PROMOTIONS IN THE ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT. Major George Bomford of the corps of engineers, and brevet lt. colonel, to be lt. colonel of ordnance, 9th Feb. 1815. Captain A. R. Woolley to be major, 9th Feb 1815. Captain James Dalaby to be major, 9th February, 1815. Captain I. D. Hayden, late of the 15th infantry, to be captain, 9th February, 1815. First Lt. William Wade, to be captain, 9th Feb. 1815. Capt. M. I. Magee, late of the 4th rifle regiment, to be captain, 10th Feb. 1815. By order of the Secretary of War, Adjutant and Inspector General's Office, May 3, 1816. GENERAL ORDER. Colonels Gardner and Wool will repair to the head quarters of Major General Brown, and report for duty. Colonels Butler and Hayne are arranged to the staff of Major General Jackson, and will repair to his head quarters. Majors Belton and Romayne will repair to De troit, and report to General Macomb. Majors Davis and Wright will repair to Fort Hawkins, and report to Gen. Gaines. Majors Nourse and Lee are arranged to the staff of General Scott. Majors M'Donald and Kirby will repair to Boston, and report to General Ripley. Doctor Mann will report to Major General Brown for orders. Doctor Bell will repair to Fort Hawkins and report to General Gaines. Doctor Catlett is assigned to the post at Pitsburg and will report to the commanding officer at that place. Doctors Wheaton and Blood will repair to St. Louis and report to Brigadier General Smith. Doctors Mercer and Monroe will report to this office for orders. Judge Advocate Winter will report to Major General Brown. Judge Advocate Duval will repair to Detroit and report to General Macomb. Judge Advocate Winston will report to Major General Jackson. Judge Advocate Hanson will repair to St. Louis and report to Brigadier General Smith. Chaplains Booge and Jones will report to Major General Brown. Chaplain M'Calla will report to Major General Jackson. Quarter masters, Topographical Engineers, and Paymasters will report to the War Department for instructions, preparatory to entering on their respective duties. By order, D. PARKER, Adjutant & Inspector General. FROM THE JOURNAL OF AN ENGLISH TRAVELLER. STATE OF ROME. -Alas! rude fragments now Lie scatter'd where the shapely column stood; "Rome, June 10, 1813.-I was at Rome in the year 1791; the city then contained 160,000 inha bitants, the luxury in equipages and liveries was considerable: in many of the great houses the foreigner met with a hospital reception; and in every thing indicated a great and opulent capital. I entered the city this time by the same road, and instead of carriages, was met by droves of oxen, goats, and half wild horses, driven along by black-eyed herdsmen, armed with long pikes, and muffled up in their cloaks; they looked like Tartars. The dust raised by the cattle filled the air. These herdsmen, with their charge, seek every evening, within the walls, a refuge from the pestiferous atmosphere of the environs. They take possession of the quarters and palaces which are abandoned to them by the population, in proportion as it diminishes, and is crowded together by the unwholesome air into the centre of the city. The Porta Populi, the Transtiberine quarter, and those of the Quirinal and the Mountain of the Trinity, are already deserted by their inhabitants, and country people have settled in them. The population of Rome is reduced to 100,000 souls, and this number includes more than 40,000 vine dressers, herdsmen, and its walls. It already relates the glory and magnificence of past ages, and prepares to proclaim to future generations, the genius and the piety of the times in which it was founded. SOLAR SPOTS. On the 30th ult. spots on the sun's disk were ob served by the citizens of this place; and by the public journals it appears they were also observed in most parts of the United States about the same time. having been observed at intervals for some cenThis phenomenon is not new to astronomers, turies, but has excited much curiosity and speculation, by the circumstance of the visibility of these spots to the naked eye. gardeners. Extensive districts of the city are transformed into villages, and are occupied by rustics, driven by the insalubrity of the atmosphere from their former dwellings. Such a prodigious depopulation in the short space of twenty-two years is almost unprecedented. The political events of that period have doubtless contributed much to its diminution; but the principal cause must be sought in the general relations of Rome, and in the effects of its noxious atmosphere. This scourge is every year making fresh encroachments; every year it overspreads streets, places, and quarters, and every year its baneful influence must augment, because it augments in an inverse ratio to the assistance opposed by the population. The fewer the inhabitants the greater the number of victims; and every funeral