on the tops of Mourne mountains at about the elevation of 2,500 feet. On the Serra of Madeira, latitude 32°, 38', and elevated 5,162 feet, is found the erica arborea, of the neighbourhood of Genoa, latitude 44, 25'. Therefore as the temperature which prevails at the elevation of 5,162 feet, in latitude 32°, is found nearly to correspond with that of 51° north: the erica arborea, which grows at that elevation in latitude 32°, will find a climate suited to its nature in latitude 51°, But as the before mentioned plants have a considerable range of latitude, it may be cultivated farther north when the soil and situation are favourable. At James Holmes's, esq. on the eastern shore of Carrickfergus Bay, four miles north of Belfast, there is a plant in the greatest vigour at the present time (July 1799) which has now stood uninjured three as severe winters as Ireland ever experienced, viz. 1794, 5, 1797, 8, and 1798, 9.' P. 124.

• VII. Description of an Apparatus for impregnating Wa ter and other Substances strongly with carbonic acid Gas. By the Reverend Gilbert Austin, M.R.I.A.'

This union is effected by compression, by means of a piston, which combines a much larger portion of fixed air with the water, than in the usual method. Some force is always requi site, for very little air unites with water, from affinity; but, in Nooth's machine, the only power employed is the force of the air issuing through the capillary tubes.

VIII. Analysis of Turf Ashes. By Lord Tullamore, M.R.I.A. Communicated in a Letter to the Reverend Doctor Elrington.'

It was, we believe, generally known that turf-ashes did not produce kali, or soda, in a pure state; and we once encountered some unexpected opposition, from offering this as an ob jection to an author's remark. Lord Tullamore found the white peat exhibited no separate alkali, but sulphat of soda only: the red ashes contained muriat of soda. In Mr. Jamieson's experiments, the salt appeared to be sulphat of magnesia.

IX. A Memoir of the Mines of Glan, the Royalty of Richard Martin, Esq; By Monsieur Subrine, Engineer to the King of France.'

This memoir contains a very minute description of different strata; but it cannot be easily followed in an abridgement; and the observations are chiefly of local importance.

X. Remarks on some sceptical Positions in Mr. Hume's Enquiry concerning the Human Understanding and his Trea tise of Human Nature. By Richard Kirwan, Esq; LL.D. F.R.S. and P. R. I. A.'

The singular skepticism displayed in Mr. Hume's metaphy sical works has long engaged the attention of numerous philo sophers; and, in more than one tract, he has been completely refuted. Mr. Kirwan, with whom we do not always coincide on metaphysical subjects, reasons in this article with singular

force and perspicuity. The opinions of Mr. Hume, which he attacks, are the following:

1o. That beings of any kind may start into existence without the intervention of any efficient cause:

2o. That the connexion between phænomena and their supposed causes can in no case whatsoever be traced by reason, but in all cases is inferred merely from experience:

• 3°. That inferences from experience are themselves unsupported by any solid reason, for that none can be assigned for expecting similar effects from similar causes, but the mere custom or habit of seeing them conjoined :

4°. That belief is not an act of judgment, but a particular species of sentiment or feeling:

Lastly, That fallacious as all experimental reasoning may be, yet the violations of the laws of nature (the existence of which laws can be known and inferred only from experience) cannot be rendered credible in any case by any human testimony whatsoever.' P. 158.

In the refutation of the treatise On Miracles,' a work which Mr. Hume contemplated with peculiar complacency, Mr. Kirwan follows him step by step: the most prominent passages, the hinges on which the whole hangs, and which are consequently often repeated, he replies to in the following very satisfactory

manner:

1o. A constant fallacy lurks in our author's application of the term experience; sometimes he applies it to our own past or actual experience of which we have a metaphysical certainty: sometimes to that of others only, and not our own, of which we can have at most only a moral certainty; and sometimes he denotes by it a mere conformity to past experience, either of our own or of others, which is often attended with physical or moral certainty, and often with bare probability: these different senses he dexterously shifts and employs as best suits his purpose.

