our minds. But, says our author, those intruders are easily distinguished from the genuine offspring. And to prevent inquisitive impertinents from prying into our very souls, we have nothing more to do than to put our hand, (either right or left.) on the occiput, while we are thinking. His Moralists tell us, and philosophers agree with them, that every good has its evil: even this in valuable discovery itself, appears by the confession of its parent to be attended by evils of moment and magnitude, for, notwithstanding all his precautions, our unfortunate author has suffered most severely from his own discovery. thoughts have been stolen from him, half formed, which has induced him to hurry the printing of them, in their present undigested state. Nor is this all his personal cogitations have been maliciously disturbed, by the unwarrantable introduction of other people's thoughts, into his brains; mobs at a distance and out of his sight have surrounded his study, compres sing their occiputs, and tearing their hair, in order to contuse his ideas; wounds have been inflicted on the hearts of dead animals, that he might feel the sympathetic anguish; nay, and shooting pains have been inflicted on his head, exactly in the places from whence sprout the horns in animals, for purposes the very reverse of benevolent! Practice has, at last, enabled him to guard, in some measure, against these persecutions, but the waggish authors of them are the objects of his most bitter execrations. And very deservedly, for most surely there would be no living in peace in this world, if every man who chooses may by pressing his fingers on the cartilaginous part of the first false ribs, put categorical questions and receive categorical answers, before we have time to defend our occiputs: a cunning fellow who has filled both the hands of his adversary, with loaves and fishes, for instance, may contrive effectually to pump the truth out of him before he lets go his hold. His discovery is, nevertheless, as we may well suppose, the most sublime and the most useful which ever blessed mankind. At the end of the first volume, in which it is fully detailed, he seriously proposes new legislative measures, which are to have no other basis. For instance, to bring to justice a debtor against whom the greditor has no proofs, and who denies his debt; to receive the last instructions of a dying man who has lost the use of his speech, &c. He proposes also to make use of this discovery for the administration of police, for the erection of a new kind of sympathetic telegraphs, and for the better obtaining the truth in auricular confession. We are afraid, however, that these laws would be absolutely superfluous for if we could suppose (a case indeed not properly supposeable) that a statesman should say one thing and mean another; or that a pious confessor, by mere inadvertence, should approximate nearer than sympathetic distance (30 to 300 feet) of his fair penitent, how easily might either exclaim against the ideas which had been infused into him, by some malignant but invisible dæmon, whether human or spiritual, before he had defended himself by clapping either hand on his occiput: and what are the true principles of justice in cases of such extraneous infusions, our author has not condescended to inform us. The second volume contains essays on electricity, in galvanism, and on the magnetic fluid. The expectations of our readers cannot have been much raised by the specimen we have given them of the author's sobriety of thought; not that he is quite so preposterous in his ideas on physics and chemistry, as on physiology: yet his new views on these subjects are mostly either wild combinations of received theories, or new colourings given to abandoned systems. Such is, for instance, the supposed existence of the principle of sulphur, which he represents as a modification of hydrogene, and as the universal principle of combustion, in fact the phlogiston of Macquer, Kirwan, &c. Such is his pretended explanation of the positive and negative electricity of Franklin, and others; instead of which, he adopts the appellation of resinous and vitreous, given by Grey, Boyle, &c. and more recently by Hauy. He then discovers that resinous substances are rendered by friction capa. ble of absorbing a greater quantity of elec trical fluid; that they do not produce negative electricity, but a privation of positive electricity, in bodies brought into contact with them; or within their atmos phere. The want of method and of perspicuity so remarkable in this compilation, would not have deterred us from attempts ing to follow our author, could we have rationally expected to gather some useful information by our labour. But whatever appears new in his assertions is wholly unsupported by experiment. Nothing, perhaps has more contributed to retard the progress of real science than such unchecked ebulitions of fancy; and so convinced are we of this, that we prefer to the most brilliant but unsupported system of the most ingenious man, the simple, but well ascertained experiment of the humblest chymist. But we must not part with M. Roucher in so formal a manner; not, at least, without thanking him for his kindness. He has been unwilling that any of the good things he has ever said should escape us. And he has accordingly prefixed at the beginning of his work a most ranting speech, publicly delivered on the glorious 