is the avant courier of many more. That period, therefore, is probably not far distant when this queen of cities will be completely shorn of her splendour, and nothing be left of her but that glorious name, which time cannot destroy The traveller will then find at Rome, as he now does at Volterra, nought but a vast collection of monuments, palaces, and ruins of every age. The marks of near approaching destruction are impressed upon every part of Rome. As there are many Sol, the sun, the most splendid of the celesmore houses than inhabitants, no person thinks of tial globes, diffuses light and heat through the repairing his own-if it becomes ruinous, he seeks whole planetary system. Many authors have another elsewhere; to mend a door, &c. would be written upon his nature and constitution. A cadeemed labour thrown away; they tumble down, talogue of these heliægraphic books was publishand as they fall are left lying. In this manner, num-ed at Heimstadt, in Germany, during 1753, by bers of convents are now transformed into ruinous Nichols Frobesius; but in 1768, Mich. Chr. Ha shells; many places are become uninhabited, and novius attempted, in a formal dissertation, to deno one takes the trouble even to secure their doors.monstrate that the sun was not a body of fire. This abandonment, this Tartar population filling Astronomers, on beholding this grand luminathe streets with their cattle, already present strik-ry, are satisfied that he is not equally radiant in ing characteristics of decay and ruin. "Amid this neglect of the private buildings, a strong anxiety for the preservation of such remains of antiquity as time has spared is observable. The government are carrying on works upon an extensive plan, according to which, all those which are partly covered with rubbish are to be cleared, and to be connected and grouped, that these precious relics shall present a view at once picturesque and agreeable. many of the newspapers of the day, a few of Paragraphs noticing them have appeared in which, we extract for the entertainment. of our readers. The following is from the New-York MERCANTILE ADVERTISER: every part. His surface is occasionally beset with spots or clouds, of which the famous professor Weidler, of Wirtemburg, has exhibited an able summary. The usual facts and appearances of solar macula are these, viz. 1. Occasionally on the disk of the sun are seen blackish spaces, of a round, oval or irregular figure. They often have a dark nucleus, whose circumference is tinged with a red and blue colour. They are called maculæ or spots. 2. Frequently, as the French astronomers rewere none to be seen for days, months, and even years in succession. Picard, Hevelius Mairian distinguished themselves by the assiduity with which they pursued their investigation upon this subject. All the environs of the Vatican, with the exception of the main street conducting to it, are like-marked during the seventeenth century, there wise abandoned to herdsmen. I was particularly struck with their desolate appearance, early one morning, when I set out to visit St. Peter's. The sun had just risen when I reached the great square, the doors of the cathedral were still shut; profound silence every where prevailed, except that at a dis- 3. The number visible at a time, in the sun, vatance I heard the bells of the cattle returning tories; for sometimes there is but a single one, and their pasture. Not a creature was to be seen, and then again ten, twenty, thirty, or more, have been I arrived in the fore-court without having met with distinguished. Scheiner discovered, on a certain 'one single human being. The coolness of the morn- occasion, fifty spots in sight at a time on the sun's ing, and the tints of the dawn, diffused an inex-disk. pressible charm over the enchanting solitude, I be- 4. Their apparent magnitude varies; they ocheld the temple, its colonades, and the sky before cupying, at different times, the hundredth, fiftime, and never had my mind so deeply felt the sub-eth, thirtieth, twentieth, and even a greater porlime magnificence of nature, at the moment of se- tion of the sun's diameter. paration between day and night. 5. They usually make their appearance first "At length the doors of the church opened, and near the easternmost margin of the sun, whence its bells announced the opening day, but in vain did they pass in a curved line to the westernmost their sound summon the christians to their devo-edge, and disappear.-Near the summer and wintions. Not a soul came to implore the blessing of ter solstices their line of motion is straight. Heaven. This temple, the most splendid monu- 6. Near the extremities of the disk they move ment that the world ever raised to the divinity-more slow; towards the centre their progress is this temple already stands in a desert; the grass grows in its fore-courts, and moss springs up on faster. 