and performed on the flute, with great taste and feeling; and could sing a plain air at sight, which many instrumental performers cannot do. But this was science. Dr Black was a very intelligent judge of musical composition; and I never heard any person express so intelligibly the characteristic differences of some of the national musics of Europe. I speak of Dr Black as I knew him at Glasgow. After his coming to Edinburgh, he gave up most of those amusements. Without having studied drawing, he had acquired a considerable power of expression with his pencil, both in figures and in landscape. He was peculiarly happy in expressing the passions; and seemed, in this respect, to have the talent of a history painter. He had not any opportunities of becoming a connoisseur; but his opinion of a piece of painting, or sculpture, was respected by good judges. Figure, indeed, of every kind, attracted his attention;-in architecture, furniture, ornament of every sort, it was never a matter of indifference. Even a retort or a crucible was to his eye an example of beauty or deformity. His memorandumbooks are full of studies (may I call them) of this sort; and there is one drawing of an iron furnace, fitted up with rough unhewn timber, that is finished with great beauty, and would not disgrace the hand of a Woollett. Naturally, therefore, the young ladies were proud of Dr Black's approbation of their taste in matters of ornament. These are not indifferent things; they are features of an elegant mind, and they account for some part of that satisfaction and pleasure which persons of all different habits and pursuits felt in Dr Black's company and conversation. I think that I could frequently discover what was the circumstance of form, &c. in which Dr Black perceived or sought for beauty, -it was some suitableness or propriety; and he has often pointed it out to me, in things where I never could have looked for it. Yet I saw that he was ingeniously in the right. I may almost say, that the love of propriety was the leading sentiment of Dr Black's mind. This was the first standard to which he appealed in all his judgments; and I believe he endeavoured to make it the directing principle of his conduct. Happy is the man whose moderation of pursuits leaves this sentiment in possession of much authority. Seldom are our judgments greatly wrong on this question; but we too seldom listen to them.' The merits of Black as a chemical philosopher, have been lost sight of amid the brilliant and rapid discoveries of his successors, though, as has been most justly observed, theirs have been only the glories of rearing a system of which he had laid the firm foundations. M. De Luc and the French academicians made an ungenerous attempt to deprive Black of the merits of his great discovery,―the doctrine of latent heat; but his countrymen have successfully vindicated his claim to this most important and fundamental theory. M. Wilcke, secretary to the Stockholm academy, published in the 'Memoirs' of that association, for 1772, a paper on the quantity of heat absorbed by snow when it melts. was, however, just ten years after the publication of Black's discovery. The publications of Lavoisier and Laplace on the same subject were full twenty years later, and Dr Irvine and Dr Crawford had in the interval prosecuted their master's researches with great success, and proved that every substance in nature has a specific heat of its own. This Before Black laid the foundation of a new era in chemistry, the chemists of Europe were universally possessed with a mistaken faith in the phlogistic theory of Stahl. According to them, all combustible bodies are compounds, one of their constituents being what he called phlogiston. During combustion this phlogiston makes its escape, and the other constituents remain behind. A metal, for example, according to the Stahlian theory, is a compound of a calx and phlogiston; and when it is burnt, the phlogiston flies off and the calx remains. But it was very soon discovered that when a metal has undergone combustion, the calx which remains is heavier than the metal was before it was burnt. To meet this difficulty chemists gravely asserted that phlogiston was not merely destitute of weight, but actually endowed with a principle of levity! This phlogiston of Stahl, then, was "evidently no inference from induction, even as modified and altered by his followers; neither was it the hypothesis of any peculiar qualities in the matter of heat: it was the assumption of a substance, different from every other with which we are acquainted, endued with qualities repugnant to the universal properties of matter, and capable of producing every effect which the inventors might wish to explain. Phlogiston was indeed denominated the matter of heat and light; but it might as well have been called the reguline principle; and then, instead of saying that the escape of the matter of heat and light causes the calcination of metals, the followers of Stahl would have said, that the escape of the reguline principle causes the combustion of inflammable bodies. It is evident that no specific effect, no subordination to the laws of chemical affinity, was ever ascribed to the substance which affects our sense with the feeling of heat, until Dr Black, from the most faithful and cautious examination of obvious facts, found that this substance is capable of uniting with bodies, so as not to affect our senses with the peculiar feeling of heat, and yet to produce upon those bodies the most important changes,—in the same manner that an acid, when combined with an alkali, ceases to taste sour, while it destroys the acridity of the alkali, and forms a third body, possessing the noxious qualities of neither. This physical law, discovered by the strictest induction, is applicable to the explanation of an infinite number of phenomena: its operations actually occur in almost every chemical experiment, and its influence is perceived in all the great processes of nature." Joseph Towers, LL.D. BORN A. D. 1737.