Arts and Atmospheric Telegraph-Physiognomy-Steam Fireengine-Electric Telegraph-Chicago River-NewYork Farmers' Club-Type-setting Machine-Railroads-The Paper Trade-Pompeii. THE Committee of Congress on the memorial of Mr. Richardson, respecting the atmospheric telegraph, reported favorably. The report says: "The mail between Washington and New-York is now carried upon railroads in twelve hours. If your committee do not greatly err, the same mails may be carried between these cities in two hours, by the proposed atmospheric telegraph, and the expenditure now necessary for the transmission of one set of mails, would enable the post-office department to send six sets of mails every twelve hours. The impulse which such a frequent, rapid, and certain delivery of the mails between distant points would give to all the business of the country is incalculable: operating with as much safety and unerring certainty in night as in daylight; unaffected by changes of seasons or weather; and exempt from liability to those mischances, accidents and delays, which are retarding the delivery of the mails throughout the country, the atmospheric telegraph seems destined to become the exclusive mailcarrier of the age." The editor of the London Athenæum, after an inspection of the Art Sections of the London Crystal Palace, remarks: "It is singular to observe that when the Greek strove to convey a low type of humanity, as in the Faun or Silenus, its face has European analogies. The Roman heads resemble ours in many respects; and the depraved women of the Imperial times, as Faustina, Agrippina, &c., have the hard round forehead and small weak chin, which became the marked feature of the Louis Quinze age, or may be traced in the sleepy-eyed, languid beauties of Lely and of Kneller. It is impossible to deny that every century seems to have impressed its peculiar crimes and virtues, and its hopes and struggles, on the faces of its great men. The Elizabethan face is finely oval; the eyes meditative, the forehead high and arched, and the chin firm and well rounded. The George the Second visage is fleshy and full, the chin small and fat, the lower jaw heavy, the neck thick, and the cheeks full and furrowed. The fifteenth century forehead is square,-the seventeenth, round, the thirteenth, flat and wide,-the eighteenth, full and swelling over the eyes. We believe that in the present day a better type of physiognomy is beginning to appear:--the face grows more oval, the forehead higher and fuller, the lips smaller and firmer, the nose nobler and straighter. Napoleon's was a model of a head,-Byron, Shelley, Southey, Wordsworth, and Keats, were spiritual and handsome. Most of our living authors present much more of the Elizabethan type. Refinement of manners is already perceptible on the national features. Club life may be as selfish as tavern life; but it is purer and healthier. There is more religion now and more decorum,-more earnestness and less materialism. A pure school of poetry has arisen, drawing its images direct from nature, and appealing to the common heart. A school of painting has sprung up side by side, originating from it, and likely to rival it in renown. With the peaked beard vanished chivalry,-with the full-bottomed wig, Renaissance poetry,-and with the revival of a taste for Gothic Art is now coming back all that was worthy of preservation in the Middle Ages." A Cincinnati correspondent of the Boston Traveler, says, that the steam fire-engine, recently invented and put in operation there, promises to be a valuable and important improvement upon the engines in common use. It can, by the use of oil, be at any time got in readiness for full operation in ten minutes, and this while it is on its way to the fire. It is readily drawn to any part of the city by horses. It propels six streams of water with greater force, and to a greater height, than other engines. Committees Sciences. from Eastern cities have recently been here to observe its operation, and make investigation as to the advantage it combines. It is understood they have been favorably impressed in regard to it. The opinion here of those most competent to judge of its utility is, that it is a great advance upon the common engines, and will soon be in use, particularly in all our larger cities. A young man of Bayonne has just invented a mode of electric telegraph, by which the dispatch is printed in ordinary letters, or conventional signs, by the telegraph itself, at the point of departure, at the end, and at several intermediate stations simultaneously. A committee of the Chicago Council have resolved to accept the plan for tunneling Chicago River, as proposed by the American Submarine Tunnel Company, of New-York. It is to be made of cast-iron; entrances on a grade not exceeding one foot fall in nine. The plan to be two wagon tracks, each ten feet wide, and two foot-ways, each four feet wide, the former eleven feet high, and the latter seven feet: the top of the tunnel to be not less than twelve feet below low water-mark for one hundred and fifty feet in the center of the river. At a recent meeting of the New-York Farmers' Club, Mr. Wagoner introduced the model of collect the heads and separate the grain from a new reaping-machine, which is calculated to the chaff, and deliver the grain in bags. He had one machine in operation at Racine, Wisconsin, this last year, that cut at the rate of twenty-five acres a day. A machine will weigh about twelve hundred pounds, and cost $150. The cutters can be raised or lowered to suit the height of grain by the operator, the heads being carried directly to a thresher and cleaner, and the grain thence to a screen and the bags. The