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perature, becomes capable of dissolving a greater quantity of water, the hygrometer must rise indefinitely with the thermometer, even though the absolute quantity of moisture in the air should undergo no change. The hygrometer then gives us no direct information of the state of the atmosphere, and a record of its indications, unaccompanied with the contemporaneous observations of the thermometer, and also of the barometer, is in reality useless. This defect of the instrument was partially noticed, we believe, in some of the philosophical magazines, at a very early period; but the very ingenious friend, of whose investigations we propose to avail ourselves in our future reports, was the first who discovered and applied the necessary corrections. The profound nature of these investigations has, we believe, prevented them from being so generally known and so extensively applied as they deserve to be, from the light that they have thrown on this department of science.

It may be necessary to remark, for the sake of some of our readers, that the law which regulates the solution of moisture in the atmosphere is such, that, though the air, at a given temperature, be completely saturated, it is capable, at a higher temperature, of dissolving more moisture, and that, however far it may be above saturation, at any temperature, it may be cooled down, so as to be incapable of holding what it formerly contained, and, consequently, begin to let fall a certain portion of it. By a laborious course of experiments, and much intricate calculation, the author alluded to has discovered a formula, from which it is easy to deduce, in any given state of the hygrometer, thermometer, and barometer, the three following facts, the most interesting that can well be conceived, to the science of hygrometry.

1st, The point of deposition, or that temperature at which the atmosphere would begin to deposit a part of its moisture, in the form of rain or dew. This point is found, on an average, to coincide nearly with the lowest point to which the thermometer sinks during the night.

2d, The absolute quantity of mois ture, in a cubic inch of air, in decimals of a grain.

3d, The relative humidity of the

atmosphere, absolute dryness being denoted by 0, and absolute moisture by 100. This last is in fact the application of a limited instead of an unlimited scale to the hygrometer, and must always convey a very clear and accurate idea of the hygrometric state of the atmosphere.

In our future reports, we shall give the averages of, at least, the 1st and 3d of the above, and should any other addition or alteration occur to us as expedient, we shall give such an explanation of it, at the time, as may render it intelligible to our readers. 4th January 1819.

MR HAZLITT'S LECTURES ON THE COMIC GENIUS OF ENGLAND.

LECTURE III.-Cowley, Butler, Suckling, &c. &c.

We now come to the third Lecture, which is upon Cowley, Butler, Suckling, Etherege, &c. It is not less clever than its predecessors, but the subjects are not so vast, commanding, and attractive. There is a good deal of very just criticism on the metaphysical poets of the time of Charles the First,-who marred fair thoughts with the most extravagant conceits, and arrayed pathos and feeling in the most ridiculous masquerade dresses. They served poor poetry as fashion served the women; dressed it up in silks, and furbelows, and hoops, and obscured the simple beauty of the figure by the most cumbrous and perplexing loads of dress and ornament. Unfortunately the muses in that age went to Court, and it was thought necessary to trick them out for the occasion. They were then ladies about town,arrant coquettes,-masqued beauties. Any thing that was simply natural was insufficient; every quiet grace and beauty was banished society; poetry played fantastic tricks in the Mall and in the Park; all was dazzling, confused, and extravagant ; and poetry paid compliments to philosophy and fashion; and philosophy and fashion paid them back tenfold; and feeling studied the mathematics; and pathos learned dancing; and imagination and fancy were reduced to the state of elegant trifles. Cowley was, however, a most delightful writer; but he lost himself everlast

ingly in his own conceits and speculations. Donne, who preceded him, wrote some beautiful little pieces, and would have been a lasting favourite if he had given his powers fair play. He became, however, a passionate logician. The finest and most impassioned openings in his poetry die of excessive reasoning, or are stiffed with heavy and lumbering conceits. Mr Hazlitt quotes the following lines, and then gives their continuation. We shall be kinder to Donne, and only gather the blossom.

"Little think'st thou poor flower, Whom I have watch'd six or seven days, And seen thy birth, and seen what every hour,

Gave to thy growth, thee to this height to raise,

And now dost laugh and triumph on this bough,

Little think'st thou

That it will freeze anon, and that I shall To-morrow find thee fall'n,-or not at all!”

