1816.] French Literary and Scientific Intelligence, ing the present session; and the whole will be preceded by an introduction on the proceedings of the two chambers, the spirit of the ministry, and the present state of France. GREAT BRITAIN, says the Journal des Debats, affords a retreat to all the exploded quacks of the continent. Thus Feinagle, the inventor of the system of Mnemonics, has formed a very successful establishment, which he calls the Feinaglian Institution, at Dublin, where all who are deficient in memory, are supplied with that useful quality.-The journalist does not inform us how many British empirics we have exported to the continent in return; though we observe in the Paris papers, various announcements of the wonder-working powers of the renowned Dr. Williams, to the good people of that city. A periodical work has lately been commenced under the title of Panorame d'Angleterre. It is a selection from English works and from the notice given of its contents, not too well calculated to accomplish its professed object, that of "making the French intimately acquainted with this country in all its bearings." Mademoiselle Suzanne, who appeared some months since at the Comedie Francaise in Paris, with no very flattering success, lately returned to Bourdeaux. She bore, however, a very bad character among the people of that city, who recollected the excessive fondness which she bad manifested last year for the violet. On making her first appearance after her return, no sooner was she recognized than she was ordered from all parts of the house to shout Vive Le Roi! She obeyed. Vive Madame! was next called for; again she complied. A tricoloured cockade was then thrown on the stage with this injunction: "Mademoiselle Suzanne, pick up that cockade and burn it immediately." The actress fetched a candle and reduced the sign of rebellion to ashes. Satisfied with this amende honorable, the audience permitted poor Finette to begin her part and for once to perform the character of a hoy den with the humbled look and contrite tone of a penitent. PILLET, the author of a notorious libel on the English nation, which was suppressed by the French government about a year ago, died at Paris on the 28th of April, at the age of 54 years. The Journal des Savans, originally es-tablished during the reign of Louis XIV, is about to be revived. The different de 427 partments are thus arranged, Messrs. Visconti and Quatremère de Quincy will superintend what relates to the arts; Boissonade, Greek and Latin literature, Raoul-Rochette modern history; Vanderbourg, foreign and French literature; de Chezy, oriental literature; Gay-Lussac, chemistry; Biot, the mathematical sciences, and Cousin philosophy and metaphysics. The Chevrette cutter, commanded by Capt.Gauttier, to whom the French navy is indebted for several hydrographical works sailed from Toulon on the 16th of April. That officer is directed to determine the position of the capes and coasts forming the circumference of the Mediterranean. Similar operations are about to be undertaken by the royal command on the coasts of the Atlantic ocean. The charts of these coasts were drawn during the reign of Louis XIV, with all the accuracy which the state of knowledge at that period admitted of: but the king is sensible of the importance of furnishing nautical men with charts of the utmost precision that the improvements in the sciences and the instruments employed can bestow. Political events alone prevented the commencement of this interesting enterprize a year ago. It is under the direction of M. BEAUTEMS BEAUPRé, assisted by several engineers and draughtsmen. The government is extending its views to still more distant quarters. The fine ship Le Solide, which under the command of Capt. Marchandet, performed a voyage round the world, the account of which was drawn up by M. Fleurieu, has sailed for the Isle of Bourbon, on an expedition of discovery. The manufactory of files at Amboise is one of the most considerable in France, and also one of those that furnishes articles of the best quality. About ten years since, when it came into the bands of the present proprietor, it occupied only 20 workmen and produced goods to the amount of no more than 36,000 francs of such inferior qualities as to be unsaleable. Such have been the improvements since made in every branch of the manufacture, that the goods produced here are now in the highest request, and are employed exclusively in the naval arsenals. In 1815 the establishment employed 120 workmen, and turned out of hand 40,000 dozen of fine files and 30,000 packets of coarse ones. During the present year the demand and the number of workmen are so increased that the manufactory which in 1815 consumed 428 Switzerland---Austria &c. 160,000 kilogrammes of fine steel, is expected to require no less a quantity than 200,000 in 