yet it is in good preservation, and appears | likely to last for ages. A small theatre is the only building besides which Mr. W. mentions. The three temples of Pæstum close our author's labours: these are well known from other writers: they are. nevertheless, proper subjects of Mr. W's atten tion and complete the series to advantage. Of two of these temples, one is the only instance known of super-columniation (and an awkward one it is) the other has a row of columns in the very middle of the interior of the edifice, a no less awkward situation for them. These peculiarities have never yet been accounted for. Mr. W. adjoins an appendix in which he justifies a correction he has proposed in Stuart's construction of a disputed pas sage in Vitruvius, by means of Mr. Gell's measures of the Temple of Jupiter at Olympia and reports some particulars of the Temple of Apollo at Phigalia, on the authority of the same gentleman. A very handsome Corinthian capital, not overloaded with ornament, is added: with two others, which do not strike us as being any great gain to art. We have already proposed this work for a place on the shelf with Palmyra, Balbec and Athens: it was desirable that the British nation should not be under the necessity of recurring to foreigners for the examination of these interesting an tiquities. It is unfortunate for Mr. W. that others having published before him, have deprived his labours of the zest of novelty but we doubt not that we may safely commend these designs for accuracy of measurement and representation, as we justly may the execution of the plates for elegance and correctness. The views are executed in aqua tinta (which ought to have been printed uniformly with ink of the same tone of colour) the niembers at large are engraved in the line manner and sundry head and tail pieces attached to the chapters contribute to encrease the value of the work, and the pleasure of inspecting it. Poems, in two Volumes, by William Wordsworth, author of the Lyrical Ballads. 12mo. Price, 11s. Longman and Co. ondon, 1807. SPECIMEN. The Red Breast and Butterfly. Art thou the Bird whom man loves best, The Bird that comes about our doors And Russia far inlaud? If the Butterfly knew but his friend, What ail'd thee, Robin, that thou could's The cheerer thou of our in-door sadness, Like the hues of thy breast His beautiful wings in crimson are drest, Hours of Idleness; a Series of Poems, Original and Translated. By George Gordon, Lord Byron, a Minor. Sm. 8vo. pp. 187. Price 6s. Ridge, Newark; Crosby, London, 1807. 'Something to blame, and something to commend For this wild error, which pervades my strain, The soul's meridian don't become her, The aid which once improv'd their light, And bade them burn with fiercer glow, Now quenches all their sparks in night; As many a boy and girl remembers, Extinguish'd with the dying embers. As a specimen of a different kind, and partly connected with other subjects in the present number, we insert one of Lord B.'s poems at length. LACHIN Y GAIR. LACHIN Y GAIR, or as it is pronounced in the Erse, LOCH NA GARR, towers proudly preeminent in the Northern Highlands, near Invercauld. One of our modern tourists mentions it as the highest mountain perhaps in Great Britain: be this as it may, it is certainly one of the most sublime and picturesque amongst our "Caledonian Alps." Its appearance is of a dusky hue, but the summit is the seat of eternal snows Near Lachin y Gair I spent some of the early part of my life, the recollection of which has given birth to the following stan zas.- AWAY, ve gay landscapes! ye gardens of roses! In you let the minions of luxury rove; Restore me the rocks, where the snow-flake re poses, This may be true; but we cannot help wishing, that absence of guilt had precluded necessity for apology, even to a friend, and, à fortiori, to the public. Surely our author has been a rover, to be able, in his nineteenth year, to furnish the following list of nymphs, whose names he has Yet, Caledonia! belov'd are thy mountains, hitched into some of his prettiest verses :— Full often has my infant Muse Attun'd to love her languid lyre; And Mary's given to another; In truih, dear L-, t'was time to flee, Though still they are sacred to freedom and love: Round their white summits though elements war, Though cataracts foam, 'stead of smooth flowing fountains, I sigh for the valley of dark Lochin y Garr. 2 Ah there my young footsteps in infancy wander'd, My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid. On chieftains long perish'd my memory ponder'd, As daily I strode through the pine-cover'd glade; * This word is erroneously pronounced PLAD: the proper pronunciation (according to the Scotch) is shewn by the orthography. I sought not my home. till the day's dying glory Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star; For Fancy was cheer'd by traditional story, Disclos'd by the natives of dark Loch na Garr 3 Shades of the dead! have I not heard your voices Rise on the night-rolling breath of the gale?" Surely the soul of the hero rejoices, And rides on the wind o'er his own Highland vale. A Vocabutary in Two Parts, English and Bongallce, and vice versa, by H. P. Forster, Senior Merchant on the Bongal Establishment 2 Vols. quarto. The first volume English and Bongallee, the second Bongallee and English. Imported by Blacks and Co. London. Price £5. 