799.] List of a Kitchen Library.... Mr. Busby on Modern Music. 35 PROCEEDINGS at large of the NATIONAL INSTITUTE of France, o To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. A SIR, LTHOUGH I am unable to give your correfpondent MUNNGO any information respecting the origin of hatmaking, I am inclined to fuggest a small acceffion to his kitchen library, if you will allow me to do so through the medium of your Magazine. With the exception of Dr. BEDDOES'S well-known "History of Isaac Jenkins," I think Mrs. Trimmer's writings are better calculated to interest and instruct the poor than those of any other perfon I have met. She adapts the style and phraseology of her little tracts to their taste and comprehenfion, without reminding them of her condescension, or their inferiority; and her piety is of that kind which has a tendency to mend the temper, as well as to regulate the conduct. "The Life of Benjamin Franklin," written by himself, is a work of general utility: the narrative is remarkably interesting, and while the writer must be allowed to have poffeffed uncommon powers of mind, his life would feem to teach, that persons may arrive at eminence by the exercise alone of temperance, industry, and frugality. But I forgot, I have only to fuggeft books, and not to make comments on them. "Life of Benjamin Franklin," written by himself. "Franklin's Effays," and "Poor Rich ard's Almanack." To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. TH SIR, HERE are prejudices, the remova of which require a previous preparation of the public mind. Before even an attempt be made practically to fubdue established errors, it is necessary to render people willing to be convinced. No stronger instance can, perhaps, be adduced of a fettled adherence to one opinion, at leaft on scientific subjects, than that which we find in certain musical amateurs; I mean the partisans of the old school They are so involved in their partiality to what is called ancient music, as absolutely to be perfuaded that all genius necessary to the production of found harmony and original melody, has long fince been extinct: to be a modern, is to be disqualified for their approbation. The names of Purcel, Handel, Corelli, and Geminiani, instead of being held forth as stimulatives to rivalship, or to imitation, are hung in terrorem, over the heads of living composers; and are only employed to check those exertions which they ought to excite and encourage. Fortunately, this subject of complaint has not existed in the fame degree in literature, or the other arts and sciences. Here the fields of improvement have been left fairly open, and the endeavour to furpass former works has, under due encouragement, given birth to more useful discoveries and nobler systems of thinking, than those known to our forefathers. Had the injuftice I am pointing out been exercised towards the great masters above cited; had they, because they were moderns, been confidered as incapable of fucceeding to the merits of their profeffional ancestors, so great a difadvantage must, in some meafure, have fuppressed those talents which they fo forcibly displayed. Perhaps, in wo province of the harmonic art, has this obstacle to dawning talent more formidably obtruded itself among the lovers of ancient mufic, than in that of oratorial composition. With them it is not fufficient to allow that Handel's facred dramas have been hitherto unequalled; we are obliged to grant that he towers above every thing to be expected from future genius; and that in this department all human ability muft fink before him. This prejudice, Sir, has unhappily extended itself to some modern professors of eminence; and I am intimate with a master of high and deferved repute, who, on being pressed by his friends to compose an oratorio, faid No mam man ought to attempt such a task after Mr. Hande!. No one, I believe, ad mires more than myself the hitherto unrivalled excellence of that illuftrious German; yet, I have been careful not to fuffer that admiration to instil the fear of being loft in the blaze of his tranfcendant powers; nor to thwart the hope of exhibiting some faint beams uneclipfed by his fplendor. It was with this emulous spirit that Beaumont and Fletcher, undazzled by the radiance of nature's sweeteft. child,' afpired to his path of glory, and run Their brilliant course round Shakespeare's golden fun. Prompted by the same sentiment, I have been laborious in my art, and my productions in manufcript are voluminous. The day is approaching on which I pro pose to make my first appeal to the public judgment, I am confequently deeply in terested in the removal of a prejudice which opposes every modern effort to en sure applause in the fublimer walks of the science. He who at the moment he is preparing a facred composition for public performance, is told by the advocates for the music of the last age, that no man, after Handel, will ever be qualified to compose an oratorio, cannot but feel the weight of an opinion so detrimental to himlelf and every future composer. It was therefore my wish, through the medium of your widely-circulated publication, to soften the obduracy of this prejudice; and to expatiate on the injurious nature of an attachment, which, while it obftructs the prefent candidate for reputation, deprives the public of the noblest efforts of living talent. Let me then hope, Sir, that I may induce the friends of ancient to with impartiality, and harmo indulgence, to the compof tions of those moderns who revere the old masters, and who endeavour to forin their style on the fame great basis. THOMAS