where he was almost left alone, surrounded by a stormy sea, and a dusky and inclement sky. The spirits of a man accustomed to the finer climates of the south, must have sunk in such a situation, had they not been supported by his love of science, and his zeal for promoting its interests. He has written an ccount of his visit to Great Britain, and particularly of his reception in Scotland and the Isles, drawn up in an excellent spirit, full of good temper, cheerfulness, and a disposition to be pleased; and abounding also in judicious remarks. The Shetland Isles seem particularly to have interested him; and the contrast between the aspects which the moral and physical world presented in that remote region, to have struck him forcibly. He was pleased with the kindness, hospitality, and intelligence of his hosts; and they, no doubt, were filled with respect for an illustrious stranger, who, from the centre of civilization, had penetrated into their distant isle, and was connecting, with the researches and the renown of Science, the obscure and sequestered corner in which Providence had fixed their habitation. He must have experienced feelings of high gratification, on considering that he had now assisted in defining both extremities of a line, extending from the most southerly of the Balearic to the most northerly of the Shetland Isles, the longest that the finger of Geometry had yet attempted to trace, or her rod to measure, on the surface of the earth;a work that, in all ages, it will be the boast of the 19th century to have accomplished. The different aspects of nature, at the remote stations which he had successively occupied, would not fail to present themselves with all the force that contrast can bestow; -the bright sun, the cloudless skies of the south, the glowing tints and the fine colouring of the Mediterranean, compared with the misty isle on which he now stood, and the tempestuous ocean which was raging at his feet. If he turned to the moral world, the contrast was also great, but it was reversed; and he would, perhaps, think of the fierce barbarians before whom he or his companions had been forced to fly, when the lonely islander was opening his cottage to receive him, and defend him from the storm. He would not then fail to reflect, how much more powerful moral causes are, than physical, in determining the good or evil of the human character.

M. BIOT, on his return to London in the autumn, was joined by MM. ARAGO and HUMBOLDT, and, in conjunction with these illustrious associates, completed his experiments. The results have not yet, we believe, been given to the public; neither have those of Dr GREGORY. The scientific world waits impatiently for both.

During the present summer Capt. KATER has visited the same stations, as well as some others particularly connected with the trigonometrical survey, employing the apparatus above described for ascertaining the length of the pendulum. The result of observations made at six different points, from Unst in Shetland to Dunnose in the Isle of Wight, may be expected in the course of the ensuing winter. A great advantage that results from the manner in which his experiments are made, is the comparative shortness of the time that they take up. After the rate of the clock has been ascertained, the observations of the pendulum may be finished in three or four days, and the number of its vibrations in twenty-four hours, determined within a fraction of a second. Thence the length of the seconds pendulum is easily deduced, being, to that of the invariable pendulum used in the experiment, and of which the length is already accurately known, as the square of the number of vibrations performed by this last in twenty-four hours, to the square of 86400, the number of seconds in the same time. When the experiments are conducted in the way followed by the French astronomers, the length of the pendulum must be measured anew at every station. We cannot help thinking, that the frequent repetition of an operation, which it is always difficult to perform with accuracy, ought as much as possible to be avoided.

While we are concluding this article, we learn, with great satisfaction, the further progress of cther operations connected with those of which we have been giving an account. Captain COLBY, after finishing his campaign among the Scottish mountains, is at this moment on his way to Dunkirk, for the purpose, as we suppose, of joining the French mathematicians, in order to examine, over again, the junction of the English and French triangles, and to determine the latitude of the extreme point of the meridian of Paris with the zenith sector—the same excellent instrument that has been used for all the celestial observations in the British survey. As this will involve a comparison between that sector and RAMSDEN'S great theodolite on the one hand, and the repeating circle on the other, it will be an experiment of great interest to astronomers; and, we believe, the conduct of it could not be in better hands than those into which it is about to be committed. Orders, we understand, have been given by LORD LIVERPOOL for preparing every thing that may be required along the coast of Britain. The liberality and steadiness with which Administration has supported the trigonometrical survey from its com mencement, is deserving of the greatest praise, and is a strong claim to the gratitude of the Scientific World.