18th of Brumaire. His amenity has also led him besides to intersperse delightful extracts from one of his brother's poems, for though, says he, in one place, Racine has written on the same subject, yet it is very natural that I should quote my own brother. This reminds us of an anecdote of the French poet, Piron, whose conduct, like his muse, was under no remarkable restraint. He was once brought, for some midnight exploit, before the divisional commissary of police, who, with the stern face of office asked him the usual questions, his name, his profession, &c. which he no sooner knew, than assuming a most benignant countenance, Come," says he, "we are all friends here; I have a brother who is a poet also." "That may very well be," answered the cynic Piron, for I have also a brother, who is a most confounded blockhead." M. Roucher's brother was one of the party present at M. de Cazotte's prophecy. See pages 67 and 533-but more of him hereafter. Voyage en Italie et en Sicile, &c. Travels in Italy and Sicily in 1801-1802, by M. Creuzé de Lesser, Paris, Didot, 8vo. 1806. Price 8s. pp 372. Dulau and Co. A hasty journey over a beaten track, written after a lapse of time, with the avowed intention of contradicting all former travellers. Indeed, we should have dismissed this work without ceremony, but that it furnishes us with an occasion of cautioning our readers against the systematical deceptions of modern French writers. We have been long accustomed to con sider French vanity as a harmless national infirmity, for which every allowance was to be made; but our author thinks the chief defect in the character of his countrymen is too muck modesty! We however, can no longer smile at extravagant pretensions, which inforced by arms and upheld by fraud, threaten the liberties of all other nations, as a devoted race of inferior beings. This, incredible as it may seem, is at present the constant theme of French writers; and not a publication appears, in which the idea is not directly or indirectly conveyed. It has even been roundly asserted, that whenever the French invade a country, they are only re-entering into possession of their own legitimate property. M. Greuzé de Lesser, as a courtier, wrote for no other purpose, but to contribute his share of support to this arrogant system; for which he is probably ere now rewarded. He contemptuously looks down on the unfortunate Italians, as a race hardly worthy of being his master's slaves. The country itself is not more favourably treated and delightful Italy, is pronounced to be scarcely habitable for a Frenchman. Even Sicily which our traveller hardly saw, loses with him her ancient reputation, and her fruitful plains are compared to the dreary wastes (landes) of Britanny! It was natural to expect that in a French work of this description, Britain should come in for a more than ordinary share of abuse, however irrelevant to the subject, and many pages of this volume are, accordingly, devoted to that favourite topic. Even our fair country-women could not escape the illiberal malevolence of the writer, but share the fate of the Venus of Titian, the Aurora of Guido, and the Goddesses of the Carrachi. We give the following passage as a specimen of modern French gallantry. "I have never seen women, who could less pretend to beauty than the Italian'; except the five hundred English ladies, who came to Paris, after the peace of Amiens, with such a remarkable confidence, to make us admire their faces, and what is still worse their fashions. This is a new chapter to add to the deceptions of travellers, who for a century past, have agreed with novel-writers in representing the English women as the fairest of the creation, and the men as the wisest. God knows, how we have succeeded in almost SA every thing we have borrowed from them! As to the women, who have fondly believed all that has been said in their praise, it would be too hard, perhaps, to undeceive them entirely. But I must own, that since I have, with my own eyes, seen so many of them, of every class; I dare not read a single English novel. I tremble lest the adorable Clarissa or the angelical Amanda should have a chalk complexion, bad teeth, a bending shape, a strong knit frame and a most enormous foot. This picture is quite different from that usually drawn of English women, but it is not the less true, generally speaking. I take all Paris to witness as to this, and we had much ado, with all the French politeness, to prevent our betraying the sensations produced by those foreigners. I will not speak of their dress, which like their carriage, is the reverse of any thing graceful, and the little the French women have condescended to borrow from them, they have been obliged to alter, correct, and, in a manner create anew." Our ingenious and discerning gentleman takes care on the other hand, to inform us of the qualities a woman must possess, to obtain his approbation. We will not quarrel with him on the indispensable qualification of her being a French woman, and a Parisian. But we sincerely congratulate our fair country women on their being strangers to the meretricious graces with which he has decked the idol of his fancy. Censures coming from a man whose taste and heart appear thus equally vitiated, are praises indeed! Who would take the opinion of libidinous satyrs, on the modest charms of "fair Dian's train?" But to return to M. de Lesser. It may