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groves of Circassia. The life of the wandering Arab abounds with events which strike the fancy, and when clothed in the metaphorical and exuberant language of the east, cannot fail to interest our curiosity and excite our feelings. Their independence, hospitality, and love of poetry, are beautiful features of their character, and form a strong contrast with the more luxurious and servile existence of the Persian. In Arabia itself nothing can be more opposed than the two districts which are known by the epithets of petræa and felix; a dreary and boundless waste of sand, with out shade, shelter, or water, scorched by the burning rays of the sun, and intersected by sharp and naked mountains, while, instead of refreshing breezes, breathe the most deadly vapours and whirlwinds, and which, raising the sandy ocean, threaten to overwhelm the affrighted caravan, are descriptive of the one part, while shady groves, green pastures, streams of pure water, fruits of the most delicious flavour, and air of the most balmy fragrance, characterise the other. From the banks of the Tigris, from the deserts of Arabia, from the shaded plains of Georgia and Circassia, bas

our inimitable Collins drawn his scenery and characters, and no eclogues of ancient or modern times, in pathetic beauty, in richness and wildness of description, in simpli city of sentiment and manners, can justly be esteemed superior, His "Hassan, or the Camel-Driver," is, I verily believe, one of the most tenderly sublime, most sweetly-descriptive poems in the cabinet of the Muses. The "Solyman" of sir William Jones, and the "Oriental Eclogues" of Scott of Amwell, have also considerable merit; the former is an exquisite specimen of the Arabian eclogue, and the "* Serim" and "Li-Po" of the latter have many picturesque touches, and much pleasing moral.

"A poet of fine imagingtion, and great pathetic powers, has lately presented us with "Botany-Bay Eclogues," a subject fruitful in novelty both of scenery and character; nor has he failed strongly to interest our feelings. In "Elinor," the first of his four eclogues, he has more particularly availed himself of the peculiar features of the country; the following passage vividly paints the state of this yet savage land.

Welcome, ye marshy heaths! ye pathless woeds!
Where the rude native rests his wearied frame

• Beneath the sheltering shade; where, when the storm,
'As rough and bleak it rolls along the sky,

• Benumbs his naked limbs, he flies to seek

The dripping shelter. Welcome, ye wild plains
Unbroken by the plough, undelved by hand
Of patient rustic; where for lowing herds,
And for the music of the bleating flocks,
Alone is heard the kangaroo's sad note,
'Deepening in distance.

'SOUTHEY.'

Mrs. West too, in imitation of Shenstone, has given us some elethe pastoral ballad of Rowe and gant productions; one, in which

the

the superstition and imagery of the Scotish bighlands are introduced, has the merit of originality.

"If what has been now observed should induce the unprejudiced reader to reperuse the authors alluded to, he will probably be inclined to admit that, in pastoral poetry, Virgil, Spenser, Pope, Gay, and Phillips, must yield the palm to Tasso, Warner, Drayton, and the two Fletchers, to Rowe, Ramsey, Shenstone, Gessner, and Collins; yet most of our critics in this department have considered the former as, the only genuine disciples of Theocritus, and have. scarce deigned to mention any of the latter. Some indeed have noticed the Italians and the courtly Fontenelle, but none, except Blair, though treating professedly upon this subject, have applauded Gessner, and as to Warner and Drayton, save a few observations with regard to the latter from the elegant pen of Dr. Aikin, they have almost suffered oblivion. Virgil, excluding his first bucolic, is a mere, though a very pleasing, imitator; and whatever may be thought of Spenser, Pope has certainly nothing but his mpsical versification to recommend him. The purport of Gay seems to have been parody and burlesque, and Phillips, and I may here also add Lytelton, though superior perhaps to Pope, have little or no originality. It is no wonder, there

