During his confinement in the Tower of London, Sir Walter Raleigh devoted a considerable portion of his time to chemical and pharmaceutical investigations; and interesting it is to see how his unsubdued spirit enabled him to make the most of his misfortunes, to surmount difficulties, and to turn ordinary things to extraordinary purposes,--greatly, no doubt, to the amazement of those about him, who marvelled much to behold the splendid courtier, and the captain of a happier day, earnestly employing himself with chemical stills and crucibles in a vacant hen-house! "He has converted," says Sir W. Wade, the lieutenant of the Tower, in a letter to Cecil, "a little hen-house in the garden into a still-house, and here he doth spend his time all day in distillations." ------------------ MR. BABBAGE'S CALCULATING MACHINE. A calculating machine is a fair subject for a joke. In May, 1839, when an additional grant was applied for in the House of Commons, in order to complete Mr. Babbage's machine, Mr. Wakley inquired whether it was likely to be of any use to the public? Upon this, Sir Robert Peel felicitously replied, that "the machine should be put to calculate the time at which it would be of any use." The calculating machine has certainly not yet been put to any more practical purpose. ------------------ HERSCHEL'S LOVE OF MUSIC. Sir William Herschel was a good musician, yet such was his ardour for astronomical discovery, that at some benefit concert which he gave, he had his telescope fixed in a window, and made his observations between the acts. ------------------ POWER OF THE LEVER. Archimedes said, "Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, and with my own weight I will move the world." "But," says Dr. Arnott, "he would have required to move with the velocity of a cannon-ball for millions of years, to alter the position of the earth a small part of an inch. This feat of Archimedes is, in mathematical truth, performed by every man who leaps from the ground; for he kicks the world away from him whenever he rises, and attracts it again when he falls." ------------------ AN ELECTRIFYING MACHINE IN PERSIA. When Sir James Malcolm was in Persia, on his first expedition, an electrifying machine which he took with him was one of the chief means of astonishing his Persian friends; and with its effects he surprised and alarmed all, from majesty itself to the lowest peasant.