be easily supposed, that, by way of compensation, the French receive from him a tribute of praise, fully equal to the load of abuse he has laid on other nations. To do him justice, he is, on this head, uncommonly diligent in availing himself of every opportunity. Flattery springs up at every step he takes, and no French agent in Italy but is a model of all virtues, and a bright example to the debased inhabitants: Tous les gens querelleurs, jusqu'aux simples mâtons, Au dire de chacun, étoient des petits saints. Among other instances, a wonderful escape from shipwreck, in the long and perilous navigation from Naples to Sicily, gives him an occasion too fair to be un improved of expatiating in praise of two French sea officers, whose skill and intre. pidity effected his preservation. This na turally introduces an account of their prowess on that element, against English tars; but our readers will think with us, that when a Frenchman is so lost to truth and justice, as to give the palm of skill and intrepidity in marine affairs to his own nation, it is high time to avail ourselves of a liberty of which France has not been able, hitherto, to deprive us, that of closing the work and dismissing it with scorn. One reflection, however, we may be permitted to address to our ladies. This Frenchman speaks the sentiments of many of his nation, who, while in company with English women, affect to admire English beauty; but we know, that after they are out of sight and hearing, they ridicule those very persons and perfections which they had professed to admire. There is, moreover, a bitterness in their ridicule, proportionate to the satisfaction they had pretended, and fully coextensive with those compliments, which in expressions of affected ecstacy they had lavished on the subjects of their praise and peculation. We deny not that France has produced men of honour; we have known many but they were never equally vo luble with those whose interested motives animated their loquacity: they dealt less in flattery, but more in truth: and if their promises were less copious, their performance was more certain. in India, more than four thousand years ago. According to him, India has been likewise the parent of the venereal disorder, which he says, was brought into Europe by the Bohemians in the fifteenth century. The proofs of these two assertions would lead us too far, and we refer the curious to the work itself, in which they will also find conjectures on the Asiatic origin of American nations. There appears to be a contradiction in our author's mode of calculation; for if the sea still rises, the coast of Malabar instead of emerging, must be immersed deeper and deeper. This article is translated from a foreign journal; and we suspect a mistake in the critic who drew up the report; or of the press. New Globes, Celestial and Terrestrial, made by J. Carey, Strand, London. Prices of 9 inches, from £2. 16s. to 4. 4s. 12 inches from £3. 13s. 6d to £5. 10s. 21 inches from £9.9s to 16. 16s according to their fittings up. We have been induced, not less by our inclination than by our duty, to inspect the Globes of a new appearance, lately published by Mr. Carey. Their general effect is very neat and elegant: but we think the terrestrial globe rather too highly tinted, especially the water. Possibly Mr. Lowrie's new manner of colouring the water in maps, by lines drawn with uncommon truth and beauty, may have given somewhat of a tone to our geographers: but, we must confess, that however exquisite may be his execution, the employment of it in this instance, does not increase our satisfaction. It produces a too powerful opposition between the land and water, and too strongly distinguishes what already with proper management, was sufficiently distinct. Mr. Carey's celestial globe, is composed on the same principle as the Astrarium, review ed in p. 76. The stars are extremely distinct, and being relieved from their cumbersome companions are more intelligible to the eye but our objection still recurs, that the History of the Heavens is omitted by the non-insertion of the constellation figures. The regions they occupy are, indeed, marked by slight division lines; yet we think occult delineations of the objects themselves might have been introduced, without any disadvantage The places of the stars appear to us to be lau'dably correct. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Isaac Watts, D. D. with extracts from his correspondence, 8vo. pp. 177. price 2s. 6d. Williams and Co. London, 1806. THERE is no great difficulty, we believe, in extracting from the works of such a man as Dr. Watts; not a line of whose productions ever had the slightest tendency to do harm. Few men," says Dr. Johnson," have left behind them such purity of character, or such monuments of laborious piety."