fore, that modern pastoral poetry should appear so despicable contrasted with the ancient, when our best and most original writers are unappealed to; when to quote Pope, Gay, and Phillips, Warner, Drayton, Collins, and Gessner, are neglected. These four authors assuredly rescue modern pastoral and eclogue from the charge of insipidity. Not servilely treading in the footsteps of Theocritus and Virgil, they have chalked out, and embellished with the most beautiful simplicity, paths of their own; their flowers are congenial to the soil, and display their tints with a brillancy and fragrance which no sickly exotic can ever hope to emulate. To this remark the oriental eclogue may be opposed, but let it be observed, that the manners still exist, and have all the freshness of living nature; the shepherds of Arabia are what they were a thousand years ago, and a well drawn picture of their pastoral customs and country must be highly relished by the lov ers of simple and independent life. In Warner and Drayton our own country manners, without exaggeration or much embellishment, arc naturally and correctly given, and in Gessner, the domestic affections, flowing from the bosom of more refined sensibility, and very picturesque description, are clothed in language of the utmost simplicity."

PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS

INVESTIGATION of the ORIGIN of Basaltes.

[From the third VOLUME of TRAVELS into the Two SICILIES, and some Parts of the APPENINES, by the Abbe LAZZARO SPALLANZANI.]

ITERARY disputes and dif- to discover whether it bears the

quently arise from want of previously fixing the state of the controversy; that is, from not defining in precise and clear terms the thing in question. Before we inquire what is the origin of basaltes, that is to say, whether they are the result of the action of fire or water, it will be proper to decide what we mean by the term; or rather what the ancients understood by this word, which is the name they gave to a certain kind of stones. It is now generally known, because it has been repeated by a hundred writers, though perhaps by the greater part without due consideration, that the word basaltes is used by Pliny and Strabo to denominate an opake and solid stone, of the hardness, and nearly of the colour, of iron, commonly configurated in prisms, and originally brought from Ethiopia; of which stone the Egyptians made statues, sarcophagi, mortars, and various utensils. This premised, it remains to inquire whether this stone was of volcanic origin or not, by repairing to the places where it was found, and attentively examining the country

This labour, however, has not, to my knowledge, been hitherto undertaken by any one; but M. Dolomieu, to whom lithology and the history of volcanos are so much indebted, has discovered, during his stay at Rome, an equivalent, in some measure, with respect to the solution of this question. Among the many noble monuments in that superb capital which are instructive not only to the admirers of the arts, but to the contemplators of nature, are a great number of statues, sarcophagi, and mortars brought from Egypt, which have all the characters attributed to basaltes, and likewise preserve the name. These he has studied with the greatest attention, and declares that the stone of which they are formed manifests no sign of the action of fire. Among other Egyptian monuments, he observed some of a green basaltes, which change colour, and assume a brown tinge, similar to that of bronze, on being exposed to the slightest heat. All those that have been burned have acquired this colour; which proves, as he very judiciously ob

serves,

serves, that the green basaltes have never suffered the action of fire.

"The Egyptian stones, therefore, to which the ancients gave the appellation of basaltes, have been produced by nature in the humid way. These observations perfectly agree with those of Bergmann on the trapps produced in the same way; and which have, both externally and internally, the same characteristics with the basaltes.

"Werner, taking the term basaltes in a wider sense, and understanding by it all those columnar stones which, by their prismatic configuration, resemble the Egyptian basaltes, supposes both to have the same origin, and adduces, as a proof of that origin, the basaltes of the hill of Scheibenberg, which are the effect of a precipitation by means of water; and concludes that all basaltes are formed in the humid way.'

66

Though I am willing to be slow the praise due to his discovery, I cannot admit his conclusion; for though many basaltes, taking that term in the sense of this author and other naturalists, may derive their origin from water, many others are certainly the product of fire.

"I shall not repeat what various volcanists have written on this subject, but merely refer the reader to what I have already said relative to the basaltine lavas of Vulcano and Felicuda. With respect to the former island, I have remarked, in chap. XIII. that I found within its crater a range of articulated prisms, with unequal sides and angles, which, in part, composed one whole with a mass of lava; and, in part, were detached from it. I have also there described the qualities and nature of these prisms.

