first at the school in Soho Square, and next at Chiswick. At an early period he conceived an aversion to animal food, in an abstinence from which he has continued to persevere ever since. He was brought up under his uncle, a brewer in Oxford Street, but in 1786, he became partner in the management of a school at Chester, from whence he removed, two years afterwards, to Leicester, where, in 1790, he opened a bookseller's shop and began to publish the Leicester Herald. In 1792 he distinguished himself by his concern in several canals, towards which he was a subscriber on paper, and turned his enterprizing schemes to some advantage. The following year he was prosecuted for selling Paine's Rights of Man, and having been found guilty, was sentenced to be imprisoned twelve months in Leicester gaol. In 1795 his house and printing office were consumed by fire, soon after which he came to London, and was enabled by the democratic party to set up the Monthly Magazine, which was designed to be the organ of that faction, and in which cause it has continued to operate effectually enough from the period of its commencement to the present hour. The success which the publisher experienced in this work induced him to embark pretty largely, first in the hosiery, and next in the bookselling business, so that he found it expedient to remove from St. Paul's Church Yard to New Bridge Street, where he carried on a very extensive concern. In 1807, he was chosen, by the management of his friends, one of the sheriffs of the city of London; and on going up with an address in behalf of ministers, he accepted the honour of knighthood, to the great astonishment of his republican friends. After various manœuvres to support his establishment, his name appeared in the Gazette, and for some months he led a life of obscurity at Pimlico, but on obtaining his certificate, he again burst forth as a meteor in the sphere of literature. His Magazine having been purchased in by some of his friends, he became the avowed editor of that publication.

Mrs. HESTER LYNCH PIOZZI. This lady is the daughter of John Salusbury, Esq. of Bodvel in Caernarvonshire, where she was born about the year 1744. In 1763 she married Mr. Henry

Thrale, an eminent brewer in Southwark, and for some years representative in parliament for that borough. On the death of that gentleman in 1781, his widow and four daughters went to reside at Bath, where, in 1784, Mrs. Thrale gave her hand to an Italian teacher of music named Gabriel Piozzi, with whom she visited the continent, and remained at Florence some years. Mrs. Piozzi was the intimate friend and correspondent of Dr. Johnson, whose displeasure she incurred by her very imprudent marriage; and when the doctor died, she published letters and anecdotes of that venerable character, without paying much regard to the propriety of the selection, or the verity of her relations. The late ingenious Joseph Baretti, in particular, was very severe in his animadversions on her conduct, and Dr. Wolcot published an admirable poem, in which he exposed the literary lady and her competitor, Mr. Boswell, under the appropriate titles of "Bozzy and Piozzi.” In the Miscellanies of Mrs. Anna Williams, printed in 1765, is a very beautiful tale written by Mrs Thrale, entitled, "The Three Warnings," besides which she communicated many light essays and poetical effusions to other collections.

Madame DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN, is the only daughter of the celebrated M. Necker, by his wife Susan Curchod, the friend and correspondent of Gibbon. She was born at Paris in 1768, and received the most liberal education under the eye of her accomplished parents. But as Madame Necker encouraged an assembly of literary characters at her house, in which questions of morals, metaphysics, and politics, were freely discussed, the young lady, who witnessed these debates, very early contracted a disputatious and paradoxical spirit. When young, she married the baron de Stael-Holstein, Swedish ambassador at the court of France, but the union was far from being an harmonious one, as the husband soon perceived that his wife was too proud of her own intellectual powers to pay any deference to his opinions. She was besides little attentive to those graces which give a charm to the female character, and her appearance was frequently such as to create disgust by the carelessness of her dress, and the

forbidding rudeness of her manners. The first publication of madame de Stael, was a vindication of the character and writings of Rosseau, in 1789, but prior to this, she had written three short novels, which were printed at Lausanne, in 1795. At the beginning of the French revolution, this lady took a more active part in the convulsions which overturned the monarchy, than became either her sex or her situation as the wife of a foreign ambassador. She involved herself indeed so much in those scenes, as to become an object of public attention; and in 1793, she found it necessary to seek an asylum in England; but, two years afterwards, her husband being appointed ambassador to the French republic, she had the privilege of returning to Paris; and about this time she endeavoured to conciliate the men in power by publishing her " Thoughts on Peace addressed to Mr. Pitt," a pamphlet filled with sophistry, though it received the praises of Mr. Fox. About this time she lost her mother, and in 1798, her husband, neither of which events could repress her literary ardour or restrain her from publishing, for at this period she wrote a play called "Secret Sentiment," and a work, "On the Influence of Literature upon Society." In 1800, when Buonaparte passed through Switzerland, he visited Madame de Stael, who talked to him a great deal about her plans for the organization of France, on which the first consul very sarcastically replied: "Who educates your children, madame?" During her residence in Switzerland she wrote her novel of "Delphine," the elegance of which will hardly be admitted as an excuse for its tendency. Shortly after this she accompanied her father to Paris, but her residence there was short, for the freedom of her opinions and the popularity of Necker, induced Buonaparte to pronounce a sentence of banishment against madame de Stael, who said to him, 66 You are giving me a cruel celebrity; I shall occupy a line in your history." This, perhaps, might be wit, but it was far from being prudent; and she felt the effects of her indiscretion, for having settled near Rouen she was ordered to remove to a greater distance from Paris, on which she withdrew to Frankfort, with her