whole is mounted upon four wheels, with a body capacious enough to contain all the machinery and carry the bags and man to fill and tie them up. The inventor says that two horses are sufficient propelling power, and these are hitched to a shaft behind, so as to push the machine into the standing grain. One advantage of this mode is, that it leaves the straw upon the land, and the heads require less labor to thresh. An invention for composing type has long been a "desideratum," and quite a "forlorn hope;" such are the complicated difficulties of the design. We notice, however, the announcement of a successful attempt at it. A letter from Copenhagen says: "By the politeness of the editors, I have now been able to see the new composing machine as in actual operation in the office of Frædrelandet. Instead of the usual cases and composing sticks, and the compositor standing at his work, we see a person sitting before a machine with keys like a piano, which he plays on incessantly, and every touch on the tangent is followed by a click; the letter is already in its place in the long mahogany channel prepared for it. The whole is excessively ingenious. In fact it is fairy work. The most wonderful part is, that it distributes the already used type at the same time that it sets the new page, and with an exactness perfectly sure. No mistake can ever occur. The compositor by this machine does four times as much work as another workman; but as he requires an assistant to line and page the set type, this brings it to twice the amount of type set. The whole is so clean and pleasant, that it will probably soon be a favorite employment for women. The machine occupies a very small space, not more than a large chair, and is beautifully made of hard woods, brass, and steel. Its success now is beyond all doubt. The proprietors of Frædrelandet are so gratified by the one they now have, that they have ordered another. The price is 2,400 Danish dollars. It will last apparently for a century or two without repair. Mr. SORENSON, the inventor, himself a compositor all his life, kindly shows the machine to any visitor. Of course, a compositor cannot set with his machine at once; it will take a short time, a few days, for him to become familiar with the details; but he is then a gentleman, compared to his old comrades." If this Mr. Sorenson were named "Jonathan" Sorenson, with his whereabouts somewhere. among the "Down-Easters," we should have more confidence in the report, and more hope of introducing it into the office of the National. As it is, we wait for confirmation, doubting meanwhile whether anybody but " brother Jonathan” can ever come it over" the difficulties of the case; and he, we fear, will have to try his wits a long while over them. Every poor wight who has had to travel, as we have, by cars, over thousands of miles during Apropos of Railroads.-The English papers state that a statue has been erected, in the great hall at Euston-square terminus, London, to George Stevenson. The London Times says: "In early life a collier, working for his dayly bread in the bowels of the earth, he mended watches in his leisure hours that his son might have the blessings of education. While his fame as a mechanical and civil engineer was still in its infancy, he elaborated experimentally the same result as to the safety-lamp which Sir Humphrey Davy reached by the process of philosophic induction. The tramways of the coal mines and the rude forms of the first locomotive engines grew under the strokes of his vigorous intellect into a mighty system, which has already exercised an incalculable influence upon industry and civilization. That one who, when a boy, was a hurrier' in a coal-pit, should, by the force of native genius, rise to a position such as the statue in the hall of Euston Station commemorates, may well be regarded as a proof that the days of romance are not yet over, nor the giants of an elder world without their types in modern times. Perhaps it is also to be viewed as a characteristic of the age, that the fame of such a man is so quietly left to the good keeping of the good works which he has achieved. The traveler hastening on his way should pause in Euston Station, to contemplate the masculine form, and massive, energetic features, of him who, by combining the blast-pipe with the tubular boiler, first endowed the locomotive with its tremendous speed-who, during his busy manhood, superintended the construction of more than two thousand five hundred miles of railway-who thought out everything connected with our first iron highways-and who engineered lines extend ing in unbroken series from London to Edinburgh.” ernment to the consequences likely to arise to their trade from the present war with Russia. It appears that the supply of raw materials for the manufacture of paper has of late years barely met the enormously increasing demand, in spite of many new substances worked up; and it is now feared that the short supply and dearness of all fibres and textile fabrics will prove very detrimental to the paper trade and the literary world. In consequence of these representations, circulars have been issued by the authorities to the governors of colonies, calling their attention to the necessity of finding some substitutes, within the colonial territories, for the materials at present used in paper-making. the hot months, will agree with us that a right mode of ventilating these otherwise very comfortable carriages, would be one of the "greatest Some leading paper-manufacturers have reinventions of the age." We shall be as thank-cently called the attention of the British govful to the genius who shuts the dust out of them, as