illuminating Streets, Houses, and Manufactories with Carburetted Hydrogen or Coal Gas, with remarks on the Utility, Safety, and general Nature of this new branch of civil Economy, 1816. This work it appears originated in consequence of many years' experience, during which time the author was professionally called upon to witness and verify the most extended series of operations that ever have been made for the purpose of ascertaining the practicability, safety, and general nature of the art of applying coal gas as a substitute for tallow and oil, and which have as it were fixed the fate of this art. The numerous experiments carried on upon a very large scale, which the author was called upon to institute, for the purpose of adducing them for the use of those who applied to Parliament for being incorporated as a Chartered Company, in evidence before the House of Commons and House of Lords, enabled him to collect such a body of information as could not have been obtained by any other private individual. The substance of these results were printed by order of Government, and the author has incorporated them in this treatise, together with such other facts and observations as presented themselves in the routine of his profession." This book, therefore, is highly useful to those who wish to acquire a practical knowledge of the subject on which it treats, and will enable mechanics to erect the apparatus necessary for carrying the gas light illumination into effect. It will give to those who are unacquainted with the nature of the gas light illumination, a fair and not overcharged statement of the merits and defects of this new art; whilst, at the same time, the chemist will meet with facts relating to the subject of lighting with coal gas, which will arrest his attention and add to the general stock of chemical knowledge." (Philosoph. Mag. 1815.)

This work has passed through four editions in this country, and it has been translated into the French, Italian, and German languages.

5. Elements of Crystallography after the Method of Stacey, 8vo. 1816. This work is designed for the purpose of initiating into the principles of Crystallography those who possess no previous knowledge of it; and as the doctrine which explains the production of crystalline forms and their metamorphoses abounds in mathematical and algebraic calculations, and cannot be studied with ease and success by such as are unacquainted with the mathematics, the author, to render this book more generally useful, made arrangements to accompany and furnish with the work a set of geometrical solids, partly solid, and partly dissected, so as to give the untutored eye a distinct conception of the laws of that geometry of nature which are followed by the integrant particles of crystallisable bodies when they combine, and of which the orderly arrangements produce symmetrical crystals, so that with the book

in the hands and the help of the models, those who are actually unacquainted with the mathematics, are enabled to study with great advantage the laws of crystallography, and their relations and consequences.

6. A Practical Treatise on the Use and Application of Chemical Re-agents and Tests: 1818. Of this work the 3d edition has lately appeared. It has also been translated into the French language.

It is by far the most complete and judicious manual, showing the utility and application of chemical tests, yet published. The examples, in elucidation of the action of the various chemical tests, are selected with judgment, and they are such as are easy to be performed, and the exhibition of which requires no other substances than such as are readily to be procured in all solutions. The work has run in a short time through several editions, and a French translation of it has lately appeared.

7. Chemical Amusement: comprising a Series of Curious and Instructive Experiments in Chemistry, which are easily performed, and unattended by danger: 1819. This work has been written with a view to blend chemical science with rational amusement. To the student it serves as a set of popular instructions for performing a varity of curious and instructive experiments, well calculated for illustrating the most striking facts which the science of chemistry has to offer. The experiments are such as may be performed with ease and safety in the closet, and the exhibition of which requires neither costly apparatus nor complicated instruThere are several editions of this work.

ments.

8. A Description of the Process of Manufacturing Coal Gas, with Elevations, Sections, and Plans of the Apparatus now employed in the Gas Works in London and the principal provincial Towns in Great Britain, accompanied with comparative estimates, exhibiting the most economical Mode of procuring this Species of Light: 1820.

This treatise, as its title expresses, exhibits the superior processes of manufacturing coal gas now employed in the metropolis and the provincial towns of Great Britain, illustrated with elevations, sections, and plans of the most improved gas light machinery, which has stood the test of practice, and is now in action at the most celebrated gas light establishments in this country. A second edition of the work has lately appeared.

9. A Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons ; exhibiting the fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine, Spiritous Liquors, Tea, Coffee, Cream, Confectionary, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper, Cheese, Olive Oil, Pickles, and other articles employed in domestic economy, and methods of detecting them: 1820. This work has arrested general attention; it is chiefly for the VOL. II.

29

purpose of laying open the dishonest artifices of fraudulent dealers, that Mr. Accum published this very interesting popular work, in which he has given a most fearful view of the various and extensive frauds which are daily practised on the unsuspecting public, and the methods of detecting them. A new edition of the work has been published last month.

Such are the works published by Mr. Accum; from the notices before the public we learn that he has now in the press two works; namely, a System of Chemistry for self Instruction, after the method of Sir Humphry Davy, and a Description of the Chemical Apparatus and Instruments employed in operative and experimental Chemistry.

ART. XII.—The Life of the Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, late Master of the Rolls in Ireland. By his Son, WILLIAM HENRY CURRAN, Barrister-at-Law. 8vo. [2 vols. pp. 970. London.] New-York. 1 vol. William H. Creagh, 1820.

[From the Edinburgh Review-May, 1820. We can only extract those parts which relate to Curran's colloquial humour-his wit and eloquence at the bar-to the insurrection in Ireland, of 1803—and to the character of Irish oratory.]

