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ground were thereby drained, which, before that time, had been, in a great measure, useless for every agricultural purpose.'

Some critical remarks are offered by Dr. A. on the account that has been printed of Mr. Elkington's discovery: but, as this appears not to have come from Mr. E. himself, the defects which it may have are not chargeable on him. As far as it has induced Dr. A. to re-consider the matter, it has proved doubly advantageous to the public; his philosophie and investigating mind having penetrated deeply into the subject, and systematized that which to Mr. Elkington was little more than a fortunate accident.

The additions to the Essay on Draining are considerable; in these the author has not only explained the theory of springs and the causes of what is called spouting land, and in some places, springey land, (thus enabling the practical farmer to apply the properest and cheapest remedy to the disease of superfluous moisture,) but has illustrated the subject of well-digging, and has thrown out hints to which miners will find it their interest to attend. We have read these additions with much satisfaction; and all who are acquainted with the importance of draining, in agriculture, will think that Dr. A., as well as Mr. E., is entitled to some public remuneration. After the sum voted to the latter, there is something like national injustice in letting the former go without his reward.

The second essay points out the uses of the Balsam Poplar in fencing. Following the directions here given, a new, strong, cheap, permanent, and beautiful kind of fence for rich land may be obtained. Dr. A. calls it a defideratum in agriculture, that he never hoped to see supplied.

We are next instructed in the best method of making Mill-dams or Weirs, Heads, or Breasts across rivers. Here Dr. A. advises to make that side of the breast, which looks down the river, a strong perpendicular wall, instead of an inclined plane ;-to ram in a bed of clay on the upper side of the wall;-to slope off gradually with gravel and stones upwards, in order to take off the the pressure of the water against the dam-head; and to surmount the wall with a broad coping of flat stones, inclining downwards, above the weir, and projecting someway over on the other side, so as to carry the water clean over without touching the side of the perpendicular wall. If stones cannot be had, he recommends planks of oak, strongly fastened. Those who have works of this kind to construct must consult the paper itself for particular directions.

The means of preventing the sea from making encroachments on the land are next detailed. "Hilberto (says Dr. A. to the impetuous ocean) shalt thou go; but no farther." This philosoREV. SEPT. 1798. E

pher,

1

pher, however, is not like the courtiers of our Canute, who talked of restraining the tide by a command; nor like Xerxes, who thought of subjugating the sea to his controul by casting iron fetters into it (Ipsum compedibus qui vinxerat Ennosigaum *): but he sagely investigates the circumstances under which Neptune becomes not only an earth-shaker, but an earth-devourer; and he then points out in what manner this hungry God, who often eats up acres of land at a meal, may be disappointed of his prey; which is by a very simple precess clearly explained in the

essay..

This part is followed by Cursory hints on the most beneficial method of recovering low lands, in certain cases, from the sea. These hints resolve themselves into this short advice ;-to assist and not to counteract the wise operations of nature.

The volume closes with that paper which the Bath Society has justly termed excellent, entitled Disquisitions on the different varieties of wool-bearing animals, &c. and which we have noticed in our account of the 8th volume of the Memoirs of that Agricultural Society. If, however, it was excellent at its first publication, it is made much more so now by the valuable additions with which it is enriched. We may literally say enriched; for not only does the author corroborate the doctrine which he has advanced respecting the farther improvement of the breeds of animals, particularly of sheep, but gives us hopes of actually discovering the COLDEN FLEECE.

We shall terminate this article by extracting the following account of the Arnee, of Hindostan, which is by far the largest of the cattle tribe yet known.

Mr. William Haig, while first lieutenant [Mate] on board the Hawkesbury East Indiaman, then in the river of Ganges, about fifty miles below Calcutta, observed an animal in the river, alive, but floating towards the sea, carried down by the current; a boat was immediately put off, and the creature secured by means of a rope thrown over its horns, and towed towards the ship. They were surprized at the largeness of the size of the animal; and being just come into the river, from Europe, it was accounted a glorious prize, and instantly slaughtered, for the sake of fresh provisions. It was found to be a bullock of only two years old, yet when cut up, the four quarters weighed full 1450 pounds. From this datum we cannot suppose, that a beast of this kind, of full stature, and completely fatted, would weigh less than 4500 pounds; for we know that a lean bullock, of two years old, will not amount to one-third part of the weight that the same animal would have attained at nine years of age, when fully fatted; and as this creature must, in all probability, have been carried 'down the river for, perhaps, a thousand miles, before it was catched

*

Juv. Sat. x. I. 182.

(none

(none of these cattle, that I have heard of, being bred lower than Plassy,) we must suppose that it would be very much emaciated; yet all on board the fhip thought it excellent eating. As the head, feet, skin, entrails, and tallow of a fatted animal, weigh very little less than the four quarters, we shall see reason to believe that some of these, when alive, may be found, which will not be less than from 80 to 90 cwt. upwards of four ton weight! so that it must be a very stately creature. They are said to be sometimes eleven or twelve feet in height.'

WE

ART. VI. The Works of the EARL OF ORFORD. [Article continued: See Review for July, p. 327.]

E hasten to perform our promise of continuing the description of the merits of this curious and interesting publication; and our observations on the first volume being necessarily short and hasty, we shall take a retrospective view of some of its contents.

The punctuation has been so sparingly performed (we suppose in the author's own copy) as to render it difficult to comprehend some parts of the epistle from Florence: but neither Robespierre nor Marat ever gave a blacker picture of Gallic monarchs, than our noble author has done of the kings of our own country. The poem, indeed, was written during the most furious conflict between Whigs and Tories; when the Pope and the Pretender were the raw-head and bloody-bones which were to frighten all the legitimate children of liberty.

