10. Warden's Letters—"Mr Warden's pretences and falsehoods," say the Reviewers, "if not detected on the spot, and at the moment when the means of detection happen to be at hand, might hereafter tend to deceive other writers, and poison the sources of history." The motive of the Reviewers is therefore a very laudable one, and the 'detection' will no doubt be very satisfactory to a certain class of readers. But the historian! Sources of history! If the historian and philosopher should sit down to this, and the corresponding article in the Edinburgh Review, about a hundred years hence, what must he think of the political parties, and of the state of literature, in Britain in the year 1816? Mr Warden is a "blundering, presumptuous, and falsifying scribbler;" and the proof is, that he actually brought the materials of this book from St Helena in the shape of notes, instead of having really despatched letters from sea, and from St Helena, to a correspondent in England!
11. Parliamentary Reform.—That part of this article which corresponds with its title, contains sentiments, about the justness of which there will be little difference of opinion among well informed men. None but the most ignorant can expect, and none but the most wrongheaded, or unprincipled, will teach the people to expect any relief, under the present distresses of the country, from universal suffrage and annual parliaments. But the Reviewer does not confine himself to topics in the discussion of which he would have carried along with him the approbation of all those whose approbation is of any value. Unfortunately, we think, for the cause of which he is so able an advocate, he has introduced a great deal of extraneous matter, concerning which men of the clearest heads and purest intentions cannot be brought to agree. He has also counteracted the effects which the soundness of his judgment, and the powers of his eloquence, might have otherwise produced upon misguided or unthinking reformers, by indulging in a strain of violent exaggeration and reproach. So wide a departure from the Roman poet's maxim of suaviter in modo, fortiter in re, brings him too near to the style of the orators and authors whom he so justly exposes, and is inconsistent with the respect which so able a writer owes to himself and to his readers.
LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE.
Dr Clarke, the celebrated traveller, who is now professor of mineralogy at Cambridge, has lately been employed in the performance of some very curious and important experiments with a blowpipe, of a power far exceeding that of any similar instrument which has formerly been used. This instrument is in reality the invention of Mr Brooke,—although, when Dr Clarke employed it in his first experiments, he appears to have considered it as the invention of Mr Newman, who was the only artist employed in making it, and from whose hands Dr Clarke had probably received it. This mistake, however, the doctor has now been careful to correct.—The instrument consists essentially of a close box, in which air is condensed by means of a syringe. From this box, the air which in the experiments of Dr Clarke consisted of two volumes hydrogen, and one volume oxygen gas, highly condensed, is allowed to rush upon the flame of a lamp or candle; and by the powerful heat thus produced, Dr Clarke found that every substance which he tried, excepting charcoal and plumbago, were capable of being fused. All the most refractory stones,—the earths, namely, lime, barytes, strontian, magnesia, alumina, and silica,—were melted into glass, slag, or enamel. Dr Clarke has since stated, however, that plumbago has also yielded to the power of this instrument; and from the following quotation from the doctor's communication, in the Annals of Philosophy for March, it will be seen that he considers charcoal itself as not decidedly refractory when the fusing power is in all its perfection:—"As far," says the doctor, "as mineral substances are concerned, the character of infusibility is forever annihilated. Every mineral substance, not excepting plumbago, has been fused. There remains therefore, only one substance, namely charcoal, to maintain this character; and if I have leisure for a subsequent dissertation, I trust I shall be able to shew, that charcoal itself exhibits some characteristics of a fusible body."—The most remarkable, however, of all the results obtained during these brilliant experiments, was the reduction of barytes and strontian to their metallic bases:—to these the doctor has since added a long list of other metallic salts and ores, which he has been able to reduce to their pure metallic state, and of which specimens have repeatedly been transmitted for the inspection of the most illustrious scien-
