That drown or wither; give the genial west# Colonel Mitford, in the first edition of his excellent Essay on the Harmony of Language, printed in 1774, makes a remark on this propensity of his countrymen. "We are, I know, in these northern climates, accused, and even apt to accuse ourselves, of a dulness of sense little capable of being affected by the powers of harmony.Nay, so inclined are we to this self-abuse, that the writings of some may induce posterity, admiring the mild and pleasant climate of the south of England, to wonder how it happened that in the 18th cen-i tury the sun never shone there." This general abuse of the climate we remember in our earliest days, and when we had a warm summer it used to be called one of Queen: Anne's summers; and for several years after the fatal earthquake at Lisbon, if there was an ungenial year, many people, who ought to have known better, would say the earth had certainly got a jog.We have been, however, so unfortunate as never to fall in with any of that great majority who imputed the change of climate to the change of the style, and yet, paradoxical as it may seem, we are bold enough to assert, that much of the complaint of the change of climate has arisen from that cause. Much specious argument for a change of climate, though long antecedent to the period mentioned by Mr. Williams, has been drawn from old books of horticulture, where seeds, &c. are directed to be planted at seasons in which they would now perish; and fruits said to ripen at seasons we know they now are never ripe. But it should be recollected, that before the change of style, more than a third part of what is now called June, belonged to May, and so on; and therefore when we are told by Evelyn and Miller, that May-Duke cherries and strawberries are ripe in May, we should do well to remember, that May then extended in the middle of the second week in June. We shall now advert to our own observations on the weather, and the progress of vegetables, when it will appear there has been no gradual, or progressive alteration of climate, but a most striking difference between one year and another. We shall begin before the period prescribed by our author. 1766-The weather in the beginning of March as hot as Midsummer, followed by a very cold and backward spring. The hawthorns covered with blossom the first week in June, gave, from the tempe From the Meteorological Diary in the Philosophical Transactions of some year within the last ten (we cannot exactly now state which), out of the 365 days, for upwards of 300 the wind was to the west of the north or the south, but mostly the former.-REV. Lature ature of the air, the idea of snow; very hot July and August, and ine autumn and open winter. 1767-Spring and summer cold and wet; from the first of August o the middle of October very fine, warm and dry. Very hard vinter. 1768-Mild spring summer and autumn. Open winter. 1769-Remarkably fine spring, wet summer, mild autumn, and pen winter. 1770-Snow in April, warm summer, mild autumn, open winter. This brings us to the first æra from which Mr. Williams supposes he change of clinate to commence. We will now take the same umber of successive years, subsequent to the last period, viz. 17751779-A very high wind, N. E. the first of January, followed by evere frost for a fortnight, succeeded by mild genial weather; the forwardest spring we ever remember, without any check. Some nin in the middle of June, followed by a very hot dry summer and autumn; a plentiful harvest, and a profusion of fruit of all kinds. Hard winter. 1780-Frost continued to the end of February; very cold, wet, and backward spring; snow and severe frost in April. Vegetation not so forward in May as in April the preceding year. Cold summer and autumn, mild winter. 1781-Spring mild and forward; remarkably fine summer; the harvest wonderfully forward, and got entirely in by the middle of August; a very uncommon circumstance. Mild winter. 3 1782-Coldest and most backward spring we ever remember; hardly three dry days together th whole summer and autumn, except the first fortnight in September, during which most of the wheat was got in; frost set in early in November. This year there was hardly any fruit. 1783-Spring very forward, the early part of it wet; but from the 17th of March to the first week in May, dry, warm, and latterly even hot; but on the 17th of May there was a frost, accompanied with a very heavy snow. Dry summer, followed by the hardest winter ever known since 1740, all the tender evergreens, and even the furze much hurt by it. We do not think, from this statement, it will appear that our summers have been wetter and colder, and our winters less frosty and more mild since 1775, than they were before 1770. Since the period which we here noticed, there have been several very hard winters, and very hot summers, and many much the reverse. If it were possible to give any thing like an average of the weather in this uncertain climate, as well from recollection of our own times, as the meteorological adages of our ancestors, we should say, that mild winters were more frequent than hard ones, by the proportion of something more than two to one; that cold and wet summers were more frequent than hot and dry ones; that dry easterly winds generally blew early in the spring, and were reckoned inimical to animals, and friendly to subse Z3 quent quent vegetation, and that much rain frequently fell towards the mid dle of July. This appears to have been the general opinion of the weather in the time of our ancestors, and seems perfectly warranted by modern experience; and whoever will turn to the Rules of the Shepherd of Banbury, will find them equally applicable to the wea ther of the present time. That our winters are often mild, and our summers cold, is the case now, and was, undoubtedly, the case cent turies ago. At nine in the morning on the 21st of December, 1805 Frenheit's thermometer was at 51 in the open air. The 21st of Ju e, in the same year, was remarkably cold; and though we ha no opportunity of making the experiment then, we have no doub that the thermometer, in less than an hour after sun-rise, was much lower. That the same thing sometimes happened in the time of Eliza beth, though then, as now, reckoned very extraordinary, will, wi think, appear from a passage in the Midsummer Night's Dream where Shakspeare, who gives English manners to Athenian clowns and English weather to Athenian skies, says: 66 Hoary-headed frosts Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, We will now examine what Mr. Williams points out as the cause of this imaginary change of climate That a great increase or decreas of the woods of any country must have a considerable influence on thị climate, must be obvious to every person who has at all investigated the subject; but that this cause must have operated differently from what is asserted, must be obvious to every man of common observation. is true, many wastes and common fields are enclosed, but it is a funda mental canon of modern enclosers to have the fields, like the farms, large, the hedges kept short, and no trees in them. The destruction of timber of all kinds in our woods and forests, is a national evil that