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seemingly acquiesce in the views of Mr Samuel McCormack, and, with his characteristic boldness, make an attempt at publication. But mark our words:-The publication will not take place. We have seen the attempt made upon one copy, which has for three months resisted the most strenuous efforts of a spirited publisher. That copy is not heavier than its brethren; but there, we are afraid, "sedet eter numque sedebit." At first many persons looked at it some touched it a few attempted to lift it-and one gentleman from Tweeddale, a man of prodigious personal strength, actually raised it several inches from the table. Nothing, however, but the same sevenhorse power that brought it into the shop will be effectual for its removal.

But to be serious. We declare, on our word of honour, that we have read this pamphlet, and think we can put any gentleman of a sound constitution on a plan by which he will be able to perform the same achievement. Let him on no account presume to read the affair in the usual way, straight on from beginning to end; but let him swallow a small dose of the beginning an hour before breakfast. Let the patient then take a sharp walk of a couple of miles, and a hearty breakfast. About twelve o'clock in the forenoon, let him take a few pages from the end of the pamphlet, the frothy and watery nature of which will help him to digest the crudities of the beginning. The middle part may be taken about an hour before going to bed: it is a soft pulpy substance, without any taste whatever; and in the morning the patient will awake fit for the usual occupations of the day.

There is yet another mode of getting over this affair, which we can safely recommend on the authority of a judicious friend, who speaks of it in the highest terms. Begin boldly at the beginning, but instead of turning over one leaf at a time, turn over two or more. The effect produced upon our friend's mind by this mode of perusal was almost the same as that which we ourselves experienced from the usual straight forward method; and to readers of weakly constitutions we would recommend it as preferable to our own.

We find that we have not given a very full account of the matter of this pamphlet. If, however, either the author himself, or any of his friends,

will communicate to us a short statement of its supposed contents, we shall lay it before the public in our next Number.

We have not scrupled to mention the author's name (Samuel M'Cormack, Esq. one of his Majesty's Advocates-depute for Scotland), because he has openly avowed it. The Depute, however, is a sort of male coquette, and loves to dally with the public. He puts on his mask, and for a while wears it with an air of mysterious secrecy, till, feeling uneasy at the concealment, he takes it slily off before a circle of chosen admirers; then, sighing after nobler and more extensive conquests, he flings back his veil of foolscap, and exhibits to the public gaze features sparkling with all the fascination of conscious beauty.

66

The Bower of Spring, with other Poems. By the Author of The Paradise of Coquettes." Small 8vo. pp. 156. Edinburgh, Constable & Co.

THIS smart little volume strikes us as a sort of phenomenon. It has been plainly brought out to suit the season; and, with a good deal of that elegant lightness and calm gaiety which may be caught in the atmosphere of ladies' drawing-rooms and select literary coteries, is highly suited to the taste and habits of those happy persons who can spare no time even for such studies, until they find that almost all their decent neighbours have left town, and that the invidious long day of a forward spring has bereft them of flambeaux, rattling squares, and busy routs. Notwithstanding this favourable conjuncture, we are afraid that these poems run more than an ordinary hazard of being overlooked, by those who may not know the author from that gorgeous piece of fancy which he has chosen for his distinctive appellation. The essential characters of both are nearly alike, allowing a little for difference of subject and machinery; and as the author has defended his system with much vivacity, in a preface to the Paradise of Coquettes, extending to fifty-six pages, and containing as much wit and beautifully flowing English as might enliven whole volumes of criticism or apology, we must make so free with him as to state our notions.

To our plain understandings, then, it seems, that all POETRY must be pathetic, according to the good old etymology of the word, which renders it significant, not merely of a tender pity for distress, but of syınpathy with all the emerging varieties of human passion, or highly descriptive of nature, in her loveliest hues and situations, or discursive, between nature and passion,-looking abroad on nature and the seasons as they are associated with human feelings, or recurring, from the contemplation of objects, to the mind, with a deep-felt impression, that, in the ceaseless march of time, nature is still as fair as if there were neither sorrowing nor crime among mankind. To what part of this category the poetry of the author of the "Paradise of Coquettes" should be referred, we know not. Nothing seems to us more decisive of the character of this restless age, than the tendency which that formerly sympathetic race of the genus irritabile vatum now has to separate into schools. Each school has a separate language, and separate systems and sympathies of its

own.

The grand ambition of our author appears to be, that he may become the founder and the head of a new school. It is difficult to catch the evanescent varieties of his manner; but we must try, that our readers may know what they should expect in the fulness of time, when it will be unfashionable not to be able to refer to the Paradise of Coquettes for authority.