7. Seen near the margin they seem smaller: while beheld in the middle of the disk they look 8. Sometimes a single spot will divide into several; and then again several will coalesce into one. 9. Yet spots have been observed to show themselves first in the middle of the sun, and there gradually to vanish or go out of sight. 10. The motion of the macule on the hemisphere of the sun, which is turned toward our planet, the earth, lasts about fourteen days, and continues about as long on the opposite side. The period of their revolution, according to Du Hamel, is twenty-seven days, or thereabouts; some of them have returned again and again; others, however, do not present themselves a second time, but melt away or are dissipated while they are going round on the opposite hemisphere. De la Lande calculates the period of the sun's revolution on its own axis, to be twenty-five days and ten hours. 11. Spots which have been seen from remote regions of the earth, have been referred to the same point of the sun's disk. From these facts solar spots are opaque masses impenetrable by may fairly be inferred that the sun's rays.-Their position between the sun and us withholds a portion of his light; and during their continuance the earth receives a diminished share of its radiance. This diminution of solar influence must have an effect upon our planet and its atmosphere, rendering them both cooler than they otherwise would have been. Our spring has been exceedingly backward and chilly; and is nearly six weeks less forward than common. Dr. Mitchell has shown, by several-collections of facts, from year to year, the sensible operation that the vast masses of ice working to the southward, in the Atlantic ocean from Greenland, as far as the latitude of 43, have upon the atmosphere and temperature of the north eastern seċtion of America. This very spring of 1816, as that gentleman observed, brings further confirmation of the doctrine, that the chilliness of April, May and June, may be owing, in a great degree, to the presence of such extensive fields and islands of ice on the Newfoundland station. We now endure the double operation of solar spots and Greenland cold. year Spots, in the sun, were observed in the 1611, by Fabricius in East Friesland, Sheiner at Ingoldstadt, in Germany, and Galileo in Italy. They have since been very diligently watched and described by later astronomers. Those which obscured the disk of the sun in 1806, were carefully watched by the Rev. David Wiley of Georgetown, (D. C.) and their description recorded in the 10th vol. of the New-York Medical Repository, p. 80, and seq. The method of observing them in the best manner, has been stated by Weidler, in his Heliascapia emendata et illustrata, to which the curious are referred. 175 seen by the naked eye. The spot passed near the centre of the disk, and is now approaching torotation on its axis, which will cause it to disapwards the limb. This motion arises from the sun's bly reappear in the latter part of the present pear behind the sun in a few days. It may possimonth, as some spots have continued 70 or 80 The cause of these spots has not been determined days, but in general the duration is much shorter. by astronomers. The opinion of Wilson, La Lande and Herschell, may be seen in Ray's Cyclopædia, (article Macula) where may be found a particular angle of about one minute, and covers a surface account of them. The present spot subtends an whose greatest length is twenty-five or thirty thousand miles, being four times as great as the earth's diameter. From the Freeman's Journal of May 1. The Sun.-A spot of considerable magnitude has appeared on the disk of the sun, for the last two days, which has given rise to many conjectures. ty remarks, as only a few minutes were afforded The public will pardon the following very has to prepare them. sit of Venus or Mercury, for neither of them, at In the first place, we say the spot is not a tranpresent, is in the same part of the heavens with for its velocity, for the most part, is superior to the sun, and a transit of those planets is always effected in 6 or 8 hours; nor can it be a comet, those planets. The spot is situated nearly north of the sun's from the north limb. It appears stationary, as centre about one and a half digits, or 12m 16s observations were accurately taken, and no apparent change discovered after about five hours. Through a telescope it appears somewhat like body, and its magnitude cannot be less than two a spider, having parts extending from the main minutes, as it is very visible to the naked eye. surface of the sun, in which case, its surface would It is more than probable that this spot is in the prove to be about 36 times that of the earth. tion about its axis, it will be seen gradually to adIf this conjecture be true, by the sun's revolupear in about vance to the circumference of the sun, and disapor 10 days. It is probable