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Remarkable Places.

DRESDEN.

IN the January number we gave our young friends a brief description of the remarkable city of Florence, the flower of Italy; and we propose to give them in the present number a brief description of a city which is as much a gem to Germany as Florence is to Italy.

Dresden is one of the best built towns in Europe. It is a beautiful spot, both as regards the position and the buildings. The river Elbe divides it into two unequal parts, over which is a fine bridge of sixteen arches, 1,420 feet in length, and thirty-six in breadth, which, though destroyed in the French revolutionary war, has again been restored. It was fortified, but the works were afterwards made to serve the purposes of police. There are seven market-places or squares, and about sixty broad streets, with others connecting them together; and the public buildings, which are numerous and beautiful, give to the whole a most magnificent appearance; but especially in the new town, which is of more recent erection. There are seventeen Lutheran, two Catholic, and a small Calvinist church; the most remarkable are the Frauenkirk of the Protestants, and the elegant Catholic Church connected with the Royal palace.

Dresden has obtained the name of the Athens of the North, from the various collections of the fine arts and of antiquities that are to be seen there. The palace is spacious and noble, and has connected with it a tower 355 feet high. In the repository is arranged a collection of antiquities connected with the ancient history of the country, of very great value. The garden serves the purposes of a promenade; and the apartments are used as the repository of a valuable cabinet of natural history. The picture gallery, occupying the four sides of a square building, is peculiarly rich in specimens of art of the best and oldest masters, and is said to be the best in Europe at the present time. The Japan Palace, in a garden looking on the Elbe, contains the royal library, amounting to more than 300,000 volumes, a collection of porcelain, and many of the finest specimens both of ancient and modern statuary. The chancery house is a fine building, and, besides paintings, contains some most valuable records of the historical kind.

Many other public and private houses are well deserving attention. The institutions for benevolence and for instruction are

numerous, appropriate, and well-conducted. The surrounding country presents many objects which induce pleasing walks or rides, especially the Plaunesche grounds, where a rapid stream runs between lofty rocks; the palace of Pilnitz, on the banks of the Elbe ; and the gardens which surround a part of the city.

THE FLOATING CITY OF BANKOK.

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There are many manufactures carried on of gold and silver articles, silk goods, cotton and woollen cloth, gloves, hosiery, and other minute commodities. Numerous vineyards flourish on the sides of the hills, overlooking the Elbe. Dresden suffered in its population by wars in 1745, 1756, 1811, and especially in 1813. The population, however, has again considerably increased. In 1834 it had but about 60,000 inhabitants, but it has now 105,000 people. The prevailing religion is Protestant.

THE FLOATING CITY OF BANKOK.

A FLOATING city! say our young friends. Can there be such a thing as a floating city? Yes, indeed, there is. In some of the ports of China there are thousands of families who live in boats constantly afloat; and on the river Rhine there are immense floating rafts with surface enough almost for a village, and many families live for a considerable time on these rafts, as they slowly move on the stream to the distant ports where the timber composing them can be sold. Then the inhabitants leave their aquatic residence for a time, and live on land as before. But the town to which I would now call your attention is very different from these temporary residences-it has a regular floating population. The kingdom of Siam is situated between India and China, and the capital of this kingdom is called Bankok. It is a large and flourishing city, and consists of three parts. There is the royal palace, which stands on an island from two to three miles in length, and separated from the mainland by a narrow arm of the river; there is also a part of the town built on the mainland; but there is another part, and no small part either, which is built on movable bamboo rafts, each raft containing from one to eight or ten houses. But as your editor was never at this wonderful place himself, he will give a description of it furnished by one who has seen it. In a volume of travels published not long ago, we have the following lively account of this wonderful city :

"The capital of Siam! Did you ever witness such a sight in your life? On either side of the wide, majestic stream, moored in regular streets and alleys, and extending as far as the eye can reach, are upwards of seventy thousand neat little wooden houses, each house floating on a compact raft of bamboos; and the whole intermediate space of the river presents to our astonished gaze one dense mass of ships, junks, and boats of every conceivable shape, colour, and size. As we glide along amongst these, we occasionally encounter a stray floating house, broken loose from its moorings, and hurrying down the stream with the tide, amidst the uproar and shouts of the inhabitants and all the spectators. We also observe that all the front rows of houses are neatly painted shops, in which various tempting commodities are exposed for sale; behind these again, at equal distances, rise the lofty and

elegant porcelain towers of the various watts and temples. On our right-hand side, far away as we can see, are three stately pillars, erected to the memory of three defunct kings, celebrated for some acts of valour and justice; and a little beyond these, looming like a line-of-battle ship amongst a lot of cockle-shells, rises the straggling and not very elegant palace of the king, where his Siamese Majesty, with ever so many wives and children, resides. Right ahead, where the city terminates, and the river, making a curve, flows behind the palace, is a neat looking fort, surmounted with a tope of mango-trees, over which peep the roofs of one or two houses, and a tall flag-staff, from which floats the royal pendant and jack of Siam—a flag of red ground-work, with a white elephant worked in the centre. That is the fort and palace of the Prince Chou Fau, now King of Siam, and one of the most extraordinary and intellectual men in the East. Now, be careful how you step out of the boat into the balcony of the floating house, for it will recede to the force of your effort, to mount, and if not aware of this, you lose your balance and fall into the river. Now we are safely transhipped, for we cannot as yet say landed; but we now form an item, though a very small one, of the vast population of the city of Bankok.

