quarterly. Foreigners, professional students, and others, having no impediment, at the same rate for any shorter period.

8. Pupils with impediments, contracting by the quarter, 70 guineas, 25 of which to be paid at the time of entrance.

Ditto, by the month, or for any shorter period, 25 guineas, to be paid at the time of entrance.

Note-That in all cases, those of impediment, especially, the plan even of temporary domestication will be found highly advantageous; as much is frequently to be done in the hours of social relaxation, and during the cheerful intercourse of the table, that cannot be fully accomplished by the means of stated lessons and more formal instruction: so that those, even, who are precluded by other necessary engagements from attending to the morning lessons and regular exercises of the institution, may, at such seasons, with the assistance of a few occasional lessons and explanations, do much towards the removal of every difficulty of utterance, or the cultivation of the habits of oratorial facility and impressiveness.

For the further accommodation of pupils with impediments, from remote parts of the country, and whose engagements may not permit any protracted residence at the institution, books of exercises are prepared, price 10 guineas each, with manuscript notations, directions, and illustrations, by which the pupil, after a short personal attention to the plans of the professor, may be enabled to prosecute, in some degree, a course of self tuition.

House pupils have also the use of a select library; and the following tutors in the respective departments of erudition and accomplishment attend at the institution:-Classics and mathematics, Rev. W. Draper. Fencing and dancing, Mr. Goddard. Music, Mr. Arnal. Sculpture and modelling, Mr. Gahagan. Drawing, Mr. Phelps, &c.

N. B. Gentlemen accommodated, during the vacations of the universities, and of the other public and private seminaries; and exercised in oratory and composition, and all the accomplishments that qualify the candidate for distinction in the higher departments of active life.

Lyceum of oratory.—The lecture room will be open once a week, during the winter season, to pupils only, for their improvement in spontaneous speaking, by the discussion of questions of history, morals, philosophy, criticism, polite literature, &c. At these discussions M. Thelwall will preside; and all gentlemen who at any time have been pupils at the institution will be at liberty to attend, and to join in the debates.

Junior pupils, with impediments, &c. from four to twelve years of age, are superintended by Mrs. Thelwall, and initiated in the rudiments of the English, French, Latin, and Italian languages, arithmetic, geography, astronomy, &c. on the following terms:

9.-Morning pupils attending in classes, from the hour of ten tili two, or single pupils, taking private lessons of three quarters of an hour each; First course of five lessons, 5 guineas; each succeeding course of five lessons, 2 guineas; ditto by the quarter, 20 guineas. 10.-House pupils, engaging by the year, 120 guineas, including board and every species of instruction, except music, dancing, drawing, &c. The first quarter to be paid in advance.

Ditto, engaging by the quarter:-First quarter 40 guineas, one half to be paid in advance. Each succeeding quarter 30 guineas.

A sketch of Mr. Thelwall's system will be found in his "Introductotory Discourse and Outlines of a Course of Lectures on the Science and Practice of Elocution," from which it will appear, that his mode of instruction is founded on philosophical principles and a diligent investigation of the laws of organic action. In practical application, it is not only adapted to those defects of utterance usually considered under the denomination of impediments; but also to feebleness, dissonance, and every offensive peculiarity of tone and enunciation, and even to those cases in which there are actual deficiencies in the natural organs of utterance; and by a felicity that frequently belongs to systems and discoveries of real science, the very principles that conduce to the most obvious purposes of utility are no less applicable to the highest refinements of grace and elegance; so that this system of instruction, which gives speech to the mute, and fluency to the convulsive stammerer, may be applied to the improvement of all the harmonies of language and utterance; to the rythmus of poetry and elegant composition, the facility of conversational eloquence, and the energies of public oratory.

Nor is the process adopted either tedious or precarious. The time necessary to the attainment of the object must, of course, depend, in a considerable degree, upon the extent of accomplishment desired, the nature and degree of the impediment to be encountered, and the susceptibility, diligence, and dispositions of the pupil: but, in several instances, even where the impediments appeared to be of a very formidable description, a few weeks have been sufficient to secure the essential objects of tuition; and no individual pupil has ever persevered through a single quarter, without making such considerable progress as fully to justify the assertion, that, under the system of regulations and management adopted at this institution, whenever the student has capacity, leisure, and inclination to give the same attention to the subject which other sciences and much more frivolous accomplishments require, a correct and impressive elocution is attainable by all. The difficuity, indeed, will generally be increased in proportion as the pupil has already advanced towards the maturity of life, though Mr. T. has even

been successful with persons who were between thirty and forty years of age. Parents, however, will do wisely to seek for proper remedies on the first appearance of defect or hesitation; since the customary modes of initiating children in the first elements of reading, have a lamentable tendency to aggravate, or even to produce impediment; and when that calamity is once introduced into a family, it is apt to infect the whole, at least of the junior children. The system of initiation adopted by Mrs. Thelwall will, to a certainty, preclude the possibility of any such misfortune.

