1818.] Reports of Public Institutions. ing ignition in fire arms, by the condensation of atmospheric air. July 22, 1818. Henry CreiGHTON, of the city of Glasgow, civil engineer; for a new 149 method of regulating the admission of steam into pipes or other vessels, used for the heating of buildings, or other places. July 22, 1818. REPORTS OF PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. 1. Report of the Committee of the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, and for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders. THIS Institution originated three years ago in the exertions of a few individuals, whose philanthropy was excited by the cases of several boys convicted of capital offences. Having entered upon an inquiry into the subject, it was found that juvenile delinquency existed in the metropolis to a most alarming extent; that a system was in action by which unfortunate children were organized into gangs that they resorted to houses where they planned their enterprizes, and afterwards divided the plunder. Upon this a public meeting was convened, and a society formed, the object of which was to obtain information respecting the nature and causes of the evil, and to ascertain the most efficient means of removing or diminishing it. With this view the members of the committee arranging themselves into subdivisions, visited the prisons in and about London; examined the boys apart; pursued their enquiries among the parents, friends, or associates of the culprits; kept a journal of cases, in which all particulars were carefully recorded; and in short adopted every measure likely to ensure an accurate knowledge of the extent of the evil and the causes of its increase. In the present report these causes are stated to be 1. the neglect of moral and religious education: 2. the want of suitable employment for children in early life: 3. the want of necessaries to support life. Besides these general sources of early vice, there are others of a peculiar character, as,-1. Flash houses, where boys and girls frequently associate with common thieves and prostitutes.-2. The fairs in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, where every species of debauchery and profligacy is practised eighty-two days in the space of seven months.-3. The severity of the penal laws, which, instead of checking, may be said to give encouragement to crime, in consequence of the leniency of Juries, and the impunity shewn to early offenders. But though the committee dwell emphatically upon these points, they attribute the prevalence of juvenile delinquency, and the general increase of crime rather to the which is more disgraceful to a moral present state of our prison discipline, nation than any or all of the causes that have been enumerated. the report is very full, and it is to be Upon this head hoped that means will be devised for the correction of this crying abuse. powerful remedy, which has suggested One itself to the committee, and deserves public attention, is that of establishing a Reformatory for boys, combining in an eminent degree these most important requisites:- The power of complete and constant inspection, classification and facilities for carrying on various branches of labour. This is the tried plan of the Philanthropic Institution in St. George's Fields, the success of which holds out a sufficient inducement for an extension of such foundations over the kingdom. We are sorry to find from this report, that "the expenses necessarily incurred have exhausted the very limited funds of the Society;" but we trust that when their object becomes generally known, the co-operation of the benevolent will not be wanting to enable them to go on with renewed vigour in this good work: further particulars of which may be known of WILLIAM ALLEN, Esq. Plough Court, Lombard Street; THOMAS FOWELL BUXTON, Esq. Spitalfields; SAMUEL HOARE, JUN. Esq. Lombard Street; and DR. LUSHINGTON, Doctor's Commons. II. Statement of the Society for the Sup pression of Mendicity. The Board of Management have taken a house in Red Lion Square for the transaction of business, and another contiguous, where soup is served to those who produce tickets; besides which, temporary lodging is provided for such as would otherwise be consigned to the streets. Tickets are sold to non-subscribers at two-pence each; by which means the objects of charity will have a larger quantity of wholesome nourishment than can be elsewhere procured for that sum. When a mendicant applies with one of these tickets, if he be not already known at the office, an exa 150 Proceedings of Philosophical Societies. mination takes place by the sitting member of the Board, in order to ascertain the state of the beggar, and to provide for his further relief, if he be an object of real distress; but if the applicant proves to be an impostor, or a confirmed vagrant, the Secretary is instructed to put the law in force. The following table exhibits a pretty correct idea of the state of mendicity, and of the utility of this Institution: Obtained parochial relief by the interference of the Society Provided with employment and partly clothed Relieved and sent to parishes in the country Relieved and sent to sea } } } 74 [Sept. 1, amination as to their acquaintance with the leading doctrines of christianity, and the facts of scripture history; their proficiency in all which delighted and astonished the meeting. Honorary medals and premiums were presented by the chairman to such of the