ART. VII. Mémoires pour Servir à l'Histoire des Evénemens de la Fin du Dix-Huitième Siècle. Par FEU M. L'ABBE GEORGEL. 4 vol. 8vo. Paris, 1817.

THE

HE Abbé Georgel was born at Bruyeres in the year 1731, and educated by the Jesuits. For what particular species of immorality he made himself remarkable, and in what method of confounding truth he was the most celebrated, does not appear; but he was a favourite pupil in their academics of deceit at Dijon and Strasburgh; and great hopes were entertained of his future fraud and rising lubricity. In 1762 the patience of Europe could hold out no longer; and the Jesuits were abolished: But Jesuits always fall on their legs; and the Abbé Georgel became the protegé of Prince Lewis Rohan, afterwards the famous, or infamous, Cardinal de Rohan. This prince he seems to have served with zeal and fidelity; and to have enjoyed, under his patronage, some good snug appointments.

The first service which he appears to have rendered to the Cardinal, was in defending his right to walk out of the room before the Dukes and Peers of France;-a right highly valued by the house of Rohan, long enjoyed by them, and now sharply contested by the pone-sequent Peers. He studied this weighty matter so profoundly, and reasoned it with so much heraldic acuteness, that the enemies of the Rohans were discomfited by a writ of post-secution; and those who had gone out of rooms first for so many centuries, continued to do so, till the French Revolution massacred the subjects, and abolished the sciences of heraldry and etiquette.

When Louis the Fifteenth took Madame du Barry from the public stews, and made her the despotic sovereign of thirty millions of people, the Duke de Choiseul was the prime minister of the kingdom. In the Strumpetocracy of France, he had risen to this post by the most servile attention to Madame de Pompadour, the predecessor of Madame du Barry. Proud of his situation, and elated with his good fortune, he began to imagine that he could act independently of his Paphian principal, and make the present mistress as dependent upon him as he had been upon the voluptuous politician who came before her. But in the ancient regime of France, every thing depended upon the skin, eyes, and teeth of particular women. Fronti fides, crede colori, was the motto-the Duke of Choiseul was banishedand in the Duke d'Aiguillon, a First Lord of the Treasury was found, better acquainted with the legitimate means of go

verning the French people. Under his administration, the Cardinal de Rohan was sent ambassador to Vienna-and with him went the Abbé Georgel as Secretary to the Embassy. He seems to have passed his time at Vienna agreeably to himself, and usefully to his country. His reception by Maria Theresa was flattering and cordial. Madame de Geoffrin, the friend and correspondent of most of the crowned heads in Europe, had written in his favour to the Empress, the Prime Minister, the Prince de Kaunitz, and other distinguished persons of that Court. The account of his residence at Vienna is among the most agreeable parts of the book; and from that part of his work we shall select in their proper place, some interesting anecdotes. We next find the Abbé engaged in a lawsuit with the Marechal de Broglie, which, considering the inequality of their conditions, would of course have ended in the ruin of the Ecclesiastic-but the Ecclesiastic (an Ex-Jesuit) was known to be protected by the prime minister Monsieur de Maurepas. Detur potentiori was the maxim of French justice; and the Abbé gained a verdict against the Marshall for sixteen shillings and costs. In the celebrated story of the diamond necklace, the Abbé suffered with his patron, the Cardinal; and was banished to his native city of Bruyere-and utterly deserted by his Excellency, whose cause he had defended with the most heroic zeal. A short embassy to Russia in favour of the Knights of Malta, and a long expatriation in Switzerland, during the French revolution, terminate the History of the Abbé Georgel.

The circumstance of all others which seems to have produced the greatest effect upon the mind of the Abbé, is the destruction of the Jesuits. He is perpetually recurring to it, and seems inclined to attribute to that cause the greater part of the revolu tionary evils with which Europe was afterwards afflicted.