BUSBY. Vauxhall-Road, Jan. 25, 1799. the 4th of July, 1798, as published by the Secretaries. NOTICE of the Labours of the Class of T HE class of Physical Sciences, during the three months which have just elapfed, has heard the reading of many memoirs relative to chemistry, natural hiftory, rural economy, and the art of medicine, as applied to men and animals. Citizen GUYTON, in treating of anomalies in the concatenation of affinities, has shewn that these apparent deviations open to chemists a vast field for new discoveries. He has examined the reasons why there is no combination between the azote and the oxigen which exift fo abundantly in the atmoiphere, and in the state of expanfion commonly so favourable to an union. He points out the means of producing it by the expreffion of caloric in an apparatus capable of fupporting nine or ten times the weight of the atmosphere. The fajne chemist has also been making experiments on the reciprocal decompofition of falts at a temperature below ice, a phenomenon the obfervation of which becomes so important in the operation and management of faline fubftances. He discovers the cause of it in the difplacing of the caloric, which becomes a difaggregative power. Since chemifts have directed their researches to the matter of heat, it is well known that coal is one of the weakest conductors of it. Citizen GUYTON has demonftrated by pyrometrical experiments, that a fubstance inclosed in coals, only receives at the fame fire two-thirds of the heat of a fimilar substance placed in filicious fand, The confequences to be drawn from this fact, may ferve to rectify the processes of reduction and fufion employed to the prefent time. Many chemical operations have been hitherto interrupted for want of a power to augment the intenfity of the fire. The application of an hydraulic principle to the construction of Macquer's furnace, has enabled Citizen GUYTON to carry heat to fuch a point, that a crucible of platina was beginning to enter into fufion; a circumstance not obferved be fore. We have had occafion to remark, in the preceding fitting, that the colouring matter of the emerald of Peru is not iron, as KLAPROTH, a Pruffian chemift, had announced, but rather the oxide of a new metal discovered by Citizen VAUQUELIN, in the red lead of Siberia, The laft analyses 1799.] Proceedings of the National Institute, 4th of July, 1798. 37 analyses of this chemist prove that the emerald is composed of filex of alumine, of a particular earth, to which they have given the name of glucina, of lime, and of oxide of chrome. Hence it appears, that the emerald, and the beryl or aiguemarine, are two stones perfectly fimilar, composed of the same principles, with the exception of the colouring matter. By a scientific application of chemical experiments to the art of dying, Citizen CHAPTAL has discovered a fimple process of easy execution, to give cotton a yellow shamoy colour, more or lefs intenfe. It is particularly by mixing alumine with oxide of iron, that this chemift impresses on his colours a soft velvety glofs, which is never given by oxide employed alone. He has examined the different processes by which the fame oxide is combined with the red of madder, to form the violet colour, and has reduced some very complicated operations to simple principles. He has also explained the reasons why no other vegetable substance can be fubstituted in dying cotton to the gall-nut, whatever quantity of it may be applied. To give a stuff the beautiful red colour known by the name of Andrinople red, they make use in the operation of kali, or foda, oil, gall-nuts, sumach, madder, fulphur mineral, and many other fubstances. Citizen CHAPTAL has investigated the action of the three principal mordicants, oil, gall-nuts, and allum, employed in dying cotton red. Afterwards treating of the more complicated and obscure operations of the art of dying, he has furnished a new proof of what chemistry may do for the improvement of the arts, when it is directed by a fimple and luminous theory. Kali or foda is not confined to the operations of dying cotton only. Soapmanufactories, glass-houses for white glafs, and bleaching fields have a demand and occafion for Spanish kali. France imports of it annually to the amount of four millions, by the ports in the Mediterranean only. It was necessary therefore to encourage amongst us the culture of the plant which furnishes the kali of Alicant, in order to fecure on the spot, fupplies for our most valuable manufactures, and to enrich agriculture and commerce with an annual product of four millions. This is what Citizens CHAPTAL and TEXIER have performed; the first by proving, from a series of many years' experiments, that the plant which furnishes the kali of Alicant, may be cultivated with success on the fouthern coasts of France, and that the kali produced by it is precifely of the same quality as that of Spain: the second by laying down all the necessary instructions hitherto wanted, relative to the culture and combustion of this plant, for the fabrication of kali. Some years ago Citizen CLOUET, an affociate member of the inftitute, had announced the poffibility of converting iron into cast-steel, without having recourse to any preliminary cementation. This procels which he has brought to perfection, is so much the more valuable for the arts in which cast-steel is employed, as it may be procured by this means without having recourse to cementation, or to natural steel, wherever there is to be found good iron, a mixture of alumine and filex, and chalk. The goodness of a piece of artillery is well known to