the extinction of scientific ardour, which are the necessary consequences of those faults: but he shuts his eyes to the wide diffusion of knowlege, and to the intimate connection which has been established between the most distant branches of science, the utility of which undoubtedly deserves at

tention.

The second part of this production is the least objectionable, and the most interesting. Here the writer takes a view of the principal nations of the present age, and proves himself to be a man of extensive knowlege of the world, and of acute observation. The Germans he pities; the Italians he considers as deserving of their fate, and incapable of being free; of the Spaniards he entertains great hopes, and he anticipates, from the nature of their country and the charac. ter of the inhabitants, the approach of better times.

• A nation of 11 millions of men (says he) is now tributary to the French, and wages wars in which it has no interest. Yet nature has placed eternal mountains between the two people. Had the courage of the antient Cantabrians and Celtiberians now existed, a French army might indeed have crossed the Pyrenées, but none would have returned. Yet the time of deliverance approaches. All America will be free, and Spain will be obliged to live within herself, and will be happy: Portugal will be subservient, because she ought, and is an excrescence on a healthy body if she be not united to Spain; priests will lose the lustre of holiness, and kings will lose their thrones, unless the former mean to work and the latter to govern. Then the Spaniards will be again what once they were, one of the most flourishing and powerful nations of Europe.'

Of the Russians, the author has, from observation, no great expectations; but the Swedes, he thinks, are destined to be the rulers of the North. To Prussia, if she aims at aggrandisement and to join greater nations in partaking of their plunder, he foretells the fate of the ass which made a common cause with the lion. The power of England he wishes to be preserved, but he fears her ruin, not from external but internal causes. The wish which has long prevailed on the continent to see England humiliated, on account of her commercial despotism, draws from him these observations:

• Many think that nothing would be more fortunate than for the French to force the bank of London, destroy the British fleet, and then return home. Fools! shall one nation bury Europe under her ruins? do you hope for justice after her destruction? have the French taught us to love their moderation and justice so as to make us wish for them? I know no greater misfortune than that they should conquer England. They would give us no free trade; and the naval dominion in the hands of these dreadful tyrants of the continent would be an iron weight from which no power could relieve us.'

He then turns to England and thus apostrophizes her:

Britains; you were once a noble people, Your constitution gave spirit and power; you had poets and orators, astronomers and discoverers; you were free, high minded, and just. On the banks of the Ganges and the Senegal, and in Jamaica, the morals, the virtues, and the admirable constitution of Englishmen were lost! Oppressors became oppressed, and despots became slaves! It is evident that, during the last 30 years, you have been, and that you still are, on the decline. Victories by land and sea militate nothing against this assertion; such proofs of glory and virtue many nations can produce, when every thing else is lost that rendered them worthy of being a people. Should you be overwhelmed, and France become the despot of the seas, the last spark of European liberty is extinguished. You will perish by no power but your own. You are yet more a nation than most of us: but how long will you remain so? You have been so great that your fall would shake the world.'

A distinct section is devoted to Bonaparte; of whose cha racter and actions M. ARNDT expresses his sentiments with a freedom that must now be rare on the continent, yet in language which is free from invective. We have often been told that opinions abroad respecting the ruler of France differed widely from those which are prevalent among us: but we may conclude, from the pages of this writer, that many think though few dare to speak or write as we do. M. ARNDT wrote, it seems, before the last war with Austria was entirely finished; and it appears that, even at that time, many persons expected from Bonaparte the deliverance of Europe; for he warns against this delusion, and refers to former proofs of faithlessness and deception. These effusions of a patriotic mind may excite our respect for the source from which they flow; and if they have afforded the writer the satisfaction of having fulfilled his duty, he has not written in vain: but we fear that the voice of truth is now drowned in the din of arms, and that any effect from a patriot's advice must be expected only in better times.

ART. XIV. Mémoires de l'Institut, &c. i. e. Memoirs of the National Institute, Vol. VI. 4to. Paris. 1806. Imported by De Boffe.

CONT

ONTRARY to the usual practice observed in the publication of these Memoirs, which (as our readers know) has been to issue at the same time three parts of the same volume, each devoted to a different branch of literature or philosophy, we have on the present occasion received .only that part of Vol. VI. which relates to the Physical and Mathematical Sciences; and we understand that it is the intention of the Institute thus

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to give them separately in future, as opportunity enables each to be completed.

In the History of this volume, we are furnished with notices of two eminent departed members of this learned body, M. Méchain, the French astronomer, and Dr. Priestley, the English metaphysician, chemist, and theologian.

