lating medium of some kind, adequate to the wants of the country. There cannot be the least doubt that such must be the wish and the interest of the Ministers, the Legislature, and every respectable man in the country. and that every thing possible will be done to obviate the present distress; therefore we may, I trust, look for ward to better prospects. The evil effects of a glutted corn market begin to cease; agricultural produce obtains a better price; the food necessary for the people will ensure a constant demand for the fruits of the land; and these rising to their due value, we shall have more money in circulation, our credit will be restored, and the country again return to a flourish ing state. EARLY DRAMATIC POETS. -The plays of Beaumont and Fletcher display more of the Shaksperian luxu riance of poetry than the works of any other writers of their time. These fine dramatists have the art of ennobling whatever they touch: the wildest fictions and the most improbable personages partake of the splendor of their intellects; and the scenes and characters of nature lose none of their truth and freshness in description. The actual is faithfully represented, and the ideal is rendered more light and lovely. Reflection becomes embodied in language, and the romantic beauties of the pastoral world are deliciously des cribed in their poetry. The following passage is from The Two Noble Kins," and is exquisite for delicate melancholy: men, lights, But dead cold winter must inhabit here still." The characters which Emilia draws of Arcite and Palamon are also well worth extracting "Arcite is gently visaged: yet his eye Are bedfellows in his visage. Palamon The quality of his thoughts; long time his Yet sometimes tis not so, but alters to Stick misbecomingly on others, on him In the same play we have the following lovely image : "Emil. Of all flowers, Methinks the rose is best." "Serv. Why, gentle madam? "Emil. It is the very emblem of a maid: For when the west wind courts her gently, How modestly she blows, and paints the sun With her chaste blushes! When the north comes near her, Rude and impatient, then, like chastity, BELLS. There is a very large bell at Notre Dame Church, in Paris, which was cast in King Louis the XIV.'s time, by Florentine Leguay, a Frenchman, in the year 1689; consecrated in the year 1685 to St. Emanuel, by Francis de Harlay, Archbishop of Paris; and weighs the number of 32,000 lbs. which is 14 tons 5 cwt. 2 qrs. and 24 lbs. net bell metal, and has been lately measured by Mr. George de Amboise, who makes it 13 feet high, and 11 feet in diameter, at the extremity of its skirt. The clapper weighs 976lbs. (that is, 8 cwt. 2 grs. and 241bs.), which is nearly the weight of the treble bell at St. Mary-le-Bow Church, in Cheapside, London. THE GIPSIES. been made to reduce the numbers, or Of late years, some attempts have at any rate to civilize the habits, of that vagabond and useless race, the Gipsies. In pursuance of such purpose, a society of gentlemen have been mak ing all the preliminary inquiries requisite to a proper understanding of the subject. A series of questions have been proposed to competent persons in the different counties in England and Tons. Cwt. Scotland; and answers have been received. Our readers will, we think, be amused with the following specimen of these questions and answers? The heaviest single bells in England are at the following cities and Towns ; viz. City of Oxford, Christ College, City of Exeter, Cathedral, The City of London, at St. Paul's, City of Lincoln, Minster, The City of Canterbury, Cathedral City of Gloucester, College Town of Beverley, MinsterClock 7 15 5 4 11 3 10 3 '2 10. "2. How many is it supposed there are in England? "3. What is your circuit in sum mer? 4. How many Gipsey families are 5 supposed to be in it? 5. What are the names of them? : "6. Have they any meetings with those of other circuits? 7. And for what purpose? 8. What number of Gipsies are there computed to be in the county ? 9. What proportion of their nume ber follow business, and what kind? "10. What do they bring their children up to? 11. What do the women employ themselves in ? "12. From how many generations can they trace their descent? 13. Have they kept to one part of the country, or removed to distant parts? "14. How long have they lived in this part? "15. Have they any speech of their own, different to that used by other people? 16. What do they call it? Can any one write it 17. Is there any writing to be seen any where ? 18. Have they any rules of conduct which are general to their community? 19. What religion do they mostly profess? manner? "21. How do they teach their children religion ? ‹ 22. Do any of them learn to read? ****23. Who teaches them? "24. Have they any houses to go to in winter? "25. What proportion of them, is it supposed, live out of doors in winter, as in summer?" Reports in answer to these questions have been received, and their contents are thus briefly stated: "1. All Gipsies suppose the first of them came from Egypt. "2. They cannot form any idea of the number in England. 3. The Gipsies of Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, parts of Buckingham shire, Cambridge, and Huntingdonshire, are continually making revolutions with in the range of those counties. "4. They are either ignorant of the number of Gipsies in the counties through which they travel, or unwilJing to disclose their knowledge. 5. The most common names are Smith, Cooper, Draper, Taylor, Bosswel, Lee, Lovell, Loversedge, Allen, Mausfield, Glover, Williams, Carew, Martin, Stanley, Buckley, Plunkett, and Corrie. 