1816. SWITZERLAND. BARONESS KRUDENER, of Riga, who some years since displayed considerable talent in a novel, entitled Valerie, has it seems been seized with an extraordinary religious mania. Having been obliged by the government of Basle to quit that city, she has for some time past, resided at Arau, where she preaches to the Protestants who assemble from the adjacent country to hear her. She holds a pious conference in French every evening, with the better educated of the inhabitants of Arau. It is said that she gives no preference to any sect; that her opinions which tend to the union of all religious societies, are founded on the principal truths of all the christian persuasions. She accordingly admits to her meetings, persons of all religious communions, who never fail to retire highly edified, The fourth and last volume of the Correspondence of the celebrated WIELAND has just appeared at Zurich. Mr. Füssli has published the ninth part of his great Dictionary of Arts, which comprizes the letter T. Two more parts will complete this excellent collection. GERMANY. Mr. LEOPOLD VON BUCH, known to the English reader by his travels in Norway, is just returned from the Canary Islands, where he spent a whole year. He had for his assistant Mr. Smith, a young botanist, who accompanies the expedition to Congo and the interior of Africa. Mr. VON BUSCHMANN has invented a musical instrument, which he denominates terpodion. It has neither strings nor pipes, being composed only of small sticks, and is said to produce astonishing tones. AUSTRIA. Mr. DAVID, astronomer at the imperial observatory, at Prague, remarked on the 12th April, at 9 P. M. two secondary moons, formed to the east and west of that luminary. They terminated in a cone of rays, resembling the tail of a comet. This phenomenon lasted about 50 minutes. STRAUSS of Vienna, has just printed in a splendid 4to volume, a translation into French verse, by Count LAGARDE, of a Polish poem, entitled Sophiowka, by STANISLAUS TREMBECKY. The subject of it is as follows.-The Ukraine, a fertile and beautiful province of Poland, incorporated with Russia by the first partition, was long an uncultivated wild. The Zaporogian Cossacks, who were its [June 1, neighbours often made incursions into it across the Bog, and the inhabitants fled to escape captivity. It was restored to agriculture and the arts, by the care of the Empress Catherine, who caused the ferocious horde to be dispersed or destroyed. The great proprietors then returned; among them was Count Felix Potocky, whom the troubles in Poland had long kept at a distance. The cultivated steppes were soon covered with abundant harvests; convenient and elegant habitations rose around magnificent palaces; regular and commercial towns presented to colonists all that industry can furnish for the supply of the wants and luxury of new inhabitants. Thus in the midst of a wilderness, Count Potocky projected and created a garden,dedicated to his beloved consort, and named after her, Sophiowka. Two thousand workmen, vassals to the count, were employed ten years in executing the plan, designed by able artists; nearly a million of ducats was expended upon it with taste and discernment, and this garden is now one of those which are reckoned most worthy of being visited by all the lovers of the beauties of nature and of the arts. Poetry soon seized a subject which lent such charms to its fictions, and friendship sung the production of love. Trembecky, who was warmly attached to Count Potocky, and is styled by his countrymen the Polish Homer, composed this poem at the age of 70 years. A translation is ill calculated to do justice to this work, whose chief merits consist in the harmony of its numbers and the boldness of its expressions, many of which, created by the author, have been adopted by his countrymen. The same motive which inspired the author, supported the translator under his difficult task. The friendship of M. de Lagarde for the Countess Potocka, his gratitude for the generous hospitality which he experienced during a long exile, occasioned by the political troubles of France, from this lady, her noble husband, and the generous Polish nation, guided his pen and animated his muse. The erudite works of Count J. Potocky, well known for his researches on the origin of the Slavonian nations, have furnished M. Lagarde with mate rials for notes replete with learning and interest. The work is embellished with engravings by the best artists of Vienna, among which are two highly finished portraits of the author and his interpreter. The typographical part, in Polish and French, rivals the best productions of the press of Didot. 