2o. The radical error that pervades the whole of this essay, and is indeed the corner stone on which his whole theory must rest, even if the equivocal use of the term experience had been avoided, consists in ascribing the same immutability to the laws by which corporeal nature is governed, as to those which are inherent in the nature of moral agents. Knowledge of the former is conveyed to us chiefly by experience; that of the latter arises partly from experience, but being homogeneous with, and analogous to our own feelings, partly also from consciousness: the former are clearly discerned to proceed from the power and wisdom of the author of nature, which experience itself shews us not to require their absolute immutability in all possible circumstances. Thus no law has ever been considered less mutable than that of the descent of bodies when unsupported, yet exceptions to it have at last occurred, not only through the now well known, but hitherto inexplicable, powers of magnetism and electricity, but also in the adherence of the hardest polished bodies to each other; and to what degree, on what occasions, and in what circumstances the most general laws of nature may still be found to vary, or to have varied,

we are profoundly ignorant. But with regard to the laws that originate in the nature, and are essential to the constitution of rational agents, particularly of the human kind, the case is very, different ; though they also often restrict, qualify, or modify each other to a surprising degree, yet the extent, to which, in consequence of these modifications, the apparent anomalies of human conduct can reach as long as men retain the use of their reason, is perfectly known, and aberration beyond this limit being inconsistent with rational nature must be deemed impossible.

If therefore the laws of physical and those of moral nature be in any case so opposed to each other, that both cannot be reconciled, but one or other must be deemed to have been infringed, it is easy to discover which of them, the one being absolutely, the others only hy pothetically inviolable, namely, in certain known circumstances.' P. 176.

XI. Synoptical View of the State of the Weather in Dublin in the Year 1800. By Richard Kirwan, Esq; LL.D. F.R.S. and P. R. I. A.'

The highest point of the barometer, 30.66, was observed on the seventh of July and the ninth of October, the wind, at each time, in different parts of the south-west quarter. The lowest point was 29.7 on the eighth of November, wind variable, E. S. and N. W. The mean of the year was 29.978: the thernometer was from 81° 5' to 23°; the mean 47.819: the mean of April 45.65; the rain, 23.567. The rainy days were 197; of which, snow fell on ten. April and June were the most rainy months, July and August the dryest. The prevalent winds were from the west. In the year 1801, the barometer, when at its highest point, rose to 30.76 on the seventh of April, wind west: at its lowest, it was 28.80, the twentysixth of September, wind north; the mean 30.032. The thermometer was from 75° to 23°; the mean 29.278: the heat of April 45.205. The rainy days were 175. The months in which least rain fell were April, June, and August, in which last there was none. The other months, particularly July, were very wet: the quantity of rain, however, was only 21.965%. The prevalent winds were westerly. Thunder and lightning occurred in July and October.

XII. Observations on Calp. By the Honourable George Knox, M. R.1.A.'

Calp is the black quarry-stone of Dublin, resembling in its properties argillaceous earth. A hundred parts, however, contain 68 of carbonate of lime, 18 of silex, 74 of argil, 3 of carbon and bitumen, 2 of oxyd of iron, of water. This is, nevertheless, scarcely consistent with what is said in the first part of the article, that it does not burn to lime. Calp is found under successive strata of limestone; and the latter seems to degenerate imperceptibly into it. Most of the limestone in this neighbourhood presents sulphurated hydrogen. The Lucan waters con

tain hydrogen and azotic gas. This latter offers, in a gallon, of carbonated lime, 11 and a half; of carbonated soda, 19 and a half; of sulphur, 8; muriat of soda, 2; carbonat of magnesia, three-quarters. The carbonat of lime is held in solution, by an excess of carbonic acid, amounting to about sixteen cubic inches in a gallon. The sulphur is in a state of sulphurated hydrogen.

XIII. On the Orbits in which Bodies revolve, being acted upon by a centripetal Force varying as any Function of the Distance, when those Orbits have two Apsides. By the Reverend J. Brinkley, A. M. Andrews' Professor of Astronomy in the University of Dublin.'

This article will not admit of abridgement.

As we find it impossible to conclude the volume in a single article, we shall vary its contents, by turning to the department of polite literature, reserving the antiquities for the close. This class contains two essays by Mr. Preston; viz. 1. On the Choice of Subjects for Tragedy;' 2. Reflexions on the Peculiarities of Style and Manner in the late German Writers, whose Works have appeared in English, and on the Tendency of their Productions."