5s. Very seldom have we occasion to express our dissatisfaction with the modesty Round Loch na Garr while the stormy mist ga- of a title Page: yet in this instance we thers, Winter presides in his cold icy ear, Clouds there encircle the forms of my fathers. They dwell in the tempests of dark Loch na Garr. 4 "Ill starred, though brave, drove, did no visions foreboding, "Tell you that Fate had forsaken your cause?' Ah! were you destin'd to die at Culloden, ‡ Victory crown'd not your fall with applause; Still were you happy in death's earthy slumber, You rest with your clan in the caves of Brae mar, !! must protest against describing any well executed vocabulary as vox et præterea nihil, which phrase Mr. F. has chosen for the motto to his work. A knowledge of things as well as of words, and an intimate knowledge too, is necessary to who ever attempts to compose a work of this description. Words are the signs of things, and having usually several applications, those who are ignorant of things may misapply and pervert them, to senses altogether unwarrantable. The knowledge of only words makes a pedant; the combined understanding of words and things The Pibroch § resounds, to the piper's loud num-qualifies, not merely for perusing a book, ber, Your deeds, on the echoes of dark Loch na Garr. 5 but for appearance in public. This seems to us to be a useful performance; and, knowing the labour which it must have cost the composer, we should think our Years have roll'd on, Loch na Garr! since I left selves unjust if we did not pay it proper you; Years must elapse, ere I tread you again : Nature of verdure and flowers has bereft you, Yet still are you dearer than Albion's plain: England! thy beauties are tame and domestic, To one who has rov'd on the mountains afar, Oh! for the crags that are wild and majestic, The steep, frowning glories of dark Loch na Garr. + I allude here to my maternal ancestors, the "GORDONS," many of whom fought for the unfortunate Prince Charles, better known by the name of the Pretender. This branch was nearly allied by blood, as well as attachment to the Stuarts. George, the 2d Earl of Huntley, married the Princess Annabella Stuart, daughter of James 1. of Scotland. By her he left four sons; the third. Sir William Gordon, I have the honour to claim as one of my progenitors. Whether any perished in the Battle of Culloden, I am not certain; but as many fell in the insurrection, I have used the name of the principal action, "pars pro toto." A tract of the Highlands so called: there is also a castle at Briemar, A bagpipe, respect. It is not, however offered by its author as a complete collection of words in the Bengallee language; but, as a work between a grammar and a dictiona ry, containing more words than the former, yet being less comprehensive than the latter. If we are rightly informed Mr. F. is preparing both those useful ar• ticles. This vocabulary follows the alphabetical order of words in each language. This might be easy enough for the English part, wherein the orthography of the language is fixed, and the writer had assistance of great importance from Europe; but it was not so for the Bengallee part; since that is not by any means equally fixed as to its spelling, but, some districts write, (and pronounce) words differently from what others do, that they are hardly cognizable by the eye (or the ear) when submitted to it. so very We are happy to see this work imported, and think it must be useful, to gentlemen whose concerns are likely to lie an ong the natives of India. The venerable Sanscrit, is, with great his meaning in using them was misunpropriety recommended by Mr. F. to the derstood. attention of all who wish to acquire a competent familiarity with the Bengallee that is the parent, though its offspring be corrupted. The Bengallee may nevertheless assume some merit as being not so much corrupted as other dialects, though terms relating to the revenue, to the administration of justice, to every day salutations, have indeed been adopted by it from foreign sources. This language is divided into the polite and the vulgar: and these differ very sensibly. M. F. affirms from his own observation that six-tenths of the inhabitants of Bengal speak the Bengallee: and that threefourths of the remainder understand it equally well with the Moor's dialect, &c. He therefore considers it as a glaring inconsistency that the Persian should be the official language, so that the natives themselves are daily imposed on, by those whom they employ to state in writing particulars which they wish should be so expressed. The course of such writing is usually this: a Dhom or native of the most illiterate class, applies to a Darogah, or writer in a station: this man translates the bad Bengallee of his client, into bad Persian of his own: together with the depositions of witnesses, to be forwarded to the magistrate: this process is repeated by the courts of circuit, with a further translation into English: and thus are the punishments of imprisonment, transportation corporal chastisement, or even death, at the mercy of double translations and misunderstood language." The difficulty of rendering a written document in its true spirit, from one language to another, is not trifling, says Mr. F. how much more must it be to render off-hand a viva-voce deposition in a foreign tongue, admitting the writer to be tolerably conversant in it; but the kind of documents here alluded to, bear the most unequivocal proofs that he is not; indeed BongaleePersian is proverbial, and as little intelligible to the Persian scholar as the Bongalee itself." Where there is so much room for misconception to use no harsher term, the hazard of prevarication is surely great, and the difficulty of punishing it, is in proportion: since the party accused may with the utmost plausibility deny the use of such or such words, or affirm that We need say no more to point out the evils attendant on a system of doing business in three languages: what uncertainty, what jargon, must it produce! Weturn then to the English reader, and remind him, that our fore-fathers were subject to an evil of the same kind when under their Norman conquerors, they were forced to plead in the French language in our courts of law; when the laws themselves were promulgated in that tongue; and honest as a Saxon might be, he was liable to be punished for the knavery of one in