There is a quiet pathos in these simple lines, which nothing can surpass, and which it was a crime in the author to sully with a cold and calculating after-thought. Again, there are three or four exquisite lines on the poet's wearing his late wife's hair about his arm, in a little poem called the Funeral.

"Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm Nor question much That subtle wreath of hair about mine arm, The mystery, the sign you must not touch.'

Donne should have closed the poem here, and not have marred the mystery himself, by the meddling and abstruse reasons which he has thereafter given. Lovers should not trust their fancies to the world, or endeavour to account to themselves for every little romantic indulgence of their attachment. Mr Hazlitt beautifully observes, "The scholastic reason Donne brings, quick dissolves the charm of tender and touching grace in the sentiment itself." He who wears a locket of his lady's hair next his heart, needs no confidante to heighten the charm; it is a spell over his thoughts and dreams, of which any exposure would hurt the mystery. Crashaw was an indifferent writer; but he has told the story of the Nightingale and the Musician with great precision and skill. The story, as he tells it, is quite an essay on music. Marvel and

Shadwell are next noticed. Of the latter we know little, and are contented to dwell in ignorance. The former is worthy to live, on every account. Of Suckling, Mr Hazlitt thus speaks:

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Suckling is also ranked, without sufficient warrant, among the metaphysical poets. Sir John was of the court, courtly,' and his style almost entirely free from the charge of pedantry and affectation. There are a few blemishes of this kind in his works, but they are but few. His compositions are almost all of them short and lively effusions of wit and gallantry, written in a familiar but spirited style, without much design or effort. His shrewd and taunting address beginning Why so pale and wan, fond lover?' will sufficiently vouch for the truth of this account of his extemporaneous pieces."

Suckling deserves all this. He is one of the best writers of love and wit

poems in the language. His Muse was the lady of a knight, and "our hostess kept her state;" but she bears marks of having been his mistress, and occasionally lets slip an expression, or betrays an action, that bespeaks her origin. She is a laughing joyous lady of the ton, and all her effusions are strictly in the mode, but infinitely gay and spirited. Millamant, the charming Millamant, hits off the character of Suckling in a few words. After quoting two lines from one of his gayest little effusions, she sighs out, Natural, easy Suckling!" thus reducing criticism to a very essence. His ballad on a wedding Mr Hazlitt describes "as his master-piece. It is indeed unrivalled in its class of composition, for the voluptuous purity of its sentiments, and the luxuriant freshness of the images." It is, indeed, wit and poetry in their nightgown and slippers. The only fault in Suckling is, that he did not write more-he wrote so well. His songs, when mentioned, awaken a smile and a sigh at once. Mr Hazlitt next goes pretty fully into the merits and failings of Cowley. He quotes one or two of his translations of Anacreon, and, for simplicity, feeling and nerve, they are most inimitable. We never heard poetry spoken with such effect as when Mr Hazlitt gave these odes to his auditors at the Surrey Institution. Every line told. The prose works of Cow

ley are highly spoken of, and, indeed, we are always sorry, when we read them, that he did not abandon verse, and take kindly to a species of composition in which he so eminently succeeded.

Butler's Hudibras is thus described: "The greatest single production of wit of this period, I might say of this country, is Butler's Hudibras. It exhibits specimens of every variety of drollery and satire, and those specimens (almost every one) masterstrokes, and those master-strokes crowded together into almost every page. The proof of this is, that nearly one-half of his lines are got by heart, and quoted for mottos. In giving instances of different sorts of wit, or trying to recollect good things of this kind, they are the first which stand ready in the memory, and they are those which furnish the best tests and most striking illustrations of what we want. Dr Campbell, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric, when treating of the subject of art, which he has done very neatly and sensibly, has constant recourse to two authors, Pope and Butler, the one for ornament, the other Butler is equally in the hands of the learned and the vul

more for use.

of the heroine of the piece, which is perfect in its way, and is equal, or nearly so, to Fielding's description of Fanny, in Joseph Andrews. Mr Hazlitt speaks highly of it. It runs thus:

"Medley. First she's an heiress, vastly rich.

Dorimant. And handsome?