VOL. X.

friend and protector Benjamin Constant. From Frankfort madame de Stael went to Berlin, where she received the intelligence of her father's illness, on which she hastened to Weimar, but found that he had died before her arrival, April 9, 1804. As soon as the first emotions of grief subsided, she employed herself in arranging his papers for publication, and they accordingly appeared in print the same year, at Geneva. In this publication, she was mean enough to pay a high-flown compliment to Buonaparte, in hopes, no doubt, of softening down his resentment, though the man himself, and every body else, well knew that the panegyric did not proceed from the heart. The sentence of her banishment remained, and to alleviate her uneasiness under the decree, she travelled to Italy, which produced another novel full as extravagant and beautiful as Delphine. She afterwards resided, for some time, at the Swedish capital, where she formed a close intimacy with the crown prince, Bernadotte, to whom she dedicated, in a very flattering style, her little work on Suicide, From Stockholm, madame de Stael passed over to England, where she remained while the allies were marching upon Paris, to which city she returned on the restoration of Louis XVIII, in 1814.

PROPERTIES OF PLANTS.

From the Literary Panorama. The following extracts from a lecture on Agricultural Chemistry, by sir Humphrey Davy, are particularly worthy the attention of the ingenious. They open a view of the operations of Nature on a large scale, that is at once striking and instructive. The vegetable kingdom is distributed in great masses all over the face of the earth; and it produces effects accordingly. The numbers of the animal kingdom bear but a small proportion to it, considered as to such effects. Without entering into particulars, we shall set before our readers the general results of this learned lecturer's disquisitions. Sir Humphrey had been observing, that, when the leaves of vegetables perform their healthy functions, they tend to purify the atmosphere in the common variations of weather, and changes from light to darkness. Vege32

tables, he thinks, produce more oxygen than they consume: animals, on the contrary, are constantly consuming this gas. 'If every plant, during the progress of its life, makes a very small addition of oxygen to the air, and occasions a very small consumption of carbonic acid, the effect may be conceived adequate to the wants of nature.

'It may occur as an objection, that if the leaves of plants purify the atmosphere, towards the end of autumn, and through the winter, and early spring, the air in our climates must become impure, the oxygen in it diminish, and the carbonic acid gas increase, which is not the case: but there is a very satisfactory answer to this objection. The different parts of the atmosphere are constantly mixed together by winds, which, when they are strong, move at the rate of from 60 to 100 miles in an hour. In our winter, the south-west gales convey air, which has been purified by the vast forests and savannas of South America, and which, passing over the ocean, arrives in an uncontaminated state. The storms and tempests which often occur at the beginning, and towards the middle of our winter, and which generally blow from the same quarter of the globe, have a salutary influence. By constant agitation and motion, the equilibrium of the constituent parts of the atmosphere is preserved; it is fitted for the purposes of life; and those events, which the superstitious formerly referred to the wrath of heaven, or the agency of evil spirits, and in which they saw only disorder and confusion, are demonstrated by science, to be ministrations of divine intelligence, and connected with the order and harmony of our system. . . .

The experiments of Montgolfier, the celebrated inventor of the balloon, have shown that water may be raised almost to an indefinite height by a very small force, provided its pressure be taken off by continued divisions in the column of fluid. This principle, there is great reason to suppose, must operate in assisting the ascent of the sap in the cells and vessels of plants which have no rectilineal communication, and which every where oppose obstacles to the perpendicular pressure of the sap. The changes taking place in the leaves and buds, and the degree of their power of transpiration, must be intimately connected like

wise with the motion of the sap upwards. This is shown by several experiments of Dr. Hales.

A branch from an apple tree was separated and introduced into water, and connected with a mercurial gage. When the leaves were upon it, it raised the mercury by the force of the ascending juices to four inches; but a similar branch, from which the leaves were removed, scarcely raised it a quarter of an inch.

'Those trees, likewise, whose leaves are soft and of a spongy texture, and porous at their upper surfaces, displayed by far the greatest powers with regard to the elevation of the sap.