On a

N'est-ce pas, says the Abbé, de cette fâcheuse époque que nous devons dater l'altération et la corruption des principes qui ont fait éclore notre malheureuse révolution? En effet, qu'est-il arrivé, quand on a eu sappé les fondemens de l'autel et du trône? tellement désorganisé la France au moral et au physique, que de la nation la plus polie, la plus éclairée de l'univers, on en a fait un peuple d'athées, de scélérats et de tigres altérés de sang.' I. 70.

In the same spirit, the good ecclesiastic represents the Pope Clement XIV. as agitated by the most lively remorse for having consented to the destruction of the Jesuits.

A peine Clément XIV. eut-il comblé les vœux du roi d'Espagne, par la ruine des jésuites, que sa vie ne fut plus qu'un tissu d'inquiétudes et de remords: les honneurs et la suprématie du pontificat devinrent pour lui une source d'amertume; pouvoit-il se dissimuler que

sa tiare étoit le prix d'un pacte criminel qui frappoit son élection d'un vice radical? İl voyoit que la suppression des jésuites assuroit le triomphe de l'impiété, de l'hérésie et du libertinage. Ces pensées, sans cesse renaissantes, portoient le trouble dans son ame; elles échauffoient son imagination: souvent, lorsqu'il se croyoit seul, on l'a entendu s'écrier: "Compulsus feci! compulsus feci ! la violence! "oui, la violence m'a arraché ce bref fatal qui me tourmente et me "déchire!" Absorbé nuit et jour dans ces idées qui empoisonnoient tous ses momens, il devint sombre et mélancolique; il ne trouvoit, a dit depuis un de ses plus intimes confidens, il ne trouvoit de lénitif, pour calmer les agitations de sa conscience, que lorsqu'il prenoit la résolution de réparer, autant que possible, le tort qu'il avoit fait à la chrétienté. En attendant ce moment favorable, il se determina à laisser entre les mains de son confesseur une attestation de son repentir, et une rétractation formelle et motivée du bref qu'il avoue avoir été le produit de la violence. Cette tardive rétractation n'est plus un mystère; elle est datée du 29 juin, jour de la fête de Saint-Pierre, 1774; elle est écrite en latin, et rapportée tout au long dans une histoire des jésuites, écrite en langue allemande par PierrePhilippe Wolff, imprimée à Zurich, en 1791, 3° partie, pag. 296 et suivantes. I. 147-8.

Clement XIV., it is well known, employed four years in discussing the question of the Jesuits; and, after calling to his aid the best understandings he could collect, deliberately acquiesced in their suppression. How this wears the air of compulsion, or what uneasiness so enlightened a man as Ganganelli could feel in putting down such a repository of consecrated swindlers, we are at a loss to understand. That a paper would be found after his death, indicating his deep repentance, was a matter of course to all who were acquainted with the Jesuits. One great cause of their destruction, indeed, was the good fortune they had so long enjoyed in finding, on all occasions, such opportune and decisive documents.

In page 83, vol. I., there is a curious anecdote of the Duke de Choiseul, and the particular circumstance which rendered him so eager in the suppression of this celebrated order.

Cette grande animosité devoit avoir une cause; on ne peut haïr avec cet acharnement et cette persévérance, que quand une offense personnelle a, pour ainsi dire, imbibé le cœur du fiel de la vengeance. Le duc de Choiseuil justifioit ses poursuites en racontant une anecdote qu'il disoit personnelle. "J'étois, disoit-il, anıbassadeur à Rome. Dans un entretien que j'eus avec le général des jésuites, quel fut mon étonnement, lorsque j'appris de lui la manière dont je m'étois expliqué sur sa société dans une conversation que j'avois eue à Paris! Nous savons tout, m'ajouta-t-il; nous connoissons parfaitement nos amis et nos ennemis,