depend essentially on the operations connected with the alloy and the fusion of the metal. The pewter which enters into its compofition fometimes acquires so much heat during the service as to enter into fusion, which has a tendency to injure the cannon. medy this inconvenience, Citizen BEAUME proposes to harden the copper with nickel or with what was formerly called regulus of antimony; neither of these substances being fo fusible as pewter. To re Experiments made at Rambouilet and in different parts of France, have already demonftrated the poffibility of propagating and preferving in all its purity the race of Spanish sheep on the foil of the French republic. Citizen GILBERT has communicated the most copious instructions on this important point of rural economy, and has furnished grounds for the best founded hopes relative to the naturalization in France of those valuable sheep, whole race is perpetuating without any dege neracy. The conquests which we owe to our army of the north, by augmenting 'the riches of the museum of natural hiftory at Paris, have given Citizen LAMARCK an opportunity of tracing with precision the diftinctive characters of the cuttlefish, (la feche) the calmar, and the pulp, (la poulpe) which had been confounded and blended into one fingle kind. He has exposed an error prevalent among fome naturalists, who had mistaken a pulp, which has a habit of lodging in the shell of the argonaut or the papyraceous nautilus, for that animal itself; there is a species of cray-fith called Bernard the Hermit (Bernard L'Hermite) which lodges, in a similar manner, in diferent forts of hell-fish. We We learn, from a very extensive memoir on the organ of the voice, by Citizen CUVIER, that most birds have, independently of an inferior glottis, which is the principal organ of the voice, a fuperior larynx; a mechanism, which enables them to vary their tones with the more facility, as they can, by means of it, easily change the ftate of their glottis, the length of their trachea, and the aperture of their upper larynx. It refults from this organization, that the deepest tones, and the harmonics of the fame tones, are produced by the allongation of the trachea, and the greatest relaxation of the glottis; whilft, by the contraction of the trachea and the condensation of the glottis, the bird produces tones higher in proportion to the shortness of the trachea, together with all the harmonics of the tone, which correfponds to that degree of contraction. Some obfervations, which confirm the utility of mild mercurial muriate, or calomel, in the treatment of the small intercepting substances, present very sensible analogies between the phenomena of Galvanism and those of electricity. Some essential differences, however, appear to militate against this analogy, and will not fuffer us to admit, at least for the present, the identity of a common principle. However it may be, these phenomena, excited by art, are so intimately connected with those of the animal economy, that it may be adviseable, in order to catch these connections, to look in the one for the application of the others. The refult of these experiments, made to verify the phenomena of Galvanism, have been lately committed to the prefs. (The other claffes in our next.) PROGRAMMA of the Prizes of the NATIONAL INSTITUTE of SCIENCES and ARTS, proposed in the public Sitting of July 4th. CLASS of Moral and Political Sciences. PRIZE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. pox, by Citizen DESESSARTS, together THE class of Moral and Political Sciences had proposed the following question as the fubject of the prize for the year VI.:' What are the objects and conditions for, and according to which, a republican state may judge it exfedient to open pubiic loans? with fome profound researches by Citizen HUZARD, on a malady which affects the organs of generation in hories, have alfo been the object of the attention of the class. Many of its members have been principally occupied with the care of afcertaining by a multiplicity of experiments, the phenomena of Galvanikin. mily to extend, and what limits should be prescribed to it, in a well-conflituted republic? This name is given to a discovery which Dr. GALVANI, a member of the Institute of Bologna, made many years ago, and from which it refults, that when a contiguous series of metals, commonly differ ent from one another, are put into contact on the one fide with a nerve, and on the other with a muscle, or even with different and diftant parts of the fame nerve, at the instant of the double contact, a rapid and convulfive motion takes place in the muscle into which the nerve is diftributed. This phenomenon feems to prefent to the mind the idea of a circle, a portion of which is formed by the excitatory metals, and the other by the nervous and mufcular organs. Different fubstances may concur to form this circle, and to excite its effects. Other different ones may break the circle, and fufpend or intercept those effects. It has been remarked, that there are fubitances which feem to PRIZE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. How far ought the power of a father of a fa PRIZE OF GEOGRAPHY. To determine what are the great changes which bave taken place on the furface of the globe, and which are either indicared or proved by Liftors? PRIZE OF MORAL.S. The class of Moral and Political Sciences had proposed the following question as a fubject of the prize for the year VII.: What are the propereft institutions on which ta found the morals of a people ? CLASS of Literature and Fine Arts, PRIZE OF POETRY. The class