open air from ice; or any thing impregnated with it, even by so thin a body as gauzepaper, if not porous, the ice or frozen object will continue in that state for a long time; perhaps for years." ART. IV.-Conversations on Chemistry, in which the Elements of that Science are fumiliarly explained and illustrated by Experiments. 2 vols. 8vo. Of this very excellent work it is not easy to speak in terms of exaggeration. Elementary books of chemistry have hitherto been for the most part carelessly composed; their authors either attempting too much have contracted and confused the proper elementary and fundamental parts; or coming to the undertaking very scantily provided with the requisite knowledge, have kept aloof from all particulars, confining themselves to so very general a view of the subject, as at best can only stimulate the curiosity of their readers, and lead them to suppose that to be the simplest and easiest of the sciences, which in fact and practice from its vast extent, and the intricate nature of many of its parts, requires much closer attention than those who know nothing of it are willing to believe. In the work before us (and we find from the preface that it comes from a female pen) is eminently displayed an intimate acquaintance with the subject, and both good sense and good taste in selecting and dilating upon those topics in which it is more particularly requisite that the student should be thoroughly grounded. A caviller would perhaps object to the dialogue form, and sturdily maintain that no science can in reality be taught by question and answer: he might also observe that the two young ladies, who, with their mother or governess, are the interlocutors, both urge and answer objections with an acuteness, of which it would be in vain to look for examples in real life. This is true; but in return it must surely be conceded, that as the dialogue recedes from nature, the objection to the form becomes proportionably weaker. The first volume is devoted to the consideration of the simple bodies. Caloric heads the list, and furnishes a subject for three conversations, in which almost all that is known of this most important agent is explained with considerable detail, and the utmost clearness. Oxygen and nitrogen, hydrogen, sulphur and phosphorus, carbone, the metals and metallic oxyds, the alkalies, and the earths, follow in succession to the end of the volume. The compound bodies are the subject of the second volume; but between the two classes of substances is interposed a dialogue on chemical affinity, which we should object to as not sufficiently particular, if we did not recollect how little qualified the young student in chemistry can be justly to appreciate a topic which comprehends the whole philosophy of chemistry properly so called. The seven last conversations relate to vegetable and animal chemistry, including not merely the products of these two varieties of or ganization, but containing besides a very elegant and accurate sketch of vegetable and animal physiology, as far as chemical, agency is concerned. A work of such superior merit deserves more than cold approbation: nor shall we scruple to claim the thanks of our readers for thus pointing out to them the very best introduction to the science of chemistry that the English language affords. CHAPTER XXIV. COMMERCE. ART. I.—Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce. By ADAM ANDERSON. 4 Vols. 4to. ANDERSON's History of Commerce rather resembles the lump of indigest materials industriously provided by a man of letters for the purpose of drawing up a book from them, than a work already prepared for the public eye. A great deal of civil history, as well as of commercial his tory, is introduced; much more of political event is narrated, than had any influence on the fortunes or pursuits of trade. Facts are not sifted from the sources where they were found, but are stated for the most part in the form of extracts, as occurring in the different works consulted. Thus every thing wants its proper bearing and point of view, and seeins related for some other purpose than that for which it is adduced. These countless heterogeneous transcripts are broken into incoherent pieces, and are arranged in annals; so that the regular rise and progress of any specific branch of commerce is no where to be found in connexion, but must be laboriously sought, by means of the index, in a dozen places. Some important, sound, fundamental authorities, such as Fischer's History of German Commerce, and Beckman's History of Inventions, are wholly neglected; but much useless antiquarian micrology is employed by the author to fill, and stretch, and swell, and spread the heavy width of his two thousand pages. He seems intent, like a haberdasher, on displaying the variety of his petty wares, and on cramming his shop-windows with every portion of his stock; not, like a wholesale dealer, on moving much in close package, and on confining his attention to leading articles. Anderson's history was fitter to re-make than to reprint: it might without detriment have been abridged and reduced one half; and a new arrangement by order of matter, a methodical distribution of the contents, should have been undertaken. To this task of amelioration and regeneration the continuators have not condescended. They deliver their three first volumes in the words of Anderson, whose history extended only to the year 1703; and they continue the chronicle with similar diffuseness, yet with less detail, to the end of the year 1789, at which period this book was first offered to the public, nearly in its present form. A transposition of the preface from the last to the first volume, and a title-page or two new-dated, is all the show of improvement we can perceive in the present edition. We sup pose that a fifth volume is in contempla tion, which is to extend from 1790 to 1800, and that a