-died A. D. 1799. THIS literary and political, rather than ecclesiastical character, was a native of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire. His father was a bookseller, in very limited circumstances, and he himself received only a very partial education. In 1754, he was apprenticed to a printer; and, on learning his trade he came to London, where he for some time supported himself by working as a journeyman-printer. In 1763, he appeared as an author, in a work entitled A Review of the Genuine Doctrines of Christianity;' subsequently, having married a lady with some property, he opened a bookseller's shop; but in 1774 he resigned trade, having been chosen pastor of a congregation at Highgate. In 1778, he was nominated morning preacher to a congregation at Newington, on the removal of Dr Price to Hackney. In 1779, the university of Edinburgh conferred on him the degree of LL.D. On the formation of the 'Society for Constitutional information,' Dr Towers was ballotted for, and appointed secretary. In this capacity he was laid under arrest in 1794, and examined before the Privy council, relative to the proceedings of a club which enumerated amongst its members, the dukes of Norfolk and Richmond, the earls of Effingham and Derby, Sir William Jones, Sheridan, Dr Price, Mr Erskine, and many other distinguished names. On this occasion the Doctor exhibited great firmness as well as prudence, and was dismissed without trial by the intercession of the primate. On the establishment of the society of Friends of the People,' Dr Towers was of course enrolled a member. Dr Towers was a man of extensive information, liberal principles, and great energy and decision of character. He lived a laborious and useful life up to the period of his death in 1799. He compiled the greater part of the British Biography,' also between fifty and sixty articles in the new edition of the Biographia Britannica.' In 1773 he published 'An Examination into Sir J. Dalrymple's attack on the memory of Sydney and Russell;' in 1774, a Letter to Dr Johnson, occasioned by his Political Pamphlets;' in 1786, an Essay on the Life and Writings of Dr Johnson; and, in 1788, 'Memoirs of the Life and Reign of Frederick III.' Robert Merry. BORN A. D. 1755.-died A. D. 1799. BETWEEN the classical school of Gray and the school of nature founded by Cowper, there arose a set of poets in England who strove to introduce into the native literature a style of composition and sentiment singularly mawkish and affected. Of this new school-on which its own founders conferred the name of Della Cruscan-Robert Merry was accounted facile princeps. "The first foundation of the gentleman, in young Merry"-to use the words of a biographer of his own school-" was laid by that great literary character, Dr Parr." From the Doctor he went to Christ church, Oxford. It was at first intended that he should study law; and with that view, after leaving the university, he entered of Lincoln's inn; but he speedily forsook Coke and Littleton for a commission in the horseguards. He joined that honourable corps at a period when, according to our Della Cruscan authority, "it was difficult to decide whether the devotion to the rosy god and Cyprian goddess did not outdo its zeal in the service of Bellona." A military life, however,- —even in such a gay corps as the horseguards," did not long engage his heart." Our hero threw up his commission, and betook himself to Florence, where our English Eneas' was for a while captivated and entranced by the charms of an Italian Dido? But even Dido's influence was as short-lived as that of Bellona. The "waters of the gilded Po," which had once "extinguished the ambition of a Phaeton," now" contributed to quench the flame of our hero." Literary ambition next took possession of our hero's heart; he applied himself to the study of Italian, and at last reached the summit of literary glory in being elected" a member of the celebrated academy Della Crusca.' "The judicious and learned Mrs Piozzi" was also at this time in Florence, and exercising her literary gifts in a publication of her own, called The Florentine Miscellany.' She had the good fortune to enlist the newly elected associate of the Della Crusca in her band of contributors; but alas! "while wit and taste," says our leading authority, "were thus publicly diffused through the elegant part of the world, private scandal did not want for publishers. Tales were circulated, which, according