During two years, repeated fhocks continued to agitate the affrighted minds of the inhabitants of Calabria and Sicily, but the principal mifchiefs arofe in the months of February and March in the first year. For feveral months the earth continued in an uncealing tremor, which at certain intervals increased to violent fhocks, fome of which were beyond defcription dreadful. The fhocks were foinetimes horizontal, whirling like a vortex; and fometimes by pulfations or beating from the bottom upwards, and were ac times fo violent that the heads of the largest trees almost touched the ground on either fide. The rains, during a great part of the time, were continual and violent, often accompanied with lightning, and furious gufts of wind. All that part of Calabria, which lay between the 38th and 39th deHoufes, churches, towns, cities, grees, affumed a new appearance. Mountains were and villages, were buried in one promifcuous ruin. detached from their foundations, and carried to a confiderable diftance. Rivers disappeared from their beds, and again returned and overflowed the adjacent country. Streams of water fuddenly gufhed out of the ground, and fprang to a considerable height, Large pieces of the furface of the plain, feveral acres in extent, were carried five hundred feet from their former fituation, down into the bed of the river, and left ftanding at nearly the distance of a mile, furrounded by large plantations of olives and mulberry trees, and corn growing as well upon them as upon the ground from which they were feparated. Amidit thefe fcenes of devaftation, the efcapes of fome of the unhappy fufferers is extremely wonderful. Some of the inhabitants of houfes which were thrown to a confiderable distance, were dug out from their ruins unhurt. But thefe inftances were few; and thofe who were fo fortunate as to preferve their lives in fuch fituations, were content to purchase existence at the expence of broken limbs and the most dreadful contufions. "During this calamitous fcene, it is impoffible to conceive the horrors and wretchedness of the unhappy inhabitants. The jaws of death were opened to fwallow them up; ruin had feized all their poffeffions, and thofe dear connections to which they might have looked for confolation in their forrows, were for ever buried in the merciles abyfs. All was ruin and defolation. Every countenance indicated the extremity of affliction and despair; and the whole country formed a wide feene of undefcribable horror. "One of the most remarkable towns which was deftroyed was Cafal Nuova, where the Princefs Gerace Grimaldi, with more than four thousand of her fubjects, perifhed in the fame inftant. An inhabitant happening to be on the fummit of a neighbouring hill at the moment of the mock, and looking earneftly back at the refidence of his family, could fee no other remains of it than a white cloud which proceeded from the ruins of the houses. At Bagnara about three thoufand perfons were killed, and not fewer at Radicina and Palma. At Terra Nuovo four thousand four hundred perithed, and rather The inhabitants of Scilla efcaped from their more at Semniari. houfes on the celebrated rock of that name, and, with their prince, defcended to little harbour at the foot of the hill; but, in the courfe of the night, a ftupendous wave, which is faid to have been driven three three miles over land, on its return fwept away the unfortunate prince with two thoufand, four hundred, and feventy-three of his fubjects It is computed that not less than forty thousand perfons perifhed by this earthquake." Vol. ii. p. 421. Book VII. Of Water.-This is firft confidered in its compound flate, or, according to the late difcoveries, as a combination of oxygen and hydrogen, in the proportion of feventeen to three, and then in its three ftates, of a fluid, vapour, and ice. This leads to the doctrine of hydroftatics and bydraulics, and obfervations on the ocean, rain, rivers, fprings, and mineral waters. Among the machines, we find here a full account of the fteam-engine, as well on the old construction, as according to Mr. Watt's late improvements. Book VIII. Of Vegetables.-Their ftructure, fluids, functions, component parts, preparations from them, and, lastly, on fermentation. Book IX. Of Animals.-Except a fhort introduction on the chemical components of animal fubftances, this very copious book may be confidered chiefly as a treatife of the ana tomy and phyfiology of the human body. It closes with chapters on the geftation, birth, growth, and decline of man, Book X. Of the buman Mind.-That as little as poflible might be wanting to complete this course of elementary know. ledge, the author, in this laft book, concludes his work with a fketch of the human mind. The fubject is here confidered under three heads: 1. The inftruments and modes of action of the human mind: of perception, fenfation, and hence ideas of allociation; an important chapter, this operation being confidered as one of the bafes of knowledge, and indeed of moral agency: of the three operative faculties of the mind, memory, imagination, and judgment: and, laftly, of words where much feems to have been derived from the acute reafonings of the author of the Epea Pteroenta. 2. Of the fprings or incentives that produce action in the mind, and influence its movements. These incentives, the author endeavours to prove, are ultimately the fenfes of pleasure and pain love and hatred, he fays, are the ideas of pleasure or pain, combined with fome other idea: defire and averfion, are active love and hatred: other motives, reducible from the fame principles, are derived from beauty, cuftom, and the various paffions of the latter, of which he gives a concife but diftin&t enumeration. 3. An application of the above principles, to the investigation of fome curious fubjects, and the theory of morals. The titles of the feven chapters in this part are; of reafoning, the fine arts, morals, genius, tafte, opinion, and, laftly, of the free agency agency of man, where the work clofes, with a pathetic exhortation against vanity and prefumption in our reafonings on the nature and motives of the Supreme Being. This part the author acknowledges to be imperfect, and rather given as a confirmation of the principles above laid down, than as a complete system. Hartley and Locke, it may be imagined, have fupplied much of the materials here brought forward; and the latter is occafionally vindicated, efpecially as to the charge of fatalifm, with which he has been gratuitoufly taxed. The oppofition of the two prevalent doctrines of fatalifm and materialism, forms a very useful part of this book. The reader will obferve, that the fublime fciences of aftronomy and mechanics, are no part of this work. As to the former, the author declares that he omitted it, because he thought it right to confine his view of nature to our own world; and becaufe while