decennial quarto on these topics is in future to be brought forth. More facts might easily be collected; fewer public papers require to be reprinted entire the gestation of the elephant is long, it should produce an elephant. There are several questions respecting which the enquiries of Anderson have been negligent, or confined; such is the history of commercial guilds, which is glanced at under the year 1000, but without any addition to the information of Madox. When it is considered that these commercial companies laid the groundwork of our internal industry and prospe rity, applied for the charters of almost all our incorporated towns, and have this been the principal causes both of our trade and of our liberty, a more extended research into their origin was desirable and due. It is not known whether they are the residues of purse-clubs instituted during the commercial age of the ancient Roman world, or whether they are of native northern growth. In the capitularies of Charlemagne, in the Florentine history, in the English and in the German annals, they make their appearance about the same time; but one sees not whence they originate. Under the year 1290 some account is given of the expulsion of the Jews from Great Britain. The great injury done to commerce by the intolerance of the middle ages against the Jews, deserved a more extensive and elaborate investigation. They were the most opulent, civilized, learned, and travelled class of society in that age, and were barbarously persecuted by the rapacity and envy of the feudal countrygentlemen. What the interior of Europe preserved of the arts of antiquity was preserved by the Jews. Under the year 1-492 the Portuguese settlements in Africa are described as having struck root, as abounding with churches and clergy, who have converted the natives to christianity. Such over-statements may occur in the journals of the missionaries; but if this had ever been the state of Portuguese Africa, we should find more remains there of the agricultural and commercial arts. Under the year 1595 occurs a very brief account of sir Walter Raleigh's voyage to Guiana. Now that the districts he visited, the island of Trinidad and the coast of Demerary, are passing under our protection, one wishes for minuter details of an expedition which confers, on this nation, a title from discovery to provinces, which have since accepted our protection for the sake of its utility. The declension of Portuguese power in Asia is justly ascribed to their undertaking too large a basis of territory for them to supply adequately with the means of protection and defence. The most expedient settlements for a trading country are those islands or deltas at the mouth of great rivers. Such small patches of territory drain the metropolitan population for but a small civil and military establishment; but they are necessarily the seats of a vast barter of exterior for interior produce, Soldiers and governors are a heavy percentage on the profits of industry: the smaller the proportion they bear to the amount of the commercial returns the better. A settlement which consumes more than the profits of its commerce in patronizing the unproductive classes, such as lawyers, clergy, and magistrates, ought immediately to be presented with its independence, it is be come a burden, not an advantage, to the parent state. Let treaties of alliance connect them still; but let European troops be paid for by a subsidy, and European navies by a proportionate advance of ca pital. Under the year 1625 the settlement of St. Christopher's is narrated, which was undertaken conjointly, and with an equal number of colonists, by the English and by the French; but the orderly, domestic, and industrious habits of the English soon rendered their district the more flourishing. In Guienne, in Louisiana, in Surinam, in Canada, in Senegal, and at Pondicherry, the French have tried colonization; but they never make such establishments succeed, their national habits are not favourable to patient industry. Instead of binding out their lads apprentices at fifteen, they drill them all for soldiers; of course courage and idleness, the love of variety, and the love of pleasure, become the characteristics of the numerous classes of their people, Under the year 1731, the profit derived yearly from our American colonies, insular and continental, is computed at one million sterling, and the sailors employed at eighteen thousand. How swiftly commerce pullulates! In two generations how vast the increase! The abridgment of Busching's geography, which fills the latter half of the third volume, might wholly have been omitted with advantage to the unity and consistency of the entire work. We now go to Pinkerton for our geography; and no longer want the minutious, stale, arrear intelligence of Busching. He was a kindred mind of Anderson's, and is no doubt fraternally reprinted by his side. Both collected and collected, like countyantiquarians, myriads of barley-corus of information, careless about the quality, so they but compiled quantity. The maritime treatise by sir Philip Medowes is good; but what has it to do here? One might as well reprint, in a history of commerce, the whole controversy between Selden and Grotius. The continuation. which occupies the whole fourth volume, contains a copious collection of public and state-papers, many of which are so exclusively political, that we wonder to see them in a chronicle professedly commercial. The rise and progress of the American war is very well detailed; much more is related concerning it than had any obvious influence on trade. Under the year 1776 a proclamation of the Spanish king, issued during peace, is preserved, which concedes to the ships of the American colonists a liberty of admission into any ports of his dominions, while they conformed to the laws of the country. The author of War in Disguise affects