The object of the first essay is to oppose an observation in a periodical journal, that recent events are not the proper subjects of tragedy. In opposition to this remark, the examples of Aschylus and Sophocles, of Seneca in Octavia, of Shakspeare, in the wars of the houses of York and Lancaster, Henry VIIIth, &c. of Dryden in Amboyna, of Rowe in Tamerlane, &c. are successfully adduced. The law was originally promulgated, with a reference to the subjects of the epos.

In the second essay, Mr. Preston combats, with singular force and success, the strange conduct of the modern German dramatists, and ridicules the sentimental bombast and the absurd improbabilities of their stage, while he reprobates, in the most indignant style, their artful sophistry, their apologies of the worst crimes, the varnish of sentiment, with which they gloss over the most atrocious villanies. Their plagiarism from the English authors is properly noticed. Mr. Preston tells us, that he is unacquainted with the German-a circumstance we should have otherwise discovered, and which has led him into some trifling errors, though it has prevented him from detecting some absurdities still more striking, some artful glosses of a worse tendency, than any which he has noticed. The most terrific incident of Burger's Leonora occurs in the 'Suffolk Miracle.'

It may be remarked, as another peculiarity of the German writers, that amidst their love of horrors and their affectation of the sublime, they have had the singular felicity of finding sources of the great, the terrible and the pathetic in all that is commonly held to be

little, contemptible and ridiculous; and, descending a step below do mestic tragedy, they have introduced a new kind of drama, which, for want of a more appropriate term, may be called straw tragedy, and which climbs into the garret, or dives into the cellar, for its heroes and heroines, and is founded on the loves and heroic acts of beggars and bunters, of thieves and cut-purses, of tailors and seamstresses; on such transactions as an insurrection of journeymen against their employers, which has furnished Mr. Foote with his Tragedy for warm weather.' The incidents, which to an English writer appear highly ludicrous, and become the grounk work of a Beggars' Opera, are adopted by a German and become the subject of an horrible tragedy, full of portentous incident and deep distress.-Macheath and his gang soar into the clouds of bombast; they moralize on the inequality of human conditions, and consider themselves as the vicegerents of Providence, commissioned to rectify the caprices of fortune. Polly Peachum and Lucy Lockitt perplexed in the extreme, between disinterested love and tender friendship, resolve, at the same moment, on the most heroic sacrifices, and mutually determine, each to devote herself for the happiness of her lover and her rival. The combat of friendship and gene rosity is carried on, through many high-wrought scenes; at last, the young ladies agree to end the sentimental contest, by poisoning themselves and their lover, and all three expire together embracing and embraced. Lockitt informs against old Peachum, who is broken on the wheel, for the amusement of the audience. Macheath's band set fire to the prison, and so the piece concludes.' P. 24.

This ambitious spirit of the German writers occasions, in all their productions, another trait of family resemblance, which is excess; a straining at something superlative, an attempt to surpass nature, that produces only contorsion and grimace. Their incidents are in excess, of horror, and of burlesque, that exhibit revolting spectacles or contemptible farces. Their personages are also in excess; there is nothing of the just size or proportion of nature, but all are giants or dwarfs. There is no true delineation of character. All the lines are aggravated, all the features are overcharged into caricature. Their heroes and heroines are Bedlamites; their comic characters merry Andrews and cinder wenches. When they would depict passion, excess, excess still predominates. They want the keeping, the reserve, the chastity of manner inseparable from probability and nature. Their virtues attempt to rise to something super-human, and fall into their contraries; they are lost in the clouds of romance and extravagance, or involved in the mazes of chimerical and unintelligible refinement. Their dramatic exhibitions of vice are monsters redeemed by no virtue; they carry their malignity and guilt to an excess unexampled in the history of our species, and only to be found in what fancy may have feigned of the diabolical nature.

Abominable, unutterable, and worse

Than fable ever feigned or fear conceived.
Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire!

The unwearied predilection for a display of the most atrocious crimes is peculiarly characteristic of the German muse, and is naturally con