the fubjects they reprefent. The Mofaics of Prænefte or Palettrina, and thofe of the Palace of Nero, are highly celebrated.The ancient temples which belonged to the Christians contain many ornaments of this defcription; and among them a variety of curious objects, of great utility in the ftudy of ecclefiaftical antiquities. claffes of which we have thus taken a fur- 6.-The Vafes are interefting, both on account of the beauty of their forms and of the fubjects which are figured on them. Thofe of the largest dimenfions were deftined to receive the votes when the fuffrages were taken; others were employed for civil ufages; others, again, for religious ufages; and the fmalleft were merely play-things for children. We do not poffefs any of those beautiful vases of por-, phyry, or Thericlean vafes, which were fo celebrated among the ancients; but many of the fine cups of agate, fardonyx, alabafter, jasper, granite, porphyry, cryf tal, and white or coloured glafs, are fill in existence. The moft interefting of the vafes, and the most useful, as well to the hiftory of the art as in the explanation of the fables, cuftoms, and usages, are those anciently fabricated of potter's earth in the Campagna of Rome, and either turned or modelled by Greek artifts. They have been improperly denominated Etrufcan vafes, for this reafon, that few of them, comparatively speaking, out of the great number which are met with, are found in Etruria. Our attention is drawn to the variety of the forms, to the nature of the earth, to that of the glazing or enamel, and to the fubjects which thele vafes reprefent. 7.-The Instruments, whether civil, religious, or military, of different nations, to be found in a greater or lefs number in the cabinets, are highly inftructive and interefting, infomuch as they contribute to illuftrate the ancient authors, and to throw The PRESENT STATE of SOCIETY, MANnew lights on hiftory. They confift of the utenfils employed in the facrifices, of the Lares or houfehold gods, of lamps, urns, lachrymatories, armours, bracelets, and ornaments and trinkets of every description. 8.-I have already touched on the immenfe utility of medals in the study of geography, chronology, the hiftory of the events of nations, cities, empires, and kings, and that of the different fciences.We find on them whatever is defcribed on the other monuments; they enable us to afcertain the weights and measures of the ancients; and, finally, it may be faid, that in thefe numifmatic treasures all the knowledge of antiquities is concentrated. 9.-The monuments, of the different Such are the different branches of the archeological fcience. It is easy to perceive that each of them requires much preliminary labour and application. (To be Continued.) For the Monthly Magazine. NERS, &c. at TAUNTON. (Continued from Vol. XVI. p. 327.) HERE are five places of worship Tbelonging to the Diffenters of dif The ferent denominations in this town. In In 1732 was erected by fome, who had feparated from the original congregation of Diffenters here, a neat, plain, and uniform building, of the dimenfions of thirty-three feet in front and forty-nine feet eight inches in depth. The third chapel belonging to the Diffenters, is that of the Baptifts: a fociety of whom exifted here fo far back as 1646. This building was raifed in 1721. Its dimen. fions are fifty-four feet by forty-nine. The roof is fupported by two ftrong and curious pillars of the Corinthian crder. The pulpit and its staircase are enriched with elegant carved work. The front of the galleries and pews are made of Flemish oak, which gives to the whole a neat and hand fome appearance. It is remarkable for not having one double pew in it, and the feats are judicioufly arranged fo as to make the accefs to them perfectly easy, and to give every hearer a view of the preacher. The place of worship belonging to the Quakers, the ground for which was the gift of Mr. Robert Button, was built in 1693, and its dimenfions are fifty-four by twenty-feven feet. In 1778, under the direction of the Reverend John Wesley, was erected, for the ufe of a fociety of Methodists, a neat octagon chapel, forty feet in diameter, conveniently pewed. It is rendered light and chearful by twelve hand fome windows, fix of which are circular, is furnished with a curious timepiece, and accommodated with a good veftry-room. Before it is a fpacious area, inclosed with a large iron gate and palifades. The fecond clafs of public buildings includes a free-fchool, and two almshoufes. The free-grammar fchool is a large and ftrong ftructure, with a houfe for the mafter. It was founded by Fox, Bishop of Winchefter, in the reign of Henry VII. whofe arms are over the entrance; and was endowed, in 1553, by William Walbee and by William Pool, of Colyford, Efquires: the mafter is named by the Warden of New College in Oxford. One alms-houfe was founded by Robert Gray, Efq. in 1635, for fix poor men and a reader, and ten poor women, with an allowance of two fhil lings a week to each, and two fhillings and fix pence to the reader. The building is an hundred and fifty feet in length, having, befides the chapel and fchool-room, feventeen feparate apartments, with a fmall garden to each. On the front are the arins of the founder, and of the Merchant-taylor's Company in London, of which Mr. Gray was a member. It was erected