to doubt the prescriptive right of the North Americans to trade with the Spanish colonies; and is for founding our right of seizure on the supposed novelty of the course of neutral commerce. The history of the armed neutrality, which begins under the year 1780, forms an interesting and convenient part of the narrative, and is copiously interspersed with state-papers. Under the same year is given a copy of the treaty between North America and Holland, in which it is expressly stipulated that enemy's property may be shipped without being seizable on board the ships of either party. Under the following year are given the orders inserted in the London Gazette on the 21st of April 1781, prohibiting ships of war, or vessels having letters of marque and reprisal, from taking prizes in the Baltic. This sea was thus first consecrated to perpetual commercial peace: we trust that in due time armed vessels will be suffered to assail only one another, and that a perpetual commercial peace will overspread every sea. Under the year 1783 more criticism is wasted on the then made treaty of peace than strictly concerns its commercial merit. The Ohio should if possible have been made the back line of boundary: it may yet be worth while to offer an exchange of the Bahama islands for an additional strip of continent in Upper Canada. The cession of West Florida is to be regretted. Even the yielding up Senegal and Goree is a dereliction of right which in favourable circumstances ought to be revoked. Under the year 1783 Mr. Fox's India bill is introduced: one is surprised how a regulation so natural; so little different in any thing, but in its tendency to throw open the trade of the India company to the whole commercial world, from the regulation eventually adopted, can have excited much ferment, or much displeasure. An important public paper is given under the year 1784, which is a petition of the proprietors of landed estates in the sugar-colonies, and which makes many allegations of grievance, still true, and still unredressed. Under the year 1784 an Arret du Conseil d'Etat of the French king is given, which opens various ports of the West Indies to the ships of the North Americans. Such documents are become important, because they prove a prescriptive right ia neutrals to trade with the French colonies; and that we ought to have protested against such permissions, if we are authorized to capture the neutrals who avail themselves of them. The more the piratical proposal of the author of War in Disguise is investigated, the more contrary it will appear to the recognized law of nations. Under the year 1787 the commercial Prussia is printed in full length, which foreign authorities and foreign commerce title most descriptive of its real contents. It may deserve a place on the shelves of statistical readers, rather for purposes of reference than perusal; but its best destination is to serve as literary wash, whence a future writer may distil a single volume of the spirit. Among the most valuable histories of commerce, and of those which throw light on its obscurest periods, are the Memorias historicas sobre la marina, comercio y artes de la antigna ciudad de Barcelona; por Don Antonio de Capmany, 1779. It proves that Constantinople had become the depository of the commercial arts and usages of the ancients; and that from Constantinople they passed to Barcelona, and were thence distributed and taught to the modern world. Nor was Barcelona merely the cradle of modern commerce, but of all the refinements which every where accompany commerce: the first vernacular poetry of the moderns, known by the name of the Provenzal school, was chiefly composed at Barcelona, at the court of the Berengari, who, much more than the Medici, have been the founders of modern culture, ART. II.-The Merchant's Assistant. By CHRISTOPHER DUBOST. 8vo. pp. 250. HAYES' Negociator's Magazine, and Beawer's Tables of Exchange, were formerly used by the commercial world for the purposes which this arithmetical book is adapted to answer; but as revolutions in the system of coinage and measurement of several continental states have caused the par of exchange to oscillate between new limits, and brought fresh quantities into currency, it was desirable to newmake such books, to repeat the old processes with variations, and to familiarize these calculations, which are now become the more usual. This task has been accomplished with information, with conciseness, and with exactness, by the author of the volume before us. In our opinion books of instruction should be drawn up for the dull, not merely for the quick: we doubt if there is enough of explanation in this treatise to make it a sufficient substitute for personal tuition. To a second edition the author would do well to add tables ready calculated for every amount from 17. to 1000l., at the probable rates of exchange between London and the other European seats of commercial negociation. Books of this kind are convenient not merely to merchants and to travellers, but to those statistical speculators who read books of travels, and project treaties of commerce, and harangue and dissert on the utility of an industrious intercourse, which is usually best accommodated by escaping the very notice of the statesman. We should have hoped the Levant trade was not so wholly unknown in London as to justify the entire omission of Smyrna, in the list of places, whose mo-` nies, weights, and measures, were to be recorded for the use of the British merchant. There is a practical exchange subsisting between London and North America: the dollar is sometimes received at more, and sometimes at less this sweep of intercourse is overlooked. In the British settlements of the East Indies, there is a currency which differs from our own, and which it would have been useful to notice and explain. A future edition may be rendered far more complete. |