that this spot is a comet fallen into the sun. helps to confirm this conjecture, as it is of an elipThe apparent shape of the spot,' when falling obliquely upon a plane. tical form, somewhat pointed at, one end, which is the shape into which globular bodies are thrown' Newton computes, that a comet in 1680 ap- Galileo who made the first discovery of spots the sun, it might in that case appear stationary. Nothing further can be said until further observations be obtained. DAVID M' CLURE, Nautical and Mathematical Academy. Tuesday evening, April 30. From the Carlisle Herald, May 2. ASTRONOMICAL NOTICE. DROUGHT. A letter from Charleston to a gentleman in NewYork, states, that an unusual drought has parched the ground, withered foliage and vegetation of all sorts, and dried up springs and brooks. For upwards of three months there had not fallen a dep of rain. Remaining casks of fresh water taken from New-York and the North, were eagerly bought at a high price, and reckoned a very valuable article of merchandize ! Several spots have been observed for some days past in the sun's disk. They may be distinctly This drought does not appear to be confined to seen on a clear day, on his N. W. limb, through the southern, but pervades the Atlantic states geany telescope; they may be even perceived thro' nerally, if we judge from the many fires that have a common spectacle glass, coloured, on his ris-happened in the forests and mountains.—In this ing or setting. city there has been no rain of consequence for Through a small glass it has the appearance of about four weeks; a circumstance very unusual at N. Reg. but one spot; but through the three feet reflec-this season of the year. tor of Dickinson college, three large spots may be distinctly seen contiguous to each other, with several small ones, surrounded by an umbra of considerable extent. The motion of the spots are from east to west, and will not be seen for more than seven or eight days. It is by observing the motion of these spots, the time of the sun's revolution on his axis, has been ascertained. From repeated observations, these spots have been seen to appear on the eastern margin of the sun, to cross his surface, to disappear and to reappear again, in twenty-seven days and seven hours, from whence astronomers have calculated, allowing for the motion of the earth, that the sun revolves on his axis in 25 days and 9 hours. From the Albany Advertiser of May 1. Fire in the woods.-Our city was yesterday filled with smoke and cinders from the woods which were on fire between Albany and Schenectady. The fire commenced on Sunday afternoon, and, we understand, has extended its ravages over a distance of five or six miles. Reports state, that two or three houses on the turnpike have been consumed, and that some fears were entertained for the powder-house in the vicinity. Engines left the city yesterday afternoon to arrest its progress. When we take into consideration the high price of fuel in our market, this fire will be considered a serious calamity. Whether it was the effect of ac. cident or design, we have not ascertained. Easton, (Penn.) May 3. These spots have been seen, by attentive obserFire on the mountains.-For several days, the vers, to change their shape-to separate into dif-surrounding country has been darkened by clouds ferent parts the nucleus to encroach on the umbra, and even to disappear entirely. It has frequently been observed, that that part of the sun where the spots have appeared, has been much the brightest. The Rev. Mr. Wolaston states, that he saw a spot burst to pieces, while looking at the sun through a twelve inch reflector; the appearance was to him as if a piece of ice when dashed on a frozen pond, breaks to pieces. No astronomer has ventured to account, with any certainty, for these appearances in the sun. The great Herschel has given us his conjectures on the subject. of smoke, which have evidently proceeded from the blue mountains, the brushes and trees on which have been on fire for upwards of a week. The fire (we are told) first commenced in the vicinity of Ross-common, about 14 miles from this place, and advanced rapidly with the wind, which blew from that quarter towards the upper parts of the mountains, extending itself over the country about 20 or 30 miles, consuming property to a considerable amount. The fire is not yet extinguished, but rages in some parts of the mountains with the greatest fury. Boston, May 4. Destructive Fire.