Gardens, and other places in this neighbourhood, formerly the resort of the gay and the vicious, are now scarcely remembered: and the Philanthropic Reform The Free Mason's Charity School The Magdalen-The School for the Indigent Blind-The Surrey Institution The intended Hospital for Lunatics The Asylum for Female Orphans-The School for the Deaf and Dumb-And the Widow's Alms houses, near Hangman's Acre; may now be reckoned among the more useful and recent erections. The Alms-houses have been, within these few days, opened for the use of twenty-four aged widows, and a discourse delivered on the occasion to near three thousand persons, by the Rev. Rowland Hill, in the open air. Among the recent alterations in Lambeth, may be mentioned the enclosures, and the new workhouse on Norwood Common; which has given much dissatisfaction to many of the householders, as partaking too much of the "parish job." The building, which cost the parishioners 9,142l. 18s. 5 d. has been publicly declared by an intelligent gentleman, to be not worth half the money! The new vestry room is only large enough for a committee, so that on the public meetings of this extensive parish, an adjournment to the church is yet found necessary. On the site of this new vestry, stood a house much remarked for the antiquity of its appearance; and of which I have a correct drawing. A direct communication bas for some time been made from the Marsh Gate, ar Lambeth, to Bermondsey, but it requires improvements. The new road, from the Bricklayer's Arms to Blackman-strect, is now nearly completed, and a thoroughfare from the latter place, near Stone's-end, to the entrance of the New Cut, is in contemplation, and would be a real improvement: some of the roads from the Strand Bridge I have, with other particulars, before described in your Magazine for November, 1811. Pedlar's Acre, near Westminsterbridge, is remarkable on account of the gallery and manufactory of artificial stone, by Coade and Sealey, being on that spot; as well as from the tradition that this land was given to the parish of Lambeth by a pedlar, on condition that the portrait of himself and his dog should be kept in the church. With regard to the pedlar's legacy, some doubt is en tertained of the fact; the effigy painted on glass, twenty-four inches by sixteen, is now visible in the south-east window of Lambeth church; some have thought it intended to represent Tobit and his dog; others think it designed for DoșSmith, who died 1627. In the yeall 1505, this land let for two shillings per annum; and some years since it was let for the yearly rent of one hundred pounds, the lessee paying a fine of eight hundred pounds. The gallery of artificial stone has been lately neglected, though the Polyphemus, and other fine performances there, were much admired: at the manufactory, the ingenious Mr. Dubbin and Mr. Penzetta are employed as modellers. They have been for some time at work on the Duke of Northumberland's intended present to the Prince Regent of Portugal, designed as a superb gateway to his palace, at the Brazils; as well as on the grand performance now exhibiting there, intended for the chapel of Greenwich Hospital, to commemorate the gallant Nelson. In this monument he is represented expiring in the arms of Britannia, who receives the trident which Neptune has delivered to Fame, &c. Among the most remarkable inhabitants of Lambeth, might formerly be reckoned the persecuting bishop Bonner, whose dwelling, &c. I have already described in the Monthly Mirror for May, 1806. John Tradescant should also be mentioned as the first man in this kingdom that distinguished himself as a collector of natural and artificial curiosities: in "Philos. Transact." tab. 4 and 5, page 88, are views of his tomb in Lambeth church-yard. In Lambeth Marsh, was also the Lyceum of Erasmus King, who read lectures and exhibited experiments in natural philosophy; once coachman to, and afterwards the rival of, the famous Dr. Desaguliers. And it was in Lambeth fields, (as we are told,) that Dr. Foreman, the astrologer, used to hold his conferences with the devil. But, to such as are fond of the marvelJous, few places on the Surrey side of the Thames can have more attractions than a building at Newington, on which is presumptuously inscribed, "The House of God!" This place was formerly a car. penter's shop; and, though Mr. Carpenter, the present visionary preacher there, may be said to use other materials in his trade, it is still called by some wags, "Carpenter's Shop." And it is a singular fact, that his door-keeper, about sixteen years ago, used this place as a cock-pit. The singular paintings which SOME OME doubts have long since been advanced in your valuable publica tion, whether Captain Manty was the original inventor of the methods he made use of for saving the lives of shipwrecked stamen, and for which he received a premium of two thousand pounds, grant ed by the honorable the House of ComInous, on a motion made by Mr. Curwen, April 12, 1810. The time is at last arrived for me to make my appeal to a candid public, relative to this subject. It is well known to many gentlemen high in office in London, as well as in the country, that I have claimed these inventions; the authenticity of my being the first and original inventor is