6 and 7. The gangs in different towns have not any regular connexion or organization; but those who take up their winter-quarters in the same city or town appear to have some know ledge of the different routes each horde will pursue; probably with a design to prevent interference. 8. In the county of Herts it is computed there may be sixty families, having many children, Whether they are quite so numerous in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Northamptonshire, the answers are not sufficiently definite to determine. In Cambridge shire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetsbire, greater numbers are calculated upon. In various counties, the attention has not been competent to the procuring data for any estimate of families or individuals. 9. More than half their number follow no business; others are dealers in horses and asses; farriers, smiths, tinkers, braziers, grinders of cutlery, basket-makers, chair-bottomers, and musicians. 10. Children are brought up in the habits of their parents, particularly to music and dancing, and are of dissolute conduct. "11. The women mostly carry baskets with trinkets and small wares; and tell fortunes. "12. Too ignorant to have acquired Europ. Mag. Vol. LXX. Sept. 1816. accounts of genealogy, and perhaps indisposed to it by the irregularity of their habits. 13. In most counties there are par ticular situations to which they are partial. In Berkshire is a marsh, near Newbury. much frequented by them; "andDr. Clarke states, that in Cambridgeshire their principal rendezvous is near the western villages. "14. It cannot be ascertained, whether, from their first coming into the nation, attachment to particular places has prevailed. 15, 16, and 17. When among strangers, they elude inquiries respecting their peculiar language, calling it gibberish. Don't know of any person that can write it, or of any written specimen of it. "18. Their habits and customs in alt places are peculiar. 19. Those who profess any religion represent it to be that of the country in which they reside: but their description of it seldom goes beyond repeating the Lord's Prayer; and only few of them are capable of that. Instances of their attending any place for worship The Algerines. it would seem, have been much undervalued as to their skill in guunery: the late action against them, our readers will be surprised to hear, was the bloodiest which has been fought of late years, in comparison to the numbers employed. In the action of the 1st of June, there were 26 sail of the line (including the Audacious) in action with about 17,000 men; of these 281 were killed, and 797 wounded. Total 1078. In Lord Bridport's action, 23d June, 1795, there were 14 sail, with about 10,000 men; of whom only 31 were killed, and 118 wounded. Total 144. li In the action off Cape St. Vincent's there were 15 sail of the line, with about 10,000 men; of whom there were killed 73, and wounded 227. Total 300. In Lord Duncan's action, 11th Oct. 1797, there were 16 sail of the line (including two 50's) engaged, with about 8,000 men, of whom 191 were killed, and 560 wounded. Total 751. In the battle of the Nile, 1st Aug. 1798, there were 14 sail of the line engaged, with about 8000 men; of whom 218 were killed, and 677 wounded. Total 895. In Lord Nelson's attack on Copenhagen, 2d April, 1801, there were 11 sail of the line and 5 frigates engaged, with about 7,000 men; of whom 234 were killed, and 641 wounded. Total $75. In the battle of Trafalgar, 21st Oct. 1805, there were 27 sail of the line engaged, with about 17,000 men ; of whom 412 were killed, and 1,112 wounded. Total 1,524. In the attack on Algiers there appears to have been five sail of the line and five frigates engaged, the crews of which may be computed at about 5000 men; of whom 128 were killed, and 690 wounded. Total 818.-If the Dutch frigates were added, they may be taken at about 1,500, of whom 13 were killed, and 32 wounded; so that the totals would be, of 6,500 men, 141 killed, and 122 wounded. Total 863. stance took place on the 5th Nov. 1814, and differs in no respect from the other well authenticated accounts of the same kind, and is chiefly interesting from the mode in which this Eastern philosopher accounts for the phenomenon. After enumerating the number of stones found, he observes, "the causes of this may be, that in the course of working (or of changes on) the ground, air being extricated, may have entered into combina tion, and come near elemental fire, and from this fire have received a portion of heat; that then it may have united with brimstone and terrant salt, as, for instance, saltpetre; when the mixture, from some cause, being ignited, the fire bestows its own property on the mass, and the stones which may have been above it are blown into the air." Nov. 20. Dr. Brewster read a paper on the optical properties of fluate of lime and of muriate of soda.