pupils as had peculiarly distinguished themselves. After the examination the Rev. Dr. Ritchie read the report of the directors during the past year, and one from the committee of ladies, as to the internal management of the Institution, and education of the female pupils, both of which were stated to be altogether excellent. Upon a motion for recommending the 29 Institution to the attention of the various counties and presbyteries, it was observed that the number of deaf and dumb persons in Scotland was not less than eight hundred. Nothing, therefore, the measure here detailed for making could be more judiciously imagined than the charity generally known by a perambulation of the tutor with a select num 34 22 16 15 19 Fully clothed and sent to sea Corporation 3 Taken into the charge of Foreign 4 ber of his scholars. In 1814, Mr. Kinni Consuls An annual subscription of one guinea constitutes a governor; and a donation of ten guineas within the year, a life governor. III. Report of the Institution for the burgh went to Glasgow with a few of his pupils, who underwent two examinations in public, in presence of crowded meetings of the inhabitants. An auxiliary Society was immediately formed there, by the aid of whose contributions a considerable number of additional pupils have ever since received the benefits of instruction in the Institution. Encouraged by this success, Mr. Kinniburgh and a few of his pupils were sent last autumn to the north. His first public examination was at Dundee, whence he proceeded along the coast to Aberdeen and Inverness, and returned by Perth. He exhibited the progress of his pupils at every considerable town upon this route, and meetings have been held in consequence at several places for the formation of auxiliary Societies, in aid of the parent Institution. adopted with equal advantage in the This proceeding, we think, might be southern part of the island, by which means similar Institutions would no doubt be established in the principa cities and county towns of England. PROCEEDINGS OF PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETIES. 1. ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AT LISBON. On the 24th of June this learned body held a public Session. Its proceedings were prefaced by a short discourse pro nounced by the Vice-President, the Marquis of Borba, one of the governors of the kingdom. The Secretary then made a statement of the labours of the Society, and of the memoirs which had 1818.] Proceedings of Philosophical Societies. been presented and read during the preceding year. Sebastian Francisco de Mendo Trigoso afterwards read a memoir on the five first editions of The Lusiad of Camoens. He was followed by Mattheus Valente de Conto, who read an introduction to a memoir which had gained a prize, relative to the programma of the Academy, upon the demonstration of rules given by Wronski, for the general reduction of equations. Joseph Maria Soares read a compendious statement of the General History of Medicine, from the beginning of the Portuguese monarchy: this statement is intended to form an introduction to his History of Medical Science in Portugal. Sebastian Francisco de Mendo Trigoso read a memoir on the establishment of the Arcadia in Lisbon, and on its influence in the restoration of Portugese literature. The author of this memoir is Francisco Manoel Trigoso de Aragam Morato. After these proceedings, the academician Ignacio Antonio da Fonseca Benevides read an historical recapitulation of the labours of the Vaccine Institution, in the course of the preceding year. Time would not admit of the reading of other memoirs, and the following were therefore omitted: - One by Francisco Elias Roderigues da Silveira, upon medical empiricism; another by Antonio de Aranjo Travassos, upon the means of abbreviating typographical labour; and a third, by Constantino Botelho de Lacerda Lobo, on the unequal temperature of the solar rays, separated by the prism. It appears that the following works were printed by the Academy within the last 12 months:The fifth volume of the Chronological Index of the Portuguese Laws and Edicts, by the Desembargador (the Judge), John Peter Ribeiro: a Treatise on the Practice of Medicine, by Joseph Pinheiro de Freitas Soares; and the second part of the third volume of the Memoirs of the Academy. 2.-FRENCH INSTITUTE. Public Sitting of the Royal Academy of The Sitting of the 17th of July was opened by the announcement of the prizes proposed for competition in the years 1819 and 1820; next was read the decision pronounced on the memoirs sent for the competition of 1818; and finally the prizes were proclaimed. The subject proposed for 1818 was the combination in one Memoire of all that can be collected respecting the 151 Annals of the Lagides, or the Chronology of the Kings of Egypt, from the death of Alexander the Great, to the subjugation of the country by the Romans, after the death of Cleopatra, the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes. The prize was adjudged to the Memoire enregistered under No. 1, the motto of which was, Et ament indulgere periti, (The author is M. J. J. Champollion Figleac). The Academy deemed worthy of honourable mention a Memoire, having for its motto the following words of Tacitus : Opus aggredior, opimum casibus, atrox præliis, discors seditionibus, ipsa pace sævum. loudly applauded, M. Raoul Rochette After this proclamation, which was read, for M. Dacier, a biographical notice on the late Ginguené, or rather