in his life: but as he died before his trustees were named, and his will was perfected, his benevolent defign was confirmed and carried into full effect by a decree of chancery, under Edward, Lord Lyttleton. The other alms-houfe derives its name from its founder, (by a will, dated 30 January, 1615.) Richard Huifh, Efq. one of the family of the Huifhes, of Douiford, in the county of Somerfet, and of Sand, in the parish of Sidbury, in the county of Devon. The building, a large good house, ninetyfive feet in length, is laid out into a chapel, and thirteen feparate rooms, for thirteen poor, needy, maimed, impotent, or aged men; one of the most difcreet of. whom, who can write and read English, is appointed prefident or reader, with a penfion of three fhillings and four pence per week; two fhillings and eight pence per week, is allowed to each of the other twelve, payable, under the direction of twenty-two governors, from a groundrent charged on houfes in Black Friars, London; the furplus of which is affigned to the repairs of the building and to furnish the penfioners with gowns or coats. There was formerly another alms-house, confifting of eighteen separate rooms, founded by Dorothy Henley, in 1637, which has for many years been deftitute of any funds, either for the maintenance of its inhabitants, or the repairs of the building; which was occupied by paupers, placed in it by the overfeers of the parish of St. Mary Magdalen. When the building had fallen into a ruinous ftate, and was, from different caufes, become a nuifance, and it appeared on the estimate of two builders, delivered on oath, that the neceffary repairs would require an hundred pounds: Sir Benjamin Hammet, one of the reprefentatives of the town, purchaled and fitted it up in 1787, at his own expence, for the use of the parith, on the credit of the vote of the veftry engaging to pay him that fum, in the room of Henley's Alms-houfe, the fcite of which is now included in Hammet's-(treet, more commodious tenements, to receive a greater number of poor, in a remoter part of the town, on a foot more healthy, to bear the name of "Henley's Alms houfe." To the edifices erected for the relief of poverty and diftrefs, humanity would wifh to add, that there is an infirmary for the fick. Benevolence once rejoiced in the profpect, that Taunton would afford an asylum for difeafe and fick nefs. Hh2 The The foundation-ftone of an hofpital for the county was laid by Lord North, attended by feveral noblemen, an a numerous company of the gent y and clergy of the neighbourhood, and of the refpectable inhabitants of the town, on Michaelmas-day, 1772. With great and pleasing expectation was the ftructure feen to rife; and, in the y ar 1774, was the building covered in. Here the pen mutt ftop. Some fat milmanagement blafted the hopes of the afflicted. It was formed, perhaps, on too large a fcale; and the liberality, with which it was commenced, was exhaufted with rearing the thell. The undue proportion of expence, which was fuffered to fall on a few gentlemen, damped zeal and generofity,, and changed it into diguft. For many years it food unfinished; till the fcite and building were fold, to ditcharge the debt incurred by the erection, to John Coles, Efq. collector for the county, by whom it was converted into a family-refidence. The nxt clafs of buildings includes thole which are employed for the purposes of juftice and civil government. The fire and attendance, and fupplied with An To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR, principal of thefe, both for magnitude pori, at page 99 and ufe, is the Affize Hall, which forms part of the Caftle. In its ancient ftate ts dimenfions were 119 feet by thirty, and its height twenty feet five inches: and the two tribunals were held at each end, without any interfecting walls; but of late, it has been divided into two dif tinct courts, laid out in different departments, acceffible by different doors. The Caftle is held under the Bishop of Winchetter by John Hammet, Efq. one of the reprefentatives of the town, as a purchafe made by his father to fecure the ufe of the Hall for the purpofe of holding the affizes in it, when the ruinous ftate into which it had fallen under a former tenant and proprietor, threatened the removal of them: it is now invefted by his fun in truffees for this purpose. There is in the Caftle a strong room, called the Exchequer, in which the records of Taunton Dean Land are repofited. A room properly fitted up for the purpose, on the ground floor of a large and elegant building, in the center of the town, called the Market-houfe, is devoted to the ufe of the juftices of the county, who prefide over its order and peace. This building is formed on a plan comprehenfive alfo of rooms for the purposes of entertainment and pleafure. On the ground floor is a coffee-room: where gentlemen, for the annual fubfcription of a guinea, are accommodated with HE writer of the Commercial Reof your laft Number, Ipeaking of the Grand Junction Canal Company, fays, "The laft works remaining to be executed, in order to complete their undertaking, are the tunnel and aqueduct at Blilworth ;" but he feems not to have been aware of the extent of the works to be performed before this Company and the public can enjoy the benefits of an uninterrupted navigation; and I beg, through the medium