In chap. XVII. I have particularly described the litoral lavas of Felicuda, which, near the water, are prismatic.

"It is therefore evident, that, in these two situations, the origin of the basaltes there found cannot be what it has been assumed, generally, by Werner and other Germans, but that it is truly volcanic. It consequently appears that Nature obtains the same effect by two different ways. In the fossil kingdom, one of her grand operations is crystallization; which, though it be most frequently effected in the humid way, is sometimes produced in the dry; as we see, among other instances, in iron, which Nature crystallizes within the earth, both by the means of water and of fire, in which latter way the beautiful specular iron of Stromboli is produced. Nor are there wanting other instances, of the crystallization of the same metal by the action of fire. And did other metals exist in the entrails of volcanos, and the necessary circumstances concur to their crystallization, it is indubitable that this may be effected by fire as well as by water. see that, by taking certain precautions, metallic substances assume a regular and symmetrical disposition within the crucible. The same is true of basaltes, the prismatic configuration of which, though not strictly a crystallization, has the most exact resemblance to it. Observation, likewise, teaches us that the same combination of earths, according to different circumstances, forms prismatic basaltes, sometimes in the humid, and sometimes in the dry way. called trapp, found in the mountains of Sweden, is configurated in prisms, though those mountains are of aqueous origin; and the

Thus we

The stone

horu

they have drawn lines or zones, in different parts of the globe, indicative of extinct volcanos, which they have inferred from finding basaltes there; and thus pourtrayed a picture of prodigious dimensions, representing the ruins caused in the world by subterranean confla grations. Other naturalists, on the contrary, being convinced that certain basaltes are the produce of water, have assigned to all the same origin. From the facts now ad. duced, it is, however, sufficiently evident that both these hypotheses are erroneous. The basaltes, taking the term generally, when examined detached, do not bear exclusively any decisive marks of their origin. Local circumstances alone can determine to which of

horn-stone, which is so analogous to the trapp, has the same configuration at Felicuda, notwithstanding it is a true lava. In the same island, likewise other basalti-form lavas have for their base shoerl in mass, and those of the crater of Vulcano, the petrosilex; which two stones, according to the observations of M. Dolomieu, form some of the Egyptian basaltes, which are a work of the waters. These two agents, fire and water, are not, in fact, so different in their action as we might at first be inclined to imagine. The prismatic figure in the bumid way arises in the soft earth by the evaporation of the water; in consequence of which the parts dry, contract their volume, and split into polygonal pieces. The same phenomenon the two principles it is to be may be remarked in margaceous earths, imbued with water, and exposed to the ventilation of the air; and I have frequently seen the mud of rivers, when dried in the sun, in summer, to make potteryware, divide, when it became dry, into small polyedrous tablets. Similar configurations are produced in different lavas by the congelation and contraction that take place by the privation of the fire which held them in a state of fluidity.

"It appears to me, therefore, that the dispute relative to the origin of basaltes is at an end; nor would there be any difference of opinion if, instead of generalizing ideas and fabricating systems, na turalists would make an impartial use of their own observations and those of others. Some volcanists, perceiving that the generation of various basaltes is evidently igneous, have immedia ely inferred that all must have the same origin. In consequence of this principle,

ascribed; to discover which, we must attentively examine whether the places where these figured stones are found exhibit any indubitable signs of volcanization. Yet even these are frequently not sufficient, as there are many hills and mountains which owe their origin to both the great agents of nature, fire and water, in which case it will be necessary to redouble our attention, and fix it on the substances originating from each; to determine, by the relations these have to the basaltes, from which of the two the latter derive their formation. By diligently employ ing these means, we shall be certain, without fear of error, to elucidate and advance the inquiries relative to basaltes, and be enabled accurately to determine which of them are to be ascribed to the action of water, and which to that of fire.

"But here a second question occurs, not less interesting than the first, relative to the cause why cer

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