on the works of that estimable man, whose political opinions seem not always to have enjoyed the advantage of being approved by the Secretary General. The author of the notice pronounced the sincerest eulogy on all that is good in the works of the deceased, and all that was still better in his private character. We shall not notice a learned Memoire on the discoveries made in several islands of Asia, from ancient times up to the period of the voyages of Magellan; it is one of those productions, the merits of which cannot be decided on without mature consideration; it is impossible to analyse it from a single reading. The author is M. Walckenaer, a man distin guished for learning. The general observations on the Egyptian Medals, by M. Tochon d'Annecy, are probably good; but though read by M. Quatre-Mere de Quincy, but little attention was paid to them; and the President finding it would be difficult to enter on another subject, without incurring the risk of a total desertion, prudently closed the Sitting a quarter of an hour before the usual time. All these memoirs were replete with sound erudition, though the subjects precluded the possibility of sacrificing to the Graces. Perhaps the most interesting, though we have omitted mentioning it in its proper place, was a notice by M. Dacier, on the life and writings of the celebrated geographical en gineer, David Niebuhr, who died in Saxony on the 25th of April, 1814. It abounds in facts hitherto but little known; it was listened to with an unusual degree of attention, and the interest was 152 The Basso-Relievo at the New Custom House. [Sept. 1, increased by the manner in which M. vestigated, would afford certain indicaRaoul Rochette read the Essay. 3.-ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. In one of the recent Sittings of this Academy at Paris, M. Percy, in the name of the Committee, presented a Report on the memoir of Dr. Laennec, Physician to the Necker Hospital, relative to a new mode of demonstration, proper to develope, with greater exactitude than any yet adopted, the various diseases of the lungs and of the heart. The properties which solid bodies possess, the tube, the trump, or portevoix, &c. of transmitting to the ear even the feeblest sounds and impulses, had suggested to M. Laennec the idea of studying, with the assistance of similar instruments, the different sounds, intonations, and movements which take place within the interior of the chest, and their coincidence or sympathies with a state of health or of disorder. The voice, the respiration, the noises within the throat, and the oscillations of the heart, so in tions of several maladies, which, in the present state of science, we could scarcely have thought of. One of these indications, among others, showed the existence of ulcers in the lungs, their extent, their state of greater or lesser fullness, the nature and consistence of the matter which they contained. The instrument which M. Laennec used for these purposes was a cylinder of wood, which, according to the nature of the proposed examination, should be solid, pierced from one end to the other by a straight canal or cavity, or widened at one extremity in the manner of a horn. According to the favourable manner in which this improvement is spoken of in the memoir, it appears that the extent of the results already obtained, or those which may rationally be looked for, by means of the above instrument of demonstration, is not less remarkable than its simplicity. FINE ARTS. THE BASSO-RELIEVO AT THE NEW CUSTOM-HOUSE. THE absurd and unjust assertion which has been made by prejudiced writers, that the climate of this island and the temperament of its inhabitants must necessarily prevent the successful progress of the arts, has been, even in our own times, triumphantly disproved. We do not-we dare not challenge a competition with the great masters of the ancients, but we confidently invite a comparison of the late works of the English school with the contemporaneous productions of any other: and we are convinced that the result of a dispassionate examination would not merely place us on a level with our neighbours, but would assign to us a proud and a deserved pre-eminence. Our best artists are now sedulously employed in the study of nature, and have successfully retraced their steps to that unadulterated source of information., They are convinced of the justice of the observation of one of our own poets: First follow Nature, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same: At no time could the ELGIN MARBLES have arrived so happily, or have con tributed so effectually to the progress of the cause of art. The eyes of the artist and the amateur are now cleared of the film which has long oppressed and distorted their vision: they have already begun to recur to nature and the simplest principles of composition, and in these admirable works they find an illustration of the efficacy of such a course of study: they behold all that is beautiful in nature, sublimated and refined by art, but still remaining untouched and unaltered in its essential qualities. There are, however, some who err as much in anticipating a sudden renovation in the arts of design, as those who have prophesied their eternal debasement. We have ever been foremost in our admiration of the Elgin marbles. We consider them to be the purest models of imitation, and were ardent in our hopes of the amended taste which their presence in this country would be likely to induce; but