of your Magazine, to fate a few particulars relative thereto, which I have been at the pains to collect. The grand object of this canal, in connecting the metropolis by the nearest rout with the numerous canals in Warwickshire, and the other interior parts of the country, has now for a confiderable time been accomplished, though imperfectly, by a temporary railway over the hill between Bitworth and Stoke Bruerne. The aqueduct alluded to by your Reporter, at Wolverton, near Stoney Stratford, was undertaken fince the communication acofs that valley has been opened, by locking down into it, and up again on the oppofite fide, in or der, by an embankment, to preferve the level, and avoid the walle of two lockages, to which the fupply of water was found inadequate. Except, therefore, the failure of the former attempt to tunnel through Blidworth-hill, and the confequent delay and expence of the railway, the I dreadful dreadful and ruinous difappointments which too many of the perfons engaged in trade on this canal, in common with the proprietors and the public, have experienced, have arisen from want of water; and it is right that the public should underftand that this moft formidable obftacle, increasing with every increase of trade, remains yet in a confiderable degree to be overcome through a confider able portion of this long canal. The three tummits, or highest levels, viz. through the tunnel at Braunftone, at Stoke Bruerne, (which is to go through the intended tunnel at Blifworth,) and through the deep cutting on the Chalk Hills at Bulborne, near Tring, have all experienced the want of water, even for the limited trade that has yet been carried on. The Company are now proceeding with the tunnel at Blifworth. They are conftructing extensive reservoirs in the neighbourhood of Daventry to increase the fu ply of the Braunftone fummit; they are embanking across the Wolverton valley to preferve water for the Blifworth fummit; and have lately erected a teamengine to raile water out of a sew refervoir, for increafing the supply of the Bulborne fummit. But the main caufe of the evil, viz. the leaky ftate of the canal, has been little attended to, except that in the laft (ummer and autumn, during the fufpention of trade, fome parts of the bottom and fides of the canal, near Tring, were new puddled; this moft effential speration of puddling having it feems been omitted, or imperfectly performed, through many parts of the canal where it was abfolutely neceffary, particularly where, in curting, a porous ftrata of gravel, &c. was penetrated, and furnished a fpring, but on a level much below the pretent furface of the water in the canal ; fuch porous itrata now form ing extenfive under-ground drains to dif charge the water of the canal at other places. The great expence of this operation to the Company is not the only evil; but the traders and the public muft fuffer a fufpenfion of trade in the canal while it is performing. It is hoped, however, that the Company will, by long and explacat notices of their intentions of fhut ting up the Canal, enable dealers and others on the line to lay in ftocks of articles which are brought to them by the canal, and thereby effentially leffen the evil to the public. It remains yet to mention a fundamental error in the construction of fome parts of this canal, particularly between Great Berkhamstead and Uxbridge, 'in cauting the canal in fo many inftances to connect with and pafs through the milldams, by which even that ftream of water which the Company had purchased, or were in the undisputed poffeffion of, on the fummit at Bulborne, and which, by judicious arrangements and precautions to increase it, might have answered even the increafing trade as you approach the metropolis, has been again furrendered into the power of the millers, many of whom, feeling the increafed power they have acquired, are enlarging the breadth of their old wheels, and fome are erect. ing entirely new ones; a forcible instance of which may be feen at the Mines Royal Mills, near Harefield. The moft grievous loffes and disappointments have all along been fuftained by the traders on this part of the canal, by the millers even through obstinacy, in many inftances, letting off the water, which is here fo plentiful, and rendering the locks impaffable. Numerous and expenfive difputes have alfo arifen between the Company and the millers, and farmers who attempt irriga tion in this fine but thamefully-neglected vale. All the evils here mentioned must increase with the increase of trade, and nothing short of cutting a confiderable part of the canal in the Colne Valley anew, fo as entirely to avoid the milldams and the river, collecting as many as poffible of the fprings above the canal's level by furfs and drains conftructed for the purpofe, and avoiding, or puddling out, all fuch fprings as will not on trial rife above the furtace level of the canal, can render this effential part of the line productive to the Company, or ferviceable to the public. It is plan that thefe alterations, and the new locks, might be made before the prefent mill-dam line or the trade thereon is disturbed, which is no inconfiderable argument in favour of the alteration. I have been induced to make thefe obfervations from a defire to prevent the hopes and expectations of the public be ing, as heretofore, improperly raised refpecting the final and fuccefsful completion of this great undertaking; which, nevertheless, but for the culpable neglect or mifconduct of the committees entrusted with the management, or the agents they employ, muft in a few years become moft productive to the proprietors, and highly beneficial to the public at large. I am, Sir, your's, &c. London, THO. RAFEY. February 13, 1804. For For the Monthly Magazine. GEOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION of SOUTH AMERICA. By the late F. A. VON HUMBOLDT.