The next piece, Inscription for the neglected Column in the Place of St. Mark at Florence, is a most vehement, and, seemingly, unprovoked philippic on a family, some of whom had certainly virtues to compensate for the vices of the rest; and which were the vices of the times in which they lived. Our readers will doubtless recollect the great obligations that literature, arts, and sciences, have had to Lorenzo il Magnifico, Leo the Xth, &c.

The portrait of Lord Granville is spirited, and nicely touched : Portrait of John Earl Granville. Written immediately after his Death in 1763.

Commanding beauty, smooth'd by cheerful grace,
Sat on each open feature of his face.

Bold was his language, rapid, glowing, strong;
And science flow'd spontaneous from his tongue.
A genius, seizing systems, slighting rules;
And void of gall, with boundless scorn of fools.
Ambition dealt her flambeau to his hand,
And Bacchus sprinkled fuel on the brand.
His wish to counsel monarchs, or controul;
His means th' impetuous ardour of his soul;

For while his views out-stripp'd a mortal's span,
Nor prudence drew, nor craft pursued the plan.
Swift fell the scaffold of his airy pride
But, slightly built, diffus'd no ruin wide.
Unhurt, undaunted, undisturb'd he fell;
Could laugh the same, and the same stories tell:
And more a sage than he, who bade await
His revels, till his conquests were complete,
Our Jovial statesman either sail unfurl'd,

And drank his bottle, tho' he miss'd the world.'

At p. 32. we have another † ingenious and pleasant fable. When we descend into prose, we meet with a specimen of playful sarcastic humour of a very peculiar kind, in the Advertisement to the Hiflory of Good-breeding; which appeared, in 1746, in a periodical pamphlet called the Museum.

The essays which Mr. Walpole gave to "The World" are of a very original and ironical cast. Whoever is in possession of the papers so called, established and carried on by Mr. Ed. Moore, author of Fables for the Female Sex, may be glad to be informed that No. vI. VIII. X. XIV. XXVIII. CIII. CLX. CLXIV. and a World extraordinary,-with two very pleasant papers on the inundation of books, intended for The World, but which were never published in that work,-were written by the Honorable Horace Walpole, late Earl of Orford.

We have already celebrated his humorous pamphlet, written in 1757, intitled, "A Letter from XO HO, a Chinese philosopher in London, to his friend LIEN CHI at Pekin,” in our xxth volume.

Notwithstanding the pains and ingenuity which our author has bestowed in his inquiries into the age and person of the -long-lived Countess of Desmond, we have thought, and think still, that he has left the authenticity of this extraordinary longevity nearly as he found it: i. e. very obscure and unsatisfactory.

For our free and candid discussion of the merits of the author's lively and spirited Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, we refer to the XIXth vol. of our Review; where, though we have not always been of the ingenious writer's opinion, we have sincerely praised when we approved, and have been unusually copious in our extracts of long and discriminative characters of illustrious persons, whose memory and descendants he has very seldom flattered. Had we leisure to go over the same ground again, we should probably find ample room for discussion in the singularity of some of the early

Pyrrhus.'
+ See the Review for July.
Under the name of " Adam Fitz-Adam."

First Series.

opinions

opinions of our author; in which appears a determined ambition of being wiser than all former historians and biographers, and of knowing more of the personages whom he paints ideally, than those who saw the originals face to face. Much as Mr. Walpole ever affected to hate politics, it does seem as if party prejudices had sometimes the guidance of his pen, in pulling down and lifting up established characters; giving no other authority for degrading anecdotes than very impure sources. The character of Sir Edward Hyde, however, p. 348, in comparing him with Vandyke as a verbal portrait painter, is ingenious, discriminative, and candid. Mr. W. seldom is temperate in speaking of any friend or servant of Charles; and some of the character-blasting anecdotes and assertions are little better than female tittle-tattle, particularly those that are hostile to the chastity of the Queens of the first James and of Charles I.

P. 381 of this 1st vol. is indubitable republicanism;-and in the character of Clarendon, whom he is obliged to praise in some particulars, how much does he deduct, in pronouncing his work" a laboured justification of Charles" That the son of a favoured minister, during two reigns, should see these defects in the illustrious historian plainer than any other dispassionate man, is somewhat marvellous!

Seven additional noble authors" are added to the Catalogue, in this edition: Lords Bath, Melcombe, Paulett, Townshend, Orrery, Duke of Dorset, and Lord Edgecumbe : but from these gleanings in the nobility's Parnassian fields, not enough seems to have been collected to fatten a goose. Six new characters are added to the supplement, that were omitted in former editions. Among these we have PHILIP STANHOPE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD; to whose infirmities of vanity, immorality, duplicity, artificial and made-up character, our author is very tolerant; nay more, partial. As this article has not appeared in any former edition of the Catalogue, that we recollect, and has been written with some degree of elaboration, we shall insert it. The reader will also see in it a melancholy instance of want of temper in a polite, well-bred, and, to the living, perfectly good-humoured man, when speaking of a writer as superior in intellectual strength to the noble Lords in his Catalogue, as Samson was to the Lords of the Philistines in muscular force.

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Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield. 'Few men have been born with a brighter show of parts: few men have bestowed more cultivation on their natural endowments; and the world has seldom been more just in its admiration both of genuine and improved talents. A model yet more rarely beheld, was that of a prince of wits who employed more application on forming a successor, than to

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