THIS is really a very good book; and not less instructive in its moral, and general scope, than curious and interesting in its details. It is a mixture of Biography and History—and avoids the besetting sins of both species of composition-neither exalting the hero of the biography into an idol, nor deforming the history of a most agitated period with any spirit of violence or exaggeration. It is written, on the contrary, as it appears to us, with singular impartiality and temper-and the style is not less remarkable than the sentiments: For though it is generally elegant and spirited, it is without any of those peculiarities which the age, the parentage, and the country of the author, would lead us to expect:-And we may say, indeed, of the whole work, looking both to the matter and the manner, that it has no defects from which it could be gathered that it was written either by a Young man-or an Irishman -or by the Son of the person whose history it professes to record -though it has attractions which probably could not have existed under any other conditions.

Mr. Curran's parentage and early life are now of no great consequence. He was born, however, of respectable parents, and received a careful and regular education. He was a little wild at college; but left it with the character of an excellent scholar, and was universally popular among his associates, not less for his amia

ble temper than his inexhaustible vivacity. He wrote baddish verses at this time, and exercised himself in theological discourses; for his first destination was for the Church, and be afterwards took to the Law, very much to his mother's disappointment and mortification-who was never reconciled to the change—and used, even in the meridian of his fame, to lament what a mighty preacher had been lost to the world,-and to exclaim, that, but for his versatility, she might have died the mother of a Bishop! It was better as it was. Unquestionably he might have been a very great preacher; but we doubt whether he would have been a good parish priest, or even an exemplary bishop.

Irish lawyers are obliged to keep their terms in London; and, for the poorer part of them, it seems to be but a dull and melancholy noviciate. During the three years he passed in the metropolis, he seems to have entered into no society, and never to have come in contact with a single distinguished individual. He saw Garrick on the stage, and Lord Mansfield on the bench; and this exhausts his list of illustrious men in London. His only associates seem to have been a few of his countrymen, as poor and forlorn as himself. Yet the life they lived seems to have been virtuous and honourable. They contracted no debts, and committed no excesses. Curran himself rose early, and read diligently till dinner; and, in the evening he usually went, as much for improvement as relaxation, to a sixpenny debating club. For a long time, however, he was too nervous and timid to act any other part than that of an auditor. He used often to give an account of this in after life himself; and as the following seems to have been taken down by the author from his own lips, we gladly take the opportunity of inserting it, both as the most authentic account of the fact, and as a specimen of that colloquial pleasantry for which he is here so lavishly commended.

shall

'One day after dinner, an acquaintance, in speaking of his eloquence, happened to observe that it must have been born with ' him. "Indeed, my dear sir," replied Mr. Curran, "it was not; 'it was born three-and-twenty years and some months after me; 'and, if you are satisfied to listen to a dull historian, you have the history of its nativity. When I was at the Temple, a 'few of us formed a little debating club.....Upon the first night of our assembling, I attended, my foolish heart throbbing with the 'anticipated honour of being styled "the learned member that opened the debate," or "the very eloquent gentleman who has 'just sat down." I stood up-the question was Catholic claims or the Slave trade, I protest I now forget which, but the differ'ence, you know, was never very obvious-my mind was stored with about a folio volume of matter, but I wanted a preface, and for want of a preface the volume was never published. I stood

up, trembling through every fibre; but remembering that in this I was but imitating Tully, I took courage, and had actually pro'ceeded almost as far as "Mr. Chairman," when, to my astonish'ment and terror, I perceived that every eye was riveted upon me. 'There were only six or seven present, and the little room could ' not have contained as many more; yet was it, to my panic-struck 'imagination, as if I were the central object in nature, and assem'bled millions were gazing upon me in breathless expectation. I 'became dismayed and dumb; my friends cried "hear him!" but 'there was nothing to hear. My lips, indeed, went through the 'pantomime of articulation, but I was like the unfortunate fiddler at the fair, who, upon coming to strike up the solo that was to ra'vish every ear, discovered that an enemy had maliciously soaped his bow. So you see, sir, it was not born with me. However, though my friends, even Apjohn, the most sanguine of them, despaired of me, the cacoethes loquendi was not to be subdued with' out a struggle. I was for the present silenced, but I still attended 'our meetings with the most laudable regularity, and even ventured to accompany the others to a more ambitious theatre, "the 'Devils of Temple Bar;" where truly may I say, that many a 'time the Devil's own work was going forward.

'Such was my state, the popular throb just beginning to revisit 'my heart, when a long expected remittance arrived from Newmarket: Apjohn dined with me that day.....In the evening we re'paired to "the Devils." One of them was upon his legs: a fel'low, of whom it was impossible to decide, whether he was most distinguished by the filth of his person, or by the flippancy of his 'tongue; just such another as Harry Flood would have called "the highly gifted gentleman with the dirty cravat and greasy pantaloons." I found this learned personage in the act of calum'niating chronology by the most preposterous anachronisms, and (as I believe I shortly after told him) traducing the illustrious dead by affecting a confidential intercourse with them, as he 'would with some nobleman, his very dear friend, behind his back, who, if present, would indignantly repel the imputation of so in'sulting an intimacy. He descanted upon Demosthenius, the glory of the Roman forum; spoke of Tully as the famous cotemporary ' and rival of Cicero; and in the short space of one half hour, 'transported the straits of Marathon three several times to the 'plains of Thermopyla. Thinking that I had a right to know 'something of these matters, I looked at him with surprise; and whether it was the money in my pocket, or my classical chivalry, 'or most probably the supplemental tumbler of punch, that gave 'my face a smirk of saucy confidence, when our eyes met there was something like wager of battle in mine; upon which the eru'dite gentleman instantly changed his invective against antiquity

6