whom he was obliged to confide. We even feel this disadvantage to this day: hence the jargon of our courts of law: hence the retention of many terms which surely our language is very competent to express with equal accuracy and power to that in which they are handed down. Baron and feme is nothing superior to husband and wife; or feme couverte to married woman." In some cases this ope rates disadvantageously: for the word culprit has been thought by our antiquaries to import pres to culpabilis, "guilty already"-but, there seems to be some thing so harsh in condemning a man before he is tried, that we greatly prefer to derive it from qu'il paroit, "let him appear"-i. e. to take his trial. So we observe that our judges with great propriety refrain from saying "the criminal at the bar"-but always say the prisoner:" for a prisoner he certainly is, when arraigned; but the evidence may prove him to be innocent. There is something more, then, in the application and use of words than mere grammatical construction: a word wrong fully applied may cost a man his life; and we well know that cant phrases which are but misapplications of words, are often pregnant with extensive mis chiefs. A Philosophical Inquiry on the Cause, with Directions to Cure, the Dry Rot in Buildings. By James Randal, Architect, pp. 66 Price 3s. Taylor, London. 1807, EVERY profession has a somewhat connected with it which is a source of mortification to those engaged in it, and. stands as a boundary to their science and skill. The investigating mind is not sa tisfied with superficial' appearances, but desires to comprehend the whole of what it examines, if possible, both cause and effect. Sometimes it traces effects up to their cause, sometimes it conjectures the cause and establishes conjectures by experiments, yet it often finds itself baffled by the constancy with which the subject of investigation maintains its properties Mr.R.considers as the cause of this evil float in a plant, the seeds of which " the air, and constantly pervade all matter, vegetating wherever they find a pabulum and an elevation of temperature. and eludes detection. Such has been the As this phenomenon appears to be the result of temperature and liberated gases, it will necessary to examine the changes that they undergo in places infected with fungus rot. to a volatilization of some of the vegetable prinThese changes being considerable, and owing ciples, or of their parts, and these being very pernicious and assuming various aspects, arising either from an absorption of part of the oxygen, or a combustion of the hydrogen, or probably from the formation of a certain quan tity of carbonic gas; while these processes are going on, a part of the hydrogen may escarbon, which being divided into minute parcape, carrying with it a small quantity of ticles by the aeriform solution, burns either at the same time or immediately afterwards. Thus the air, at the last term of its alteration, may be entirely deprived of its oxygen, contain also, a large portion of water, the greater part of which, not being preserved in a dissolved state, is precipitated, and becomes charged with a portion of vegetable matter in a state of vapour. Hence the formation of fungus, which this vapour impregnates in greater or less abundance, according to the The rot is known to builders by the prodigious quantity of fungus formed on every part of the decaying wood. Its appearance often varies, depending wholly on the situation where it is engendered. That which is most commonly found is fleshy to the touch, adheres firmly to the wood, walls, and every contiguous substance, and branches out into, apparently, strong fibrous roots. It occasions a gradual decomposition of the wood, begin-quantity of seed that is present. ning at the surface, and, finally, proceeding This fatal destroyer proceeding only from through the whole mass. If any portion, one cause, it may be removed by means of an however, remaius exposed to the atmosphere, artificial preparation; and, as it should act the destroving principle of the fungus is ar- not only on the sap, but the wood also, it rested. Thus, floors often appear perfect to appeared to me, that the most effectual remethe eye, when nothing is left undestroyed but dy would be oxydation. With this view, I the part immediately in view. Painted wood- oxydated several pieces of wood, both with work is wholly decomposed; the paint pre-nitric acid and fire, and placed them in the venting a spontaneous oxydation of its surface. That this is a subject of importance to Builders, and to tenants also, appears from the following instances of it. I saw it in a house at Whitehall, built by Sir J. Vanbrugh. The house is, I think, only two stories high; the plant had ascended to the upper story, committing devastation on the wainscot all the way. It will destroy half-inch deal in a year, says Mr. Johnston most favourable situation among this pile. Portions of the same plank, and of similar dimensions, were placed constantly near particular change was visible in either of the them. During the first twenty days, no pieces. At the expiration of this period, on removing one of the unoxidated portions, I discovered particles of mould forming between the lamella of the wood, but not the least alteration was perceptible in the others, al though surrounded by wood covered with and producing fungus. In sixty days, the It is a well known fact, that the great pieces, and all that were near them, exceptdome of the Bank of England, as originallying the four previously oxidated, were enbuilt by the late Sir Robert Taylor, was de-tirely decomposed, exhibiting nearly the same stroyed by this rot, while no other part suf- appearances as have before been detailed. fered. The timber framing of this dome was of good sound oak. From these facts, it is obvious, that orydation is a certain remedy for the Dry-Rot |