* Also a paper by Dr. Murray was likewise read. Dec. 4. Mr. Playfair communicated an account of some experiments in which he had assisted, made at Woburn Abbey in August last, for determining the proportion between the load and draught of horses in waggons. The instrument used in these experiments for measuring the quantity of the draught, was a dynamometer, or, as it were perhaps better to call it, a Sthenometer, of a different construction from that of General Regnier, and the contrivance of Mr. Salmon, at Woburn, already known in the mechanical world for many ingenious inventions. One general result, from the experiments, was, that in a four-wheeled waggon of the ordinary construction, Malies, and other philosophers, who have examined this class of christals, announced that they did not possess the property of double refraction. In using large masses, however, of considerable thickness, Dr. B. found that muriate of soda, fluate of lime, alum, and the diamond, not only possessed this property, but possessed it in a manner different from all the other crys tals of the mineral kingdom, These crystals combine in the same specimen the structure of both the classes of doubly refracting crystals. In one part of their mass, they have the same structure as calcareous spar and the other minerals of the same class, while in another part of their phate of lime, and the other crystals of that mass they have the same structure as sul class. In some parts of these minerals, the property of double refraction is not at all exhibited, ́ón a good road, and on a horizontal plane, the draught is between a 25th and a 30th of the load. If the load, for example, be one ton, or 2240lb. the draught is between 75 and 89 lb. Several other general results were deduced.. A paper by Dr. Drewer, on the education of Mitchell, the blind and deaf lad, was next read. The melancholy situation of this unfortunate young man has long been a subject of much solicitude among the members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and the circumstances of his unfortunate case the public have already been put in possession, by the interesting Memoir by Prof. Dugald Stewart, which appeared in the last volume of their Transactions. An attempt has subsequently been made to obtain some small annuity from government, to be settled upon him and his sister, with the view of enabling them to remove from a remote quarter of Scotland to the neighbourhood of the capital, in order that he might not only be provided with the best medical assistance that could be procured, but also that so singular a case might be placed under the inspection of men of science. It is to be regretted their benevolent intentions were not attend ed with success. Dec. 18. Dr. Brewster read an account of a chromatic thermometer. This instrument is founded upon a new property of heat, in consequence of which a plate of glass is thrown into a transient state of crystallization during the propagation of heat through its mass. When the glass is in this state, it acts upon polarised light like regularly crystallized bodies; it produces various orders of colours in different parts of the glass plate. The number of fringes increases, or the tints rise in Newton's scale, as the temperature of the source of heat is increased; so that the difference between the temperature of the glass and that of the source of heat, is measured by the number of the fringes, or the nature of the tints which are developed. As every tint in the scale of colours has an accurate numerical value, differences of temperature may be measured with the utmost correctness, from the lowest temperature, up to those at which glass begins to lose its solidity. The heat of the hand applied to a single plate of glass three-tenths of an inch thick, produces a perceptible effect in crystallizing the plate; so that, if ten plates were employed, a difference of temperature, equal to one-tenth of that which was applied to the single plate, will be distinctly appreciable. Feb. 5. At this meeting, Mr. Playfair read some extracts from a memoir of the Comte Le Place, not yet published, on the application of the calculation of probabilities to natural philosophy. The general object of that application is, to determine the degree of probability, that the error of a result, ob tained from the comparison of certain experiments, is contained within given limits. The extracts referred particularly to the determination of the figure of the earth, from the experiments made on the vibration of pendulums. From a selection of 37 of the best of the experiments made on the length of the second's pendulum in different latitudes, La Place finds that the increase of gravity, from the equator to the poles, follows the law which theory points out as the most simple; and hence he conceives that the density of the layers, of which the mass of the earth consists, must augment regularly from the surface to the centre; a condition from which he thinks it reasonable to infer the original fluidity of the whole mass of our planet; a state, he adds, which nothing but the action of excessive heat could produce in the whole mass of the earth. From the formula for the length of the second's pendulum, deduced from the 37 experiments just mentioned, Mr. Playfair finds the length of the second's pendulum for London in English inches, 39.13009. This agrees in the first three decimal places with the number 39 13047 put down in the bill for the equalization of weights and measures. It is probable, therefore, that those three decimals are correct, but that the other two are not to be relied on. A series of experiments on the length of the pendulums, made with more accurate instruments than we have yet employed for that purpose, is greatly to be desired. Feb. 19. Dr. Brewster communicated an account of the sleeping woman of Dunninald, near Montrose, drawn up by the Rev. James Brewster, minister of Craig. Margaret Lyal, aged 21, daughter of John Lyal, labourer, at Dunninald, was first seized with a sleeping fit on the 27th June, 1815, which continued to the 30th June |