It has all the trim gracefulness and measured vivacity of Pope, without the unconscious music of his manner; and is, to a wonderful nicety, just such a production, in every respect, as a wordy and ambitious member of that sect might be supposed to venture out with in these cloudy times, could he be produced to us with his broad hand-ruffles, and tall amberheaded cane. Times and propensities, however, are essentially altered. Pope caught the tone of society at one happy stroke. After the lapse of an hundred years, his Rape of the Lock is a model for pleasant raillery and easy satire as the letters of his friend, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, are patterns of acuteness of remark with negligence of manner. But the haut ton of society has now ceased to be the haut ton of letters. The moral enthusiasm

of our own age we do not take to be greater than that of those which have preceded it; but we venture to assert, that it has a keener taste for deeptoned emotion, and high-raised excitement. Now, as we firmly believe this, we never expect to see our author leading a school. His great work is an effort, through nine parts, to be gay. It has something of the unmeaning flutter of a very fine lady, mixed with more of the watchful and provoking acuteness of a practised metaphysician. Almost every second line contains a nicely balanced antithesis; and the wit with which it really sparkles till the eyes dazzle, is so quick and fleeting, and so shadowed out, that the mind racks itself in attempting to grasp its intent. The epithets are for the most part exquisitely happy, and wonderfully new. The verse is so uniformly adjusted, by a complete and careful rythmus, as seldom or never to offend, by a harsh note, or an unfinished cadence,—but rather to astonish by some fine breaks, and artificial collocations, more like those in the majestic blank verse of Milton, than any thing in the unvaried measure of couplets. The machinery is nicely culled from all those adjuncts and circumstances with which earthly coquettes are surrounded, or which can be supposed in that "Paradise of her kindred immortals," to which the author ultimately conducts his heroine. He could find no appropriate term for all this, but "the light and playful species of epic." Yet with this ingenious preparation, and all these negative qualities of poetry,-when we take up these volumes,

"We start, for soul is wanting there."

There is ease which does not produce ease; there is gaiety which does not excite spirits in the reader; there are no bursts of inspiration,-alnost no passages that are beautiful as well as brilliant, and no occasions on which we find any thing like an easy falling in with those ordinary trains of thought that are the very staple of poetry. There is rather more of a very elegant languor, and ready quickness of apprehension as to the developement and shadowing out of ideas which are the least tangibly related,— than of a healthful sensibility, or much freshness, as well as depth of natural emotion. There is so much purity and delicacy, and such a choice

of topics of illustration, that the author seems to deal out any allusion to the conventional realities of a rough and vulgar world as tokens only of smartness or sagacity. He seems not to write for the average of readers who delight in Lord Byron's poetry. He would appear to count rather on a critical wonder at difficulties of manner, and choice of subject overcome,-or an admiration of chaste effect and polished finishing,-than on the rapidly excited sympathy, the undiscriminating enthusiasm of ordinary men. It is not enough that such productions are those of a most ingenious and a most amiable man, who has the rare merit of being not only perhaps the most acute among the ingenious, but one of the very best among the acute. Every poet writes for fame; and, in this respect, poetry is not, like virtue, its own reward. The man, therefore, who submits himself " arbitrio popularis aura," with more than two or three trials of a style and manner in poetry which are found to be any thing rather than popular, or even generally relished among the more respectful and indulgent race of critics, must submit to mediocrity of praise,-the " unkindest cut of all" to generous minds. And no friend can see a person of real talent come to this, without feeling even more than the force of a great poet's anathema,

"Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non Dii, non concessere co

lumnæ."

There are some agreeable "copies of verses" in the same volume with the Bower of Spring; but we have already said so much of it and its favoured predecessor, as to have no room left for any quotations from either. All that we can give is an extract from verses addressed to Mrs Stewart, the lady of Mr Dugald Stewart, which are whimsically enough denominated "THE NON-DESCRIPT-To a very charming Monster,"-but which contain nothing whimsical or unfounded in their praise.

"Thou nameless loveliness, whose mind, With every grace to sooth, to warm, Has lavish Nature bless'd,-and 'shrin'd The sweetness in as soft a form!

Say on what wonder-bearing soil

Her sportive malice wrought thy frame,That haughty science long might toil, Nor learn to fix thy doubtful name!

For this she culled, with eager care, The scatter'd glories of her plan,—— All that adorns the softer fair,

All that exalts the prouder man : And gay she triumphed,-now no more Her works shall daring systems bound As though her skill inventive o'er, She only trac'd the forms she found. In vain to seek a kindred race,

Tir'd through her mazy realms I stray.Where shall I rank thy radiant place? Thou dear perplexing creature! say! Thy smile so soft, thy heart so kind,

Thy voice for pity's tones so fit, All speak thee woman; but thy mind Lifts thee where Bards and Sages sit."