Sancho Panza was to the unknown "men who first invented sleep." An invention for the purpose, by Messrs. Toole and Allen, of Buffalo, has been announced, and is thus described:-On the top of the car, at the center, are placed sheet-iron bonnets, (one on each side,) so arranged as to receive the air when the cars are running in either direction, deflecting it downward through air chambers (placed within and on each side of the car) into a box or tank suspended beneath the floor; from which it is conducted by air tubes opening up into the car through grates in several places along the aisle, thence out again through openings in the top. The tank is of sufficient depth to hold a barrel or more of water-allowing a free passage of air above it. In connection with this water, are pipes leading to a small rotary pump attached to the truck frame, (which is driven by a belt passing round the axle of the car wheel,) then back again to the tank and air chambers, where by a simple arrangement of diffusers the water in its passage is scattered into a fine spray, falling into the tank to be used over again. When the cars are in motion the air rushes in with great force, passing through the spray of water, which washes down all dust, smoke, cinders, and other impurities, coming up into the car as pure as a summer's atmosphere after a shower, and very much cooled. The water is changed dayly when the roads are dusty. The amount of air received is easily regulated by a valve in each air-chamber. During winter, instead of water, a stove is placed in the tank below the floor, which heats the air in its passage, thereby ventilating and warming all parts of the car alike, and that too without the loss of any seats, which in other cars are removed to make room for a stove. Scales and steelyards have been discovered in Pompeii, which could only have been meant to weigh provisions; but the chains and bars of which are delicately wrought. The weight even is found made to represent a warrior, with a helmet most beautifully chiseled; and so genuine and true, so really intended for every-day use are these commercial implements, that one of them has stamped upon it its verification made at the Capitol, declaring it to be just. The lamps also, and the candelabra by which they were supported, are most elegant-not made upon a pattern, a fashion of the season, but exhibiting true artistic beauty. This feeling is carried so far, that even surgical instruments found in those ruins, which could only have been meant for practical purposes, display equal attention to ornament, and delicacy of finish. There is no end of other vessels, which must have served for domestic purposes, such as braziers, for instance, of which the handles, rims, and other parts, are finished beyond what the finest bronzes now made in Paris usually equal. a mighty effect it must have on the character of the nation!" It is even and truly so. This book, more than anything else, has made us what we are, and lighted up elsewhere the few bright spots which appear on our earth's otherwise benighted and dreary outlines. There is no solid hope for our race here or hereafter, from any volume, policy, or effort of man, except in close alliance with this sacred volume. A population equal to that which is required for the admission of ten new states into the Union is added to the American people every year; and to keep this vast multitude supplied with the Scriptures is a work of infinite interest, and one which the American Bible Society endeavours to accomplish. Through these devout efforts we hope the time is not far distant when every man in our land may read for himself the revelations of God. On the 11th of May, 1816, the American Bible Society was organized, and it is a most interesting fact in our national history that the very first Congress of the United States performed the duties of a Bible Society long before such an institution had an existence in the world. One year after the Declaration of American Independence, 1777, Congress appointed a committee on the subject of printing an edition of thirty thousand Bibles for the use of the people-our entire population then amounting to only three millions. Finding it difficult to procure the necessary material, paper, type, &c., this committee recommended the importation of twenty thousand Bibles; to copy their own language, "the use of the Bible being so universal, and its importance so great." Congress was advised "to direct the Committee on Commerce to import, at its expense, twenty thousand English Bibles from Holland, Scotland, or elsewhere, into the different ports of the states of the Union." This report was adopted, and the importation ordered. In 1781, when an English Bible could not be imported, in consequence of the war with Great Britain, the subject of printing the Bible again was considered by Congress. Robert Aitken, of Philadelphia, had published an edition, and that body passed the following resolution : "That the United States, in Congress assembled, highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the interests of religion; and being satisfied of the care and accuracy of the execution of the work, recommend this edition to the inhabitants of the United States." These are notable pages in our national records-fair as unshaded light, and bright as the morning sun. Who dare deny that this is a Bible nation, or affirm that the precious volume should be excluded from the schools of our land? The proposition of forming a national Bible Society had been often discussed, until 1815, when a plan for such an institution originated with the New-Jersey Bible Society, of which Mr. Boudinot was president. He