clear, from the following copy of my claim, which is humbly submitted as a proof of my assertion. The inventions undermentioned I communicated to the governor of Trinity House, London, in the month of De cember, 1799, to obtain a premium then said to be offered by that house, for new methods of saving the lives of shipwrecked seamen; and to be, as I imagined, first made trial of by them, in order to ascertain their merit, if they would more effectually relieve suffering humanity than those then in use; namely: 1. Method of shooting a line or rope affixed to a grapple, froin the shore to a ship in distress; and from a vessel in distress to the shore, or upon a rock or cliff; by the aid of which, shipwrecked seamen might, with a double or running Tape, expeditiously get to land, and over cliffs, without any assistance from the shore, when that cannot be procured. Explained by drawings representing the grapple, its sliding ring, and double rope. 2. Method of shooting a line from a musket or fawling-piece, from a vessel in distress to the shore; and also, by the Same method, to shoot a line from the shore to the people in distress on board ship. Explained by drawings representing the rodded ball, line, &c. 3. Method of expeditiously landing shipwrecked seamen: first, by their own exertions; secondly, by those on shore. With the uses aud management of the double running rope; accompanied with copious directions for putting the whole into practice. Thus far to the TrinityHouse at the time above specified. In the months of April, May, and June, 1810, I sent my claim to my representatives, to the late minister Mr. Perceval, to the committee who sat on Mr. Manby's claim, and to the Lords of the Admiralty. The answers were, that I had applied too late; and the latter could not interfere, as parliament had granted the premium to Captain Manby, I also wrote to the governor of the TrinityHouse, by letter, post paid, requesting the favour to know if my papers were still in that office, if not, who had them? but he did not think proper to answer me. I transmitted the following to Lord St. Vincent, when his lordship was First Lord of the Admiralty, for which I received a letter of thanks from his lordship, dated Admiralty, April 21, 1804; namely: Method of shooting a grapple from a vessel near shore to land, over rocks, cliffs, &c. affixed to a runuing rope; by the aid of which, seamen or troops might easily ascend, and thereby attack an enemy from an unsuspected quarter. At the same time I sent two other inventions to Lord St. Vincent, with the above, which I beg not to name at present, but have done it fully in my clains long since sent to London; but it would be doing myself justice were I to omit to declare, that one of the last was a short time after tried, approved, and adopted, by government, and since often put into practice, and deemed a great invention. As I directed it to be made, it is made; as I proposed it should be prepared, so it is now done; as I said it would act, so it has acted; and performs the very operations which I recommend◄ ed it for! An officer has received the merit and reward of this also! My reward has been a letter of thanks, considerable expence, and much pains. This is stifling genius in its birth; if one person is to invent, and others have the honor and the rewards thereof: to what era are we now arrived? How ever, I do not despair but that some virtuous feeling characters will yet take my case into consideration. C. HUMPHRIES. Moreton Hampstead, near Exeter, June 29, 1812. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. I SIR, BEG leave to return your correspondent, W. F. page 435 of your last volume, my thanks for the very handsome manner in which he has express ed himself, in controverting some of my positions concerning the management of cider. I trust to his candor while I explain in what respect I differ from him: I am not desirous of retaining the saccharine principle in the cider longer than till it be pressed from the apple and put into casks, well knowing that no çider can be strong which has not fermented. By strong, I mean, of course, that which contains a large quantity of alcohol. I am aware that it is a practice in some cider districts to adopt such methods as are pursued by your corre spondent, and, no doubt, for the purpose of a lady's cider, i. e. a sweet and weak liquor, those methods are the proper ones for obtaining it; but in this part of the county such processes are not commonly practised; and, strange as it may appear to W. F. I assure him that the farmers here rack their cider very commonly after it is fermented,- -a very in judicious proceeding truly, but not the only one for which many farmers are to be blamed. W. F. will, I am sure, excuse me if I remark that, although his explanation of his processes for preserving the sweets in cider be sufficiently explicit, yet it appears to me that he has not had in his view the chemical decomposition which all saccharine juices, at a given temperature and liquidity, are naturally disposed to undergo, which chemical de'composition we usually call fermentation. At such process the liquor is in continual agitation; a quantity of alcohol, proportioned to the quantity of sugar in the liquor, is of course formed (in cider usually about one