Eccentricities for Edinburgh, &c. By GEORGE COLMAN, the Younger. Foolscap 8vo. Edinburgh, Ballantyne, 1817.

MR COLMAN'S poetical productions are chiefly remarkable for two things: in the first place, one-half of his verses are generally without any meaning whatever; and to make up for this, he contrives, in the second place, to endow the other half with what the French call double meanings,—that is, licentious, vulgar, and disgusting ideas, disguised (in Mr C.'s case, very slightly) under equivocal or ambiguous terms. In justice to Mr Colman's taste, we must add, that there is sometimes a third part of unpalliated grossness; though we mention this with some hesitation, because our apology for alluding to him at all, namely, the plan he has adopted for localizing the present effusion, may, after that, we fear, scarcely be sustained by our more respectable readers. These Eccentricities are exactly such as have been produced by heads of the same altitude, and morals of the same standard, down from Haywood's days. Edinburgh, it seems, had resisted all his attacks in print, and his books could never penetrate beyond the Border: he was therefore advised to steal in in manuscript; and his employers (for his genius resembling a hotbed, where the stercoraceous heat produces, in a few hours, abundance of insipid vegetables; the booksellers, when they need a supply, appoint him time and subject) invented, as he informs us, the lying designation in the title. Mr Colman is now an old man-and ought to be otherwise occupied than in writing doggerel verses for the vulgar and the vile.

LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE.

From the observations made by Professor Jameson, it would appear, that augite, hitherto considered a rare mineral, is very generally and abundantly distritributed throughout Scotland.

It is much to be regretted that we possess no mineralogical map of Scotland. Mr Smith, an industrious and intelligent surveyor, has published a mineralogical map of England and Wales, which, although incomplete, is a creditable work for a single individual. The public anxiously expect the promised map of England, from the active and intelligent president of the Geological Society of Lon don, Mr Greenough. Professor Jameson has been for several years collecting materials for a general mineralogical map of Scotland; and it is expected, that he will soon communicate the result of his labours to the public.

The celebrated traveller Baron Von Buch is now printing, in London, a Mineralogical Account of the Canary Islands, which, it is confidently expected, will prove a classical work on the natural history of volcanoes. In the same work, he will treat particularly on the geographical and physical distribution of these nearly-tropical isles-in which in vestigation he will be materially assisted by the observations of the companion in his voyage, the late excellent but unfortunate Dr Smith of Christiana, who perished in the calamitous expedition up the Congo.

Mr Boue of Hamburgh, an active and intelligent disciple of the Edinburgh school of Natural History, is about to publish a Tract of the Physical and Geographical Distribution of the plants of Scotland.

We ought to have noticed, in a former Number, the Map of the County of Edinburgh, by Mr Knox. It is on four sheets, well engraven, and exhibits, in a lucid and accurate manner, the physiog nomy of that portion of Scotland. We would recommend it to the attention of those who are interested in geographical and geological researches, and the more so, as we understand that it is to be illustrated by a Memoir from the Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh.

Mont Blanc, hitherto considered as the highest mountain in the old world, is now far eclipsed by the lofty ranges of the Himmalah, which rise 27,000 feet above the sea. Even the Elbrus, a European mountain, measured by Wis. nievsky, is said to be 2,500 French feet

higher than the far-famed summit of Mont Blanc.

A monstrous birth is stated to have taken place in the city of Jypore: the wife of a Bramin, named Kishun Ram, had been brought to bed of a girl with four faces and four legs. When this ominous circumstance was related to the Rajah, he instantly ordered a charitable donation to be made to the poor, to avert the calamity which such an occurrence was supposed to threaten.-Ceylon Gaz

Mr Stanley Griswold, in the New York Medical Repository, informs us, that earthquakes, extending for more than an hundred miles, are occasionally produced by the combustion of beds of coal in marshy places.

New Barometer.-We understand that an instrument has lately been invented by our very ingenious townsman, Mr Alexander Adie, optician, which answers all the purposes of the common barometer, and has the advantage of being much more portable, and much less liable to accident. In this instrument the moveable column is oil, enclosing in a tube a portion of nitrogen, which changes its bulk according to the density of the atmosphere. Mr Adie has given it the name of sympiesometer (or measure of compression). One of these new instruments was taken to India in the Buckinghamshire of Greenock, and, by the directions of Captain Christian, corresponding observations were made on it, and on the common marine barometer, every three hours during the voyage. The result, we are informed, was entirely satisfactory-the new instrument remaining unaffected by the most violent motion of the ship. We may add, that the sympiesometer may be made of dimensions so small as to be easily carried in the pocket, so that it is likely to become a valuable acquisition to the geologist.