we are too old to believe that even their radiance taste which had been so long accumuwould instantly dispel the clouds of bad lating. The rising race of artists will exhibit more than the present; the improvements which they are calculated to effect, the next in succession will evince still more; and thus will they act in pro 1818.1 The Basso-Relievo at the New Custom House. gression until the happy time shall arrive when they may be equalled, or, if possible, surpassed. These considerations suggested them selves to us on viewing the bas-reliefs at the NEW CUSTOM HOUSE. One would have imagined that the influence of the exquisite marbles, of which we have been speaking, would have been first perceptible in the art of sculpture, and particularly in the department of basso-relievo; but we are sorry to say, that in this instance not the remotest trace of their ascendant power is discernible. We cannot imagine how any one, to whom such an interesting and extensive work was entrusted, could have imbibed so little of the feeling of those excellent models, which were with in his reach, and were pressed upon his notice, not merely by their intrinsic merit, but by the concurring admiration of all whose opinion in art is valuable. The Custom-House, as most of our readers know, is situated on the banks of the Thames, from the edge of which it is separated by a very broad and beautiful terrace, affording an excellent and unusually good view of the building and its appendages. On each side of the centre of the new building is placed a very long basso-relievo, and other sculptural decorations are introduced; the following account is extracted from a description of the building by Mr. Laing the architect: "The compartment on the eastern side represents Britannia seated on her car, attended by Strength, Justice, Naval Power, and Victory: this group forms the centre. On the right hand of Britannia, Philosophy is introducing Jurisprudence, Mathematics, Chemistry, and Navigation-sciences indispensably necessary to the prosperity of our insular power, whose establishments and colonies are found in all parts of the world, and whose vessels circumnavigate the globe. Following the sciences are the virtues-Charity, Hope, and Faith, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence. The polite arts are ranged on the left of Britannia, where Wisdom and Genius are leading on Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. History and Astronomy are placed in succession to these; and the composition closes by the sister Muses in company, whose various offices and employments allude to the elegant and refined studies in all their branches. "The compartment on the western side of the central inscription represents, as a leading and general idea by a group in the centre, the four quarters of the globe, Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, offering their commodities to the British empire, symbolized by natives of the three kingdoms. NEW MONTHLY MAG,—No, 56, 153 On each side of this principal group are placed inhabitants of the various countries which have formed mercantile connections with Britain: these are dressed in their various costumes as representatives of their respective nations; Abyssinia, Africa, Arabia, Brazil, Caful, Canada, China, Egypt, Hindostan, Holland, Lapland, Pennsylvania, Spain, Turkey, &c. &c. These characters Peru, Poland, Prussia, Russia, Saxony, or personages are promiscuously grouped to shew the intermingling nature of commerce, which promotes universal intercourse, and gives whatever is wanting or whatever can be furnished by every people without exception; and, in fact, such representatives of various nations do assemble indiscrimi nately in this public edifice. "The prevailing intention of the general allegory is to shew that commerce, founded tude, virtue, and knowledge, produces that on public protection, and guided by rectiopulence which encourages and supports national clegance; and the arts, in their various departments, contribute to furnish fresh materials for the operations and employment of commerce, to the great conve nience, emolument, and civilization of all nations throughout the globe." The remaining figures in this part are thus described. They are situated in the centre and on a part of the building called the King's Warehouse. "The sitting figure placed over the western extremity of the entrance to the King's Warehouse, is Britannia. bellished with the arms of St. George: She is distinguished by her shield, em on her head a helmet; and while she grasps in her right hand the spear which she holds an olive branch, on a of defence she rests her left hand, in globe, expressive of her desire to extend the blessings of peace to all the world. The caduceus marks her commerce: the cornucopia indicates the result of that commerce in wealth and plenty; the British lion hints at the power and readiinterest taken by the nation at large in ness of her protection, and the general the welfare and security of the commerce issuing from and returning to the port of her capital. The figure placed over the eastern extremity of the entrance to the King's Warehouse represents Neptune, armed with his trident, recumbent on a seahorse." Over the centre is the royal arms. The idea of the allegory is good; but the mode in which it is conveyed to the spectator is extremely deficient and ambiguous. The composition is entirely destitute of sentiment: no impression is made on the mind of the obVOL. X, X |