It may be proper explicitly to add what the preceding detail will, in some degree, have suggested, that, although the removal of impediments and the cultivation of elocution be professedly the principal objects of attention, no branch of education, either useful or ornamental, is disregarded in this institution. So that young pupils committed to the care of Mrs. Thelwall, and those of more advanced years, placed under the superintendance of Mr. T. may confidently expect, besides the proper treatment of their elocutionary defects, all the other advantages that are respectively to be secured at a preparatory or at a finishing school: nor, after the first few weeks, will the treatment of their respective impediments be any obstruction to the attainments consistent with their respective years and particular objects of pursuit.

SCIENCE-FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

Ir is a very common practice, of late, to attribute the deflagration of manufactories to the insidious hand of the incendiary. That manufactories have been set on fire, by evil disposed persons, there can be no doubt; but I am far from believing that it is carried to that extent, which is so generally supposed. Many ve getable substances, when dried and heaped together, will heat, scorch, and finally burst into flame; therefore, in order to guard those who are concerned in various manufactories, I beg leave to attract their attention to the following facts.

In consequence of several accidental conflagrations in storehouses and other places, where expressed oils of the farinaceous seeds (such as rape or linseed) and dry vegetable substances,

such as hemp, cotton, matting, &c. had been stored, a number of experiments were instituted to prove the fact: Among the most important of these, those by Mr. Georgi and a committee of the Royal Academy at Petersburgh, in the year 1781, in consequence of the destruction of a frigate in the harbour of Cronstadt; the conflagration of a large hemp magazine in the same place, in the same year; and a slight fire on board another frigate, in the same port, in the following year, deserve our particular notice. “Forty pounds of fir wood soot were soaked with about thirty-five pounds of hemp-oil varnish, and the whole wrapped up in a mat and put into a close cabin. In about sixteen hours it was observed to give out smoke, which rapidly increased, and when the door was opened and the air freely admitted, burst into a flame."

Three pounds of fir-black were mixed with five pounds of hemp-oil varnish, and the whole bound up in linen, and shut up in a chest, in sixteen hours it emitted a very nauseous putrid smell and steam, and in two hours afterwards it was actually on fire, and burned to ashes.

The presence of lampblack, or any other carbonaceous matter, is not, however, necessary; for a spontaneous inflammation will take place in hemp or cotton, simply soaked in any of these expressed oils, when in considerable quantity, or under circumstances favourable to this process, as in very hot weather, or closely shut up. "An accident of this kind happened at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, in July 1794, with a bale of yarn of one hundred and twenty pounds, accidentally soaked in rape oil, which, after remaining in a warehouse for several days, began to smoke and finally burst into a flame." A similar accident, with a very small quantity of materials, happened at Bombay. A bottle of linseed oil had been left standing on a chest, this had been thrown down by accident in the night, the oil had run into the chest, which contained some coarse cotton cloth, and in the morning the cloth was found scorching hot, and reduced nearly to tinder, and the wood of the chest charred on the inside.

Similar to this, is the spontaneous combustion of wool or woolen yarn, which has occasionally happened when large quantities have been kept heaped up in rooms, little aired and in hot weather. The oil with which wool is dressed appears the chief agent in this combustion.

Rye flour roasted till half parched, and of the colour of coffee, and wrapped up in a linen cloth, has been found to heat violently, and to destroy the cloth. Wheat flour, heated in large quantities and highly dried, has been known to take fire in hot weather, causing accidents in granaries and bakers' shops. Count Morrozzo, in the Memoirs of the Turin Academy, notices an accident of this kind, in a flour warehouse at Turin, where there, were three hundred sacks of flour. It began by a violent explosion on a lamp being brought into the warehouse and the whole was soon in flames. We have likewise many curious instances on record of the spontaneous combustion of the human body, which occurred in England, France, Italy, and elsewhere; a minute account of which may be found in the Repertory, vol. 2, and Philosophical Transactions, vol. 43 and 64.

The many accidents which occur, likewise, at our gunpowder manufactories, ought to induce those, who are concerned therein, to examine the causes which frequently produce explosions, and to adopt such means as will in future prevent, not only the loss of property, but the lives of those who are immediately engaged in the various operations of powder making.

The workmen, usually employed, have only a general idea of the process of making powder, without the least acquaintance with those latent causes, which, in a moment, may put a period to their existence.

Mr. de Caussigni appears to have been the first, who observ ed that charcoal was capable of being set on fire by the pressure of millstones. Mr. Robin, commissary of the powdermills of Esonne, has given an account, in the Annales de Chimie, No. 35, p. 93, of the spontaneous inflammation of charcoal made from the blackberry bearing alder. This accident occurred May 23, 1801, in the box of the bolter, into which it had been sifted. This charcoal, made two days before, had been ground in the mill without any signs of ignition. The coarse powder that remained in the bolter experienced no alteration. The light undulating flame, “unextinguishable by water," that appeared on the surface of the sifted charcoal, was of the nature of inflammable gas. The moisture of the atmosphere, of which fresh made charcoal is very greedy, was supposed to have concurred in the development of the inflamnable gas, and the combustion of the charcoal.

VOL. III.