"We take a brief survey of our present apartments, and find everything, though inconveniently small, cleanly, and in other respects comfortable. First, we have a little balcony which overhangs the river, and is about twenty yards long by one and a half broad. Then we have an excellent sitting-room, which serves us for parlour, dining-room, and all; then we have a little side room for books and writing; and behind these, extending the length of the other two, a bed-room. Of course we must bring or make our own furniture; for, though those houses inhabited by the Chinese are pretty well off on this score, the Siamese have seldom anything besides their bedding materials, a few pots and pans to cook with, a few jars of stores, and fishing-net or two. Every house has a canoe attached to it, and no nation detests walking so much as the Siamese; at the same time they are all expert swimmers, and both men and women begin to acquire this very necessary art at a very early age. Without it a man runs momentary risk of being drowned, as, when a canoe upsets, none of the passers-by ever think it necessary to lend any aid, supposing them fully adequate to the task of saving their own lives. Canoes are hourly being upset, owing to the vast concourse of vessels and boats plying to and fro; and, owing to this negligence or carelessness in rendering assistance, a Mr. Benham, an American missionary, lost his life some twelve years ago, having upset his own canoe when it was just getting dusk, and, though surrounded by hundreds of boats, not one deemed it necessary to stop and pick the poor man up.'

The King of Siam was a very learned man, and very fond of

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English literature; but he is lately dead. The kingdom of Siam is heathen. May God grant that it may soon be enlightened by the Gospel, and added to the kingdom of Christ!

Remarkable Persons.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

GOD has put great honour upon our country, in the fact that the most distinguished philosphers, poets, mathematicians, engineers, and theologians have been Englishmen. The greatest philosopher since the world was created was Sir Isaac Newton. There may be something favourable to genius in the bracing atmosphere of our clime, and there may be something in the equity and freedom of our laws; but there is still more in the stimulating and invigorating power of the Protestant faith, which is the faith of the Bible. It is doubtless the good pleasure of God that the country which is the most distinguished by its love of religious truth should be rendered the most eminent in the discovery and adornment of scientific truth; for both classes of truth have but one Author-the God of truth and love.

Sir Isaac Newton was born at Woolsthorpe, not far from Grantham, in Lincolnshire. In the latter town there was lately a noble monument erected to his memory, when the late Lord Brougham delivered one of his magnificent orations on the genius, discoveries, and character of Newton. We often pass near the spot where the great philosopher first breathed, and the scene calls up to our mental vision the early days and the rising genius of the boy, who was destined by Providence to illumine the world by his discoveries, and to adorn the history of England with his fame.

It is said that when sent to school he did not at first give evidence of any extraordinary powers. But one day a boy who was above him gave him a kick on the stomach, which caused him great pain, and he resolved to be avenged by rising above him in the class. By diligent study he soon accomplished this; and having now acquired the habit of application, he soon rose to be head boy in the school. Now, instead of spending his hours in play, he was employed in fabricating ingenious machines-such as a windmill, water-clock, and a carriage to be moved by the person Occupying it; and the walls of his room were covered with charcoal drawings of birds, beasts, men, ships, and mathematical figures; all of which, it is said, were well designed. At the same time he amused himself at times by writing poetry. But soon sublimer studies engaged his mind. He began, while yet a boy, to observe the motions of the sun, the moon, and other heavenly bodies, and,

by marks of his own devising on the walls of the building, to mark the periods of their revolutions. When the boy had reached his fifteenth year, his mother thought the time had come for him to be useful on the farm; but his mind was little fitted for such occupation; for one day, when sent out with the horse and cart to Grantham, he was found, report says, under a hedge, engaged in the study of a mathematical problem, so completely absorbed therein as to be unconscious of everything around him. Young Isaac was not right in this. When sent by his mother on an errand of business he ought to have first discharged his duty, and then in the hours of leisure to have turned his attention to mathematics. However, it was soon seen that he was unfitted for farming, and therefore he was sent to Grantham Grammar School, to prepare by a course of education for admission into Cambridge University.

Having made proficiency, he entered Trinity College in his eighteenth year, and now he had ample scope and encouragement for the development of his extraordinary powers, and he entered upon those wonderful discoveries in science which astonished the world. During his first three years at college, so rapid were his attainments that he outstripped the professor who had directed his studies.

At the age of about twenty-three he had made the grand discovery that light does not consist of rays of one colour, but is a compound of variously coloured rays. This discovery was effected by means of a prism, a piece of glass of a triangular shape, which separated the different rays of light as they passed through it, resolving them into the distinct colours-violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, like those seen in a rainbow.* Not only so, he proved that rays of light were emitted and reflected in straight lines, and were regulated by strictly mathematical prineiples. By numerous elaborate experiments and demonstrations he developed the wonderful laws of light in their relation to the structure of the eye and the laws of vision. This opened new and marvellous displays of the Creator's wisdom and goodness. In the abstruse study of mathematics Newton was so much at home that he could read off at ease profound problems which seriously taxed the mental energies of others, and by a kind of intuitive perception he could see through or anticipate the mode of their demonstration. When only twenty-seven he was elected to the professor's chair of mathematics at Cambridge; and when only twenty-nine he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, solely on the ground of his inventions and discoveries.

When he was only forty years of age he had completed his wonderful discovery of the laws of the solar system. It is said that, being one day in his garden and musing on the laws of nature,

* These colours have since been resolved into five, and Sir David Brewster says into three.

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