...." He is at least one of those few poets with whom (even) youth and ignorance may be safely pleas ed; and happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed by his verses, or his prose, to copy his benevolence to men, and his reverence to God." After this opinion of our eminent critic, we cannot but commend the pamphlet before us: yet we should at all times prefer a complete work of the Dr.'s to excerpts. In fact, we have never seen a selection which satisfied us; since there evidently appears something incongruous in mingling verses intended for the lips of a child, with Pindarics descriptive of the loftiest themes; each alone is commendable, but both are injured by association. In this pamphlet, the life is given more at large than usual; and it may be read with advantage, though we do not perceive much that is new in it, We learn without surprize, that the Dr. wished to have corrected some things in his hymns; we wish he had done so; but, if this be our judgment on good Dr. Watts's performances, whose devotion was guided by learning, what must be our opinion of those imitations, which since his day have deluged certain religious interests? productions, possessing neither the Dr's learning, good sense, sobriety of thought, candour of manner, poetical talents, (nor even tolerable rhimes, the lowest branch of poetry,) to recommend them! These observations are not intended for the present pamphlet, which contains, besides the life, only letters to or from this illustrious divine. Among them we find one to the Dr. from Gibson, Bishop of London; and one from the Dr. to the Bishop; another from the Archbishop of York, &c. The portrait prefixed is a pretty performance, and we believe, is authentic: but why, if so, was not the place where it is preserved mentioned, together with the name of the painter Les quatre Fondateurs des Dynasties Françaises. The four founders of the French Dynasties: by Dubroca. 1 vol. Svo. 8 fr. common paper, 13 fr. 50 c. fine paper. Dubroca and Fantin. The aim of this author is to draw a kind of parallel between the different changes which have taken place in the French monarchy, and to prove that they have always arisen from the principle of gratitude, as displayed towards those who have rendered great service to the state. It comprises a history of the establishment of the French monarchy by Clovis: the accession of the royal dynasties of Pepin and Hugo Capet; and the founding of the French empire by Napoleon. Portraits of these personages, with an engraved allegorical frontispiece, illustrate and embellish the work. Bibliothèque Historique. The Historical library by J. F. Née de la Rochelle; a work adopted in the libraries of the Lyceums. 1 vol. 8vo. Bidault, 6fr. A selection of the most approved works on history, geography, chronology, politics, and the law of nations, composed in French or translated into that language: it is accompanied by several opinions. relative to the principal historians, greek, latin, and modern, extracted from the writings of Lamotte le Vayer, d'Argenson, Henault and Mably. Mémoire sur le Lin de Sibérie. An essay on Siberian flax, by J. B. Buc'hoz. 8vo. Mad. Buc'hoz. 2fr. 90c. Siberian flax is stated by M. Buc'hoz to be far superior to that in ordinary use. This work contains also remarks on hemp, and on the best method of improving it in its progress through the hands of the workman on other vegetable productions employed in manufactures, on such as afford tannin; on marine productions from which soda may be extracted; on the cultivation of these plants, and their employment in various modes. : Atlas der alten Welt; Atlas of the ancient World, in 12 maps, drawn by U. Vieth, and explained by tables by P. Funk, 2d edition revised and augmented. Weimar 1rxd. 12gr. The 12 maps of this work are: 1. The globe, according to the ideas. of Homer, Dionysius, and Eratosthenes. -2. India and Persia, with that part of Upper Asia, known to the ancients. 3. Asia Minor, with Syria and the Black Sea.-4. Palestine.-5. Arabia and Egypt. -6. Africa as known to the ancients.7. Greece.-8. Italy.-9. Ancient Rome, in the time of Aurelian.-10. Spain and Gaul.-11. The British islands.-12. Germany, Rhetia, Pannonia, Dacia, and Mœsia. Repositorium für die Geschichte, c. Historical, Statistical and Political Archives, by F. Lueder, No. 1 of Vol. 2. Svo. pp. 150. Berlin, Frohlich. 12gr. THE two following interesting memoirs compose this number. 1. The finances of the republic of the Netherlands, and of the province of Holland in particular, an extract from an unpublished report of the committee of finances, made 14th December, 1797. According to this report the consolidated debt of the province of Holland, amounted, Jan. 1, 1795, to 422,345,955 florins: the ordinary revenues, during the years 1788-1794, to 15,778,952 florins annually; the extraordinary revenues to 9,459,800 florins; the expenses to 32,614,292 florins, leaving a deficit of more than 8,000,000 florins. The second memoir contains a survey of the progress of knowledge in Germany. Tafel der Culturgewaechse in Europa. A table of the vegetables cultivated in Europe, arranged according to the geographical order of the climates, by C. RitOne sheet, folio, and a map. Schnessfenthal, Library of the Institute. 8gr. ter. This table commences with some observations on the luxuriance of vegetation as caused by the increased intensity of heat, founded on the greater or less abundance of plants produced in warm or cold countries. The author then proceeds to notice the gradation and difference of vegetation on mountains and in plains: the plantation or diffusion of plants by means of seed, carried by the winds by currents in the sea, and by other means. He arranges the vegetable kingdom into 2 Vegetables cultivated in gardens. 4 Plants employed in commerce. The degree of latitude necessary to the production of each is noticed, and the map annexed to the table, indicates the geographical and physical climates, with their principal productions. |