The Glasgow Astronomical Society has lately procured a solar microscope from Dolland, the largest that celebrated optician has ever constructed. It is exhibited to most advantage betwixt eleven and two o'clock, during which hours the sun is in the best position for observing it. The first trial of this superb instrument disclosed some wonderful phenomena; hundreds of insects were discovered devouring the body of a gnat. These animalcula were magnified so as to appear nine inches long, their actual size being somewhat less than the fourteen hundredth part of an inch. The mineral

kingdom afforded another display of brilliant objects; their chrystalization, and the splendor of their colouring, exceed any thing the most lively imagination can conceive.

Mr E. Donovan, the ingenious author of a series of interesting works illustra tive of the Natural History of Britain, and proprietor of the Museum of Natural History in Fleet-street, has announced bis intention of selling that collection by public auction in the beginning of next year, unless it shall have been previously disposed of. He states that it has cost him the labour of thirty years, and an expense of more than £15,000.

Sir Everard Home has submitted to the Royal Society a paper on the nature and effects of an infusion of colchicum autumnale and eau medicinale on the human constitution in cases of gout. He found from experiments, that the sediment of the latter is excessively drastic and severe, while that of the infusion of colchicum possesses about half the strength of the former; and that the clear tincture of both is equally efficacious in curing gout without being so dreadfully destructive to the constitution. The result therefore of these experiments is, that the clear fluid, either of the vinous infusion of colchicum or of the eau medicinale, may be taken with equal advantage to the health, and much less injury to the body; but that of the former is much the milder of the two.

Mr John Davy has detailed, in a letter to his brother, Sir Humphry Davy, many new and curious experiments and observations on the temperature and specific gravity of the sea, made during a voyage to Ceylon. From these it appears, that the specific gravity of the sea is nearly the same every where; that the temperature is generally highest about noon; that it is higher during a storm, but that in this case the period of the highest temperature is somewhat later. He has found that shallow water is colder than deep; so that by this difference seamen may discover, at night, when they approach either shoals, banks, or the shore. On approaching the coast the water was always found to be two degrees colder than when in the open sea.

In August last, a buck that was remarkably fat and healthy in condition, was killed in Bradby park, and, on open ing him, it was discovered that, at some distant time, he had been shot in the heart; for a ball was contained in a cyst in the substance of that viscus, about two inches from the apex, weighing 292 grains, and beaten quite flat. In the second volume of the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, is published an

extraordinary case of a soldier who survived forty-nine hours after receiving a bayonet-wound of the heart; but a gunshot wound of the heart affords a still more striking example of the great extent to which this vital organ may sus tain an injury from external violence, without its functions being immediately destroyed, or even permanently impaired.

Fusion of Wood Tin.-Dr Clarke of Cambridge has made a curious addition to our knowledge respecting wood tin. When exposed to the action of his powerful oxygen and hydrogen blow-pipe, it fuses completely, acquires a colour near ly similar to that of plumbago, with a very strong metallic lustre. Dr Clarke was so obliging as to give me some specimens of wood tin thus fused. It was very hard; as far as I could judge, nearly as much so as common tin-stone. It was brittle, and easily reducible to a fine powder. I found it not in the least acted on by nitric acid, muriatic acid, and nitro-muriatic acid, even when assisted by heat. Hence, it must still continue in the state of an oxide.

The circumstance, that wood tin (and probably tin-stone also) acquires a metallic lustre when fused, seems to decide a subject which has been agitated in this country with much keenness. It was asserted by Dr Hutton, and is still maintained by his followers, that all granite has been in a state of igneous fusion. From Dr Clarke's experiment, it may be inferred, with considerable confidence, that the granite in which the ores of tin occur has never been in a state of fusion.-Thomson's Annals, No 55.

FRANCE.

Theories of the Earth-Many of the fanciful theories of our globe, founded upon false conclusions, drawn from the repeated discovery of fresh water shells and marine shells being found together in the same strata, are likely to be set at nought by an experiment of M. Bendant of Marseilles, from whence it results, that fresh water or marine molluscæ will live in either medium, if habituated to it gradually; but with some few exceptions.

The Society for Elementary Instruction in France, lately held a public meeting at the Hotel de Ville of Paris. From the reports read by the secretaries it appears, that during the past year the new method of instruction has made great progress both in Paris and the provinces, and there is every reason to hope that it will soon become general. In the capital there are 15 schools in full activity; one of them has 333 scholars. The Prefect of the department of the Seine has ef

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