Medley. What alteration a twelvemonth may have bred in her I know not, but a year ago she was the beautifullest creature I ever saw; a fine, easy, clean shape, light brown hair in abundance; her features re

gular, her complexion clear and lively, large wanton eyes; but, above all, a mouth that has made me kiss it a thousand times in imagination; teeth white and even, and pretty pouting lips, with a little moisture provence rose fresh on the bush, ere the ever hanging on them, that look like the morning sun has quite drawn up the dew."

off in the style of a court pastoral. This is beautiful, and quite done But the character of Sir Fophing Flutter is the acme of all coxcombry. He breath is a mere French essence,-his seems made up of feathers, and his mode, his senses are of the air. Fawit is a vapour,-his affection is a shion is his god, and he worships it with a most mincing idolatry. We would answer the pains of revival. think with Mr Hazlitt, that this play The comedies of Dryden, and the Re

first are as wretched as indecency ticed: we think little of either. The could make them. The last is tedious, but not brief.

gar, for the sense is generally as solid as the images are amusing and grotesque." We have spoken already of Hudi-hearsal of Buckingham are finally nobras, so we shall not stay to eulogize it here; neither shall we indulge in extracts from the poem, though Mr Hazlitt has sadly tempted us to revel in the pleasure, by his happy intermixture of quotation and comment. He notices the power of the rhymes, and instances that whimsical couplet, "And straight another with his flambeau, Gave Ralpho o'er the eye a damn'd blow."

Mr Hazlitt thinks Butler's Remains as good, or nearly so, as his Hudibras. We cannot agree with him. They are more loose, feeble, and sketchy. One of the chief virtues in Hudibras, is its conciseness and instantaneous effect. It is a string of decided conclusions. Facts are strung together like onions. Mr Hazlitt concludes his Lecture with some short remarks on the dramatic writers of this time. He notices" the Man of Mode" of Sir George Etherege, which, for airy grace and pleasantry, has certainly no equal. We remember a description

STATE OF GLASGOW IN 1692 AND 1815.

[IN our Number for April 1818 (Vol. II. p. 307) we inserted the instructions of the Convention of Burghs, held on the 9th Ju ly 1691, to visitors appointed to obtain information of the state of the Scottish Burghs at that period; and also, the report made by these visitors of the revenues and other matters regarding the city of Edinburgh. From the same manuscript collection, out of which that paper was extracted, we now transcribe the report of the state of Glasgow in 1692, and, by way of contrast, the corresponding Annals of Glasgow, published in 1816. branches in 1815, as given in Cleland's The comparative view cannot be made to apply to details, but it is sufficiently close to show the extraordinary progress of this great commercial city in little more than a century.]

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By the Trone,

By the Bridge toll,

State of Glasgow in 1692.
Receipt.

By the one-fourth part of the Gorbal teinds or tithes,

By the walk-mill,

By the drawn teinds,

By the barony of Provand,

By a one-fourth part of the Gorbal lands,

By ground annuals or rents,

By the mill-lands,

By the rent of Peter's Hill,

By the cominon lands,

By the two Greens,

By the flesh-mercat,

By the Royal Company's House,

By the freemen's fines,

By the Correction-House and yard,

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333 6

L. 16,902 0

L. 5400

950 0 0

593 6 8

133 6 8

166 13 4

200 0 0

320 0 0

To the keeper of the High Church,

To the few-duties of the --- Greens,
To the town's quarter-master,

To the town's postmaster,
To a cutter for the stone,

133 6 8

66 13 4

180 0 0

120 0 0

66 13 8

To Porterfield's pension,

52 0 0

To repairs of the churches,

666 13 4

To coals and candles for the Town Guard,

800 0 0

To public works,

4400 0 0

To a surgeon for the poor,

To the ringers of the bells,

To keeper and servants of the Tolbooth,

To the Magistrates' master of works, &c.

To the Town-clerk's servants,

To the Town's 17 officers,

To the Town's agent at Edinburgh,

To the newspapers,

To the Town's Equy and Equy of Provand,
To the Town's drummers,

The Magistrates of Glasgow, in their answers to the visitor's instructions upon oath, declared, that their city's Common Good, communibus annis, amounted to the sum of L.16,902 Scots, and their debts to L. 178,800 of same money. And farther, declared, that

Sum total,

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by the great decay of trade, occasioned by the war, about 500, and many of these of their best houses, were empty, and those inhabited were fallen near a third in their income, that their rents then were from L.100 to L.4 Scots money yearly.