published a notice for a general meeting, to be convened at NewYork, in May, 1816. This convention presented a sublime spectacle, as almost every Christian denomination in the land was represented. Great, indeed, was their object, and great and worthy were the men who composed it. It was the first time in our country when the different religious denominations were brought together for concerted action. They assembled upon the broad platform of the Bible— "Where names, and sects, and parties fall." This convention appointed a committee to prepare a constitution, consisting of Messrs. Nott, Mason, Morse, Blythe, Beecher, Bayard, Wilmer, Wright, Rice, Jones and Jay. On the 11th of May they presented the constitution, which was unanimously adopted, and thirty-six managers were elected, with the Hon. Elias Boudinot for president. An eloquent and powerful address to the people of the United States, written by the celebrated Dr. Mason, was adopted and published. Of all the officers first appointed, nineteen in number-the president, fourteen vice presidents, three secretaries and a treasurer-not one survives. The same, I believe, may be said of the earliest managers. "They rest from their labors," and, emphatically," their works do follow them." In accepting the office of president, Mr. Boudinot wrote: "I am not ashamed to confess that I accept of the appointment of President of the American Bible Society, as the greatest honor that could have been conferred on me this side of the grave." When the American Bible Society was organized there was not a dollar in its treasury. Soon, however, funds began to accumulate, and, among others, a donation of £500 (nearly $2,500) was received from the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the munificent sum of $10,000 from Mr. Boudinot. John E. Caldwell, Esq., was the first agent, and kept the depository for a short time at his office, in an upper room, at the corner of Cedar and Nassau streets. The books were next removed to the building of Mr. Fanshaw, in Cliff-street, who executed the Society's printing. This depository was a room only nine feet by twelve. From this place the Scriptures were issued, until a four-story building was hired in Sloat-lane, now Hanover-street, adjoining the Merchants' Exchange. On the first floor, the agent ocupied the front room for his office, and the depository was the rear one, only twenty feet square. He expressed his belief that he should see that room entirely filled with Bibles! The second story was used by the binder; and the third appropriated to the printer. Here the Society began its earliest operations, and its success was no longer doubtful, as will be seen by the following tabular view : In addition to these there were issued about fifty-eight thousand copies in Gaelic, Welch, German, Spanish, and several Indian languages. These results Mr. Boudinot was permitted to behold during the few years he was President of the American Bible Society. That a life so nearly exhausted, when he was elected to that honorable post, should have been lengthened out to witness its fifth anniversary, was a remarkable circumstance, and grateful to the friends of the institution. Thus blessed, they had no tears to shed at his removal but tears of joy. His useful life was prolonged beyond the ordinary limit, and he lived to see the rapid growth of this cherished object of his affections. He displayed an unremitting interest in the Society, retaining it even while suffering under the infirm ities of very advanced age, and acute bodily pain. It required great exertion to attend the anniversaries; but he was always faithful at his post on these occasions. He was born in Philadelphia, in the year 1740. His grandfather was one of the persecuted Huguenots who were compelled to leave France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantz. Mr. Boudinot received a classical education-such at least as was so called during our colonial period-after which he studied law under Richard Stockton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He soon became distinguished at the bar of NewJersey. When the war of the American Revolution commenced, he advocated the cause of his struggling country, taking a decided part in favor of the colonies. In 1777 Congress appointed him Commissioner-General of prisoners, and the same year his fellow-citizens elected him a member of that body. In November, 1782, he was chosen President of Congress, and in that capacity, soon after, signed the Treaty of Peace, which secured American Independence. Mr. Boudinot resumed the practice of law, and, upon the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1789, was again honored with a seat in Congress, and occupied the important post for six successive years. General Washington appointed him Director of the Mint in 1796, and he continued to discharge its duties until 1805, when he retired from all public life, settling in Burlington, New-Jersey. In 1794 the United States Mint began its regular operations at Philadelphia. Mr. Boudinot's portrait, among others, adorns the walls of the Cabinet of the Mint. In this splendid collection there are about five thousand specimen coins, ancient and modern, and nearly four thousand of them belong to United States money. After his retirement from the Mint, Mr. Boudinot devoted his leisure to the study of Biblical literature-a department of inquiry which had always been one of his favorite pursuits and to the exercise of a munificent public and private charity. He was a trustee of Princeton College, and founded its cabinet of natural history in 1805, at a cost of $3,000. In 1812 he was elected a member of the Board of |