to the late and learned Lord Mansfield's doctrine, could not fail to be deemed great libels. And these becoming every day more current, failed not to give great uneasiness to the inamorato as well as to his friends. Mr Merry's indignation at the authors of these reports urged him to take up the pen of satire in revenge. He employed it in ridiculing the greater part of the circle, and in some measure occasioned its breaking up. This incident hastened his return to his native country, and gives a proper occasion to speak of his poetical taste and acquirements." Our Della Cruscan biographer goes on to tell us that as Mr Merry "had the qualities of a poet by nature," it was nothing in the least wonderful that he should at last think of turning his attention to the composition of poetry; and that "the approbation his first essays in the art experienced fully justified the great expectation formed of his future productions. Many of his pieces," we are assured, "have been rather impromptu flights to Parnassus than studied compositions. They show, however, the author's powers; and while they give pleasure to the present age they will not fail to secure him the admiration of posterity. Of his beautiful verses and fugitive-pieces published in the 'World,' under the title Della Crusca, &c. it is unnecessary to speak; they are fresh in every one's memory. Of his satirical and witty epigrams published in the Argus,' under the signature of Tom Thorne, it is equally needless to make mention. During the last months of that paper's existence, it might be truly said, a certain Rose was never without a Thorne. As a specimen of the keenness of our poet's epigrammatic wit, we give," continues our eulogist, "the few following instances: THE LONDON ROSE. The Rose is called the first of flowers In all the rural shades and bowers; But O! in London 'tis decreed, The Rose is but a dirty weed. THE HOT-HOUSE ROSE. From genial heat, the hot-house Rose ON ANOTHER SUBJECT. When Truth her rending scourge applies, “Upon a ministerial newspaper affixing his adopted signature to some verses of a very different nature and tendency, he wrote the following 6 IMPROMPTU. The slavish print, that's dead to shame, In fury for departed fame, Has even robb'd me of my name : Alas! my nose is out of joint; Yet what's a Thorne without a point?" Our epigrammatist next directed his brilliant talents to dramatic composition; but we are gravely told that "he was not superficial enough to succeed in this walk. He disdained to sacrifice judgment to perverted taste, and therefore was not calculated to please a vitiated palate. His tragedy of Lorenzo,' represented at Covent Garden house, and his Magician no Conjuror,'-while they prove his various turn of mind, equally manifest to those who knew the writer, that he was biassed to the undertaking without due consideration. His native fire," we are next assured, "flames out in his odes. Some of these give room to think that had he employed himself chiefly in the lyric species of poetry, he might have filled a most honourable place between Pindar and Horace.(!) In confirmation of which assertion reference may be had to the odaic song he wrote for the 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastile, and which was repeated in full chorus, with so much applause, in the year 1791, at the Crown and Anchor tavern. The Laurel of Liberty' he wrote also, and presented it to the National convention, who did honour to the author by the manner in which it was received." The French revolution drew Merry to Paris, where, we are informed, he favoured the young legislature with a short treatise, in English, on the nature of free government, which also was graciously received by the convention; "honourable mention being made of it in their journals." Our poet and legislator, however, did not feel himself quite at ease in Paris: "Revolution upon revolution greatly affected his sensibility; for, although he was robust of frame, his nerves did not correspond with his muscular strength." For these excellent reasons, "he quitted the scene of sanguinary contention," and once more betook himself to England. His next adventure we must relate in the words of his Della Cruscan pupil. "Upon his marriage with the celebrated actress Miss Brunton, a prospect opened to him of living at his ease by the joint production of that lady's talents and his own pen; but unfortunately the pride of those relations upon whom he had most dependence, was wounded by the alliance, and he was constrained, much against Mrs Merry's inclination, to take her from the stage. This he did as soon as her engagement at the theatre expired, which was in the spring of 1792. They both returned from the continent in the summer of 1793 (for Mrs Merry had accompanied him to France,) and from that date they cannot be said to have formed an settled plan, unless their retiring to America in 1796 may be so considered. Occasionally, in the above interval, Mı Merry wrote for a periodical paper; and some of the best poetry in the 'Telegraph' was the production of his pen. His Signior Pittachio, written at this period, must ever be deemed a most happy production of keen satire, unsurpassed by any thing in ancient or modern times. (!) No |