The ships, great and small, belonging to Glasgow at this time were 15 in number, their tonnage amounted to 1182 tons, and their value to the sum of 50,209 Scots money. At this time the Glasgowers consumed about 20 tuns of French wine, 20 butts of sack, and about 12 butts of brandy, and about 1000 bolls of malt monthly. This city has four yearly fairs, one whereof continues six days, the others one day each; and in their neighbourhood are the following burghs of regality and barony, viz.: Hamilton, Paisley, Greenock, and Crawforddyke, which are places of considerable business, and greatly obstructs the trade of Glasgow.

Revenue and Expenditure of Glasgow in 1815.-"The revenue of the burgh arises from various sources, but chiefly from what is called the common good. The following may be considered as the most productive, viz.: An impost of two pennies Scots on the Scots pint of ale or beer brewed, inbrought, or sold within the city; ladles and multers, which are certain dues paid on grain, meal, fruit, &c. brought into the burgh; dues on cattle killed within the burgh; dues from the public washing-house and tron; rents of markets, church-seats, houses, mills, and mill-lands; burgess entries; feus of land, and ground annuals;-amounting in whole, for the year ending 31st December 1815, to L.16,135, 19s. 1d. The following may be considered as the particulars of the expenditure, viz.: Burgh assessment; criminal prosecutions; alimenting criminal prisoners; general expence of the prison and bridewell; expence of church and civil establishment; ministers' stipends and officers' salaries; police establishment; repairs of heritable property; and general improvements. The amount of all which, for the year ending 31st December 1815, was L. 16,075, 7s. 8d., thus leaving a balance in favour of the revenue of L. 60, 11s. 5d.” *

The next point of comparison is the rents of the houses. The amount in 1692 is not stated in the foregoing extract; but, in 1712, it was found to be L. 7840, Os. 11d. The highest rent of a shop at this last period was L. 5, and the lowest 12s., the average a little more than L. 3. In 1815, the

Annals of Glasgow, Vol. I. p. 48.

rental within the royalty amounted to L. 240,000, and the average rent of the shops in the streets to which the survey of 1712 applies, might, at a moderate calculation, be taken at L. 40.

In regard to shipping, the comparison is still more striking. Instead of "15 vessels, great and small, carrying 1182 tons," in 1692,-there entered inwards at Port-Glasgow, in the year ending January 1815, 116 vessels, carrying 22,991 tons; and the number outwards was 233, with 33,853 tons. In the same year, the entries inwards at the Port of Greenock were 332, with 56,228 tons, and the clearances outwards 359, and 60,497 ton;-the vessels entered inwards for both places being 148, with a tonnage of 79,219, and those that cleared outwards 592, carrying 94,350 tons,-and exporting British goods to the value of more than four millions sterling. What wine, sack, brandy, and malt "the Glasgowers" consumed in 1815 does

not appear.

If the accuracy of Cleland's statements may be depended on, the increase in the population of Glasgow has been singularly rapid, having nearly doubled in 21 years; in 1780, the number having been 42,832, and in 1801, 83,769. In 1811 it was found to be 110,460, which is supposed to have increased to 120,000 in 1816.

From the preceding view of the revenue of Glasgow in 1692 and 1815, it appears that the pounds Scots* in the former period had been converted into pounds Sterling in the latter, the numerical amount of pounds being nearly the same at both periods. We have remarked a still greater rise in the landed rental of Scotland, when compared with its valued rent in Scots money about the middle of the seventeenth century; the amount of the valuation at the latter period being L. 3,804,221 Scots, and the real rent in Sterling money in 1811 L. 4,792,842. May we venture to infer from these facts, that a pound Sterling is now of no greater value in the general market of commodities than a pound Scots was 150 years ago? S.

Our readers to the south of the Tweed
must know by this time that the pound
the well-known lines,
Scots is only 20d. Sterling, according te

"D-n a Scot;
How can the rogues pretend to sense,
Their pound is only twenty pence ?"

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