twelfth); and at the same time a large portion of carbonic acid gas is disengaged, which escapes, in minute bubbles, from the surface of the liquor, producing the noise usually termed by the farmers singing; and, as long as any sugar remains without decomposition, the liquor will retain a degree of sweet ness in the ratio of a quantum of sugar. The same processes apply to wines whether foreign or domestic; and it is easy to see the real reason why a voyage to the West Indies is calculated to make wines (good-bodied ones of course) better: the fermentation or decomposition of the saccharine matter being more completely effected by a farther addition of heat; and which the hold of a ship, and the temperature of the West Indies, seem well calculated to produce. From this view of the subject, it appears that the processes of W. F. are calculated" to prevent fermentation," as he says; to obstruct the process for the formation of alcohol, so that such cider must be continually able to go into that decomposition, unless kept in an unusually cold place, a small addition of heat being almost at any time sufficient to begin it; for, except at or below the freezing point or very near it, cider, if left to itself, will ferment in the winter temperature of Somersetshire. It is just such cider as this which is, I presume, found frequently in London in bottles, and which, when the cork is drawn, rises with much froth out of the bottle, from the incipient fermentation; but such ci- ́ der is, I should suppose, very likely to disagree with many stomachs, and to afflict the bowels with spasm, as newlypressed cider is commonly known to do. I have explained thus far, although I did not suppose, when I last wrote on the subject, that such explanation was necessary; for want of which, it seems, I have been misunderstood. W. F. and I are perfectly agreed on the necessity of the complete maturity of the apple before its juice is expressed for cider; and I hope he will do me the justice to believe that, in these remarks, I have but one object in view, namely, the pursuit of truth. I apprehend it is very easy to differ, and still agree; ame. nity in disputation is at all times desira ble-would that it were at all times to be found. JAMES JENNINGS. Huntspill, June 26, 1812. P.S. On acetic acid, p. 425. I have as yet seen no reason to alter my opinion. If your correspondent could not obtain the acid by my description of the process, he has, perhaps, failed from not attending to two or three things which are essential pre-requisites. To obtain genuine vinegar-to use concentrated sulphuric acid about the specific gravity of 18409 at least, or the acetate of lime might not be sufficiently dry. However it is my intention to go through, at my first leisure, a new series of processes ou this subject; and should I discover any errors in my my former results, they shall be communicated through the channel of the Monthly Magazine. In addition to what I have said above, con cerning the disengagement of carbonic acid gas from cider in the state of fermentation, I would say that there seems to be, besides carbonic acid, a portion of some sulphurated gas, with the exact properties of which I am not acquainted; but I believe this gas is emitted in the earlier stages of the process principally, if not entirely. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR, YOUR YOUR Correspondent Mr. J. Brit. schmeister, who, at page 408 of your last Volume, inquires respecting the manner of converting musical ratios into the notation by E, f, and m, which I some years ago introduced for the purposes of musical calculations, through the medium of the Philosophical Magazine, is doubtless aware, not only of the unnatural, but difficult, process, in most practicable instances, of adding musical intervals (when expressed by ratios of the lengths of their sounding strings) by multiplying the terms of their ratios, and of subtracting them by dividing their terms, &c. He can scarcely also have failed to observe, that, though logarithms represent musical, in common with all other, ratios, yet that, correctly speaking, they do so only when an indefinitely great number of places of figures are used, the least or the greatest musical intervals, those having the most simple ratios (as), having just as long a sound and complicated a common logarithm as the largest, most incommensurate, or complicated, ratio: besides their increasing when the intervals decrease. He is probably also aware, (as I have elsewhere shewn,) that, if any three independent diatonic intervals are sumed, all other diatonic intervals whatever may be correctly expressed in terms of these, by addition and subtrac tion only; as the octave, fifth, and third, or viii. v. and iii., for instance; or, what most writers on harmonics have used, the major and minor tone and hemitone, or T, t, and H; but in the use of which notations, it is plain, that all intervals smaller than the least in the notation, as well as many larger ones, can only be expressed by the use of negative signs, which in addition and subtraction are perplexing to all but mathematicians: and to whom even a calculation is often necessary to discover which are the largest of two intervals 1 25 expressed in these notations involving large intervals and