-On Monday last, a person in He supposes, in his paper, in the Philosophi- the northerly part of Dartmouth, (Mass.) set fire cal Transactions of 1795, that the sun is surround- to a pile of brush, which in a few hours spread ed by a luminous atmosphere, which, when in-over several miles, destroying fences, standing terrupted, gives a transient glimpse of the body trees, &c. The damage done is said to be incalcuof the sun-That it is a world inhabited like our lable some have estimated it at 20,000 dollars. Savannah, April 30. own, that the heat of the sun is accounted for on the principle, "that heat is produced by the sun's A Launch-The steam boat Union, intended to rays only when they act on a calorifick medium."ply as a ferry boat between this city and S. CaroOthers have supposed, that they are burning lina, was launched yesterday; and, it is expected, mountains of immense size, and that when the will be ready in about five weeks to go into opecruption is nearly ended and the smoke (which ration. She is sixty feet in length and twenty in partly occasions the dark-spots) dispersed, the breadth, and without her machinery draws 13 Hames appear as luminous spots. inches of water. Mr. N. Bosworth is the builder, Others have imagined (but which appears so improbable as to merit prompt rejection) that they are bodies revolving round the sun, as the moon about the earth. The largest of the spots seen in 1779 has been supposed to be greater in breadth than six times the diameter of the earth. The nucleus alone of those now visible, are probably much larger than the whole continent of America. Quebec, April 18. The Season-On Friday last the 12th inst. there was a heavy fall of snow nearly to the depth of one foot, and every day since more or less snow has fallen. The country has all the appearance of the middle of winter; the depth of snow being still between 3 and 4 feet. We understand that in many parishes the cattle. are already suffering from a scarcity of forage. Without intermeddling with the political opinions of the late Samuel Dexter, we may be allow-ment of facts was, what should be the amount of ed sincerely to lament the loss which his country has sustained in his death. Mr. Dexter was not a deep read lawyer; he paid but very little attention to his books, and usually imposed on the subordinate counsel the drudgery of exploring his library for cases in point. But to compensate for this defect, he possessed a sort of intuitive analysis, by which he could, without the least appearance of labour or exertion, unravel the thread of the most changing argument; it was simplified, explained, and rendered intelligible to the meanest capacity, in a manner so perfectly free and familiar, that the jury were persuaded he told them nothing new: they saw the things so distinctly, that they mis-is the common. The satires of Dexter were not took the ideas of Dexter for their own. If a case the sallies of a light and sportive fancy: he selwas produced by the opposing counsel, point blank dom struck; but when he did, the sting was against his construction of the law, it was distin- deep, terrible, corrosive, and always rememguished from the one on trial, with such superla-bered afterwards. He was once counsel in a case, tive ingenuity, that the jury have often been made in which the editor of a public paper, not reto adopt his construction, to prevent that very lawmarkable for his engaging physiognomy, was infrom being violated. His enemies at the bar haveterested. Mr. D. in stating an imaginary case, often thus found their batteries so completely turn-supposed that a man should be found, whose caed against themselves, that they were apprehen- lumnies were as notorious as his face. In discusssive of producing the most favourable precedents.ing before a populous assembly, the constitutionWe have known this gentleman to thank the coun.ality of a particular law, to which he was oppossel opposed to him for the production of such authorities: he had been on the hunt for them himself; but had not the good fortune to find them in the reporter, notwithstanding the most painful research. A deep and thorough acquaintance with his case in all its bearings, enabled him to become an absolute master of all its strong points, and his intuitive power of luminous analysis, rendered resort to a law book almost unnecessary. It was dangerous to interrupt this brilliant debater, for the purpose of correcting his statement. Whatever was then advanced, was taken by Dexter as concession from the opposite counsel; and it was turned to so new, so extraordinary, and so dangerous a use, that we have often seen the lawyer compelled to take his seat, and to bite his lips from vexation. Probably, a single fact may do more to illustrate the peculiar character of Mr.guage: not a word was lost or misapplied; it fell Dexter's mode of argument, than the most labour- directly in the place designed by the speaker. ed analysis. A merchant, in one of the New-Eng- Studied gesture, violent emphasis, theatrical conland states, fitted out a ship for a voyage to Can-tortions, unnatural warmth-those stale tricks of ton. She was to stop at the island of Tristam de secondary minds, he merely regarded as beneath Cuna, and procure seal skins for an East-India his notice. His evolutions were easy, natural and M |