts are affecting and beautiful. I have added to it a few lines preserved from the works of Antiphanes, which are applicable to the subject, and contains one of the most cheerful grounds of consolation which religion allows us to indulge upon the death of friends:

When those whom love and blood endear.

Lie cold upon the funeral bier,
How fruitless are our tears of woe,
How vain the grief that bids them flow!
Those friends lamented are not dead,
But gone the path we all must tread;
They only to that distant shore
Where all must go, have sail'd before.
Shine but to-morrow's sun, and we,
Compell'd by equal destiny,

To the same inn shall come, where they
To welcome our arrival stay.

The following epigrams are marked with a high degree of sensibility. How often, Lycid, will I bathe with

tears

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I'll follow thee; Love through obscurest hell

Shall guide, and with his torch the shades dispel.

But oh! beware the touch of Lethe's wave!

Remember him who hastens to thy grave!

This latter, as appears from the last verse, was an inscription on a cenotaph. Epigrams of this kind on celebrated characters are numerous, and not all of great merit, but they well deserve that a good selection should be made of them.

In their thoughts and reflections on death, mankind have ever had in view some idea of a consciousness that remains and lingers round the fileasing, anxious solicitudes and scenes of life. They have ever ima gined to themselves a spirit after death, that busied itself in protecting

Oh had no vent'rous keel defied the the fame and character of their

deep,

Then had not Lycid floated on the

brine

For him, the youth belov'd, we passing weep,

A name lamented, and an empty shrine.

The former is interesting as having probably suggested to Dr. Jortin an idea contained in one of the most beautiful Latin poems of this description to be met with in modern poetry:

lives, that was yet alive to slights or honours paid to the grosser and earthy parts. And the delicate Tibullus suffers himself to be so far led away by these ideas, that he has prescribed the very mode of burial, and named the very persons whom he wishes to appear as mourners is full of tenderness. He thus sings: over his funeral. The whole elegy

Cruel the man that labour'd to divide The youth and maid by tender love allied;

Quæ te sub tenerâ rapuerunt, Pæta, ju- And hard was he, who could the theft

ventâ,

O, utinam me crudelia fata vocent: Ut linquam terras invisaque lumina solis; Utque tuus rursùm corpore sim posito. Te sequar; obscuram per ter dux ibit eunti

Fidus amor, tenebras lampade discutiens.

Tu cave Lethæo contingas ora liquore; Et citò venturi sis memor, oro, viri.

O might the cruel death which ravish'd thee

In youth's soft prime, my Pæta, call on

me,

That I may leave this earth, this hated light,

To dwell with thee amidst the realms of night!

forgive,

Bear with his sorrow, and endure to live. Absence from her in vain I try to brave: I yield, and grief consigns me to the

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THERE are no works so famous for the abundance and purity of their wit as those of Addison, Steele, and their colleagues. They not only abound with examples of the best kind of wit, but they are extremely earnest in inculcating an abhorrence and contempt of all spurious wit, all puns, quibbles, and conundrums; and yet there is one particular in which they egregiously fail in adhering to their own precepts. In turning over the Spectator, it will be found that this very word, spectator, has been made the groundwork of a greater number and variety of puns, than any word in the English language. There are continually allusions made to the double sense which it bears, as an ordinary word, and as the title of their paper; and if any thing deserves the name of pun, I think it is this.

X.

For the Literary Magazine.

POPLAR WORM.

THERE has lately been considerable alarm excited in almost all of the United States respecting parts said to be found only on the newly the poisonous properties of a worm, imported poplar. This tree was introduced into North America, about eighteen or twenty years ago, by W. Hamilton, Esq. of the Woodlands, from whose original nursery it has since spread itself, with astonishing rapidity, to the remotest parts of the country. Till the present summer, no public or general rumour of the existence of this worm has taken place. Whether time, or whether this dangerous this reptile now exists for the first property is now, for the first time, acquired, or whether it has only accidentally escaped observation till now, or whether, in fine, there is any truth in this tale of horror, are all points on which the public curiosity has been very active. Some persons, especially in the eastern states, have been so much terrified by this rumour, that they have cut down whole rows of flourishing poplars, on which they had previously bestowed their fondest cares.

The most authentic and satisfactory experiments on this head which have hitherto appeared are the following, the account of which has appeared in a Philadelphia daily paper.

To the Editor of the American Daily Advertiser.

RESPECTED FRIEND,

In compliance with thy request, I have ventured to send thee, for publication, an account of some experi ments made on a worm found on the Lombardy poplar trees.

As I was passing through Southwark yesterday morning, I met with a person of respectability, who obligingly furnished me with three of those worms. On my return home, I immediately commenced

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