1816.] Statistical Sketch of the Austrian Empire. "In the fourth number of Baron Lichtenstern's Historical, Political and Statistical Repository, printed at Vienna, is a new statistical sketch of the states and population of the Austrian monarchy, since the treaty signed on the fourteenth Country below the Ens Lower Austria including the Innviertel, 429 of April last, with Bavaria. According to the territorial arrangements concluded with the neighbouring states, this monarchy now consists of the following provinces : Inhabitants. German 'square miles. and the parts of the Haus It is proper to observe, that the foreign paper from which the above statement is extracted, gives a different result, making the total number of square miles 12046, and of the inhabitants 27,956,000. RUSSIA. The Emperor has appointed M. KARAMSIN, historiographer of the empire, a counsellor of state, conferred on him the order of St. Anne, of the first class, and ordered the sum of 60,000 rubles to be placed at his disposal for the purpose of printing his History. TURKEY AND THE EAST. The positive statement of the death of Dr. SEETZEN, the celebrated traveller, who has, for 16 years past, been exploring with indefatigable zeal, Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia, is now as positively contradicted. Letters from Constantinople, dated Nov. 2, 1815, assert that he is detained a prisoner by the Iman of Sana, in Yemen. The Iman conceived that he had secured a rich prize, and was disappointed to find that the traveller had in his possession nothing but some astronomical instruments and dried herbs, and about 600 piastres. It is to be hoped, that this enterprizing man will not be suffered to languish long in the prisons of Sana, but that the interference of some powerful prince with the 928,000 27,035,000 Porte will procure his liberty. It would be an act worthy of the British government to exert its influence in his behalf. The same letters from Constantinople inform us, that Mr. RICH, author of an interesting Description of the Ruins of Babylon, lately published, has returned to Bagdad, where he is about to engage in fresh researches. During the last year, Messrs. RICHTER and LIEDMAN, the one a Livonian, the other a Swede, have explored the whole of Egypt and Nubia. They discovered above Philoe superb architectural remains in what is called the Egyptian style. They returned by way of Syria; Mr. Liedman proceeded to Constantinople; but his companion is gone to the north-west, and will endeavour to pene trate toward Bokhara and Bactria." M. VON HALLER is busily employed at Constantinople in arranging the materials which he collected in Attica. AMERICA. The Swiss papers make us acquainted with the existence of a new town, called New Vevey, on the banks of the Ohio, which already contains four large and six small streets. They also relate, that a colony has been founded under the name of New Switzerland, but without informing us in what part of the United States, by wealthy proprietors of the 430 The Pitt Clubs of Great Britain. canton of Vaud, who emigrated in 1801, when Buonaparte forced upon Switzerland what he termed his act of mediation. A letter from Louisville, in Kentucky, states, that a valuable discovery has lately been made in the Indiana territory, 12 miles from the Ohio river, and the same distance westward of New Albany. It is a cave containing an inexhaustible quantity of Glauber salt, or sulphate of potash. It was first discovered by a hunter, who went in, found the salt, and brought a specimen of it to an apothecary at Louisville. Dr. Adams, a physician of that place, to whom it was also shown, immediately set off to examine the cave, and finding it to be a section of land not taken out of the land-office of the United States, he entered it for himself, and is now preparing to dig it for exportation. The section, of 160 acres, cost him 320 dollars per acre. In the neighbourhood are several caves containing saltpetre. The following elegant appeal will serve to prove the rancorous spirit which still prevails among a certain class of the people of the United States against England and every thing that is English. It is extracted from the Boston Patriot of April 10, 1816. [June 1, DARTMOOR MASSACRE! "Hark! hark! ye tars of Columbialisten to the sound of the voices of the departed spirits of your brave but murdered countrymen, which calls aloud from their graves, in that tyrannic and blood-stained island whose sons have twice cowered to Columbian freemen in battle. Hark! I say, and hear them ask if they, by their beloved countrymen, are so soon forgotten, and their memories consigned to oblivion, as their bodies were to the cold and silent tomb, by the hands of the bloody SHORTLAND and his myrmidons. No, my brave and gallant Countrymen! those heroes are not forgotten, nor never shall be, so long as the purple liquid continues to circulate through their veins, and reason holds her empire in their minds. The 6th of April is the anniversary of that bloody deed committed in Dartmoor prison, which will stain the page