has awakened legislative interference; and instead of the ancient man sion,bosom'd high in tufted trees," every large tree is removed from the vicinity of the dwelling, and instead of the venerable aves nue, and the shady rookery, a few solitary trees and occasional clumps are scattered over an extent of dreary lawn, with a view to give u the envied epithet of park-like; and the house is surrounded by a belt of flowering shrubs and evergreens, which are destroyed as soon as the get above the height of a furze-brake, and new ones substituted for them; and, as the new enclosures exhibit the appearance of that harlequin patchwork which, in the opinion of our author, see p. 287, 'conveys the idea of health and fertility, who ever that runs may read through the whole country, the rapid steps with which the old enclo sures are advancing to the same enviable state. Wherever the mania of agricultural improvement has extended its influence, and it is now almost universal, small enclosures are thrown into large ones, all trees are 1 Th ACT are removed from the fences, and the fences themselves are kept short by continual cutting; and instead of "the Vale of Worcester from Malvern, and the Vale of Gloucester from the hill at Towcester, appearing like a forest," they will soon exhibit that motley appearance, which Charles the Second used to say, put him in mind of a beggar's petticoat. There have been writers of discrimination and ability who have formed very different opinions of the consequence of the increase and decrease of wood on the temperature and salubrity of the climate, and among these is a gentleman of the same name with the author. From Volney's Picture of the Climate and Soil of America*, we made the following extract in a former Review: "Mr. Volney makes some very curious remarks on the change of cli- mate produced in North America by the clearing the forests, and the cultivation of the soil"-(clearly not turning arable into pasture, which Mr. Williams deprecates through his whole work);" and, contrary to the generally received opinion, he conceives it to be for the worse. He says, the consequence has been from demonstration, that the winters are shorter, the summers longer, and the autumns more backward, without any diminution of the intenseness of the cold; and he confirms the idea of the deterioration of climate by the experiments of a Mr. Williams (Ouilliams), and a Dr. Rush (Rosche), the result of which is, that bilicus fevers always follow the destruction of the woods, the clearing of the lands, and the draining of swamps; and it requires many years of cultivation to make them disappear entirely, or take a milder form; and that pleurisies, and other diseases purely inflammatory, which were formerly almost the only ones known, are at present much less common, which proves an evident alteration in the purity of the air, then more impregnated with oxygen. This opinion Mr. Volney corroborates by his observations in his own country. If (he says), within ten years, we have experienced in France a new alteration in the temperature of the seasons, and the nature of the winds that produce it, I will venture to say, that it is because the immense fall and devastation of the forests, caused by the anarchy of the Revolu tion, have disturbed the equilibrium of the air, and the direction of its currents.'" Do not let us be misunderstood as applying this to England. At the same time that we again declare it our decided opinion, that the climate of England has experienced no change, we also are convinced, that the alteration in the quantity of wood, either on Mr. Williams's supposition or our own, has not been sufficient to have any such effect; for our old woods certainly have not suffered that, devastation. which they have in France and America; nor can the modern plantations, if they contain double the quantity of trees destroyed, have yet gained a sufficient size to be either very noxious or very salubrious. In this, however, Mr. Williams will not agree with us; as one of See Ant-Jaccbin Review, vol. xix. p. 468, Z 4 the the chief causes of the humidity of our springs, and the early part of our summers, he imputes to the earth being loaded with grass early in the year, on account of the decrease of arable land. We must confess we do not think the cause adequate to the supposed effect; but if it were, it could not have that effect; for grass never acquires thickness enough to shade the ground essentially, before a field of wheat will be clothed with a much greater profusion of vegetable sub stance. Another of Mr. Williams's causes of the increasing humidity of the atmosphere we must totally reject, viz. the canals; for surely these ditches filled with water, considering the distance they are from each other, when compared with the whole surface of the country, must be considered as nothing; but not such their effects in another view; and we agree with the author in all that he says in the following passage, except the beginning of the first sentence. "Independently of the unfavourable influence which canals have on the climate of this country, there are other considerations of high political importance, which imperiously call on the Legislature to withhold their sanction, in some particular cases, from the further extension of the canal system. The particular cases here alluded to are, when these artificial rivers are intended to convey produce from one sea-port to another: thus, if canals were made to communicate from the counties that raise a surplus of grain on the eastern side of the island, to those which consume this commodity on the western side, as, for instance, from Norfolk to Lancashire, such an internal navigable communication might, perhaps, add wealth to individuals, or facilitate the conveyance of grain, without risking the article to damage or loss by sea; but, in a national point of view, it it would be impolitic in the extreme, as such communications through the interior of the island would lessen the coasting trade. A sailor may be as perfectly initiated in the art of navigation, and its tactics, by sailing from Lynn to Liverpool, and from Liverpool to Lynn, as by a voyage to the West Indies, and, in stamanship, tentold more: but the dragging of a canal boat can give a man no more the idea of ploughing the trackless ocean, than the driver of a waggon could, by such occupation, learn the art of surveying." Having, in a great measure, mentioned all the causes to which Mr. Williams attributes the supposed deterioration of the climate, we will now advert to the remedy which he proposes, in addition to the destruction of every thing beautiful in the island. Mr. Williams shall speak for himself. "Suppose a building erected, and furnished with machinery, something similar to a cotton or silk mill, and that the various movements consisted of cylinders, or plates of glass, fitted up with rubbers, &c. for exciting electricity; and so arranged as to convey the electric matter into an insulated upright bar, terminating without the roof of the building, in a large lamp, or a series of lamps and points, for again diffusing the electrical matter in the circumambient air; I find, by calculation, that a force adequate |