Derham's, Ferguson's, and Bonnycaftle's writings on the fubject are extant, there can be no want of a good and popular treatife. As to mechanics, he confiders the conftruction of machines rather as the work of art than of nature, and refers us, for this branch of science, to Nicholfon's Introduction to Natural Philofophy. We have now to declare, that the work has appeared to us written with much perfpicuity and precifion. The occasional obfervations and inferences are juft and appofite. Much practical knowledge is introduced: and no predilection for fyftems or hypothefes, has mifled the author in his long and toilfome career. Repetitions, we acknowledge, often occur; but for these he apologizes, by obferving, that he has practically noticed the neceffity of frequently recalling the attention of beginners, to principles already proved and established, in order to enable them to understand what they are to be taught. We have, lastly, to lament much inaccuracy in the references to the plates, which, as the omiffions are, we believe, almoft entirely in the latter, we cannot but afcribe to the negligence of the engraver. We notice this the rather, as it will be eafy to remedy this imperfection, even in the prefent edition. ART. XVII. Two Letters addreffed to a Member of the preSent Parliament, on the Proposals for a Peace with the Regicide Directory of France. By the Right Hon. Edmund Burke. 8vo. 188 pp. 35. 6d. Rivingtons. 1796. ACCUSTOMED as we are, in common with most other reading men of this country, to contemplate with admi◄ ration the powers and resources of Mr. Burke's extraordinary 3 mind, mind, we have found ourselves more impreffed than ufual with the letters now before us; more than by any publication which has come from his pen fince the celebrated book of 1790, on the French Revolution. We have feen even more regular and finished excellence in this than in that compofition. The fplendors of that tract were fudden and aftonishing; they flashed like lightning upon the reader, and left him afterwards, for a time, in a state of comparative darknefs; but here all is luminous, and the fire of the irradiating mind fhines fteadily from the beginning to the end. The energy and beauty of the language, the force and livelinefs of the images, the clearness and propriety of the hiftorical allufions and illuftrations, all combine to give an effect to these letters, not eafily rivalled by the pen of any other writer. Age has certainly not impaired the genius of Mr. Burke; he afferts himfelf to be on the verge of the grave: "whatever I write," fays he," is in its nature teftamentary;" yet he writes with the vigour of a man who had juft attained the maturity of his talents. These letters are an able plea against peace. But we do not find the arguments of the writer fo cogent, as his eloquence is feducing. The plea amounts to this: That the fyftem of Jacobin France is deteftable, therefore we ought never to make peace till the fyftem is deftroyed. This plea he has the fkill to exhibit in a variety of forms, and illuftrate in a thoufand ways; but the general refult is this, which is fufficiently open to controverfy. Two queftions feem at once to prefent themfelves in the very front of this difcuffion. Is the fyftem in fact unaltered? and, can we, by continuing the war, produce a further alteration, or the deftruction of it? Syftems may die a natural, as well as a violent death; and a gradual decay may announce their approaching diffolution. In this cafe, the author, who combats what did, inftead of what actually does exift, is fighting only the air. Or, the remedy he propofes may be inadequate, and then alfo his arguments fall to the ground. Molt ready are we to acknowledge that Facebinifm is the moft odious demon that has appeared to fcourge mankind, within the reach of human records. Every odious epithet, every artifice of language, direct or metapho rical, is weak, faint, and inadequate to the defcription of its crimes and tendencies. All this we feel as powerfully as Mr. Burke can feel; yet, on the main ground of his publication, we differ from him, because we do not fee the actual ftate of things as he conceives it. There was a time, he tells us, when not only the minifter of this country, but all Europe, feit the danger of a Jacobin exiftence in France." Their no tions have changed, but his continue the fame. "I am," he declares," in this year, 1796, only where all the powers of Europe were in 1793." But ought he to be ftill here? If the realities of things have changed, our opinions ought to make a fimilar progrefs, otherwife they will be left aground; and truth, which buoyed them up at firft, will be found to have paffed from under them, and gone over to another shore. The two questions then, which we have here ftated, we will examine a little further, before we proceed to the more pleafing task of noticing and commending particular paffages of the letters. It was early in the prefent year, that we reviewed a pamphlet of no common merit, entitled "Confiderations upon the State of public Affairs at the beginning of the Year 1796.” That author contended, and, we confefs, carried our conviction with him, that the worst and most pernicious characters of Jacobinifm had, of themselves, difappeared in France. Their laft conftitution, he obferves, has exploded the Jacobin doctrine of equality, and has explained it to mean no more than an equality in the eye of the law; an equality more fully enjoyed in England than in France, or any other country. The fame conftitution denies the Jacobin ideas of equality in property; and even abolishes the principle of annual legislatures. and of univerfal fuffrage. It is fevere against the doctrine and practice of clubs, public harangues, debates, correfpondences, and affiliations; and pofitively forbids all factious affemblages (attroupements) of the people, in direct contradiction to the facred right of infurrection. It has, in a word, established a government, the outlines of which are much more like our own than any thing we could have expected fo foon to see in that country; and, with the public confent and approbation, has formally abrogated and annulled the most odious and deftructive doctrines which belonged effentially to the fyftem of Jacobinifm. Thefe things being confidered, it feems to be no longer a queftion with us, who the perfons are of whom that government is compofed, or through what crimes, or what contradictions in principle, they may have waded to their prefent fituations in it; these are matters for a tribunal not of human conftruction; but are they fo fituated, that their neighbourhood, or their friendthip, is as dangerous as that of the French Republic in its Jacobin form? On this very confideration, which we think of the utmost confequence, and indeed the grand hinge of the whole difcuffion, turns the conclufion * In March: feo vol. vii. p. 281. of |