negative signs. Now, instead of assuming three large and well-known intervals for my nota tion, as all previous writers on the subject had done, I made an industrious search into the manuscripts of the late Marmaduke Overend, Dr. Boyce, and others, now in the library of the Royal Institution, for the three smallest intervals which the authors had discovered, as the results of continued compoundings and subtractings of the well known intervals; and these, schisma, lesser frac tions, and most minute, the last being less than the 11400th part of a comma, or 1-78118th part of an octave, I adopted as the terms of my notation, for avoiding negative signs, and for producing an increasing series in all the terins expressing an increasing series of intervals. Not to lengthen this letter unnecessa rily, I beg to subjoin part of a table, which, but for the extraordinary conduct of Dr. Abraham Rees, would long ago have been before the public, instead of being returned to my drawer, viz. having decimals annexed to the Σs, 494.052904 10 43 expresses, the false major seventh of the trumpet, or of a musical string. Larger numbers than those found in the table must be separated into their component primes, or tabular numbers; thus, for the major comma, 80 ÷ 81, we bave 8 X 109 X 9, and the expressions for 8 and 10 must be added together, and for 9 and 9, and then subtracted, thus: 995880 76 386 +10=3869 76 335 11 U 1, or 11 m. The converse of these operations, or reducing intervals, given in this notation to numerical ratios, will be easy, by help of columns 3 and 4 of my original table, in plate 5, vol. xxvii, of Mr. Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine. The important theoretical and practical application of numerous intervals, before itle understood and seldom heard, that is now making by Mr. Liston's Enhar monic Organs, exhibiting at Messrs. Fight and Robson's, in St. Martin'skane, and exemplified in his "Essay on perfect Intonation," gives this subject a more than ordinary degree of interest at the present moment. Westminster, June 1, 1812. P. S. Had you, Mr. Fditor, been able seven months earlier to have found room for the polite "composition" addressed to me, in page 506 of your last Volume, I should have deemed any notice of the same improper; and this delay alone occasions me to request, all whom it may interest, To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. I SIR, T appears, from the documents now before the public, that there was an understanding between his Majesty's late government and the East India Company, that the China trade, as carried on by the latter, shall not be thrown open to the general commerce of the empire, but that the company shall be allowed to retain the monopoly of this their most important and lucrative trade. And, in order to prepare the public mind for such arrange ment, much gratuitous assertion has been brought forward by interested individuals without a shadow of proof, and argu ments adduced which, if deserving of weight, certainly make against the East India Company. The subject is a most important one, and will, I trust, meet with the most mature consideration of parliament. In the view I take of the subject, I cannot but think that, in ten years after the doing away of all commercial monopoly throughout the various and extensive shores of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the country will have abundant cause to rejoice that its present commercial distresses have imperiously called for the surrender of a monopoly, which the ignorance of our ancestors of the true nature of commerce, as well as perhaps generally prosperous state of the country since, have entailed on the empire in the nineteenth century. The period is now at hand when a part, if not the whole, of the monopoly must be done away. The intellect of alt classes of the commercial world is now busied on the subject, and each in the JOHN FAREY, Sen. consideration of what will redound most to its separate interests. Those who aspire to this hitherto sequestered (for I am authorized to make use of the term) track of commerce, though multitudinous, enlightened, and enterprizing, are, unfortunately for the general cause, dispersed throughout the population of the country, and consequently, though all animated by a singleness of object, cannot act with that vigour and effect with which their opponents will. But their cause is the cause of the country, and the real nature and tendencies of the trade are only to be explained to insure a majority of the votes of an enlightened legislature. The East India Company, with their numer. ous and powerful allies, viz. the Bank of England, many of the London banks, the corporation of London, and the merchants carrying on private trade through to read what i have written on musical tem perament, in your's and the Philosophical Magazine, &c. nor shall I descend further, than to recommend the careful perusal also of Mr. Liston's "Essay on perfect Intona tion," and the trying and hearing of every Fossil le "inversion" on his Enharmonic Organ. The surject of temperament is interesting and capable of a rigid mathematical treatment, and in which mode, I shall at all ⚫ times be happy to receive or give information, through the medium of your instructive J. F. pages. the |