* SINCE INCE I fent to Madrid the two firft sketches of a geological delineation of South America, from the Caraccas and ' Nueva Valencia, I have travelled twelve hundred miles, and described a square between Caribe, Portocabello, Pimichin, and Esmeralda, a fpace comprehending above 59,000 square miles; for I am not acquainted with the land between the mountain Parea and Portocabello, and between the northern coal and the valley of the Black River. In confequence of the great circumference of this district, I must content myself with delineating it in a general manner, and, to avoid details, with defcribing the conftruction of the earth, the declivity of the land, the direction and inclination of the mountains, their relative ages, their fimilarity with the formation of thofe in Europe. Thefe are the circumstances most neceffary to be known in this fcience. We muft proceed in mineralogy as in geography; we are acquainted with ftones, but not with mountains; we know the materials, but we are ignorant of the whole of which they form component parts. I wish I may be able, amidst the variety of the objects which occupy my attention during my travels, to throw any light on the ftructure of the earth. The laborious journeys which, for eight years, I have made through Europe had no other object; and if I have the good fortune to return to Europe, and to recover my geological manufcripts which I left behind me in France and Germany, I fhall venture to give a sketch of the ftructure of the earth. What I have long faid, that the direction and inclination, the rifing and falling, of the primitive ftrata, the angles which they form with the meridian of the place, and with the axis of the earth, are independent of the direction and depreffion of the mountains; that they depend on laws, and that they obferve a general parallelifm which can be founded only in the motion and rotation of the earth; what Freie fleben, Von Buch, and Gruner, have proved better than I, will be found confirmed, name This valuable man intended to return to Europe by the way of the Manillas; but we learn, that, while he was waiting for a ship at Acapulco, he was feized with a fever, which carried him off in a few days. His papers and journals are, however, on their way to Europe. ly, that the fucceffion of the alluvial ftrata, which was confidered as a peculiarity of certain provinces, fuch as Thuringia and Derbyshire, takes place generally; and that there appears an identity in the order of the ftrata; from which there is reafon to conclude that the fame depofition has been effected at the fame time over the whole furface of the earth. All thele ideas are of the greatest importance, not only to the philofopher, who endea vours to elevate himself to general principles, but allo to the miner, who muft conceive in his mind what he has not before his eyes, and guide himself by analogy deduced from actual exerience. Before I defcribe the fituation of the mountains which I have obferved from the coaft to the province of Venezuela, I fhail give a general view of the form of this continent. Unfortunately there are no early obfervations to ferve as a ground for this defcription. For half a century past many accidental obfervations refpect ing this land have been collected, but not a fingle idea relating to its geology has been made known. The great genius of Condamine, the zeal of Don George Juan de Ulloa, would certainly not have left us in the dark on this fubject, had mineralogy been more cultivated at the time when they wrote. All that could then be done was to measure and to take levels. As they were employed on the high cordillera of the Andes, which extends north and fouth from Zitara, as far as Cape Pilar, and beheld with wonder the immenfe height of the mountains, they forgot that South America exhibits other cordilleras, which extend east and weft parallel to the equator, and which, on account of their height, deferve as much the attention of naturalifts as the Carpathians, Caucafus, the Alps of the Valais, and the Pyrenees. The whole immenfe tract on the weft fide of the Andes, which extends obliquely to the coast of Guiana and Brafil, is defcribed as a low plain, expofed to the inundation of the rivers. As only a few Francifcan miffionaries and a few foldiers have been able to penetrate over the cataracts to Rio Negro, the inhabitants of the coaft of Caraccas imagine that the immenfe plains (the Llanos de Calabozo, del Guarico, and de Apure,) which they fee to the fouth, beyond the valleys of Aragua, extend without interruption to the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, and to the country of the Patagonians; but the extent of these plains is far from being fo great; they are not uninterrupted plains, they are ra ther phenomena of the fame kind as those prefented |