Historical Notice respecting M. Méchain: by M. Delamere, perpetual Secretary.-The eulogist informs us that PierreFrançois-André Méchain, a member of the National Institute and of the Board of longitude,. F.R.S. London, &c. was born at Laon, in the department of Aisne, April 16, 1744, and died in the province of Valencia in Spain, of an epidemic disorder, as he was prosecuting an undertaking for measuring an arc of the meridian, Sept. 20, 1799. It will be unnecessary for us to recount to the scientific reader, all the services which this zealous and indefatigable mathematician rendered to astronomy: but M. DELAMBRE displays with becoming assiduity the merits of the deceased member of the Institute, and the benefits conferred by him on the philosophical world. Having discovered at an early age a singular taste for mathematics, Mechain was taken by his relations to Paris, where he was patronized by M. de Lalande, was entered in the depôt of the marine, and afterward made two voyages with M. de la Bretonniere, to survey the coasts of France from Newport to St. Maloes. The first memoirs, which made him known as an astronomer, were on the occultation of Aldebaran which had been observed in 1744, on the great eclipse of the sun in 1778, and on the opposition of Jupiter in 1779. After this pexiod, he rapidly advanced to celebrity, became in 1782 a member of the French Academy, and in 1785 was intrusted with the direction of the Connoissance des Temps. He was also united with M. M. Cassini and Legendre in measuring a series of triangles, to correspond with those of the English mathematicians, for the purpose of rectifying the relative positions of the observatories of Greenwich and Paris; of which Méchain gave details in the Memoirs of the Academy. When the Academy alo was consulted by the Constituent Assembly, on the choice of a new system of measures, and proposed for the base of this measure a quarter of the earth's meridian, the length of which arc was to be ascertained with the greatest possible exactness, M. Méchain was one of those who were appointed to this important undertaking. The arc proposed to be measured extended from Dunkirk to Barcelona. In the preparation of astronomical instruments and other necessary apparatus, so much time was consumed, that it was not till the year 1792 that Mechain could proceed to the object of his destination; and he

had

had not gone far on his journey towards Spain, where he was appointed to measure triangles, when, owing to the singular construction of his carriage and the not less singular appearance of its contents, he was stopped at Essone, on suspicion of being furnished with counter-revolutionary instruments. At last, however, he was suffered to proceed; and from Sept. to Nov. 1792, he was occupied in fixing on all the points proper for the angles of his triangles, by which he meant to measure the space comprized between the parallel of Barcelona and that of Perpig nan, with the exception of two points in the Pyrenées. In the following winter, his labours were interrupted, and indeed his life was nearly destroyed, by a violent blow received in endeavouring to stop an hydraulic machine, which a medical friend at Barce lona had lately constructed, which he had inspected with him. at his particular request, and which had overpowered and endangered the Doctor and his servant. He was taken up senseless: his collar bone was dislocated and broken, together with several of his ribs; and he was otherwise bruized and lacerated; so that for three days he remained without hope of recovery. When he became convalescent, he lamented more the loss of the favourable season for observation, than the personal sufferings which he had endured; and with all the enthusiasm of science, he hastened to prosecute his labours. We shall not recount the obstacles with which the war, that now broke out between France and Spain, interrupted the execution of his plans; and with what assiduity, in a subsequent and more peaceable period, he renewed and extended his ob servations on the coast of Spain opposite to the Baleares. It is sufficient to add that no hardships, no labours, no dangers, could divert him from his purpose; and that, before he had completed the object of his mission, he died a martyr to his ardent zeal for the sciences, in consequence of having caught an epidemic disorder which prevailed in the district where he then was, and which had been fatal to several of his attendants.

The eulogist represents Méchain to have been remarkably modest and silent, seldom speaking at the meetings of the Society. At the end of the Memoir, we learn that, before his last expedition, he intrusted to M. DELAMBRE all his registers and MSS.; extracts from which, it is observed, will contribute more to Méchain's praise than the most eloquent discourse.— He married in 1777 Theresa Marjou, by whom he had a daughter and two sons, both of whom are following their father's steps, and are already known to science.

Historical Eulogy of Joseph Priestley, by M. CUVIER, perpetual Secretary. It Dr. Priestley could peruse the account of himself which is here given to the French National Institute, by one of APP. REV. VOL. LI.

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its illustrious members, he would on the whole perhaps be gratified, but with the whole he could not be pleased. As a philosopher, he receives considerable praise; and the virtuous energy with which M. CUVIER condemns the disgraceful proceedings of the Birmingham rioters, and laments over the want of liberality which forced him to abandon his native land, would be peculiarly satisfactory to his manes; especially as his own countrymen do not appear to have generously appre ciated his worth, nor charitably commiserated his misfortunes. In his profession of a divine, however, Dr. Priestley obtains little that is complimentary from the French eulogist. While in his character of natural philosopher he is represented to have been circumspect, cautious, patient, and modest in the pursuit of truth, he is described in that of theologian as indiscreet in attacking mysterious articles, in treating with contempt the faith of the age, in having rejected authorities mot revered, and in having entered the lists of controversy with too high an idea of the importance of his peculiar opinions. Between the two characters of philosopher and theologian, existing in one man, M. CUVIER discovers a great difference to subsist; and his language shews his approbation of the one and his dislike of the other. The first (he observes,) quietly surrenders his discoveries to the examination of men of science; they are established without difficulty; and they obtain for him uncontested glory. The latter, equipping himself like a warrior, and bristling with erudition and metaphysics, attacks all sects, shakes all opinions, and revolts all consciences, by the ardour which he manifests in his endeavours to overturn them.'

After having detailed at some length an account of the Doctor's philosophical discoveries and writings, which it is altogether unnecessary to repeat in this place, and lamented his obstinacy in the controversy relative to Phlogiston, the eulo gist does not hesitate to declare that Priestley has a right to be considered as one of the fathers of modern Chemistry; and that his glory justly associates with that of the authors of this celebrated revolution in human knowlege.

A French philosopher seems entirely out of his element when he is discussing the differences which subsist between religious sects; and the members of the Institute probably yawned while M. CUVIER was explaining the doctrines of Calvinism, Arianism, and Socinianism, from the first to the last of which Dr. Priestley is known to have passed. This part of the memoir amused us, however, by its singularity; though we were mortified at discovering that, in this discussion of religious opinions, a Frenchman could display more enlarged

principles