of history to the latest date of time, and England shall tremble to its base, when she remembers the day that freemen bled by their unhallowed hands, whilst prisoners, unarmed and incapable of defence. It has been said, and truly said, that cowards are cruel; but the brave love mercy and delight to save. We will not forget those brave men, but on the 6th April will remember them. PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. NEPTUNE." a tribute to the merits of the great states. man from whom they emanated, we sha!! be forgiven for introducing the inscription upon his monument erected in the Guildhall of the city of London, in which they are thus justly and emphatically recorded: WILLIAM PITT, Son of WILLIAM PITT, Earl of Chatham, service of the state. THE PITT CLUBS OF GREAT BRITAIN. THERE is perhaps no feature in the national character of Englishmen that more strongly distinguishes them from the people of other countries than the numerous associations established for the purpose of promoting some particular political opinion, providing relief for every species of distress that can befal humanity, or perpetuating those local attachments which are the sources of the most agreeable recollections. Among the first class we know of none whose object is so important--whether we consider the person commemorated, or the influence which his principles have exercised over the state of the whole civilized world, as the societies formed in almost all the principal towns of the British empire in honour of the late Rt. Hon. WILLIAM PITT--a statesman whose name our remotest posterity will pronounce with reverence. Though we are confident that the nature of those principles is so well known to all the readers of this work as to render any elucidation of them here unnecessary, yet in an article professedly designed as Called to the chief conduct of the Admini stration, after the close of a disastrous war, He repaired the exhausted Revenues, he revived and invigorated the Commerce and Prosperity of the Country, And he had re-established the Public Credit on deep and sure foundations, When a new War was kindled in EUROPE, more formidable than any preceding War from the peculiar character of its dangers. To resist the arms of FRANCE, which were directed against the Independence of every Government and People, To animate other nations by the example of GREAT BRITAIN, 1816.] The London Pitt Club. To check the contagion of opinions which tended to dissolve the frame of Civil Society, To array the loyal, the sober-minded, and the good, in defence of the venerable Consti tution of the BRITISH MONARCHY, Were the duties which, at that awful crisis, he And, in the midst of difficulties and perils, For these high purposes, endowments, Rare in their separate excellence, wonderful in their combination : Judgment; imagination; memory; wit; force and acuteness of reasoning; Eloquence, copious and accurate, com manding and persuasive, And suited, from its splendour, to the dignity of his mind and to the authority of his station; A lofty spirit; a mild and ingenuous temper. Warm and stedfast in friendship, towards enemies he was forbearing and forgiving; His industry was not relaxed by confidence in his great abilities; His indulgence to others was not abated by the consciousness of his own superiority; His ambition was pure from all selfish mo tives; The love of power and the passion for fame were in him subordinate to views of public utility; Dispensing for near twenty years the favours of the Crown, He lived without ostentation, and he died poor. NIEI. ATCHESON, esq., who at that time this association met on Mr. Pitt's birth a more extensive society might be formed The members of this patriotic insti- We regret to be obliged to state that though we have spared no pains, by personal application and by letter, to obtain accounts of the state of each individual club, in the hope of presenting to our readers a complete view of these institutions, yet in various instances our endeavours have proved unsuccessful. shall therefore proceed to fulfil our inten- THE LONDON PITT CLUB. a The origin of this club proceeds from society of respectable private individuals who in 1793 associated themselves for the purpose of endeavouring to counter act the principles disseminated by the partisans of the French Revolution. This society owes its origin to NATHA * This fund consisted of 1,000l., part of the ment erected at Cambridge to Mr. Pitt. The surplus of a subscription raised for the monufirst election took place in January, 1814, when this honourable distinction was ob tained under circumstances that reflected Mr. MARMADUKE LAWSON, of Magdalen peculiar credit on the successful candidate College, who has this year added to his academic laurels by gaining one of the Chancellor's gold medals, as is recorded in our last number, p. 323. |