of Literature and Fine Arts proposes for the fubject of the prize of poetry : Liberty; as an ode, a poem, a discourse in verfe, or an epifile. CLASS of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. SUBJECT OF TWO PRIZES IN PHYSICS. The class of Mathematical and Phyfical Sciences of the Institute had proposed in the extinguish this fingular faculty in the year IV. as the fubject of a prize which it Walpoliana, No. X. animal, whilft others excite and re effablish it when it appears dead or dormant. The rapidity of the effect, and the promptitude of the communication, the nature and the participation of the exciting and was to adjudge in the public affembly of Vendemiaire, of the year VII. the use to which the liver is applied in the different claffes of animals. The memoirs were to have been received before the 1st Germinal of that year, as the chas had judged it necessary to referve te 1799.1 to itself fix months for the examination of the labours, and the repetition of the experiments which it expected from the candi dates. This subject, so important, which the Academy of Sciences had proposed in 1792, and which the Institute judged it should again offer to the researches and meditations of the learned, has not been handled as was expected; only a fingle memoir has arrived, in which the question is not even so much as fketched out, and its author, who has neither perceived the scope nor true state of it, has bewildered himself in the labyrinth of ancient hypothefes, and has not profited by the anatomical and chemical resources which the Institute had pointed out in its programma. This fcantiness of works on a subject so interesting to one of the finest and most useful branches of phyfics, has led the Institute to imagine that the magnitude and extent of this question, and more especially the difficulty of finding united in one single perion the anatomical and chemical knowledge which the folution required, were the causes why no candidate had as yet appeared. Not to sheck the zeal of naturalists in the agitation 39 of so important a question, the Institute has thought fit to divide it into two branches, and to make it the subject of two prizes, by devoting to it, with the medal which was to have been adjudged in the year VII. on the totality of the question already indicated, that which is to be disposed of for the present year; confequently it proposes for the subject of the two prizes, to determine the functions of the liver, by separating what has a relation to the anatomical structure of the hepatic system, from that which belongs to the chemical examination of the liquids and folids of that system. The first of these prizes will have for its object the form, the fituation, the magnitude, the comparative weight, and the description of the paren-chyma, of the veffels, of the canals of the appendices of the liver, confidered in the principal classes of animals, from man to infects, the mollusca and worms. The second prize will have for its object the analysis of the bepatic or cyftic bile in the different classes of animals already noticed. The works may be written in French or Latin, or in any other language the authors chuse to adopt. WALPOLIANA; OR, BONS MOTS, APOPHTHEGMS, OBSERVATIONS ON LIFE AND LITERATURE, WITH EXTRACTS FROM ORIGINAL LETTERS, OF THE LATE HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD. NUMBER X. * This Article is communicated by a Literary Gentleman, for many years in habits of intimacy with Mr. WALPOLE. It is partly drawn up from a collection of Bons-Mots, &c. in his oron band-writing; partly from Anecdotes written down after long Conversations with him, in which be would, from four o'Clock in the Afternoon, till two in the Morning, display those treasures of Anecdote with which bis Rank, Wit, and Opportunities, bad replenished bis Memory; and parily from Original Letters to the Compiler, on subjects of Taste and Literature. CXLI. CELLINI'S BELL. NE of the pieces in my collection which I the most highly value, is the filver bell with which the popes used to curse the caterpillars, a ceremony I believe now abandoned. Lahontan, in his travels, mentions a like abfurd custom in Canada, the folemn excommunication, by the bishop, of the, turtle-doves, which greatly injured the plantations. For this bell I exchanged with the Marquis of Rockingham all my Roman coins in large brass. The relievos, reprefenting caterpillars, butterflies, and other infects, are wonderfully executed. Cellini, the artist, was one of the most extraordinary men in an extraordinary age. His life, written by himself, is more amufing than any novel I know. CXLII. ENVY. Envy, though one of the worst and meanest of our paffions, feems somehow atural to the human breast. This senti ment is well expreft by a French poet, in a drama on the banishment of Ariftides: Je ne le connois point; Je l'exile à regret; Mais que ne jouit il de fa gloire en secret? CXLIII. SULLY'S MEMOIRS. "It is history, madam: you know how the tale goes," faid Cardinal Mazarine to the queen dowager of France. But in no respect is history more uncertain than in the defcription of battles. Sully obferves that when, after the battle of Aumale, the officers were standing around the bed of Henry IV. not two of all the number could agree in their aocount of the engagement. Though the original folio edition of Sully's Memoirs be very confused in the arrangement, it is worth while to turn it over for many curious particulars. The account of his embassy to James I. is particularly interesting, and lays open the politics of that day with a masterly hand. It |