'The same philosopher, found that the pear, the quince, cherry, walnut, peach, gooseberry, water-elder, and sycamore, which have all soft and unvarnished leaves, raised the mercury under favourable circumstances from three to six inches. Whereas the elm, oak, chesnut, hazel, sallow, and ash, which have firmer and more glossy leaves, raised the mercury only from one to two inches. And the evergreens, and trees bearing varnished leaves, scarcely at all affected it; particularly the laurel and the lauristinus.

'As the operation of the different physical agents, upon the sap vessels of plants ceases, and the fluid becomes quiescent, the materials dissolved in it by heat, are deposited upon the sides of the tubes now considerably diminished in their diameter; and in consequence of this deposition, a nutritive matter is provided for the first wants of the plant in early spring, to assist the opening of the buds, and their expansion, when the motion from the want of leaves is as yet feeble.

"This beautiful principle in the vegetable economy was first pointed out by Dr. Darwin: and Mr. Knight has given a number of experimental elucidations of it.

"The joints of the perennial grasses contain more saccharine and mucilaginous matter in winter than at any other season; and this is the reason why the Fiorin or Agrostis alba, which abounds in these joints, affords so useful a winter food.

The roots of shrubs contain the largest quantity of nourishing matter in the depth of winter; and the bulb in all

plants possessing it, is the receptacle in which nourishment is hoarded up during the winter.

'In annual plants the sap seems to be fully exhausted of all its nutritive matter by the production of flowers and seeds; and no system exists by which it can be preserved.

....

In perennial trees a new alburnum, and consequently a new system of vessels is annually produced, and the nutriment for the next year deposited in them: so that the new buds, like the plume of the seed, are supplied with a reservoir of matter essential to their first development.

The old alburnum is gradually converted into heart-wood, and being constantly pressed upon the expansive force of the new fibres, becomes harderdenser, and at length loses altogether its vascular structure; and in a certain time obeys the common laws of dead matter, decays, decomposes, and is converted into aëriform and carbonic elements; into those principles from which it was originally formed.

The decay of the heart-wood seems to constitute the great limit to the age and size of trees. And in young branches from old trees, it is much more liable to decompose than in similar branches from seedlings. This is likewise the case with grafts. The graft is only nourished by the sap of the tree to which it is transferred: its properties are not changed by it: the leaves, blossoms, and fruits, are of the same kind as if it had vegetated upon its parent stock. The only advantage to be gained in this way, is the affording to a graft from an old tree a more plentiful and healthy food than it could have procured in its natural state; it is rendered for a time more vigorous, and produces fairer blossoms and richer fruits. But it partakes not merely of the obvious properties, but likewise of the infirmities and dispositions to old age and decay, of the tree whence it sprung.

'It is from this cause that so many of the apples, formerly celebrated for their taste and their uses in the manufacture of cider, are gradually deteriorating, and many will soon disappear. The golden pippin, the red streak, and the moil, so excellent in the beginning of the last century, are now in the extremest stage of their decay; and, how

ever carefully they are ingrafted, they merely tend to multiply a sickly and exhausted variety.

'The trees possessing the firmest and the least porous heart-wood, are the longest in duration.

Amongst our own trees, the chesnut and the oak are pre-eminent as to durability; and the chesnut affords rather more carbonaceous matter than the oak.

'In old Gothic buildings these woods have been sometimes mistaken one for the other: but they may be easily known by this circumstance, that the pores in the alburnum of the oak are much larger and more thickly set, and are easily distinguished; whilst the pores in the chesnut require glasses to be seen distinctly.

'In consequence of the slow decay of the heart-wood of the oak and chesnut, these trees, under favourable circumstances, attain an age which cannot be much short of one thousand years.

The beech, the ash, and the sycamore, most likely never live half so long. The duration of the apple tree is not, probably, much more than 200 years: but the pear-tree, according to Mr. Knight, lives through double this period; most of our best apples have been introduced into Britain by a fruiterer of Henry the Eighth, and they are now in a state of old age.

'The decay of the best varieties of fruit-bearing trees which have been distributed through the country by grafts, is a circumstance of great importance. There is no mode of preserving them; and no resource, except that of raising new varieties by seeds.

'Where a species has been ameliorated by culture, the seeds it affords, other circumstances being similar, produce more vigorous and perfect plants; and in this way the great improvements in the productions of our fields and gardens seem to have been occasioned.

'Wheat in its indigenous state, as a natural production of the soil, appears to have been a very small grass: and the case is still more remarkable with the apple and the plum. The crab seems to have been the parent of all our apples. And two fruits can scarcely be conceived more different in colour, size, and appearance, than the wild plum and the rich magnum bonum.